Angel Eyes, Harmonic Analysis

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Bob, welcome to jazz piano skills. I'm Dr Bob Lawrence, it's time to discover, learn and play jazz piano. Well, here we are again. The start of a new month. September. The start of a new month is always exciting, right? Because it means a new tune. It's time to move on a fresh start. So important to have these feelings, right of a new start, a new beginning when tackling a high level discipline like jazz piano, so important to constantly create, as I like to say, forward motion. Forward motion motivates. The opposite is also true, right? The feeling of running in place or No, forward motion allows stagnation to set in, which is the kiss of death to our motivation, and that is why we at jazz piano skills. That is why we do what we do. We're always moving on. So today we are moving on to a new tune to help us accurately assess our strengths and weaknesses as jazz pianists, as jazz musicians, you know, we are constantly searching as we should be. We are constantly searching for accurate answers to the all important question. And the all important question is, what jazz piano skills do I have a command of, and which ones do I not have a command of which ones need attention? After all, if we are capable of successfully answering this all important question, we have hope we know exactly what we need to practice in order to improve as jazz pianist, you know we have spent the past four plus years tackling essential jazz piano skills, scales, arpeggios, chord scale relationships, harmonic function, piano technique, fingerings, improvisation approaches and so much more. All of it, right, all of it in preparation for our tune journey that we started back in January. So since the start of the year, we have dissected a jazz standard, a new jazz standard. Every month we've dissected it harmonically, melodically and improvisationally, right? And we do so to do what, to illuminate our strengths and weaknesses, the jazz piano skills that need attention, both conceptually and physically. I think for you, jazz piano skills members who faithfully follow the agenda, you can honestly say that you have taken your discover, learn and play approach to jazz study to a whole new level. So a new month, a new tune, and in a few weeks, an updated assessment of our jazz piano skills. This month, we're exploring one of my personal favorite standards of all times. In fact, I say that every month, right? Because they're all my favorite jazz standards. But this one, I really, truly mean it. It's one of my favorite standards of all time. It's a masterpiece. And I mean that as well, it truly is a masterpiece. It has a gorgeous melody, beautiful chords, heartfelt lyrics, and guess what? It's in a minor key, too minor, not major. Wow. It's hard to find a tune better than the standard that we're going to explore today, Angel Eyes. We will start, as we always do, with a harmonic analysis of Angel Eyes. We'll take a look at the form the chord changes, harmonic function, common progressions and, of course, voicings, left handed shells, as well as two handed structures. And next week, we'll follow up with a melodic analysis, which will involve learning the melody of Angel Eyes, of course, by ear, plus fingerings and various treatments. We will then enjoy our grand finale, as we do every month, week three, focusing on improvisation development using various patterns and motifs, common tones, common zones, and, of course, tension. Now, if you've been a faithful jazz piano. Skills. Listener, for the past four and a half years, you're you're locked and loaded, right? You're ready to go. You you have the jazz panel skills under your fingers that are needed to accurately do tune studies. And if you haven't been a faithful jazz panel skills listener, over the past four plus years, with no worries, right? The tune study that we are doing, and the process that we have implemented will help you actually sift through and prioritize the last four plus years of podcast episodes so that you can begin maximizing your jazz skills right now, immediately. So as I mentioned last month, it makes no difference whether you are a jazz piano skills vet or a rookie, you're in the right place at the right time to begin a jazz piano journey that will profoundly impact your understanding of music, which is most important. And then, of course, your understanding of music will have a profound impact on your jazz piano playing. I'm thrilled, and I hope you are, too, because having established a systematic approach to tune study that we've been implementing since the start of the year, we now have this assembly line, if you will, that we can repeat every month with every tune that we tackle, and This means our learning process will only get faster because our skills are getting better and stronger. So today we begin our harmonic analysis of Angel Eyes. Today you're going to discover this classic standard by Matt Dennis. You're going to learn the form chord changes and harmonic function for Angel Eyes. And you're going to play Angel Eyes using my suggested voicings, my left hand shell voicings, my two handed voicings, plus we're going to look at the comma common harmonic progressions that's that's found within Angel Eyes for ear training development. So, as I always like to say, regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, now beginner, an intermediate player, an advanced player, or even if you are a seasoned and experienced professional, you're going to find this jazz piano skills podcast lesson, exploring Angel Eyes to be very beneficial. But before we get started, before we jump in, I want to, as I always do, welcome first time listeners to jazz piano skills. And if you are indeed new to jazz piano skills, you're a new listener to the podcast, or just new to jazz piano skills in general, I want to invite you to become a jazz piano skills member. Your membership comes with many perks, many privileges. First of all, it grants you access to the premium content, not only for this podcast episode, but for every weekly podcast episode. And premium content will help you, of course, thoroughly and correctly discover, learn and play the jazz standard we are currently exploring, and so much more like for example, as a jazz panel skills member, you have access to the past, current and future educational weekly podcast packets. These are the illustrations, the lead sheets and the backing tracks for the play alongs that I design and develop for every weekly podcast episode to help you get the most out of each episode. Now you'll also have access to a self paced and sequential jazz piano curriculum, which is loaded with comprehensive courses, all of the courses containing educational talks, interactive media to help you conceptually digest the jazz panel skill that we are studying, there are video demonstrations of the jazz panel skill and all 12 keys and so much more. You also, as a jazz piano skills member, have a reserved seat in my online weekly masterclass, which is held every Thursday evening. Now if you can't attend, it's no problem, because the master classes are recorded and you can watch and re watch the video of the class whenever and as often as you wish. Now you also have access to an online interactive fake book that contains must know jazz standards, all of them with excellent chord changes. The chord scale relationships are mapped out. Harmonic function analysis is laid out as well. There are listening suggestions and historical insights for each tune as a jazz panel skills member. You can also enjoy the online private jazz piano skills community, which host a variety of engaging forums. And the community is a great place to hang out with some old friends, and, of course, a great place to meet some new jazz friends as well. Last but. Not least, as a jazz panel skills member, you have access to unlimited private, personal and professional educational support whenever and as often as you need it now, all of these amazing privileges are waiting to help you discover, learn and play jazz piano. So check it all out@jazzpanelskills.com

