Have You Met Miss Jones, Improvisation

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Welcome to jazz piano skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn and play jazz piano. Well, today is part three of our three week exploration of the jazz standard. Have you met Miss Jones? Week one, two weeks ago, we took a deep dive into the harmonic foundation of the tune, followed by last week's dissecting of the melody and phrases to be followed up today with a challenging look at various ways to use Have you met Miss Jones for developing our improvisational skills. What's great about our three tiered approach, Harmony melody improvisation to study in tunes is that it quickly reveals our strengths and weaknesses regarding various essential jazz piano skills. And how important is that knowing our strengths and weaknesses? It's vitally important. The bottom line is that there's no way to improve our plane without having an accurate understanding or assessment of our skills. The last couple podcast episode lessons and today's lesson do exactly that. They give us a very accurate report card. As I like to say, we know pretty quickly we find out pretty quickly where we stand with our ability to play critical jazz piano skills. I have made it a point since the beginning of the year, to mention several times that there is a sequential order to learning how to play jazz piano, right and that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. After all, I cannot think of one not one high level skill that you can successfully develop without having a strategic game plan. I can confidently guarantee you that a scattershot approach, or what I like to call a YouTube approach to trying to learn how to play jazz piano will only cause frustration, confusion, and ultimately, your raising of the white flag. So my goal from day one with jazz piano skills has been not only to introduce you to the essential jazz piano skills, discover, but to also provide you with a very successful way to study the skills learn and a process for developing a physical command of the skills play. I also mentioned several times since the start of the year that if you had been a faithful jazz piano skills listener for the past four plus years, you have become intimately familiar with the various jazz piano skills needed to successfully begin tune study. Now, I've also mentioned that if you haven't been granted along with us over the past four plus years, no worries, it's no big deal. It's a great time to jump on board and begin developing and enhancing your jazz piano skills. Right now. The tune study that we're going to be doing every month will help you actually sift through and prioritize the last four years of podcast episodes so that you can begin maximizing your jazz piano skills right now immediately. So if you're a jazz panel skills veteran or jazz panel skills, rookie makes no difference. You are in the right place at the right time to begin a jazz panel journey that will have a profound impact on your understanding of music and of course, your jazz piano playing. So today you are going to discover an improvisation approach for Have you met Miss Jones. You are going to learn about improvise improvisational zones and patterns motifs. For Have you met Miss Jones and you are going to play several harmonic and melodic phrases taken from Have you met Miss Jones to help you develop and enhance your improvisational approach and skills. So as I always like to say regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner intermediate player and advanced player or even if you're a seasoned and experienced professional, you're gonna find this jazz panel skills podcast lesson explore Laureen Have you met Miss Jones 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 and listening to the jazz panel skills podcast for the very first time, welcome, I want to invite you to become a jazz piano skills member. Your membership grants you access to the premium content not only for this podcast episode, but for every weekly podcast episode. premium content will help you thoroughly and correctly discover, learn and play the jazz standard that we are currently exploring. And has the old saying goes so much more. 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 to play alongs that I design and develop for each weekly podcast episode so that you get the most out of each weekly podcast episode. You also have access to a self paced and sequential jazz piano curriculum which is loaded with comprehensive courses containing educational talks, interactive learning media, video demonstrations, and so much more. You also have a reserved seat as I like to say in my online weekly master classes, which are held every Thursday evening now if you cannot attend, no problem, master classes are recorded. And you can watch and rewatch the video of the class whenever and as often as you wish. As a jazz panel skills member you also have access to an online interactive Fakebook containing must must know jazz standards, all of them with excellent chord changes, chord scale relationships mapped out harmonic function analysis mapped out listening suggestions, and of course historical insights. As a jazz piano skills member, you can also hang out with some old and make some new jazz piano skills friends in the online private jazz piano skills community, which hosts a variety of engaging forums. Finally, your jazz piano skills membership grants you unlimited, private, personal and professional educational support whenever and as often as you need it. All of these privileges are waiting to help you discover, learn and play jazz