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One of the most fun and exciting milestones in the study of jazz piano is when you start to get sounds out of the instrument that truly resemble a professional pianist. In today’s Quick Tip, The Most Fun Way to Play Jazz Piano, Jonny May helps you sound amazing as he decodes the infectiously fun playing style of Oscar Peterson! You’ll learn:

• 3 Steps to Play Fun Jazz Piano Like Oscar Peterson
  • Step 1: The Fun Jazz Progression
  • Step 2: Right Hand Grabs
  • Step 3: Four Fun Solo Jazz Techniques

3 Steps to Play Fun Jazz Piano Like Oscar Peterson

Today’s jazz lesson is all about having fun at the piano—something that Oscar Peterson truly exemplified in his playing. Certainly, Oscar is in a category all by himself in terms of his musical gifting, technical proficiency and artistic instincts. Nevertheless, his sheer musical joy, which is just as much a part of his musical personality as his towering talent, is perhaps what makes is music so appealing. This joy is one aspect of Oscar’s playing that students of all levels can aspire to in their own playing. In fact, with the tips and techniques in today’s lesson, you’ll find that playing jazz with the joy of Oscar Peterson is within your reach.

In today’s lesson, Jonny decodes the essence of Oscar Peterson’s jazz piano playing style into 3 reproducible steps. The lesson sheet PDF and backing tracks can be downloaded from the bottom of this page after logging in with your PWJ membership. In addition, members can also easily transpose this lesson to any key using our Smart Sheet Music.

Are you ready to have some fun? If so, then scroll down to Step 1!

Step 1: The Fun Jazz Progression

The first step to having fun while learning jazz piano is to play a representative jazz progression with professional sounding chords. In this section, we’ll learn a common jazz progression called the extended turnaround progression in the key of F major. This popular progression occurs in many jazz standards including:

• “O Christmas Tree”
• “They Can’t Take That Away From Me”
• “Teach Me Tonight”
• “You Are the Sunshine of My Life”
• “The More I See You”

Since our aim in this piano lesson is to get you playing and having fun as quickly as possible, we’ve omitted a lengthy discussion here concerning the harmony and chordal structure. However, you can explore this progression in detail in our course on Extended Turnaround Improv (Int, Adv). In addition, our Quick Tip entitled Rootless Voicings for Piano: The Complete Guide (Int) unpacks the voicing style demonstrated here.

Since this progression is fairly short and the voicings only contain 3 notes each, students of all levels can enjoy playing these professional sounding jazz chords. If you already know how to read music, then you can simply learn the voicings from the notation below. Students who are not yet readers can also learn these chords by rote using the provided video demonstration.

Extended Turnaround Rootless Voicings

The example above demonstrates how to play the extended turnaround progression in half notes. However, once you’ve mastered these voicings, the next step is to add in some more characteristic swing rhythms and syncopations. (To hear some sample rhythms, be sure review Jonny’s playing demonstration in today’s featured Quick Tip tutorial at the top of this page around 2:23 in the timeline.)

Now that you have these left hand chords down, you’re ready for Step 2.

Step 2: Right Hand Grabs

The second step to channeling that classic Oscar Peterson sound involves a piano technique used by jazz and blues pianists called top harmony (aka upper harmony or drone notes). This fun piano technique involves playing improvisatory lines that include an occasional harmony note that involving a static pitch in the upper register. Often times, pianists align this top harmony note with the spontaneous accents in their phrases, which gives their lines a bit of a bite.

Students of all levels can get started with this technique by learning four right-hand “grabs.” The following example shows four ways to include a top harmony note in the key of F. (Incidentally, these grabs are taken from the F mixo-blues scale.)

4 Grabs

You’re might be thinking, “That’s doesn’t sound like Oscar Peterson.” Well, not yet. In the next step, you’ll learn how to build improv lines that utilize these four right-hand grabs.

Step 3: Four Fun Jazz Solo Techniques

Now that you’ve learned the four right-hand grabs from Step 2, you’re ready to start having fun building your own improv lines on piano. Here in Step 3, we’ll explore four solo techniques that incorporate these right hand grabs:

1. Quarters, 8ths & Triplets
2. Slides
3. Turns
4. The Connector

#1: Quarters, 8ths & Triplets

Let’s begin by examining the three primary rhythmic values that we typically use when improvising in the swing style: (1) quarter notes, (2) 8th notes, (3) and triplets.

The example below demonstrates each of the right-hand grabs played consecutively as quarter notes.

Quarter Notes

As you might have noticed, quarter notes by themselves don’t swing very hard. Nevertheless, we do use quarter notes when improvising in the swing style. However, quarter notes are most effective when combined with 8th notes or other smaller subdivisions. Therefore, let’s play some 8th notes next.

