Comping

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Body & Soul – Week 2

Last week, we began our study of "Body and Soul" by developing a practical set of voicings through the entire form in the traditional key of D♭ major.

Our focus was on finding good voicings that loosely followed the melody, while becoming comfortable with the tune's rich harmony and challenging modulations.

This week, we're continuing our work on voicings, but with a slightly different approach.

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Body & Soul – Week 1

Welcome to the next installment of Play A Great Standard In One Month!

After spending two full series exploring blues and rhythm changes, we've moved into a new phase of our studies: applying those concepts to some of the most important standards in the jazz repertoire.

A solo that Tony played that I comped under (or over, I guess)

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Stella – Week 2

Last week, we began our study of "Stella By Starlight" by developing a practical set of voicings through the entire form.

This week, we're taking those voicings and putting them into a more musical context:

👉 A basic chord melody.

🎵 New Series Alert – Play A Great Standard In One Month!

We've spent the last two series taking a deep dive into two of the most important forms in jazz:

• Play A Great Blues In 3 Months
• Play A Great Rhythm Changes In 3 Months

Those 14-week series gave us plenty of time to develop comping, voicings, melodic vocabulary, substitutions, and improvisational concepts over forms that show up everywhere in jazz.

Now we're ready to move a little faster.

👉 Play A Great Standard In One Month

🎵 Play A Great Rhythm Changes In 3 Months – Week 14

We've made it to Week 14 and the final lesson in our Play A Great Rhythm Changes In 3 Months series!

Over the course of this series, we've worked through rhythm changes from a number of different angles:

• Common four-mallet voicings
• Comping rhythms
• Guide tones and 3rds & 7ths
• Bebop, diminished, and chromatic vocabulary
• Chord and scale outlinings
• Substitute harmony
• Longer melodic phrases
• Transposition and register considerations

🎵 Play A Great Rhythm Changes In 3 Months – Week 13

Last week, we moved rhythm changes from B♭ into F, beginning our work on taking the concepts from this series into different keys.

This week, we're staying in F, but we're shifting our attention back to comping.

👉 More specifically, we're returning to the voicings from Week 1 and transposing them into our new key.

On paper, that sounds simple: take every voicing from B♭ and move it into F.

On the vibraphone, however, it doesn't always work that way.

🎵 Play A Great Rhythm Changes In 3 Months – Week 4

Over the first three weeks of this series, we've built a solid foundation:

• Learning the form
• Internalizing common voicings
• Introducing basic comping rhythms
• Developing a feel for the harmonic movement of rhythm changes

This week, we take another step forward.

👉 We're introducing more syncopated comping rhythms.

🎵 Play A Great Rhythm Changes In 3 Months – Week 3

Over the first two weeks of this series, we've focused on building a harmonic foundation:

• Learning the form
• Internalizing common voicings
• Hearing the movement of the harmony
• Developing familiarity with rhythm changes

The rhythm was intentionally simple so all of our attention could be placed on the chords.

This week, that changes.

👉 We're introducing comping rhythms.

Many of the voicings in this lesson will already be familiar from Weeks 1 and 2. That's by design.

🎵 Play A Great Rhythm Changes In 3 Months – Week 2

Last week, we focused on learning the form and internalizing a set of common rhythm changes voicings. The rhythm was intentionally simple so all of our attention could be placed on the harmony.

This week, we're continuing that approach.

👉 The focus is still harmony, not rhythm.

The written rhythm remains simple because we're trying to build a larger vocabulary of voicings before we start introducing rhythmic comping concepts.