I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face, Melodic Analysis

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:33.08)
Welcome to Jazz Piano Skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn, and play jazz piano. Here we are, the second week of the month, which means we're going to tackle a melodic analysis today. You know, last week we took our tune of the month, you know, the gorgeous standard I've grown accustomed to her face. And we did our traditional harmonic analysis, examining the form.

traditional changes, the harmonic function, common harmonic movement, and of course, voicings, left-handed voicings, shell voicings, plus the two-handed structures. And as y'all know, we always follow up our harmonic analysis with a melodic exploration to discover, learn, and play lyrics, melody, fingerings, phrases.

And of course, various standard treatments, jazz treatments like the ballad, bossa, swing. And as we do every week, we have a rhythmic challenge to confront us today as well. How fun is that? You know, every month, harmony, melody, improvisation, rhythm. Every month. Four jazz skills categories or camps, as I like to say.

that every aspiring jazz musician, not just pianist, but every aspiring jazz musician must address both conceptually and physically through well thought out and constructed practice strategies or agendas. As I said last week, people don't plan to fail, they just fail to plan. Now, you know, this age old adage,

It rings ever so true when it comes to the study and practicing of jazz. The study of jazz, as I imagine it is with many disciplines, has become saturated with information. know, jazz tips abound in articles, books, the internet, social media, website, yes, podcasts. Heck, it was information overload in the 70s when I began my jazz journey.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:54.606)
And it has done nothing but exploded with all of the various ways we connect today. But you know what hasn't changed? What hasn't changed, regardless of when you started your jazz journey, whether you started your study of jazz in the 70s like me or beginning in the year 2025, what hasn't changed is having access to information, good or bad, is not

the same as having a coherent strategic plan that is formed from a clear and concise understanding of what jazz is the study of a plan, right? A plan that can be successfully implemented to ensure consistent musical growth. How nice is that right?

having a plan that can be successfully implemented to ensure consistent musical growth. Wow. You know, that's, that's important stuff. You know,

for you for me to continually to consistently enhance our ability to play jazz. It's vitally important. In order to do that, it's vitally important that we formulate and implement a practice plan, a practice plan that is derived from a true from a factual conceptual understanding of what jazz is the study of. In other words,

What are the essential jazz piano skills and how should I study and practice them? That is the question, right, that we all need to ask. What are the essential jazz piano skills and how should I study and practice them? You know, this is precisely what this podcast is all about. It is about answering that question every week. Hence the name jazz piano skills. You know,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:05.994)
I have been pounding since the start of the year, what I call the seven facts of music and why, why do I keep talking about the seven facts of music? Because the seven facts of music answers the question, what is jazz the study of? The seven facts of music actually expose, illuminate what the essential jazz piano skills are and how we should study

and practice them. So what are the seven facts of music? Number one, music is the production of sound and silence. Sound, of course, being major, dominant, minor, half diminished and diminished. Number two, sound is produced harmonically and melodically. Harmonically and melodically. Number three, when sound is produced harmonically, we're playing chords, right? Voicings.

Number four, when sound is produced melodically, we are playing scales and arpeggios. Right? Every melody is made up of scales and arpeggios. Number five, when playing scales and arpeggios, melodies, we are moving in one of two directions, up or down. And number six, we camouflage or we decorate our scales and arpeggios with tension, chromaticism, right? Notes that are outside the key center.

And finally, number seven, we make musical facts one through six interesting by adding rhythm. That's it. Those are the seven facts of music. And it is imperative that you think about these seven facts a lot, a lot to the point that you actually see and hear, course, see and hear music in accordance with these seven facts.

You know, once this tipping point happens for you, when you can identify everything you encounter musically as being framed by the seven facts that I just outlined, then you can begin constructing, finally, right? You can begin constructing a practice plan that actually produces the results that you're looking for. Now, on the other hand, if you approach

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:34.426)
learning how to play jazz as the process of assimilating a bunch of autonomous musical concepts, ideas, licks, progressions, theories that you've heard about. Now you practice them in hopes that they somehow eventually and magically, of course, that somehow they all

together to begin making you sound like Oscar Peterson or Bill Evans, or maybe you write Garland and Keith Jarrett, or maybe Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, right? Doesn't matter. You're going to magically sound like a professional jazz pianist by practicing these autonomous musical concepts. If that's how you approach it, then all I can say to you is, good luck.

