Fly Me to the Moon, Melodic Analysis

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:32.993)
Welcome to Jazz Piano Skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn, and play jazz piano. Well, I hope everyone had a good weekend and is fully recovered from the holidays and knocked it out of the park last week with our harmonic analysis of Fly Me to the Moon. Such a great tune for developing essential jazz piano skills like

the essential harmonic skills that we dissected last week are form changes, harmonic function, common harmonic movement, voicings, and of course, the essential melodic skills that we're going to examine today, lyrics, melody, fingerings, phrases, melodic treatments, and of course, the essential improvisation skills that we're going to tackle next week. Plus, the essential rhythmic skills we are doing every

week. And speaking of rhythmic skills, I hope everyone enjoyed our first rhythm challenge last week. You know, I received a ton of feedback and saw some great comments and contributions to our online community, which fires me up and makes me extremely excited to unveil the rhythmic challenge for this week. You know, this is going to be a ton of fun this year and even more importantly, provide a huge

musical and jazz growth for everyone, everyone who's courageous enough to take the plunge each week to embrace the challenge. You know, on all of this a little later in the episode, but I received wonderful input regarding the rhythm scales and I'm glad that's going to work out. Now, likewise, I received some great input from you all regarding the seven facts of music that I presented last week as well.

And in case you didn't listen to last week's podcast episode or just simply need a quick refresher, here are the musical facts that are going to govern everything we do this year. Not only this year, but beyond this year. Here they are. Musical fact number one, music is the production of sound, Major, dominant, minor, half diminished, diminished. Number two, sound is produced

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:56.575)
harmonically or melodically, right? And number three, when produced harmonically, we are playing chords, voicings. Fact number four, when produced melodically, we are playing scales and or arpeggios. Fact number five, when playing scales and arpeggios, we are moving in one of two directions, we can only go up or down. That's it. Fact number six, we

camouflage scales and arpeggios with tension. Those are notes that fall outside of the key center. And fact number seven, to make musical facts one through six interesting, we add rhythm. That's it, man. Those are the musical facts, the seven musical facts. That's it. Regardless of genre. Again, we're sitting here talking jazz, but it makes no difference. Classical music, rock,

country. I don't care. Right. These are the seven facts of music. Period. The key words, sound, harmony, melody, chords, scales, arpeggios, up, down, tension, rhythm. I love that. Right. How many? is that? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Ten words, sound, harmony, melody, chords, scales, arpeggios, up, down, tension.

rhythm, music, boom, bang, that's it. Now, these seven musical facts that you must come to know, you must etch them into your mind because our daily, our weekly, our monthly, our yearly practice agenda needs to reflect these seven musical facts. Everything we study, everything we practice.

we should be able to plug into these seven musical facts. And if we cannot, if we cannot do that, then the bad news is you're wasting valuable time thinking that you're practicing when you really are not. That is a bummer. And that is precisely why

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:23.948)
We approach our tune study at Jazz Piano Skills, centering around the seven facts of music, using three distinct tune learning phases. We have a harmonic analysis, a melodic analysis, and improvisation development. All right. And this year, as I announced last week, we're adding an emphasis to each of these phases, which focuses specifically

on fact number seven, rhythm. Now again, each phase moving forward incorporates a rhythm challenge that will be posted in the private jazz panel skills community in our forums. The harmonic rhythm challenge week one involved rhythmic transcribing and comping skills, right? This week with the melodic rhythm challenge, week two, we focus on

transposing, right? Transposing melodic ideas to various key centers. And then with our improvisation rhythmic challenge next week, week three, we stretch our arpeggio and scale motion through various segments of the sound, thus transforming our soloing by increasing our vocabulary. Right? This is why

more than ever, I'm excited about this year and what we have planned. We have an amazing, educationally sound, three tier, three phase approach that is formulated from a very clear understanding of the seven facts of music. The seven facts needed to illuminate essential jazz piano skills, right?

