A Beautiful Friendship, Melodic Analysis

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Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:32.888)
Welcome to Jazz Piano Skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn, and play jazz piano. Here we are, week two of the month, which means, as week two always means, it's a melodic analysis week. Last week we took our tune of the month, the jazz standard of Beautiful Friendship, and did our standard harmonic analysis examining the form.

traditional changes, harmonic function, common harmonic movement, and of course, our voicings, block shapes, root position, first, second, third inversion, traditional left hand shells, contemporary left hand shells, and of course, two handed structures. We always follow our harmonic analysis with a melodic analysis to discover, learn, play melody, fingerings, phrases, and various standard treatments. Typically a

ballad bossa swing groove. So every month we take a tune, study it harmonically, melodically, and as we will do next week improvisationally. These are areas of study that every aspiring jazz musician, not just piano players, but every jazz musician must gain a functional command of a conceptual and physical command. And how do you accomplish this essential task?

Right? It begins with establishing, as I've mentioned many times, a well thought out and constructed practice strategy, a well thought out and constructed practice agenda, which requires a proper conceptual understanding of music, or as I like to refer to it, the seven facts of music. I stress it all the time. If music does not become simple for you conceptually,

boy, then it's going to be impossible for you physically. That's just a brutal fact. If music does not become simple conceptually, then you have no shot of having success with it physically. And that is precisely why I stress over and over and over again how important it is for you to be able to recite the seven facts of music.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:53.623)
that you know these seven facts inside and out. In fact, you see music framed within these seven facts of music. And what are the seven facts of music? Come on, you can say it with me, especially all of you who've been listeners, Jazz Panel Skills listeners for some time now, because I do this every podcast episode. So say it along with me. Fact number one, music is the production of sound and silence. Sound, of course, being

major and dominant, minor, half-diminished, Fact number two, sound is produced harmonically and melodically. Fact number three, when sound is produced harmonically, we're playing chords or voicings. Fact number four, when sound is produced melodically, we are playing arpeggios and scales. Fact number five, when playing arpeggios and scales, we are moving in one of two directions. We're either going up or we're coming down. In fact number six,

We camouflage or decorate arpeggios and scales with tension, notes that fall outside of the harmony, often referred to as chromaticism. And finally, fact number seven, to make musical facts one through six interesting, we add rhythm. So important to know these seven facts. So important.

to see music as the production of harmonic and melodic shapes that go up and down the piano using arpeggio and scale motion decorated with chromaticism tension and expressed rhythmically. That's the key to becoming a musician. Because once you understand that music is the production of harmonic and melodic shapes that go up and down the piano using arpeggio and scale motion, decorated with chromaticism tension and expressed rhythmically,

Well, then you can begin to assemble practice strategies, practice agendas that reflect this understanding, which will produce the results that you are seeking. And until then, without this understanding, without this knowledge of the seven musical facts, musical truth, without this understanding, conceptually solidified you

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:17.569)
You're simply wandering around collecting information to practice. In fact, I just said to a student the other day, golly, know, if you don't see music in relationship to the seven facts, what are you, what are you doing? What are you practicing? How are you practicing? What's the goal? What are you trying to accomplish?

not a good strategy to simply collect information, jazz information, and hope that somehow something surfaces from that information and sticks and helps you develop into the jazz musician that you're wanting to become. It's just not a good plan. In fact, I remind students all the time that without musical truth conceptually understood,

are the seven facts of music, then the odds of developing accomplished jazz skills, jazz musicianship, it's worse than the odds are worse than being struck by lightning or winning the lottery. It's just not going to happen. And I'm not being hard. I'm just being truthful. So with our musical compass in hand, the seven musical facts, we tackle a new tune every single month. We do it harmonically.

melodically and improvisationally, which are the three musical camps that encompass the seven musical facts. So all of this to say that today we are going to do a melodic analysis. Today you're going to discover a beautiful friendship melodically. You are going to learn the melody by ear, phrases, target notes for a beautiful friendship.

and you are going to play the melody of A Beautiful Friendship, supported by our voicings from our harmonic analysis, our harmonic study last week, using three standard jazz treatments. So as I always like to say, regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner, an intermediate player, an advanced player, or even if you are a seasoned and experienced professional,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:32.725)
you're going to find this Jazz Piano Skills podcast lesson exploring a beautiful friendship to be very beneficial. But before we get started, want to, as I always do, welcome all of you first time listeners to Jazz Piano Skills. If you're new to the Jazz Piano Skills podcast or new to Jazz Piano Skills, I want

to welcome you. want to invite you to become a Jazz Piano Skills member. Your membership comes with many perks. Number one, you have access to premium podcast content, which means you get to listen to the entire podcast episode. The first half of every weekly podcast episode is free for everyone to enjoy. This is where I deal with the question of the week, lay out the educational agenda and the lesson rationale.