piano. So check it all out at jazz piano skills.com. And of course, become a member to enjoy the premium comp podcast content, as well as all the other privileges that I just mentioned. Of course, you get the jazz panel skills and you're poking around you have some questions, please do not think twice of reaching out and contacting me. I'm happy to spend some time with you and answer any questions that you may have. Okay, on to the question of the week and this week's question comes from Tim Compton live in in Johannesburg, South Africa. Wow. Tim writes, I am a very novice jazz pianist trying to improve my improvisation skills. The problem is, I am not sure how to practice improvisation, which honestly sounds like a contradiction. But I have heard you and many others stress that improvisation is a skill that can be developed. Nevertheless, I feel overwhelmed by what appears to be this incredibly daunting task. Any words of advice and encouragement? are welcomed with open arms? Or should I say hands? Thank you. Tim, Tim, Tim. You're agreed to love this podcast episode, my friend, which is all about how to practice improvisation, which as you stated, sounds like a contradiction. I cannot tell you how many people I have taught over the years, who like you are stunned by the idea of practicing improvisation. After all, right? Doesn't improvisation imply creating without preparation, right kind of off the cuff sort of speak? Well, that's a myth. I hope you all know about that. That is a myth. That is the misconception misconception that so many folks have about this essential jazz piano skill called improvisation. The truth 10 Improvisation is is a developed skill that absolutely can and should be practiced. That is if you want to develop your jazz piano skills and become an accomplished jazz pianist. So here's a question for you, Tim. What do you think? The number one challenge for all aspiring jazz musicians? What do you think the number one challenge? Is? That stands in the way of developing solid improvisation skills?

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Do you think it's technique? Maybe it's a rhythm thing? Or could it be poor ears, more ear training as needed? I know. It's not doing enough transcriptions. That's it. We need to do more transcriptions if we want to develop our improvisation skills. Okay, that's another topic. But the list goes on and on and on. But I am here to tell you, Tim, it's none of those things at all. It's not one of those things is the number one challenge. So what do you think it is? I'll tell you, the number one challenge for all aspiring jazz musicians wanting to develop solid improvisation skills. And this is the number one challenge for everybody. At Sunday, everyone who's ever studied jazz, this is the number one challenge. It is their solidification of an accurate and simple conceptual understanding of how music works. That's right, let me say that again. We all must solidify an accurate and simple conceptual understanding of how music how music works, if we hope to develop improvisation skills. Honestly, if you do not have an accurate and simple conceptual understanding of how music works, you will chase one theoretical idea after another after another after another in hopes of finding the mythical jazz improvisation treasure chest that once you find it, all you have to do is unlock it, open it and the jazz improvisation mystery will finally be solved. Well, we all know, I think we all know this is untrue. And yet, we all fall into this treasure hunt trap, which only leads us to becoming overwhelmed and of course, frustrated. So Tim, once you have an accurate and simple conceptual understanding of how music works, it then governs everything you do on the piano. It reveals to you what to practice in guides you're practicing. And without an accurate and simple conceptual understanding of how music works. You are simply grasping at straws, hoping something magically will happen. And I promise you won't. So what I want you to do is I want you to grab your pencil and paper. I am going to give you a very concise outline of how music works so you can solidify an accurate and simple conceptual understanding. Okay. So here we go. Number one, music consists of 12 notes. That's it. Our tuning system provides us 12 notes. Number two, these 12 notes produce the five primary sounds of music, major dominant minor, half diminished and diminished. Number three, these five sounds that are produced by the 12 notes can be played harmonically and melodically. Number four, we play the five sounds harmonically using 60 chords, right 12 notes times five sounds 60. So we play the five songs harmonically using 60 chords. Number five, we play the five sounds melodically using arpeggios and scales. arpeggios equal, equaling four notes. root, third, five, seven. In the scale the three notes in between those four, right provide us the seven notes of the scale. Number six, Melody, arpeggios and scales can only travel in one of two directions, up or down. That's it. And finally, number seven musicians after they have a command of the sounds, harmonically, and melodically musicians jazz pianos disguise, ascending and descending arpeggio on scale motion, using using the notes that are not found in the arpeggio and the scale, the tension tones, or commonly referred to as upper and lower neighboring tones, or half step approach mints. And there are five of those right? We have the four arpeggio notes, we have the three additional scale notes, and we have the five tension notes. That's it. That is how music works. That is how jazz improvisation