Jazz Standards, a DLP Synopsis

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Welcome to jazz piano skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn and play jazz piano. Today is a great opportunity, great opportunity for us to pump the brakes. Exhale, and reflect upon our efforts since the start of the year. It's a time for us to retreat, regroup, if you will, right so that when we put the wheels back in motion next month, and begin tackling a new tone, we will do so with a renewed sense of purpose, understanding and commitment to tune learning. A renewed belief in our ability to successfully apply essential jazz piano skills to the tune that we want to learn. It's hard to believe that we have already thoroughly studied for jazz standards since the start of the year. In January, we we started with the Harry Warren classic, there will never be another you. We then turned our attention to back home again in Indiana, followed by one of my all time favorite ballads, these foolish things. And this month, we dissected the iconic Henry Newman seni Johnny Mercer standard the days of Wine and Roses. With each of these jazz standards, we utilize the three tiered approach to discover learning play the tune. Tier one we focused on a harmonic analysis, tier two a melodic analysis and tier three improvisation development, harmony, Melody, improvisation. I think it's the perfect 123 Punch needed to be able to with confidence, actually claim that you know, a two as I have said in previous podcast episodes. The great thing about our three tier approach harmony melody improvisation to study in tunes is that it quickly reveals our strengths and weaknesses regarding various essential jazz piano skills, the essential jazz piano skills I might add needed in order to successfully learn and play a toe. And how important is that? You know that we know our jazz panel skills, strengths and weaknesses? Well, I'll tell you how important it is. There's no way to improve our plane without having an accurate understanding or assessment of our plane of our skills. Our three tiered approach to discover learn and play tunes does exactly that it gives us a very clear picture. And very quickly, I might add, where we stand with our ability to play critical jazz piano skills. Having a process sequential order, systematic approach to learning how to play jazz piano. And learning how to play tunes is an absolute must. We shouldn't be surprised, right? I mean, after all, how can you master any high level skill without a strategic game plan? I can confidently guarantee you that a YouTube approach to trying to learn how to play jazz piano will only cause frustration, confusion and eventually surrender. So my goal with jazz piano skills, and it's been my goal since day one back in 2019 has been not only to introduce you to the essential jazz piano skills, discover, but to provide you with a way to successfully study the jazz piano skills, learn and a process for developing a physical command of the jazz piano skills play. Hence, discover, learn and play. It's important to say and I've stressed it many times since the start of the year that if you have been a faithful jazz piano skills listeners since 2019, you've become intimately familiar with the jazz piano skills needed to begin to study. I've also mentioned that if you haven't been grinding along with us over the past four years, it's no big deal. No worries. It's a great time right now to jump on board to begin to Val been enhancing your jazz piano skills. The tune study that, that we do every month will help you sift through and prioritize the last four years of podcast episodes that you can begin so that you can begin maximizing your jazz panel skills and like immediately so if you're a jazz panel skills vet veteran, and we're if you're a jazz panel skills, rookie makes no difference. You're in the right place at the right time to begin a jazz panel journey that will have a very profound impact on your understanding of music, and of course, on your jazz piano playing. So here is the game plan for today. Today, you're going to discover what I call jazz standards, a DLP discover learn play synopsis, jazz standards a DLP synopsis, you're going to learn how to prioritize the various essential jazz piano skills and you are going to play effective practice approaches effective practice approaches for the jazz panel skills. So as I always like to say, regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner intermediate player or even advanced player, even if you consider yourself a seasoned and experienced, crusty old professional, you're going to find this jazz piano skills podcast lesson devoted to the presentation of jazz standards, a DLP synopses to be invaluable, liberating, and dare I say, comforting. 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 to the jazz piano skills podcast or if you're just new to jazz piano skills in general, I want to personally invite you to become a jazz piano skills member. Your membership grants you access to the premium content for this podcast episode and for every weekly podcast episode. And premium content will help you thoroughly and correctly discover, learn and play the jazz standard that we are currently exploring. And as the old saying goes a whole lot more. For example, as a jazz panel skills member, you can access the past the current the future educational weekly podcast packets. These are the illustrations the lead sheets, the play alongs, the backing tracks that I designed and developed to help you get the most out of each weekly jazz piano skills 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, there are video demonstrations at all 12 