Our Love Is Here to Stay, Harmonic Analysis

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:32.492)

Welcome to Jazz Piano Skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn, and play jazz piano. Well, I hope everyone had a wonderful week. I hope you enjoyed last week's special episode and my conversation with Bobbie Young and Mike Knapek from Monterey Jazz. It was a wonderful opportunity. Step away from our regular educational format for a week. Talk some jazz. Talk about the importance of live music and learn more about the upcoming Monterey Jazz Festival. But you know what? The vacation is over. It's time to get back to work. And today, we begin a brand new four-week Jazz Piano Skills study with one of the most beautiful and one of the most loved standards in the great American songbook.

I'm talking about George and Ira Gershwin's Our Love Is Here to Stay. And as always, we're going to spend the next four weeks exploring this tune from four very specific musical perspectives. Today we begin with harmony, next week melody, week three improvisation, and week four solo piano. Same process, same educational approach, same skills we've been developing month after month after month. The only thing changing is the tune. And that's important because we're not studying Our Love Is Here to Stay simply so that you can add another tune to your repertoire. Of course, I want you to be able to play the tune, learn the tune, I want you to enjoy the tune, but more importantly, we're going to use Our Love Is Here to Stay as another musical laboratory, another opportunity to develop the essential Jazz Piano Skills that allow you to eventually approach any tune.

And that means we begin exactly where we always begin. Before we worry about the melody, before we worry about improvisation, before we worry about creating a solo piano performance, we need to understand the musical landscape that everything else is going to live inside. We need to understand the harmony. So today we're going to roll up our sleeves.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:54.786)

Take a very close look at the harmonic structure of Our Love Is Here to Stay. Identify the relationships, recognize the patterns, simplify what may initially appear complicated, and once again discover that a new tune doesn't necessarily require new skills. And I have to tell you, I am extremely excited about our study this month because in addition to exploring Our Love Is Here to Stay, we're going to begin exploring a question together over the next four weeks that I believe is incredibly important. A question that sits underneath everything we do here at Jazz Piano Skills. And it's a surprisingly simple question. How do we actually learn jazz? We're going to have some fun with that one.

So we have a lot to discover, a lot to learn, and of course a lot to play. So let's get after it. Okay, so before we dive into Our Love Is Here to Stay, I want to begin a conversation with you. Actually, it's a conversation we're going to continue throughout the entire month. And it begins again with a very simple question. How do we actually learn jazz? Think about that. Not how do we learn a particular tune, not how do we learn a particular chord voicing, not how do we learn a particular lick. I'm asking something much bigger. How do we actually learn jazz? Now if you've spent any amount of time studying jazz, you've probably heard some advice like this.

Listen to the greats, study the greats. Sing their solos, transcribe their solos, play along with their recordings, analyze their phrases, transpose those phrases into different keys. Learn the language. And let me be perfectly clear. That's all great advice. You should listen to the greats. You should study them. You should sing phrases that you're attracted to that you hear them play. You should play along with the recordings.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:19.242)

You should investigate how great musicians phrase, how they articulate, how they use rhythm, how they create tension and release tension. How do they make music? Study their transcriptions. Absolutely. We have an extraordinary musical tradition sitting right there in front of us, waiting to be heard, studied, appreciated, and understood. But I want to ask you a question. And I want you to really think about it. Somewhere along the way, jazz education seems to have embraced an assumption. And the assumption goes something like this: the language of jazz exists out there. It's in the recordings, it's in the solos. It's in the phrases played by the great musicians who came before us.

And therefore, if we want to learn how to improvise, our job is primarily to go out there and get it. Find the language, transcribe the language, memorize the language, transpose the language, internalize the language, accumulate enough of it, and eventually we'll be able to speak jazz.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (06:48.96)

Is that really how this works? Again, I'm not questioning whether we should study the masters. We actually should. I'm questioning something much more fundamental. Is the musical language worth playing primarily something that exists outside of you, waiting to be put inside of you? Because if that's true, I have a question. Why does Oscar Peterson sound so different from Chick Corea? And why does Chick Corea sound so different from Keith Jarrett? Think about that. These are three extraordinary jazz pianists. They inherited the same jazz tradition. They had access to the same 12 notes. They have the same fundamental harmonic relationships, the same fundamental rhythmic possibilities.

They studied musicians who came before them, they listened, they learned, they absorbed, and yet you don't need thirty seconds to figure out who's playing. Oscar sounds like Oscar. Chick sounds like Chick. Keith sounds like Keith. Why? If the ultimate objective of learning jazz language is simply To acquire enough language from the musicians who came before us, shouldn't accomplished jazz musicians eventually begin sounding more alike? And yet the musicians we admire most often sound remarkably different. Now we're getting somewhere. Because perhaps the great musicians we study are not simply repositories of musical vocabulary. Places we go to collect phrases that we can eventually make our own.

