The Style of Oscar Peterson
This page will give a few notes on Oscar's wonderful playing, and to show a few phrases and their harmonic basis. I realise that this will be an incomplete study because Oscar's music is too rich to do a thorough analysis. I can only scratch the surface, but hopefully it will be of some use to a student of jazz piano.
Oscar's style shows many influences, including Art Tatum, George Shearing, Bill Evans, Boogie Woogie, Blues and Classical music.
Here are some of the textures he uses:-
1. Right hand single note improvisation, with left hand chordal accompaniment. The right hand figures can be fast, using double tempo phrases at times. He uses accented notes off the beat for swing, frequently the high note of a phrase. There are blues figures, crushed notes. Also there are phrases using extended chords. Octaves can also be used in the right hand, and tremolos used too.
The left hand chording is free (not four in a bar like Erroll), can be on the beat or just before. There are punctuation marks with accented low notes, generally off beat.
2. Block chords using left and right hands in concert like George Shearing. Very rich chords are used.
3. Improvisation with right and left hands playing simultaneous single note lines spaced two octaves apart.
4. Art Tatum style stride piano.
Here are some example right hand phrases applicable to (1) above. They are all in F major and should be played in swing feel.
F
Notice how the phrase weaves in and out of the chord notes. The first note is a chord note , then 3 non chord notes skirting around the A which is duly played at note 5. At the places where 2 notes are played together an accent is produced, in both cases it is off the beat. This helps the phrase to swing.
F7
This one has effective use of triplets. It also is based on the F pentatonic scale, with the flattened third added in ( see right hand improvisation patterns 2c). The high note ( D ) can be accented to heighten swing feel.
F
The above is another example of weaving in and out of the chord notes, the chord notes are F A and C the others "circle" around the chord notes and resolve onto them.
F9
This one shows Oscar's use of extended chords. Here the underlying chord is F9 ( F A C Eb G ) . Oscar extends this to #11th ( B ) and 13th ( D). The first four notes link the 13th and #11th chromatically, then the phrase descends as an arpeggio.
Fma7
In the second bar there is a chromatic rising scale arriving at the chord note ( C ). The semiquavers weave around the A which duly arrives at the start of bar 3. Notice the arpeggio which rounds the phrase off.
Her are some possible left hand voicings:-
F7 Bb7 Eb7 Ab7
Note all the above omit the root of the chord and the F7 and Eb7 have the ninth added.
Here are some minor chord voicings
Am7 Dm7 Gm7 Cm7
These also omit the root of the chord and all have the ninth added.