Exercises for Changing Direction (Jazz Piano Exercises)

January 19/19 edit: I've added a section at the end called “Practice Goals” which includes an exercise that’s a good summation of the whole article. It also includes a simple chart for keeping track of progress. 

Dec. 19/18 edit: I’ve updated the article and images in “Exercises for Changing Direction.” It is now ONE article, in two parts. The first part is a shorter explanation of the exercise using the chromatic scale. The second part explores the bebop(ish) scale I introduced in the previous article. It’s more succinct, organized, and the images include anchor points. 

Here’s our scale, ascending and descending:

For students of classical music, exploration of the scale stops here. The points from which you ascend and descend the scale are always on the root.

But in jazz and improvisatory music, it’s important to practice and explore the scale in a variety of ways. One area of practice could simply be changing direction at different points in the scale. For example, why not practice the scale like this:

Practicing scales in this way serves a few purposes. Obviously, for improvisatory music, it increases versatility and range of motion. Ideas are less likely to be restricted because of physical and technical limitations. 

More specifically, it develops the skill of playing the scale more horizontally rather than vertically. I’ve observed that when students first learn a scale or chord, they’re conceptual, visual and physical references always begin on the root. It’s only by starting on the root that they can vertically build the rest of the scale or chord. This ‘crutch’ often translates into their playing. When the harmony changes, you can hear interruptions and hiccups in their phrasing because they’re searching for the next scale, which for them, begins on the root. 

Removing this crutch requires us not to play chords and scales from the root (vertical), but from where we are at any moment (horizontal). The exercises below are my attempt at doing this in relation to changing direction in a scale. As we’ll see, changing direction at different points requires a variety of fingerings and hand positions. 

Chromatic Scale Exercises

Before examining the scale above, we can uncover some of these fingerings and hand positions by using stepwise motion and the chromatic scale. The following exercises use only this sequence of notes:

Assigning different fingers to playing C will require different fingerings, hand positions and crossovers. Here are some possibilities in the right hand:

For best range of motion, the thumb is always on anchor points and preference is given to larger note clusters. The bracketed fingering (3)(4) also leaves open the possibility of continued descending motion from Ab. 

In the left hand, all of the fingerings and hand positions above can be duplicated using piano/hand symmetry and playing the chromatic scale between E and G#:

The next step to this exercise is transposing these five notes to different places on the keyboard. This will create new sets of white and black notes which will require new sets of fingerings and hand positions to play comfortably. To use practice time optimally, it makes sense to avoid practicing the patterns that are visually and physically similar to each other. For example, ascending chromatically from C to E is physically and visually similar to ascending chromatically from F to A. Here is a chart that maps the patterns of black and white notes of the chromatic scale, up to five notes:

For the right hand exercise above, you only need to practice it from C, C#, D, D#, E and A# to cover all the possible combinations of white and black notes. In the left hand, E, D#, D, C#, C and F#.

Bebop Scale Exercises

Once again, here’s our scale ascending and descending:

One way to isolate ‘changing directions’ is to break the scale down into smaller clusters. These clusters can be defined by the distance between chord tones. For example, if you’re changing directions between two neighbouring chord tones, there are only four possibilities:

Because these clusters have no context, we can assume that there are a variety of fingerings and hand positions that could comfortably play them. For example, all of these fingerings could work on the first cluster:

Likewise, for the other three clusters, there are probably three or four fingerings that would be comfortable. I’d encourage everyone to play and repeat these clusters to discover a few different ways to play them. 

Let’s expand these clusters and add approach tones to the top and bottom chord tones:

Now we can combine these clusters and create more complex exercises. We do this my repurposing the notes of one cluster to fit another.  For example, with the four-note cluster C-D#-E-Db, the note E can be repurposed and used as a pivot to move to the next cluster E-F#-G-F:

With all these clusters, there are many possibilities for combining them. Here are a few:

In the left hand:

All of these exercises involve changing direction in and around two consecutive chord tones. If we add a third chord tone, our chunks will look like this:

Again, I’d recommend playing and repeating these chunks to discover some comfortable hand positions. With these longer chunks, we can string them together and create many different exercises:

In the left hand:

After practicing these for an hour or so, I added a fourth chord tone. I also started combining these exercises and improvising direction changes. Eventually, I noticed that even though these patterns are already built on specific fingerings, hand positions, and anchors, I began to simplify them further into groups of chord tones. For example, while playing this:

I may be thinking and visualizing this:

And maybe this:

This supports my observation that stable chord tones, played on stable beats not only sound stable, but physically feel stable too. The notation above references Schenker graphs, which I’m somewhat familiar with. If Schenkerian analysis reveals the underlying tonal structure of a composition, it seems reasonable that compositions and improvisations have underlying physical, gestural structures too. The symbols used in Schenkerian analysis may not entirely appropriate to express physical gestures, but I’m further convinced that these structures exist and can’t be separated from the tonal and theoretical structures. 

Practice Goals

All of these exercises are their own little black holes. There’s no limit to how deep you can explore and refine them. Because of this, I’ve been experimenting with setting goals that once achieved, give me permission to move on to the next challenge. When it comes to changing direction, the following exercise is a good summary, and requires many of the physical gestures learned above:

I have three tempo goals and a chart with all the scales and keys:

3 stars is extremely difficult and requires a deep understanding of all the fingering variations and hand chunks. The tempo goals are also reflective of what you hear in jazz music. Straight No Chaser, from Miles Davis’ Milestones, is approximately quarter note = 180, where Coltrane and Cannonball are playing double time (sixteenth notes). That’s about as fast as it gets. 

My goal isn’t necessarily to achieve three stars. Generally, I can easily get two starts with my right hand, sometimes three. I can easily get one star with my left hand, sometimes two. After spending a day or two investigating a scale and exploring all the exercises above, I’ll spend 20mins practicing the final exercise with a metronome. If I only get 1 or 2 stars, I’ll try again the next day. But after two days, if I haven’t achieved two or three stars, I move on. 

How do you know which scales to practice? Any scale I practice must be related to a tune I’m working on. For example, while learning Donna Lee, I’ll practice and eventually test myself on AbMaj7, F7, Bb7, DbMaj7, Eb7, C7 and any others associated with the chords of that tune. The goal is to learn these in all twelve keys, but I don’t enjoy practicing without an immediate application. The next tune I play will have scales I haven’t learned yet – S’wonderful in E major for example – which has new chords/scales but also has crossover with the chords/scales in Donna Lee.