

You’ll need to understand what all jazz piano chord symbols mean in order to play songs from a real book, and I’ll explain these in a moment.įREE RESOURCE: Download my Complete Guide to Real Books. The jazz pianist can ‘voice’ these chords in many different ways, so instead of telling you which chord voicings to play, chord symbols gives you the freedom to choose. Then chord symbols will be written above the melody line (most chords will end with a '7'):

In jazz, songs are notated using a single melody line in the treble clef (there’s no bass clef usually). However the notation will look slightly different to that of most western music (like classical music). To play jazz piano you'll need two things:Ī real book is a collection of lead sheets to different jazz songs. In this article I'll show you everything you need to know to play jazz piano! Real Books However if you want to play jazz, then you have to understand some theory, chord symbols, and notation markings in order to play. To play most styles of music you only have to read music.
