Stride Piano

Everyone knows about the Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin. It is catchy and can be quite an earworm. However, something that any pianist looking to hone in their classical and jazz skills should definitely seek out Stride Piano! It also is called Harlem Stride since it mainly developed around Harlem during the Harlem renaissance. Sometimes, jazz and classical can seem to be worlds apart, and both demand a lot of your time to invest to even reach a competent level of playing. Fortunately, Stride Piano ecompasses fast passages, unique chord voicings, and most importantly enjoyment.

A short background about Stride Piano is that it sort of developed from Ragtime. However, they shared many characteristics, they mainly differed because Stride was most often improvised and fast whereas Ragtime was composed and it followed a particular form. Similar to rap battles of now, pianists would often compete with each other by demonstrating their technical abilities and music theory knowledge. Many prominent Stride pianists include ‘Fats’ Waller, Art Tatum, and James P. Johnson.

Now, at its core, Stride Piano can be described as having a left hand playing accompaniment and the right hand playing the melody and a solo. This is helpful for anyone wanting to enter into Stride since a pianist is able to create an entire band from a single instrument which allows for some fun that can allow you to maintain interest. Anyone interested should try listening to any of Art Tatum’s compositions, granted, he has a unique style and sound, he represents the peak of technical ability.

To start, find any lead sheet of a standard that you can find online. Stride can be simplified to this. The left hand alternates between a bass note and a chord every beat. To start off simply, the bass note can be the I and V of a chord. The chord can simply be a blocked chord. The right hand can just play the melody.