to successfully discover, learn and play tunes, to successfully discover, learn and play jazz. So this is going to be a phenomenal year. today, today we begin our melodic analysis of the classic jazz standard that we introduced last week, Fly Me to the Moon. So today we discover Fly Me to the Moon. We learn the melody by ear. We're going to transcribe that melody.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:46.912)
We're going to look at the phrases and the target notes for Fly Me to the Moon. And of course, we're going to play Fly Me to the Moon using three standard jazz treatments. And of course, you're going to be given a rhythm challenge to develop your transposing skills. So as I always like to say, regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner, an intermediate player, an advanced player,

even if you're a seasoned and experienced pro, you know what? You're going to find this Jazz Piano Skills podcast lesson exploring flying me to the moon to be very beneficial. But before we get started, I want to, as I always do, welcome first time listeners to Jazz Piano Skills. If you're new to Jazz Piano Skills, new to the Jazz Piano Skills podcast, then welcome. I want to personally invite you to become a Jazz Piano Skills member and your membership

will grant you many perks. Number one, you will have access to premium podcast content. In other words, the entire podcast episode. The first half of every Jazz Panel Skills podcast episode is free for everyone. You know, we explore the question of the week, we lay out the educational agenda, the lesson rationale, that's all free for everyone to enjoy. The second half of the podcast, however, is for members only.

We dive into the lesson content, we have the educational demonstrations, and of course now the weekly assignment as well. You also, as a member, have access to the podcast packets. And these are designed and developed for each weekly podcast episode. These are the illustrations, the lead sheets, and the play alongs. This is educational material that I developed to help you get the most out of every podcast episode.

You should absolutely have them in your hands when listening and of course sitting on your piano when practicing as well. As a member, you also have access to the online courses. These are comprehensive, interactive, self-paced and sequential courses that contain interactive learning media that helps you digest the jazz piano skills conceptually so that you have a shot at developing them physically. There are video demonstrations of those skills and all 12 keys. So the courses are very beneficial.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (10:12.746)
You also as a member have access to the online weekly master classes, which I host every week, every Thursday evening, 8 p.m. Central time. And if you can't make it, it's no big deal. As a member, these master classes are recorded and you can listen and relisten to the recordings of the classes as often as you wish. And you also have access to the private jazz piano online community, right, where we host.

variety of forums. There are episode specific forums and of course, general jazz forums as well. It's a great place to meet friends and check out the various questions and answers, feedback and assistance. It's wonderful. And last, certainly not least as a Jazz Panel Skills member, you have access to unlimited educational support. This is private, personal and professional educational support as often

as you wish. You can access the support through the SpeakPipe widget. There's a web form, my office number here at the Dallas School of Music, and of course email as well. All of these amazing privileges, these perks are waiting to help you discover, learn, and play jazz piano. So check it all out at jazzpianoscales.com and of course become a member and begin enjoying premium podcast content and all of the other perks that I just mentioned. Of course, get to website, poke around, have

have some questions, do not hesitate to contact me. I'm always happy to spend some time with you, help you in any way that I can and answer all of your questions. All right, well, speaking of questions, it's on to our question of the week. Okay, so this question of the week for this week comes from Pat Stevenson, living in Lexington, Kentucky. And Pat writes, we had our first

rhythm challenge last week and I must admit, initially I thought it would be easy and I must admit as well, I was wrong. I found transcribing the rhythm to be very difficult and I'm not sure why. I'm looking forward to developing my rhythm understanding and playing, but I am not off to a good start. What tips can you give?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:35.53)
to help a stunned and rhythm shock newbie. I don't want to suck at this. Well, all right, but listen, man, you might suck at it now, but you won't suck at it by the end of the year. And you know what? I to be honest, congrats for having the courage to openly admit that something is kicking your butt.

Because that, honestly, that's the very first step at getting better at any skill is having the guts to say, dang, man, I suck at this. Right now, you know what? With that being said, I promise you that you did not do as poorly as you think you did. We all have this tendency to be a little harsh on the negative side when it comes to accurately assessing our own skills, which again is good.

especially if we want to get better. However, you know, we don't want to let it discourage us to the point that we just throw up our hands and we give up. And obviously this is not the case for you, because you took the time to write and submit your question, looking for some insight, for some tips to help you gain a command of rhythmic transcribing, which is not easy. So

Here are a few tips that I would suggest. I would suggest keeping these in mind when we tackle this skill again next month with a new tune. So tip number one. You ready? Tip number one. Listen, listen, listen.

