Au Privave

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Welcome to jazz piano skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence, it's time to discover, learn and play jazz piano. While the last two weeks we have looked at five different jazz improvisation patterns for the primary sounds of music major dominant, minor, half diminished and diminished, plus the altered sounds deriving from the harmonic and melodic minor scales, the sharp 11, flat 13, flat nine, flat 13. And of course, the fully altered sound, the flat nine, sharp nine, flat five sharp five, all from the root note, get this D flat. We applied these five jazz improvisation patterns to these iconic sounds. And we studied and applied proper fingerings to the patterns, making it possible to play with an authentic jazz articulation. The goal of our fingerings as always, is to allow the continuous incremental shifting of our right hand across the keys. Right and you're going to need that shifting to the right hand today with the tune that we're about to tackle. It only makes sense right? That the continuous shifting of our right hand when plan establishes small movements, which are much more manageable and accurate than giant leaps. I've said it many times understanding and applying this truth becomes paramount when improvising and playing melodies of tunes. And again, especially bebop tunes, and Iskin especially the tune that we're about to discover, learn and play. So today you are going to discover Charlie Parker's classic bebop tune provider and you're going to learn chord changes harmonic function, Melody and fingerings for opera BA. And you're going to play multiple patterns extracted from our profile for developing classic jazz language to use when improvising. So as I always like to say regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner and intermediate player an advanced player even if you are a seasoned and experienced professional, you're going to find this jazz panel skills podcast lesson exploring Charlie Parker's are providing to be very beneficial. But before we get started, I want to as I always do welcome first time listeners to jazz piano skills. And if you are indeed a new listener to jazz panel skills. If you're new to the podcast, I want to invite you to become a jazz piano skills member. There are various membership plans to choose from. So check out jazz piano skills.com To learn more about the perks of each membership plan. There are educational weekly podcast packets, the illustrations lead sheets to play alongs there's a sequential jazz piano curriculum which is loaded with comprehensive courses. Online weekly master classes online interactive Fakebook private jazz piano skills, community and of course, unlimited, private, personal and professional educational support. All of these benefits all of these perks are waiting for you to help you discover, learn and play jazz piano. So take a moment when you have some free time and check out jazz piano skills.com And of course, become a member. Once you're there, if you have any questions, please, by all means, feel free to reach out to me. I'm happy to spend some time with you and answer any questions that you may have. Okay, on to the question of the week. This week's question comes from Ed Schroeder living in Manchester, England. And Edie writes. I love jazz. I'm cool. I'm glad man I need to. It says I love jazz but having a difficult time staying motivated to consistently practice. I know that without consistent practice, my dream of playing jazz piano will remain just that a dream? Can you offer some ideas on how to not only stay motivated, but to even possibly increase my motivation, so that I do not give up on my dream. Wow, Ed, great question. And I can assure you that you are not the only one wrestling with motivation. So I am sure, there are many listeners that feel the exact same way that you do. So let me try to give you some insight that I have gained over the past 50 years as a student of jazz. And over the last 35 years as a jazz educator, typically, typically, a lack of motivation is directly tied to a lack of results. And a lack of results is typically due to a poor practice approach, which is typically laced with bad information material that ultimately takes you nowhere. No doubt, it would be tough to remain motivated if trapped in this endless cycle of running down blind alleys, which, by the way, is very easy to do in jazz, you become like a dog chasing his tail, right? Lots of activity, lots of commotion, producing nothing rewarding. Now, I'm going to assume that this is your situation. Otherwise, you'd be motivated. But based on this assumption, I would guess that you are spending a lot of time trying to play tunes, and trying to improvise, which ultimately is what we all want to do, right? We want to play tunes, we want to improvise, and we want to have some fun. But if your practice agenda is primarily centered around playing tunes, and trying to improvise, you are trying to bypass the work needed to actually succeed at playing tunes and improvising. And if this is what you are doing, then your lack of motivation is the result of you attempting to take a shortcut that will not get you across the finish line. Again, great intentions, but taking you nowhere. And there's only one thing worse than taking a shortcut and that is taking an unintentional shortcut. In other words, you are doing what you have been led to believe is exactly what you should be doing to achieve your musical dream of playing jazz piano. That's a big bummer, right? spending days, weeks, months, years practicing and anon unintentional shortcut, leading you to simply chase your tail, hard to stay motivated. So if you are in this situation, and again, this was an assumption just based on your question, but if you are in this situation, then I would suggest the following. Number one, focus on learning how to play the piano, not a song. Number two, make sure everything you are practicing can be placed into one of the following buckets. bucket number one harmony, which would be chords and voicings, harmonic motion, various progressions, bucket to melody, scales, arpeggios, right scale patterns, arpeggio patterns, bucket three, rhythm, which would consist the whole quarter eighth 16th note patterns, and of course, dotted patterns as well dotted eighths and sixteenths and bucket for improvisation, stationary improvisation which would be major and minor thirds chunks that we've talked about that I've talked about the last couple of weeks. And also mobile improvisation where you're actually connecting major and minor thirds. You're connecting those chunks, using scales and arpeggios to do so right scale and arpeggio motion. So Ed, if if you select one of these buckets a day in zeroing in on developing that specific skill and you remain consistent, then you will be playing all the tunes you want, and improvising through them with ease. Right. So developing jazz skills will produce the musicianship you dream of. And the goal you seek to achieve, of playing jazz piano. You know what, let