and, of course, become a member and begin enjoying premium podcast content as well, as well as all of the other perks that I just mentioned. Of course, if you get to the website, you poke around a little bit, you have some questions, please contact me. I'm happy to spend some time with you and answer any questions that you may have. Okay, speaking of questions, it's on to the question of the week. And this week's question comes from Joyce Bailey, living in Helsinki Finland. And Joyce writes, I am trying to improve my comping skills, but finding it much harder than anticipated, right? Of course, do you have a list of do's and don'ts that you could share along with any tips on how best to approach practicing this skill? Thanks so much for all you do really enjoyed the podcast. Well, Joyce, that is a great question, and it's a great question for several reasons. Number one, we rarely think about or talk about, practicing our comping we should. We should be talking about it, but rarely, if ever, we do. And number two, practicing comping is an excellent way to improve our internal, internal sense of time, which, of course, is the most important skill of all. And again, we rarely, if ever, talk about it. And number three, comping forces us to deal with our rhythmic development, which of course, is another skill that gets very little attention. You know, we all love to talk about improvising, which, honestly, I believe, easily takes up 90 plus percent of the jazz education discourse, right? But skills like comping, which forces us to deal with other essential jazz skills, such as time, rhythm, space, repetition, voicings, right? Comping always takes a back seat. So Joyce, I really appreciate this question. Okay, so first, for those of you who may be unfamiliar with the term comping, C, O, M, P, I, N, G, comping. Let me give you a good definition for what it is. And of course, I lifted this definition from Wikipedia. So not everything on Wikipedia is bad. So this is good. This is really good. So here's what I got from Wikipedia. It says in jazz comping is the chords, rhythms and counter melodies that keyboard players, guitar players or drummers use to support a musician's improvised solo or melody lines. It is also the action of accompanying and the left hand part of a solo pianist, all right? That's why we always deal with left hand voicings and two handed voicings as pianist, right? So that's not bad, right? That's a that's a pretty good definition of comping. I want to read it again in jazz. Comping is the chords, rhythms and counter melodies that keyboard players, guitar players or drummers use to support a musician's improvised solo or melody lines. I like it, right? So with that being said, here are my top five tips Joyce that I will offer you to keep in mind when practicing your comping skills. Okay? Number one, number one, when practicing your two handed Well, I would actually practice comping with two hands first, right? But when practicing comping using two hands, be sure to play the hands together. Other, right? We do not alternate it. So if I'm playing a 251, something like this,

both my hands are playing together. I'm not doing some kind of alternating this kind of silliness, right?

