Sweet Lorraine, Improvisation

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Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:38.946)
Welcome to Jazz Piano Skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn, and play jazz piano. Week three of the month is here. I know it's hard to believe. It rolls by quickly every single month. But week three of the month is here. And as we all know, week three of every month here at Jazz Piano Skills is the week that we dedicate ourselves to improving

our jazz improvisation skills. Week one always begins with a harmonic analysis of tune, followed up in week two with a melodic analysis, and in week three, we always turn our attention to developing our improvisation skills. Our harmonic analysis of sweet Lorraine, which we do with every tune, explored the form, the changes, harmonic function, common harmonic movement, and of course, yes, our voicings.

We always take a look at the traditional block voicings and their inversions. We take a look at traditional shells and contemporary shells and of course, two-handed structures. Our melodic analysis, which we just completed last week, we transcribed the melody, we checked out fingerings, we looked at the phrases, target notes within those phrases. And of course, we had some fun applying various melodic treatments to the tune. Now today, our improvisation

skills will be developed using, well, let's put it this way. The old saying, less is more, that's kind of the theme of today's podcast episode. Less is more when it comes to improvisation development, and you're going to soon find out. No doubt about it, our three-week study of every tune that we dive into is always extremely beneficial for developing the essential jazz piano skills

needed for us to become an accomplished jazz pianist. Of course, the study and practice of these essential jazz piano skills, as you all know, must be governed by a crystal clear and I mean crystal clear thought process that simplifies, simplifies the musical concepts, so that we have a legitimate chance of developing our physical capabilities. It's really

Dr. Bob Lawrence (03:06.425)
quite that simple. If our conceptual understanding of music is complicated, we have no shot of physically developing our skills. achieve, now this is important, we achieve this crystal clear thought process by making sure that all that we do, conceptually and physically, adheres to what?

Yes, it adheres to the seven facts of music, our seven musical facts. And what are those seven musical facts? I know I don't even need to go through the list because I know you haven't memorized. But you know what? What the heck? For all the new listeners, we need to go through this list. The seven musical facts are as follows. Number one, music is the production of sound and silence. Sound, of course, being our primary sounds, major, dominant, minor.

diminished and diminished. Fact number two, when producing sound, we can do it one of two ways, harmonically and or melodically. Fact number three, when sound is produced harmonically, we're playing chords or we often refer to them as voicings. Fact number four, when sound is produced melodically, when the facts are produced melodically,

going be one of those days, I guess. But when sound is produced melodically, we are playing scales and arpeggios. And when playing scales and arpeggios, we can only move one or two directions up or down. And then fact number six, we camouflage the fact that we're playing scales and arpeggios that go up and down. We camouflage those scales and arpeggios with tension or chromaticism. And then finally, fact number seven, to make facts one through six interesting,

we add rhythm. That's it. That's music. And those are the seven musical facts, musical truth. And it is for this very reason that our tune study is always centered around those seven musical facts using our tune study approaches, harmonic analysis, melodic analysis, and improvisation development.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:25.55)
And now we've added this year, of course, our solo piano approaches. So today, we tackle improvisation. And we do so using Suite Lorraine. So today, you're going to discover Suite Lorraine improvisationally. You're going to learn why the third is the key to developing improvisation skills. And you are going to play a solo.

for Sweet Lorraine using the third as our melodic anchor. 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 gonna find this Jazz Panel Skills podcast lesson exploring Sweet Lorraine improvisationally using thirds to be extremely.

beneficial. But before we get started, I want to, as I always do, I want to welcome all of you first time listeners to Jazz Piano Skills. If you are new to Jazz Piano Skills, you're listening for the very first time, you're new to the podcast, you're new to the site, I want to personally welcome you and I want to personally invite you to become a Jazz Piano Skills member. Your membership comes with many perks. Number one, as a member you get

premium podcast content, which means you get to listen to the entire episode. The first half of every Jazz Panel Skills podcast episode is free for everyone to enjoy. I deal with the question of the week, which is always fascinating. And then the I out the educational agenda and the lesson rationale. The second half of every podcast episode for members only lesson content is presented demonstrations and of course we explore the

podcast packets. These are the illustrations, the lead sheets and the play alongs that are designed and developed for every weekly podcast episode to help you maximize the benefit of every weekly podcast. You as a Jazz Panel Skills member also have access to the online courses. These are comprehensive sound based, self paced and sequential courses focusing on harmonic, melodic and improvisation development.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:52.03)
as a Jazz Panel Skills member, you also have a reserved seat in the weekly masterclass that I host every Thursday evening at 8pm Central Time. And I know many of you have expressed that it's not the best time for you, which is hard to find the best time for everyone. But nevertheless, the masterclasses are recorded and you can watch and rewatch the masterclass at your convenience and as often as you wish.