Perhaps they're showing us something even more important. They're showing us what is possible. Oscar shows us what's possible. Chick shows us what's possible.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:06.85)

Keith shows us what's possible. Bill Evans shows us what's possible. Bud Powell shows us what's possible. Herbie Hancock shows us what's possible. And every one of them reminds us that the same musical materials can produce radically different musical results. Which means maybe the real question isn't simply what did they play? Maybe another question has to enter the conversation. What can I do with the musical materials they were using? That's that's a different educational question. Because now the objective isn't simply to acquire answers, it's to develop the ability to produce answers. That is a distinction we're going to spend some time exploring this month.

Because I believe there is an enormous difference between teaching a student what to play and teaching a student how music works. There's an enormous difference between giving a student musical vocabulary and developing the skills necessary for that student to create. Vocabulary. And there's an enormous difference between studying somebody else's creative decisions and developing the ability to make creative decisions of your own. And don't misunderstand me. We need both. Jazz has a tradition. We should know it. Jazz has a history. We should respect it. Jazz has great musicians. We should study them for the rest of our lives. But the purpose of jazz education cannot simply be to fill you with an ever growing collection of somebody else's musical ideas.

At some point, at some point, something has to begin coming out of you. And that is where education becomes very

Dr. Bob Lawrence (11:33.28)

Interesting. Because perhaps the responsibility of a great teacher isn't simply to ask, What does this student need me to put in? Perhaps the teacher also has to ask, What can I help this student pull out? Pull out of their ears, their understanding, their instincts, their rhythmic imagination, their musical curiosity, their creativity, their voice. And suddenly learning jazz becomes something much more exciting than collecting enough information to eventually sound authentic. It becomes a process of discovering what kind of musician you might become. Now, we're not going to solve all of this today. In fact, I'm deliberately going to leave several questions sitting right there on the table.

Because we're going to continue this conversation next week and the week after that and the week after that. But for today, I want you to carry one question with you as we begin our study of Our Love Is Here to Stay. When you sit down at the piano to study music, are you simply asking, What am I supposed to put in? Or are you also creating opportunities to discover what I can pull out? Because ultimately, Oscar Peterson already sounded like Oscar Peterson. And Chick Corea already sounded like Chick Corea. And Keith Jarrett already sounded like Keith Jarrett. Jazz education doesn't need another one of them. It needs you. And our responsibility as educators is to help you develop enough musical understanding, enough physical command, enough creative freedom to discover what that sounds like.

Now, that's something worth thinking about. All right, so before we go any further, let's take a moment to review the seven musical facts that serve as the foundation for every Jazz Piano Skills lesson. And remember, these facts do not change from week to week. The tunes change, the lessons change, the musical applications change, but these seven musical facts

Dr. Bob Lawrence (14:00.972)

remain constant because they describe the fundamental relationships found within everything we hear, everything we study, everything we play. So here we go. Fact number one, music is the production of sound and silence, sound of course being major, dominant, minor, half-diminisheded, and diminished our primary sounds. Fact number two, sound is produced harmonically and melodically. Fact number three, harmonic sound equals Chords or what we often refer to as voicings. Fact number four, melodic sound equals arpeggios and scales. Fact number five, harmony and melody have motion. Harmony has circle motion, diatonic motion, and chromatic motion. Melody has ascending and descending motion.

Fact number six, movement is decorated with tension or what we call chromaticism. And finally, fact number seven: rhythm gives everything life. Rhythm is what makes facts one through six interesting. Now, because today we're beginning our study of Our Love Is Here to Stay with a harmonic analysis. I want to draw your attention specifically to fact number three. Fact three tells us that harmonic sound. equals chords or voicings. Pretty straightforward. And when most musicians think about learning harmony of a tune, that's typically where they begin. What's the first chord? What's the second chord? The third chord? The fourth chord? And before long we have a lead sheet sitting in front of us with 32 measures filled with chord symbols.

Chord symbols that we're trying desperately to memorize. That's not really harmonic analysis. That's chord identification. And there's a big difference because fact five tells us something incredibly important about those chords. Harmony has motion. The chords aren't simply sitting there, one after another, waiting for us to memorize them. They're going somewhere. They're moving. They're relating to one another. And that motion can be circle motion, diatonic motion, chromatic motion.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (16:28.652)

So instead of only seeking to discover what chord is this, harmonic analysis teaches us to ask: where is this chord going? How does this chord function within the progression? How is it getting there? Now, when we ask those questions, we're beginning to understand music. And I want you to think about how different that is from staring at 32 measures of chord symbols and thinking, Good grief. I've got to memorize all of this? No, you don't. At least that's not where we begin. We begin by looking for relationships. Because the moment we begin seeing harmony as relationships in motion, instead of a collection of isolated chord symbols, something remarkable begins to happen.

