“Moon River” – Adding Embellishments
In this lesson we focus on enriching our right hand to add more sophistication and expression when playing the tune “Moon River”. We cover a selection of melodic principles and devices that can be used to create simple but effective fills and embellishments.
‘Rolling’ Left Hand Chords
We start with a recap of the left hand ‘roll technique’ to create a fuller and stronger harmonic foundation. This technique is extremely useful in solo jazz piano performance as it ‘frees up’ our right hand to play more melodically.
If you are new to jazz piano it will take some practice for the left hand ‘roll technique’ to feel comfortable and natural. Consistent daily practice is key to build up the muscle strength in your hands and fingers.
Chord Extensions & Melodic Embellishment
We then shift our attention to adding interest to our right hand by incorporating chord extensions and melodic embellishments such as turns, grace notes, short scale runs, and triad based fills.
We start by connecting the melody notes with short scale runs and triad fills to create smoother transitions between the big jumps in the melody. We also explore enclosures where we play the adjacent notes around the target note to create a slight sense of tension and release.
Altered Harmony & Upper Structure Triads
Moving on we touch on more advanced harmonic concepts, demonstrating how alterations like flat nines and sharp nines can add tension and interest to our chord voicings. These concepts, while more complex, are introduced gently, with the aim of familiarising our ears and hands with the sounds and shapes of altered jazz chord voicings.
Related Lessons
We take each bar of the A Section and apply licks, fills, and melodic ornamentation that we can use to create a soulful bluesy vibe.
Upper structure triads are complex altered dominant chord voicings that are widely used in solo jazz piano performance.
In this lesson Hayden explored the altered tensions over dominant chords and how to resolve these tensions into the Imaj7 Chord.
Practice Tips
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Cycle through the harmony of the A section whilst isolating the left-hand rolling technique. Once we are comfortable with this movement, it frees up our right hand to add melodic embellishments and decoration.
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Experiment with scale runs, turns, grace notes, triad arpeggios, and enclosures to add melodic interest and variation on the main theme of the melody.
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Experiment with chord alterations and upper structure triads to add layers of complexity and sophistication to your chord voicings. Check out the related lessons for dedicated theory studies on these topics.
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Check out this playlist of Moon River recordings for additional inspiration on melodic embellishment and phrasing. Remember that listening is the ultimate source of inspiration.
I am no longer a “novice,” having joined Pianogroove in July 2022. But I was curious about this course and decided to take a look at it after hearing Hayden talk about it in one of his live seminars.
And I am glad I did. I did not “learn” anything new in that I had already gone through other Pianogroove lessons covering all the more advaned concepts that Hayden discusses here. But this novice course is extremely, extremely useful in putting mmy of these concepts together in the context of a lovely jazz standards, which makes the study of them that much more meaningful and enjoyable. To all the novices who may be reading this and ,may be at the stage of learning I was two years ago, I assure you that with practice all of this will not only make complete sense but will even begin to feel like second nature, and your fingers will know where to go to hit a particular extension or alteration for the type of sound ypu seek.
One question for Hayden, did not find the recordings of Moon River you said you would share for inspiration.
Hi Humberto,
Thanks for your comments and I’m glad that you are finding these lessons useful.
That was exactly my intention with these Novice courses; to help students play simple but beautiful jazz piano without getting too bogged down in theory.
Yes here is the link to a playlist I created. I had originally planned to add more lessons to this Novice course on Moon River, but a few beginner students indicated that introducing more complex theory at this stage can be intimidating.
For anyone looking for more studies and more advanced tutorials on this tune, please see the search results here: https://www.pianogroove.com/?s=moon+river
In these lessons we explore the style of Beegie Adair’s Moon River arrangement – which is perhaps my favourite from the playlist above.
Talk soon,
Hayden
Could we get a PDF with the words where they go in the score for singing?!