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waiting to help you discover, learn and play Jazz Panel. So check it all out at jazzpanelskills.com. And of course, become a member and start benefiting from all these perks. Now, once you get to the site, if you have any questions, by all means, please reach out to me. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have and help you in any way that I possibly can. And one more educational tidbit. If you're not receiving the Jazz Panel Skills blog post every weekend,

please take time to join the email list which you can easily do at the Jazz Panel Skills website on the homepage. Every Saturday I publish a blog that summarizes the podcast episode, the lesson for the week in writing. It's definitely worth checking out. It's definitely worth reading. It's always about a four minute read, four to five minute read and it will help you stay on track, keep you on track both conceptually and physically.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (10:12.246)
Alright, check out Jazz Panel Skills and of course, become a member. Okay, so let's get on to the question of the week. Alright, this week's question comes from Ethan Brooks, Ethan living in Denver, Colorado. Ethan writes, Hey, Dr. Lawrence, I've been working on my improvisation and trying to apply chord scale relationships. But I feel like

when I sit down to practice, I end up just noodling. I play a lot of notes, but I'm not sure I'm actually improving. How do I practice improvisation in way that is structured and actually helps me get better? Ethan, common question. In fact, I think we've dealt with very similar type questions here at Jazz Piano Skills in the podcast, but nevertheless, it's a great question. I'm glad you submitted it. It coincides beautifully with the

the lesson for today. So perfect timing. Okay, so I think it's important that

But before we talk about how to practice improvisation, I think it would be wise for all of us to hit the pause button for a second and take the time to clear up one of the biggest misconceptions in all of music. So important. And that is, you know, what exactly is improvisation? Well, I always like to address that question.

by actually explaining what improvisation is not. Improvisation is not playing something you have never played before. I cannot begin to tell you how many people have that understanding or approach improvisation from that understanding, thinking that improvisation is playing something that you've never played before.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:16.236)
So let me say that again, improvisation is not playing something that you've never played before. The idea sounds incredibly romantic, but it's false. Now here's the truth. And I have mentioned this many times in the podcast, various podcast episodes throughout the years. I've mentioned it many times that your hands and your ears can never go where they've never been before.

simply impossible. Your hands and ears can never go where they've never been. They can't. If you've never practiced the sound, if you've never explored a shape, you've never internalized a rhythm, you will not magically produce it when it's time to improvise. That's not how learning works. That's not how the brain works. And that's not how music, that's not how jazz works.

So with that out of the way, what is improvisation? Well, improvisation is the ability to organize, manipulate, and combine musical ideas you have already practiced in real time.

I'm going to say that again. It's your ability to organize, manipulate, and combine musical ideas, combining musical ideas that you have already practiced, and you're doing it in real time. You're not creating from nothing. There's only one person that can do that, and you ain't him. Okay, so you're not creating from nothing. You're not, instead, you're creating from experience.

Right? So you're not creating from nothing. You are creating from experience. That is so important. So if your hands and ears can't go where they've never been, how do you get them there? Well, I've said this before in the past as well. They must be escorted. Well, escorted by whom or what? Well, escorted by your intellect. In other words, you must have an approach to musical exploration. You must have an approach to musical exploration.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (14:34.776)
You don't, you don't wait to discover ideas while performing. That's a bad strategy. Right? You design discovery during practice. You design, and that's what we're going to do today. Actually, you design discovery during practice. So when you're practicing improvisation correctly, like we're going to do today, you are exploring melodic ideas, harmonic ideas, rhythmic ideas.

But you're you're not exploring randomly. You are exploring intentionally. And that's the key. It's intentional exploration. Now, the piece that's often left out of the practicing, which is mind boggling to me because it is absolutely the most important piece when it comes to improvisation. And that's the that's the piece called Time.

right? No one talks about it when it comes to improvisation, but time. And I don't mean counting. I don't mean 12341234. I mean, internal time. Time is not, you know, I mentioned this last week in the podcast, I mean, in the masterclass. And I'm not sure I explained it well to the group. So maybe I'll take a few minutes right here to give it another take another stab at it.