The second half of every podcast for members only, the lesson content is discussed, demonstrations are given as well as goals for the week. Along with having access to the entire podcast episode, members have access to the podcast packets. These are the educational materials that I designed and developed for every weekly podcast episode, the illustrations, the lead sheets, the play alongs with the backing tracks.

This material is invaluable to have in your hands when listening to the podcast episode and of course, to have sitting on your piano or music stand throughout the week when practicing. As a Jazz Panel Skills member, you also have access to the online courses. These are comprehensive sound based self paced and sequential courses, focusing on harmonic, melodic and improvisation development.

As a Jazz Panel Skills member, you also have a reserved seat in the weekly online masterclass that I hold every Thursday evening, 8pm Central Time. I know it's not the best time for everyone around the world, but check it out. The masterclasses are recorded and you can watch and rewatch the video of the class at your convenience and as often as you wish.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:45.023)
As a Jazz Piano Skills member, you also have access to the private online Jazz Piano Skills community. This is an awesome group and it keeps growing daily. The community hosts episode specific forums, general jazz forums. We have a killer listening list that is assembled every single week to go along with our studies. It's a great place to meet folks to

receive member feedback and assistance and also to give some member feedback and assistance as well. And finally, as a Jazz Panel Skills member, you have access to educational support, private, personal and professional support given directly by me. And there are several ways to reach me through the website, SpeakPipe. There's a web form. You can also call my office number here at the Dallas School of Music or if you're old school and like to use email, that's fine as well. So

All of these amazing privileges are waiting to help you discover, learn and play jazz piano. So check it all out at jazzpanelskills.com and of course become a member to begin enjoying all of these fabulous perks. Now, once you get to the site, of course, if you have any questions regarding the benefits or the membership plans, by all means, do not hesitate to reach out to me. I'm happy to spend some time with you, answer any questions that you may have.

help you in any way that I can. I also want to take just a few minutes to encourage everyone to subscribe to the Jazz Panel Skills YouTube channel to begin receiving educational videos that I am publishing now every week. I have weekly recaps that go out, weekly challenges, weekly quick tips. Again, I'm populating these playlists with new videos every week, so be sure to subscribe.

So you are notified when a new Jazz Panel Skills video is released. And finally, if you are not receiving the Jazz Panel Skills blog every Saturday, then please take the time to join the Jazz Panel Skills email list, which you can do at the Jazz Panel Skills website. Every Saturday, I publish a blog that summarizes the podcast episode and lesson for the week in writing. It's definitely worth reading to help keep you on track conceptually and

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:03.447)
physically. All right, that is a lot of info. So let's get to the question of the week. This week's question comes from Christopher Glover living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And Christopher writes, Dr. Lawrence, I am so sorry to bother you with a basic question that I am sure you have answered many times, but

I'm new to jazz piano skills and I would love to know your thoughts. My question is this, how much should I practice each day? Again, my apologies for asking such a basic question. No rush getting back to me. Thank you. Well, Christopher, it's a great question. And yes, it may be safe to say I answer this question every day.

every stinkin day I answer this question. Every single day, was a slip every single day I answer this question. Heck, you know, I think it's safe to say I have addressed this very question in previous podcast episode, or at least I've some variation of it. But but get this. I love the question.

And I actually never get tired of answering it because it may be, it just may be the most important question to ask. It's definitely in the top five of the most important questions to ask and that of any of us for anyone, right? It is definitely in the top five of the most important questions to ask as any aspiring musician. the first thing I would say is

Stop thinking about practice time.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (14:05.759)
and begin thinking about practice objectives. Okay, stop thinking about practice time and begin thinking about practice objectives. I am a big time believer that practicing should be objective driven and not time driven. Every single practice session should have a single practice

objective, not multiple practice objectives, a single practice objective. And once you have completed the objective, you're done practicing. It may take you 20 minutes to complete your objective for today. May take you 30 minutes to complete your objective tomorrow. It just, it may take one hour to complete your objective on another day. So

have a specific objective and your goal is to just simply complete the objective. And that's how much time you should practice every day. Now, with that being said, the identification of an objective can only be accomplished after you have selected, are you ready? After you have selected a skill.

and a practice approach along with content can only be determined after your skill and objective have been clearly defined. So Christopher, successful practicing, effective practicing is the result of a four-step process. Step one, skill. Step two, objective.