The tune starts getting smaller, conceptually smaller, physically smaller. And remember, that's exactly what we want, because music has to become simple conceptually, if we have any hope of developing it physically. Or as we've been saying, simplify it conceptually, develop it physically, express it musically. And this precisely why we review these seven musical facts every single week. I'm not trying to give you seven more things to memorize. I'm giving you a conceptual framework, a way of organizing musical information so that when you encounter a new tune, you don't have to start over. Think about that. We're beginning a brand new tune today. Our Love Is Here to Stay.

New title, new melody, new harmonic progression. But do we need a new set of musical facts to understand it? Nope. Do we need an entirely new approach to analyze it? Nope. We're going to use the same fundamental musical relationships we've been studying month after month after month. Sound and silence, harmony and melody, chords and voicings, arpeggios and scales, motion, tension, rhythm, seven musical facts. That's music.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (18:55.5)

And today, Our Love Is Here to Stay, is going to give us another wonderful opportunity to take those facts, apply them to a completely different musical environment, and once again discover that the tune may change, but the skills remain. And that is how we begin making music understandable. All right, before we move on today, I thought it would be nice to spend just a Couple of minutes learning a little bit about the tune that we're going to be studying throughout the month, Our Love Is Here to Stay, because this tune has rather a remarkable history. Our Love Is Here to Stay was written, of course, by George and Ira Gershwin for the 1938 motion picture, The Goldwyn Follies.

And historically, this song holds a very special place in the Gershwin. catalog because it was the last song that George and Ira Gershwin wrote together. George died unexpectedly on July 11th, 1937, following surgery for a previously undiagnosed brain tumor. And get this: he was only thirty-eight years old. And following George's death, Ira returned to the unfinished work for the Goldwyn Follies and completed the score with composer Vernon Duke. Ira also wrote the verse lyric to Love Is Here to Stay after George passed away. And knowing that, right, knowing that Ira wrote the verse after George passed away, it's difficult not to hear Some sentiment in that song, perhaps a little differently than we are used to thinking about it.

A song about things changing, things disappearing, but love remaining. Now, we don't need to impose a meaning here on Ira's words that he didn't give us, but knowing the circumstances surrounding the completion of the song certainly adds rather a poignant dimension to it.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:17.708)

And here's something else that's interesting. Although the tune was written for the Goldwyn Follies, it would eventually become associated with another famous Hollywood film in 1951, An American in Paris, starring Gene Kelly. Now, that brought Gershwin's music to an entirely new generation. And the film incorporated numerous Gershwin songs, including Love is here to stay. And it went on to win six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Not bad. Not bad for a tune written more than a decade earlier. And of course, there's the title itself. You see, it's listed as Love Is Here to Stay. And you'll also frequently hear musicians refer to it as Our Love Is Here to Stay.

In fact The official Gershwin catalog lists the composition as Love Is Here to Stay. While Our Love Is Here to Stay has become firmly embedded in the way many musicians, especially jazz musicians, and recordings identify the tune. And here at Jazz Piano Skills, I'll be calling it Our Love Is Here to Stay. But regardless of which title you prefer, what we have is an absolutely beautiful Gershwin composition, one that has endured for nearly 90 years, and one that gives us a wonderful musical landscape for developing our Jazz Piano Skills throughout the month. And I think there's something rather appropriate about that. A song whose title tells us that Love Is Here to Stay has itself managed to stay.

It's amazing. Generation after generation after generation. continues to hear the tune, sing it, interpret it, and fortunately for us, play it. And this month, it's our turn. Alright, before we go any further, I want to take just a moment to welcome all of you who may be listening to Jazz Piano Skills for the very first time. Welcome. I'm glad you're here and I want to personally thank you for spending some time with me today.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (23:41.608)

If you're new to Jazz Piano Skills, I think you'll discover rather quickly that what we do here is a little different. Jazz Piano Skills is not simply a podcast. It's a complete jazz piano learning platform designed to help you develop the musical understanding and physical skills necessary to become the musician that you want to become. And if you're enjoying today's episode, I certainly invite you to visit jazzpianoskills.com and of course become a member. As a Jazz Piano Skills member, you'll have access to the complete version of every weekly podcast episode, including the second half of today's episode, where I'll head to the piano and work through our complete harmonic analysis of Our Love Is Here to Stay.

