Hi @Hayden
What do you think about a seminar where you would play a handful of beginner jazz standards using the Quartet app? It seems like most standards are expected to be played in mid-tempo swing style. Perhaps you could show us examples of playing a couple of our beginner standards in low-tempo ballad style as well?
Thanks!
Nivaldo
Hi @Nivaldo 
I think that’s a great idea. I have scheduled the seminar for next Wednesday:
I’ll choose 2 or 3 ballad jazz standards and make sure they are tunes that we have covered in the beginner section.
Looking forward to it!
Cheers,
Hayden
Hi,
The Quartet app sounds interesting. I hope to be at the live event and suggest Georgia on My Mind.
Greeting
Orlando
Thanks for suggesting Georgia On My Mind… we will cover that tune in the session.
I haven’t used Quartet with that tune before but I just checked and it is included in the “Vol 1” jazz standards bundle.
To learn more about Quartet, you can check out this forum post:
As I mention above there are different Quartet App ‘volumes’ - 6 in total. The 1st volume contains 150 jazz standard backing tracks and I have found this selection of tunes to be perfect for my practice needs.
If you search “Quartet” in the Apple/Android Store, you will see the different versions, and I’m sure that the tune library in Version 1 is perfectly adequate for you.
We used the Quartet app in some of my recent seminars on medium tempo improvisation, here’s an example:
and also in the following course:
See you in the seminar next week!
Cheers,
Hayden
Hi @Nivaldo and @orlandoceccarelli
The seminar chapters have been added, and I also cleaned up the section towards the end where my microphone was accidentally muted.
Here is the archived seminar page:
I have created a PDF with rootless voicing examples for “Georgia On My Mind”.
Please note that this is not a transcription, but rather rootless voicing options (different inversions and variations etc…) and added some variety to the rootless voicing choices in each A section in the PDF.
One of the key points from the seminar was that learning and internalising the rootless voicings shapes is a very important step to ‘free up our mental bandwidth’ for right hand melodic embellishment and improvisation.
I recommend to cycle around and around the song using Quartet App. Set the repeats to 10 or 20 and just cycle around until these voicing shapes become comfortable and intuitive.
The main benefit of rootless voicings is that there is very little movement between them. Usually the notes move by half or whole steps.
If you play through these progressions, you will see that the hand movement is kept to a minimum:
You will see slightly different variations for the dominant chords, such as natural 9th, b9th, #9th, and #5#9 - which provide a slight difference in color/tension but remember that the underlying chord quality and guide tones (3rds and 7ths) are the same throughout all of these examples.
Here is the trio recording that we were analysing in the seminar:
This can be found in the Spotify Playlist for “Georgia On My Mind”.
If you have any feedback on this seminar format - specifically pulling in the Quartet chord visualisation - please let me know.
I hope it was useful and easy to follow along compared with looking at the regular score/chord chart.
Any ideas for future seminars don’t hesitate to let me know!
Hayden
