This weekend my family and I attended a jazz festival. There were way too many people there for a Covid-19 jazz festival, but that’s a different post all together and not the purpose of this blog. And of course, I am totally jazzed that so many people would in fact show up for a jazz festival in the park! Of course, sadly, of the few hours we were there, I only heard one band that could really be considered jazz. But the point of all this? Why should every musician, especially vocalists, learn to play piano, and learn chords and chord theory, including ear training with chords well?  To avoid musical disaster.

On Saturday evening a man took the stage and grabbed a mic and began to sing a timeless jazz standard. This is a song that almost any jazz musician, even many high school and college students would likely be able to play and probably even recognize the chord progressions to, but that is not what happened. The piano player began to play a standard pop chord progression using all diatonic chords. The problem of course is that the song has some pretty complex changes to include -7b5 and diminished chords, substitute dominants, and contiguous II-7 V’s.

I could not believe my ears. I could not unhear what I was hearing. The vocalist proceeded to attempt to sing the melody as written, over these diatonic and incorrect pop voicings. We talk about this kind of thing with our more advanced students all the time. How could this have been avoided? If the vocalist knew their chords and if there was a rehearsal, he could have set the pianist straight. If there was no rehearsal and this was an on the spot situation, he could have (a) reharmed the melody to work over the in the moment chord changes (probably how I would have gone), or (b) tapped the pianist on the shoulder and told him to lay/out or take the night off (and go without piano).

The whole mess could have been avoided if the vocalist knew piano and their chords. Yes, it was the piano player’s job. But guess what, sadly there are piano players and guitarists that don’t know all their chords, that don’t do their homework. Likely either the piano player couldn’t read the chord chart, didn’t know the chords themselves, or both.  Learn piano, learn your chords, if you are a pianist or guitar player for sure—but vocalists and songwriters too!