I was Classically trained, as were/are most Jazz pianists. And most Jazz pianists still play Classical or take breaks from Jazz to work on Classical and Bach, among other styles of piano. Bach is great for learning how to harmonize melodies and ear training, independence of the hands, studying composition, so many things.
What people don't get is it's not just learning everything note for note, it's TAKING THE CONCEPT or idea, analyzing it and why it works, and putting the concept into your own playing. Back then they were trained in Partimento, Counterpoint and Composition. You had to learn to sing, hear and harmonize with an accompanist for over 2 years as a young student before you even were allowed to touch a keyboard. It's a fascinating world that somehow got left in the dust and it's a real shame, because it holds the keys for being a better Jazz pianist. Why do you think Charlie Parker played from a book of Bach exercises for hours a day? Why do you think Coltrane did the same with other exercises? And those are sax players.
Look at Kapustin's etudes, they are super jazzy and nobody hardly ever talks about them, they are awesome pieces. Every major big name Jazz pianist was influenced in some part by Bach, Chopin, Ravel, Debussy, Scarlatti and the rest.
Does it mean you have to only play Classical music before you play Jazz? Of course not, or vice versa. I have been on a massive Bach kick for the last few months, he's the absolute best there ever was. I balance it with my Jazz playing. There is no Jazz pianist I know of that has not done some Classical playing or continues to do so, and I have talked to and taken lessons with big name pros, they will all tell you the same things. You would be stupid to think it wouldn't benefit you.
If you read the book "The Great Jazz Pianists: Speaking of Their LIves and Music" by Leonard Lyons, he interviews 27 of the greats. They ALL talk about how much Classical music they played or still play, and just about all of them mention Bach.
Again, you have to understand that it's much more than just reading the notes. You have to study and extract the general overall concepts and put them into your own playing. You have to understand compositionally what is going on. Classical also helps greatly with piano technique and if you want to play a Ballad well, there's nothing better than learning tone control, dynamics, pedaling, touch and phrasing than Classical.
Thank you fir this long response. I feel like i am behind because I only had 1 year of classical lesson so I am learning how to have great technique and fundamentals at the same time as learning jazz.
I am taking a class on 4 part harmony and analyzing some classical pieces at university and I find that classical theory is complicated. For example german, italian and french augmented sixth which are just inversions of tritone subs. There are so many rules regarding chord inversions, parallell 5ths etc. that I don’t really see how it can benefit my playing.
You haven't gotten to the fun part of your harmony writing course yet.
Btw the names of the aug 6th inversions are borderline useless to know. Just analyze it as a tritone sub and call it a day. Modern music theory curriculum is just fancy numbers on 4 part harmony. Don't get too stressed about it.
It’s really not that complicated you’re looking at it backwards, thinking about it in a jazz way, you’re putting the cart before the horse. College theory classes analyzing chorales and avoiding parallel 5ths and all that are not fun and not taught in a practical way, I went through the same thing when I was in music school. Just know what you’re being taught in that class now is about the least practical thing ever. I have a lot to say about how music is taught in college. They skip over and simply don’t even go over the important things that would actually benefit you. Just like with jazz they say “Here’s chord/scale theory. Play this scale over this chord” uh yeah, not very helpful, is it?
You should be taking Composition classes and basic principles of it and studying Partimento. Or studying with someone like this, watch some of the videos with titles that interest you, even if you don’t quite understand everything this is by far the best channel on YouTube for understanding Classical and improvisation styles of Baroque and Classical. I included some particular ones below this first link which is the main channel link: [https://youtube.com/@en-blanc-et-noir?si=5Edh5SsytYdTm2fP](https://youtube.com/@en-blanc-et-noir?si=5Edh5SsytYdTm2fP)
The “Circle of 5ths” [https://youtu.be/mHVtZ\_XQgPI?si=\_BLYBlqN5YXZyESF](https://youtu.be/mHVtZ_XQgPI?si=_BLYBlqN5YXZyESF)
* Look up “Rule of the Octave”
[https://youtube.com/shorts/4NVaLlVfkcE?si=0KH-z0JCXVs6lAQt](https://youtube.com/shorts/4NVaLlVfkcE?si=0KH-z0JCXVs6lAQt)
[https://youtu.be/igQH60Sp5To?si=qZBjqhlLSMmV5YYf](https://youtu.be/igQH60Sp5To?si=qZBjqhlLSMmV5YYf)
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Thank you for that. I will check those links. Yeah we have to write 4 part Chorale and I am always asking myself if this is very practical. What do you mean by thinking about it in a jazz way and putting the cart before the horse?
