Good Grief Vince Guaraldi, O Tannenbaum

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:01.763)
Josh Walsh is in the house at Jazz Piano Skills. Josh, how are you, Man, it's been way too long, brother. But you know what? I'm not surprised because you've been just killing it and just dominating the jazz world online with all the great stuff that you've been putting out. man, why don't you take a few minutes right now and talk a little bit about that? Because you're doing some phenomenal stuff.

Josh Walsh (00:07.876)
What's up, Pop? It's always good to be here.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:31.171)
phenomenal things, my friend.

Josh Walsh (00:33.586)
Look, don't want to, nobody's going to stick around to listen to the whole podcast if I talk about myself at the beginning. So no, I'm teaching jazz five days a week for various people, all online through zoom through this fancy studio that I have built since the last time we were here. I have a newsletter that goes out every week. That's become very popular. I, you know how much I love my transcriptions. That's why we're here today. I do a new transcription every week and I put it up in the, in the newsletter. So if anybody wants that, go to jazz library.com jazz library with a hyphen between jazz hyphen library.com.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:35.669)
Ha ha ha!

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:44.473)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:50.818)
I get it.

Josh Walsh (01:02.842)
It's right there on the homepage, just sign up. It's free, no strings attached. I just send a transcription out every week. Yeah, all kinds, I mean, there's just so much, man. Like six videos a week, all this stuff, there's so much going on.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:11.169)
Yeah. Gosh. Yeah, you've been killing it. And I get your email. I get your newsletter. Love it. Always great stuff. Always high production stuff, too, man. You're not putting out raunchy, bad quality materials, man. This is like high-end stuff, bro.

Josh Walsh (01:29.964)
I do my best, thank you, I appreciate that.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:31.897)
Yeah. what's the goals for, what do you got cooking for us for 2025? Because I know that's just right around the corner. And I know you probably got a whole business plan laid out. You got a whole business plan laid out. Yeah, you got a.

Josh Walsh (01:47.002)
Well, actually, I mean, I certainly have a business plan laid out, but I'm a mission-driven guy right now. All right, so you know this, used to run a company that I sold a few years ago. And when I switched to do jazz full-time, I was like, I want this to be mission-focused, not like profit-driven. Right, and so my whole goal is to reach, I get 100,000 people to learn how to play jazz. That's the whole mission.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:54.137)
Yeah.

Right? Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:03.449)
Yeah, yeah, there you go. There you go.

Josh Walsh (02:11.478)
And so you do that in way where you can reach as many people as possible, sharing great transcriptions over emails and making YouTube videos and putting out some education materials. And you give me a platform every once in to come chat with you here. And it's fun. That's the whole goal, though, is that I used to be a terribly stressed out person that didn't have any outlet to get rid of my stress. And it was what I realized that all my musical training actually was the best way for me to deal with coming home after a busy day at work and just...

kind of angry at the world and I would punch the wall, this is a better thing to punch. Don't punch your piano, but you you can deal with some stuff through it. And so I think a lot of people need, even if they never aspire to play for somebody else or go out and go to a jam session, if they just want to sit at home and play because it gives them an outlet at the end of the day, I mean, I think that's important.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:43.001)
Alright, yes.

Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:58.105)
Yeah, so you don't regret the transition at all. You don't regret saying goodbye to the corporate world, jumping back into the music world, jumping back into the jazz world. You're like, man, this is best thing I've ever done.

Josh Walsh (03:09.594)
The only thing that's weird is that my customers, it's their hobby, which I didn't anticipate. So like my business, my work hours, if you will, I love this so much. It's like pinch me, but my work hours are after work for everybody and on the weekends, right? So it can be a long hours every once in a while, but no, just love it, man. It's so much fun. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (03:14.017)
Yeah, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (03:24.995)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (03:29.497)
Awesome. Well, you're a great contributor, and so I'm glad that you took the dive, the plunge, and made the move. Welcome back to the jazz world. It's great to have you, man.

Josh Walsh (03:46.042)
I appreciate that so much. I'm just having so much fun.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (03:48.109)
Yeah, So, okay, so look, here we are today. It's the end of the year and, you know, Christmas time. And for jazzers, when Christmas rolls around, we tend to think of one person. Right? Vince Garaldi, right? I mean, come on. He's got the market on Christmas when it comes to the jazz world. And so here we are, man, with...

Christmas time and we got old Tonnenbaum here, a transcription that we're gonna be looking at today. So talk a little bit about your fascination and love with Vince Guaraldi and Old Christmas Tree.

Josh Walsh (04:29.37)
I have a little bit of a story with this tune. I don't know that I have a huge like obsessive fascination with it, but when I was like, I don't know, maybe 12 years old, my neighborhood music teacher at the local music store assigned me a Christmas tree out of the Vince Coraldi, know, the Charlie Brown Christmas song book that every bookstore in the world sells, right? And so they had me play it. And I remember going through so much discovery about finding these chords that I'd never heard these sounds before.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (04:34.734)
Okay.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (04:45.027)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

Josh Walsh (04:58.042)
The video I put up on my YouTube channel last week is all about this story of how I discovered these fancy dominant chord voicings and upper structures and things that I, as somebody who wasn't interested in jazz at all, didn't understand. So I kind of really, it became a gateway for me to like open my eyes to all these different jazz ideas that as a 12 year old kid I'd never seen before. But I remember being terribly disappointed because the more that I dug into this song, the more that I learned and the more I got excited. But then when you get to the solo section,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:08.611)
Yeah, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:16.419)
Right.

Josh Walsh (05:25.594)
in the book that they sell, it just says solo. It has like the first 16 or 20, maybe 32 bars of the solo. And then there's a repeat sign and it just says repeat for all solos. And I'm like, no, the 12 year old kid in me wants to know all the notes, right? I wanted to sit down and play along with them. And so I sat down and played their CD or whatever it was at the time. Maybe it was a cassette, I don't remember. Over and over and over and over, trying to figure out the notes.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:38.137)
You're right, right. You're right.

Josh Walsh (05:51.066)
to this solo and I was not mature enough for music edition to figure it out and I kind of put it aside. Every Christmas it comes up and I'm like, damn it, one of these days, I'm gonna learn this solo. Well, here it is, it's been 29 years. So I finally last week, I just bit the bullet. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it right. So I did. So what we're talking about, we know O Christmas Tree, right? Maybe I should play an excerpt of it from the beginning. I'm sure everybody knows it, right?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:59.929)
You

Dr. Bob Lawrence (06:04.505)
my gosh.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (06:18.877)
yeah, let's, yeah.

Josh Walsh (06:21.451)
I'm sorry.

