Hybrid Arpeggios

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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, here we are right smack dab in the middle of the month. We've been hard at it, studying the jazz standard, just friends and we studied it, of course, harmonically. We started with our harmonic analysis of the tune. We looked at its form, the various chord changes, common progressions found within the tune, various voicings, left hand shell voicings, two handed voicings. We then turned our attention to the melodic analysis of the tune, where we transcribed the melody. We studied our fingerings, various phrases, target notes within the phrases, various treatments. And of course, last week we looked at it improvisationally. So, you know, we we gave it our 123, punch, if you will. We looked at it harmonically, melodically and improvisationally. And I typically like to give you all a break with an interview or a lecture series, and today, and actually today and next week are going to be two back to back lecture series that are designed to help you develop your improvisational skills, designed To help you practice improvising, right? Seems kind of contradiction in terms, right, practicing improvisation, but that's exactly what we do, and that's exactly what jazz musicians do. So we're going to spend the next couple weeks diving into how to successfully, how to successfully practice improvisation. So today you are going to discover hybrid arpeggios. You heard me correctly, hybrid arpeggios, and you're going to learn why hybrid Arpeggios are critical for developing mature improvisation skills, and you're going to play a variety of melodic lines using hybrid arpeggios formulated from harmonic pairs. Wow. So, as I always like to say, regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner, an intermediate player, advanced player, even if you're a seasoned and experienced professional, makes no difference. You all are going to find this jazz panel skills podcast lesson exploring the art and skill of using hybrid arpeggios to help you develop your improvisational skills, to be very, very beneficial. But before we jump in, before we get started, I want to, as I always do, welcome all of you first time listeners to jazz piano skills and if you are indeed a new listener. If you're new to jazz piano skills, welcome. I want to invite you to become a jazz piano skills member, and your membership will grant you access to the premium content, not only for this podcast episode, but for every weekly podcast episode. 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I'm happy to spend some time with you, answer all of your questions and help you in any way that I can Okay, so now is usually the time that I do the question of the week, but because we have so much to get through today and and I'm gonna, I'm telling you right now, I'm already gonna feel like I'm gonna rush through this because there's so much content. But anyway, I'm going to bypass the question of the week this week, so we can get right down the business and start studying and talking about these hybrid arpeggios and how they're going to help you develop your improvisational skills. So with that being said, let's get after this. Let's discover learn and play jazz piano. Let's discover, learn and play hybrid arpeggios. Okay, so let's, let's begin with a really important question. The question is this, why? Why is improvisation so difficult. Why do we struggle with developing improvisation skills? Well, I have three reasons, three reasons I'm going to share with you why I believe, after years, decades of teaching I'm old, here are the three reasons that I have formulated over the years through my teaching as to why it is so difficult for people to improvise. Number one, it is a lack of hand mobility, poor fingerings, without question, poor fingerings, pianists have difficulty getting around on the piano because of poor fingerings. If you can't get around on the piano because of poor fingerings, improvisation is going to be very, very difficult, okay. Number two, it's a big one. Here we here we go. Number two, the inability to play harmony melodically. I'm going to say that again, the inability to play harmony melodically, right? And that is a result if you are unable to play harmony melodically. And this goes for non pianist listening, right? This is not just for pianist. If you are unable to play harmony melodically, it is because it's a result of not knowing what I call the block shapes of the primary sounds of music. The primary sounds of music, of course, being major, dominant, minor, half diminished and diminished. And when I refer to block shapes, I am referring to the root, the third, the fifth. And the seventh of those sounds, those primary sounds, right? So you we need to be able to have a command of each of those primary sounds, the root, the third, the fifth, the seventh, not only in what we call root position, but also in first, second and third inversion and number three. Number three, unstable time. Unstable time.

