Adding Fills & Embellishments - w/ Hayden

Hey everyone :wave:t2:

I’m hosting a live seminar on fills and embellishments today at 9AM UTC.

It’s a beginner-focused session so it will be accessible to all levels. Here’s the page where you can tune in:

Seminar Supplment

Here’s the seminar supplement and notation that we will be working from:

Fills & Embellishments.pdf (864.1 KB)

We’ve scheduled this session at a more convenient time for our students in Europe/Asia/Australia. Don’t fret if you can’t attend the seminar, it will be archived and available to rewatch on the page referenced above.

Cheers and see you soon!
Hayden

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Thanks so much for another very informative and lovely lesson, Hayden. :blush: Lots of great tips in the live seminar today!

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I agree Kristeta. It’s a great format. Many thanks Hayden.

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Great session Hayden! So many tips to explore. Thank you!

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Hey Hayden

arg i miss that … have you send some email for it ?
ye very interesting and very dense informations for a live session.

really good sound and nice video quality too… cool
But there was an issue so no student able to interact with you … sad to hear that , must be quite a lot of work.
Thanks

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Hi Pierre :wave:t2:

Yes we send out an email beforehand, see this walk through video on how to register for a seminar and add it to your calendar:

There are 3 upcoming live events - https://www.pianogroove.com/live-seminars/ - simply register for the events that you are interested in and add them to your calendar.

And yes each seminar has a live chat so if you have any questions you can ask them directly to the teacher.

Cheers!

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oh wow. Got it. I was so looking forward to Tuomo’s masterclass and sooo very glad there is a replay we can watch. Thanks so much :heavy_heart_exclamation: This is amazing! Watching it again.

Really looking forward to re-watching these live seminars. Curious, do we still get to receive email reminders before the live seminars? Thanks very much in advance. These are all amazing :heart_eyes:

Hi Kristeta :wave:t2:

Yes I will be sending out email reminders and I’m also adding a new notification tool to the site to remind students of upcoming seminars when they log in and when using the site.

I hosted a seminar yesterday on “Arranging Jazz Standards”, check out the archived version here:

Here is my annotated chord chart of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” which we were working on in the seminar:

I’ll Be Home For Christmas - PianoGroove Seminar 24:10.pdf (140.2 KB)

I’ll be scheduling my next seminar shortly where we will dive into arranging techniques in more detail, using the same tune.

Cheers!
Hayden

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This was a wonderful session!!! Can’t wait for the next one and hope there will be more covering other tunes.

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Thanks Hayden will certainly look at this session. I also didn’t receive any notification via email of this session

Cheers

Paul

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The link to the pdf is not working Hayden, it simply goes to https://www.pianogroove.com/join/

Hi Ken :wave:t2:

Thanks for letting me know, I have forwarded to our tech guys.

Here is another link to the PDF whilst we fix the issue:

Cheers,
Hayden

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Thanks for letting me know Paul… I will improve notifications for upcoming webinars.

Remember to check out the live seminar page every few days and add the latest events to your calendar:

https://www.pianogroove.com/live-seminars/

Cheers!

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3 posts were split to a new topic: Arranging & Reharmonising Jazz Standards

HI Hayden,

I finally have another question :blush: - you probably have answered this before from another thread… In terms of fills and embellishments, apart from the obvious ones, how can a jazz beginner player differentiate or easily detect the similarities and differences when adding fills and embellishments on a jazz tune compared to when one does fills and embellishments meant for classical tunes? Thanks very much in advance. :blush:

Good question Kristeta.

When playing jazz standards I would say that we have more freedom to add fills, embellishments, and melodic decoration than when playing classical repertoire.

The main reason is that lead sheets can be quite vague in the information they convey and so they lend themselves very well to personal interpretation.

When you take a lead sheet, look out for sections where the melody, harmony, or both, are static. ie, the melody remains static for a bar or more, and/or the harmony rests in the same place for a bar or more.

These sections are always great places to experiment with fills and ornamentation. Make a note of these sections on your lead sheet and when listening to recordings observe how the space is filled with additional harmonic or melodic ornamentation.

That would be my main recommendation to hear and detect the kind of fills that are commonly used in jazz. I will be hosting more live streams on this topic, and as always listening and transcribing should be our ultimate source of inspiration.

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Just finished watching the 2-5-1 seminar as I was unable to attend the live session. I am loving these as I continue to pick up new ideas. They also serve as a reminder to revisit some of the lessons. BTW…practicing the 2-5-1 down the keyboard with six keys is brilliant as it makes for a fun and fast refresher.

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Thanks Celia - glad you enjoyed the session! I still need to add the chapters and downloads which I will do shortly.

And yes exactly… the whole step descending 251 pattern is nice quick and easy drill to hit all 12 keys whilst working on extensions, alterations, upper structures, and anything 251 related.

Wow. I love these tips! Hayden. THANKS very much - You always know how to simplify whatever it is that sounds and looks sooo complex :heart_eyes:

All noted! It’s always motivating now that I am slowly getting the hang of it and really loving the routine for Jazz Piano learning. :star_struck:

PS Storm surge in our area the past days , just really happy now that I can log in on PianoGroove and watch lessons and seminars again Yipeee!