Josh Walsh (06:36.702)
Just beautiful voicings. Yeah, all of their classic. It's in 3-4. Right? But then when you get to the solo section...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (06:38.167)
It's gorgeous, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (06:46.211)
Yeah, something's...

yeah, something changes.

Josh Walsh (06:53.978)
So this is the part of the solo that's in the book. I didn't transcribe this section. It's not in the PDF. Because it's in the book if you can go buy it and I didn't want to, you know, publish somebody else's copyrighted material. But it's in four now, right? We switched to 4-4 and it swings. So it went from this kind of rubato 3-4 ballad into a swing feel.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:08.385)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:16.697)
yes it does.

Yeah, yeah. And man, does that conjure up childhood memories or does that conjure up childhood memories, right? And I'm talking not just for the jazz musician, right? All the adults I speak to, I mean, you mentioned this tune, they all mentioned Vince Garaldi, they all mentioned the Charlie Brown Christmas. And, you know, that imagery of him walking across the snow, you know, with the Christmas tree.

Josh Walsh (07:46.702)
I put this question out on Instagram the other day, which was, if you wanted to get somebody into jazz who wasn't into jazz, you had an open-minded friend who you wanted to share your love with jazz with, what would you introduce them to? And of course, most of the answers are like, well, try and find something similar to the music they already enjoy. But the other answer was Charlie Brown Christmas. Who doesn't love Charlie Brown Christmas?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:50.044)
it's fantastic.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:54.872)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (08:08.579)
That's right. In fact, that's a great point because I actually think that this would be if you wanted to introduce somebody to jazz, like you said, said, I'm open to hearing what you have. Man, if you drop this on the turntable, I think you got a winner because I don't know anybody. Like you said. Yeah, right.

Josh Walsh (08:26.84)
Yeah, it's not cartoony jazz, it's not really dumbed down. I would put like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood in the same thing, right? It's authentic, real fun. Johnny Costa playing on Mr. Rogers versus Vince Grotty here. Authentic, fun, real jazz, but yet makes you, you know, gives you this sentimentality.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (08:32.493)
Yeah, right. Yeah.

my gosh.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (08:41.527)
Yeah, Ali man, it's funny that you say that because now that you you bring that comparison up, that's right. mean, Mr. Rogers neighborhood, I used to tune in for the last three minutes. I just wanted to hear that last that the last three minutes, man. Give me the last three minutes. And you're right. That's a great that's a great comparison.

So, okay, are we gonna listen to this solo and then we're gonna talk about it a little bit and kind of break it down and... No, no.

Josh Walsh (09:05.624)
Yeah, I think that's fine. think the... Sorry, I cut you off. I didn't mean to do that. The main thing that happens, right, is I have a whole collection of these. I put out a transcription every week. I have so many transcriptions that I've done and collected from other people and omnibooks that I've bought. But the question I get is like, what am I supposed to do with it? Like, do I just sit and play along with it? Or do I study it somehow? How do I get the ideas from the solo that's in front of me that I've transcribed and actually make that become part of my playing?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:17.227)
You're... Dude, you are the king of transcription.

Josh Walsh (09:34.948)
going forward, like what practically do I do? And so that was what I wanted to do with this thing, is I thought we could talk about some of the observations that I made from deconstructing this. So let's listen to the solo first.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:35.181)
Right. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:43.085)
Yeah, great. Yeah.

Josh Walsh (09:47.268)
see if I can find it. should be right here somewhere.

Josh Walsh (10:00.91)
go.

Josh Walsh (10:07.418)
you

Josh Walsh (10:19.514)
you

you

Josh Walsh (11:40.474)
bass solo for a little while. It comes back in here.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (11:41.333)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:22.105)
Just let me just let me just let me sit here for a while. Yeah, that's really good, man. Hey, awesome job with the transcription. It's fantastic.

Josh Walsh (12:24.004)
So good. It's so good. How could you not be happy?

Josh Walsh (12:34.456)
I just found a mistake that I made. gotta go through and fix now, but that's the way it works. Yeah, thank you. Do you know the term splitting the metronome? I'm sure you do, but splitting the metronome. So splitting the metronome is, my teacher used to teach me, is that you play so perfectly in the pocket that you can't hear the metronome, right? So you're perfectly nailing the feel everywhere. So the thing that you lose in this transcription, if we started like maybe the second half after the bass solo.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:37.069)
Yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah.

Splitting the metronome? No, I do not. No, what is that?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:54.361)
okay.

Josh Walsh (13:04.728)
is you wanna get the feel, right? The notation loses the feel. It gives you kind of sort of an idea for what the rhythms are he's playing, but you'll notice like he pulls back in some sessions and plays behind the beat, and then in other sections he plays right on the beat. He goes straight back into time. And so the way that, like the first thing that I like to do with the transcription is to play along with it and see if I can make Vince disappear. Meaning I hear myself, but I don't hear Vince, right? So like, let me, I'll demonstrate like this.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (13:06.659)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (13:16.707)
Right.

Right. Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (13:28.843)
Yes, right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right.

Josh Walsh (13:35.194)
you

Josh Walsh (13:50.767)
you

Josh Walsh (14:01.306)
you

Dr. Bob Lawrence (14:06.657)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Josh Walsh (14:07.418)
What? Yeah, it's so fun to do that because, you learn so much about where does he articulate things? How does he emphasize? Where does he pull back? Where does he play on the beat? To me, that's like, that's the fun.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (14:17.143)
Yeah, yeah, you're right. You know, the first time I really, really experienced that quite, I've never heard that phrase, right, splitting the metronome, but I remember in a class at North Texas, a jazz transcription class, Jim Riggs, who was the jazz saxophone instructor there at the time. So it was a graduate level class. The first day of the class,

Josh he walks in he doesn't say a word we're all sitting there he doesn't say a word and of course this is back this is a long time ago so it was like turntables right records right so he put a Cannonball Adderley album on the bossa you know where he's playing all the bossa nova tunes puts a Cannonball Adderley record on he starts the cut and he starts playing and I remember I looked at the guy next to me I said is he lip-syncing because he played he played

He played so perfectly with Cannonball Adderley that you couldn't tell the difference. And I actually compared it to somebody lip-syncing. And so that's what you're getting at, and I think that's fantastic.

Josh Walsh (15:24.154)
Yeah, yeah, and you learn so much about feel, right? So one of the things that you learn if you're brand new, let's say you're a classical player and you've been into jazz, you get this notation that's like two eighths equals the two triplet thing, right? And like nobody really swings like that. It's just like a gross approximation kind of of what swing feels like. And you can't describe it with words. The only way you can do it is to mimic it and feel it. So I think the way, and so many artists do it differently.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (15:30.339)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (15:37.763)
Yeah. Right, right.

