Christmas Time is Here, Melodic Analysis

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Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:32.408)
Welcome to Jazz Piano Skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn, and play jazz piano. Here we are. The clock just keeps on ticking. The weeks fly by, the months fly by. Here we are, week two of a new month. And of course, week two means it's a melodic analysis week. So last week, we took our tune of the month, which is the beautiful standard, Christmas standard. Christmastime is here.

Vince Giraldi. And we did our typical harmonic analysis. We examined the form, the traditional changes, the harmonic function, common harmonic movement, and of course, our voicings. Black voicings, which are your traditional root position chords, first, second, third inversion, our traditional shells, 379 and 735 structures, as well as our contemporary shells that are built with the primary interval being the fourth, and of course, our two-handed structures.

We always, always follow our harmonic analysis with a melodic analysis to discover, learn, and play the melody, the fingerings, the phrases, target notes within those phrases. And of course, we have some fun with various treatments of the tune. Typically a ballad, bossa, swing. This week's a little different because we're talking about a waltz. Three, four time, Christmas time is here. But nevertheless, we will explore some various treatments.

Every month we take a tune and we study it harmonically, melodically, improvisationally. These are our areas of study that every aspiring jazz musician, and not just pianists, every jazz musician, you know, must gain a command, a conceptual and physical command of these areas of jazz study, harmony, melody, improvisation. So

You know, how do you accomplish this essential task? All right. Well, it begins with establishing, as I always say, a very well thought out and constructed practice strategy or agenda, which of course requires a proper conceptual understanding of music. And how do we get a proper understanding of music? Well, I'll tell you what the easy way is to follow my seven facts of music.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:58.113)
We do this every, you know, so fun. We do it every week, right? Every podcast episode, right? Because you know what? Without these facts, right? There's no way music can become simple for you conceptually. And if music cannot become simple for you conceptually, then you have zero chance. You have zero shot of having success with it physically. Right? I'm going to say it again because it's that important.

If music does not become simple for you conceptually, you have zero shot of doing anything with it physically. And that is why I stress it over and over and over again that you must think of music in relationship to the seven facts of music. And what are the seven facts of music? Number one, music is the production of sound and silence. And of course, sound being

primary sounds, major, dominant, minor, half-diminished, and diminished. Fact number two, sound is produced harmonically and melodically. That's it. That's the only two ways to produce sound. And fact number three, when sound is produced harmonically, we're playing chords, or what we call voicings. Fact number four, when sound is produced melodically, we're arpeggios and or scales.

fact number five, when playing arpeggios and or scales, we can only move in one of two directions that's up or down. And then fact number six, we like to decorate or camouflage the fact that we're playing arpeggios and scales with tension or what's affectionately known as chromaticism. And then finally, fact number seven, to make facts one through six interesting, we add rhythm.

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

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:19.697)
using scale and arpeggio motion decorated with chromaticism and expressed rhythmically, then you can you are at a point then that you can assemble a practice strategy that actually reflects this understanding. And if you can assemble a practice strategy that reflects this understanding, you are on your way to experiencing much musical success.

But until then, without this understanding, this musical truth, you are simply wandering around, collecting information. Just collecting a lot of information. Not really knowing what to do with it. You got good information, have no idea what to do with it. Well, you think you have good information. Some of it may be good, some of it may not be good. But nevertheless, you have information.

And that's not a good plan just to have information. In fact, I remind students all the time that without musical truth, without these seven facts, right, literally tattooed on your mind, then the odds of developing accomplished jazz skills, jazz musicianship, wow, are zero.

So we go to great lengths here at Jazz Piano Skills to make sure that this doesn't happen to us. We take our musical compass and we tackle a new tune every month. We do it harmonically, we do it melodically, and improvisationally, which of course are the three musical camps that encompass the seven musical facts. So all that to say,

that today we are going to do a melodic analysis that today you are going to melodically discover Christmastime is Here. You are going to learn the melody by ear to the best of our abilities. And we're going to check out the phrases within the melody. We're going to look at target notes within those phrases. And then we're going to play the melody of Christmastime is Here, supported by our voicings from our

