A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ – jazz piano lesson – it is best to watch in high quality au.youtube.com Another favourite standard of jazz piano players with lots of different possibilities in the harmony. As with all these instructional videos, you can download an much higher quality copy from my website at www.bushgrafts.com There is also a pdf printable copy of the transcription on my instructional DVD (details on website) A good tip to slow down and study these DVD videos is to play them in Windows Media Player and press ‘Ctrl to slow down without altering pitch. ‘Ctrl/Shift/N’ returns to normal speed. This of course does not work for the Youtube version or while streaming from my website.

‘Girl Talk’ – jazz piano lesson (advanced). Recorded as a midi file some time ago, I am converting quite a few midi files that I have recorded over the years to video format – I had spent quite a time annotating these, and I thought it would be worthwhile to convert them to video lessons. The annotations on this are a little to small to read if played as lower quality video. Try au.youtube.com for better quality video – but for even better quality, you can download a much clearer version of this in stereo at www.bushgrafts.com along with the original midi file and also a backing track of just bass and drums. With this video, I have added a scrolling leadsheet at the bottom so that it could be played along with on your instrument.

‘You’ve Changed’ Jazz piano lesson (advanced). This was improvised in free time. To make it readable as a transcription, I had to create a ‘click’ track (using the ‘Sonar’ program and its ‘fit improvisation’ option), to align the notes to their correct places in the measures. I tried to use lots of slash chords – probably a little over the top! However, I wanted to give some examples of using this way of visualizing chord structures and in what situations that they may be used. Most are simple triads with a different and unusual bass note. Pianists usually find the basic triad shape easy to play with – invert, arpeggiate, and manipulate in other ways. Keeping the triad notes separate in the RH, I find, helps me to create melodies often just with these 3 notes. I have added lots of comments again to this one – probably only readable in high quality mode (click youtube.com ). There is a much clearer version at my website at www.bushgrafts.com I have done another midi file of this great song – quite a few years ago – it is on my midi site at http

‘This Nearly Was Mine’ – solo jazz piano lesson. To clearly read the music, you will need the high quality youtube version – au.youtube.com Wonderful tune from South Pacific – lots of jazz pianists have played it – Fred Hersch, Chick Corea, Dick Hyman, Cecil Taylor. I tried to keep this as simple as I could – in the key of C, no re-harmonisation or difficult to execute runs. My favourite Keith Jarrett album is the one he recorded straight after having chronic fatigue – ‘The Melody At Night With You’ where he plays great songs in a lovely simple way, with minimal improvisation and no grunts and groans! Non pianists please ignore the comments/explanations. This would be easy for an intermediate pianist to play from the transcription which is on my DVD along with a melody and chords leadsheet. Details regarding the DVD, the midi file,, and a superior quality copy of this videoto freely download are on my website at www.bushgrafts.com

‘I Fall In Love Too Easily’ – Jazz piano lesson. I was hoping that this might be in stereo – I don’t think it is though! The stereo version is on my website at www.bushgrafts.com along with a leadsheet and a transcription. It is quite different from my other recent uploads – almost classical in its simplicity. I got the idea from hearing a version by Dutch Pianist Harry Happel. The song which, in its usual form, has been recorded by lots of jazz pianists, is transformed by using the sort of chord scheme used by ‘classical’ composers of piano music – the ostinato type left hand figures, the use of pedal tones, the logic of a descending bass voice, and the minor key. I used a simple leadsheet, and improvised the bass figures as I played, so they may not be absolutely perfect. As it was my intention to play it as an accompaniment for a female singer, it has been played in a key that would suit the usual female range, and not in the usual key.

‘You Must Believe In Spring’ – a jazz piano lesson. Sorry about the title page on the video where I called it ‘You Must Remember Spring! This is quite a challenging song to play – Bill Evans’ versions, including the one with Tony Bennett are brilliant. Like other videos I have done recently, this includes a scrolling notation view, as well as clear views of the keyboard. It is intended as a lesson, so I perhaps have gone a bit ‘over the top’ crowding in a lot of things to illustrate different techniques! To get a clear more readable view of the transcription, you probably need to go to my site at web.newsguy.com There is a stereo version there which should play as it loads – also a midi file, and the backing that I used. Check out this excellent version by a young Lithuanian jazz pianist au.youtube.com

You will definitely need to watch this in high quality to read the annotations added. youtube.com This is the 2nd time I have done this – see au.youtube.com for the other version. I used the same bass and drum track that I had recorded earlier. For an even better version go to www.bushgrafts.com.au – there is also a midi file there. A printable transcription (pdf file) is on my DVD – details on the website.

Embraceable You – jazz piano lesson. This is an enhanced version of the original video posted here on Youtube. Now that I can upload High Definition videos, it is worth upgrading some of my earlier videos that have had lots of hits, with added notation, and clear views of the keyboard. Herbie Hancock does a great solo version of this on his (fairly) recent ‘Gershwin’s World’ album. This is a very simple play through ( 3 times) which should be fairly easy to play. The printable transcription is on my DVD – www.bushgrafts.com – (over 120 printable transcriptions of these videos and more than 9 hours of high quality video for !)

Two For The Road You will definitely need to watch in high quality mode to read the notation and comments au.youtube.com or better still, download the exceelent quality version at www.bushgrafts.com . This is my most ambitious tutorial – in fact I think that I tried to crowd too much into it. Unfortunately, the annotations are small and very diificult to read. The best solution is to download (free) the version at http If this file is too big (nearly 50 Mb), you might consider my DVD (details on the website) which has over 10 hours of instructional video, nearly 180 full transcriptions, backing tracks, 300 or so annotated jazz midi files. With this in your computer’s DVD/CD drive, all of these are instantly available.

‘Mood Indigo’ (Ellington)Solo Jazz piano lesson (HD). Still experimenting with HD so I decided to upload this even though I was not all that pleased with my playing on this! Hopefully, the notation and comments will be very clear. I have noticed that the audio seems to suffer a little when uploaded to Youtube.