You're right, Nate, right.

Josh Walsh (15:53.038)
And at different tempos, they do it differently. And beboppers do it differently than... So to understand all that, you can't just like study it in a book. You gotta sit and play along. And so I use this tune, this track, this track, this app called AnyTune, where it let me slow things down. And you loop little sections and you can figure out like, he's holding back or he's pushing.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (15:56.653)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (16:01.966)
Yep.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (16:07.907)
Yeah, it's a app.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (16:11.969)
Yeah. You know, with that being said, it's funny you start off the conversation, you start off the conversation with this this topic because I'm going to throw something out at you and I'm just going to get your reaction. I think the most important, I think the most important measure in this whole transcription, if you were to ask me, what is the most important, what measure captures at all, right, captures it all.

that if you the most significant measure of practice if I were a student one of the practices the measure that I would pick the measure that I would pick are you ready you don't have a measure number here but I'll tell you where it is if you go to the very last line the very last second page second page of the transcription very last line go to the last measure and then go one measure up what do we have we have

Josh Walsh (16:58.606)
of which page.

Josh Walsh (17:08.334)
Yeah, those triplets, things we were talking about.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (17:10.905)
No, very last measure, second line from the end, the very last measure.

Josh Walsh (17:19.197)
this one.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (17:21.857)
No, maybe my printout is different. It's the F major, G minor seven. You have a... Let me see. Yes. I'm sorry, page three. I'm sorry. Dude, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Page three.

Josh Walsh (17:27.585)
You see my screen?

Josh Walsh (17:32.73)
Page two or is it page three?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (17:40.601)
Yeah, yes, but I'm talking about that measure with the three quarter notes in it.

Josh Walsh (17:43.844)
that one.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (17:50.829)
That's the measure of

Josh Walsh (17:53.018)
That one. Yeah. Yeah

Dr. Bob Lawrence (17:54.135)
That one, that's the most important measure in the entire transcription.

Josh Walsh (17:58.36)
You are freaking right. I agree with you.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (18:00.375)
Yes, and if you can listen to how he articulates those three quarter notes in that measure, and if you can play along with him in that measure, and you can split the metronome as you put it, and disappear with Vince Giraldi on that measure, you are off to a great start. You are off to becoming a great jazz pianist. good man.

Josh Walsh (18:22.202)
100 % agree. There's a couple, I think this one, at the top, also is right up there, Simple bluesy lick.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (18:27.155)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right. But yes, as we were listening to it and we got to the end of that solo and he played those three quarter notes, I actually went, because just the way he laid back on those three quarter notes. I think that I think the myth out there or the mistake that a lot of beginning jazz students make.

is we always tend to and listen I did the same thing our eyeballs go to the the eyeballs go to the ink where where's the most ink right and what and we and our eyeballs go to what looks the most complicated and that's got to be the most hip and that's got to be where the gold gold is but but the reality of it is and I was just talking about this in the master class last night that if you can play four quarter notes here

Vince is playing, I love this, Vince is playing three quarter note, he's playing three beats of sound followed by a beat of silence. And let's not forget, you gotta play silence too, right? That measure, three beats, three quarter note sound, three beats of quarter note sound and a beat of quarter rest, right? And I was saying in the master class that look, that's in the hands of a skilled

musician, a skilled jazz improviser such as Vince Giraldi, four quarter notes is hip, is very, very hip. we, and we don't, as teachers, we don't stress that enough and we don't stress the need to practice that enough. Right? We kind of skim over it, unfortunately.

Josh Walsh (20:13.946)
I agree with you. I'm going to put an asterisk on it. But I think I agree. So I told you I have three observations about this. That's the third one. So let's just dive into it. Which to me, everything that's interesting about

Dr. Bob Lawrence (20:22.945)
Okay. Okay.

Josh Walsh (20:30.714)
To me, everything that's interesting about jazz solos in general, including this one, is variety and spontaneity, right? So when I see, there are a few different ways to create variety. One would be in the rhythmic units, we'll come back to that one in a second. One would be where you start your lines, that's another one. And the third one is this contrast between the kind of faster rhythms and the slower rhythms. And I think one of the reasons that this works so well is because this comes after it.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (20:47.833)
All right.

Josh Walsh (21:02.318)
Right? The contrast of the slow line versus the fast line. And if you go through and listen to this solo again, it's happened several times where he has this crazy flurry of technical notes, and then he ends it with another phrase that's just a simple quarter note or simple eighth notes. And the two contrast between those two things.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:16.025)
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. And would you also agree with what comes after that? That flurry that comes after that? What he's still hearing, what he's still feeling is Yes.

Josh Walsh (21:32.216)
Yeah, of course. It's a difference in texture, not a difference in like melodic material. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:39.033)
Yeah, yeah. And the second point that you brought up, I like your three points. Can you say those again? Say them slowly, because I want everybody to hear those again.

Josh Walsh (21:47.116)
Yeah, yeah, so let's just let's get all three of them out and then we can explore whatever we want. So the first one is a variety in rhythmic units. So that would be like this line at the top here of page three.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:50.741)
Okay, yes.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:55.609)
Okay.

Josh Walsh (22:06.426)
It's got a mixture of eighth notes, eighth note triplets, and sixteenth notes. And you have to play those with precision so that you hear clearly the difference between the eighth notes and the triplets. So many people I think play those sloppy and you lose just how freaking cool it is to have the subdivision change like that in the middle of the line. I have so many students who just play eighth note lines all the time, right? And it gets kind of monotonous and dull and boring. No matter how cool your notes are, the rhythms are boring. So that's observation one. Observation two is where in the measure your lines start.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (22:22.305)
All right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (22:26.381)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Walsh (22:35.994)
So again, I have a lot of students who start all their lines on the and of one or on beat one or on beat two. And they just play phrase after phrase after phrase. That might be really cool hit phrases, but because they all start on beat one, they start to sound boring. And then the third one is this contrast between kind of fast and slow or busy and relaxed.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (22:40.215)
Right, that's right, that's right.

Right. Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (22:49.913)
Correct.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (22:55.033)
All right. Yeah, those are all very. So which one would you say out of those three that you just mentioned, which as a beginning student, I'm learning how to improvise. I'm trying to hone my skills here. Which one would you say would be priority number one?

