Is it possible to learn jazz piano by yourself

I wanna learn jazz piano, but I don’t have anyone to play with. The only musicians I know on my level play violin, cello, guitar, and drums, and the only one I can really contact is the drummer, so I don’t really have a band to play with.
How do I go at it alone, I know how to read and play sheet music, and I know basic theory. I took lessons consistently from 6th to the first half of 8th Grade, and then on and off through highschool.
How do I go about this?

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Start with learning the basic jazz tunes with backing tracks. And maybe complexify from here

It's not very much fun to play alone. But you can get pretty good just playing by yourself, especially with the resources available to you today. Plus if you only know basic theory and have no experience playing jazz then you'll have quite a bit of work to do before you'd really be able to play jazz with other people anyway. Here are your basic building blocks for teaching yourself:

1. Listen to jazz pianists. Find a few that you really like and listen to them constantly. Get to the point where you've heard your favorite tracks so many times that you can sing along with the solos.

2. Practice sight reading as often as you can. Start very very basic if you haven't read much music before and progress slowly. Eventually your goal should be to work up to the point where you can sight read a Charlie Parker solo at a decent level.

3. Master basic technique. You should know all your major and minor scales and arpeggios inside and out. Playing 7th chords in their various inversions should be second nature. The Hanon Virtuoso pianist book can be good for practicing general technique and common piano idioms.

4. Master basic theory. Figure out all your major and minor triads and their inversions, then move on to 7th chords (it all goes along with the scales and arpeggios) Once you've got those down then learn how to do Roman numeral analysis and practice by analyzing some Bach chorales until it becomes second nature.

5. Master jazz theory. Pick up some kind of a jazz theory text (Mark Levine's is good) and then pick an easy standard to learn and start learning it from a leadsheet.

6. Learn a standard. Try figuring out as much as you can by ear, but don't be afraid to look at a lead sheet either. Memorize the melody and the changes and be able to walk a bassline. Start improvising over the changes.

7. Start transcribing piano solos you like. Find a piano solo on whatever standard you're learning and transcribe that. Analyze the solo and figure out why it works theoretically.

These aren't necessarily progressive, since you can work on most of these areas concurrently but some of them are prerequisites for others. For instance it won't do you any good to start trying to understand jazz theory if you don't have a very strong grasp of the basic stuff.

Holy fuck, thanks man

Transcribing, analyzing, and learning solos that you like is really the best way to learn. Learn to imitate pianists that you like and then start taking the frames of their ideas and using them in new contexts in your own improvisation.

There's an app called iRealb that creates a backing track for any standard or any tune you enter into it that sort of imitates playing with a rhythm section. It's good enough for practicing with.

I learned to play piano by myself because I'm an autist and can't accept hierarchies. It's difficult and you have to realize when you're technique goes the wrong way, otherwise you're pretty much fucked and you're gonna need 10x the time to correct the damage. Best advice is to get good books about technique and watch videos of good piano players. And always take your time.

Jazz was first played by a bunch of poor blacks in the South that didnt know how to play
Everyone can play Jazz cause Jazz is anything you want

>The Hanon Virtuoso pianist book can be good for practicing general technique and common piano idioms.
don't want to be rude, but seriously don't do that... you learn to play by playing music... you learn a language by reading book and talking the language, not by learning vocabularies.. I know that schools all over the world do that, but it's not the efficient way.

But if you want to do something well and at a high level then technique will be important and expeditious.

Sure you learn a language best by just speaking it and being surrounded by it. But if you want to speak it idiomatically at a very high level and with no accent then it will take some hard and careful work of learning slowly the correct way to pronounce words and the subtle differences in inflections and connotations of words.

You can learn learn about the C major scale and play it all with one finger. With practice you can probably play it fairly quickly all with one finger. But it won't sound as good as someone playing it with the "correct" fingering and won't really help you if your goal is to improvise music fluently.

I know what you mean, but trust me, it doesn't work like that. If you connect a technical device with a piece you know and like, it's 100% more likely that you're going to remember it and that you're able to use it in other pieces and in improvisation. Take Mozart's K 545 for example, that was the first classicle piece I played after years of playing shit like Hanon and other empty etude fuckers. It's full of scales and arpeggios, but it's also beautiful music. Our brain is no machine... if you haven't anything of beauty connected to your technique, nothing of beauty will be created from it. Just play the stuff you really like, and the technique you'll obtain will always fit to your style, and that's the most important and sadly also most rare feature of a musician.

I agree with you and that's all well and good if your goal is to play a Mozart piece where you have the luxury of sitting at the piano and working through the fingerings while you learn it.

But if your goal is to improvise fluently and be able to play music that you're extemporaneously composing in your head in real time, then it's going to really come in handy to know some common scalar patterns and arpeggios and to be able to play them effortlessly.

I agree that solidifying technique through actually applying it in music is a great way to do it. But if the only way you ever learn any technique is by finding a piece of music that utilizes that specific technique, it's not a very efficient way to learn.

you agree yet you don't understand what I mean... assumed you improvise with a Jazz Band and you're trying to come up with a solo... what's the pool of ideas you're dragging from? As I said, the brain doesn't work like a machine that can put lifeless patterns together and make something of beauty from it. You drag the ideas from stuff you like, and a scale can be beautiful if you're connecting it to a piece where it is filled with music.
>it's not a very efficient way to learn.
Mind and body are one unit and it's actually the most efficient way. I played piano all my life and my technique always sucked and I wondered why, because I played that Hanon like shit all the time. The day I stopped and forced myself to only play what I like and make no exceptions, my technique went through the roof, just because it became efficient.

