Sunny, Solo Piano

SUNNY — SOLO PIANO DEVELOPMENT
Jazz Piano Skills | Dr. Bob Lawrence | Editorial Transcript


WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
[00:32.482] Welcome to Jazz Piano Skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn, and play jazz piano. Well, here we are, the final week of our October exploration of Bobby Hebb's wonderful jazz standard, pop standard, wonderful tune, Sunny. Over the past three weeks, We have examined the harmonic foundation of Sunny. We've explored its melodic characteristics. We've developed improvisational ideas using a remarkably small amount of musical material. And today, we're going to bring it all together. We're turning our attention to solo piano development. Now, I want you to know something right from the very beginning. Today's lesson is not about how many chords you know. It's not about how many voicings you've mastered or how many impressive musical tricks you can squeeze into a performance. Today, we're going to explore something much more important. How to make beautiful musical decisions using the skills you already possess. And we're going to do it with one piano, one wonderful tune, and one of the most fundamental approaches. To solo piano playing. Now, before we get started, a quick reminder about how the weekly Jazz Piano Skills Podcast works. The first half of every episode is free for everyone. This is where I introduce our topic, explore important musical ideas, answer our question of the week, and lay the groundwork for our piano lesson. The second half of every episode is Our members-only piano lesson. That's where we move to the keyboard and put those ideas into practice with musical explanations and demonstrations. So whether you're joining us for the first half or staying around for the complete lesson, I'm delighted that you are here. Get comfy, grab your favorite beverage if you can, settle in. We have a terrific, a terrific jazz piano skills lesson ahead of us. So let's get started.


DISCOVER • LEARN • PLAY
[02:55.382] Okay, so in today's lesson, we're going to discover that solo piano playing is not something reserved for advanced pianists. In fact, we're going to discover that a beautiful, complete solo piano performance is possible with a single-note melody, simple harmonic support, and thoughtful musical decisions. We're also going to discover that the seven stages of solo piano development that I typically discuss are not simply a progression toward greater complexity. Each stage is a legitimate approach to solo piano playing, and each stage can grow musically as our skills develop. We're going to learn how to approach Bobby Hebb's Sunny using stage one of our solo piano development process. harmony and melody played rubato. And then we're going to learn how the musical skills we develop in other stages can become creative options within stage one and how decisions about voicings, harmonization, keyboard register, and musical space influence the character and beauty of our performance. And finally, we're going to play Sunny as a complete Solo piano performance. We'll begin with the essentials, single-note melody supported by harmony, and then explore how carefully selected musical skills can enrich our performance without changing our fundamental stage one approach. Most importantly, we're we're going to practice making musical decisions based on what the music needs rather than rather than how many skills we can demonstrate. Because remember the Quantity of skills available does not determine the quality of the musical decisions made. So it makes no difference where you are in your jazz journey today, whether you're a beginner, an intermediate player, advanced player, or even if you're a seasoned professional. You're gonna find today's jazz piano skills lesson using Bobby Hebb's Sunny to develop our solo piano skills to be incredibly beneficial. All right.


WHEN IS SOLO PIANO SOLO PIANO?
[05:23.886] To get started, let me ask you a question. When is solo piano solo piano? Now, I know that sounds like a very unusual question. After all, if you're sitting at the piano playing by yourself without a bass player, without a drummer, without another musician accompanying you, well, isn't that solo piano? Well, of course it is. But here's where things get Interesting. When we talk about solo piano playing, especially in jazz, we tend to imagine something rather sophisticated. We imagine a pianist playing beautiful chord voicings, harmonizing melodies, creating interesting bass lines, introducing harmonic substitutions, embellishing phrases and improvising with endless musical possibilities. And You know what, there's nothing wrong with that picture. In fact, it's wonderful. But I want you to consider something. How much of that musical activity is actually required for a performance to qualify as solo piano? Do we need stride piano? Do we need sophisticated harmonic substitutions? Do we need to harmonize every melody note? Do we need an elaborate arrangement filled with impressive musical ideas? I say no to all that. So what's what's the least amount of musical material we need to make Sunny sound like Sunny when we're playing completely alone? Well, how about this? We need a melody and we need some harmony. That's it. A single-note melody supported by appropriate chord voicings, played freely, expressively, without the obligation of maintaining a strict rhythmic pulse. That's it. It's what we call rubato. And that is stage one of the seven stages of solo piano development that I'm always discussing. Now

