That's All, Melodic Analysis

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:32.814)
Welcome to Jazz Piano Skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn, and play jazz piano. Well, here we are, week two of the month, which means, as week two always means, it's a melodic analysis week. Last week, we took our tune of the month, the beautiful jazz standard, that's all, and did our standard harmonic analysis, examining the form.

traditional changes, harmonic function, common harmonic movement, and of course voicings. Block voicings, traditional shell voicings, contemporary shell voicings, and of course two-handed structures. We always follow our harmonic analysis with the melodic analysis to discover, learn, and play melody, fingerings, phrases, target notes within the phrases, and of course standard treatments of the tune, ballads.

bossa swing. Every month, every month, we take a tune and get comfy with it through our harmonic analysis and melodic analysis and of course improvisation study. All three, every aspiring jazz musician must gain a functional command of right harmony, melody, improvisation. And when I say functional command, I'm talking both conceptually and physically. And

How do you do this? Well, it begins with establishing a well thought out and constructed practice strategy. You got to have an agenda. And that's what we do here at Jazz Piano Skills. We establish very specific roadmaps that we follow every month. Our practice strategies. In fact, our practice strategies have become very familiar to Jazz Piano Skills members. So familiar that the greatest compliment I hear from Jazz Piano Skills members is,

Hey, I know exactly what to expect with each week's tune study. To which my response is, well, thank you. Consistency is the key to success. It is so important to have a well thought out practice plan addressing essential skills and then execute that plan. Execute it consistently. If you do, success will surely fall.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:58.733)
Ironically, major roadblock to establishing a successful practice strategy is the enormous reservoir of jazz information available today in print and online that often, and quite frankly, has a suppressive effect on the learning process. And sadly, most of the information floating around is not needed to become an accomplished

jazz musician. You know, I find that jazz information falls into one of three camps. Camp one, essential skills, clearly explained and taught, not just demonstrated, but taught an educational path. The process is presented to achieve the goal of student success. Camp one, camp two, lofty, heady information presented with

the single goal of impressing listeners, no educational content. In other words, look how smart I am. Look how good I am. Please. And camp number three, nonsensical information disguised as educational content in order to produce profit. Otherwise known as baloney bunk.

Hooey Malarkey, poppycock, hogwash, mumbo jumbo, or simply bull, bad stuff. I personally, I always strive with each and every podcast episode each and every week to fall into camp one. I want to teach essential jazz piano skills with a plan and then execute the plan.

every week, every month. This is why we have a harmonic plan, we have a melodic plan, and we have a plan for developing improvisation skills and rhythm. Each plan centered around one very specific goal, your success, student success. You know, of course, we use a compass.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:26.859)
You know where I'm going. We use a compass that keeps us in our lane, keeps us focused, keeps us on track. A compass that prevents us from, right, straying off course. And of course, the compass I'm referring to, correct, the seven facts of music. And without the seven facts, branded. And I literally mean that. Branded into your mind.

You cannot formulate a coherent and strategic practice plan and agenda. You just cannot. And you need to practice plan to produce the results you hope to obtain. Without the facts, without the seven facts, you'll be in a constant state of just information gathering, constant state of the pursuit of information.

with absolutely no idea as to what to do with it. So what are the seven facts of music? Number one, music is the production of sound and silence. Sound, major, dominant, minor, half diminished and diminished. Fact number two, sound is produced harmonically and melodically. Fact number three, when sound is produced harmonically, we are playing chords or voicings. Fact number four, when

sound is produced melodically, we are playing arpeggios and scales. Fact number five, when playing arpeggios and scales, we are moving in one of two directions up or down. Fact number six, we spend a lot of time camouflaging, decorating our arpeggios and scales with tension or chromaticism. And fact number seven,

to make musical facts one through six interesting, we add rhythm. I cannot stress this point enough. It is imperative, absolutely imperative that you think about these seven facts a lot. You think about these facts so much that you actually see and hear them.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:51.489)
in the music and all of the skills that you practice, that you play. You should see the music, the skills that you're practicing, that you're playing, shaking hands with at least one of the seven facts, if not more or all of the seven facts. You know, once this tipping point happens for you, when you can actually identify everything you encounter musically as being found within the seven facts,

And then you can begin constructing a practice plan, a practice strategy, an agenda that actually produces the results that you're looking for. You are now on a clear path leading to musical success. And this is why we approach our tune study every week, every month, every year centered around the seven facts of music using three distinct studies. A harmonic study, a melodic study.

and improvisation study. I'm thrilled because we have solidified an amazing educational, educationally sound three study approach that is formulated and anchored in this seven facts of music. The seven facts needed to illuminate the essential jazz piano skills needed to successfully discover, learn and play tunes.

