Cry Me A River Jazz Piano Tutorial
In this lesson we are going to create a solo piano arrangement for ‘Cry Me A River’ by Arthur Hamilton.
Most often played as a ballad, this is a great tune to incorporate bluesy licks and riffs. It’s written in the key of Eb Major and it follows a standard 32 bar AABA form.
We start off with some simple voicings and add subtle inner voice movement over the opening minor chords. We then explore licks and lines using the minor blues scale to access altered tones over dominant chords. The tremolo is a very useful device as there is a lot of space in the melody. This also adds to the bluesy tone of the arrangement
The A sections are relatively straight forward and then the harmony gets more challenging in the bridge of the tune. The A section repeats 3 times so we will look at ways that we can add variety and interest to the performance.
Related Lessons
The altered contains every possible altered chord tone and is a great scale choice to improvise over altered dominant chords.
Passing chords are temporary stepping stones between chords, adding variety and making your playing sound more interesting & dynamic.
Minor harmony is much more complex than major harmony and so the minor 251 progression takes much more time and patience to master.
Practice Tips
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It's important to accentuate the inner voice movement in the A Section, this is a characteristic feature of the tune.
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Stick within the notes of the minor blues scale and the minor pentatonic scale for melodic fills.
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Avoid the major blues scale - it clashes with the underlying minor harmony.
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Strive to play the tremolos phrases as evenly as possible. It's a good exercise to practice this quietly and then slowly increasing the volume and then back down. This will help you gain more control over the dynamics.
