Ulysses Owens, Jr. reveals his go-to fills when playing with a big band.

For full lessons with Ulysses Owens, Jr., check out Open Studio: https://www.openstudionetwork.com/project/fyb-overview/

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Peter Martin shows you a simple left hand comping technique that can add another layer of groove to your playing using only the root-5, 6, and 7.

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What's goin' on, everybody? Peter Martin here for Two Minute Jazz. Just wanted to throw one little left hand technique. We got a lotta cool things we can do over Chick Corea's "Spain" to get that groove going.

But one that I realized I do sometimes, kinda wish I did it more, is just the concept of root and five, root and six, and root and seven. Real simple little melodic play.

So it's just a little bit of a melodic concept. And you know, you gotta check on each chord which ones of 'em sound good, some of 'em sound better than others. But you can do 'em on almost every chord.

And you know, different orders, playing around with them, but it's just a little bit of a melodic play, little countermelody thing to get a little action in the left hand that's a little different than some other things.

All right, have fun. Happy practicing.

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For full length piano lessons with Peter Martin, check out www.openstudionetwork.com/piano

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Ulysses Owens, Jr. shows you how to keep time on the snare using a technique from one of the great innovators of jazz drums: Baby Dodds.

For full lessons with Ulysses Owens, Jr., check out Open Studio Network: https://www.openstudionetwork.com/project/fyb-overview/

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This is Ulysses Owens, Jr. with Two Minute Jazz. We're going to talk about a guy by the name of Warren "Baby" Dodds. Baby Dodds was one of the first great jazz drummers that really started out jazz swing drums. But, because the sound of the drums and jazz drums had not evolved yet with the ride cymbal, he created playing time and keeping time with this cool pattern, that comes out of the New Orleans rhythm on the snare drum.

The cool thing is he's taking a quarter note, a buzz roll, and he's making that groove, alright?

Also, he had wood blocks. He had some other auxiliary percussion as a part of his drum kit, and he would make it sound like this.

Then, you get to the swing drum era and with that era you start playing on the hi-hat.

But none of that would be possible if not for Baby Dodds introducing this.

Check out Baby Dodds 'cause it all began with him.

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Peter Martin shows you different movements and scales you can combine to add variety to your voicings.

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What's going on everybody? Peter Martin here, just wanna talk a little bit about two-handed voicings, use of fourths that can be so useful. Just playing around a little bit over "Autumn Leaves." And especially when you combine them with other types of voicings, maybe even kind of block chords situations. Kind of traditional stuff.

And then when we play in the fourths, these are all perfect fourths and there's certainly a lot that you can do just moving around chromatically. But don't sleep on the diatonic movement with those fourths.

What I mean there is we're just going up, C minor Dorian. You can throw in some chromatic chords too, but the idea being that we don't have to just do, we could do diatonic, just going up that C Dorian scale or B flat major scale.

So, you wanna have those in your hands. You can go six notes, you can go five, you can go four. But when you combine them with other voicings, that's when it gets really interesting. Right?

All right, happy practicing.

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For full length piano lessons with Peter Martin, check out www.openstudionetwork.com/piano

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Ulysses Owens, Jr. shows the techniques he uses when playing at a fast tempo.

For full lessons with Ulysses Owens, Jr., check out Open Studio Network: https://www.openstudionetwork.com/project/fyb-overview/

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Two-Minute Jazz with Ulysses Owen, Jr. We're gonna talk about playing fast.

The key to playing fast is playing slow first. There's nothing that I can play fast that I can't first play slow. When you learn how to play slow, you learn the right placement, right? So you get on the ride symbol, you consistently play in the same position, you learn how to feather, the hi-hat on two and four.

But there is a little secret that many don't talk about that helps you to play fast. That's something called breathing. When I play fast at a fast tempo, I'm always breathing, and the more that I breathe, the more that I can stay relaxed while playing fast.

Another thing is using your hands and your wrists and keeping the mobility in those hands and wrists depends on very much on being able to breathe, okay? So, I'll start slow and then play faster and faster, but watch my breathing change.

And the key thing about breathing is that you have to breathe more often the faster you play. The other thing is you have to play more simple. When you play fast, you have to focus on what is the rhythm I'm gonna play on the ride symbol, how am I gonna accompany that with the hi-hat and the bass drum, and you get tighter and you get more simpler, and you just relax the body, and that way you can play fast.

Playin' fast, but you can play fast if you learn how to play slow.

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Peter Martin provides some examples of taking inspiration from hand drums for your comping.

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What's going on everybody? Peter Martin here for 2 Minute Jazz. Wanna talk to you this week about two-handed rhythmic comping ideas. Now, it's so effective to comp with both hands, where we're linked up rhythmically.

But what about if we can combine a little bit of two handed stuff? So the idea with this, and what I want you to think about for inspiration, is somebody playing the hand drums, right?

So it's a little bit different sound, and we take that to the two hands. And we can go back and forth to being linked up. That's where it gets really fun.

But the syncopation that we can create between the hands is really exciting.

Okay, little idea for you. So just think about those hand drums. Alright, happy practicing.

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For full length piano lessons with Peter Martin, check out www.openstudionetwork.com/piano

#2minjazz #openstudio #petermartin #jazz #piano #happypracticing #2handed #rhythmic #comping

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Ulysses Owens, Jr. gives a tutorial on how trading fours can help you when playing with a band.