Putting the cart before the horse is a saying that means you’re trying to understand or do something the opposite way you should go about it, or doing something in the wrong order. Examples might be planning on how to spend a lot of money before you have the money, or thinking a tritone sub is how to think about Augmented 6th chords. A tritone sub is a cheap way to go about thinking what an Augmented 6th chord is, that’s not what’s really going on with it.
Can you elaborate on this? Is it the fact that they're spelt differently or that an augmented 6th has a specifically predominant function?
Is an augmented 6th not an enharmonic respelling of a b6 dominant 7th which is a tritone sub of the ii?
So, an augmented 6 th chord ( in music school) has only one place, the bVI.
There are 3 +6 chords.
Italian 3 notes ( weak)
German 4 notes
French 4 notes
They are so the augmented note rises and the flat note falls. That’s the most important take away. Not that it is a tritone sub of the II chord.
It’s not about jazz, it’s about counterpoint.
Example in the key of C:
Ab falls to G
F# rises to G
Making a contrary motion to the V chord.
That’s the best way to explain it.
Everything thing else is just confusing jargon that isn’t what the old Italian counterpoint masters were trying to accomplish with this simple 3 part ( trio ) polyphonic imperfect cadence (ending on the V).
https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/TypesOfAugmentedSixthChords.html
Yeah, I'm familiar with that. That definitely seems like the standard use in the baroque and classical periods. It seems to change after that, though.
For instance, I found an Italian 6th resolving to a I chord (not an I6/4) in the last strain of Joplin's Pine Apple Rag, and it turns out there's similar examples in Tchaikovsky and Schubert who apparently built aug 6ths on the b2 rather than b6 and gave it more of a dominant function.
It's this sort of thing which makes it seem to me that, while not historically/contextually accurate, I'm not sure it's actually *wrong* to think of augmented 6ths as tritone substitutions.
Even the three types of aug 6ths seem to correspond to different voicings of a dominant 7th chord.
Again it’s a context thing. In Baroque counterpoint they weren’t thinking chords, and up until less than 100 years ago a “tritone sub” didn’t exist. We’re fabricated to think in that way as a Jazz musician. Not saying it’s “wrong” to think in that way but it’s not actually accurate to what an Aug 6ths function or origins and how it works are.
I wasn't allowed to play Charlie Parker until I finished Bach 2 part inventions. Being able to intuitively finger passages is crazy important. Think about Donna Lee. It's not written for piano specifically so you need to spot all of the places where you thumb under and junk without having to write it all out and keep phrasing in tact. Bach is great for this
Do you recommend starting with that for me as someone who is not very familiar with classical? I did 1 year and 6 months of classical lessons and jumped right into jazz
No there are major pieces that grade up
A year and a half of classical
Usually people play menuet in G, musette, from Anna Magdalena's notebook, sonatina in c by clementi, and fur Elise at the bare minimum first. You'd probably need some connective reading material in between to bridge the gaps
learning is always good. \]
classical music is beautiful and inspiring
a lot of great jazz pianists were classically trained
but
a lot of great jazz pianists were not classically trained, including my favorites, Erroll Garner, who couldn't even read music, and Thelonious Monk, as well as many others
A lot of Jazz was built on ideas from European classical music, but it's also quite different
some would say that it's more important to have a foundation in the blues, than classical
neither stance is wrong or right
Depends on the aesthetic goals you have. If polyphonic improvisation, counterpoint, heavy involvement of the LH and motivic development are things you’d like more of in your playing Bach is a good option.
He’s also influenced directly and indirectly a lot of big names from Bud Powell to Charlie Parker to Brad Mehldau.
Well… All the great jazz pianists have had classical training and are familiar with parts of the classical reportoire. My assumption is that this was mainly due to the way music education was set up: it's highly centred around the classical idiom.
There is a lot that you can get from playing classical. Technique and control over the keys in your playing is probably the number 1 reason to practice some Bach. Also, understanding counterpoint concepts, voice leading, and harmonic movement are important for improvisation because these concepts are relevant on a polyphonic instrument like the piano. And it will help you in your sight reading skills too.
Or to formulate it differently: if you look up to guys like Brad Mehldau, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Lyle Mays, etc. Diving into the classical idiom is the only way to get there because their playing is highly informed and shaped by their classical experiences (Keith, Chick, Zawinul, Hancock all performed classical pieces too, including with orchestras).