When we use the right-hand grabs with 8th notes, we often intersperse single notes between the grabs. In other words, it would be less common to build an 8th note line by playing more than a couple 8th note grabs in a row. Instead, we typically pivot off a single note such as the “home note” of the key. Try playing the follow example which illustrates this approach.

8th Notes

Next, let’s try to play some triplets that incorporate the four right-hand grabs. In the example below, we’ve placed a grab on each downbeat while filling in the triplet grid with single notes. Notice that the single notes are also drawn from the same set of notes that we’ve been using for the grabs.

Triplets

So far, we’ve prepared a handful of rhythms that incorporate our right-hand grabs. The next step is to try to improvise original phrases that combine these rhythms in manner that is characteristic of the swing style. The following example represents one possibility. Notice how this sample line pairs together various combinations of the different rhythms we’ve examined.

Sample Line with Quarters, 8ths & Triplets

As you can hear, the combination of an improv line with top harmony over rootless voicings results in a pro jazz piano sound that is tons of fun to play!

Next, let’s explore another technique.

#2: Slides

Another technique that professional pianists use when improvising in the swing style is slides. This technique gets its name from the fact that we literally slide our finger from one key to an adjacent key on the piano. Slides are essentially a special type of articulation that is commonly used in jazz and blues piano styles. Today’s lesson explores a further subset of slides known as harmonized slides, which are slides that include a top harmony note.

The first slide will play is from B♭ to B♮ with a top harmony note D. Notice how the middle finger literally slides off the B♭.

Slide 1

Another harmonized slide that we can play from the F mixo-blues scale is a slide the moves from A♭ down to G with a D on top. In the example below, this slide is modeled with the middle finger. However, this slide can also be played with the index finger.

Slide 2

A third option for a harmonized slide from the F mixo-blues scale is to play an “up slide” from the note G to A♭. Once again, we’ll use the note D as an upper harmony note. Notice that this slide must be played with two fingers since it is not possible to physically slide from a white key to a black key.

Slide 3

Now that we’ve learned three harmonized slide options, the next step is to apply this articulation in an improvisatory context. We’ll continue to build lines using quarter notes, 8th notes and triplets. In addition, we’ll incorporate these slides for an even more professional sound.

Sample Line with Slides

Wow, not only does that sound amazing…it’s also supper fun to play!

Now, let’s consider yet another professional jazz piano technique in the style of Oscar Peterson.

#3: Turns

The next super fun jazz piano technique that we can use when improvising in the style of Oscar Peterson is turns. This flashy melodic device ornaments a target note by means of a quick, melodic flourish that draws on the upper and lower neighbor notes. In today’s lesson, we’ll specifically examine a further subset of turns known as harmonized turns, which include an upper harmony note.

The first turn we’ll play uses the note B♭ for a target note. Therefore, our upper neighbor note is B♮ and our lower neighbor note is A♭.  In addition, we’ll include a harmony note D on top. (In the example below, the turn is shown as a quarter note followed by a triplet. This represents one manner in which the turn can be played. However, faster durations are also possible.)

Turn 1

Let’s try another harmonized turn. For Turn 2, we’ll target the note G, with A♭ as an upper neighbor and F as a lower neighbor.

Turn 2

Lastly, let’s learn Turn 3, which targets the note A♭. This turn uses B♭ for the upper neighbor and F for the lower neighbor.

Turn 3

Alright, now we’re ready to have fun improvising some jazz piano lines with harmonized turns. Here is a sample line which features all three turns! Notice that these turns can be applied as 8th-note triplets or even 16th-note triplets. However, we don’t necessarily recommend spending a lot of time trying to count-out the rhythm for these turns. Instead, this technique is generally mastered by imitation.

Sample Line with Turns

That sounds fantastic! Now, let’s consider one final technique.

#4: The Connector

So far, all of the improv techniques we’ve explored have been stationary. In other words, all of our lines have centered around the four right-hand grabs in a single octave. Our final technique for today, which Jonny calls “the connector,” will allow us to play lines that cascade down the piano. To accomplish this, we’ll use the notes E♭ and C, which also come from the F mixo-blues scale. These notes are perfect for connecting our right-hand grabs in multiple registers. This connector uses the middle finger on E♭ and the thumb on C.

The Connector

Here is a super fun sample line that uses all of the techniques we’ve learned in today’s jazz piano improv lesson, including the connector. Check it out…

Sample Line

Conclusion

Congratulations, you’ve completed today’s Quick Tip on The Most Fun Way to Play Jazz Piano. As you continue to explore and apply the techniques in this lesson, we hope you are delighted by your progress.

If you enjoyed this lesson, then be sure to visit the following PWJ resources:

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