For full lessons with Ulysses Owens, Jr., check out Open Studio Network: https://www.openstudionetwork.com/project/fyb-overview/

#2minjazz #ulysses #owens #openstudio #jazz #drums #tutorial #tradingfours

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Peter Martin shows you how to add passing tones to your lines to get a more authentic bebop sound.

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(piano music) - What's going on everybody? Peter Martin here for Two Minute Jazz. Got a quick tip for you today on bebop passing tones. So many different ways to get into an authentic and really satisfying bebop sound, but one of them that I love that really kinda comes from a harmonic concept that can inform your melodic bebop playing is passing tones, and I'm gonna just talk about two today.

E flat major.

(piano music)

You know, if we improvise over E flat major.

(piano music)

And we just stick to the E flat major scale,

(piano music)

it's fine, but it gets interesting when we put in those passing tones. So if we look at the minor third,

(piano music)

that's the first one.

(piano music)

And you know, there's three basic ways of thinking about this. Start your line on the passing tone.

(piano music)

And normally we're looking at resolving that minor third up to the third or down to the ninth or the second. So you can start your line there or you can go to it immediately at the beginning of your line.

(piano music)

From the third, or you can do it from the second, I don't like that one as much.

(piano music)

Or the third way is to play it somewhere in the middle of your line.

(piano music)

And when you're running up a scale, this is a great time to do it, because I mean, it works aight, but it's kinda

(piano music)

if I just play the major scale, but if I do

(piano music)

and put that minor third resolving up to the major third in the middle of it, and then I mean, you know you can get (piano music) some rhythmic offsets, some syncopation, that's where it gets really nice.

So the other one I like a lot is a minor sixth. Same thing, you can start your line there,

(piano music)

you can go right to it.

(piano music)

Or you can catch it in the scale.

(piano music)

Okay?

So these are just two over the major scale, but they're fun to practice by isolating them. Each scale has its own, we'll get into those on other episodes, but for now, happy practicing.

(soft music)

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For full length piano lessons with Peter Martin, check out www.openstudionetwork.com/piano

#2minjazz #openstudio #petermartin #jazz #piano #happypracticing #bebop #passingtones

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Geoffrey Keezer shows you how to spice up your solos by switching up the rhythm.

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(piano music)

- Hey, this is Geoffrey Keezer for Two Minute Jazz. I'm gonna talk to you about alternating between triplets and sixteenth notes. Now this is something you can do in your solos to really give some rhythmic spice, so you're not just playing eighth notes all the time. An easy way to practice, you know, get a little metronome like this, start slow, you can just do scales.

(piano music)

Right? Or you can do any combination of that.

(piano music)

But the main thing is just lock it in with that metronome, so when you're playing with a real drummer, you're locked in with the drummer's groove. You know, and then you can speed it up. Always start slow, and then go faster.

(piano music)

So in the context of jazz.

(piano music)

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Want more piano lessons with Geoffrey Keezer? Check out his brand new course, Advanced Jazz Piano Concepts, at https://www.openstudionetwork.com/ajp-overview. You can also purchase his first course, Keez to Jazz Piano, at https://www.openstudionetwork.com/project/kjp-overview/

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Ulysses Owens, Jr. demonstrates the essentials of what it takes to play the drums with brushes.

#2minjazz #ulysses #owens #openstudio #jazz #drums #tutorial #brushes

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(rhythmic drums beating)

(hi-hat clinking)

(brushes tapping)

(brushes sweeping)

- The brushes are my favorite thing to play. It's one of the most sensitive ways to play as a drummer and it's one of the coolest ways to really create amazing textures. When you play the brushes, there's a couple different rules that you have to apply by, but ultimately you can still make great music. The first rule is, left hand. Left hand is your sweeping hand, like a broom. You sweep, one, two, three, four. One, two, a-uh, uh, uh.

(brush sweeping and tapping)

This is with an accent. This is without an accent.

(brush sweeping)

We'll go back to the accent.

(brush sweeping and tapping)

Then you can take that right hand with the same spang-a-lang pattern you played in the right hand with the ride cymbal, you add that to the center of the drum, like this.

(drum beating)

(brush tapping)

(brush sweeping)

Then you can add the hi-hat in,

(hi-hat clinking)

(brush tapping)

(brush sweeping)

Then a little bit of bass drum.

(Bass drum booming)

Then sometimes you can add some fill.

(rhythmic drums beating)

(brushes sweeping and tapping)

The cool thing about the brushes is that they're really used with great singers. You can use them in certain arrangements with big band. You can use them even in certain arrangements with horn players or you can just use them to play softer. For younger drummers and drummers that are playing around locally, you can use them in different venues, whether it's a restaurant gig, or club gig or whatever, but it's an art form that you've gotta really check out. There's some great drummers to check out, Vernel Fournier, Papa Jo Jones, Kenny Clarke, Elvin Jones and so many others. But I really love the brushes because it's a way to find your own, creative sound. And I have a lot of fun playing the brushes, but you've gotta really make sure you check out the brushes and make sure that you know how to play the brushes by themselves and with the hi-hat. So like this,

(drum beating)

(brushes sweeping and tapping)

(hi-hat clinking)

and also like this

(drum beating)

(brushes sweeping and tapping)

(drum booming)

So again the brushes are a great thing to have fun with and it's a great way and a true part of the jazz tradition of being a jazz drummer. I love the brushes.

(fast, rhythmic, percussion music playing)

(percussion playing)

(melodic piano playing)

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For full lessons with Ulysses Owens, check out Open Studio Network: https://www.openstudionetwork.com/project/fyb-overview/

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