keys, the jazz panel skills being taught and so much more. You also have a reserved seat as I like to say in my online weekly masterclass, which is held every Thursday evening. Now, if you can not attend, it's no big deal so no problem master classes are recorded. And you can watch the video 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 know jazz standards with excellent chord changes chord scale relationships, harmonic function analysis, listening suggestions and historical insights. As a jazz panel skills member you can hang out with some old friends make some new friends and the jazz panel, the private jazz panel skills online 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 and play jazz piano. So check it all out when you have a second check it out at jazz panel skills.com. And of course become a member to enjoy premium podcast content, plus all the other privileges I just mentioned. Of course if you have any questions once you poke around on the site, any questions please contact me. I'm happy to spend some time with you and answer any questions that you may have. Speaking of questions, it's time for the question of the week one of my favorite segments I received This question actually, several weeks ago, at least a few weeks ago, and I saved it for today, because it syncs up beautifully with today's podcast episode. So Adam Linkner, check this out from Athens, Greece, Adam, love it, man, Adam writes,

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I've been studying jazz piano for around five years and love it. However, five years into my journey, and I feel more overwhelmed than ever, with the amount of information and material that I need to practice. As a result, I feel I now have a scattershot approach to practicing. Is there any kind of outline you know of or you can provide? That will help me establish an organized and effective practice agenda? Thanks for considering my question. I appreciate all that you do. Well, Adam, you have hit the nail on the head. Honestly, this has been this has been the problem with jazz education for as long as I can remember, there is so much information available more than ever, especially with the onslaught of the internet. Heck, I I feel like you currently do I I felt like you currently do back in the 70s and 80s. When I was searching for information and materials to help me develop my jazz skills. It seemed like, it seemed like at that time, there was an endless number of books available. And that was, that was just what you could find in the Jamie aber saw catalog. And on top of that, there was no way to determine which ones right which one of the books in the Jamie aerosol catalog, which ones which ones I should use. And if I could determine a grouping of books to use, there was no easy way for me to determine an order in which I should study them. What a dilemma. So typically, what would happen back in those days, for all of us wanting to improve our jazz playing, we would simply purchase as many books as we could. We'd have a library of books, man, we would buy any book that we could, and begin to somehow somehow try to piece the information together in a meaningful way that would hopefully improve our practicing, which in turn would improve our jazz panel plan. In hindsight, it was not, it was not a good plan. It was on a good plan financially, because we were buying anything we can get our hands on. And it certainly wasn't a good plan. Educationally, right, not a good strategy. So today, we still have the Jamie Ebersol catalog, which is packed with excellent resources. And many other music publishing companies now are offering an entire catalogue of jazz education materials plus, we have this relatively new phenomenon called the Internet, which, which honestly could also be called the Black Hole jazz. There is so much information, right, a lot of great information. And of course, a lot of not so great information, which of course, makes it even more challenging than ever, to sift through and determine what to use, how to use it and when to use it. So Adam, I think the very best advice I can give you is to think about your study and practice approach in three categories. Number one, harmony and number two, Melody, number three, improvisation. And all three of those, of course, include rhythmic aspects of music as well. So we have harmony, Melody, improvisation. You need to answer we all need to answer the following questions. Number one, what harmonic skills? Am I practicing weekly? And how and why? Number two, what melodic skills am I practicing weekly and how and why? And number three? What improvisation skills? Am I practicing weekly? And how and why? Now, of course, answering these questions becomes much easier if you actually know the harmonic melodic improvisational skills that you should be practicing. That's where I come in. And guess what? We are doing that. today? We're doing exactly that answering those questions. This is why I have been hanging on to your question Adam for a few weeks because it leads perfectly into the topic of today's podcast episode, which presents What I like to call jazz standards, a DLP synopsis, discover learn play synopsis, which I could have very easily very easily called a practice agenda synopsis, which of course does not sound nearly as fun. So you got to be aware of these things right? Get a title things in a fun way. So Adam, today is a huge episode for you, hopefully a huge episode for all of us. And after listening to this episode, your as you put it scattershot approach to practicing will be a thing of the past. I'm pumped up. So let's get started. Let's discover, learn and play jazz piano. Let's dig into jazz standards, a