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:45.937)
our harmonic study last week. So we're going to play Christmas time is here using our block voicings and we're going to play Christmas time is here using our traditional shells and contemporary shells. So as I always like to say, regardless of where you are in your personal jazz journey, a beginner, an intermediate player, an advanced player, or even if you are a seasoned and experienced professional, you're going to find this Jazz Panel Skills podcast lesson exploring

Vince Guraldi's Christmas Time is here to be very beneficial. But before we get started, I want to, as I always do, want to welcome all of you first time listeners to Jazz Piano Skills. And if you are indeed a new listener, if you're new to Jazz Piano Skills, new to the podcast, welcome. I want to invite you to become a Jazz Piano Skills member. Now your membership grants you many perks. Number one, as a Jazz Piano Skills member,

you can enjoy premium podcast content, which means you get to listen to the entire podcast episode. The first half of every podcast episode is free for everyone to enjoy. I deal with the question of the week. I lay out the educational agenda, the lesson rationale. Now the second half of the podcast is for members only. And that is where we discuss, go over the lesson content, the demonstrations. And of course we

look at our Jazz Piano Skills podcast packets, which are the materials that I design and develop for every weekly podcast episode. These are the illustrations, the lead sheets, and the play alongs. Always great to have this material in your hands when listening to the episode so you get the most out of it in the course. Very helpful to have this material sitting on your piano or music stand when practicing throughout the week.

You also as a Jazz Panel Skills member have access to the online Jazz Panel Skills courses, are comprehensive, sound-based, self-paced, and sequential courses focusing on harmonic, melodic, and improvisation development. You also as a Jazz Panel Skills member have a reserved seat in my weekly masterclass, which is live online every Thursday evening, 8 p.m.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (10:09.446)
Central Standard Time and I know it's not the best time for everyone. However, the master classes are recorded and you can as a member watch the video of the class at your convenience and as often as you wish. You also as a Jazz Piano Skills member have access to the private online Jazz Piano Skills Community which hosts a variety of forums, episode specific forums, general jazz forums,

And we also have our killer listening list in there every single week that goes along with every single podcast episode. It's also a great place for folks to gather to meet new friends and provide some member feedback and assistance and also receive some member feedback and assistance. And then finally, as a Jazz Piano Skills member, you have access to educational support, private, personal, and professional support. So all of these

perks. All of these privileges are waiting to help you discover, learn and play jazz piano. So check it all out at JazzPianoSkills.com and of course become a member. If you get to the site, you have questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. I'm always happy to spend some time with you, answer any questions that you may have and 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 publish every week. Your subscription, every time I release that new video, you will be dinged and made aware of the fact that a new video is now available. And I currently have a few playlists. have weekly recaps that I do, weekly quick tips, weekly challenges.

Those go out every single week, so you want to be notified when those are released. And again, I'm populating these playlists with new videos, so be sure to subscribe. And finally, if you are not receiving the Jazz Panel Skills blog post every Saturday morning, then please take time to join the Jazz Panel Skills email list, which you can easily do at the Jazz Panel Skills website. And every Saturday, I publish a blog that

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:27.29)
summarizes the podcast episode lesson for the week in writing. It's about a four minute read, which is definitely worth it to help keep you on track conceptually and physically. Alright, so let's move on to the question of the week. This week's question comes from Dexter Young. Dexter Young living in Buffalo, New York. Dexter writes, Hi, Dr. Lawrence, loving our monthly tune study.

and I am learning a ton, especially regarding how to practice. With that being said, I am confused when it comes to learning or practicing melodies of tunes. When learning the melody, should I practice it exactly as written or should I feel free to add ornamentation? Thanks for your help and guidance. Wow. Great question.

I picked that question this week because it goes right along with our melodic analysis. So great question, Dexter. Lots to unpack. So let me begin by saying stop reading the melody. Stop it. Just stop. I always get nervous when I hear that statement. Should I practice it exactly as written?

That's precisely why I was attracted to jazz and left the classical world. I hated playing things exactly as written. Now, I'm not the best reader in the world, which may have shaped my thoughts, but nevertheless, why I was and why I am and why I will continue to be attracted to jazz is that I can play and modify the melody.

as inspired to do so. In other words, I can be expressive. Now with that being said, Dexter, the heart of your question is fabulous. You're really getting at and wanting to understand the process, the process of practicing, of learning a melody that develops

Dr. Bob Lawrence (14:51.363)
and inspires personal expression and creativity, which is fabulous, right? So here, here are some of my thoughts. First and foremost, when you approach a melody, any melody, your initial responsibility is to play it as pure as possible.