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Time is so important, and if you are unable to maintain time, establish time, maintain time, track objects in time, in the elements of those objects in time. And what I'm talking about when I say objects, I'm referring to the chords, and I'm those harmonic shapes, and I'm referring to that. When I'm referring to the elements, I'm referring to what, the root, the third, the fifth, the seventh, the chord tones, right? So unstable time, right? It's like a deck of cards that it's going to collapse very quickly. So look, if you put together poor hand mobility, together with the inability to play harmony melodically, and then you throw in unstable time, that's just the disastrous formula, and you're not going to develop your improvisation skills. So you can sit at the piano all day thinking, why can't I improvise? And you're all so focused on why you can't improvise that you are not even able to assess the fact that you have poor hand mobility, you are not capable of playing harmony melodically, and your time is all over the map, but yet you're concerned about improvisation. That makes sense, right? Of course, not. So what we're going to do today is fix well, not in one podcast episode, but I'm going to give you some ideas on how to go about the process of beginning beginning the process to fix these three reasons why People find it so difficult to develop improvisation skills. So the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we are going to discover, learn and play hybrid arpeggios. What are they? Why are they important to practice? How do I create them? Number two, we will discuss why we must move beyond, move beyond isolated arpeggio. Practice number three, we will discuss the importance of seeing improvisation as the melodic representation of harmony, right again, improvisation as the melodic representation of harmony. Number four, we will discuss why time is everything, our ability to track objects within time, right our harmonic structures, our chords, our ability to see and of course, hear the objects, the chords and the elements of those chords, roots, thirds, fifths, sevenths in time, right, and number Five, we will discuss how to properly practice hybrid arpeggios, and the importance this is no this is really important. The importance is really important. Did you get that? So we're going to discuss how to properly practice hybrid arpeggios, the importance of establishing self imposed constraints, or, like, what I like to call the rules of the game, the rules of the game. And if you're practicing and you don't have rules of the game, game when you're practicing, you're not practicing correctly, there always must be rules of the game. Okay, so you see why I'm skipping the question of the week this week, this is a lot to try to get through. It's going to require some heavy thinking and, of course, some heavy playing as well. This is a lot to discuss conceptually and to digest it conceptually and physically, of course, but we're going to get it done. We're going to get it done. We're going to get it done. So okay, so again, oh, and just a reminder, likewise, with with the lecture series, there are no podcast packets, and that's intentional, because I just I want you to listen, and I want you to think things through, and I want you to hear things through. I don't necessarily want you. See things. See things through right? I don't want you to rely on the eyes to process this information and to play it. I want you to think through it. I want you to digest it conceptually and then be able to play it, execute it physically, with no paper in front of you, no written music in front of you. Okay, all right, so let's begin. Why do we need to move beyond isolated arpeggio practice? Well, I think if we stop to think about it, the answer is pretty obvious, and that is that music doesn't deal with an isolated chord. Doesn't deal with harmonic sounds, harmonic shapes, melodic sounds melodic shapes and isolation. Now it's okay to practice that way, if we're have an objective to explore a specific sound in a certain way. Sure, absolutely, I do that all the time. However, if that's all that you do, you're going to have trouble when it comes to playing literature, when it comes to playing songs, materials, repertoire, right? Because we're moving through several sounds, we're not isolating one sound. And, you know, it's ironic, right? Because all of us in our piano lessons, on our music lessons, we all learn our arpeggios, we all learn our scales in isolation, and we never move beyond that, right? So I can remember as a young boy learning my scales. I always had the mindset, because I was taught this way, practice your C major scale, practice your C major arpeggio, oh, now practice your F major scale. Now practice your F major arpeggio, and so on. Always practicing arpeggios in isolation, one at a time. We need to move beyond that if we want to develop our improvisational skills, because that's what's going to be demanded of us when we go to improvise, we're going to have to move through sound melodically, not in isolation, right? Move through sound melodically, side by side by side by side. Okay, so we need to move beyond isolated arpeggio practice, and that's where hybrid arpeggios come in. We need to start practicing hybrid arpeggios. So a hybrid arpeggio is the combination. Hence the name. It's the combination of two different chords or three different chords or four different chords. Melodically, I'm going to say that again, it's the combination of two or three or four or more chords. Melodically, today, we're going to use what I call a harmonic pairs to begin the process of establishing or developing hybrid arpeggios. So for today, we're going to take two two harmonic shapes, two chords, place them side by side and create one melodic line that moves through those chords. So we're starting to begin the process of developing the mindset of one melodic line, or I should say, maybe two chords. But yet one melodic line, two chords, one melodic line, right? That's a hybrid arpeggio. It could be three chords, one melodic line, four chords, one melodic line. But the point being is, is that we have multiple sounds that we are combining melodically, that we are combining melodically, and that is how we create hybrid arpeggios, and we'll go through that today. Okay, now, I mentioned earlier the rules of the game. I'm going to establish the rules here shortly. But I also mentioned that if when you're practicing, if there aren't rules of the game when you sit down to practice, regardless of the skill, whatever it is that you're practicing, then you're not practicing correctly. There always must be rules of the game, constraints that have been self imposed. Right? Self imposed constraints, the. It allows you to accurately assess success or failure, success or failure, right? And I will go through the rules of the game here shortly. Now we're

