Indiana (Back Home Again In), Melodic Analysis

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Welcome to jazz piano skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn and play jazz piano. Hope everyone enjoyed this past week exploring the harmonic structure of the great jazz standard from 1917. Indiana. We certainly tackled many essential jazz panel skills. Last week, we looked at the form of Indiana, the standard chord changes of Indiana, the harmonic function of Indiana, the common harmonic movement found within Indiana. And of course, last but certainly not least, my suggested voicings for Indiana. Without question, write a ton of information that as I have mentioned in the past, feels like you're drinking from a firehose, but and this is a very big, but this process will get easier and easier as we continue to march through this year. And the years to come. Study in jazz standards right every month, a new jazz standard. I mentioned last week, there is a sequential order to learning how to play jazz piano, which indeed there is. And there's also a sequential order to learn how to play tunes. We completed step one last week, looking at the form changes function, harmonic movement voicings. Today, step two, we take a look at the melody a melodic analysis. And next week step three, improvisation. Right harmony melody improvisation a sequential order, allowing us to discover learn and play a tune successfully. Gotta love it right. I mentioned last week that if you have been a faithful jazz piano skills listener for the past four plus years, you have become intimately familiar with the jazz piano skills needed to begin tune study. And I also mentioned that if you haven't been grinding along with us over the past four years, well, no worries right. This is a great time to jump on board, begin developing and enhancing your jazz piano skills. The tune study that we are going to be doing every month will help you sift through and prioritize the last four years of podcast episodes so so that you can begin maximizing your jazz piano skills now, immediately. So if you're a jazz piano skills veteran, or a jazz piano skills, rookie makes no difference. You are in the right place at the right time to begin a jazz piano journey that will have a profound impact on your understanding of music, and of course, on your jazz piano playing as well. So today, you are going to discover a melodic analysis of the jazz standard Indiana, you are going to learn melody guide tones fingerings phrases and target notes of Indiana and you're going to play three different melodic treatments of Indiana. Alright, but ballad pasa swing. So as I always like to say regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner and intermediate player and advanced player even if you are a seasoned and experienced professional, you're gonna find this jazz piano skills podcast lesson exploring Indiana a melodic analysis 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 are a new listener, if you are new to jazz piano skills, I want to personally invite you to become a jazz piano skills member. Your membership will grant you access to the premium content for this podcast episode. And every weekly podcast episode. premium content will help you thoroughly and correctly discover learn and play the jazz standard we are currently exploring and as 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. Now these are the illustrations the lead sheets the play alongs the backing tracks that I designed and developed and produced produced for every weekly jazz pan Well skills podcast episode and you want these educational podcast packets in your hands as you listen to the episode of course. And you also want these podcast packets sitting on your piano when practicing as well. As jazz panel skills member you also have access to the to a self paced and sequential jazz piano curriculum which is loaded with comprehensive courses containing educational talks, interactive learning media video demonstrations of the jazz panel skill being taught in all 12 keys, and so much more. You also have a reserved seat in my online weekly master classes which are held every Thursday evening. And if you can't attend no problem, master classes are recorded. And you can watch and rewatch the class whenever and as often as you wish. You also as a jazz panel skills member have access to an online interactive Fakebook containing must know jazz standard with excellent chord changes chord scale relationships, harmonic function analysis, listening suggestions and historical insights. As jazz piano skills member, you can hang out with old friends and make some new jazz panel friends, and the online private jazz panel skills community, which hosts a variety of engaging forums. And finally, your jazz panel skills membership grants you unlimited private, personal and professional educational support whenever and as often as you need it. All of these amazing privileges are waiting to help you discover learn play jazz piano. So check it all out at jazz piano skills.com and become a member to enjoy premium content, right, the podcast content, as well as all the other privileges I just mentioned. Of course, if you have any questions once you get to jazz panel skills, please do not hesitate to contact me. I'm always happy to spend some time with you and answer any questions that you may have. Speaking of questions, we're on to the question of the week. And this week's question comes from ties Sally of Mount Tabor, New Jersey, Mount Tabor, New Jersey. Now Ty writes, I am having difficulty determining what voicing I should use when? How do I know when it's best to play a simple black cord or a shell of some kind. If I do choose to use a black cord, how do I know what inversion is best to us given the situation? I want to make sure I'm using the correct chord voicings and not sure how to properly assess my choices. Thanks as always for your insight and help. Kay Thai? You know the old saying if I had a nickel