Listen for what? Well, listen for counts one, two, three, and four. Now I know this may sound like I'm stating the obvious, but it has to be said out loud, right? The question needs to be asked. Do you hear count one, count two, count three, count four of every measure?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (14:54.72)
Can you clap on the downbeat of each measure? All right. Now, if the answer is yes, then you're ready for tip two. If you cannot, then I would stay put and practice hearing and practice clapping counts one, two, three, four. That's tip number one, and it's huge. Okay. Don't move on.

until you can do that. Tip number two, listen, listen.

Listen. Listen for what? Listen for the upbeats of counts one, two, three, and four. This is not so obvious, but the question needs to be asked. Do you hear the upbeats of counts one, two, three, and four? In other words, can you clap on the upbeat of each measure? Think of it this way. There is a downbeat and an upbeat.

for counts one, two, three, and four. If you can clap upbeats, then you are ready for tip three. And if you cannot, again, I would stay put and practice hearing and clapping the upbeats of each count. Counts one, two, three, and four. So tip one, clapping the downbeats. Tip number two, clapping the upbeats. Tip number three.

pay careful attention to what is happening on counts one and two, and then what is happening on counts three and four. In other words, subdivide the measure. Instead of thinking of all four beats at once, begin hearing the first half of the measure, counts one and two, and then begin hearing the second half of the measure, counts three and four.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (16:58.228)
Now it's interesting, music is typically written in this way, this manner as well, right? As if there's like this invisible bar line splitting the measure in half. The first half of the measure counts one and two. The second half of the measure count three and four. Tip number four, nail your down beats first. Right? So

ask yourself the question, is there something being played physically being played on count one is so market on your staff paper, your notebook paper, your candy bar wrapper, whatever you're using to sketch out the rhythm makes no difference, right? Just market beat count one. Boom, there's something happening. Is there something happening on count two? If so market. So we've got the first half of the measure taken care of something happening on account one, something happening on count two.

Now turn your attention to the second half of the measure. Is there something happening on count three? If so, market something happening on account four again, if so market, okay. Tip number five, do the same process for the upbeats of each downbeat, right? So there is there something happening on the upbeat of count one? If so, market is something happening on the upbeat of beat.

two or count two. If so, mark it. So now we've got the first half of the measure taken care of. Turn your attention to the second half of the measure. Something happening on the upbeat of count three, mark it. Something happening on the upbeat of count four, it. Okay.

Tip number six. Practice clapping dotted rhythms, especially the dotted quarter note eighth note combination and the dotted eighth note sixteenth note combinations. Now I promise you, I promise you, if you get comfy with tips one through five, one through five,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (19:12.431)
you're going to be able to rhythmically transcribe 90 plus percent of all melodies you hear. Tips one through five, 90 plus percent of all melodies you hear. If you get comfy with tip six, the dotted rhythms, right? You're golden. You will be able to rhythmically transcribe everything you hear. I say everything, maybe some weird piece of music. I don't know.

everything that I play everything that I hear, right? So tips number one through five absolutely will set set the pace for you 90 plus percent of all melodies you hear you add number six tip number six, you're good to go. So Pat, great question. And as always, if more clarification is needed, or if you want to dive deeper, do not hesitate to reach out to me, right? This is a very quick overview.

on how to improve your rhythmic transcribing skills. So I'm always happy to spend some additional time with you if needed and help you in any way that I can. All right, let's get busy, right? Let's discover, learn and play jazz piano. Let's discover, learn and play, fly me to the moon, a melodic analysis. When studying, when learning, any two.

I approach it the same way. And again, you're going to get tired of hearing me say it, but I'm going to say it. Genre makes no difference. It doesn't matter what kind of song it is, a jazz tune, rock tune, pop, country, folk, R &B. All right. I go about it the same way. And here's how I go about it. I listen, of course, various artists, vocalist, instrumentalist, pianist, and from various genres. I don't just listen to jazz musicians.

