That's All, Improvisation

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:33.262)
Welcome to Jazz Piano Skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn, and play jazz piano. Here we are again, week three of the month. And of course, week three of every month is the week we dedicate ourselves to improving our jazz improvisation skills. Week one always begins with a harmonic analysis of a tune, followed up in week two with melodic analysis, and week three, this week, we work on developing

our improvisation skills. Our harmonic analysis of that's all, as we do with every tune, explored form, changes, harmonic function, common harmonic movement, and of course voicings. Our block voicings, traditional shell voicings, contemporary shell voicings, and of course our two-handed structures. Our essential melodic skills study looked at the lyrics, the melody, the fingerings, the phrases, target notes, and of course melodic treatments.

Today, our improvisation skills will challenge our ability to successfully articulate a solo played over the changes of that's all using chord tones, approach tones, and grace notes, or oftentimes referred to as crunch tones. At least that's what they were called when I was a kid and learning how to play.

Or maybe it was crushed tones, crunch tones, crushed tones. I don't know. One of those. Regardless, the three-week study that we do for every tune is pretty thorough and very beneficial. Of course, the study and practicing of all these essential jazz piano skills, harmony, melody, improvisation, these skills must be governed by a crystal clear thought process that simplifies music.

conceptually so that we have a legitimate chance of developing our physical capabilities. And we achieve this crystal clear thought process by making sure that all we do musically, conceptually and physically, plugs into and hears to the seven musical facts. What are the seven facts? Number one, music is the production of sound and silence. Sound, of course, being major, dominant, minor, half diminished and diminished.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (03:01.686)
Fact number two, sound is produced harmonically and melodically. Fact number three, when sound is produced harmonically, we're playing chords or voicings. Fact number four, when sound is produced melodically, we're playing our scales and arpeggios. Fact number five, when playing the scales and arpeggios, we are moving in one of two directions. We can only go up or down. Fact number six, we camouflage or decorate.

our scales and arpeggios with tension or chromaticism. And finally, fact number seven, we had interest facts one through six by adding rhythm. And this is precisely why we approach our tune study centering around the seven facts of music using three distinct tune learning phases or studies, a harmonic analysis, melodic analysis,

and of course improvisation development. So today we tackle improvisation. Today we continue to discover that's all improvisationally. We're going to learn how to construct a solo for that's all. And we're going to play a solo using chord tones, approach tones, and grace notes over the entire form of that's all. So as our audience 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 that's all to be very beneficial. But before we get started, before we dig in, I want to, as I always do, welcome all the first time listeners to the Jazz Panel Skills podcast. If you're new to the podcast, if you're new to Jazz Panel Skills, welcome, I want to personally invite you to become a member in your membership.

does a couple things. Number one keeps jazz piano skills, the podcast 100 % ad free, which has been my goal from day one. All education, no ads. Additionally, your membership grants you many educational perks. For instance, you get premium podcast content, which basically means you get to listen to the entire podcast episode. Now the first half of every podcast episode is free for everyone.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:22.88)
I deal with the question of the week, lay out the educational agenda, and the lesson rationale. The second half of the podcast for members only, lesson content and demonstrations. Additionally, members have access to the podcast packets. These are the educational materials, the illustrations, the lead sheets, the play alongs that I design and develop for every weekly podcast episode. And every week I

stress how important it is to have these materials in your hands when listening to the episode to get the most out of it and of course to have them sitting on your piano or your music stand when practicing throughout the week. As a member you also have access to the online courses they're comprehensive, interactive, self-paced, and sequential. In addition to that you have a reserved seat in the online

weekly masterclass held every Thursday evening. That's 8pm Central Time. And I know that that's not the best time for everyone around the world. But the masterclasses are recorded and you can watch and rewatch the video of the class whenever convenient and as often as you wish. As a Jazz Piano Skills member, you also have access to the online private Jazz Piano Skills community which

host a variety of engaging forums. There are podcast specific forums and general jazz forums as well. It's a great place to hang out, meet new friends, provide some feedback and assistance for others and to receive some member feedback and assistance as well. And finally, as a Jazz Panel Skills member, you have educational support, private, personal, professional support. So all of these,

Amazing privileges are waiting to help you discover, learn, and play jazz piano. So check it all out at JazzPianoSkills.com and of course become a member. Once you get to the site, if you're poking around, you have some questions, need some assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. I'm happy to spend a little time with you, answer all of your questions, and help you in any way that I can. I also want to take just a few minutes to encourage you to subscribe to the JazzPianoSkills YouTube channel.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:37.482)
And once you do, you'll begin receiving harmony, melody, and rhythm challenges. There are jazz quick tips and jazz talks as well. And I'm starting to populate these playlists with new videos every week. So be sure to subscribe so that you're notified when a new Jazz Panel Skills video is released. All right, it's time to get busy. Let's get to the question of the week. This week's question comes from Drew Hammond.

living in Tallahassee, Florida. Drew writes, Dr. Lawrence, I cannot improvise. I find it very difficult, if not impossible, to be creative. Every time I try to improvise, I feel very unmusical. I know the chords, and I stick to the chord tones as you suggest. However, nothing comes out. Nothing musical, that is.