[07:50.99] I want to make something very clear. Stage one is not a preliminary exercise that we must somehow graduate from before we're allowed to call ourselves solo pianist. Stage one is solo piano, a complete, legitimate, musically satisfying approach to playing the piano all by ourselves. And here's something else I want you to understand. So are the Other six stages. Every one of the seven stages that I speak about represents a legitimate approach to solo piano performance. We're not climbing a ladder where solo piano magically begins when we reach the seventh rung, right? We're exploring different ways of organizing and expressing music at the piano. And as our musical skills develop, something fascinating happens. We begin to realize that these seven stages are not simply a one-way street. In fact, they're a two-way street. And let me explain. As we study the various stages of solo piano development, we acquire additional musical skills. We learn to harmonize melodies. We learn different approaches to accompaniment. We develop greater command of harmonic motion, greater command of melodic embellishment, rhythmic expression, and of course improvisation. All of it. Wonderful. But here's the question: What happens to stage one as we develop all those additional skills? Does stage one become obsolete? Do we abandon it because we've supposedly moved on to something more advanced? Absolutely not. We bring those newly developed skills back into stage one. We might harmonize a particular melodic note. We might introduce a beautiful harmonic movement. We might move a voice into a different register of the piano. We might

[10:13.578] embellish a phrase or introduce additional musical texture. And we can do all of that while maintaining our fundamental stage one approach. Harmony and melody played rubato. You see, stage one is the musical approach. Our developed skills provide additional musical Options. And here's where we arrive at the most important part of today's discussion. Just because we have additional musical options doesn't mean we should use them. Think about that for a moment. You might know ten different ways to harmonize a melody note. Wonderful. But which one should you use? You might know several different chord voicings for a particular harmony. That's terrific, but which voicing belongs in this musical moment? And even after choosing a voicing, you have another decision to make. Where should you play it? Lower register of the piano? Upper register of the piano? In the middle? Each choice produces a different musical effect. Each choice changes the relationship between the melody and the harmony. Each choice influences the character, the color, the expression of your performance. And sometimes the most beautiful musical decision is to leave everything exactly as is, to play the single-note melody, to support it with a simple chord. To let the music breathe. See, that's music. And that brings us to something we spent a great deal of time discussing in last week's episode. Musical decisions. Remember our improvisation development lesson? One third, one measure, one melodic idea. We deliberately limited our musical material so we could concentrate on creating.

[12:42.178] We could concentrate on listening. We could concentrate on evaluating and refining our musical decisions. We practiced making a musical statement followed by an intentional measure of silence. I called it REST AND ASSESS. Why? Because we wanted to develop something far more important than the ability to accumulate melodic patterns. We wanted to develop the ability to think musically. And today we're taking that exact same educational principle and applying it to solo piano playing. Last week we practiced making musical decisions within one measure. This week we're going to practice making musical decisions within an entire solo piano performance. And I want you to remember something as we work through today's lesson. Again, I mentioned it earlier. The quantity of skills available does not determine the quality of the musical decisions made. Let me say it again for the third time. The quantity of skills available does not determine the quality of your musical decisions. That statement is. so important for the developing jazz pianist because it's very easy to listen to an accomplished pianist and conclude that the reason they're playing sounds so beautiful is simply because they know so much more than we do. And yes, accomplished pianists have typically developed an extensive collection of musical skills. But the beauty of their performance is not determined simply by how many of those skills they possess. It's determined in large part by the musical decisions they make with those skills. And the wonderful news is that you don't have to wait until you've developed an enormous musical vocabulary to begin practicing that kind of musical judgment. You can begin today with the chords you know, with the voicings you know, with the melody you know.

[15:08.578] With the skills you already possess, because musical growth isn't simply learning what else you can play. I'm gonna say that again, too, because musical growth isn't simply learning what else you can play. It's developing the judgment to decide what you should play. And that judgment is developed through practice, through listening, through evaluating our choices, and through the willingness to try something. Different. Sometimes we add something, sometimes we take something away. Sometimes we discover that the simplest musical idea was the most effective choice all along. And I want you to hear this very, very clearly. Don't confuse the skills you haven't developed with the music you're incapable of making. Those are two entirely different things. Developing additional skills is important, of course. That's why we study. That's why we practice. That's why we continue exploring this magnificent musical language we call jazz. But developing those skills and making beautiful music are not activities that must occur one after the other. We develop our musical skills while learning to make beautiful music. So today, as we explore Bobby Hebb's Sunny, we're going to remain focused on stage one: Harmony and Melody, Rubato. We're going to begin with the essentials and discover just how beautiful a simple solo piano performance can be. And then as we explore additional musical possibilities. We're going to ask ourselves a very important question. Does this musical decision make the performance more effective, or does it simply make the performance more complicated? Because those are not necessarily the same thing. And when we're finished today, when we're done with this lesson, I hope you'll recognize something that can fundamentally change the way you approach your jazz piano studies. You don't have to wait until you're a


