Comping Drills & Exercises
Welcome to this lesson on comping drills and exercises. You can use these drills to strengthen your right hand comping both on Hammond organ and on piano.
Move Voicings Around Chromatically
When comping the F blues we can sideslip voicings up and down chromatically to add interest to our comping. Chromatic motion is particularly effective between the chords which are a 5th apart.
By moving voicings up and down the keyboard, we learn how they feel in all of the key centres so that we can use them on demand during performance.
Turnaround Drills & Exercises
The 36251 turnaround is present in the jazz blues form. It’s important to be able to navigate this progression with just 3rds and 7ths. Then then move onto extended chord voicings incorporating 9ths and 13ths.
Robert also demonstrates a practice drill where we take our favourite 25 voicings around the circle of fifths with half steps in between.
Lesson Downloads
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Comping Drills & Practice Guidance File Type: pdf
Related Lessons
In this lesson we will explore some useful voicings, patterns, and rhythmic ideas for right hand comping over the 12 bar blues.
Rootless voicings sound more professional than root based 7th chords and they voice lead much more smoothly in a 251 progression.
To play a rootless voicing we leave out the root of the chord and play one of the upper extensions to get a richer, more colourful sound.
Practice Tips
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Play your favourite comping voicings moving chromatically up and down the keyboard with your right hand.
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Experiment with chromatic motion as per the example in the tutorial.
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Practice 25 progressions around the circle of 5ths with half steps in between. Startwith just the 3rds and 7ths and then extend the voicings to include 9ths and 13ths.
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Once you are comfortable with the voicings shapes and bass line contours you canapply a Charleston Rhythm to the right hand voicings.
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The most common keys for jazz blues on the organ are F, Bb, G, C, & Eb. Memorise comping voicings for the 36251 progression in all of these keys.
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Always practice these exercises with a metronome or with the DrumGenius app.