works. All that to say, if you do not have a conceptual understanding of the data, the outline that I just presented, that makes up the musical database, then how do you know what you should be practicing? The truth is without an understanding of musical data, then you have no idea what you should be practicing. So Tim, how well can you play the five primary sounds of music major dominant minor, half diminished and diminished? harmonically and melodically? How well? Can you play the sounds harmonically? Using root position and inverted chords? How well can you play the sounds melodically using ascending and descending arpeggio scale motion if you need to improve these essential jazz piano skills, and I would not concern myself with practicing anything else, serious, nothing else. Once you feel you have a command of the sounds harmonically and melodically The next step is to begin disguising your arpeggios and your scale motion using the half step approaches or the tension tones. Tim, listen to this we can take any transcribed soul and label everything in it as either ascending or descending arpeggio and scale motion. That's true. So your question is awesome. And it really actually comes at the perfect time. Because today we are going to isolate various phrases found within Have you met Miss Jones and practice improvising using these three approaches, number one ascending and descending arpeggio motion, number two ascending and descending arpeggio plus scale motion. And number three, arpeggio ascending and descending arpeggio plus scale motion plus half step approachment. Or the tension, we're actually going to do those three steps. If now if after listening to this entire podcast episode, and those demonstrations that I will soon play for you. If you need further clarification, right, then do not hesitate to contact me again. I'm always happy to dig deeper with you and help you in any way that I can. Okay. Wow, what a great question. Give some thought to that outline, think through it. And then pay attention to the three steps that we're going to utilize today to develop our improvisation skills using very specific phrases within Have you met Miss Jones. Okay, so let's discover learn and play jazz piano. Let's get after it. Let's let's explore Have you met Miss Jones, part three, in improvisation approach. Since the beginning of the year, I have presented I think just about every podcast episode, my outline for studying and learning any tune, right but it never hurts to review, right? That's good teaching, review, review review. So let's do that. When learning to tune again and genre makes no difference to me. I don't care whether it's a jazz tune or a rock tune country pop r&b folk, I don't care. Here's how I approach learning that to number one I listen a whole please listen, right I cannot even imagine trying to learn a tune without spending a lot of time listening to various art It is performed that tune. I like to listen to vocalist first than instrumentalist. And then finally, of course, jazz pianist. Number two, every tune, I want to learn, I quickly decipher the form of that too.

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Is it an A, A, B, A Form A, B, A, B, A, B, A, C, and so on, right, every two has a form, I need to know what it is. Number three, I will then attack the chords, the harmonic structure of that tune and voicings, I'll look at the common harmonic progressions like 2511451625, and so on. Number four, I'll turn my attention to the melody and then playing various treatments of that tune. Right? In a, like a swing style, or Bossa style, ballad style, jazz, rock country, right, I'll even explore various styles as well. Number five, I will then turn my attention to improvisation approaches, right? Various zones, patterns, motifs, tension, arpeggios, scales, all the things that we're just talking to Tim about, based on his question, right. So that's my outline, right? That's it, nothing more, right. Nothing less. That's it. We focus like so. Every every tune that we tackle, we focus first on gaining harmonic familiar familiarity and command of the tune, just like we did with Have you met Miss Jones a couple of weeks ago. And then we will turn our attention to the melodic analysis of Have you met Miss Jones like we did last week, we looked at the various guide tones and phrases, target notes, fingerings, and so forth. And then of course, today, we will explore Have you met Miss Jones improvisationally. Our goal always, always is to keep things really clean, really tidy, with our discover, learn and play approach. Right? Whether it's a skill, whether it's attune makes no difference, right? We want to keep things really structured, really organized. Again, our conceptual understanding, as I was just talking about our conceptual understanding of all that we do musically, must be structured must be simple. So that we can be successful studying it, and successful replicating it over and over and over again. Right. And I know you all can attest you regular listeners can attest to the fact that I say it many times and will continue to say many times that your conceptual understanding of music or any skill. If it's not structured and simple, then it's unorganized and confusing. And if it's unorganized and confusing, conceptually upstairs then you have no shot of executing it in your hands downstairs, just a brutal fact. Therefore, we keep our tune steady. Our discover, learn and play study, very structured, very simple. And of course replicatable so the educational agenda for today is as follows number one, we are going to be in part three to discover