just know that the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against you. But you know what? There is a silver lining, you can't take comfort in knowing that you're not alone. The majority of people with aspirations of developing accomplished jazz skills are actually in that boat, they're in the same boat with you, right? Wow. You know, again, this is why I launched

jazz piano skills six years ago to help everyone swimming in the stagnant pool of autonomous musical concepts, ideas, licks, progressions, theories, an entirely new approach. All right, I wanted to offer an entirely new approach to studying and practicing essential jazz piano skills, an approach anchored by the seven facts of music. And

you know, this is precisely why we approach our tune study every week, every month, every year centered around the seven facts of music using three distinct phases, right? Phase one, always a harmonic analysis. Phase two, melodic analysis, and phase three, improvisation development. And we add emphasis to each of these phases with a very specific

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:58.648)
focus on fact number seven. And what was fact number seven? Rhythm, right? We add interest to facts one through six with rhythm. You know, the harmonic rhythm challenge week one always involves some kind of rhythmic transcribing and comping skills. The melodic rhythm challenge week two always involves some kind of transposition of a melodic motif to various key centers.

And the improvisation rhythm challenge, which we'll do next week, stretches arpeggio and scale motion through various segments of the sound, right? Thus really, truly transforming our solo, our jazz soloing or jazz improvisation vocabulary. Needless to say, I'm thrilled because we have officially established an amazing

educationally sound, three-tier, three-phase approach that is formulated from a clear understanding of the seven facts of music. The seven facts needed to illuminate essential jazz piano skills needed to successfully discover, learn, and play tunes, to successfully discover, learn, and play jazz piano. So, you know, all this to say that today,

We are doing a melodic analysis that you're going to melodically discover I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face. And you're going to learn melody by ear, of course. You're going to learn the phrases and the various target notes of I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face. And you're going to play I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face using three standard jazz treatments. And on top of all that,

you will be given a rhythm challenge to develop your transposing skills, your ability to move a rhythmic melodic idea around to various key centers. So as I always like to say, regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner, an intermediate player, an advanced player, or even if you consider yourself a seasoned and experienced professional, you're going to find this Jazz Panel Skills Podcast lesson

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:25.684)
exploring I've grown accustomed to her face, a melodic analysis to be very beneficial. But you know what? Before we get started, before we dig in, I want to, as I always do, welcome first time listeners to Jazz Piano Skills. And if you are new to Jazz Piano Skills, if you're a new Jazz Piano Skills podcast listener, welcome. I want to invite you to become a Jazz Piano Skills member.

Membership at the at Jazz Panel Skills helps keep this podcast episode ad free, which I'm very proud of. So your membership, in addition to helping us keep Jazz Panel Skills ad free, grants you many, many perks. Number one, as a member, have access premium podcast content access to the premium podcast content, which basically means you get to hear the entire podcast. The first half

half of every podcast episode is free for everyone to enjoy. We deal a lot with educational content in the beginning that I just like I just discussed. We have the question of the week, we lay out the educational agenda and the lesson rationale. The second half for members only we get into the lesson content, the various demonstrations, and weekly assignments. As a member, you also have access to the weekly podcast packets.

podcast packets are the illustrations, the lead sheets, the play alongs that are designed and developed each and every week for each and every weekly podcast episode. These are educational materials that you need to have in your hands when listening to podcasts to get the most out of it. And of course, to have sitting on the piano when practicing as well. As a Jazz Piano Skills member, you have access to the online

courses. These are comprehensive, interactive, self-paced and sequential courses. All of them are packed with interactive learning media, plus video demonstrations of the Jazz Panel Skills in all 12 keys. You also, as a Jazz Panel Skills member, have a reserved seat in the weekly master classes, which are held every Thursday evening, 8pm Central Standard Time. And if you can't make the class, it's no big deal.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (14:45.166)
the master classes are recorded and you can watch the video or listen to the audio whenever you wish whenever convenient and as often as you would like. As a Jazz Panel Skills member you also have access to the private online Jazz Panel Skills community which is growing weekly. The community hosts a variety of episode specific forums as well as just general jazz forums and lots of great member

feedback and assistance is available through the community as well. And finally, as a Jazz Panel Skills member, you have unlimited educational support, right? Private, personal, professional support whenever and as often as you need it. There are many ways to get in touch with me throughout the week. SpeakPipe, which is a nice widget that is on every page in the website that allows you to send me an audio, audio clip, and I can respond with an audio clip right back.