You'll also have access to the podcast packets that accompany our weekly lessons, our illustrations, the lead sheets to play-alongs. Plus, you'll have access to the complete online library of interactive jazz panel courses, our weekly Jazz Piano Skills Masterclass, Lisa's Listening List, and our Jazz Piano Skills online community forums. And of course, direct access to me whenever you have questions or need a little help along the way. All of these perks, all of these benefits are important because learning how to play jazz piano can certainly feel overwhelming, especially when you're trying to figure it out. What to study, when to study it, how to practice it, and what should come next.

That's precisely why Jazz Piano Skills exists: to give you a logical, organized, and sequential approach to developing your Jazz Piano Skills. So if you've been searching for more than Content from a content creator. If you're looking for an educational approach that makes jazz piano a little less mysterious, a little less fragmented, and a whole lot more understandable, I invite you to join us. Visit jazzpianoskills.com, become a member, and let's continue this journey together. I'd love to have you. And again, if you're joining us for the very first time today, welcome to Jazz Piano Skills. I'm glad you're here.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (25:59.734)

All right, on to the question of the week. And this week's question comes from a listener who wishes to remain anonymous, which is perfectly fine. And the question is this Dr. Bob, when I'm learning a new tune, what should I learn first? That's it. That's the question. I love it. Simple, straight to the point, and profound. Great question. And I think most jazz musicians, especially jazz pianists, would would probably answer that question, start with the chords. And I agree, but I want to add one very important word to that answer. Don't don't simply learn the chords, learn the harmony. Now some of you might be thinking, well, wait a minute. Aren't the chords the harmony?

Well, yes, but there's an important distinction that I want you to understand. Learning the chords can mean looking at a lead sheet and memorizing F major 7, G minor 7, C7, so on. In other words, learning a sequence of chord symbols. But learning the harmony means understanding the relationships. Between those chords. Where are they going? How are they moving? what harmonic patterns are being used? Right? what relationships have I seen before? And perhaps most importantly, what relationships am I going to see again? That's a very different way of learning a tune. And you know what? this precisely why we begin every new tune here at Jazz Piano Skills with a harmonic analysis.

Before we study the melody, before we begin looking at improvisation, before we begin looking at solo piano approaches, we always first want to understand the harmonic landscape. Because once we understand the landscape, everything else we're going to do begins to make much more sense. Now, there's another reason I believe harmony should come first.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (28:24.108)

And it's one that I think gets overlooked when you're learning a new tune. You're actually learning two things. You're learning the tune, of course, but you're also learning music. And those are not necessarily the same thing. If I simply memorize the chord progression to Our Love Is Here to Stay, I've learned how to play the chord progression to Our Love Is Here to Stay. Great. But if I learn to recognize the harmonic relationships inside Our Love Is Here to Stay, then I've developed musical understanding that I can take with me to the next tune. And the next tune. And the next tune. That's the difference between memorizing a tune and developing a skill.

One gives you something you can play today, the other gives you something you can use. for the rest of your musical life. And ideally, we're doing both. We're learning Our Love Is Here to Stay while simultaneously developing the skills that allow us to understand all the things you are, autumn leaves, Satin Doll, or whatever tune happens to be sitting in front of us next. That's why I frequently refer to the tune as our musical laboratory, because the tune gives us the musical environment in which To develop skills. And the skills are the real objective. So when you're learning a new tune, what should you learn first? Learn the harmony. Not simply what the chords are, but how the chords work.

Learn the relationships, learn function, learn motion. Because when you do, you're no longer simply memorizing 32 measures of information. You're learning how to understand music. And once again, there it is. The tune changes, but the skills remain. All right. Time to take a look at our educational agenda. And as always, our agenda is very specific. Today we are going to take the harmony of Gershwin's Our Love Is Here to Stay.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (30:50.058)

And organize it in a way that allows us to see it, hear it, think it, and ultimately play it. And we're going to do that by working through the same five areas of study that we use for every harmonic analysis. So here's our game plan for today. Number one, we're going to identify the standard key and the form of Our Love Is Here to Stay. What's the standard key? How many measures are we dealing with? How is the tune structurally organized? Because before we begin pulling the harmony apart, we need to understand the musical framework that contains it. Number two, we're going to identify the unique chord changes. And this one of my favorite things to do whenever whenever we begin studying a new tune.

