Misty, Harmonic Analysis

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:33.026)
Welcome to Jazz Piano Skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn, and play jazz piano. Well, here we are again, the start of a new month. And as all of you regular jazz piano skills listeners know, the start of a new month means we begin studying a new tune. A new tune, but guess what? The same, thorough,

Organized structured logical what I like to call skill centric approach to studying and learning a tune is What we're gonna do We do it every month you know it's so important to be what I call skill centric because That's exactly what tunes expect us to be it doesn't take long right when trying to learn a new tune or any tune

to the importance of having a command of skills. We find out really quick. Tunes have a funny way of doing that. They illuminate our weaknesses very quickly. Once we realize the importance of having a physical command of essential jazz piano skills, we quickly want to know what are those essential skills that are holding us back? What are they and how do I begin to practice them?

right? Well, to help us catalog essential jazz panel skills, we organized them into four pillars, right? One, harmony, two, melody, three, improvisation, four, rhythm. Harmony, right, it's our ability to play the sounds of music using various voicing approaches, blocks, shells, two-handed structures, which we're going to look at all those today, and our ability to recognize and understand harmonic

motion function. And we're gonna look at that as well. Melody, which we'll dive into next week, is our ability to hear, determine, and properly articulate melodic lines and phrases, which of course requires mature technique, which of course requires good fingerings. And we'll look at all that next week. Improvisation, our ability to correctly determine chord scale relationships so that we can play the sounds of music

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:58.713)
using the correct arpeggios and scales with ascending and descending motion and we'll dive in all that in a couple weeks. And finally rhythm, our ability to play authentic jazz rhythms, which of course is dependent upon our command of the most important skill of all, time. Wow, makes no difference what tune you study, right? Makes no difference what tune you want to play if you're incapable.

of executing the essential jazz piano skills that I just mentioned with proficiency. You don't have to worry about playing tunes. You know why? Because you can't. It's just that simple. That's why at Jazz Piano Skills we use tunes to help illuminate these essential skills, especially what I call the grunt work skills needed to play jazz piano. And then we attack those skills.

We start with a new tune every month in order to gain a new perspective on those essential jazz panel skills. Different tune, same skills, new perspective. A new perspective of our harmonic skills, a new perspective of our melodic skills, and a new perspective of our improvisation skills. You know, these three distinct

musical camps allow us to conceptually organize and methodically practice essential jazz piano skills. But that's the key. How do we practice these essential jazz skills? Very important question. And as you know, especially if you have been listening to jazz piano skills for some time, you know that everything we do in music must begin with the right mindset.

it is our conceptual understanding that drives our physical development and ultimately will determine how we approach our instrument and the music we play. The wrong mindset, the wrong conceptual understanding are hurdles that we will never be able to jump. So it's critically important that we get this right and this is precisely why I stress

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:24.856)
over and over again that we must see, we must understand the essential jazz skills in relationship to... yes, I hear you all saying it... the seven facts of music. Very good, I'm super proud of you. So what are the seven facts? Number one, music is the production of sound and silence. Number two, sound, major, dominant, minor, half, diminished, and diminished, is produced harmonically and melodically.

shapes. The harmonic shapes are chords, voicings. Four, the melodic shapes are arpeggios and scales, melodies. Five, when playing these shapes, scales and arpeggio shapes, we are moving in one of two directions always. We're up or going up or down. And number six, we love to decorate or camouflage scales and arpeggios with tension or notes that are outside the key or chromaticism. All right. And finally, number seven, make

facts one through six interesting, we add rhythm. Right? So everything we do, everything we do in music should be approached from the mindset of the seven facts of music should be framed by these seven facts. I have stressed, I think, in just about every episode since the beginning of the year, that if you're an unable

you're unable to see the essential jazz piano skills framed by the seven facts of music, then there is a very, very high probability that you're like the hamster in that will, you you're running in place. A lot of activity, but not going anywhere. You will have a skewed perspective, right? Bottom line is you're not going to be accomplishing anything or what you think you're accomplishing.

So here at Jazz Piano Skills, we prevent all of that from happening. We take an essential skill and we examine it harmonically and melodically. We use it to develop our improvisation and rhythm. We see it and practice it governed by the seven facts of music. And in doing so, we avoid falling into the trap of running in place, of being one dimensional with our understanding and application of any musical skill.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:50.431)
Now, with all that being said, we continue our study of harmony, melody, improvisation, and rhythm using another classic jazz standard. This is going to be a great month. As always, we begin with a harmonic analysis. So today you are going to discover the most recognized and requested standard of all time. One of my favorites, of course, and I'm talking about

timeless standard MISTY. Number two, we're going to learn the form, chord changes, and harmonic function for MISTY. And three, we're going to play MISTY using my suggested voicings, right? The blocks, shells, the two-handed structures. Plus, we'll look at the common harmonic progressions for ear training development, right? 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, you're going to find this Jazz Piano Skills podcast lesson, Exploring Misty, to be very beneficial. But before we dig in, before we get started, I want to, as I always do, welcome all of you first time listeners to Jazz Piano Skills. If you're new to the podcast, you're new to Jazz Piano Skills, welcome. I want to invite you to become a member. Right? Your membership