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going to, I want to talk a little bit about harmonic what I call harmonic vision. I've mentioned this several times in past podcast episodes. I call it harmonic vision, your ability, your ability to see harmony melodically, right, your ability to see harmony melodically. How well do you know the harmonic shape, the roots, the thirds, the fifths, the seventh right of every melodic of every harmonic shape, the primary sounds of music that I mentioned earlier. How well do you see them? How well can you place your hands on them, on your instrument? So high harmonic vision, the greater chance you're going to succeed improvisationally, the lower your harmonic vision, you're blind, right? And if you're blind harmonic, your harmonic vision is blind, then your ability to improvise, well, it's just not going to happen, okay? So we will talk about that as we go through our hybrid arpeggios. And then also, I mentioned earlier too, time is everything. Everything we do today, of course, is going to be placed within the context of time, within the context of time and the self imposed constraints that we're going to use today. Here they are. Here are the rules of the game for today when it comes to our hybrid arpeggios, number one, we are going to create harmonic pairs using the same quality of sound. Now, of course, harmonic pairs can be I mean literally. You can take any two chords that you want, place them side by side, but today we're not going to we're not going to do that. We're going to be a little bit more structured. I am suggesting that that we stick with the same quality of sound. In other words, we're going to match up major with major, or minor with minor, dominant with dominant. So on right today I'm going to be doing minor with minor. But what, what I model for you today should be done across the board, with major sounds, with dominant sounds, with half diminished sounds, which and with diminished sounds. Today I'm going to model everything using a minor, minor harmonic pair. Okay, number two, the first chord of our harmonic pair. This is the second rule. The first quarter or of our harmonic pair will remain constant. It's going to never change, right? And the cord will be swapped using the other 11 chords, all right? Well, today, today, I'm not going to do that, because the podcast would be several hours long, but when you're practicing at home, when you're taking this and you're practicing, the first chord is going to remain the same. So today I'm using, for example, I'm using C minor and F sharp minor. These are going to be my two harmonic pairs, C minor and F sharp minor. If I were practicing this, I would be thinking in terms of matching my C minor with C sharp minor, my C minor with D minor, my C minor with E flat minor, my C minor with E minor, and so on, to move through all of the 12 Minor sounds, right? So we always want the first chord of our harmonic pair to remain constant, never changing while the second chord will be swapped out with the other 11 chords. Rule number three, each harmonic pair will be one measure in length followed by a measure of silence. And we've spent a lot of time talking about that over the last couple months, right? So each harmonic pair will be one measure in length followed by a measure of silence number four. We will create four specific melodic lines. We will create an ascending, ascending line. We will create ascending, descending line, we will create a descending descending line, and we will create a descending ascending line. So we have very specific directions types of motion that we are using, ascending, ascending, ascending, descending. And descending, descending and descending, ascending. Okay. The next rule, each of our four melodic lines will be created in two ways. The first way we'll create it using all quarter notes. The second way, we will use all eighth notes. Again, we're being very specific the type of rhythmic values that we are utilizing to create our hybrid arpeggios. Okay? The next rule, our melodic lines will only for now, only consist of the root, the third, the fifth and the seventh of each chord. That's it. Okay. Next, we must practice creating our musical lines, launching from various entry points from the root, from the third and the fifth and seventh of our first chord, right of our first chord. Now today I'm going to do it just from the root again, because if I did through all the combinations, it'd be a multi hour podcast. And then we're the next rule. Each melodic line will fill the entire measure. So if I'm using quarter notes, I'm going to be using four quarter notes to get through that measure. Eighth notes. I'm going to use 8/8 notes to get through that measure with my hybrid arpeggio. Not going to do seven, not going to do six, I'm going to do eight. When it comes to quarter notes, I'm not going to do three or two, I'm going to do four, right? And then finally, of course, our melodic lines must be played in time. Must be played in time. So those are a lot of rules, right? That's a lot of rules of the game. And somebody might be asking, Do you really think like that, man, do you really create these kind of rules when you sit down the practice. The answer, of course, is yes, yes, I do. I do exactly this. I have it set I have a set methodology, a set approach that I'm going to implement when I practice again so I can measure, accurately assess whether I succeed or whether I fail. I just don't sit down and doodle. Doodling is fun. Doodling is cool. Doodling has some value to it, for sure, right? But it's not like, it's not, it's not this kind of grunt work. It doesn't have the payoff that this grunt work has, I promise you, it doesn't. Because, you know what, when you doodle, you can't replicate doodle, right? You can't randomness. How do you replicate random? See, you have to have rules. So to go through the list again, very quickly, we're going to create harmonic pairs using the same quality, major, major, minor, minor. So on the first quarter of our harmonic pair will remain constant, never changing. We'll swap the second chord out with other the other 11 chords. Number three, we're going to each harmonic pair will be one measure in length, followed by a measure of silence. Number four, we will create four specific melodic lines, ascending, ascending, ascending, descending, descending, descending, and descending, ascending. Number five, each of our four melodic lines will be created two ways, one using all quarter notes. The second way all eighth notes. Number six, our melodic lines will only consist of the root, third, fifth and seventh of each chord. Number seven, we will practice creating our music lines launching from various entry points of the first chord, the root, the third to fifth and the seventh of our harmonic pair, right. The first chord of our harmonic pair, number eight. Each melodic line will fill the entire measure, entire measure, right. And of course, our melodic, finally, our melodic lines will be played in time very, very specific rules of the game that we must adhere to today. Okay, so let's get after this. Let's play our hybrid arpeggio. So as I mentioned earlier, I'm using today C minor. Thank you for listening to jazz piano skills. The remaining premium content of this episode is available to jazz piano skills members at jazz piano skills podcast.com Visit jazzpanelskills.com to learn more about membership privileges and become a jazz piano skills member, thank you.