In other words, no frills, no embellishments, no ornaments. Why? Because that's how you learn the essence of the melody of the line. You know, keep in mind, the composer crafted that melody with intention, the contour, the rhythm, the phrasing, the harmonic placement. And until you fully understand what the melody is, you cannot

authentically interpret it. step one is always discover, learn, and play the melody. Check this out by listening, by listening to various renditions. That's why we have our listening lists every last every week. So discover, learn, play the melody by listening and not rely on playing it as written. think playing it as written is the kiss of death.

You just don't want to do that. So once and only once you have done that, then you can begin to explore ornamentation. So you've done your listening, you've poked out the melody, you understand the phrases in the melody and the target notes in the melody in the phrases. So now you're ready to begin exploring ornamentation.

Now here's the key. Jazz ornamentation is not decoration for decoration sake. It's not it's not a mathematical or calculated process. Ornamentation embellishment in jazz is about expressing the melody through your musicianship. Let me say that again, ornamentation or embellishment.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (17:14.796)
in jazz is about expressing the melody through your musicianship. And how do you develop musicianship? You practice essential skills. Yep, skills, or what I like to call grunt work. No one likes to talk about grunt work. But that's the key. And I guess that's a topic for another day. So

Okay, it's about shaping ornamentation. Embellishment is about shaping the melodic line, the melody, so that it is expressive. You'll hear jazzers. I'm sure you've all heard musicians, jazzers use terms like, you know, the melody has to breathe. It has to swing. It has to say something. It has to communicate. All of that sounds really good, but honestly,

Honestly, I think it's a bunch of hooey. That kind of language is way too abstract for me. And that is why I simply that's why I like simply saying that the line the melody has to be expressive. It has to be you. That's what I mean when I say expressive. It has to be you. Your musical ideas, your ornamentation, right, is applied to that melody. and your ornamentation is expressed correctly appropriately when the melody is clarified.

by highlighting its phrases, it's the important notes, targets, and rhythms. And that is why we do what we do here at Jazz Piano Skills every month with our melodic analysis of a tune. We learn the melody by ear, we identify phrases and target notes, which we're about to do here shortly. We explore different grooves, which forces us to deal with various rhythmic challenges. Right? So

Dr. Bob Lawrence (19:20.397)
what kind of ornamentations are we talking about as we go through this process? Well, there are little rhythmic embellishments, like slight delays, anticipations, elongations of the melodic line. There are melodic devices like grace notes or neighboring tones, enclosures, passing tones, we've we discuss all those talk about those. There are articulations like

staccatos and slurs and accents. But here's the beautiful part. You see, I'm all of this, all of these little skills, which are huge skills, right? Here's the beautiful part. All of this grows naturally out of your understanding of the tune and your development of jazz skills. In other words, ornamentation.

is not something that you tack on. It's something that emerges, right? That's why the study of jazz is about extracting expressiveness from you, not putting it in you is extracting it from you. Right? So again, ornamentation is not something that you tack on. It's something that emerges. And here's a pro tip. When you first

start adding ornamentation because I think this is where so many students miss it. When you first start adding ornamentation, keep it simple. Very, simple. Make one tiny rhythmic adjustment, or add one little passing tone, or delay one entrance of a phrase. Keep in mind the melody becomes on if the melody

This is so important. If the melody becomes unrecognizable, or if it starts sounding like improvisation, instead of melodic theme, you've gone too far.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:34.168)
right? You've gone too far. So ultimately, the goal is to honor the melody while giving it your authentic jazz voice, your expression. And that balance only comes through time, study, repetition, right? And of course, guidance. And that's what we do here at Jazz Piano Skills every single week.

every single month, every single year. So do you play the melody? Do you play it as you learn it through listening? Yes, of course. And do you ornament, ornament the melody? Yes. Right. You do both Derek. But, but in that order, you know why that is right? Because

here at Jazz Piano Skills, we know that being skill centric, I use that term a lot. We know that being skill centric comes before artistic freedom. In other words, we have to bake the cake before we can decorate the cake only makes sense. We have to learn the melody before we can embellish the melody. So learn through listening. And then after you've done that, then ornamentation.