Number one, your membership helps keep Jazz Panel Skills 100 % ad free, which has been my goal from the very beginning. I want all education, no ads. And plus, your membership comes with a lot of perks. And let me just go through them real quick. Number one, you'll have access to premium podcast content, which basically means you get to listen to the entire podcast episode. The first half of every episode,

episode is free for everyone to enjoy. deal with the question of the week, we look at the educational agenda, lay out the lesson rationale. The second half of every podcast for members, members only, we deal with the lesson content, demonstrations, and of course, weekly assignments. Number two, along with premium podcast content, you have access to the podcast packets, the weekly packets that

Dr. Bob Lawrence (10:14.534)
I designed and developed for every podcast episode. These are the illustrations, the lead sheets, the play alongs or the backing tracks. These materials help you get the most out of every podcast episode, maximize your musical benefit. And of course, they're tremendous to have on the, on your piano or your instrument, your music stand when practicing. So you have access to all the podcast packets past, current and future. You also have access as a member.

to all of the courses that are online. These are comprehensive, sound based, self paced and sequential courses. I also host a masterclass live masterclass every every week on Thursday evenings that you have a reserved seat in as a member. And it's Thursday evenings at eight. And I know this is not the greatest time for everyone around the around the globe. But but the masterclasses are recorded and you can watch

and re-watch the video of the class as often and when convenient, as often as you wish and whenever convenient. So keep that in mind. You also, as a Jazz Piano Skills member, have access to the online Private Jazz Piano Community, which is a community that hosts episode-specific forums as well as general jazz forums. It's a great place to mingle.

meet some new folks, provide some member feedback and assistance, and also get some member feedback and assistance as well. And finally, as a Jazz Panel Skills member, you have unlimited educational support, private, personal, and professional support whenever you need it. So, you know, all of these perks, all of these amazing privileges are waiting to help you discover, learn, and play at Jazz Panel. So check it all out. And of course, become a member to begin enjoying

the entire podcast episode and all of the podcast content and benefits that come along with your membership. Of course, if you get to the website and you're poking around and you have some questions, need some help by all means. Do not hesitate to reach out to me. Happy to answer all of your questions and help you in any way that I can. I also want to take a few minutes to plug my YouTube channel. And if you're not aware of this, please take some time to

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:35.614)
visit YouTube and go to the Jazz Panel Skills channel. I'm producing educational content videos daily that I think you'll find to be beneficial for your jazz growth. I currently have several playlists out there that are changing. I'm tweaking things as I go here as I'm getting used to YouTube. I have the daily challenges, one-minute lessons, jazz talks, of course our standard study of the month.

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help us all discover, learn, and play jazz piano or whatever instrument that you are studying. Okay, so on to the question of the week. And this week's question comes from Mike Krauss. Mike Krauss living in Dresden, Germany. And Mike writes, I am struggling with my attempt to play stride piano. Well, we all are. So

So, okay. So let me back up. I am struggling with my attempt to play stride piano. To be honest, I am not really sure about the best way to practice this style of playing. I currently take a tune and try to play through it with a stride left hand, but without fail, I am unable to maintain the stride beyond a couple of measures. It's frustrating on many levels, but my number one frustration is that my stride never gets better.

regardless of how much time I put in practicing the style. Can you point me in the right direction as to how best to practice stride so that I actually have positive results and can successfully play a song using this approach? Wow. Great question. And Mike, I'm not kidding. Everyone struggles with stride piano, right? So join the club, right? You're not alone. And you know why we struggle with stride piano?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (14:58.695)
I'll tell you, it's hard. It's very hard. Plain and simple. It is a very difficult style of piano playing. And it's very tough to gain a command of stride. And it takes, as you know, a lot of practice to begin seeing and hearing and capable of applying your results. The gains, unfortunately, they come slowly, but

Let me give you some quick pointers as to how best, at least I believe, best way to approach practicing this skill. To begin, start practicing stride piano by not playing stride.

I know that sounds confusing, but let me say that again. The best way to begin practicing stride piano is to not practice stride. No, right? It sounds crazy, but let me explain. I think it's very important to realize that the goal of stride piano, really the goal of stride piano is to make time audibly obvious. It's to make time audibly obvious.