Josh Walsh (23:13.978)
Probably number two, where you start in the measure, because it's the easiest to get your head around, and it's the easiest to, when you look at a transcription like this, right, I don't get it, if you're watching the video of this, can see, on beat one, or beat four, starts on beat two, starts on beat three, starts on, let's call it the and of two, starts on here, a different and of two, right, starts here on beat three, every freaking line.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (23:15.683)
Good.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (23:19.213)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (23:32.119)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (23:37.273)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (23:42.809)
Yeah, and you know what he's doing, right? And jazzers, we do this kind of instinctually because we've practiced this for so long and not even really consciously aware of what we're doing, but I make a conscious effort to tell students to be consciously aware of this. I say you have to be able to hide the bar lines. You must hide the bar lines. And when you're hiding the bar lines, what you're doing is hiding the math.

Josh Walsh (23:43.236)
starts in a different place.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (24:11.735)
You're hiding 1234123412341234. So you have to hide the bar line and what you're what you just pointed out there with Vince Giraldi and that right right out of the gate, right? He's hiding those bar lines immediately, right? Coming in at different points, ending at different. Where's the bar line, right? And when you're listening, you're not even aware, right? Talk about splitting the metronome and hiding, you know, hiding why you play along with Vince. But if you hide bar lines.

That's fantastic, and that's why I agree with you. think your number two is priority number one.

Josh Walsh (24:48.408)
Yeah, I mean, think there's a responsibility. I had this shift. My teacher kind of knocked me in the head with that same idea of, because I used to be guilty of play the chord in my left hand and then let my right hand respond to whatever chord had just been played. And he's like, no, no, no, your right hand should almost like tell the other players what chord you're about to play. It should be leading you into those things. And so the same thing, we're talking about doing that idea rhythmically and instead of melodically, but yeah, that's great.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (25:00.398)
yeah right right right

Dr. Bob Lawrence (25:05.675)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, he's 100 % Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Right. OK, so how do you practice that, How do you teach a student? How does a student go about practicing various entry points, rhythmically speaking, so that they hide bar lines? What would you recommend?

Josh Walsh (25:33.652)
I'm not sure I know what to recommend there. So I have an exercise that I use that helps you practice starting lines in different places. I call it my red garland torture test. And I can show you what that is if you want. But basically we get the red garland pattern going in the left hand with a drum beat, you know, backing track going. And then you practice coming in one end, one end with your right hand. So we get the...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (25:45.326)
Okay.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (25:53.272)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:00.087)
Yeah. Yeah, right.

Josh Walsh (26:03.428)
Then you move it to two and.

and you do it on three and you do it on four and then you learn how to do it on the off beats, right? And that will give you, this is more like a hand coordination thing that I'm teaching because I want you to get comfortable with starting these lines in different places, with your hands to be able to do it. But I think just by the nature of creating a phrase that starts on beat three, you're going to, you're gonna go over the bar line, I think. I don't actually know how to teach that, I'm curious. You're the pro, you're the doctor.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:13.303)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:17.133)
Yeah, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:28.461)
Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

Well, I don't know. Here's how I teach it. I don't teach it as rhythmically as you do. I teach it much more spontaneous in that what I do is I first have students create what I call a string of quarter notes through the entire progression. So let's say you take Old Christmas Tree. Can you start at the beginning of Old Christmas Tree and can you march?

literally march and that's what I that's the expression I use can you march quarter notes through this tune ascending and descending quarter notes using court and the only I put a restriction quarter notes using only the core primary core tones the root third five and seven of each sound and you can go up you can go down you can repeat you can change direction at will you can go however you want but you have to create an entire string of quarter notes from the beginning of the tune to the end of the tune

So what I'm really doing is trying to get them that measure that I pointed out, the second, that last measure where he's doing three quarter notes, C, D, C, and he's got a quarter rest. Trying to get them to be able to play like that quarter notes all the way through the tune. So then I say, all right, so now we're going to mathematically insert silence. And when I say mathematically insert silence, now the quarter notes are going to go measure one quarter notes.

through whatever harmony is being dictated to us, quarter notes. Measure two, four beats of silence. Measure three, four more quarter notes. Measure four, four beats of silence. So we mathematically are inserting silence. We're not hiding the bar lines. We're actually illuminating the bar lines when we do that. So then that's step two. Step three, then I say, okay, now let's play our quarter notes again all the way through. now this time,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (28:31.347)
I want you to instinctually stop and start wherever you want inserting different lengths of silence. So you can stop on count two, come back in on count three in the next measure. can, however you want to do it. And you've got to be, you're going to be, let your musical reflexes guide you with this and start and stop wherever you want.

And I model that for them just doing quarter notes, right? And as soon as I get to that step and I start hiding those bar lines because I'm playing through measures, stopping at different points, starting at different points, different lengths of silence, everyone goes, wow, wow, that actually sounds musical. I said, well, because it is, right? So I always start with those three steps to hide the bar lines because then I know we can

Josh Walsh (29:20.324)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (29:28.471)
we can add icing to the cake and hide in the bar lines as soon as we start doing like these various rhythms like you're like outlined here in this solo. You got your eighth notes you can put in there and your sixteenth notes. Wow, now you're really now you're really decorating it. But even the decoration with the eighth note and the sixteenth notes, right? You know that that quarter note string, whether that quarter note string is sound or whether that quarter note string is silent, it runs through the entire solo.

Josh Walsh (29:59.29)
I do something similar with scale running, which sounds, you know, running a constant quarter notes or constant eighth notes from the notes of the scale. We're here doing it with arpeggios, right? Of chord tones.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (30:03.2)
Yeah, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (30:08.481)
Right. Yeah, I'm doing it with arpeggios, chord tones, and I'm doing it with just quarter notes. So they don't get, I'm trying to free up the mind so the students not getting wrapped around the axle with, do I play eighth notes here? Do I play 16th notes here? Right? Because I feel like that comes later. If you can get the idea of different entry points of sound, different entry points of silence, and hide those bar lines by doing that, wow.

now you've got the main point now we can start decorating

Josh Walsh (30:42.158)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I dig that. I'm gonna practice that myself.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (30:46.401)
Yeah, it's it's you know what it's pretty illuminating because because when I when I introduced this Josh every time I introduce it to a student right I I already know that their initial instant their initial facial expression their initial body language tells me this Come on, man That's like really basic stuff He must really think I suck because I he's asking me

just to do this really fundamental, rudimental, elementary type skill. You know, I'm really put out by this. But you know what? I'll amuse them, I'll do it, here we go. They get the measure too and they go, holy crap, that's harder than I thought it was.