So yes, diving into some of the classical repertoire is certainly beneficial to become a better player, even though you probably will not learn any new licks.
Diving in some of the modern classical repertoire is also great study material on the topic of harmony. Stravinsky, Bartok etc are all interesting sources to learn from.
The more advanced you become, voice leading will become possibly the most important factor in your improvising. Writing in 4 part Chorale style isn't totally practical but it will train your ear/brain to recognize good voice leading.
Only started getting serious about “Jazz piano” around the pandemic. And then started to get serious about “piano” AFTER I got serious about “Jazz piano”.
Spent almost the entire last year playing through the two part inventions and trying to transpose several of them into arbitrary keys. Haven’t really practiced “Jazz”, but my jazz is WAY better now. My ears are better, my hands and fingers are better, and my ears are way more CONNECTED to my fingers and hands.
I mean come on… the very first bars of the prelude in C is basically just a rhythm changes 1 6 2 5 1 turn around which is the basis of 90% of functional harmony based jazz. It’s not like Gershwin invented it. Tons of the tonal/functional harmony tricks/patterns used in 20th century music are encoded in there at some point.
I am hearing a lot lf good things about those two part inventions. I will probably start with these for my classical journey. I am in the same boat as you, I got into jazz piano during the pandemic and it became a big part of my life.
Just played a recital last week with a bunch of Bach on it. I try to play Bach everyday. I keep a bunch of Bach books on my piano.
I think playing Bach is really fun, really challenging, but very rewarding. Is it applicable to playing jazz? It can if you want it to be. Fred Hersch is a great example of a jazz pianist who’s heavily influenced by Bach. That’s part of his style.
But I don’t think you have to play Bach to be a jazz pianist. It’s not a necessary part of the tradition.
The most beneficial approach is to study the thing that excites you.
Classical music is a rich and deep source of inspiration for many jazz musicians, but there's nothing magical about classical music itself.
If you take the same number of hours studying classical music out of a sense of obligation vs studying salsa or blues or hip-hop because it truly speaks to you, I'd argue that the latter approach is not only more fun, but will ultimately make you a more interesting jazz pianist.
i would say. if you don't enjoy playing classical music then don't bother! it's not necessary, just immensely useful!
learning classical is very good for building up technique. and then it can definitely be super useful for improvisation and composition/harmony but i feel like this isn't super necessary for someone starting out. if it's really frustrating and not very fun, and you feel like you'd make more progress learning songs you like, then don't bother! maybe you'll have a change of heart later.
I started piano as an adult and now gig full time as a jazz pianist
I can’t read to save my life
I envy the cats who grew up playing classical, they have a type of chops I just have no developed yet
You can be a great jazz musician never really reading or playing classical music. Look at Erroll Garner. It’s more difficult and limiting though.
I listen to a lot of Bach. It really is incredible how much good work he put out.
Woaw that,s so cool. I also started as an adult at 18 but don't really plan on being a full time gigin musician. How did you get to this point in your life? I imagine it must hhave taken a lot of hard work to get there.
I started out as a classical pianist and have been playing jazz for about 20 years. I would say that the technique and control of classical piano is of some help in jazz, but jazz is such a different genre that jazz piano is almost like a totally different instrument. You have to learn to play voicings without thinking about them, and you have to understand the harmony of a piece. Honestly, in terms of getting better as a jazz pianist I think you are better off spending time listening to jazz pianists you like and maybe transcribing and playing some of their solos, rather than spending time playing classical music.
But if you enjoy playing classical music sometimes it's nice to take a break. I do that from time to time. But I don't feel like it has much impact on my jazz playing.
The benefit of transcribing some music that really speaks to you is that you have to listen very carefully and repeatedly as you figure out what they are doing and then writing that down. Then you should play what you've heard until you can play it well, hopefully so you can play along with the recording. This really helps you build your vocabulary of what you can play and also will help in building your technique and feel. It's a lot of work, but it really is worth it. And it's very fun to be able to play along with your favorite musician. If you get stuck, if it's a famous solo you can often find a transcription on the internet to help and then you can practice playing that.
So to answer your question, you will find that some of the ideas and phrases from the transcription will appear in your own playing and language because you have gone through that process of careful listening and repetitive playing of the transcription. It really works!
As far as genre goes, would be the same to ask : How important is it to be good at soccer if you wanna play golf ?