THE SEVEN FACTS OF MUSIC
[17:33.944] Better pianist to begin making beautiful music. Making beautiful music with the skills you have today is how you become a better pianist. And that is what today's jazz piano skills lesson is all about. Alright, so before we go any further, let's take a moment, as we always do, to review the seven facts of music that serve as the foundation for. every jazz piano skills lesson. Now again, these are not my opinions. These are not theories. They are musical truths that help us understand and organize everything we study and play. All right? So here we go. Fact number one: music is the production of sound and silence. And when I'm speak of sound, I'm talking about our primary sounds of music, right? Major. Dominant, minor, half diminished, diminished. Fact number two, sound is produced two ways, harmonically and melodically. Fact number three, when producing sound harmonically, we're playing chords, or what we often refer to as voicings. Fact number four, when producing sound melodically, we're playing arpeggios. And we're playing scales. Fact number five, harmony and melody both have motion. Circle motion, diatonic motion, chromatic motion, ascending and descending motion. Fact number six, that motion, that movement is decorated with tension or what we call chromatism. And then finally, fact number seven. To make facts one through six interesting, to give facts one through six life, we add rhythm. Now, think about how directly these seven facts connect to today's study of solo piano. We have harmony, we have melody, we have movement, we have opportunities to introduce tension. And even when we play rubato, we still have some rhythm.


SOUND, SILENCE, AND MUSICAL SPACE
[20:01.41] The timing, duration, and placement of our musical ideas, right? And let's not overlook the other half of fact number one: silence. We don't have to fill every moment, which is hard for us pianists, we want to do that. We don't have to fill every moment. You know what? Sometimes allowing a chord to just simply ring, allowing a melody note to breathe, allow, allow, allowing a phrase to settle, right? This is some of these are some of the most beautiful musical decisions that we can make. So as we explore Sunny today, keep these seven facts in mind, as always. They'll help us stay focused on the musical essentials, and they'll help us make thoughtful decisions with the skills that we already possess. All right, before we go any further, I want to take a moment to welcome all of you who may be listening to Jazz Piano Skills for the very first time. If that's you, welcome. I'm delighted that you are here. Jazz Piano Skills is an educational program designed to help you develop the essential skills needed to become a confident and accomplished jazz pianist. And everything we do here centers around three words. Discover, learn, and play. Each month, now each month we use a single jazz standard as our musical laboratory while exploring four essential areas of jazz piano development. Week one, we always take a look at harmony, week two, melody, week three, rhythm and improvisation, and week four solo piano. This month, our musical laboratory is Bobby Hebb's wonderful tune Sunny. And today we're bringing our study together by exploring how to create a beautiful solo piano performance using harmony, melody, and of course, thoughtful musical decisions. Now, if you are joining us for the first time, please don't feel as though you have to catch up before you can begin. You can actually just start right here. Listen, explore, and work with the musical skills you currently.


WELCOME TO NEW LISTENERS
[22:26.072] possess. Now as you spend more time with jazz piano skills, you'll hear me return to an important idea. The tunes change, but the skills remain. You know, that's so important because we're all about developing musical understanding and practical skills that you can actually carry into every tune that you play. So if you are looking for something much more than random content from a content creator, If you're looking for a structured educational program with a clear path, connected lessons and personal support, then you know what? I can I encourage you to consider jazz piano skills. Each month our lessons build upon one another to help us develop lasting musical understanding and practical skills that we can use every time we sit down at the piano. If you'd like to explore today's material more deeply, then I encourage you to. Visit jazzpianoskills.com. There you can discover the benefits of membership, including our podcast packets, the weekly masterclasses, our online community, and of course, personal support. So whether you're listening in your car, enjoying a walk, or sitting at the keyboard, thank you, thank you for spending a part of your day with me, with us. I'm happy that you're here, and I look forward to helping you discover, learn, and play jazz piano. All right, let's move on to the question of the week. And this week's question comes from Bennett James, living in Bristol, England. And Bennett writes, Dr. Bob, I can play the melody and chords of a tune correctly, but it still sounds more like an exercise than a complete solo piano performance. I always feel like something is missing. So common, right? I always feel like something is missing. How do I turn the melody and chords into music that sounds complete without having to add a lot of complicated techniques? Well, Bennett, your question is perfect. Perfect timing. You know what? When you're playing sounds like an exercise, because that's what I'm picking up from your question. When you're playing sounds like an exercise,