Josh Walsh (31:29.722)
So, I'm the same way. I'm a big stickler for fundamentals. I mean, the product that I sell is called Jazz Fundamentals. And I don't get a lot of people that ask for their money back, but occasionally I get somebody who's like, you know, I think I'm beyond this. Like, I like your program, but it's too easy for me. And chapter one is major scales. And they're like, they've been running through their classical lessons their whole life. I'm like, okay, but like put the metronome on 100 beats per minute and just play E flat.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (31:33.739)
Right. Right. Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (31:43.799)
Yeah, right, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (31:48.729)
Yeah

Josh Walsh (31:58.286)
just make up stuff in E flat and don't miss a beat, just go for like five minutes. And it's hard. And it's like, you expect to play altered, double diminished, you know, stuff if you can't do that. Sorry. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (32:03.111)
my gosh.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (32:07.065)
But, right. That's right, that's right. That's 100 % right.

Josh Walsh (32:12.844)
It is humbling though, how much stuff comes back to fundamentals and how much your ego gets hit sometimes with like, I know this stuff, why can't I play it? Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (32:19.18)
Okay.

hey for everyone, for everyone, right? You know, I'll be demonstrating it and I choke and students love it. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, you just bit it. I go, yeah, man, you know, that's what happens. So yeah, okay, so that was, so number two, we would say would be number one in terms of priority, in terms of practicing, right? All right.

Josh Walsh (32:45.786)
Yeah, I think it's the easiest one to see and the easiest one to do.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (32:48.493)
Yeah. All right, so what do you put next, What's next?

Josh Walsh (32:51.662)
the first observation, the units, specifically eighth notes and eighth note triplets. I think I caught onto this way too long, way too late in my career that so much of the swing feel comes from the contrast between the eighth notes and the eighth note triplet. And there's like, if you look at the beginning of the solo, right, the whole thing start, I'm not sharing, we go, share my screen. The whole thing starts with a triplet line. Right?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (32:57.237)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (33:19.128)
Yep.

Josh Walsh (33:20.024)
And then the second bar contrasted by playing basically eighth notes. Starts with a sixteenth note flourish, but it's...

That difference between the triplets and the... It's just so cool. To me, maybe it's like my fascination with rhythm. I don't know, but to me it's such a big importance. Early in my career, I would have just played both as eighth note lines, right? I wouldn't have thought to mix the two together like...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (33:36.313)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (33:46.157)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, question for you. I agree, right? This is really important to be able to play, seamlessly transition as a musician through quarter notes, the eighth notes, eighth note triplets, to sixteenth notes, right? To seamlessly be able to do that. So again, I guess it's the teacher in me, right?

how do you practice that? As I tell every student, right, the very first question you should ask that comes out of your mouth every time when a teacher presents a skill to begin working on, the very first question should always be, that's great. Well, how do I practice that? And I wanna talk about that a little bit because I'm not sure Vince Giraldi, right, I think it's safe to say,

Vince Giraldi isn't thinking, I'm going to start this solo with a series of triplets, and then I'm going to go in the next measure. I think I'll throw in some 16th notes and then come out of those 16th notes with some eighth notes. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. So then we have to get at, you know, it's the old Art Tatum story, right? When somebody played Art Tatum back to Art Tatum, and they said, what do you think about that, Art? He just played you.

Josh Walsh (34:55.482)
No, that's us analyzing. He's just playing what he's heard.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (35:12.897)
and Art Tatum said, yeah, well, he knows what I played, but he doesn't know why I played it. The teacher in me, want to know, but I do want to know why you play it, right? Why did you play that? And how did you get to the point that you could make that decision to play that, right? So how do you teach this seamless transition for students to practice a seamless transition from quarter to eighth, the eighth note triplets to 16th notes? What tips?

Josh Walsh (35:21.924)
Yeah.

Josh Walsh (35:40.942)
I do, I wanna, I'll show you that in a second, but I wanna back you up on that because I certainly am not that heady when I'm soloing either. I'm not really thinking about this stuff when I'm playing. I think about it only enough so that I can hear it in the stuff that I'm listening for and be like, I heard Oscar do that too. And just be aware of that thing and maybe I learn to hear a little bit more of the jazz language. When it comes out of me, I'm just trying to mimic the language. I'm just trying to speak the language.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (35:43.596)
Okay.

Okay.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (35:50.027)
Of course. Right. Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (35:57.558)
Yeah, right.

Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (36:08.877)
That's right, right, 100%, 100%.

Josh Walsh (36:10.456)
Yeah. So I'm still working on the best way to teach this, but I have something that's been working well for me lately, which is doing this over the blues scale. The blues scale is interesting because it's what, six notes? So it'll divide equally well into eighth notes and into triplets. It actually works well over 16th notes too. And so you can just kind of have a track going and just comp the 12 bar blues in your left hand if you wanted to and practice just play the.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (36:23.009)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (36:30.53)
Right. Right.

Josh Walsh (36:42.734)
in eighth notes, right?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (36:44.834)
Yeah, right.

Josh Walsh (36:47.236)
Then do the same line with triplets.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (36:52.215)
Very hip, yep.

Josh Walsh (36:53.4)
Right? Then you do it in 16th notes. Can't help with it as well doing that. But, and okay, so there's like learning the difference with the metronome of the eighth note verse of the triplet and getting that feeling grained in you. I think most people can do that pretty instinctively. Then how do you mix it? Well, I start to just take the four bars and do like triplet on beat one, three beats of eighth notes, then do the second time through. Maybe I do two eighth notes, a triplet, two eighth notes, two eighth notes. You break up the bar that way. And you start to insert.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (37:19.385)
Yeah, there you go.

Josh Walsh (37:22.938)
the different varieties of rhythms so that you learn how to split them, to be able to switch between them in the middle of the.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (37:29.059)
Yeah, yeah, very good. Yeah, I think that's right. With all skills, I'm a big believer in that it has to start very formulaically. It has to start very, what's the word, very structured, very systematic, very mathematical, if you will, right? Very much an exercise. To the point to where a student would ask, you know,

you know, when you laid something out and say, okay, I'm to play this blues scale and we're going to play it at all eighth notes and we're just, and we're literally just going to stay with eighth notes. know, oftentimes the student will say, well, do you really think like that when you play? And I always respond, no, I think like that when I practice. I think like that when I practice so I can actually play, you know, I think it's so important with this step to be, do exactly what you're talking about where you're going like, okay, I'm going to set

I'm going to set my criteria. How am going to practice? What rhythms am I going to use? How am going to practice those rhythms? Is it going to be a one measure idea that goes three chord notes followed by a pair of eighth notes? Am I going to use chord tones? In other words, you have to set some kind of criteria so that you can be able to accurately, there's what I call self-imposed constraints. You actually establish self-imposed constraints so that you can assess.

success or failure. Right? Yeah, yeah, we have to be able to at the end say I succeeded or I failed. Right? So I agree.

