My Jazz director gave my friend and I a very ominous warning about Jazz piano, telling us it was THE CRAZIEST and HARDEST part of the Jazz Ensemble.
:shifty:

Experiences? Advice? References I should look into? I'm just a Freshmen, and I'm not as skilled as my friend. I want to be competitive and be able to beat him, and I figured I'd ask you guys for some advice on how to get ahead.

Hahaha... jazz piano, in an ensemble, isn't that hard at all. It's only hard to beginners that may not be good at sight reading, and even you're great at sight reading you have to know how to build chords the "correct" way. Here's a tip:

Standard jazz piano is that the 1 and 5 are in the left hand (bass/lower) and the 3 and 7 are in the right; you can edit that and put the 1 and 5 in the lower part, OR if you can reach a tenth, the 1 and 3 of the chord (as in, it'd be a 10th above) and in the right hand, everything else. You'll tend to find more dissonances in the right hand, such as the 9th and 11th and 13th, etc. etc. because it's just standard of the "Orchestration of the Piano." (The lower you go the muddier it sounds, and the high the more "precise" sound you get).

And, my last point, NEVER COMPETE IN JAZZ. I can't tell you hat more than enough times!!! If you try to compete and be better than someone else, especially in jazz and with your instrument, you've lost your integrity as a jazz musician. Jazz is about fun and getting the groove with people; it's a lot like chamber music, and I can see it was a huge contribution to how I am able to play chamber music in piano trios, and hopefully a piano quartet in the summer. Just don't try to compete, try to make your own piano and licks jazzy and to make people bounce to it.

This is making SOME points for jazz, and jazz at the piano in more of a specific respect. I'd love to teach you more, since you could say, I'm a "self-taught" jazz musician, but I have studied it briefly with some pretty good people.

Take care.

I've had one jazz piano gig which I had 4 weeks to prepare for, prior to which I had not studied any jazz piano whatsoever. I can tell you now it helps to be good at sight-reading. You will encounter unique chords and rhythms (playing with more of a triplet feel than even eighth notes), but once you play with the ensemble, you'll learn which parts are important and which parts you can stray from the sheet music and play around with the chords. You might need to study a few improvisational scales if you have a solo, like the minor pentatonic scale. You'll have to be an active listener--not just a player--as with any other ensemble: make sure you follow the drum set, don't overpower the featured solo, etc.

As Mazeppa said, just have fun with it :)

if anything jazz guitar in big band is THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD.

Depends on the director too. Mine was a drummer, and so the drummer's life was hell. He never really commented much (nor as critically) on other instruments. Probably, if you just read the chart things will go smoothly (unlike set, where you apparently needed to do either less or more than what the chart said; doing exactly what the chart said was forbidden!)

The drums keep the style with the pattern and ONLY fill when needed.

Drumming is a lot more simpler in a jazz band than you think, but egotistical drummers in high school like to think otherwise.