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<\/a><\/p>\nIn the first eight bars of this solo excerpt, Butler focuses on using the flatted third of the F7 and C7 changes, which gives the melodic line a more traditional blues flavor.\u00a0 However, both the way that his line closely follows the chord changes, and the way his left hand interacts conversationally with the right (comping in spaces his right hand leaves, rather than playing chords underneath a more continuous line) are more characteristic of jazz players like Wynton Kelly.\u00a0 Starting with the pickup to measure 9, Butler uses the bebop approach of placing non-scale tones or ‘half steps’ on upbeats (for instance, using the half steps between the root and 7th and the 6th and 5th of the F 7th scale in m. 10).\u00a0\u00a0 His blues-based opening strategy in the first eight bars grabs your attention, but the jazz chromaticism in the latter half of the solo holds it .<\/p>\n
In the workshop at UVM a few weeks ago, Butler hit a wonderful balance of criticism and encouragement with my students. While some of the statements I\u2019ve quoted are critical, which is to be expected in a master class, my written quotes don\u2019t fully convey the congeniality with which he delivered these thoughts. I am really grateful for how generously he shared his prodigious knowledge and insight during an hour and a half sandwiched between his arrival in town and a house concert. (Before the workshop, we were also treated to Butler\u2019s harmonically adventurous takes on \u2018In Your Own Sweet Way\u2018 and \u2018Love For Sale\u2018 while he tested out the piano.)<\/p>\n
The workshop began with one of my UVM students playing a rendition of \u2018Mood Indigo\u2019 that opened with two choruses of stride (a head statement followed by a chorus of solo.) After listening to some of the stride solo, Mr. Butler stopped the student and said: \u201cYou\u2019re playing this sort of in a stride style, and I hear in your right hand that you\u2019re intimating that it\u2019s supposed to be a triplet feel or swing feel, right? But in other parts of your playing, I wonder if you\u2019re trying to be in the swing style or in more of an even rhythmic style.\u201d He then demonstrated some ways of adding a swing feel to a stride left hand. (An example of this is in the discussion of \u2018Blue Monk\u2019 below.)<\/p>\n
In discussing the student\u2019s solo, Butler commented: \u201cYou have to compel people to listen, and the only way you\u2019re going to be able to do that is by instituting more contrasting elements. [Your solo sounds] pretty much the same in both choruses. Your first four bars, maybe your first eight bars, could be just the way you started. And then, after that, you need to lift it. One way to lift it is by changing your phrasing to maybe a mix of sixteenth notes with maybe some of what you\u2019re doing [i.e. eighth notes] or triplets.\u201d He followed this with a couple choruses of his own that demonstrated rhythmic variety and swung hard. I\u2019m going to see if I can get Mr. Butler\u2019s permission to post audio excerpts, but in the meantime, here\u2019s a transcription of the beginning: Later in the workshop another student played \u2018Blue Monk\u2019, also leading off with two choruses of stride. Through first talking and then playing a few choruses of his own on the tune, Butler made the point that stride piano is not just the \u2018boom-chuck\u2019 combination of a bass line in one range and chords in another, but that it can and should also include elements of swing feel. \u201cIf I was going to play it sort of like you were playing,\u201d Butler began, \u201cI would maybe do this.\u201d He then played a stride head statement of \u2018Blue Monk\u2019 full of swing and great voice leading in the left hand. He further clarified his approach to stride on this tune by playing a chorus of left hand alone on the twelve-bar jazz blues in B flat, starting with these four bars: He then paused, perhaps remembering how one of my students had mentioned that he couldn\u2019t reach tenths, a common interval in stride left hand parts. Butler added: \u201cIf your hands aren\u2019t big enough to do that, you can do…\u201d and went on to play the following excerpt.\u00a0 He began by taking a different approach to the walking tenths in the last bar of the excerpt above and changing them to what I’d call jump tenths : Throughout this excerpt, Butler either jumps up a major tenth from the root of a chord to its\u00a0 third(as in the first bar), or up a seventh from the root of a dominant chord to a guide tone (i.e. 7th and 3rd) voicing of it.\u00a0 In these excerpts he also follows the standard jazz piano practice (described in Jazz Keyboard Harmony by Phil deGreg) of keeping the 3rd and 7th of every chord above C3 (i.e., the C below middle C.)<\/p>\n Henry Butler\u2019s visit was an energizing experience both for myself and my students, some of whom have also gotten to play in workshops with other guest artists; over the years I have had the privilege of coordinating workshops with Arturo O\u2019Farrill, Marcus Roberts, Donal Fox, Mike Holaber, Jason Moran and John Stetch. If I can see interest in this post in the form of blog comments, maybe I\u2019ll post some of the transcriptions I\u2019ve done of these great players. Recently I\u2019ve discovered the benefits of transcribing first and asking questions later (as I did with Butler, Roberts, and Fox); but then again, it can also be exciting to chase the traces of a melodic imagination after its owner leaves town. True confession: while I was transcribing Butler\u2019s workshop excerpts, I was dashing back and forth from my computer to the TV to catch updates on the gripping last game of the World Series.\u00a0 It was doubly inspiring to take breaks from decoding Butler’s brilliant piano moves and see the team from the birthplace of the Count Basie Orchestra stride to victory over the team from the birthplace of bebop (who swung hard in their own right.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Four of my piano students recently played in a workshop with the great Henry Butler, one of the prime exponents of the New Orleans piano style. (Many thanks Steve MacQueen and Madeline Bell from the Flynn as well as Dr. … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n