Josh Walsh (38:56.697)
Yeah.

Josh Walsh (39:01.112)
Right. I empathize with this a lot. In fact, I think I learned this from you early in my journey because I'm a recovering software programmer and lover of spreadsheets. Right. And so I didn't realize for a little while until like there's an enormous gap between like having the academic understanding and knowledge in your head of what it is you're hearing versus your ability to play it or create something similar, you know, in the moment.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (39:10.489)
You're right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (39:26.765)
Right. Right.

Josh Walsh (39:28.578)
It's an enormous difference, enormous chasm between those two ideas. And so part of me used to think, I could probably write an algorithm that would create a really hip, cool jazz solo. I could come up with the math and the structures to make that work, but that's not really what it's all about. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (39:31.757)
Right. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (39:45.495)
Yeah, right. Yeah, I wonder, can you do that today, man, with all this AI stuff? Can you just go AI, create a solo for me that sounds like Oscar Peterson, and then I print it out and I go practice.

Josh Walsh (39:57.836)
I did make a Charlie Parker solo using AI. I will send it to you and it is, it's depressingly good to be honest with you.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (39:59.734)
did you really?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (40:04.785)
Ha!

Dr. Bob Lawrence (40:08.355)
See that? I knew it, I knew it.

Josh Walsh (40:10.445)
Yeah, but see

Dr. Bob Lawrence (40:13.273)
Well, hey man, it's the Art Tatum thing. Well, good for you. You know what I played, but you don't know why I

Josh Walsh (40:14.399)
we're gonna get the haters out today.

Josh Walsh (40:21.958)
I don't want to, yeah, and the kind of musicians that I want to play with are the kind that'll sit in a jam session and play back with me. And, you know, maybe someday we'll get to the point where AI can comp behind the solo that I'm taking. Maybe, it's probably coming. But right now, like, this is a human connection to me. I told you I want to help people de-stress at the end of the day at work. I don't just want people to have more Charlie Parker albums that he could have released. And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of weirdness in the AI Charlie Parker thing that I created. It's very strange in some places too, but it is.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (40:27.618)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (40:33.303)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (40:43.353)
Ha!

Josh Walsh (40:52.794)
closer than you would expect it to get.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (40:55.325)
my gosh that's scary that's scary wow wow okay so what what's number three was the third one then again

Josh Walsh (40:58.65)
Yeah.

Josh Walsh (41:02.996)
That's the one we started with, the kind of flurries. like if we look at... Maybe we can listen to this, might be easier to hear it. That way don't have to play it either.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (41:06.1)
okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (41:12.843)
okay movement

Josh Walsh (41:17.274)
Here we go.

Josh Walsh (41:25.85)
Hear the difference? Right out of the gate, right? This huge flurry of just, you know, harmonic minor stuff. And then, then it just ends on a simple couple quarter notes. Let me do it again.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (41:26.957)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Walsh (41:52.058)
Another flurry.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (41:59.789)
Yeah.

Josh Walsh (42:02.202)
Yeah, right? I think that both are fun. The flurry of notes is fun. The virtuosity is fun, right? The hearing the whole harmonic spectrum of the harmonic minor is fun. And then hearing the simple stuff that comes after it. But the two together are better than they are individually, right? Like the contrast of the two is what's cool about it.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (42:04.301)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (42:12.675)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (42:20.845)
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, right.

Yeah, now, so for everybody listening, that they hear that those flurries, right? They hear those flurries, you know, so for those listening and hearing the flurries going like, my gosh, that's just that's just too many notes. don't know. I'll never I can never play like that. Let me let me extend some comfort. If you analyze this soul. If you get beyond.

flurries and you get beyond just a quarter note. So you really look start looking at what's happening. The good news is this, whether you're hearing a flurry or whether you're hearing simple three quarter notes side by side, 90 plus percent of what you are hearing are chord tones and scale tones. 90 plus percent. There you go.

Josh Walsh (43:22.468)
Here's the line that we just heard, the crazy one.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (43:22.68)
Right.

Josh Walsh (43:28.226)
It's just G harmonic minor.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (43:28.397)
Yeah. That's it.

Josh Walsh (43:32.546)
And I would argue that he's not even playing those notes. He's just playing something G harmonic minor. And yeah, he's got this repeating from the G sharp to the E flat that he's used as a motif throughout a few times, but it's not even about that. It's just, he wants a texture that's just this like chaos for a couple measures.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (43:45.367)
Yeah, that's right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (43:50.445)
He knows that sound, he's practiced that sound, and he's developed shapes that represent that sound, melodic shapes that represent that sound, as all jazz musicians do. That's what we do, right? We're masters of shapes and sounds. Here's a sound, here are the shapes that I have developed from that sound. And so, okay.

Josh Walsh (44:07.662)
I'm gonna prove it for people who don't believe you. Here, look. Right? Measure two. Right? Then here.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (44:19.191)
Yes, exactly. There you go. There's the shape.

Josh Walsh (44:21.882)
He alternates it. There. Then, then, but here.

the same thing. I know. And I think he stole it from Bud Powell too. Right. So the thing that he... Some people have the mistake like, my gosh, he's thinking so fast about every note that's coming up. It's like, no, no, no, he just knows what he can do over G harmonic minor and his fingers have already figured it out. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (44:31.159)
Wow, geez, where have I heard that before? Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (44:36.921)
Who stole it from somebody else?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (44:52.429)
Right. So what's so comforting when you look at a solo like this, what is so comforting for me, and hopefully it is for all of us who study jazz, is that you're looking at chord tones, you're looking at scale tones, and you say, wait a minute, wow, I guess my teacher's right. I guess I should really hit it hard practicing my arpeggios, practicing my scales, exploring.

exploring various shapes and patterns within those arpeggios and scales and developing some of my vocabulary that I can begin using when improvising because it comes that's what it gets back to always no matter what transcription I look at it always circles me back to that.

Josh Walsh (45:40.894)
I just, this is why I love transcriptions. You I've bought every book under the sun. I love the videos you put out. I try to put out some decent ones myself. You can only go so far by trying to analyze and explain this stuff. And in fact, oftentimes the analyzing becomes almost like a vice. You and I have some common friends in mind who I won't name, but who know who I'm talking about, who are total nerds, right? Who will spend their whole life.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (45:43.469)
Yeah.