to successfully discover, learn and play jazz. So all of this to say that today we are going to do a melodic analysis. Today you're going to discover that's all melodically. You're going to learn the melody by ear of course, phrases and target notes for that's all. And you are going to play the melody of that's all supported by our voicings from our harmonic study last week.

using three standard jazz treatments. So as I always like to say, regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner, an intermediate player, an advanced player, or even if you are a seasoned and experienced professional, you're going to find this Jazz Panel Skills Podcast lesson exploring that's all to be very beneficial. But as always, before we get started, I want to

Dr. Bob Lawrence (10:18.312)
Welcome all of the first time listeners to the Jazz Piano Skills podcast. If you are a new listener, if you're new to Jazz Piano Skills, welcome. I want to invite you to become a Jazz Piano Skills member. Your membership grants you many cool perks. First of all, you receive premium podcast content, which basically means you get to listen to the entire podcast episode.

first half of every episode is free for everyone to enjoy. We deal with the question of the week, I out the educational agenda and the lesson rationale. The second half of the podcast members only lesson content, demonstrations. You also as a Jazz Panel Skills member have access to all of the podcast packets. These are the educational materials that I design and develop for every weekly podcast episode.

the illustrations, the lead sheets and the play alongs. You also as a Jazz Panel Skills member have access to the online courses which are comprehensive, interactive, self paced and sequential. As a Jazz Panel Skills member, the list just keeps going see, as a Jazz Panel Skills member you have access or you have a reserved seat as I like to say in my weekly master class which is held every Thursday evening 8 p.m. Central time and I know this is not the group

the best time for everyone around the world. But all of the master classes are recorded so that you can enjoy the class at your convenience when as often as you wish. As a Jazz Panel Skills member, you also have access to the online private Jazz Panel Skills community, which hosts a variety of educational forums, episode specific forums, general jazz forums. It's a great place to meet folks.

receive some feedback and assistance when you need it, as well as help others out and give some feedback and assistance. And finally, as a Jazz Piano Skills member, you have unlimited educational support, private, personal and professional support. So all of these amazing privileges are waiting to help you discover, learn and play Jazz Piano. So check it out at jazzpanelskills.com and of course, become a member. Once you get to the site, if you have any questions after you poke around a little bit,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:41.546)
please do not hesitate to contact me. Reach out. I'm happy to spend some time with you, help you in any way that I can, and make sure all of your questions have been answered. I also want to take just a few minutes to encourage everyone to subscribe to the Jazz Panel Skills YouTube channel. And once you do, you'll begin receiving harmony, melody, and rhythm challenges. There are jazz quick tips that I'm offering now, as well as jazz talks.

starting to populate these playlists every week, so be sure to subscribe so you are notified when a new Jazz Piano Skills video is released. Okay, so on to the question of the week. This week's question comes from Pamela Stark living in Chicago. Yeah, Chicago, Illinois. And Pamela writes, Hi Dr. Lawrence, unlike the gentleman in last week's

question of the week. I do not have a handle on my block chords. I am practicing them by family as you have suggested in previous podcast episodes and in your jazz courses. However, I find the sticking process to be very slow. Is this normal? If so, what can I do to help me remember the chords? I'm only doing root

position shapes for now. I have not started on inversions and don't plan on doing so until I have a handle on route position. I love being part of the Jazz Panel Skills community and thanks for your help." All right, well Pamela, great question and one that honestly I think when everybody gets started, when everyone gets started, they wrestle with this

right out of the gate. in other words, you're not alone. Yes, it is normal in other words. So I'm super glad to hear that you are practicing them, the chords, practicing them by family first. And for those of you listening who may not know what we're referencing when we use that terminology, by family meaning that you're putting all your C chords together, all your F chords together.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (15:06.51)
C major, C dominant, C minor, C half diminished, C diminished, and then moving on to say the F family, F major, F dominant, F minor, F half diminished, F diminished, and so on with all 12 notes. It's a great way to go about it, right? C major, C dominant, C minor, C half diminished, C diminished.

to F, F major, F dominant, F minor, F half diminished, F diminished, and then moved to B flat and so on. So I like moving around the circle of fifths, keeping it in root position, playing all five sounds, a fantastic place to start. No question about it. Now, once you are comfortable with the chords grouped by family, then I would say

it to the next level, group the chords by type. In other words, put all of your major chords together, all of your dominant, all of your minor, and so on. And maybe start, what I would recommend is starting to play them by type, moving chromatically. So you'd be C major, move up a half step, D flat major, move up a half step, D major, E flat major,

E major, and so on. Okay? Then... and that gets hard, right? I mean, quite honestly, that's a pretty big-time skill because when you start grouping like dominants together, C dominant, the D flat dominant, the D dominant, the tendency...