In other words, when playing stride, are intentionally playing all four beats of each measure in our left hand. I like to describe it as boom, chuck, boom, chuck, one, two, three, four, right? Boom, chuck, boom, chuck. I know this is a simplification of stride piano, but not really. You know, to begin gaining the command of stride, it is best to approach it from this simplistic perspective.

chuck, boom, chuck, boom being the root of the chord and chuck being the chord itself. So all four beats are sounded in the left hand. Now with this understanding, would recommend practicing stride by eliminating the boom and playing only the chuck. Eliminate the boom, just play the chuck. Remember the chuck, it's the chords, right? So play the chuck, play the chords,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (17:15.503)
on all four beats. So instead of stride piano, you're playing what I call strum piano. Right? So both the stride piano and strum piano make audible all four beats of the measure. Now, when making all four beats of the measure audible, you better have really, really

Really solid.

solid time is the key to playing stride piano. So if your time mic is vulnerable, then it will absolutely be exposed when trying to play stride or strum piano for that matter. So again, I guess what I'm trying to say is that the key to playing stride piano is time. It's not the boom chuck boom chuck motion that we all focus on when trying to learn how to play stride, right? So

So again, don't be quickly led astray by the characteristic boom chuck boom chuck style of stride and ignore the real challenge to play in stride, right? The real challenge that needs your undivided attention and that challenge, that essential skill is time.

Okay, so to test and develop your time in preparation for stride, I'm going to say that again, to test and develop your time in preparation for stride, begin practicing strum piano, literally strum piano, play the chords of the song you are wanting to play that you're hoping to play in stride style, play those chords in your left hand strumming them like a guitarist would do.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (19:09.873)
like guitarist Freddie Green of the Count Pacey Orchestra. He did it his entire career. Seriously, check him out and you'll immediately know what I am thinking about when I use the expression strum piano. since we're about to begin a three-week study of MISTY, let me demonstrate strum piano for you. Check this out.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (19:57.417)
Yeah, see now, you see what I mean by strum? It's strum piano is just strumming those chords like a guitarist would on the guitar, right? Now, you can see the test is time. I have to be able to strum those chords in time, making all four beats of the measure audible while I'm playing the melody on top of those strumming chords.

right? This is the core essence of stride piano. Now, once you have strum piano going for you, once you feel comfortable with strum piano, you can turn it into stride piano by adding in some of those booms to go along with the chucks, right? So check this out.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:11.782)
Right. so Mike, I must say, even with all this being said, right, strum piano, then turn it into stride piano using a, you know, whatever tune you're working on. You know what? I must say, I would even step back further and begin practicing my strum piano and my stride piano without any song, without any tune in mind at all. Instead, I would practice these iconic piano

styles stride and strum using a simple progression.

wonder what progression that might be. If only there were a progression that is found in practically every song ever composed, especially in the Great American Songbook. If I could use that progression to develop my strum and stride piano playing, man, a progression that I would need to know in all 12 keys.

A progression that my ears should be able to recognize when hearing it. A progression that entire books have been written about. I wonder what progression would that be? I don't know. Maybe a progression like the two, five, one progression. That'd be a good one, right? So Mike, this is exactly where I would begin practicing my strum and stride piano. Take a two, five, one progression and begin strumming it. For example.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (22:51.878)
just like that. I would strum two five one in time. I would record myself to see how stable my time is. Am I rushing? Am I dragging? Am I keeping it consistent? Right? So start with two five one and practice that strumming two five one in all 12 keys. Then guess what? You get you're comfortable with the strumming. Then turn that two five one strumming into Stride Pianos. Check this out.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (23:35.718)
right? So I would not worry about playing tunes. I think I would just focus, Mike, on playing 251 progressions, starting with strum piano, and then experimenting with stride piano. So I hope this helps. It's a great question, Mike. And again,

Stride piano is not easy, so be patient. And I hope my answer gives you some ideas. I hope it gives you some clear direction to begin developing your stride piano skills. And remember, the gateway to great stride piano is learning how to play great strum piano first. You know, I will be devoting some podcast episodes to stride piano later this year, so stay tuned. All right. So let's discover, learn, play jazz piano. Let's discover, learn, and play.