Wow, I kind of got on a little soapbox there for a little bit. But all right. That's a great question, Derek. I hope I hope I hope this helps. And as always, a further clarification is needed. Please let me know always I'm always happy to dig deeper with you. All right, so let's discover learn and play jazz piano. Let's discover learn and play Christmas time is here. As you all know, when we study a tune, we approach it

the same way every single time. And again, I know we study jazz here, but quite honestly, the genre makes no difference. If we were studying a rock tune, a pop tune, country, folk, R &B, whatever, right? We go about it the same way. Number one, just got done talking about this. We listen. We listen to various artists, vocalist, instrumentalist, pianist.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (23:57.933)
professional musicians, amateur musicians makes no difference. If I want to learn a tune and somebody's playing it, I want to check it out. Right? This is how I learn the melody. Number two, I always turn to and we always turn to here at Jazz Piano Skills, week one harmonic analysis. We look at the form of the piece, the chord changes. We do harmonic function analysis, look at the common harmonic movement within the

chord progression, we check out voicings, blocks, traditional shells, contemporary shells, two handed structures, pretty thorough. Week two, we always turn to melodic analysis that we're going to be doing here shortly today. Transcribe the melody, we'll look at the phrases, target notes, important notes within the phrases, and various treatments. And then finally, week three, which we will tackle next week, improvisation development.

chord scale relationships, arpeggio scale movement, tension, release, all that good stuff, rhythm, all that good stuff that makes improvisation exciting. So it's a pretty thorough process that we repeat over and over again. Listen, harmonic analysis, melodic analysis, improvisation development. So this month, we've already completed our harmonic analysis. It's time for our melodic analysis.

So the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we are going to listen to recordings of Christmas time is here. Number two, we are going to learn. are going to transcribe the melody. In other words, we're going to learn it by ear to the best of our ability, right? Number three, we will look at my suggested fingerings for playing Christmas time is here.

Number four, we will identify the melodic phrases found within the melody of Christmas time is here. We will also then look at the target notes within those phrases. Five, we will apply voicings, our voicings from last week, our block shapes, and then our traditional and contemporary shells. We will use those voicings to play the melody for Christmas time is here. And then finally, we will apply

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:22.241)
our melody, our voicings to three various treatments. as I mentioned earlier, you know, we typically do the traditional jazz styles of a ballad, a bossa, a swing, but we're dealing with a waltz today. Christmas time is here is in three, four time. So we will be doing different treatments, various three different jazz waltz treatments. So if you are a Jazz Piano Skills member, I want you

to hit the pause button and take just a few minutes to download and print your podcast packets. These are the illustrations, the lead sheets, and the play alongs. And again, your membership grants you access to these podcast packets, so be sure to utilize them. Okay? As I said earlier, to maximize your musical growth to get the most out of this podcast episode and to maximize your musical growth as you practice during the week.

You want to have this material sitting on your piano or on your music stand. Okay, so now that you have your podcast packets, I want you to grab your lead sheets. As always, we start with our lead sheets. You should have seven lead sheets in your packets. I want to just talk through them here quickly before we do a deep dive. So lead sheet one is what I call the fill in the blank lead sheet. I give you some melodic guide tones. This is going to be our template that we utilize.

to transcribe the melody. sheet number two is our melodic lead sheet. It's kind of the answer key to lead sheet number one, if you will. So we have a clean lead sheet with melodic, with lead sheet two. Lead sheet three, you can see I have my fingerings notated in lead sheet three. Lead sheet four is where we identify the melodic phrases found within the melody of Christmas time is here.

Lead sheet five, the target notes are illuminated in this lead sheet that we want to be aware of when we're learning and playing this melody. And then finally, lead sheet six and lead sheet seven. Lead sheet six, we take our left hand block voicings that we studied last week with our harmonic analysis and we place the melody of Christmas time is here on top of those voicings. And then lead sheet seven.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (28:50.825)
we do the same thing, but we use our left hand shell voicings, our traditional and contemporary shell voicings. And now we play the melody of Christmas time is here, supported by those voicings. So while we have, as always, right, we have a ton to get through today. So it's time for us to get busy. It's time for us to discover, learn and play. So grab lead sheet one, and let's take a look at how we are going to approach transcribing the melody of Christmas Time is Here.

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