Blue Bossa Tutorial Part 2
In this tutorial we will build upon what we learnt in Blue Bossa Part 1 and add all of these individual elements together to create a full Bossa Nova arrangement.
It’s difficult to maintain the 3 elements of Bossa Nova which are a steady bass line, syncopated rootless chord voicings, and finally the melody on top.
The bass line ties up your left hand in the lower register of the piano. You can’t use the sustain pedal as this will blur the rhythm from the bass line.
This leaves your right hand to play roles of melody and the rootless voicings. One way you can approach this is to hold down long notes with your 4^th^ finger or pinky finger and then fill in with the left hand voicings.
We also introduce topics we have explored in our study of jazz piano, such as passing chords and chromaticism.
A very important point is that it’s not absolutely necessary to play all of these elements concurrently throughout the performance.
In fact it often doesn’t sound very good if you do this. Instead you can just imply these different elements and leave more space. Always remember that you don’t have to fill up all of the space but understand that both the bass lines and comping rhythms are available to you, should you wish you insert them.