Misty. All right, as always, you know, when we begin looking at a new tune, when we want to study a new song, make it part of our repertoire, we should have an approach to do that. Right? And we should have an approach that we can replicate. We can do over and over and over again when we tackle any new song. And that's what we do every month here at Jazz Piano Skills. We apply the same approach. Right? And as I say,

all the time. It makes no difference, right? Whether it's a jazz tune, rock tune, pop, country, folk, R &B, makes no difference. We should go about it in the same way every time. And we do. And the approach that I use, number one, always listen. I want to devour as much music as possible, listening to as many artists as possible, and listening to artists from all genres, if possible, playing the tune that I am

I'm about to learn, right? So I'll check out vocalist, instrumentalist, and of course pianist. After I've done my share of listening, I'll turn my attention to harmonic analysis, which we're going to do today. We'll look at the form of the tune, the changes, the function of the chord changes, common harmonic movement within the tune, and the various voicings, right? The blocks, the two-handed, the traditional shells, the contemporary shells, and the two-handed structures.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:04.229)
And then after harmonic analysis, I like to dive into the melodic aspect of the song. I'll transcribe the melody. I never ever learn a melody from a lead sheet. I learn it by ear. Because ultimately we want to play these melodies. We want to sing these melodies through our instrument. And transcribing or learning the melody by ear allows us to do that. And when I say transcribe, I'm not saying you necessarily have to write it down.

I rarely write a melody down. I poke it out. would strongly suggest poke it out instead of write it down. But if you're testing your skills, then have some kind of notation some way, and we'll talk about this here shortly, some way that you notate the melody so you can check your work. So I'll transcribe the melody. I like to look at the phrases, the various treatments of the tune. And Misty, home at home.

cow, there are a gazillion different ways to treat misty. So, and then after I've done my harmonic and melodic analysis, I turn my attention to improvisation. I'll study the chord scale relationships of the tune. I'll practice arpeggio and scale movement through the tune. I'll experiment with half-step approachments or tension, chromaticism, and we'll do all of that in week three with our improvisation development. So, but today it's all about

Today it's all about harmony, right? It's our harmonic analysis, which will have us listening and determining form, checking out the chord changes, harmonic function, and of course voicings. And like I said, next week we'll do melodic analysis and in two weeks improvisation. So the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we're going to listen to some definitive recordings of Misty. And when I say definitive, what I'm referring to are

the recordings that kind of define the tune itself are associated with the tune. Like last week we did, I mean last month we did Georgia on My Mind. I think every time you mention Georgia on My Mind to somebody who comes to mind, Ray Charles, right? So that's what I mean. Definitive recordings are typically recordings that when somebody hears a tune, they think of some specific artist.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (28:24.964)
Number two, we will discuss the form of MISTY. Number three, we will discover, learn, and play the chord changes for MISTY, the standard changes. Number four, we will discover, learn, and play the harmonic function of MISTY. Number five, we will discover, learn, and play my suggested voicings. Three types, block voicings, left-hand shell voicings, which traditional and contemporary shells, and then the two-handed structures. So,

got a lot to get done. If you are a Jazz Panel Skills member, I want you to take a few minutes right now. As I always say, hit the pause button and take the time to download and print your podcast packets. Again, the illustrations, the lead sheets, the play alongs. Your membership grants you access to this material. And I want to make sure they're in your hands when listening to the podcast so that you get the most out of it. And of course, I want you to be using them when practicing

throughout the week as well. Okay. So now that you have your podcast packets, I want you to first grab your lead sheets. We'll talk about the illustrations and the backing tracks toward the end of the podcast. But for right now, grab your lead sheets and you should have eight lead sheets. And I'm just going to talk you through them real quickly right now. And then we'll do our

breakdown of each one, an analysis of each one here shortly. So lead sheet one maps out the form, diagrams the form of MISTY. Lead sheet two identifies all the unique chord changes found in MISTY. Lead sheet three gives us just a classic clean lead sheet of the chord changes for MISTY. While lead sheet four complements it, however, it's the harmonic function lead sheet of MISTY.

Lead Sheet 5, I outline the common progressions that we'll use for ear training purposes. And then Lead Sheets 6, 7, and 8 all deal with the voicings. Lead Sheet 6 lays out the block voicings. Lead Sheet 7 focuses on the traditional and contemporary shells. And then Lead Sheet 8 has the two-handed voicings mapped out for you. So this is a great packet. We're going to go through it with a fine-tooth comb.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (30:50.172)
And then we'll turn our attention at the end, like I said, to the illustrations and the backing tracks. Now, at this time in the past, as I have mentioned in previous podcast episodes that in the past, I would always take a definitive recording and play it in the podcast. But this year, I've decided to place all the listening into the community, the Jazz Panel Skills Community Forums.

And again, there are a couple of reasons for this. One, I want to be able to suggest more than one tune to check out. Number two, I want to preserve as much time as possible for the educational content of the podcast. So I want you to head on over to the community and spend some time listening to recordings. Lisa is my director of listening recommendations. Lisa does an awesome job.

phenomenal job of finding some amazing renditions of the tunes that we are studying. So go and check it out in the forums. You will be glad that you took the time to do that. Okay. All right. So once you have listened to some of the recordings, grab your lead sheets, grab lead sheet one, and let's take a look at the form of Misty. It's classic, right? It's standard. I love it. So here we go.

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