Have you encountered this struggle with other students? Or is it a me thing? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Well, Drew, the easy answer to your question is yes, it's a you thing. Sounds like you're not creative, dude. And you should probably begin looking at other disciplines and skills to study perhaps maybe hey, you know what pickleball pickleball is popular now.

You might want to give that a try. But you see, Drew, that answer would be a cop out and honestly, 100 % not true. So for real, here's the deal. It's not you. It's not a you thing at all. In fact, you're simply traveling the developmental path that we all must travel when developing

improvisation skills. The path, as I refer to it, is pretty simple. And you know what? It needs to be simple because most people way overthink the whole concept of improvising. I know that's a shocker, right? That, you know, who would ever think that we, us humans, would overthink or overcomplicate anything? Well, we do.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (10:00.0)
We do it all the time in life, and we certainly do it when thinking about developing our jazz playing skills. So the path, keeping it simple, is a three-step process which you should write down and stick it on your piano so it's in front of you daily. Now here's the path. Three steps. Number one, learn chords. 60. Harmonically, the block shapes, and melodically.

arpeggios. That's number one. Learn chords. There's 60 of them. Learn them harmonically in block shapes and be able to play them melodically as arpeggios. Step number two. Learn rhythmic vocabulary to apply to the melodic shapes or to the arpeggios. And step number three. Develop a jazz articulation, a jazz feel. That's it. Nothing more.

nothing less is needed. That's it. Three steps. So Drew, if you do indeed know your chords harmonically and melodically, and you are unable to improvise, then I would say you are on step two on the of the path step two. In other words,

reason you cannot improvise is because your rhythmic vocabulary is deficient. Now, if you feel you have an adequate rhythmic vocabulary, then you are at step three on the improvisation path, which is the development of an authentic jazz articulation. But I think based on how you stated your question, your problem is a deficient rhythmic vocabulary.

Now, typically when I use that expression, rhythmic vocabulary, students begin to become overwhelmed because it sounds like something huge to develop. Again, we begin to overthink it. We begin to complicate it. here is what I want you to do, Drew. I want you to think of your rhythmic vocabulary.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:24.848)
as of right now your rhythmic vocabulary, consisting of nothing but quarter notes and eighth notes. That's it, at least for now. In fact, I want you to begin playing. There are 11 rhythms I know, you know, a few weeks ago, I did a podcast episodes, you know, something like the 50 rhythms that you must know, you know what, I'm to cut that down, I'm gonna I'm going to give you out of the 50, I'm going to give you 11.

So I want you to begin playing 11 rhythms and only 11 and I want you to get these rhythms under your belt. Alright, so here we go. Rhythm number one, four quarter notes. I'm going to demonstrate this on the C minor sound, root, third, fifth, and seventh. Four quarter notes ascending.

Rhythm number one. Rhythm number two, three quarter notes followed by a pair of eighth notes. See, so I have to ascend and descend as these rhythms get a little more involved, ascend and descend through the sound using only the root, third, fifth, and seventh. Okay, so again, number two, quarter, quarter, quarter, pair of eighths.

Rhythm number three, quarter, quarter, pair of eights on count three, followed by a quarter note. So you get this. Rhythm number four, we shift the eighth notes to count two. Rhythm number five, we're going to shift the eighth notes to count one. So so far, number one, all quarter notes, rhythm

rhythms 2, 3, 4, and 5. A pair of eighth notes moving through each beat. Count 4, count 3, count 2, and count 1. Okay? Now, rhythm 6, we're gonna put a pair of eighth notes on counts 3 and 4. Okay? We're gonna shift those eighth notes now to counts 2 and

Dr. Bob Lawrence (14:48.108)
3 for rhythm 7.

And then we're going to shift the eighth notes to counts one and two for rhythm eight. Makes sense, okay? Rhythm nine, we're going to have three pair of eighth notes falling on counts two, three, and four. So we get this.

know what's coming. Rhythm number eight, we're going to shift those eighth notes now to counts one, two, and three, with a quarter note falling on count four.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (15:32.422)
then finally rhythm number 11 we're gonna have eighth notes on all four beats.

we've gone from rhythm one with all quarter notes to rhythm 11 with all eighth notes and then rhythms two through ten eighth notes moving around on different beats within the measure. Beat four, beat three, beat two, beat one. Okay, so if you practice these eleven patterns, these eleven rhythmic patterns as an etude, as an exercise, right? But B musical

right? It's an exercise, but be musical. Practice the patterns as an exercise, but play them as an improvised line. In other words, musically, practice them at various tempos, using various grooves. Do this a lot, at least one million times. I'm not kidding. One million times for each pattern. I'm serious. And if you do, if you do that, then the following will happen.