I mean, we have such a beautiful brain that shows us the most proficient way by the tool of interest... an infant learns its mother tongue without a second of deliberate learning, and that's the way to use the brain... the materialistic approach seems useful, but it really isn't especially in the arts...

but I know that it's difficult to swallow, no one actually does, the ones who do can really get far in the field they show interest though

Plus - let's say someone asked you to play that Mozart K 545 in A flat instead of in C (something very common in jazz).

If you didn't already know all your relevant scales and arpeggios in the key of Ab then it would be like having to learn the song all over again.

Whereas someone who has taken the time to master those techniques in every key could do it much more easily.

>Plus - let's say someone asked you to play that Mozart K 545 in A flat instead of in C (something very common in jazz).
that's true, but only because it would be nice to do that doesn't mean that that's the way to do it. You learn better if you follow your instincts. I mean, you can write down a list of things that would be nice to do, but I swear to you, you're progress will be slowed down heavily if you're actually trying to approach your instrument with such a plan. Everybody tries it that way (I know tons of musicians, and I include myself), and everyone fails. I really know a single musician that doesn't suffer from the problems this approach makes. The stuff that makes you, your style and your personality as an artist, is exclusively the stuff you learned outside of such strange rational practice approaches...

Believe me, I know exactly what you mean. My point is that the best way to learn to improvise is a healthy mix of both methods. Do you play jazz?

>an infant learns its mother tongue without a second of deliberate learning
But how many adults do you know who have never spent any time studying their native language? Everybody does.

You can learn to speak your language (but not how to read!) just by speaking to your family and never once intentionally studying. But you won't learn to speak it as well as someone who has spent their life actually studying and reading the language.

>Believe me, I know exactly what you mean. My point is that the best way to learn to improvise is a healthy mix of both methods. Do you play jazz?
yes I play Jazz and I'm pretty sure you don't get entirely what I mean.
Let me put it this way: imagine you're practicing scales and arpeggios in all keys on a daily basis. I did this for years, I switched the key chromatically every day and played all exercises in all keys. But where do you stop? You can alter scales and arpeggios in virtually infinite ways and trying to practice all of them in the end is useless because it's nothing more than empty patterns for you. Our brain just works like that, thank God. When I had to radically change my approach because I was stuck for years, I soon realized that it's much easier to put stuff together from pieces you can play by heart. You brought the example of playing Mozart in A flat. Well, that's much easier than you might imagine if you're able to play a few Beethoven and Mozart sonatas and you're gonna be able to come up with new stuff, combinations of the devices and everything so easily that you're gonna be surprised. We are just not the ones to decide in what way we're creative. All we can do is play what we like and go from there. Sometimes I'm in the mood to practice scales for 2 hours, sometimes I don't do it for half a year... and that's the most efficient way to practice... follow your instincts

besides_
>But you won't learn to speak it as well as someone who has spent their life actually studying and reading the language.
I doubt that. I think a native speaker has always a natural approach to his language and that's because he memorized the parts of which it is build completely instinctively. And btw you learn reading the same way, that's at least how I did it. I deciphered the picture books I liked letter by letter, not because I was forced to, but because I wanted to. And I went on from there, just like later with sonatas. The way you would do it would be first memorizing letters and words and then put them into art

No, I get it. You’re not saying anything here I don’t understand. I’m not advocating for ONLY STUDYING SCALES AND TECHNICAL DRILLS. I’m advocating for a healthy mix of both. And furthermore I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you only feel the way you do because you were forced to learn those technical drills from the beginning. I’m sure you’ll probably disagree with me about that though.

Nobody ever helped you learn to read, write or pronounce words or learn their meanings? I don’t believe that for a second.

believe it or not... that all comes down to the question what you expect from playing an instrument, and that's a question that is most important. And if you're answer is, because you truly love it, then there's just no other way.

>Nobody ever helped you learn to read, write or pronounce words or learn their meanings? I don’t believe that for a second.
I never said that. I just said that I didn't have the feeling of learning for a second, it was all fun and games to me. And I learned it fast and well, because I used my brain the way it was designed.

Good advice.

I actually learned myself to play jazz piano at the age of 15. At age 18 i very pretty decent and I stopped at age 19 because i wanted to be an academic (which desu I don't regret to this day).

Mark Levine's book as mandatory. Regarding technique there's simple technique that are basic for classical pianists which is mandatory as well and can get spicy if you transpose them from c major. However i'll add this advice:

1) A lot of jazz is voicing/chord extensions but never forget what your right hand is doing.

2) Find a pianist whom you really dig (Mine was Bill Evans. Sunday at the Village Vanguard (and also explorations) was the reason i started at all. It won over my heart and therefore it was easy for me to practice.

3. If possible find a bassist to jam with when you feel comfortable leaving out roots of harmonization. And a lead instrument to jam with for full comping feeling.

4. Do 2-5-1 licks and voicings in all keys

GL OP. You can do it and it's a wonderful journey because when you're getting good you can just sit a piano and play something that sounds good from your head.

why does becoming an academic mean that you have to stop playing piano? I don't get that at all

Real life hits and suddenly you have more important things to focus on

>solo in jazz
>"play louder"
>I play louder
>"play louder"
>I play louder
>"play louder
>I play louder
What am I doing wrong?

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not playing loud enough

Stay away from "Jazz" fusion.

why not play Beethoven with your pals?