is to want to pass through the major in order to get to the dominant. In other words, your hands go to the major shape first, and then you go, oh yeah, dominant. Then you go up a half step major, oh yeah, dominant. And then up a half step major, oh wait a minute, dominant. And the idea is you don't want to have to pass through the major to get to the dominant or get to the minor or get to the half diminished. You want to go directly to that chord, to that type, to that sound. So it's challenging because

Dr. Bob Lawrence (17:23.88)
you've been playing the chords by family. And now all of a sudden you've taken it out of that comfy sequence and are forced to play these chords in a different grouping. So Pamela, this might maybe were some of the sticking issue, the sticking process that you referenced in your question, why, while you're finding it challenging, you may be experiencing some of this. And again, normal. Now after

I'm comfortable with my chords by family, chords by type, then I like to ratchet it up again. And now practice my chords in relationship to a key. So if I'm in the key of C, seven chords, I'm going to play those seven chords. C major, again, all in root position. C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G dominant, A minor, half-diminished.

seven chords. All root position moving right through the scale or right through the key. And again, challenging. Number one, you have to know your scales. You have to know your key. And then you have to be able to play these chords moving from major to minor to minor to major to dominant to minor to half diminish. And again, it may not these chords. You might find that they're not sticking like you were hoping that they would, but it's okay.

just keep at it. And then finally, I think I would recommend playing the chords by progression. In other words, start with the classic two, five, one progression. again, key of C, D minor, and you can do it all in root position, G dominant, move up to the G dominant, move back down to the C major.

Of course, that process gets easier when you start using inversions. But for now, if the focus is in root position, play the progression using root position chords. So we have chords by family, chords by type, chords by key, chords by progression. Again, we're just the same data. We're just looking at it from different perspectives. And then finally, I would encourage you to

Dr. Bob Lawrence (19:49.758)
take any lead sheet, any any lead sheet, it can be from a book, it can be from an application, it could be from a web page, any lead sheet with chord changes present. And then I would practice playing that lead sheet. And I do it a couple ways. I used to do this when I was when I was learning my chords, I was a kid, the only books that my mom and dad had in the house were these

read or digest music books that had chords, chords in them. So I use those. I didn't know half the tunes in the book. Well, I'm being kind. I didn't know 90 plus percent of the tunes in the book, but I would use those tunes as an exercise. So I used to sit there and look at the chord changes and I would say to myself, I'm going to pretend that all of these chords are major chords. And I would just

play every chord symbol that I would see as a major chord, and then I would say, okay, now I'm going to pretend they're all dominant chords, and I'd play them as dominant chords, and so on. I turn to the next page, now I'm going to pretend they're all minor chords. And then, of course, play the chords as notated, right, as indicated. So if it's major, play it as a major. If it's dominant, play it as a dominant. No metronome needed, no backing track needed, no time needed.

You want to see the chord symbol, play the chord symbol, go on to the next chord symbol, see it, play it. So it's basically feeding you the chords in a random order. So it like, it was a creative way for me to have musical flashcards, having somebody yell out C major, E7, A7, D minor, and so on.

I didn't have somebody to do that, so I use those reader digest books as a way to create those flashcards. So I think that's a great idea as well. So chords by family, chords by type, chords by key, chords by progression, read lead sheets, play everything, panel up, continue to play everything in root position for now until you get comfortable doing these various approaches. And just keep in mind, don't fall into the trap of thinking

Dr. Bob Lawrence (22:14.31)
every that when we that you have to be perfect. Right. For now, I think the goal would be get it to the point that you feel confident that you can play the chords. If you get stumped once in a while and you have to think about it and grab it. That's a great place to be. And once you're there, then I would encourage you to begin studying the inversions because

the study of inversions will help the stickiness, the sticky process. You may not think so initially, but I promise you, it will help. So just don't fall in the trap to thinking things have to be perfect before moving on to the next skill set because they do not. Okay. So I think you're doing great. I have to tell you that

right now what you're working on and learning the 60 chords, the 12 major to 12 dominant, 12 minor, 12 half diminished, 12 diminished, working on learning them in root position is, and listen carefully, is without question the most important jazz skill of all. It is the jazz skill of all jazz skills because without

this skill, there's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to go. So take your time, be patient with yourself, and realize that you are actually working on the most important jazz skill of all. So be patient, enjoy the journey, enjoy learning, and making music, most importantly, making music with those chords in root position.