Time is not contained in chords. Time is not contained in notes. Time is not contained in scales or arpeggios. Time is contained within you. It is internal. Time is something happening in you that allows you to play freely, harmonically, melodically, and rhythmically. So without time,

that all falls apart. Your melodic expression, your harmonic expression, your rhythmic expression falls apart. you know, so how do you develop it? You know, right? How do you practice time? Well, you must learn to hear, feel, and always know where count one is at all times, if you're going to develop time. I hope that makes sense, right?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (17:05.09)
You must learn to hear, feel, and know where count one is internally. That's time. You know, I have a very simple rule. If you lose count one, you're done. It's just that simple. You lose count one, you're done. Because if you don't know where count one is, you don't know where the phrases begin and end. You don't know where you are in the form. You don't know where resolution is happening. Everything falls apart.

So let's take this one step further. When I say play or be aware of count one, don't mean that you must always... It doesn't mean playing a note on count one or a chord on count one. When I say you're playing count one, I'm talking about you're playing it, you're aware of it within sound or silence.

This is exactly musical fact number one that music is a production of sound and silence. One is always there and you play it whether you play it with sound or whether you play it with silence. You you play it and once you understand that silence is something that you play. Wow, everything changes. Your improvisation changes radically. Because now one is always there. Whether it's played or not.

One is always being expressed. One is always being felt. Maybe that's the most important right there. One is always being felt. Whether you strike a note or you choose not to. Whether you strike a chord or you choose not to. And my point in the master class on Thursday night was if you're trying to track time using chords or using scales or melodic motion, wow.

that see now you're trying to track time with external external realities as opposed to what's internal. And in when you're doing that, you're in what I like to call survival mode. And creativity cannot exist in survival mode. Great players don't follow time. They bring time to the music. That's important to realize. So let me ask you, you know, Ethan, are you practicing time?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (19:32.516)
Most students aren't. That's just the reality. It's unfortunate. Most students aren't. And here's how you begin. Here's what I would say to you as a great starting point. Begin practicing all your jazz piano skills to count one. Intentionally do that. Practice scales to count one. Practice arpeggios to count one. Practice.

melodic pathways that you're working on to count one practice comping to count one practice rhythms that that end that travel to count one. And when you're listening to music, how about doing this just listening music clap count one train your in other words train your ear to always be aware of and to always hear count one. Because if you can hear and feel one

you're in control. And if you can't, you're out of control. You're guessing. And if you're guessing, end up as you said, Ethan, you end up noodling. New, think that's the word you use noodling. I call it doodling. But noodling and doodling, I think, I think are really closely related, whether you noodle or doodle. It's you don't want to noodle or doodle. You want to be intentional.

So we got to get the noodle and doodle out of your plane, right? So it begins with this awareness of count one. Now the next essential skill that I would say, you know, time awareness account one, number one. And then I think Ethan, the next essential skill to help you stop noodling or doodling is the awareness of the third.

And that's what that's really what we're focusing on today. Later on here as we dive in the sweet Lorraine and our improvisation development, but it's that the third that the mastery of the third is so important, it's even hard for me to articulate verbally why it's that important. So let me try my best to explain why.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:56.502)
Major and minor thirds are the key to melodic development because major and minor thirds establish or build the entire harmonic structure that we are familiar with for every primary sound from the root to the 13th. Those sounds in their entirety from the root to the 13th are formed, are built stacking melodic, stacking major and minor thirds. Right? So

our entire musical system is built on this. And then once you understand that, and then when you examine the third and realize that everything you need to develop improvisational vocabulary is contained within the third, that's monumental. Because the third gives you the third gives you arpeggio movement, right diatonic harmony gives you scale movement, which is a passing tone within the

or within the third. And within the third, you also find notes that aren't in the harmony, tension tones or chromaticism, right, which means you have everything at your disposal within the third. And the third then gives you with everything at your disposal, the third gives you vocabulary. So why students struggle with improvisation and end up noodling and doodling is because

you're trying to use all ADA keys, you're you even mentioned it, court scale relationships become the primary focus. So ADA keys, the focus on ADA keys and the scales, all the scales, all the possibilities with the scales. Man, right, just stop right there. That leads to a lot of confusion. And a lot of confusion always leads to noodling and doodling. So here's the truth.

if your improvisation isn't improving, Ethan, it is almost always because of two things, weak internal time and a lack of understanding and mastery of the third. So as I mentioned earlier, the theme really for today's podcast episode is less is more. I really mean that we're going to stop trying to create using everything.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (24:23.01)
and start focusing on something that contains everything. Right? That's the third, right? That's what I'm going to say that again, we're going to stop trying to create using everything. And instead, start focusing on something that contains everything. And that's the third. So Ethan, how do you practice improvisation without noodling or doodling or doodling or noodling? Well,

improvisation improves only when your practice is intentional, limited, in other words, self imposed constraints, and structured. And that's what we're going to do today. Some intentional, limited and structured improvisation development. So I'll close with this. improvisation is not spontaneous creation, it is prepared creativity. You don't

rise to the occasion when you improvise, you actually fall back on your preparation. And if your time isn't solid, really nothing else matters. But if your time is solid, if you are hearing and feeling and tracking one, and you understand the importance of the third, and everything that's contained within it, then everything becomes possible.