for every time I was asked that question. Well, I'm not kidding. If I had a nickel for every time I was asked that question, I would seriously make Jeff Bezos look like a popper. No doubt about it. So relax and know that you are not alone. And you are asking without doubt you are asking the million dollar question that every jazz pianist wrestles with when learning how to play. Okay, so the first thing I want to say is as long as you're playing something, playing something you are on the right track. In other words, if you have a response, for every chord symbol, you see, you are moving in the right direction. In other words, you see an F major seven chord symbol and your hand can play something immediately. Right, play some kind of F chord. If you see a half diminished chord symbol, again, your hand can immediately respond with some kind of a half diminished chord. I would make it a priority. All right, I'm back priority one to have your block shapes under your fingers in root position first, right? Although not ideal playing songs using root position chords. It's actually doable. It's not ideal, but it's doable. That would be step one. Can you do that? Now if your answer is yes, it is time to incorporate inverted shapes. And once you are comfortable with inverted shapes, I would turn my attention to traditional three note shell voicings 379735 shapes

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and if If you are already familiar with the traditional shells, then begin using contemporary coral shells. And finally, turn your attention to two handed voicings. So your voicing Arsenal consists of one blocks root position, two blocks with inverted shapes, three traditional shells for contemporary shells. And five, two handed voicings. If you can play musical sound, major dominant minor, half diminished the diminished using these five voicing categories, then you have all the Arsenal you need to become an accomplished jazz pianist. Okay, so now back to your question tie. Once you have your voicing Arsenal in place, how do you know which voicing type to use? And when? The answer is? I wish I had a drumroll right here. The answer is pick one. Pick one. I know on the surface, this is not very helpful. But it's the truth. Pick one. It is true that one voicing structure may sound better than another given a specific situation however, you have to play one. And in doing so, if your ears say, wait a minute, we think something else might sound better in this situation. Then begin experiment experimenting with the various voicing tools that you have in your toolbox. The ones I just outlined. Right? They're all correct voicings. So you will not play something wrong. You know, I had a teacher who used to ask me this question. Every time I asked the same question you are asking Ty. He would ask Bob. Does that sound good? And if I answered yes, he would, he would respond well, then it's good. If I answered no, he would say well, then it's not good. He was actually teaching me to trust my ears. What a great lesson. You know, because your ears are very truthful. So Ty when when you play a chord and it sounds good with the melody you're playing, then go with it. Do not and I repeat, do not begin hunting and searching for the best voicing for a single situation. If you do that, you will develop a paralysis that will be very difficult to shake. This is not to say that your voicing selection will not evolve and change over time. As you become more and more familiar with voicings and of course your technique improves. All allow this to happen, right allow this to happen organically as you continue to discover learn play jazz piano. It's a journey tie. It's a big, fascinating, challenging and rewarding journey. Enjoy it and enjoy playing what ever voicing type you choose. When playing a tune as long as it is the right sound, major dominant minor, half diminished, diminished. And as long as it sounds good to your ears. It's that simple. Trust your ears and enjoy the journey. Your plane will continue to evolve as you continue to study, practice. And of course listen to jazz piano skills. Great question type and as always, if further clarification is needed, if you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. I'm always happy to help you. Spend some time with you and help you in any way that I can. Okay, let's discovered learn and play jazz piano let's discover learn and play Indiana back home again in Indiana. A melodic analysis. Over the last few weeks I have presented my outline for studying and learning tunes. And again, the genre makes no difference right? It just doesn't whether it's jazz, rock, pop, country, folk, r&b, whatever. That outline my outline. Just for quick refresher number one listen. Always listen right various artists vocalist, instrumentalist and of course pianist. Number two determined form of the tune, Every song has a form a Ba, ba, B, etc. Number three, I attack the chords first the harmonic structure of the two, I learned the chords learn voicings karma, common harmonic movement, like 251145, etc. Number four, I turned my attention to the melody like we're going to do today. First and foremost, I want to be able to understand and play that melody with a single note interpretation of vocal like plain representation of the melody. And number five, once I had my harmony, my melody in place, I turned my attention to various treatments, like swing, Bossa ballads. And, of course, improvisation. That's it. All right, nothing more, nothing less. Last week, we focused on gaining harmonic familiarity and command of Indiana. So we listen, we determined to form we explored the core changes the harmonic function and voicings for Indiana. This week, we turn our attention to a melodic analysis of Indiana, our goal has always is to keep things very clean, very tidy, right? Very structured, with our approach, whether it is a skill study or a tune study makes no difference, right? Our conceptual understanding of all that we do musically