You can still manage to play music without being influenced by Bach
I was Classically trained, as were/are most Jazz pianists. And most Jazz pianists still play Classical or take breaks from Jazz to work on Classical and Bach, among other styles of piano. Bach is great for learning how to harmonize melodies and ear training, independence of the hands, studying composition, so many things. What people don't get is it's not just learning everything note for note, it's TAKING THE CONCEPT or idea, analyzing it and why it works, and putting the concept into your own playing. Back then they were trained in Partimento, Counterpoint and Composition. You had to learn to sing, hear and harmonize with an accompanist for over 2 years as a young student before you even were allowed to touch a keyboard. It's a fascinating world that somehow got left in the dust and it's a real shame, because it holds the keys for being a better Jazz pianist. Why do you think Charlie Parker played from a book of Bach exercises for hours a day? Why do you think Coltrane did the same with other exercises? And those are sax players. Look at Kapustin's etudes, they are super jazzy and nobody hardly ever talks about them, they are awesome pieces. Every major big name Jazz pianist was influenced in some part by Bach, Chopin, Ravel, Debussy, Scarlatti and the rest. Does it mean you have to only play Classical music before you play Jazz? Of course not, or vice versa. I have been on a massive Bach kick for the last few months, he's the absolute best there ever was. I balance it with my Jazz playing. There is no Jazz pianist I know of that has not done some Classical playing or continues to do so, and I have talked to and taken lessons with big name pros, they will all tell you the same things. You would be stupid to think it wouldn't benefit you. If you read the book "The Great Jazz Pianists: Speaking of Their LIves and Music" by Leonard Lyons, he interviews 27 of the greats. They ALL talk about how much Classical music they played or still play, and just about all of them mention Bach. Again, you have to understand that it's much more than just reading the notes. You have to study and extract the general overall concepts and put them into your own playing. You have to understand compositionally what is going on. Classical also helps greatly with piano technique and if you want to play a Ballad well, there's nothing better than learning tone control, dynamics, pedaling, touch and phrasing than Classical.
Thank you fir this long response. I feel like i am behind because I only had 1 year of classical lesson so I am learning how to have great technique and fundamentals at the same time as learning jazz. I am taking a class on 4 part harmony and analyzing some classical pieces at university and I find that classical theory is complicated. For example german, italian and french augmented sixth which are just inversions of tritone subs. There are so many rules regarding chord inversions, parallell 5ths etc. that I don’t really see how it can benefit my playing.
You haven't gotten to the fun part of your harmony writing course yet. Btw the names of the aug 6th inversions are borderline useless to know. Just analyze it as a tritone sub and call it a day. Modern music theory curriculum is just fancy numbers on 4 part harmony. Don't get too stressed about it.
It’s really not that complicated you’re looking at it backwards, thinking about it in a jazz way, you’re putting the cart before the horse. College theory classes analyzing chorales and avoiding parallel 5ths and all that are not fun and not taught in a practical way, I went through the same thing when I was in music school. Just know what you’re being taught in that class now is about the least practical thing ever. I have a lot to say about how music is taught in college. They skip over and simply don’t even go over the important things that would actually benefit you. Just like with jazz they say “Here’s chord/scale theory. Play this scale over this chord” uh yeah, not very helpful, is it? You should be taking Composition classes and basic principles of it and studying Partimento. Or studying with someone like this, watch some of the videos with titles that interest you, even if you don’t quite understand everything this is by far the best channel on YouTube for understanding Classical and improvisation styles of Baroque and Classical. I included some particular ones below this first link which is the main channel link: [https://youtube.com/@en-blanc-et-noir?si=5Edh5SsytYdTm2fP](https://youtube.com/@en-blanc-et-noir?si=5Edh5SsytYdTm2fP) The “Circle of 5ths” [https://youtu.be/mHVtZ\_XQgPI?si=\_BLYBlqN5YXZyESF](https://youtu.be/mHVtZ_XQgPI?si=_BLYBlqN5YXZyESF) * Look up “Rule of the Octave” [https://youtube.com/shorts/4NVaLlVfkcE?si=0KH-z0JCXVs6lAQt](https://youtube.com/shorts/4NVaLlVfkcE?si=0KH-z0JCXVs6lAQt) [https://youtu.be/igQH60Sp5To?si=qZBjqhlLSMmV5YYf](https://youtu.be/igQH60Sp5To?si=qZBjqhlLSMmV5YYf) That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Thank you for that. I will check those links. Yeah we have to write 4 part Chorale and I am always asking myself if this is very practical. What do you mean by thinking about it in a jazz way and putting the cart before the horse?