to you. There's a web form, of course, my office number here at the Dallas School of Music. You can reach out to me anytime through that number in my extension. And if you're old school, you can use email, right? So anyway, all of these amazing privileges are waiting to help you discover, learn and play jazz piano. So check it out. Check them all out at jazzpanelskills.com and of course, become a member.

to enjoy all the fabulous perks that I've just outlined for you. If you get to the website, you're poking around, you have some questions, no big deal. I'm happy to help you. So please connect with me, contact me. Happy to answer any questions that you may have and help you in any way that I can. Alrighty, so speaking of questions, the question of the week. This question comes from Alexander Bessing.

living in Mannheim, Germany. And Alexander asked this question, I'm just listening to your podcast episode, The Jazz Language. And I love the structured teaching, very concise, very clear. And you always talk about the five primary sounds of music, major, dominant, minor, half diminished and diminished. I was wondering about the suspended sound. It doesn't belong

Dr. Bob Lawrence (17:07.758)
to either minor major dominant sound directly. Is the suspension not a primary sound of music too? Thank you very much and have a great day. See you. Bye. Okay. Well, Alexander. Great question. I've gotten to know Alexander well over the last couple of weeks, relatively new to jazz panel skills, always has great questions. And this is a perfect example.

a fantastic question. And I love that you are exercising Alexander critical thinking skills, because this is exactly how you grow conceptually, which of course is going to radically change how you grow physically. The conceptual understanding drives the physical development. So let's deal with your question. Let's deal with the suspension.

and some other harmonic and now enhancements commonly used by jazz musicians. So we have the suspension, but there are enhancements like the augmented. We have flat nine, we have sharp nines and flat fives and sharp fives, sharp 11s, flat 13s. We see all this fancy schmancy stuff. Sus chords, augmented chords, altered chords like the flat nine, sharp nine, and so on, right? These are all awesome enhancements used by musicians to decorate a primary sound.

see this is so important. I'm going to say that again. Suspensions, augmented, flat nine, sharp nine, flat five, sharp five, sharp 11, flat 13. These are all enhancements, enhancements used by musicians to decorate the primary sounds of major, minor, dominant, half diminished and diminished. So let's take a few minutes and think this through.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (19:10.38)
Let's think this through. Let's start with the suspension. A suspension occurs when the third of the harmony is replaced with the fourth of the harmony. So a C major sus replaces the note E, the third, with the note F, which of course is the fourth. And likewise, a C dominant sus

replaces the third, the note E, with the fourth, the note F. Pretty straightforward stuff, but if your focus is on the enhancement, if your focus is on the sus, you might easily overlook the fact that you did not change the primary sound. In other words, a C major sus is still a major sound. And a dominant sus

is still a dominant sound. So decorating a sound does not change the sound or create a new sound. A major sus is still a major sound and a dominant sus is still a dominant sound. The same thought process applies to the augmented enhancement. A C major sharp five, C major augmented, is still a major sound.

And dominant chords that are altered with a flat nine or sharp nine or sharp 11 or flat or sharp fives or flat 13, they're still dominant chords. They're still dominant sounds. You know, here's an analogy that I always love to give to drive this point home. Alexander, if you and I went out for dinner this evening and you ordered fried chicken.

and I ordered barbecue chicken. We would both be eating chicken. Just because the chicken is prepared differently, just because the chicken is enhanced differently, does not change the fact that we are both eating chicken. Likewise, just because one dominant chord is decorated with a flat nine and another dominant chord is decorated with a flat 13,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:41.186)
doesn't change the fact that they are both dominant sounds. Likewise, a major sus is still major and a dominant sus is still dominant. You see Alexander, it is so important, so important that how we think about music, it must continually become simpler and simpler if we hope to get better and better.

If our thinking is becoming more complicated, then it's a clear sign we're heading in the wrong direction. I have said this before in previous episodes, that the difference between amateur and professional musicians is that amateur musicians are always complicating their playing and professional musicians are always searching for ways to simplify their playing.