I hear that all the time. That's a dead giveaway that you don't know what you're doing. Okay? So number one tip the hands play together when comping together. Number two, this is maybe the hardest thing for pianists to incorporate into their playing. Number two, embrace space, in other words, silence, right and rhythmic repetition. I don't know what it is, but piano players, somehow we fear. We get really nervous around space silence, and somehow we get really down on ourselves with repetition, because somehow we think repetition is a lack of creativity, which couldn't be further from the truth, right? So number two, we want to be able to embrace space silence and rhythmic repetition. Number three, I would say to you, comping, you have to have good voicings. You have to have good voicings. And I have quite a few podcast episodes that deal with this courses. A lot of the courses at jazz piano skills deal with voicings, shell voicings, as well as the two handed voicings. So voicings are crucial to becoming to sounding like a jazz pianist, the voicings right. Number four. Check this out. Number four, think melodically. A lot of times when we comp, we only think rhythmically, but copying should be melodic, and in order for it to be melodic, you have to be able to easily harmonize arpeggios and scales. Okay, we'll talk about more that, more about that here in a minute. And number five, less is more. Less is definitely more when it comes to comping. So my top five list again for comping, two hands always played together. Do not alternate the hands. When you're comping, you want to think of your hands as being like a brass section of a big band. Okay, so the hands are played together, never alternating. Number two, embrace space silence and rhythmic repetition. Number three, make sure that your voicings are professional jazz voicings. Check out my podcast episodes dealing with voicings and the courses within jazz piano skills found at the jazz piano skills website, think melodically number four and number five less is more. So we just finished up the study of the tune I wish you love. So I'm just going to take the chord changes for that tune and I'm going to play a chorus. I'm going to comp a chorus of I wish you love, no backing track, no metronome, right? I want to focus on my time development. I want to see if I'm playing in good time. I want to use space. I want to use repetition. I want my comping to be melodic. Let's see what happened. I'm just going to try to demonstrate some good comping for you. So here we go. Check this out.

Yeah, so did you notice my hands move together, right together? So okay, so that's Joyce. That's a really fast, quick answer to how I would go about approaching copying, I would, you know, I just modeled for you not using a backing track. I would definitely use backing tracks when practicing comping. But then I would do some copying without it, without the backing track as well, and see how well you maintain the temple and the time through the entire chorus of the tune, right? So definitely use a backing track or a metronome, something to track time for you as you're practicing your comping, and remember the five tips, right? Two hands played together. Number one, number two, embrace space, repetition, rhythmic repetition, right? Number three, voicings, use good voicings. Number four, think melodically, and number five, less is more, do not overplay. So Joyce, I hope, I hope this helps. And as always, if more clarification is needed. Please let me know. I'm always happy to spend some time with you and help you in any way that I can. Okay, so let's discover learn and play jazz piano. Let's discover learn and play the great jazz classic, Angel Eyes. Okay, so a quick review. Here is my outline for learning tunes. We go through it every month, but it's worth going through every month, right? And again, the genre makes no difference. I don't care whether I'm studying a jazz tune, a rock tune, a pop tune, country tune, folk tune, R and B tune makes no difference. Here's how I go about learning a tune. Number one. Listen, most important step of all, listen. I listen to various artists, vocalist, instrumentalist, and, of course, pianist. Listen, listen, listen. Number two, I always zero in on form. First. What am I dealing with here? Is it an AA, ba, form, a b, a b, form, a B, a C. Every tune has a form. I want to know what it is before I dig in number three. As a pianist, I approach learning the chord changes and my voicings. I want the harmonic foundation of the tune under my hand. So I look, I listen for common harmonic progressions like 251145616251, and so on. Then number four. Turn my attention to the melody. Always learn the melody by ear, right? I'm not learning it off a lead sheet. I listen to those several renditions, and if I've done my step one appropriately, and I've listened to various artists, vocalists, instrumentalists and, of course, pianist, then I have no problem learning the melody. About year, I will poke it out and learn it by ear, because I want my melody to be performed very naturally, very vocal like and then finally, after I have my my form, my chords, voicings, my melody under my fingers, I turn my attention to exploring various treatments of the tune, like swing, Bossa, ballad, so on. And then, of course, improvisation. That's it. That's my down and dirty, quick outline of how I approach learning a tune. Nothing more, nothing less. That's it. So this week's harmonic analysis of Angel Eyes will have us, of course, listening, determining form, learning the chord changes, looking at the harmonic function, and of course, the voicings my left hand shell voicings, as well as my two handed voicings that I utilize when playing Angel Eyes. Next week, we'll focus on the melodic analysis. And of course, in two weeks, we'll dive into some improvisation, as always, right? We try to keep things very structured and very organized, as I like to say, very clean and tidy, with our discover, learn and play approach, right? And it makes no difference whether it's a skill study or a tune study, right, our conceptual understanding of all we do musically must be structured. It must be simple, so that it can be replicated and repeated, right? And I said it many times over the past four years, and will continue to say it many times, that if your understanding of music or any musical skill is. Not structured and simple, conceptually, we're in trouble, right? It means it's unorganized and confusing. And if it's unorganized and confusing conceptually upstairs, well then you have absolutely no shot 00, shot at executing it in your hands, on the piano downstairs, or on any instrument that you're playing. All right, therefore, we must keep our tune, study our skill, study everything we study in music. We must keep it very structured and simple and replicatable. So the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we are going to begin our discover, learn and play process for Angel Eyes. Number two, we are going to listen to a definitive recording of Angel Eyes. Number three, we will discuss the form of Angel Eyes. Number four, we will discover learn and play the chord changes for Angel Eyes. Number five, we will discover learn and play, the harmonic function of the for Angel Eyes and number six, we will discover learn and play my suggested voicings for Angel Eyes. Now, if you are a jazz piano skills member, I want you to take a few minutes right now. I want you to hit the pause button and I want you to download and print your podcast packets. These are the illustrations, the lead sheets and the play alongs and again, your membership grants you access to the premium content for this weekly podcast episode, which, of course, includes the educational podcast packets, and I mention it every week. You should have these podcast packets in your hands when listening to this episode, so that you get the most out of it. And of course, you should have them sitting on your piano when practicing as well. So okay, so now that you have your podcast packets, I want you to grab your lead sheets, your lead sheets, and you should have seven lead sheets in your podcast packet. I want to walk through them very quickly here. So lead sheet number one diagrams the form of Angel Eyes. That's lead sheet number one now lead sheet number number two identifies the unique chord changes that are found in Angel Eyes. Lead sheet three gives us a clean lead sheet for for Angel Eyes. And number four, it's a lead sheet that provides us the harmonic function, harmonic function of the chord changes found within Angel Eyes. Number five, the lead sheet five highlights five common progressions that we want to utilize, that we want to focus on, for ear training development and lead sheet six. Lead sheet six maps out my left handed shell voicings for the chord changes found within Angel Eyes and lead sheet seven again, voicings, but my two handed voicings that I use when playing Angel Eyes. So we're going to walk through these seven lead sheets today, so we have a lot to dissect. So we got to get busy. So what is the very first thing we do when studying and learning a tune. We listen, of course, right? We listen to it because, without question, listening to various renditions of the tune, at least, in my opinion, is not only the first thing that we should be doing, but I believe it's the most important step of all. Again, I cannot imagine learning any tune before spending a lot of time becoming familiar with that tune, absorbing that tune by just simply listening to that tune performed by as many artists as I possibly can find playing that tune. So I like to listen to typically vocal renditions first, because vocalists remain pretty true to the original melody, especially vocalists like your Sinatra's, Nat King Cole right? Heck, if I really want to get straight versions of a melody, I'll check out folks like Andy Williams, Doris Day, Julie London, Peggy Lee, Perry Como, right?