learning play Have you met Miss Jones using an improvisation approach. Number two, we are going to listen to a definitive recording of Have you met Miss Jones. Number three we will discuss as always the importance of understanding harmonics zones, patterns and motifs. Number four, we will stress again, the importance of gaining the command of sound using arpeggio and scale motion. Number five, we will explore how to use the changes of Have you met Miss Jones, the phrases the changes, to practice improvisation. Number six, we will discover learn and play an arpeggio plus scale plus tension approach for improvisation development. And finally, I will be playing all the demonstrations today at a tempo again very relaxed. Because we're practicing our improvisation. It's not a speed contest, a very relaxed tempo 85 So as always, we have a ton to get done today. So if you are a jazz piano skills member, I want you to take a few minutes right now to hit the pause button. Download and print your podcast packets. These are the illustrations the lead sheets and the play alongs. Again, your membership grants you access to the premium content for this episode for every weekly podcast episode, which of course includes all of the educational podcast packets. As I mentioned every week you should You should be using these podcast packets when listening to the episode to get the most out of it. And of course you should have these packets sitting on your piano when practicing as well. So if you are listening to this podcast on any of the popular podcast directories out there and there are many of them, we have Apple and Google Spotify iHeartRadio Amazon Pandora The list goes on then I would suggest to go directly to jazz piano skills podcast.com And you will find the active download links for each the podcast packets in the show notes or you can log into your jazz panel skills account and from your dashboard. Navigate to this episode where you will find one nifty and one convenient link to download all three podcast packets in one convenient bundle. Okay, now that you have your podcast packets, I want you to grab the lead sheets of course and you should have in your lead sheets. You should have five lead sheets five lead sheet one provides you the arpeggios for the chord changes have Have you met Miss Jones lead sheet to provide you with the scales for Have you met Miss Jones? lead sheet three provides you with us sending patterns and motifs focusing on various targets and tension notes for the chord changes of Have you met Miss Jones? Number four, lead sheet four provides you with descending patterns and motifs focusing again on the target intention notes for Have you met Miss Jones and lead sheet five brackets or, or maps out the various phrases, harmonic phrases that I'm going to use today to develop improvisation skills. Okay, so no question about it. Some invaluable tools to have sitting on the piano when practicing this week, practicing your improvisation skills, using the wonderful chord changes and progressions and phrases within Have you met Miss Jones? So what is the very first thing we do? When studying and learning a tune? We did it last week we did it two weeks ago. We do it every week, right? We listen. And why? Well, because quite honestly, I think it's the most important thing that you you can do is to listen to various artists performing the tune that we are studying. Right. As I mentioned before, I can't even I can't imagine attempting to learn a tune without spending a lot of time listening to it and absorbing it. Now again, I typically listen to vocal renditions first, followed by instrumentalist, followed by pianist bottom line though I listened and I listened a lot. And that's what we're going to do right now before going any further now two weeks ago, we checked out Tony Bennett singing Have you met Miss Jones? Right in the standard key by the way key of F and last week we enjoyed herb Ellis with an all star cast swinging Have you met Miss Jones again in the standard key F key Bev and today we're gonna listen to Ellis Marsalis you know the dad of Wynton Marsalis the entire Marcellus, family, right, credible musicians and he is without question one of my favorite jazz pianist. Now Ellis Marsalis is performing Have you met Miss Jones This is from his 1992 album titled heart of gold and Mr. Marcellus is joined by Ray Brown on bass and Billy Higgins on drums. So as always, I want you to grab your favorite beverage I want you to sit back and watch it take all take this all in right this is a great rendition very tasty rendition of Have you met Miss Jones. Here we go check it out. Ellis Marsalis

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yes so tasteful. You know if you are not familiar with Ellis Marsalis his album Heart of Gold I want to strongly encourage you to add it to your jazz listening library so many great towns in addition to have you met Miss Jones on this album he performs them this can't be love spring can really hang you up the most. Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans I can't give you anything but love, love for sale sweet Georgia Brown and there are others right? So check it out and I promise you it will quickly become one of your all time favorite jazz albums. Okay, so now that we've done our listening, let's explore those lead sheets. Okay, so I want you to grab a lead sheet one let's discover how to properly begin developing our improvisation skills. 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 jazz piano skills.com To learn more about membership privileges, and become a jazz piano skills member. Thank you!