Is Your Band’s Pianist Comp-etent?
The piano chair is always one of the most dif- ficult to fill in a jazz band. Pianists tend to be solitary creatures who don’t usually venture into the band room and they’re only put off further by having to decipher the hieroglyphic chord symbols found in jazz band charts. When I visit middle school and high school jazz bands, I tend to meet pianists who are either nearly inaudible in their shyness, or who pound out chords with a near-disruptive hysteria.
Comping is what a pianist in a jazz band spends most of their time doing. The word itself is short for either “accompanying” or “complementing” depending upon whom you ask. Comping is usually indicated by diagonal slashes with chord symbols above.
Jeremy Siskund Building Muscle Memory
One of the trickiest parts of learning jazz piano is that a pianist doesn’t merely have to under- stand concepts theoretically, but they have to be able to access them immediately on the in- strument. They must be able to locate a barrage of complex chords smoothly and in rhythm in a matter of milliseconds. There are two primary ways to tackle this difficult task: 1) Memorize the finger patterns for common progressions. In jazz, the ii-V-I progression and its variants make up around ¾ of the total harmonic content of standard tunes. Therefore, if students successfully get this progression “under their fingers,” they make serious strides towards mastering their voicings. I have my students practice these voicings in all keys with a metronome for their daily warm-up.
Figure 1. Example of notation for comping.
When a rhythm section player comps, the chord is indicated by a chord symbol but they can freely choose the voicing and the rhythm. By a voicing, I mean which notes of the chord are included and how those notes are arranged. If a player is directed to comp, they can choose to play a lot or a little, or they could even opt for silence and not play at all.
Figure 1.2 Practicing ii-V-I’s in Whole Steps.
2) Write out the voicings for the given chord progression. Even though jazz is supposed to be about improvising, it’s crucial to find firm footing through writing out “improvised” passages when learning. The really bright students gener- ally find that once they’ve written out the voicings for 4-5 pieces, they can play future pieces with ease without going through the process of writing out the voicings.
Figure 1.1. Different possible voicings for a C Major triad.
For many young musicians, comping is both difficult – due to the amount of information they have to process quickly – and intimidat- ing – because of the number of simultaneous decisions they have to make. To be a success- ful comper, students need to develop extensive muscle memory and have a confident grasp of rhythm and style.
Getting Specific About Rhythm In my opinion, teachers shouldn’t introduce comping by telling students that they can play any rhythm at all. While this is true, there are some rhythms that are more stylistically appro- priate for each different groove.
For swing styles, I teach two basic rhythms. They are:
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