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me give you I'm gonna give you a personal example outside of music that I think may help. I recently, a little over a year ago, realized I was actually getting old. I don't know I got up one day, I looked in the mirror said, Man, I'm getting old. I also realized that I was not in the best of shape. And that I should probably lose some weight, right? So I set out on a journey to get in shape to get fit. Notice what I didn't say, I didn't say I set out on a journey to lose weight. Why? Because I knew that if I focused on getting fit, getting in shape, that weight loss would just simply be a byproduct of getting fit. I needed to focus on the skills, exercise. And the tunes weight loss would take care of itself. It's funny. It's really funny. People ask me, how much weight have I lost? I tell them, I have no idea. They looked at me, they looked at me kind of confused. They said, You know, I never weighed myself ever. I didn't weigh myself before I started the journey. And I haven't weighed myself since. So I have no idea what I weigh. Why? Because I am focusing on being fit, not focusing on losing weight. The same goes for pursuing your jazz goals. Focus on learning how to play the piano, not a song. And if you do, the songs, in your improvisation skills will flourish, they will follow. Now, that is not to say that you should never have some fun and play some tunes, you should write you should have some fun and explore improvising through the chord changes of a tune you love as well. You absolutely should do this. But that should not be your practice approach. Right, the practice approach that you are hanging your hat on, and hoping that it will produce the results needed to keep you motivated. So there's a lot more I could say, with time is, is limited. So I hope that my insight is helpful. And as a good start for kickstarting your motivation and keeping you consistently motivated. Thanks for your question. As always, and as always, if further clarification is needed, do not hesitate to reach out to me, please let me know. Okay, let's discover learn to play jazz piano. Let's have some fun with Charlie Parker's provider. Okay, all of us. Right? All of us at the beginning of our jazz journey. We invest a lot of time, effort, energy searching for the secrets to learning how to play jazz, right? We try all kinds of approaches. These are what I was talking about and answering Ed's question, right? We've tried all kinds of approaches. We're rundown, a lot of blind alleys look, checking out various gimmicks and hope that we discover a legitimate shortcut that shaves years off of our developmental timeframe. We've all done it. Right. And there are some of the some of us that will continue to do it. I hope not. But but it seems inevitable that it happens, right? Especially in this day and age with a gazillion websites out there. Providing all kinds of information, it's easy to run down these rabbit holes in search of the secret formula for playing jazz piano. And in doing so we end up with a ton of data fragments as I like to call call them data fragments with absolutely no idea of how to connect them or even determine if they should be connected at all. On the other hand, right this technology that confuses us with all this information has been enormously beneficial for aiding in our musicianship development right the various software applications that allow us to create you know, play along files and backing tracks and simulated ensemble experience are without question amazing, right and there are a huge benefit. But sometimes the old fashioned ways are still the best ways when it comes to developing good technique articulation fingerings improvisation vocabulary, the study of plane, the study and playing of bebop heads, as far as I'm concerned still remains, King still remains the best approach. You know the bottom line if you want to get good at playing jazz piano, there is no better way than studying it historically. And historically speaking, there's no period of jazz that will help you develop your time feel articulation fingerings, and improvisation of vocabulary, but better than the Bebop period. So for those of you who may be listening and are new to be Bob, or Bob as it is often referred to, it is a period of jazz that developed and flourished during the 40s and 50s. Right the Bebop style of jazz features tunes, using fast tempos, challenging melody, typically tons of chord changes, some of them very complex, that move in and out of numerous key centers within a single tune, right, within even 12 measures of music, like the blues, like opera, ah, this is so important that I want to go through that list again so that it kind of registers with everyone right? fast tempos, challenging melodies, tons of chord changes, some of them very complex, and of course, numerous key centers. All within a single to be Bob is the perfect formula for developing jazz chops. There's no need for you to look any further. Your internet search search, it's over, right over. Everything about jazz you need to know and develop is found within the melodies of bebop tunes. And that is why I refer to bebop tunes as jazz, gold. But just a side note, if all you're doing is playing the tunes, like I mentioned in Ed's question, answer to Ed's question, you're not developing the skills