must be structured and simple, so that it can be replicated over and over and over again. And you all can attest to the fact that I have said it many times over the past four years. If your conceptual understanding of music, or any musical musical skill, or tune is not structured and simple, then that means it's unorganized and confusing. And if it's unorganized and confusing conceptually upstairs. You have no shot at executing it in your hands on the piano downstairs. It's just a brutal fact. Therefore, our goal always we want to keep our tune steady, structured, simple, simple, and replicatable. Right from month to month to month to month. So the educational agenda for today is as follows number one, we are going to begin part two a melodic analysis of Indiana. Number two that we are going to listen of course always listen to a definitive recording of Indiana we will dissect the melody of Indiana diatonic versus diatonic scale versus arpeggio. Number four, we will discuss the melodic fingerings for Indiana. Number five we will discover learn and play the melodic phrases of Indiana. Number six we will discover learn and play the melodic target notes of Indiana. Number seven we will discover learn and play the melody with voicings for Indiana and number eight we will discover learn and play three different treatments of Indiana, Indiana as a ballad, Indiana as a Basa and Indiana as a swing. Wow, we have a ton as always to get through. So if you are a jazz panel skills member I want you to hit the pause button take a few minutes right now to download and print your podcast packets, the illustrations and the lead sheets. Right now your membership again your membership grants you access to premium content for every weekly podcast episode which includes all of the educational podcast packets and as I mentioned earlier, you should have these podcast packets in your hand when listening to this episode. And of course you should have them on your piano when practicing. If you're listening to this podcast on any of the popular podcast directories such as Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Amazon, Pandora Stitcher, the list goes on and on. Then go directly to jazz piano skills podcast.com And you will find the active download links for each of the podcast packets in the show notes or a little easier way for jazz panel skills members you can log into your jazz panel skills account and from your Dashboard, navigate to this episode where you will find one convenient link to download all three podcast packets in one convenient bundle. Okay, so

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now that you have your podcast packet So, I want you to grab your lead sheets, and you should have six lead sheets, six of them. Let's just go through them very quickly lead sheet one provide you a great template for learning the melody of Indiana. Using your ears, right using your ears and you'll see melody guide tones mapped out on that lead sheet lead sheet to provide you with the melody. Just a simple interpretation of the melody for Indiana. lead sheet three provides you with the fingerings for playing the melody of Indiana lead sheet for highlights seven no I'm sorry six, six phrases that we'll be using for developing the melody of Indiana. Its lead sheet five lead sheet five illuminates the target notes for the melodic and for melodic and improvisational development. And lead sheet six combines melody and voicings for Indiana. So you should have all six of those lead sheets in your packet. No doubt about it right some invaluable tools to discover learn and play today. So so let's get busy. What is the very first thing we do when we study and learn attune? We did it last week. And we're going to do it again today. Because we should always be doing it. Always. I stressed last week that listening to various renditions of a tune is not only the first but the most important step. Again, I can't I can't even imagine attempting to learn a tune before spending time becoming familiar with it, absorbing it listening to many renditions of it. Last week, we listened to a beautiful rendition of Indiana as a ballad, Rosemary Clooney, right. And I mentioned I typically listen to vocal renditions first followed by instrumentalists and then followed by pianist. Right. I like to listen to vocal renditions because the melody helps me really truly digest the melody. This week, we're going to turn to the great the one and only and the great Pete Fallon, right Dixieland clarinetist, Pete found performing Indiana and in the traditional up tempo groove. In fact, in fact, this this is how I originally learned this too, as a Dixieland team playing in a Dixieland band in hunters club hunters club in downtown Rock Island, Illinois. This rendition brings back a lot of fun memories for me. So I want you to sit back and enjoy this swing Dixieland treatment of Indiana performed by the one and only Pete fountain. And I challenge you, I challenge you right now not to tap your toes or smile at all, as you listen to this rendition. So here we go. Pete foul, take it away.

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Oh my goodness. Is that fun? Is that fun or what? Oh my gosh brings back so many memories. Indiana Dixieland, Pete fountain, you cannot beat it right. In fact, I think it's practically impossible to talk about Indiana without referencing some Dixieland treatment of the tune, whether it be Pete found out hurt Louis Armstrong, right. As with all recordings, as with all recordings, I want you to encourage you to listen to it over and over again, right, every time you do, I'm telling you, every time you do, you will hear something new. And it will profoundly, this kind of listening will profoundly impact the development of your very own treatment of the two. So now, let's explore those lead sheets. Grab the sheet one. Let's discover how to properly properly begin learning the melody of Indiana using 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