Never lose sight of the fact that you are making music when you are learning, when you are playing your chords in root position. You are making music. So Pamela, I hope this helps. If, of course, if further clarification is needed, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. I'm happy to discuss this further with you and provide additional insight if needed.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (24:35.939)
So please do not hesitate to reach out. All right, let's discover, learn and play jazz piano. Let's discover, learn and play. That's all. All right. As always, when studying, when learning any tune, right, we have a process for that as well. It's an approach that I use that I encourage all of you to use as well. And again, genre makes no difference. It doesn't matter whether we're studying

a jazz tune, a rock tune, pop tune, country, R &B, folk, makes no difference. I would encourage you to approach it the same way. And it's a very streamlined, very simple process. Number one, listen, as we do every week, right? We listen to various artists, vocalists, instrumentalists, pianists from various genres, perform the tune.

that we are learning. Number two, after I've listened, I'd love to, as we do here, turn our attention to harmony. We do a harmonic analysis. I like to look at the form, the chord changes, the harmonic function, common harmonic movement, and of course the voicings. After the harmonic analysis, I always like to turn my attention to melody. I'll transcribe the melody of the tune always.

I never read it from a lead sheet. I used my ears. And again, if you're at the beginning of this process, this is a new process for you, I would just say be patient. It gets easier as you do it more and more. And of course, if you're having difficulty learning it by ear, using a lead sheet to help you.

to give you some insight and to help you learn the melody. Nothing wrong with that. But we learn the melody by ear as much as possible. Then I like to look at the phrases, the various treatments of the tune, always playing tunes using various treatments, various tempos. I usually stick to the traditional jazz treatments of a ballad, a bossa, a swing, a groove. And then finally, after harmony and melody,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (27:00.857)
turn my attention to improvisation. Of course, I will look at various patterns, rhythmic patterns, both harmonically and melodically, chord scale relationships, arpeggio scale movement through the various sounds, the use of tension, and so on. So it's a pretty thorough, it's a pretty simple process. Listen, harmony, melody, improvisation, exactly what we do here.

every single month at Jazz Piano Skills with every single tune that we study. So this week with our melodic analysis, we are going to be looking at the melody. We're going to be looking at the fingerings for the melody, phrases, key target notes to focus on when playing the melody. And then of course, we're going to pull in our voicings that

we've established from last week's harmonic analysis, and we're going to use those voicings to place the melody on top of. So it's going to be a great day. We got a lot to get done. So the educational agenda for today then is as follows. Number one, we are going to listen to definitive recordings of That's All. And number two, we will learn the melody. Of course, again, as much as possible by ear, we'll transcribe.

Number three, we will look at my suggested fingerings for playing that's all. Number four, we will identify the musical phrases and target notes within the phrases for that's all. And then of course, we are going to apply the voicings to the melody for that's all. Again, the voicings that we established in last week's harmonic analysis. And then finally, we'll take the melody of that's all.

and we'll apply it to three traditional standard jazz treatments, a ballad, a bossa, and a swing. So if you are a jazz piano skills member, I want you to hit the pause button right now. Take a few minutes to download and print your podcast packets, the illustrations, the lead sheets, and the play alongs. Again, I encourage you to have these in your hands when listening to every episode to get the most out of every episode. And of course,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (29:21.637)
want them sitting on your piano or your music stand as well when practicing throughout the week. These podcast packets are part of your membership, so make sure that you capitalize, use the materials to maximize your jazz growth. Okay, so now that you have your podcast packets, I want you to, as always, we're going to start with the lead sheets.

talk a little bit about the play alongs and the illustrations later on. But let's start with the lead sheets. And you should have seven lead sheets in your packet. So just want to walk you through them quickly. The first lead sheet is the fill in the blank lead sheet where we do our transcription work. Lead sheet two is a melodic lead sheet, a clean lead sheet of the melody. For that's all lead sheet three.

as you can see, has the fingerings notated that I recommend for playing that song. Lead sheet four, I have identified the key phrases within the tune, within the form of that song. And then lead sheet five, I have identified the various target notes that should be, that you should be consciously aware of when playing the melody of that song.

then lead sheet six applies the left hand block voicings to the melody of that's all, and then lead sheet seven applies the left hand shell voicings to the melody of that's all. Again, these are the block voicings and shell voicings that we studied last week with our harmonic analysis. So again, we have a lot to get done, so we need to get after this. Now, before we do though, quickly, you know, at this time I would

play a definitive recording in the past of our tune. But this year, I have decided to place the listening suggestions within the Jazz Piano Skills online community and within the forums. And again, there are a couple of reasons for this. I want us to be able to listen to more than just one tune when we check out our study of the tune. And then number two, I want to preserve as much time in every podcast episode.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (31:43.715)
as much time as possible for educational content. So I want you to head on over to the community and spend some time listening to the recordings. Lisa has done a fantastic job as always assembling a very diverse listening list of the tune this week that you'll find incredibly beneficial as well as entertaining and enjoyable as well. Right. So check it out. And once you have listened,

the recommended recordings, grab the lead sheets, grab lead sheet one, and get ready. Let's get after this. Let's take a look at how we are going to approach transcribing the melody of That's All.

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