Step three, approach. Step four, content. So let's go through a few examples. How about this? Step one, our skill. I'm gonna practice today. You know what my skill that I wanna practice? Major scales. That's the skill I wanna practice today, major scales. Step two, what's my objective? My objective with my major scales today, I want to reinforce sound.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (16:31.438)
sound reinforcement or ear training. In other words, I want to practice my major scales so that I'm locking in on the major sound, right? Step three, what's my approach? Well, my approach is I'm going to play that scale from the root to the seventh. Root to the seventh in the right hand and my chord in the left hand, right?

And then step number four, what's my content? You know what? I'm going to practice the C, F, B flat and E flat scales during this session. C, F, B flat, E flat. That's it. There you go. You've identified the scale, major scale scales. What's the objective and what to reinforce sound. In other words, your training, you're really focusing on

digesting the major sound. So therefore, your approach in order to do that, your approach is to just simply play the scale from the root to the seventh to reinforce that major seventh sound. You're going to do that with your chord in the left hand, your scale in the right hand, and then our content. We just defined our content, C, F, Bb, and Eb major scales. Wow, what a great practice session. Now that may, like I said, take you 10 minutes to

satisfy that objective, maybe it's 20 minutes, maybe it's a half hour, who knows? Who cares? Right? It doesn't really matter. You've got the practice agenda laid out, you're going to execute that practice agenda, regardless of the time that it takes. Now, once I have these four steps in place, I can go to work because I'm very focused and goal oriented. Now, I can guarantee progress will ensue. There's no doubt about it.

Now, it's so important that I spotlight for a second step four content. Okay, do not and I repeat, do not bite off more than you can chew. As the old saying goes, less is more. And certainly when it comes to practicing less is more so too often too often and with great intentions. We think we can

Dr. Bob Lawrence (18:59.566)
in every practice session, do so much more than we were capable of doing. That's just a reality. We, in fact, we think we can practice. This is especially true for jazz musicians. We think we can practice in every session in all 12 keys. Because we hear that all the time. We hear that you should practice in all 12 keys. Right? So, well, okay, it's time for some tough love. You can't.

I can't, you can't, no one can't. And I speak from experience. I used to attempt this impossible feat every time I sat down to practice and talk about self-defeating. Wow. I would frequently walk away from every practice session very defeated. I walked away feeling that once again, I fell into the age-old trap of focusing on quantity over quality. I tried to do too much.

okay. And it ended up working against me. listen to this. Christopher, listen to this very carefully when you hear. Well, everyone listen to this very carefully. Because when you hear jazz musicians talking about practicing and all 12 keys, you never hear them say every day. At least I hope not.

If a jazz musician or educator does tell you to practice in all 12 keys every day, then I would suggest stop listening to that individual because they're giving you some really, really bad advice. Let me even let me be more specific. Practicing in all 12 keys, really good advice. Practicing in all 12 keys every day, really bad advice. Okay, so here's another

practice session example. Step one, skill. Let's do chords. So chords are our skill. Step two, objective. Voicings. Okay, so I'm going to practice chords. My skills are going to be chords. My objective is voicings. Step three, approach. I'm going to practice my block voicings and root position and inversions. Step four, content.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:23.822)
C, F, Bb, Eb. Very cool. Well, you know what? Let's not do C, F, Bb, Eb. I did that in my last practice session. So you know what? I'm going to do Ab, Db, Gb, and B. So I'm going to practice my major chords in Ab, Db, Gb, and B, and root and block chords, voicings, root position, and inversions. How long will it take me?

to do those four? Hmm, I don't know. 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. Again, doesn't matter, right? I'm not focused on time. I got my, I have my skill identified, my objective, my approach, my content. Now I'm going to go to work. How about this one? Here's another one. Step one skill, harmonic function, I'm going to work on my ability to identify harmonic function.

Step two, objective. Well, my objective is conceptual development. My conceptual understanding of how harmony works, chord progressions work. Step three, my approach. Well, I'm going to take lead sheet. I'm going to convert lead sheets from chords to numbers. And step four, my content. I'm going to select three standards.