QUESTION OF THE WEEK — BENNETT JAMES
[24:54.016] Here's what everyone's first instinct is. The first instinct always is maybe I need bigger voicings. You know what? Maybe I need to add a moving bass line. I know what I'll do. I'll harmonize more melody notes. It's always about adding more. But in my teaching experience, the harmony and melody are almost Never, and I mean never the problem. The musical information is already there. Typically, what needs attention is timing, the balance between sound and silence. giving attention to how every note is played. Is it is every note receiving the same emphasis? Is every chord arriving with the same predictable placement? That happens all the time? Are you rushing, this happens all the time too, into the next phrase before the previous one has even had a chance to settle? Right? Again, you can have all the correct musical information and still deliver it without expression. This is, I hear this all the time, and this is I think what you're getting at, Bennett. All the correct information without expression, though. And you know what? Adding more information won't automatically improve the delivery. So, you know, think about speaking. You know, you can read every word of a sentence correctly and still fail to communicate its meaning. But emphasize an important word, pause at the right moment, allow your voice to rise, allow your voice to settle, then those same words suddenly come to life. The words haven't changed. The delivery has. So Bennett, I think this is the issue, right? So here's what I want you to try. I want you to take.

[27:08.95] One phrase of Sunny, and I want I want you to play it using the melody and simple harmonic support. And then I want you to record yourself. This is so important because while you're playing, you're in the heat of the battle. You're you're busy producing the music. You're finding notes, coordinating your hands, thinking about what comes next. Right? So recording yourself allows you to step away from those demands and truly, truly hear what you are playing. Once you have the recording, I want you to play the recording back without playing along. Just listen. Does the melody sound like a musical thought or does it sound like a sequence of individual notes? Do your sounds have time to ring? Do your phrases have room to breathe? Does the silence feel intentional? Or are you hurrying to fill it? These are really important questions. Then record, once you answer those questions, then record the same phrase again, changing, just change one thing. Perhaps allow a melody note to linger longer than you did in the first recording. Perhaps maybe release a chord sooner and listen to the silence that follows. Perhaps wait a little longer before beginning the next phrase. Record it again, listen back, and compare. Which version communicates the phrase more effectively? Which version communicates what you are wanting to hear? You know, that process, play, record, listen. Adjust is how you begin connecting what you intend to play with what you actually play. So before you add another note, before you add another chord, before you add another technique, I want you to explore, seriously explore the timing and the space of what you already have.

[29:36.128] Allow a sound to speak, allow a sound to ring, allow a phrase to breathe, allow silence so hard, allow silence to become part of your performance. Right? Record it, listen. That's where those familiar chords and melody notes begin to sound like music instead. of an exercise. And you know what? That's exactly what we're going to be exploring today with Sunny. So again, Bennett, thank you for your question. It comes at the perfect time. It absolutely captures what we are addressing today. Okay, so now Jazz Piano Skills members, let's get your materials ready for today's piano lesson. So log into your Jazz Piano Skills account and download the podcast packets for today. Right, Bobby Hebb Sunny. So your illustration packet, your lead sheet packet are available as usual. Have them open in your hands as you listen so you can follow along with everything that we are going to explore today at the keyboard. And you'll notice you'll notice there are no it's not a play-along packet today. And there's a very good reason for that because we're studying solo piano. So no backing tracks. Today Is just us and the piano exploring how harmony, melody, timing, space come together to create a complete musical performance. And as always, keep this material on your piano as you practice throughout the week. That's how today's lesson is going to become part of your playing. Now, if you are not a jazz piano skills member yet, I want To sincerely thank you for spending time with me today. I hope our discussion has encouraged you to sit down at the piano and explore how much music you can make with the skills that you already possess. Now, in just a moment, we'll begin the members-only piano lesson where we are going to put those ideas that we've been discussing into practice using, of course, Bobby Hebb's Sunny. If you'd like to join us for the complete lesson, again, I invite you to visit Jazz Piano Skills.


MEMBERS’ PIANO LESSON — STAGE ONE
[32:03.746] dot com and discover the benefits of membership. I'd love to have you join us. For now, thank you again for listening. Enjoy your time at the piano this week and most of all have fun as you discover, learn, and play jazz piano.