Ethan, I hope that helps. We're going to be diving into, this is why I said your question of the week is perfect timing, because we are going to be diving into this today with Sweet Lorraine and our improvisation development, using the third as our melodic anchor for developing jazz vocabulary and for developing our improvisation skills. Nevertheless, I hope that helped, and for some reason,

More clarification is needed. Please let me know. Always happy to talk improvisation with you and improvisation approaches. So please let me know. Okay. So now let's get on with Sweet Lorraine. Let's discover, learn, and play Sweet Lorraine improvisationally. As you all know, our approach here with our tune study every month, every week,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:53.176)
we approach it the same way, always. We have a process and again, even though we're studying jazz here, know, jazz piano skills, quite honestly, genre would make no difference. If this was rock piano skills or pop piano skills or country piano skills or R &B piano skills, our approach would be the same when it comes to learning a tune.

I would say regardless of genre, the very first thing you need to do is listen and listen to the various artists, professional musicians, amateur musicians, vocalists, instrumentalists, pianists. It makes no difference, right? And this is why we have a killer listening list prepared for us every single week. Every single week, Lisa puts a ton of time in and effort into.

create a listening list to go along with every podcast episode that is absolutely essential. And I cannot stress it enough. This is why we do it. I cannot stress it enough how important it is for your development as a jazz musician and for your development specifically as a jazz pianist. Believe it or not, through listening, listening is one way

to really begin developing your internal sense of time. It begins with listening. So again, genre would make no difference. We would always start here. Then we always follow that up with harmonic analysis that we do every month. We look at form and changes, function, common movement, voicings. We follow our harmonic analysis with melodic analysis, transcribe for ear training purposes, the melody.

We look at phrases and target notes and explore various treatments of the tune. And then of course, week three today, improvisation development. We're always looking at various improvisational approaches. We do look at from time to time chord scale relationships, as Ethan mentioned that he does, arpeggio and scale movement, motif development, melodic pathways. There are various ways that you should be employing

Dr. Bob Lawrence (29:13.616)
to help you develop your improvisation skills. And we try to rotate through these various approaches as we do our tune studies each and every month. So it's a very thorough process, you know, it's a pretty thorough roadmap, listen, harmonic analysis, melodic analysis, improvisation development. And now, of course, this year we added solo piano approaches. So

It's very thorough. It's a very complete. It's a very organized and structured process that, as I mentioned in the question of the week, it's intentional. And through that intentionality comes growth. Okay, prevents us from noodling and doodling. So the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we are going to listen to various recordings of Sweet Lorraine. Number two, we are going to explore

my literally my practice routine for exploring the third and begin using it for developing jazz language needed to successfully learn how to improvise. And number three, we're going to apply our understanding and mastery of the third to construct and play a solo over the changes of sweet Lorraine.

So if you are a Jazz Panel Skills member, want you to hit the pause button. I want you to take a few minutes right now to access your podcast packets, download your podcast packets, and print them, the illustrations, the lead sheets, and the play alongs. Again, I want these in your hands to maximize your growth and benefit from this podcast episode. So make sure you take the time right now to

get access to and print those by podcast packets. Now once you do, you're going to see in your lead sheets packet, we always start with our lead sheets and I'll explain and touch upon the illustrations and the play alongs at the toward the end of the podcast. But in your lead sheets packet, you're going to find one. Yes, one lead sheet. That is correct. But you know,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (31:30.308)
great things come in very small packages. So lead sheet one, as you can see, is what I call our improvisation thirds roadmap. So these are the thirds that we are going to be using today throughout Sweet Lorraine to explore improvisational ideas and to help develop our improvisation skills. This is the roadmap.

crucial. And you're going to find out here very shortly, there is a lot that can be done with a very good, very efficient roadmap. Okay, so grab lead sheet one, and let me explain, let me walk you through what you are looking at. Alright, so we have the lead sheet for Sweet Lorraine. This is . . . 

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