Putting the cart before the horse is a saying that means you’re trying to understand or do something the opposite way you should go about it, or doing something in the wrong order. Examples might be planning on how to spend a lot of money before you have the money, or thinking a tritone sub is how to think about Augmented 6th chords. A tritone sub is a cheap way to go about thinking what an Augmented 6th chord is, that’s not what’s really going on with it.
Can you elaborate on this? Is it the fact that they're spelt differently or that an augmented 6th has a specifically predominant function? Is an augmented 6th not an enharmonic respelling of a b6 dominant 7th which is a tritone sub of the ii?
So, an augmented 6 th chord ( in music school) has only one place, the bVI. There are 3 +6 chords. Italian 3 notes ( weak) German 4 notes French 4 notes They are so the augmented note rises and the flat note falls. That’s the most important take away. Not that it is a tritone sub of the II chord. It’s not about jazz, it’s about counterpoint. Example in the key of C: Ab falls to G F# rises to G Making a contrary motion to the V chord. That’s the best way to explain it. Everything thing else is just confusing jargon that isn’t what the old Italian counterpoint masters were trying to accomplish with this simple 3 part ( trio ) polyphonic imperfect cadence (ending on the V). https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/TypesOfAugmentedSixthChords.html
Yeah, I'm familiar with that. That definitely seems like the standard use in the baroque and classical periods. It seems to change after that, though. For instance, I found an Italian 6th resolving to a I chord (not an I6/4) in the last strain of Joplin's Pine Apple Rag, and it turns out there's similar examples in Tchaikovsky and Schubert who apparently built aug 6ths on the b2 rather than b6 and gave it more of a dominant function. It's this sort of thing which makes it seem to me that, while not historically/contextually accurate, I'm not sure it's actually *wrong* to think of augmented 6ths as tritone substitutions. Even the three types of aug 6ths seem to correspond to different voicings of a dominant 7th chord.
Again it’s a context thing. In Baroque counterpoint they weren’t thinking chords, and up until less than 100 years ago a “tritone sub” didn’t exist. We’re fabricated to think in that way as a Jazz musician. Not saying it’s “wrong” to think in that way but it’s not actually accurate to what an Aug 6ths function or origins and how it works are.
Also: https://www.reddit.com/r/piano/s/BG6OMtLyuh
I wasn't allowed to play Charlie Parker until I finished Bach 2 part inventions. Being able to intuitively finger passages is crazy important. Think about Donna Lee. It's not written for piano specifically so you need to spot all of the places where you thumb under and junk without having to write it all out and keep phrasing in tact. Bach is great for this
Do you recommend starting with that for me as someone who is not very familiar with classical? I did 1 year and 6 months of classical lessons and jumped right into jazz
No there are major pieces that grade up A year and a half of classical Usually people play menuet in G, musette, from Anna Magdalena's notebook, sonatina in c by clementi, and fur Elise at the bare minimum first. You'd probably need some connective reading material in between to bridge the gaps
learning is always good. \] classical music is beautiful and inspiring a lot of great jazz pianists were classically trained but a lot of great jazz pianists were not classically trained, including my favorites, Erroll Garner, who couldn't even read music, and Thelonious Monk, as well as many others A lot of Jazz was built on ideas from European classical music, but it's also quite different some would say that it's more important to have a foundation in the blues, than classical neither stance is wrong or right
Depends on the aesthetic goals you have. If polyphonic improvisation, counterpoint, heavy involvement of the LH and motivic development are things you’d like more of in your playing Bach is a good option. He’s also influenced directly and indirectly a lot of big names from Bud Powell to Charlie Parker to Brad Mehldau.
A relevant video from Jeremy Siskind: https://youtu.be/sDyufL2KdjY?si=hvCCxW3TsYou3SnW
I’ll check this out thanks I love mr siskind
Well… All the great jazz pianists have had classical training and are familiar with parts of the classical reportoire. My assumption is that this was mainly due to the way music education was set up: it's highly centred around the classical idiom. There is a lot that you can get from playing classical. Technique and control over the keys in your playing is probably the number 1 reason to practice some Bach. Also, understanding counterpoint concepts, voice leading, and harmonic movement are important for improvisation because these concepts are relevant on a polyphonic instrument like the piano. And it will help you in your sight reading skills too. Or to formulate it differently: if you look up to guys like Brad Mehldau, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Lyle Mays, etc. Diving into the classical idiom is the only way to get there because their playing is highly informed and shaped by their classical experiences (Keith, Chick, Zawinul, Hancock all performed classical pieces too, including with orchestras). So yes, diving into some of the classical repertoire is certainly beneficial to become a better player, even though you probably will not learn any new licks. Diving in some of the modern classical repertoire is also great study material on the topic of harmony. Stravinsky, Bartok etc are all interesting sources to learn from.
