Starting out
Here are some basic recordings of the Jazz standards I have chosen to play that completely follow the notation and structure of the Jazz standards.
The first recording of each Jazz standard that I uploaded to sound cloud consists of me playing the standard through one time without the intro, outro or any improvisation. This will act as a base to see how my Jazz standards develop over time as well as allowing me to note any improvements in technique I could improve upon. See the rehearsal page on my portfoloio for other examples of how my playing improved over this project.
For this project I got together my first piano pad which is basically a fancy name for a folder containing the Jazz standards that I can play. I will link a Pinterest page that contains the finished Pad that I was using at the gig, including all the pieces I played except for the blues piece that I wrote.
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/finlaymactaggart/piano-pad/
Here are all the components that made up my final repertoire other than my blues piece. As you can see it shows where I edited certain chords and some of adjustments I made over the period of this project.
Apologies for some of the links further down, I had a lot of trouble uploading some of the files meaning that I had to link them to his page instead, hopefully it doesn’t cause too much inconvenience. You may have to click on the video to get the sound.
Autumn Leaves –
Here is a video of me running through the intro that I used for Autumn leaves for my final performance. As it was the first piece I would play, I wanted to create a very dramatic introduction in order to create a strong start for a strong performance. This is what I came up with.
Blue moon –
Another thing I changed for the final version of Blue moon was the chord structure of the verse. This can be seen in the picture in my Pad which is linked at the top of this page and in the video below where I explain the chord changes in a bit more detail.
Days of wine and roses –
Here is the 1st part of me playing The days of wine and roses all the way through.
And here is the second part. The outro of most of the pieces was something I could’ve worked on much sooner, however it was very similar for most pieces and on the second part you can hear me playing the one for the days of wine and roses an explaining a bit about it.
Fly me to the moon –
Georgia –
Above is my introduction to Georgia.
Here is a full version of Georgia with intro, improvisation and ending all included.
Satin Doll –
Later on in the project I realized that rhythmically I wasn’t playing Satin doll correctly which is something I changed within my own rehearsing time and you will hear the comparison in my final performance. In terms of improvising , I found this piece quite hard to improvise on as it features a lot of different 2-5s in different keys, therefore when developing my improvisation, I used mostly chord notes.
Here is the Satin Doll intro from the original Duke Ellington piece that I used for my final performance.
Here is Satin Doll the whole way through with the intro , improvisation and ending.
Summertime –
Summertime was the piece that I probably edited the most out of all of the Jazz standards. The main reason for this was that as I was playing with a singer I had to transpose the song to suit her pitch, therefore I transposed the key from A minor to B minor. As I was playing within a trio and with a singer my role vastly changed to me being an accompanying pianist which meant that although I did solo in the final performance, the main melody was sung by the singer and I was comping for the most part.
Here are a couple of early versions of me practicing with the singer, Leah Mellor. As you can see the timing was pretty shocking, however when we worked on this song as a full band it improved drastically and was fully ready for the final performance in the end.
Here is a video of me going through the comping techniques and structure of summertime on my final performance.
Take the A train –
Above is my Take the A train introduction.