Right? Anyone performing Fly Me to the Moon, I want to check it out. Number two, I always turn my attention to doing a harmonic analysis, just like we did last week, where I'm looking at the form of the piece, the changes, the function, common movement, voicings, and of course, rhythm. Then I turn my attention to a melodic analysis, like we're going to do today. I transcribe the melody. I don't read it from a fake book. I don't buy a piece of sheet music. Right?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:39.475)
it out, I sit at the piano and I poke it out, I transcribe it, right? I look at phrases, look at target notes, I explore various treatments of the tune, standard treatments like a ballad, bassa, and swing, and of course, rhythm. And then finally, I'll turn my attention to improvisational development, where I look at the chord scale relationships, arpeggio scale movement through the sounds, tension notes, right? And of course, rhythm.

It's pretty thorough. It's a pretty complete approach. It's organized, it's structured, it remains the same. It's constant that I can move from tune to tune to tune to tune. So important. So this week's melodic analysis will have us, of course, listening and we will then turn our attention to transcribing the melody and our phrases and our target notes and our various treatments. Next week,

We'll focus on part three, which is the improvisation development. So the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we are going to listen to definitive recordings of Fly Me to the Moon. Number two, we will learn the melody, as I just mentioned, by ear transcribing the melody for Fly Me to the Moon. Number three, we will discover, learn and play my suggested fingerings.

for playing the melody so that you can articulate it with a proper and authentic jazz articulation. Number four, we will identify the melodic phrases of the melody for Fly Me to the Moon. Number five, we will apply the voicings, the left-hand shell voicings from last week. We will apply those voicings to the melody for Fly Me to the Moon. And then finally, number six, we will apply the three standard jazz treatments.

the ballad, the bossa, and the swing treatment to fly me to the moon. So there's always a lot to get done. And 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. Again, these are the illustrations, the lead sheets and play alongs. And again, your membership grants you access to the premium content and of course the podcast packets. So

Dr. Bob Lawrence (24:05.689)
for every, for every weekly podcast episode. So, as I mentioned earlier, you should have these in your hands when listening to the podcast to get the most out of it. And of course you should have them sitting on your piano when practicing as well. Okay. So now that you have your podcast packets in front of you, I want you to grab your lead sheets as always, right? Grab your lead sheets and you should have six lead sheets in your packet, six lead sheets.

just want to walk you through them quickly before we do a deep dive. So, lead sheet one, scale one, you can see this is what I call a fill in the blank ear training exercise, fill in the blank ear training exercise. we have Fly Me to the Moon here. I have some guide tones, if you will, to help you navigate through transcribing the melody successfully. Okay.

So it truly is a fill in the blank exercise. We have the guide tones. There's a melody happening in between those guide tones. I want you to sit at the piano and poke that melody out and fill in the blanks. Okay? Doesn't have to be fancy musical notation. However you need to do it. We're just trying to at the end have something notated there that when you play it, you go, hey, that's fly me to the moon. All right.

That's lead sheet number one. Lead sheet number two is a melodic lead sheet of the melody of Fly Me to the Moon. So you can basically check your work, right? You can check your work and can see how well you did. Lead sheet number three has the fingerings notated that I suggest using when playing the melody of Fly Me to the Moon to give you the optimal chance of being able to articulate the melody in a jazz

idiomatically jazz correct way. Okay. Lead sheet number four identifies the phrases, the various phrases that are found within the melody of Fly Me To The Moon. Lead sheet five, we zero in on those phrases and the target notes that you need to be aware of within those phrases for Fly Me To The Moon. And then of course, lead sheet six takes the left hand shell voicings that we explored last week with our harmonic analysis.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:32.45)
and we drop the melody in on top of those voice scenes to hear how the melody and the harmony or the voicing sound together. So it's a wonderful packet. Again, we have a ton to get through today. So let's get after this thing. typically, typically at this time, we would, I would play a definitive recording of the tune, right? But just as I did last week,

I have decided to place the listening suggestions in the Jazz Panel Skills Community Forums. And again, there are a couple of reasons for this. Number one, I want to be able to suggest more than one tune to check out. And number two, I want to preserve as much time as possible for the educational content of this podcast. So right now, again, hit the pause button. I want you to head over to the community.

and I want you to spend some time just listening to the few selections that I have made of folks instrumentalist performing, fly me to the moon. Okay. And once you have listened to the recommended recordings, then I want you to grab your lead sheets all six, right. And let's grab and we'll start with lead sheet one. Okay. Lead sheet one, fill in the blanks. Here are a few thoughts to keep in mind.