It Could Happen To You - Solo Jazz Piano Improvisation Techniques Tutorial With Guided Score
It Could Happen To You - Jazz Standard by Jimmy Van Heusen. Tutorial with score guide for analysis of improvisation techniques. Learn how to improvise a simple solo jazz piano texture.
Sheet Music Download: https://www.musicnotes.com/l/RcjMX
Improvisation Technique & Considerations:
1) Left hand voicings: the bread and butter voicings for LH are:
Guide tones (3 and 7) and Shell voicings (1 and 3, or, 1 and 7).
2) Application of shell voicing example :
Eº7 at 0:01, notice how the notes of the shell voicing is spread out over time rather than sounding both notes of the shell voicing at the same time. Same thing at F#º7 at 0:04, and many more places throughout the entire improvisation
3) Shell voicing with an added 5th
F-7 at 0:03, shell voicing with an added 5th, once again with the notes of the voicing spread out over time rather than playing all three notes at once.
4) Guide tone voicing example:
C7 at 0:10.
5) Tritone substitution example:
C7 at 0:11 is changed to half a bar for C7 and half a bar of Gb7. The chord symbols do not reflect this, but it is a performers discretion to add tritone subs, as long as it sounds suitable for the situation.
At 1:55, notice a very 'in your face' application of tritone substitution. The chord progression F-7 to Bb7 is changed to:
F-7, B7, Bb7sus, E7 (once again, this is not reflected on the chord symbols on score, as it is at a player's discretion to do it)
Notice the voicings for the tritone sub chords - the RH plays a major triad one tone above the root note (eg in B7 at 1:56, RH plays C# major triad, while LH plays either shell voicing or guide tone voicing)