Right? Simplify your playing through simplifying your thinking. We have five primary sounds of music, major, dominant, minor, half diminished and diminished. Everything else is decorating or enhancing those sounds, not changing them into new sounds. So when you hear me continually refer to the five primary sounds of music, major, dominant, minor, half diminished and diminished,

It's the most succinct way to think about. It's the most succinct way to teach, discuss, or study. In practice, sound. You know, once we have a functional command of the five primary sounds of music, we can begin exploring the various ways that jazz musicians enhance or decorate these sounds. Approaching sound in this manner, again, simplifies your thought process, and as a result,

your plane. And that's what we want to do. Right? Now you're starting to think and play like a professional jazz musician. When you simplify your thought process, and as a result, improve your playing. You know, I hope this helps Alexander. It's a great question, as always. But if more clarification is needed, or you want to dive a little deeper into this subject.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (24:06.176)
I'm happy to do so. So do not hesitate to reach out to me. I'm always happy to help spend time with you and kick the can around a little bit more if need be. All right, so let's discover, learn and play jazz piano. Let's discover, learn and play. I've grown accustomed to her face, a melodic analysis. All right, so when studying when learning any tune, I approach it the same way.

And again, genre makes no difference, makes no difference whether it's a rock tune, an R &B, folk, pop, jazz, you name it, makes no difference. Here's how I go about it. Number one, I listen, always listening. Various artists, vocalist, instrumentalist, pianist, and artists from various genres of music as well, not just jazz musicians. Number two,

I always dive in harmonically first. always do a harmonic analysis like we did last week, right? We looked at form, changes, function, common movement, voicings. That's number two. Number three, I do a melodic analysis like we're going to do today, right? Learn the melody, always transcribe the melody. I look at phrases and I always explore various treatments of the tune as well. And then finally, I like

to explore a tune that I'm learning improvisationally. So I want to understand chord scale relationships. I want to be have a command of my arpeggio on scale movement through the various sounds within the tune, explore tension. And of course, with all these right harmonic analysis, melodic improvisation, explore rhythm as well. Right, just it's a pretty thorough, pretty complete approach that we go through each and every month in a very

structured manner. So this week, right? Melodic analysis for I've grown accustomed to her face. And next week, of course, we'll dive into the improvisation. So the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we're going to listen to definitive recordings of I've grown accustomed to her face. Number two, we're going to learn the melody of I've grown accustomed to her face by ear, of course transcribing it. Number four,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:27.136)
Alright, I'm sorry. Number three, we're going to look at suggested fingerings for playing the melody of I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face. Number four, we will identify the various phrases, melodic phrases within the tune. Number five, we will apply the voicings that we looked at last week with a harmonic analysis. We will apply those voicings to the melody of I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face. And then finally, number six, we'll spend a little time looking at

this great standard using three typical jazz treatments, the ballad, the bossa nova, and the swing treatment. So if you are a Jazz Piano Skills member, I want you to take a few minutes right now to download and print the podcast packets. Again, these are the illustrations, the lead sheets and the play alongs. And again, your membership grants you access to

this material each and every week, right? In addition to the premium content, you get these podcast packets as well. As I mentioned every week, you should have this podcast material, these packets in your hands when listening to the episode, and you certainly are going to want them sitting on the piano when practicing. Okay, so now that you have your podcast packets, I want

you too, as we always do, jump in with our lead sheets. So want you to grab your lead sheets and you should have six lead sheets in your packet. Now these lead sheets, as you just look at them quickly, you can tell that these lead sheets are going to help us with our transcribing of the melody, going to help us with our fingerings, identifying the phrases and target notes, applying the voicings to the melody as well. So we get

We have a ton to get through. We have a ton to dissect today, so we need to get busy. Now, you know, typically at this time, I would always play a single definitive recording of our tune. This year, of course, I have decided to place my listening suggestions in the Jazz Panel Skills Community Forums. And again, there are a couple of reasons for this, right? Number one, I want to be able to suggest more than just one tune.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (28:48.974)
right? More than just one tune to check out. And number two, I want to preserve as much time in the podcast as possible for educational content. Okay, so I want you to right now before going any further, head on over to the community and check out the listening, the listening examples that I think is worth your time to help you gain even a deeper insight.

into the tune in various ways. Great jazz artists have treated this tune over the years. Okay. And once you have listened to the recommended recordings, I want you to grab your lead sheets. And of course, we're gonna start with lead sheet one. So let's take a look at lead sheet one. Okay. And you'll see that lead sheet one, it's kind of what I call a fill in a blank template.

PREMIUM CONTENT AVAILABLE TO JAZZ PIANO SKILLS MEMBERS ONLY