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doesn't matter whether it's jazz gold or not, the bebop tunes will not get you to where you want to get. So, the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we will explore Charlie Parker's are provided. Number two, we will examine the chord changes and harmonic function of our provider. Number three, we will of course play the melody of all Prva and explore proper fingerings. Number four, we will extract five classic patterns from the melody are provided to us for discovering and developing our very own jazz vocabulary. In number five, I will be playing the various exercises examples today at at the Temple of 110 Now, if you are a jazz panel skills member I want you to hit the pause button take a few minutes right now to download and print your podcast packets, the illustrations, the lead sheets and the play alongs your membership again your membership grants you access to all the educational podcast packets for every weekly podcast episode. And as I mentioned every week you need to be using these podcast packets. They need to be in your hands when listening to this episode. And of course, they need to be sitting on your piano when practicing as well. If you are listening to this podcast on any of the popular podcast directories such as Apple or Google Amazon, I Heart Radio Spotify Pandora, the list goes on and on. Then be sure to go directly to jazz piano skills. podcast.com That's jazz piano skills podcast.com To download your podcast packets and you will find the active download links within the show notes. And one final but very important message if you are sitting there listening right now and listening to the various skills Those that we're about to discover, learn and play as we explore Charlie Parker's all provide. And if you're thinking, Wow, man, this is way over my head, then I would say to you, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, relax, no worries, continue to listen and grow your jazz piano skills intellectually, by just listening to this episode. Right? Every new skill is over our heads when introduced. But this is how we get better. And we place ourselves right smack dab in the middle of conversations where we're hearing words, we have no idea what they are, we're hearing things that we've never heard before. And we're forced to begin growing intellectually. And I say it all the time, our musical growth begins upstairs mentally, conceptually, before it can come out downstairs physically in your hands. So sit back, relax. Listen to this podcast. Listen now to discover and learn. The play, as it always does, will come in time. Now that you have your lead sheets in your hands, I want to talk you through them quickly, you will see that lead sheets one and two, present the chord changes and harmonic function for all Prva. Right to help you truly discover and learn the changes in harmonic function for operativa, I strongly recommend that you use the lead sheets templates found in your illustrations packet, right? That's the conceptual work. Now lead sheet three has the chord changes, along with the melody. And the lead sheet four includes the melody plus, the fingerings, I use when playing I'll provide has been time a lot of time playing the head, the melody over and over. And over and over, especially at slower tempos, focusing on the fingerings and the hand shifts that we have been working on. Right and I will be playing this melody and model modeling this for you here shortly. Now, lead sheets five through nine deal with five patterns that I have extracted from the melody from 12 measures of music from the melody of opera, right that we're going to use today as launchpads for developing jazz vocabulary for developing your jazz vocabulary needed of course for improvising. So wow, we have a lot to get through today. So let's get busy. The very first thing I always say First things first, let's sit back and listen to Charlie Parker play operativa right. So grab your lead sheet to follow along with the melody and let's you know what it's only a couple minutes let's listen to this rendition of all provide enjoy. Not only the melody, but let's enjoy some solos as well. Check this Out.