I'm taking three standards, the lead sheets for three standards, and I am going to do an harmonic function analysis for those three standards for my objective is conceptual development. Wow. That's a great practice session. So Christopher, it all comes down to always having a what, a why, a how.

and volume clearly mapped out before you sit down on the bench. So step one, your skill is your what. Step two, the objective, that's your why. Step three, the approach, how. And step four, content is the volume, how much, right? Now you are focusing on what's really important.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (23:51.376)
and not on some arbitrary length of time, filled with random thoughts that I can guarantee will deliver a very low return on your investment. It always does. So great question, Christopher, that we need to ask over and over again, because it's important. Never think that it's basic or simple because it is a

very good question that needs to be addressed frequent frequently. You know, actually, I actually believe we do not talk about it enough. So I hope my answer helps. And as always, if more clarification is needed, please let me know if if we need to jump on a phone call or FaceTime zoom session and kick the can around a little more as I like to say, then then please let me know. I'm happy to do that. I'm always happy to dig deeper and help.

whatever way I can. So great question. All right, it's that time. It's time to discover, learn, play jazz piano. So let's discover, learn and play a beautiful friendship. All right, let's let's just take a moment and review our learning our tune learning outline. All right, we do this every every week as well that that when studying a tune

we utilize the same approach, always. And the genre, again, makes no difference. Makes no difference whether we're learning a jazz tune, a rock tune, R &B, country, folk, pop, whatever. We go through the same process when learning a tune. And number one, we listen. We listen to various artists, vocalist, instrumentalist, pianist. We always have a killer listening list.

together every single week that is in our community posted in our community. Lisa takes care of that for us and does a fantastic job. Killer list every single week spending time listening and again, right? vocalist, instrumentalist, pianist, professionalist, amateur musicians. Again, when I'm learning a tune, I don't really care. If somebody's performing a tune I

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:16.188)
wanting to study and learn, I'm willing to listen. Number two, we always do a harmonic analysis next, which involves form, changes, function, common movement, voicings. We did that last week for a beautiful friendship. After our harmonic analysis, we turn to a melodic analysis where we transcribe the melody. We look at the phrases in the melody, target notes within the phrases. And then we take that melody and we like to apply it to various

standard jazz treatments, ballad, bossa, swing. So that we're comfortable enough with that melody that we can interpret it in a variety of ways. And then finally, we turn our attention to improvisation development as we will do next week. When we look at chord scale relationships, arpeggio on scale movement, through the chord progressions, various melodic and rhythmic patterns.

to help develop our jazz vocabulary needed for improvisation. So it's a pretty thorough and it's a pretty complete approach that should become more and more comfortable for all of us because we utilize this approach regardless of the tune. We listen, harmonic analysis, melodic analysis, improvisation development. So this month, as I mentioned, we've already completed a harmonic analysis of

a beautiful friendship today, a melodic analysis and next week, we'll dive in some improvise and into some improvisation. So the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we are going to listen to various recordings of a beautiful friendship. Number two, we are going to learn by ear transcribe, in other words, the melody for a beautiful friendship. Number three, we are going to

look at my suggested fingerings for articulating the melody of a beautiful friendship. And number four, we will identify the melodic phrases found within the melody of a beautiful friendship, and then also what I call the melodic target notes within those melodic phrases. And five, we will apply the voicings to the melody for a beautiful friendship, the voicings that we studied last week, our traditional

Dr. Bob Lawrence (28:42.871)
block voicings and versions as well as our traditional and contemporary left hand shell voicings. So if you are a Jazz Panel Skills member, I want you to take just a few minutes right now hit the pause button. I want you to download and print your podcast packets, the illustrations, the lead sheets, the play alongs again, right? Your membership grants you access to premium content and these podcast packets

for every weekly podcast episode. So be sure to take advantage of it. Access those materials, download them, print them, have them sitting on your piano. All right. And once you have your podcast packets, I want you as always, we start with our lead sheets. So grab your lead sheets, you should have seven lead sheets in your podcast packets, packets. So let's walk through those right now. Lead Sheet one,

is what I call the fill in the blank lead sheet for a beautiful friendship gives us some guide tones that we can use to help us with our transcription efforts to learn the melody by ear. Lead sheet two is a clean melodic lead sheet. It's basically the answer guide, the answer key. So once you've completed lead sheet one, we can use that lead sheet to to help us determine how well we did with our discovery of the melody.

And then lead sheet three has my fingerings that I would suggest using when playing a beautiful friendship. Lead sheet four identifies the phrases for a beautiful friendship. Lead sheet five identifies the target notes within those phrases for a beautiful friendship. And then lead sheet six and seven deal with the voicings. Lead sheet six applies the left-hand block voicings from last week to the melody of a beautiful friendship.

and lead sheet seven applies the left hand shell voicings to the melody of a beautiful friendship. So we're gonna we're gonna go through each of these lead sheets in detail. So we have a lot to get done today, as always. So let's get after it, grab lead sheet one. And let's look at how we are going to approach transcribing the melody of a beautiful friendship. Okay, so lead sheet one.

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