In April, we had the second session of the Jazz Lecture Series — Jazz Piano. The Music Department was honored to invite the Deputy Director of the Department of Modern Music of Shenzhen University, to present a lecture on jazz piano and improvisation techniques in our SCIE new campus.
Both music students and non-music students actively attended this lecture, and teachers from different department who were interested in music also presented the lecture.
In the new lecture hall, a very exotic jazz piano melody opened this Jazz piano Lecture. Mr. Lee introduced various theoretical information about Jazz music, for instance, historical background of jazz music, the origin of jazz and the development of various Jazz styles, and guided students to create Jazz chord progression and encouraged students to improvise on the piano or sing the melody out. SCIE Students were very brave and enthusiastic during the session, they use of their previous music theory knowledge and composed a series of chord progressions, and then Mr. Lee played the chord progressions with improvisation patterns right away on the piano. Students got chances to hear how is their own chord progression sound.
“You can use music to imagine and feel your emotions, emotions and life.” Mr. Lee shared with students.
Mr. Lee also introduced several classic jazz clips and analyzed the characteristics of different jazz schools with the students. He also recommended some Jazz music movie to students who are interested: “Crack Drummer”, “The Philharmonic Journey”, “The Legend of 1900”, “The Journey of the Mind”. (These names are all translations, some of them are Japanese movie.)
“It don’t mean a thing, if It ain’t got that swing.” Swing is one of the featured rhythm of jazz music. In the second half of the lecture, Mr. Lee demonstrated the essential jazz rhythm– swing. What are the characteristics of the rhythm of Swing? First, it should be built on the triplet; Secondly, the first beat is longer than the second one; Third, the stress should be placed on the weak beat. After that, some volunteers played a section of Jazz piano music on the stage and Mr. Lee provided some valuable feedback.
- Article / Molly Yu