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Is there Right? So big names? Right Charlie Parker Miles Davis Max wrote, right Walter Bishop Jr. on piano. Wow, fantastic. Fantastic indeed. Okay, I want you to grab a lead sheet one. And I want you to grab lead sheet two, skill one, skill two, and I want you to place them side by side skill one, we have the chord changes for our provides a 12 bar blues a little more complicated blues progression than your traditional 12 bar blues, but nevertheless, still considered a 12 bar blues progression. And skill two or lychee two has the harmonic function of this progression laid out for you. So you can see just at a casual glance here at the chord changes, you can see a lot of circle motion right, measure two, you got the G minor seven C seven, resolving to the F major and measure three, so nice 251 progression, that C minor to F seven going to B flat, have another 251 and measure four, going into measure five even though that five is played as a dominant, then you have a B flat minor E flat seven, another two five relationship, right? Check out measure, measure eight, a minor seven, D seven, another two, five, progression right or three, six, if you're thinking of it in terms of key of F, right. So we have tons of circle motion going on within this progression and some very classic chord movement, harmonic movement, obviously to five ones, you got the four minor go into a flat seven, seven. And that flat seven dominant resolving to the one chord in measures six and seven very classic movement as well. So anyway, spend some time with lead sheet one skill one lead sheet two skill to to really digest the chord changes and the harmonic function of our provider. And again, I mentioned that earlier, use the illustrations that I put together, there's a couple of templates there that will allow you to actually physically notate the chord changes and physically notate the harmonic function practice doing both of those, using those templates within your illustrations. Now I want to play through these chord changes. So you can follow along with the the chord changes, and you can follow along with the harmonic function. So I'm just going to play the changes of our pravasi Four times through May the first two times, follow the changes chord changes and lead sheet one and try to think of the harmonic function as you see the chord changes. And the last two times through, follow along with skill two or lead sheet two with the harmonic function laid out and try to recite the chord changes as you look at the harmonic function. Right. So in other words, you want to be able to think the opposite of what you're seeing. So big time skill, so give it a try. And if you struggle with it, it's okay. You're gonna practice it and you'll improve with time, no question about it. So let's bring the ensemble in and I'm going to play through the chord changes of our provider right now, four times through. Okay, here we go.

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Thanks right now, of course, I was planned out it's a tempo of 160. Right? I mentioned earlier that we will be doing everything at 110. Those will be the improv examples that I give here coming up, but, but for right now I'm playing through the chord changes. And I'm about to play through the melody of our Prva, skill three, lead sheet three, if you can grab that at 160 as well, but I am going to be playing the melody right hand only I'm not going to play the chord, I'm going to think like a horn player, I want to try to, I want to try to emulate how Charlie Parker would play is playing this melody right. So I'm focusing on my fingerings I'm focusing on my hand shifts and trying to play the melody of our provider with a proper jazz articulation. So grab a lead sheet three, skill three, and let's listen to the melody of provocative and playing it at 160 now in your play alongs packet and your play alongs packet I have provided several different temples, various temples some slow and then of course some some much faster so use those those play along tracks to practice and playing the melody Okay, so let's bring the ensemble and follow along lead sheet three skill three here we go.