Josh Walsh (46:06.944)
studying jazz theory without being able to really play it as well as they would ever like to because they're interested in the academia of it. And I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with that, but if you're coming into it with the goal of, I'd like to be able to sit down with some buddies and jam out every once in a while, you actually might be overthinking it. Like so much of that analysis isn't actually necessary to play really well.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (46:11.341)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (46:16.953)
.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (46:28.057)
100 % because both worlds, academic world and what I call the street world, for lack of a better expression, right? The academic world, the street world, they both say the same thing. They come from different directions. The academic world comes from the direction of let me explain it, why it sounds good, why it works. The street world says, I'm not interested in explaining it. I'm interested in playing it. So I don't want to, I'm going to think about it totally different, totally different.

Josh Walsh (46:35.322)
Okay.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (46:55.321)
So that's why, and what I use as a perfect example of that is, if I play the C dominant scale to the street musician and call it the mixolydian mode, they go, Why you? Yeah, no. Right? Right? I always tell the story, you know, of me going home.

Josh Walsh (47:07.758)
Right. We talked about this on the workshop the other night, was like, do you think about Frigiant dominance? I'm like, no, not really, no.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (47:21.923)
college and listen to a great jazz pianist at a club and I say to him, I said to him on break, man, his name was Warren and I said, Warren, man, I really love your use of the tritone substitution, man. It's just fabulous. I'm thinking, I don't know what I'm thinking. I'm thinking I'm cool or something, right? He takes his little cigar out of his mouth. He goes, what the hell are you talking about? I said, I said, you know, tritone substitution. goes, no, I don't know what you're talking about. I said, you know, like when you...

have the D minor seven and you go to the D flat dominant to the C major instead of going to the five and he takes the cigar out of the mouth and it blows smoke in my face. You mean flat two? I go yeah, yeah, flat two he goes then why the hell didn't you just say that? And from that day on it's really embarrassing Josh. He called me college boy from that day on.

Josh Walsh (48:10.121)
and then you adopted the doctor yourself.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (48:12.149)
Yeah, Exactly. So whenever I... I dreaded going into the club every time I went home. I dreaded going into the club because I knew I was going to hear, hey, college boy. Hey, college boy. So I mean, they say the same things. They come from different directions.

Josh Walsh (48:27.194)
the jazz elite. I get people who make fun of me for being in the jazz elite all the time. And look, everybody's brain works differently, right? To me, I have this framework I call DUP, D-U-P-E, which is deconstruct, understand, play exercises. Which is what I do here. I take some transcription, I find some little nugget, I deconstruct it, I understand it, I make an exercise out of it, I play it, and then once you get fluent with that exercise that I've created, it starts to show up in my play. That's how it works for me.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (48:29.913)
You

Dr. Bob Lawrence (48:36.258)
Right, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (48:41.837)
Yeah, wow, that good. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (48:47.533)
Yeah, very cool.

Josh Walsh (48:56.132)
But I know tons of people who don't have any idea, right, what a Frigian dominant are that outplay me in a major way outplay me.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (49:03.865)
You know what, a great alto sax player that I went to school, this is why I always say I learned more in the hallways at North Texas than I did in the classrooms. The classroom was great, but the hallways were even better. A bunch of us were standing around in the hallways talking, and we're talking shop.

Josh Walsh (49:19.258)
They just hand out PhDs to people in the hallway.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (49:21.721)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. they should, actually. So we're standing in the hallway. We're all talking shop. his name is Paul Critell. In fact, I had him as a guest on Jazz Panel Skills. And Paul says, just flippantly, as we're standing in the hallway, a group of us, he says, we're talking jazz theory and stuff. goes, you know, I don't know of one jazz musician who actually thinks of modes when they.

Josh Walsh (49:25.681)
Ha

Josh Walsh (49:35.054)
Yeah, I remember.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (49:53.337)
And it kind of brought a hush or everybody got really quiet because it was kind of almost like blasphemy in a way, you know? But then everybody stopped to think about it. And I walked away. I've never, ever forgotten that. And I actually think that was a big turning point in my own playing was when went, wait a minute. He said, think about modes when playing. Not about, he didn't say nobody thinks about modes. He said, nobody thinks about modes when playing. And that was a...

Josh Walsh (50:22.809)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (50:23.331)
That was the turning point.

Josh Walsh (50:25.21)
I actually have a very similar experience actually, if you've got time for one more quick story. When I was in music school here in Cleveland, my parents moved away. They moved to New Jersey right outside New York City. And so this time of year, I would be out of school and headed to their house for Christmas and New Year. And I'd go to Barry Harris workshops in New York City while I was there, because you're there. And Barry told me, nobody thinks about that stuff. No one's thinking Dorian, no one's thinking Mixolydian. These are analytical things.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (50:28.855)
Yeah, sure.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (50:41.399)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (50:45.965)
Fantastic. Yeah, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (50:54.903)
Right.

Josh Walsh (50:55.064)
The all, and so I had the same moment you are just sharing from your professor or whatever, your colleague. I think with the exception of modal jazz, if you're gonna play so what, then you think about the modes. But I think in the kind of stuff like in the Vince Guaraldi stuff we're talking about here, Vince is not thinking Dorian, then Phrygian, then Ionian, right? He's just thinking F major. In fact, if you look at this whole scale, we didn't even go into the notes because notes are boring, rhythms are cool.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (50:59.64)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (51:16.169)
No way. No way.

Josh Walsh (51:21.86)
But there's only three scales in this whole solo. There's F major, surprise. There's G harmonic minor over the two. And then occasionally he throws a little blues, a little bluesy thing in there. That's it. Yeah, so all these people who think like my solos would only be cool if I knew like the double diminished altered flat two Locrian scale. Right, it's like not the notes that are your problem. It's that your rhythms all start on beat one. They're all eighth note lines. And you have no contrast between fast and slow.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (51:21.945)
Yeah.

Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (51:31.731)
And that's it. That's it.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (51:44.909)
my gosh. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's 100 % correct. That's right. That's 100 % correct. And the reality of it is, right, I just said this last night too in the master class. I said, here's the deal. You can solo using just the chord tones.

You don't even need to use upper extension chords. You don't need to use 9 11. You can use root, 3rd, 5th, and 7th. If you play like what you're just talking about, right feel, right articulation, hide those bar lines, mixtures of eighth notes, quarter notes, triplets, right, sixteenths. Using, at the end of your solo, everybody's saying, yeah, man, yeah, man. And I stressed that the passing tones between the chord tones, which create the scale, optional.

the five notes that fall outside the scale to create the tension, optional. It's so important to know that. Optional. Do we want to be able to play it? Yes. But in reality, optional. Optional. You could play a great solo, chord tones, through the entire tune, if you do the three things that you're talking about today. You would sound fantastic.