We're going to take what appears to be an entire lead sheet filled with chord symbols and ask a very simple question: how many chords are we actually dealing with? Not how many chord symbols appear throughout the entire tune, how many unique chord changes do we actually need to know? Because frequently what what appears to be a tremendous amount of harmonic information begins to get much smaller once we remove all of the repetition. And remember, that's exactly what we're trying to do. Simplify it conceptually so that we have a chance to develop it physically. Okay, number three. We're going to study the harmonic function of those chord changes. And this where we're going to work on a skill that I want you developing every time you look at harmony.

When you see the changes, I want you to be able to think function. When you see function, I want you to be able to think changes. In other words, if you see G minor 7 going to C7 going to F major 7, I don't want my brain processing three isolated chord symbols. I want my brain recognizing, hey, two, five, one. And likewise, when I see two, five, one, I want my musical mind capable of immediately translating that function into actual chord changes in whatever key I happen to be playing. So again, see changes, think function, See function, think changes. That's a huge skill. Because now we're no longer simply memorizing harm the

Dr. Bob Lawrence (33:15.778)

The harmony of Our Love Is Here to Stay. We're we're actually developing the ability to think harmonically. Okay, number four, we're going to identify the common harmonic motion found throughout the tune. Our two, five, ones, our one, four, seven, three, six, and so on. Any other familiar harmonic movement that appears in the progression, we are going to discover it. And this where. This where 32 measures of harmony begins getting really small. Instead of seeing chord after chord after chord after chord, we begin seeing familiar harmonic movements, musical relationships that we've studied before, musical relationships that we've played before, and musical relationships that we're going to encounter again and again and again.

All right, and then finally, number five. We're going to take all that harmonic understanding and put it where it ultimately has to go into our hands. We're going to play the harmony using our various voicing approaches. We'll work with our traditional block voicings and inversions, traditional shells, contemporary shells, and two-handed structures. Notice the sequence. We don't begin with the voicings, we begin with understanding. Standard key and form, unique. Chord changes, harmonic function, common harmonic motion, and then voicings. Why do I use this sequence? Because we first want to simplify the music conceptually and then and then develop it physically.

That's education. I'm not simply showing you some cool voicings to play over Our Love Is Here to Stay. We're developing a process that you can use when studying any tune. And that is the objective. So by the time we're finished today, I want you to know the standard key and form of Our Love Is Here to Stay. I want you to know exactly how many unique chord changes you're dealing with. I want you to be able to move mentally between changes and function, function and changes. And I want you to recognize the common harmonic motion within the tune. And finally, I want you to begin physically expressing all of that harmonic understanding through our various voicing approaches.

Five objectives.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (35:39.774)

One very organized process and a process that does not change simply because the tune changes. That's a pretty thorough educational agenda. Okay, before we head to the piano, let's take just a minute to talk about today's podcast packets. As always, as a Jazz Piano Skills member, you have access to this educational material, so take advantage of it. You're going to want these illustrations, these lead sheets, these play-alongs sitting beside you as you work through the lesson. Okay? I say this every week because it's important. Don't simply listen to today's lesson. Use the materials, print them out, write on them, make notes, circle things, highlight the harmonic relationships we're discussing, and most importantly, take them with you to the piano and use them.

When you practice. The podcast packets, they're designed to help you move from simply hearing me talk about a musical concept to actually seeing it and understanding it and physically developing it at the piano. Also, and this a big awesome, while you're at Jazz Piano Skills, downloading your podcast packets, don't forget to stop by the online community forums. And check out Lisa's Listening List. Lisa does a fantastic job each week of putting together recordings related to the tune we're studying so you can hear how different artists approach Our Love Is Here to Stay. And listening is not just an important part of the educational process, it's critical.

Study the music, practice the music, but make sure you also listen to the music. So Grab your podcast packets, illustrations, the lead sheets, and play-alongs, check out Lisa's Listening List, and you'll have everything you need to get the most out of today's lesson. But before we head to the piano, if you're not yet a Jazz Piano Skills member, I want to again thank you for joining me today. I hope you've enjoyed our time together. And more importantly, I hope something we've discussed today has helped make jazz piano and

Dr. Bob Lawrence (38:04.652)

music a little more understandable. From this point forward, we're going to move into the members only portion of today's episode where we're going to sit down at the piano and open up our packets and begin working through the harmonic analysis of Our Love Is Here to Stay. So if you'd like to continue with us, I invite you to visit jazzpianoskills.com, become a member, grab your podcast packets and join me at the piano. I'd love to have you. But regardless of whether you become a member or not, I want you to know that I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to listen today. There are a lot of places I know you could spend your time. And the fact that you chose to spend some time here with me means a great deal.

So thank you. Keep listening, keep studying, keep practicing, and most importantly, continue to discover, learn, and play jazz piano.