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Nice now, if you look at skill for lead sheet for this has the melody the head of opera ah, notated once again. But you'll know notice that beneath each note of the melody, I have a fingering notated. So these these are the fingerings that I am using when playing the melody of opera VA. So you know study that, you'll see where those hands shifts are taking place to move around. There's some large leaps where you have to literally pick up the hand and and shift and move it right. So again, practice this melody at slower tempos, pay attention to the fingerings you can make some modifications slight modifications to these fingerings of course, but do not make modifications that eliminate hand shifts, because that's the whole point of what we've been focusing on this entire year with our all our patterns and exercises that we have been playing to develop this arm mobility in our right hand our ability to shift constantly be shifting and creating enough hand in order to play melodies such as our provide. So okay, let's grab scale five, lead sheet five, and pattern one that I want to take a look at really, it's two patterns, but I'm just condensing them into one. So I'm yanking the pattern from measure two and measure 10. Measure two and measure 10. In measure two I'm looking at the C seven on counts three and four. And in measure 10 I'm looking at the C's Haven't on counts three and four. And you'll notice that the melodic line focuses on the root to the fifth of the C seven sound. So in measure two, we have an E. Going down to our C, we go up to the fifth, and we resolve down to our C. And then check out measure 10, on counts three and four, really coming on and have to. Again, right, so I'm taking these two melodic ideas, and I'm actually seeing them as two chunks, right, I'm seeing it as a minor third from the e to the G. And then I'm seeing it also from the see through the E, even though he lands on the fourth and measure 10. So we get this sound. So we have our major third for C dominant, and we have our minor third, from the third to the fifth for C dominant. So I'm going to play both of these little motifs side by side. And then I'm going to start using those two motifs to develop some vocabulary thinking in terms of the root and third, and the third and fifth, and the passing notes in between them. Okay, so let's bring the ensemble in let's check it out here we go.

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Very cool, right. So, when we begin improvising like this, taking a melodic motif from a head of a bebop tune, and we can actually start seeing the harmonic intervals that make up that motif, in this case, major, minor thirds, of course, right, and start to think in terms of notes in between those major and minor thirds as passing tones. It's interesting, right? I'm not thinking about a mode, I'm not thinking in terms of a chord scale relationship. I'm thinking of these harmonic chunks, these harmonic, this harmonic structure that's guiding me and helping me develop my jazz vocabulary. Now, you'll also see on your lead sheet, that I have the same melodic motifs laid out for you in over F seven, and then the same melodic motifs laid out for B flat seven, and then you see the little note there at Red underneath that continue moving around the circle of fifths. So as I just modeled for C seven, I would encourage you to do the very same utilize a very same approach for F seven, and B flat seven, E flat seven, and so on as you move counterclockwise around the circle. This will be the case for all the patterns that we look at today. All the melodic ideas that we're looking at today. I want you to move them around the circle. Okay, and again, all these ideas Is that I'm focusing on the dominant ideas. Today I'm grabbing everything, Senator around these dominant chords. Alright, so the very next one, I want you to pull out lead sheets, six, skill six, pattern two, we're going to look at E, the E flat seven, in measure six, there's an E flat seven and measure six on counts three and four. Okay, and it too, it too begins on the fourth of the sound on the A flat and comes in on the end too. So you get this one

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so I'm going to take that little motif and I'm going to focus on this harmonic chunk of a flat F a minor third, or to top of this E flat seven. I'm going to state that melodic motif first a few times and then I'm going to start developing this idea even further using that harmonic chunk. Okay, so let's bring the ensemble back in let's check out the E flat seven and the melodic motif found on the second half of measure six of provide here we go.

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Fascinating, right, when you you know the old saying small, great things come in small packages. Wow, it's so true, right? Work it off just a minor third within the spectrum of the E flat seven sound the F to the A flat or the ninth to the 11th in the passing tones in between right how much vocabulary creativity can be generated within that little sound fragment within that little harmonic interval that little chunk. Okay, so check out skill seven, lead sheet seven. Now this is interesting, right, because I'm grabbing measure four F seven sharp five, I'm grabbing the two notes, right on the last half of the measure the D flat, which would be the C sharp or the sharp five, and, and the F the root, however, I'm going to actually think of that distance between that D flat and that F consisting of two harmonic chunks, an F and a major third, an A to the D flat or C sharp, another major third. So I'm going to state this little motif, this little two note motif on the F seven sharp five. Then I'm going to start developing improvisational ideas that center that focus that anchor are anchored on these two notes. But using the two major thirds as my two chunks side by side to create some melodic ideas. Okay, so let's bring the ensemble then I'll play it as I have done with the previous patterns. I will play our state up, do a little introduction of the F seven sharp five sound. And then I'll state the motif and then I'll say start developing it improvisationally so bring the ensemble in let's check it out F seven sharp five pulled from measure four of our provide.

