How To Accompany Singers
with Pete Churchill
Includes over 5hrs of video lessons and PDF downloads
Sign up now with a one-off payment of £80 and get immediate access to the entire course. You can watch, pause, rewind and rewatch all of the videos as often as you like, allowing you to learn at your own pace.
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This practical video course is packed with an incredible amount of material that will keep you going for years! It not only offers an explanation of how to accompany singers, but also gives you lots of useful skills to practice and develop your own playing.
Widely regarded as a leading expert in jazz studies, Pete Churchill is a highly inspiring educator. Winner of the UK Parliamentary award for jazz education and with decades of experience teaching in the finest conservatoires of music, he also has a unique talent for explaining the theory whilst also giving you highly practical exercises to put everything into context. Alongside this, for several decades he has worked as the preferred accompanist for some of the best jazz singers in the world.
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Backed up by an encyclopaedic knowledge in all areas of jazz, Pete has a great way of stripping away the layers and getting to the essence of the material, while at the same time giving you very practical methods of how to assimilate it into your own playing.
Current and past posts include; Professor of jazz studies at The Royal Academy of Music, The Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music, Senior Lecturer at Leeds College of Music and Middlesex University.
He has also given seminars and master classes at various conservatoires and academies in Finland, Bulgaria, Holland, Italy, France, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Australia. He was also recently invited to lecture at Jazz at The Lincoln Centre, in New York City.
As a performer Pete has featured at many international festivals working as a singer, pianist and conductor. He has been a member of both Kenny Wheeler’s and Abdullah Ibrahim’s vocal projects, travelled extensively as Mark Murphy’s accompanist and has collaborated with, amongst others, Jon Hendricks, Bobby McFerrin, Norma Winstone, Stan Sulzmann, John Taylor, Cleveland Watkiss, Julian Arguelles, Bobby Wellins and Tina May. He has also released several critically acclaimed jazz albums under his own name.
How To Accompany Singers
Course Contents
Video 1 - What to play (harmony) and When to play (rhythm section)
Ballads
Rubato and Colla Voce
Working with a lead sheet
The essentials of how to support the singer
The top note of the voicing
Chord Extensions
Layering the placement of the notes
Separating the bass line
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Video 2 - Finding Space and Responding to the Melody
"Open" intros
Turnarounds to the starting chord
Working in common keys
Leading the harmony
Play-along with Pete singing
Walking ballad tempo vs jazz ballad tempo
Finding the spaces in the melody for the harmony
Thinking like a backing singer
Maintaining a musical gesture throughout the tune
Using 2nds in the voicing for rhythmic bite
Playing in 3/4 time signature
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Video 3 - Medium Swing
Great accompanists to check out
Using numbers to help think in different keys
Walking bass lines
RH close voicings for rhythmic placement
Half diminished voicings
Using inversions to stay in the "Golden Zone"
Practice routines for when to place the chords
What is the correct version of the chord changes?
Using sus chords and letting the bass player do the work!
Play-alongs with Pete singing
Solutions for diminished chords
Approach notes
Combining walking bass with chords
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Video 4 - Consolidating Your Skills and Moving Forward
Abstraction of usage
The interaction between the pianist and singer
Expanding and Contracting the harmony
Shaping the arrangement and moving the music forward
Using texture and gestures
Practicing turnarounds to the starting chord
Finding motifs in the tune to use
Paraphrasing the melody to ease your way into a solo
The three types of count in
Defining the last two bars of the intro
Diminished chord options
How to deal with doubling the root or third in the right hand
Layering your sound
Pete's secret voicings!
How to bring the tempo in from a colla voce intro
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BONUS 1hr video: Intros and Endings
Voicings template
Voice leadings help the music swing
"Thumbs" exercises
Three handed piano playing
Open and closed voicings
Turnarounds to the starting chord
Four chord turnarounds
Using the same turnaround to land on different chords
The relationship of the first chord to the key
Pedal intros with turnarounds on top
Tonic and Dominant Pedals
Using motifs in the intro
Using the turnaround as a cue when vamping on an intro
How to extend the cadence for a better ending
Three options to avoid the tonic at the end
Harmonically decorating the last note (tonic, maj 7 or maj9)
Testimonials
Here's what our students have to say...
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"Pete is an extraordinary teacher and musician and in the 4 sessions he managed to cover a lot of ground. It was very helpful to have recordings of the sessions to go back over the detail. The content really suited the delivery." - Peter H
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"Pete is such a great knowledgeable musician that even though sax is my instrument and a little piano I learnt a lot - and so much jazz tradition thrown in the mix." - Arnon B
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"I really like the idea of recorded lectures as sometimes the times don't line up nicely in Australia so I can watch things back later. Overall great course - please do more!" - John G
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"Pete Churchill is so thoughtful and knowledgeable. I love his approach and analysis of how music works. He is a great communicator including humour in his explanations. I am interested in any further courses he is running. It is great that playback is available. I need to watch 3 or 4 times making notes to try to take it all in." - Mike O
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