“Pure Imagination” For Beginners

Hi Rodney,

Thanks for getting in touch. I’m really glad to hear that you’re enjoying the lessons. Yes, it does take time to become comfortable with the 2-5-1s in all of their permutations, so this is a gradual process.

Regarding finding a balance between theory and playing arrangements, I recommend students split their practice time in half: spend 50% of your time on the theory lessons and 50% on the jazz standard lessons.

Your question on how many tunes to concentrate on:
I recommend choosing at least a handful of jazz standards. Depending on your goals, I would say in the range of 5-10 jazz standards. The reason I suggest picking a smaller number is that it allows you to get deeper into the songs. Even after playing these songs for many years, there are still many things to discover, and we are always enhancing our arrangements.

The option is up to you. You could either pick a wider repertoire and learn a basic arrangement, or you could pick a smaller repertoire and learn those songs in detail. If you would like to do the latter, check out my dedicated jazz standard courses:

“Misty” Cocktail Improv:
pianogroove.com/jazz-piano-lessons/cocktail-improvisation-for-beginners/

“Nearness Of You” – Ballad Fills & Runs:
pianogroove.com/jazz-piano-lessons/ballad-voicings-fills-improv/

Each of these courses contains around 20 lessons covering the same song. Watching these courses, you will see how far we can take a single tune. The possibilities are really limitless so it’s a difficult question to answer regarding how many tunes to focus on.

If you are a gigging musician, it’s important to know hundreds of tunes, but as someone playing for pleasure or for friends/family, my recommendation would be to have a smaller repertoire and learn those songs in-depth. It’s a gradual process as we can always enhance and develop our arrangements. For the songs you choose, try to memorise them so that you don’t need the lead sheet and this frees up our creativity to play ‘in the moment’. The courses above will help you with this.

Regarding how well you should play a tune before starting another:
As I mentioned before, we are learning these tunes for all of our lives. As the years go by, we continue to develop our arrangements, so it is very much an ongoing process. I would stick to my earlier recommendation and pick between 5 and 10 tunes that you personally like and that resonate with you, and focus on these to study them in-depth.

Your final question regarding which paths to follow:
We have the Lead Sheet Fundamentals Path, which is designed for new students to jazz piano. The focus here is to teach students how to read lead sheets and become less reliant on 2-staff notation. You might find these tutorials useful for learning the ‘basic arrangement’ upon which you can build.

These are some of my newest courses and so the production quality is better than some of the older tutorials. For example, you might like to check out the Misty lessons before starting the “Cocktail Improv Course” just so that you have the foundations of the song firmly in place. pianogroove.com/jazz-piano-lessons/reading-lead-sheets-eb-major/

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The other learning path, which covers the main jazz theory areas, is our Essential Jazz Harmony Learning Path. You can find a link to that here: pianogroove.com/syllabuses/beginners-jazz-syllabus/- there is many months/years of study in these topics and theory areas.

Here is also a link to the beginner jazz piano roadmap, which lists the four most important courses for beginner/early-intermediate jazz studies, and the most important drills in these courses: pianogroove.com/media/2024/02/Beginner-Jazz-Piano-Roadmap.pdf – the courses in this PDF are the same as the Essential Jazz Harmony Syllabus.

Spend 50% of your time on the theory lessons, and 50% of your time on the jazz standards that interest you most.

I hope that helps, Rodney.

Please let me know if you have any further questions!

Cheers,
Hayden