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Love it, I absolutely love it. But I actually think I might love pattern for skill eight, lead sheet eight pattern for coming from measure five, the B flat seven, flat nine sound, or Charlie Parker is literally playing the flat nine on the strong beat the downbeat, right? So he's getting this loving listen that again. You know, we've been doing so much work with our altered dominant sounds. And I've discussed how, in previous episodes how the altered dominant sounds which create tension can be kind of tough on the ears, right? When we first start playing and studying and, and listening to these altered sounds, there's a lot of tension there a lot of dissonance. But the more time you spend with these altered sounds, the ears grow. And you start to really appreciate the beauty of these flat nines and sharp fives and all these alterations when applied in a musical context. They, they sound fantastic, right. So I want to bring the ensemble in, I'm going to work off of this flat nine sound that he's working on flat flat nine to the fifth. And again, I'm going to think about the little harmonic chunks in between this interval range of this flat nine to the to the fifth of B flat seven. So I have the minor third stacked with a male with another minor third on top. And I might find myself roaming down to the root once in a while as well to be flat but I'm staying with basically within this geographical region of the sound. So I'll state the motif first initially as played in opera vom in measure five, then I will begin to develop that, that interval that idea and create some improvisational language and vocabulary. So let's bring the ensemble in and let's check it out. Here we go.

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I'm having too much fun today and incredibly sad that we are now at least sheet nine skill nine and the last pattern for today which I want to draw your attention to measure eight and 11 the last half of measure eight which is a D seven and the last half of measure 11 which is a D seven, flat nine. But if you notice and both of those measures the D seven he is exploring from the fifth to the seventh from the eighth to the C and then in the D seven flat nine descending from the C down to the A. So I'm going to take that little harmonic chunk that little interval that A to C or C to A however you look at it that minor third and I'm going to use that to improvise within that little geographical region of the D seven sound. So I want to bring the ensemble in and I want to have a little fun with D seven found in measure eight and measure 11 of our provide.

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Wow wow we have done it again. We've unpacked a ton of information one very short very fast hour. And again, I cannot stress to you enough the importance of practicing playing bebop heads melodies for developing fingerings right, proving your technique your time and your articulation. There are no better etudes there are no better exercises for developing your jazz playing than bebop tunes. So do not skim over studying and learning the chord changes and harmonic function for are provided before tackling the melody right after all right the harmonic function the chord changes its foundation that the melody rests upon. So it needs to be solid. And again use your illustrations podcast packet to help you gain a command of this very essential skill. And once you do have a command of the changes in harmonic function, then begin practicing the melody focusing on fingerings. And of course do so at slower tempos. Right. Finally, I always love to take Part bebop melodies like we did today to find invaluable melodic ideas to convert into jazz improvisation patterns. And then use those patterns to discover, learn and play my own jazz ideas my jazz vocabulary. Right most importantly, most importantly, as I mentioned every week, be patient. Alright, developing mature professional jazz piano skills takes time. So begin structuring your studying and your practicing after the plane demonstrations that I modeled for you today in this podcast episode, and I guarantee it you will begin to see you'll begin to feel and hear your progress. Well I hope you have found this jazz panel skills podcast lesson exploring Charlie Parker's are provocative, to be insightful and of course to be very beneficial. Don't forget if you are a jazz panel skills ensemble member I will see you online Thursday evening at the jazz piano skills masterclass that will take place 8 pm Central time we'll discuss this podcast episode lesson exploring all provide in greater detail. And of course answer any questions that you may have about the study of jazz in general. If you are a jazz panel skills member again, a reminder us those educational podcast packets, the illustrations, the lead sheets, the play alongs for this podcast lesson and of course for all the podcast episodes, check out those jazz piano courses. And also check out the jazz piano skills community. Get out there, get involved, contribute to the various forums and of course, make some new jazz piano friends. Always a great thing to do. You can always reach me by phone 972-380-8050 My extension here at the Dallas School of Music is 211 if you prefer email, my email address is Dr. Lawrence, drlawrence@jazzpianoskills.com. Or you can use the nifty little SpeakPipe widget that is nestled, I believe on every page of the jazz piano skills website. Well, there is my cue. That's it for now. And until next week, enjoy Charlie Parker's are provided. And most of all, have fun as you discover, learn and play jazz piano!