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.

‘Some Other Time’ (Leonard Bernstein) solo jazz piano lesson. This could be a companion piece to one of my other instructional annotated videos – ‘Peace Piece’ (Bill Evans) au.youtube.com It has been claimed that the Bill Evans piece originated from his ‘noodling’ in the studio before he recorded ‘Some Other Time’ Others have suggested that Chopin’s ‘Berceuse’ was the inspiration for his ‘Peace Piece’. au.youtube.com This is another piece to give to slightly more advanced students – it has the same repeating I/V pattern but in two keys, and parts that can accept more blues or gospel oriented improvisation. My favourite version is by Richie Beirach on his Maybeck Hall CD. It is also a good song for singers with words by Betty Comden and Adolph Green – from the Bernstein Musical ‘On the Town’. I am having that same problem that Youtube does to (especially) solo piano sound. I think they try to level out the wide dynamic range of a solo piano, and in boosting the quieter passages they cause digital clipping of the louder parts of the recording. In the past this has not been a problem – it has became a lot worse more recently. As always, there is a very high quality video to download free(very clear to read, and excellent audio) at www.bushgrafts.com

‘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.

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 !)

‘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.

Sophisticated Lady – solo jazz piano lesson. This is a recycled midi file of mine I did some time ago. I had spent some time in adding text comments, so I was able to fairly quickly convert this to video. This is another one of the ‘classic’ songs played by many jazz piano players. I notice that some of the notes played at times don’t show up on the piano – to get a much clearer video go to web.newsguy.com Ifyou have a fast connection and want to see this in high quality video to see the notes clearly (and improved audio), add the letters &fmt=18 straight after the existing internet address line above.

Another attempt to show some solo piano techniques. I took a midi file I had created, IMPORTED it into ‘Band in a Box’ as a midi file. The notation and piano views were captured using a screen capture program. A much better quality video is at http:web.newsguy.com/dougmck along with a PDF file of the Transcription and the midi file and if you want to try to do thisyourself! If you have a fast connection and want to see this in high quality video to see the notes clearly (and improved audio), add the letters &fmt=18 straight after the existing internet address line above.

Ifyou have a fast connection and want to see this in high quality video to see the notes clearly (and improved audio), add the letters &fmt=18 straight after the existing internet address line above. Deep Purple – solo jazz piano. Another experiment – this time with 8 bars of the lead sheet displayed, with the scrolling notation , the clear piano view and the text comments on some of the techniques used. There is a much better version (along with a midi file, pdf transcription and leadsheet at web.newsguy.com