DLP synopsis. So let's talk about let's begin by talking about studying jazz standards, right before we began constructing a DLP synopsis. So since the beginning of the year, I have presented I think, in just about every episode, my outline for studying and learning jazz standards. If you can't remember, here's a quick refresher number one, listen. Number two, determine form. Number three, learn chords, voicings, and number four, learn melody treatments. Number five, explore improvisation approaches. Right. Listen, determine form, learn chords, voicings, learn melody treatments. Explore improvisation approaches. That's it, right nothing more, nothing less. Those five steps. Steps one and two and three, deal with harmonic analysis. Form. chord changes harmonic function voicings. Step Four focuses on melodic analysis. transcribing a melody learning the melody by ear in other words, using guide tones fingerings for proper articulation and determination of phrases using lyrics target note awareness for improvisation prep treatments for time and field development, right? A lot goes into that melodic analysis. And step five, right exploring improvisation approaches, right uses common tones, neighboring harmonic zones and melodic patterns using half step approaches for motif development intention. Right so again, step one, two and three deal with harmonic analysis that's listen determine form learn chords and voicings. Step four, focuses on melodic analysis, which is learn the melody and various treatments. And step five, explores improvisation development, right using common core tones, harmonic zones, patterns and motifs, tension, right, our goal, our goal has been and will always be to keep our study of jazz standards, really clean and tidy, as I like to say, actually, this is our goal with all things we do musically. Whether it is a skill study, or a tune study makes no difference. clean, tidy, structured, and simple. Right? That's how we begin with our conceptual understanding. We want it to be clean, tidy, structured, and simple. Y'all can attest the fact that I say it many times over and over over the past four years. That if your conceptual understanding of music or any musical skill is not clean, tidy, structured, simple. It is then unorganized, confusing, fragmented and frustrating. And if it is unorganized, confusing, fragmented and frustrating and confusing conceptually upstairs, you have no shot, I mean, 00 shot of executing it in your hands downstairs on the piano. That's just the brutal facts 100% truth. So the educational agenda for today is as follows number one,

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we're going to hit the pause button, so to speak, to reflect upon our tune steady efforts since the beginning of the year. Number two, we're going to answer the important questions of what harmonic skills am I practicing weekly? Right? How and why? What melodic skills? Am I practicing weekly? How and why? What improvisation skills? Am I practicing weekly? How and why. And number three, and in doing so, right, we're going to construct a concise, yet thorough outline synopsis of the jazz piano skills needed to successfully discover learn and play jazz standard to successfully discover learning play jazz piano, period. Wow. How cool is this going to be today? Now typically, I do not develop podcasts packets for Lecture Series episode like today. But I'm literally on the spot. Thinking I should do that today. And I will, I do not have them developed right now as I'm recording this podcast. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to finish recording this podcast, publish this podcast, and then work on the podcast packets. So what that means is that when you get this episode, and you immediately go to download the podcast packets, and they are not there instantly. Please do not be sending me emails or text messages. Where's my podcast packets. I'm speaking to some specific individuals here and you know who I'm talking to? You know who you are. So, so anyway, I think it's good idea that I do some podcast packets for this episode. So we have this synopsis in writing that we're going to construct today. Plus, I'll have some play along backing tracks to practice with as well. And some lead sheets that kind of illustrate what I'm going to demonstrate today in plain. So if you are a jazz piano skills member, you will be able to access those podcast packets. Your membership grants you access to the premium content for every weekly podcast episode, right, which includes all the podcast packets, not only for today, but for every week, you know, past, current and future, right. And as I say it, I said all the time that you should have these podcasts, packets in your hands when listening to the podcast packet. And of course, you should have them on your piano when practicing. So if you're listening to this podcast on any of the popular podcast directories such as Apple or Google Spotify, there's a million of them right I Heart Radio, Amazon Pandora, then I suggest going directly to jazz panel skills podcast.com And you will find the active download links for each of 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 convenient link to download all three podcast packets in one bundle. Right? It's nice. Okay, so let's get after this synopsis that we're going to construct today. Okay, I mentioned earlier that we have three questions that we need to to look at. And we need to answer in question number one. What harmonic skills am I practicing weekly? How and why so let's begin with that question. harmonic analysis every week when we look at a new tool. 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.