Josh Walsh (53:01.92)
don't want to plug my stuff, but it's free. So I hope that's okay. But one of the things that if you go to the website, the most popular thing I've ever made is called by...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:04.475)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:08.363)
it they act i've been put my stuff but it's not free it's but chris was cut chris was cut

Josh Walsh (53:13.562)
That's fine, yeah, you should go buy it. Yeah, Black Friday just ended, sorry, pay full price. You should. It's worth every penny. No, honestly, the most popular thing I've ever done is called my seven day soloing challenge. It's 100 % free and it's what you just showed. Day one is soloing with chord tones and then from there it's like how do you approach chord tones from below, from above, how do you create enclosures around them? And if until you can create a kind of cool line rhythmically with just chord tones, you can't possibly.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:30.211)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:36.129)
Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Walsh (53:42.968)
with enclosures.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:44.055)
Yeah, right. That's right. That's right. Talk about getting the cart ahead of the horse. Yeah. Yeah. You know what's funny?

Josh Walsh (53:49.87)
Right. And I love how like in sync you and I are in our methods. Because I love, you know, Mark Levine's books and stuff like that. Like I've learned a lot from them, but like chapter three is Phrygian core. It's like, what the hell is this guy thinking?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:59.234)
yeah. yeah.

He's thinking tenure. That's what he's thinking. So, okay. you know what's... Should probably not have said that.

Josh Walsh (54:07.546)
No, it really is. Chapter three is before you learn scales, he teaches you phrygian chords. It makes no sense. I love the guy.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (54:18.937)
my gosh. You know, what's interesting. I remember I always say, you know, a tipping point for me in my, if somebody had to act, if somebody asked me what was the most significant moment in my, my jazz growth, the most significant moment in my jazz growth growth, if I had to put a push pin on the timeline, right? It was when I, when I, when I could play my, all my major dominant minor half diminished and diminished chords.

In block, I didn't even know voicings, dude. I was just all blocks, right? Your basic block shape with inversions. I could play melodies of tunes. I could put them with those block shapes. I could improvise using chord tones, because that's all I knew. Because what I was doing, I always say improvisation is the melodic representation of harmony. That's how I define it. It's the melodic representation. So I had my block shapes.

I had my solid, I turned it into a liquid over here, right? Josh, I be honest, man, I was playing gigs, I was playing well, I was happy as a clam, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven, and my teacher finally looked at me one day and said, Bob, we need to move on.

And I thought, well, not really. I mean, yeah, I guess we do. But I was really happy. My point being is I was really content. I was really satisfied. And then when you say you want to get how many people playing jazz? A thousand? A hundred thousand. If you got a hundred thousand people where they can play their block shapes, inverted shapes, play melodies and improvise using chord tones, I'm going to tell you right now, you're going to have a hundred thousand very, very happy people.

Josh Walsh (55:43.578)
100,000.

Josh Walsh (55:59.876)
So I'll leave you with this because my workshop this morning was on white Christmas and in different styles, right? And if you can play white Christmas this way.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (56:03.831)
Okay.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (56:15.04)
yeah, keep going man.

Josh Walsh (56:16.314)
you

Josh Walsh (56:24.26)
Charleston in my left hand and simple one note melody.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (56:27.895)
Yeah. I wish I had my...

Josh Walsh (56:29.018)
but with good time.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (56:31.885)
I wish I had my keyboard hooked up, man. I'd join you. Still fun. Fun.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (56:45.762)
Hell yeah.

Josh Walsh (56:48.026)
Maybe some blocks.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (56:54.073)
All right, George. Nice.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (57:13.249)
Yeah, do not get any fancier. Just keep it like that, Josh. There you go.

Josh Walsh (57:22.882)
do anything fancy man you can you can learn how to do that in two years right from the from the beginning right and play at shopping malls and senior centers and people will love it as long as your rhythm is freaking good and cool and tasteful

Dr. Bob Lawrence (57:23.705)
Yeah, and well for

Dr. Bob Lawrence (57:33.945)
Hey, dude, you can play in a club and I'd sit there and listen to you, man. I mean, come on, it's good music, it's tasty, it swings, it's got a great feel, great articulation. Like I said, you're gonna have 100,000 happy people. You do that.

Josh Walsh (57:51.278)
And there's so much that you can build on from this foundation. But so many people I know are like, give me all the chordals, right? And all the man tooth voicings and the big band comping chords, which are fun, right? But you can't, what are you gonna do with them? If you can't just play Charleston in the melody in your.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (57:56.707)
No doubt.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (58:05.677)
Yeah, of course. Yeah, but you know what?

Look, if you can't see harmony with the root included, you're not going to see harmony without the root. I mean, so there you have it. Learn those blocks. What you just played there should be the goal for everybody beginning their journey in the jazz world. Should be, I need to play my harmonic structures. I need to be able to play my melody. I need to be able to play it in time. I need to play with a great feel, nice groove. And not only are listeners going to be happy, but

but your teachers are gonna come up to you and say, need to move on. And you're gonna be thinking, no, not really. Yeah. This has been great fun. Josh, man, always awesome to connect with you and have you on jazz piano skills. I'm so thrilled for you, man. I'm so happy for the success that you're having with Jazz Library. Jazz, you say hyphen, is a dash and a hyphen the same thing?

Josh Walsh (58:48.834)
Yeah. Well, we're just yapping now. If nobody's still listening, thank you for checking us out. This was fun.

Josh Walsh (59:10.394)
It's a dash, yeah, jazz-library.com. Some bozo owns the one without the dash and doesn't wanna sell it to me. If you go to jazz-library.com, or just search for my name in Google, there's a giant signup that's like, give me a transcription every week. It's right at the top of the page. Just sign up, it's free. I promise you, like I'm not baiting, switching you here.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (59:12.279)
Yes, library.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (59:18.0)
really?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (59:21.783)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (59:29.241)
Man, that's fantastic. I'm going to sign up. I don't think I've signed up yet, but I'm signing up as soon as we sign off here. So listen, man, it's always great to have you on Jazz Piano Skills. I know so many of the members express such great gratitude when you're on. So I appreciate you carving some time out of your time today, because I know it's an incredibly busy time of year to come on and talk jazz and talk Vince Giraldi, man. What a great joy.

Josh Walsh (59:55.204)
So much fun, man.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (59:56.171)
yeah hey merry christmas to you to your family safe travels if you're traveling anywhere and fire up that fire up that grill over the holidays man

Josh Walsh (01:00:05.69)
Merry Christmas, my friend. It's pretty cold here. It's like five degrees. So maybe not yet. Merry Christmas.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:00:09.977)
Merry Christmas, my friend. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.