I'm going to demonstrate, I'm going to improvise on C minor using chord tones only, using only quarter and eighth note combinations. Okay? So here we go. Check this out. and before I start, I want to stress that I'm only using the root third, fifth and seventh, and I'm staying within the octave. Staying within the octave. Okay, here we go.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (19:05.352)
see so I'm just trying to use, Drew I'm just trying to use quarter notes and eighth notes to stay within the octave, play with a great jazz articulation. So if you just isolate and practice those 11 rhythmic patterns.

with a focus on playing them with a correct jazz feel, jazz articulation, they will begin to surface in your playing. And you can literally devote time to playing music by doing exactly what I just did. Don't make the mistake in thinking that in order to play music, you have to play a song. That's a big mistake.

playing a song is certainly one form of making music, but it's not the only form of making music. Isolating the sound, practicing various rhythmic ideas, improvising within that sound is indeed making music. So I cannot stress to you enough, Drew, trust me, I promise you, get on the path, stay on the path, and your success is inevitable. You will soon be a creative

machine, right? Enjoying and improvising and making music. The best news, here's the best news of all, You do not have to abandon music. You do not have to abandon piano and begin playing pickleball. You don't have to. So I hope this helps. I hope my answer gives you some insight. It gives you some guidance, the guidance that you're looking for. And as always, if more clarity is needed, then please let me know.

and we'll dig deeper together. Please keep me posted and feel free. Seriously, feel free to send me some recordings of you improvising, of you playing. I welcome the opportunity to hear your growth and provide you some feedback. All right, so let's discover, learn and play jazz piano. Let's discover, learn and play. That's all. You know, I go through this outline every week because it's that important that when studying a tune, when learning any tune,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:18.684)
I have a process and it's the same process. I approach it the same way regardless of the tune. Again, genre makes no difference. I don't care if it's a jazz tune, country tune, pop tune, rock tune, R &B tune, folk tune, makes no difference. I go about it the same way and we do it every month here at Jazz Piano Skills. Number one, I listen. I love listening to various artists, professional and amateurs.

vocalist, instrumentalist, pianist, and from all genres. It makes no difference. If you're performing a tune that I am currently studying and wanting to learn, I welcome the opportunity to listen to you. Number two, I turn my attention always, I think, again, because maybe I'm a pianist, I turn to a harmonic analysis first. I always like to study the form, the chord changes, the harmonic function, common movement within the tune, and of course apply my

experiment and explore applying my various voicings. After I have the harmony under control, I turn my attention to melody, where I'll transcribe the melody by ear, zero in on the phrases and the target notes within those phrases. And then I like to explore various treatments. And I typically stick to the three standard jazz treatments of ballad, bossa, and swing.

And then finally, after I have my, I've done my listening, I've got my harmony going, I got my melody going, I'll turn my attention to improvisation. I'll look at chord scale relationships, arpeggio scale movement that I can use within the tune. that's pretty much the same process. That's it. What I do each and every time I study a new tune, it's pretty thorough.

it's a complete approach and it's worked well for me over the years and it's what what we do every every month here at Jazz Piano Skills when we tackle a new standard. So you know this month we've already completed the harmonic analysis, we've already completed the melodic analysis, of course we do listening every week as well. But now today it's time for us to turn our attention to developing

Dr. Bob Lawrence (23:38.668)
our improvisation skills, our understanding of improvisation and our ability to improvise. the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we are going to, as always, listen to definitive recordings of that soul. And number two, we are going to explore a solo that we are going to play over the entire form, over the entire, all the changes found within that soul.

And finally, number three, we are going to break the solo apart based on the form and then for practice purposes. And then we're going to put it all back together again to complete an arrangement and treatment of this beautiful standard. So if you are a Jazz Panel Skills member, I want you to take just a few minutes right now. I want you to hit the pause button and I want you to download and print.

your podcast packets. Again, these are the illustrations, the lead sheets and the play alongs. And again, your membership grants you access to this material, which you should absolutely have in your hands when listening to this podcast, podcast episode, so that you get the most out of it. Okay. So now that you have your podcast packets, I want you to grab your lead sheets as we always do. And let's go through through them. Are you ready?

We have one lead sheet, one lead sheet today. It's the solo that I have put together for That's All. But you know what? As I've said before, great things come in small packages. So there's a lot that we are going to extract from this lead sheet. No question about it. So typically at this time, I would play a definitive recording of That's All. But this year, as you know, we have been

placing the listening list within the Jazz Piano Skills community within the forums. And there's a couple reasons for this. Number one, I want to be able to suggest more than one tune to check out. In fact, Lisa has been putting together our list for us every week, and she does a phenomenal job at putting together a wide range of artists performing every standard.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (25:58.408)
And so we have these lists now in the forums because they're just very, very thorough and take time to listen to each and every suggestion. It is well worth it. By doing so, we preserve as much time as possible within the podcast for educational content. So right now what I want you to do is head on over to community, spend some time listening to the recordings, and then once you're done with that,

Grab lead sheet one and we'll get busy. Let's take a look at this solo that we are going to study and learn how to play today for That's All.

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