Then I turn my attention to instrumentalist horn players. A. Love listening to horn players play tunes, Stan Getz Clark, Terry Coleman, Hawk and Lester Young, Chet Baker, one of my all time favorites. And then last, but certainly not least, I check out as many pianists as possible now. Bottom line, I listen, and that's what we're going to do right now before going any further. Okay, so listen selecting recordings of these standards. I've said this many times as well, that it's hard, right, because there are so many wonderful, wonderful renditions to choose from, right? And there are a ton of great recordings of Angel Eyes. But I'll tell you what, when we talk about definitive recordings, why not go to the composer himself? So with Angel Eyes. Angel Eyes was composed by a gentleman by the name of Matt Dennis. Matt Dennis and Matt Dennis was a pianist, songwriter. Died back in just in 2002 I believe, and was like 88 years old, wonderful pianist, and, of course, wonderful songwriter, Angel Eyes, maybe his most, most well known tune, which he composed in 1946 1946 so many renditions of this tune, from Frank Sinatra to Nat King Cole, of course, Stan Kenton, Chet Baker, and then you got pop artists like Neil sadaka and Willie Nelson, Ray Charles and sting all performing their renditions of this tune. So it's well loved by musicians. And if you're have not heard it, you're about if you're new to Angel Eyes, you're going to love it. You're going to fall in love with it. So I want you to sit back. I want you to grab your favorite beverage. Relax and let's listen to Matt Dennis himself performing Angel Eyes. Matt Dennis is playing the piano and singing. Check this out. 

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Wow. That is a great tune. Absolutely love it, right? What a what a pianist, right, or a great songwriter, pianist, vocalist, right? Angel Eyes, right? So listen today, I will be playing, uh, Angel Eyes when we get to the voicings at the temple of right around the same temple, maybe about 7075, somewhere in there. So, so now that we know how this tune goes, let's explore those lead sheets, right? So grab lead sheet one. Let's take a look at the form of Angel Eyes, which is a standard, classic jazz Thank you for listening to jazz piano skills. The remaining premium content of this episode is available to jazz piano skills members at jazz piano skills podcast.com Visit jazzpanelskills.com to learn more about membership privileges and become a jazz piano skills member. Thank you.