Beginner

Working on Time Pt. 5 – Bossa Voicings on “Wave” (Intro)
In this episode, we explore voicings and time feel for the iconic bossa nova intro of Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “Wave,” which vamps between Dm7 and G7—two beats each.

We’ll start with foundational voicings and gradually apply a series of rhythmic variations to build your comping vocabulary and groove awareness. The included PDF features four rhythmic variations that progressively increase in syncopation and complexity, helping you develop both feel and control.

Practice Tips:

🎬 Lesson 4: Expanding the Blues with Functional Harmony Goal: 

Strengthen time feel and harmonic fluency by adding functional variations to the 12-bar blues form, while maintaining steady comping with a metronome on beats 2 and 4.

🎬 Working on Time Pt. 3: Simple Blues with Four-Note Voicings

Goal:
Play through a simple three-chord blues using four-note voicings, while locking in your time with the metronome on beats 2 and 4 at a medium tempo. This lesson builds on Part 2 by applying the foundational third and seventh movement into fuller voicings across an entire 12-bar form.

What you’ll practice:

🎬 Lesson 2: Building Time Through 3rds and 7ths – Intro to the Blues
Goal: Develop internal time and harmonic awareness by isolating key movements within the blues progression.

In this lesson, we’ll begin working with small sections of a blues form using dominant chords. The focus is on identifying and connecting 3rds and 7ths—especially how they voice-lead smoothly when chords move by fourths.

🎬 Lesson 1: Building a Solid Time Foundation With a Metronome

🎯 Goals:

I am always working with students on their hands. Quite a few have problems and bad habits. Well for that matter we all at some level usually have a problem or two and a bad habit or two! 

You HAVE to get your hands together and working well if you're going to play more interesting and complex music. 

i.e. Donna Lee is much more complex technically then Blue Boss or One Note Samba. 

Just some stuff to think about with double sticking as well as a way to practice double sticking. 

i do feel that we want to do as much alternate sticking as we can. I know some disagree including David Friedman. So take it for what it's worth to you. But I give you some ways to work on double sticking.

Building on the previous etude, this new version expands the lines and incorporates additional chord adjustments to deepen the harmonic exploration in 3/4. By introducing extra melodic lines and refining the chord changes, this etude offers a richer harmonic texture while staying within a straightforward 3/4 groove. It challenges the player to navigate slightly more complex progressions, encouraging a deeper understanding of how to shape melodic ideas within the time signature.

One of my students has been working on "Footprints" and wanted to explore playing in 3/4 time. To help, I put together a simple etude focused on adapting familiar patterns to fit 3/4. What I like about this approach is that it lets you apply a straightforward line throughout the tune, and it flows well in 3/4. There are a few places where I adjusted the line slightly to better match the chords. Also, keep in mind that these changes are a bit simpler than the original ones, but they’re still widely used by many players—dating back to an old real book version!

Here's what you do. Don't look at the files that say 'dont-look' download the other ones first. Take the sheet music and add your voicings to stella. Learn and and play and hopefully post it here. 

After that and ONLY after that, download the don't look files and see what voicings I used. Check out what's similar and what's different. Let me know how you do and what you think.