Research

Jazz is one of my favourite genres of music to play on the piano, normally when playing jazz I just improvise instead of playing an actual piece so i am going to find writing a jazz piece difficult. In jazz music many instruments can be used, piano is not often used as the main solo instrument, wood wind instruments are normally used so I wanted to research ways the piano can be used as the main instrument. First i wanted to listen to different pieces to understand the pianos role in the piece, for example in Moaning - By Art Blakely & the jazz messengers and Mr trumpet man- Bywilliam gillock theses pieces use the piano for a call and response style having the piano play the call and the ensamble play the response. 60otaku4. “Moaning- Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers.” Youtu.be, 2025, youtu.be/Cv9NSR-2DwM?si=LRsf81oRHbZ6oV82. Accessed 11 May 2025. 

            “Jazz Piano.” Wikipedia, 1 Jan. 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_piano.

On this wikapedia page it talks about the different styles and techniques that makes your playing sound more like jazz music. the key to playing jazz music is to play in a swing rythm and to also use chord extensions like 7ths and 9ths. Then when your creating your melody the best way is to improvise using a scale, and improvise that scale over a chord progression wich will lead you to compose a piece.     

A modern day jazz artist that I get alot of inspiration from is Kamasi Washington, although he's not a pianist all his songs have the piano in it. His music ranges from slow jazz to faster syncopated music, he also plays the saxophone in all his tracks this gives the song a calming ambients. Truth by Kamasi Washington is my favourite piece of his and has given me inspiration for my jazz track.   

Planning

For this piece I want to compose a modern day style of jazz but also included some older techniques of jazz. Using my research and also taking inspiration from different jazz musicians like Kamasi Washington I started coming up with different chord progressions and started exploring different rhythm playing.  I want to use different playing jazz techniques when composing this piece for example using syncopated and staccato notes that will give my composition a traditional jazz sound. I want to use a range of different instrument's like piano, bass drums and potentially a synth sound to really give the composition a modern sound.  I also want to use a saxophone sound and write a solo for it and also having a call and response section of the composition with the piano and saxophone. I am going to find writing the drum section difficult especially because its jazz so i am going to research more into writing the drums.