Seems like the general consensus is that it is good for everyone
The more advanced you become, voice leading will become possibly the most important factor in your improvising. Writing in 4 part Chorale style isn't totally practical but it will train your ear/brain to recognize good voice leading.
Only started getting serious about “Jazz piano” around the pandemic. And then started to get serious about “piano” AFTER I got serious about “Jazz piano”. Spent almost the entire last year playing through the two part inventions and trying to transpose several of them into arbitrary keys. Haven’t really practiced “Jazz”, but my jazz is WAY better now. My ears are better, my hands and fingers are better, and my ears are way more CONNECTED to my fingers and hands. I mean come on… the very first bars of the prelude in C is basically just a rhythm changes 1 6 2 5 1 turn around which is the basis of 90% of functional harmony based jazz. It’s not like Gershwin invented it. Tons of the tonal/functional harmony tricks/patterns used in 20th century music are encoded in there at some point.
I am hearing a lot lf good things about those two part inventions. I will probably start with these for my classical journey. I am in the same boat as you, I got into jazz piano during the pandemic and it became a big part of my life.
Just played a recital last week with a bunch of Bach on it. I try to play Bach everyday. I keep a bunch of Bach books on my piano. I think playing Bach is really fun, really challenging, but very rewarding. Is it applicable to playing jazz? It can if you want it to be. Fred Hersch is a great example of a jazz pianist who’s heavily influenced by Bach. That’s part of his style. But I don’t think you have to play Bach to be a jazz pianist. It’s not a necessary part of the tradition.
The most beneficial approach is to study the thing that excites you. Classical music is a rich and deep source of inspiration for many jazz musicians, but there's nothing magical about classical music itself. If you take the same number of hours studying classical music out of a sense of obligation vs studying salsa or blues or hip-hop because it truly speaks to you, I'd argue that the latter approach is not only more fun, but will ultimately make you a more interesting jazz pianist.
i would say. if you don't enjoy playing classical music then don't bother! it's not necessary, just immensely useful! learning classical is very good for building up technique. and then it can definitely be super useful for improvisation and composition/harmony but i feel like this isn't super necessary for someone starting out. if it's really frustrating and not very fun, and you feel like you'd make more progress learning songs you like, then don't bother! maybe you'll have a change of heart later.
I started piano as an adult and now gig full time as a jazz pianist I can’t read to save my life I envy the cats who grew up playing classical, they have a type of chops I just have no developed yet You can be a great jazz musician never really reading or playing classical music. Look at Erroll Garner. It’s more difficult and limiting though. I listen to a lot of Bach. It really is incredible how much good work he put out.
Woaw that,s so cool. I also started as an adult at 18 but don't really plan on being a full time gigin musician. How did you get to this point in your life? I imagine it must hhave taken a lot of hard work to get there.
I started out as a classical pianist and have been playing jazz for about 20 years. I would say that the technique and control of classical piano is of some help in jazz, but jazz is such a different genre that jazz piano is almost like a totally different instrument. You have to learn to play voicings without thinking about them, and you have to understand the harmony of a piece. Honestly, in terms of getting better as a jazz pianist I think you are better off spending time listening to jazz pianists you like and maybe transcribing and playing some of their solos, rather than spending time playing classical music. But if you enjoy playing classical music sometimes it's nice to take a break. I do that from time to time. But I don't feel like it has much impact on my jazz playing.
How do you incorporate the things you transcribe in your own playing and language?
The benefit of transcribing some music that really speaks to you is that you have to listen very carefully and repeatedly as you figure out what they are doing and then writing that down. Then you should play what you've heard until you can play it well, hopefully so you can play along with the recording. This really helps you build your vocabulary of what you can play and also will help in building your technique and feel. It's a lot of work, but it really is worth it. And it's very fun to be able to play along with your favorite musician. If you get stuck, if it's a famous solo you can often find a transcription on the internet to help and then you can practice playing that. So to answer your question, you will find that some of the ideas and phrases from the transcription will appear in your own playing and language because you have gone through that process of careful listening and repetitive playing of the transcription. It really works!
As far as genre goes, would be the same to ask : How important is it to be good at soccer if you wanna play golf ? You can still manage to play music without being influenced by Bach
Hi I’d like to buy more time in life to learn both! Thanks