Stride piano

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Stride piano is a solo piano style from the early days of jazz . It goes back to ragtime , but in contrast to it is not composed, but largely improvised . It was created around 1920 as the "Harlem Stride piano" by pioneers such as James P. Johnson and Willie The Lion Smith in Harlem and developed further by Fats Waller into the dominant style of swing .

Stride piano accompaniment in Art Tatum's title I surrender dear

With the stride piano, the left hand takes on the function of bass and harmony by alternating octaves (or even decimals ) in the lower register and chords in the middle register, while the right hand plays the melody or improvises over it.

Because the pianist dominates the stride game, the drums and double bass take a back seat as rhythm instruments. The groups usually did not contain more than five to six musicians. The style was rarely played with larger bands, e.g. B. from Teddy Wilson .

The ability to play stride depends not only on the practice of improvising in parts but also on the anatomy of the hands: only a few pianists can play decimals in every key, whether with two black keys (relatively simple), one white and one black key (more difficult) or with two white keys (difficult to avoid incorrect key play). Another exponent of the Stride game was Eubie Blake , who was able to play duodecimals thanks to his unusually long fingers .

Art Tatum , as a kind of finisher of the style, often played passages that let the decimals in the bass run in quarter notes , completely dispensing with the alternating chords.

The term "stride piano" ( Engl. About: piano striding) was coined later by critics, but was the basis for all subsequent jazz piano styles. Ralph Sutton called the game "Harlem Rhythm".

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