September in the Rain, 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 September in the rain. Two weeks ago, we took a deep dive into the harmonic foundation of the tune, followed up by last week's dissecting of the melody and phrases to be followed up today with a very challenging look at various ways to use September in the rain for developing our improvisational skills. You know, what's great about our three tier approach to studying a tune, harmony, Melody, improvisation is that it quickly, as you all know, it quickly reveals our strengths and weaknesses regarding the various essential jazz piano skills that we need to have a command of, and how important is it that we have an accurate picture, an accurate understanding of our strengths and weaknesses? Well, I'll tell you it's it's imperative, it's absolutely essential, that we have an accurate understanding of our plane, right? The last couple podcast episode lessons and today's lesson, well,

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they do exactly that. They give us a very, very accurate report card, right? We know where we're getting A's, we know where we have some C's, and we know where we're bombing and we have some F's, right? So we know pretty quickly where we stand with our ability to play critical jazz piano skills after we complete our harmonic, melodic and improvisation studies. You know, I made a point to mention several times since the start of the year that there is, there is a sequential order to learn how to play jazz piano, which, again, should not be of should not surprise you, right? Because I cannot think of any one high level skill which learning how to play jazz piano is. I can't think of one high level skill that you can successfully develop without having a strategic game plan. And I can confidently guarantee you that a scattered shot approach, or what I like to call a YouTube approach, to trying to learn how to play jazz piano, will only cause, will only lead to tons of frustration, confusion, and ultimately

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you're raising of the right white flay right, giving up. So my goal, my goal has been from day one with jazz piano skills, to not only introduce you to the essential jazz piano skills, to discover those skills, but to also provide you a way to successfully study those skills, to learn them conceptually, and then, of course, a process for developing a physical command of those skills, play, right? Discover, learn play. You know, I also mentioned several times since the start of the new year that

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if you've been a faithful jazz piano skills listener for the past five years, then you've become, you've become intimately familiar with the jazz piano skills needed to begin tune study. And I've also mentioned that if you haven't been grinding along with us, well it's okay. It's no worries right now. No no better time than the present to jump in, right? It's a great time to get on board to begin developing and enhancing your jazz piano skills and the tune study that that we're going to do every month, that we've been doing every month since the start of the year, and we'll continue to do that tune study will help you sift through and prioritize the last five years of podcast episodes so that you can begin to maximize your jazz piano skills right now, immediately. So if you're a jazz piano skills, vet, if you're a jazz piano skills, rookie, makes no difference, right? You're in the right place at the right time to begin a jazz journey, 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 how to practice improvisation using the jazz standard September in the rain, and you're going to learn how to systematically develop improvisation skills using September in the rain, and you're going to play five.

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Five, five essential improvisation steps using the standard September in the rain. So as I always like to say, regardless of who you are in your jazz journey, a beginner, an intermediate player, advanced player, even if you're a seasoned and experienced pro, you know what you're going to find, this jazz panel skills podcast lesson, exploring September in the rain and improvisation development to be very beneficial. But before we dive in, before we get started, I want to, as I always do, welcome first time listeners to jazz piano skills. And if you are indeed new to jazz piano skills, welcome. Welcome to jazz piano skills podcast. Welcome to jazz piano skills, I want to personally invite you to become a jazz piano skills member. Now your membership has several benefits and grants you access to the premium content, not only for this podcast episode, but for every weekly podcast episode, which, by the way, this is episode 260

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Wow. I couldn't believe that when I saw that today. So anyway, you have access to all the premium content for this podcast episode and every weekly podcast episode and the premium content will help you thoroughly and correctly discover, learn and play the jazz standard September in the rain that we are currently exploring, and as the old saying goes, so much more. For example, jazz panel skills members have access to the past, current and future educational weekly podcast packets. Now these are the illustrations, the lead sheets, the play alongs, or the backing tracks that I design and develop to help you get the most out of each weekly podcast episode. Now you have access to these podcast packets, like I said, past, current and then future, right? You also have access to a self paced and sequential jazz panel curriculum, which is loaded with comprehensive courses. And all the courses contain

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educational talks. There are interactive learning media to help you digest concepts. Conceptually. There are video demonstrations of this, of this skill in all 12 keys and a ton more. You also have a reserved seat in my online weekly master classes, which are held every Thursday evening. If you can't attend, no big deal. No problem. The master classes are recorded, and you can listen to the class whenever and as often as you wish. And as a jazz panel skills member, you can also hang out with some old jazz friends make some new jazz friends in the online private jazz piano skills community, which host 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. So all of these amazing privileges, all these perks, are waiting to help you discover, learn and play jazz piano. So check it all out at jazz panel skills.com

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and, of course, become a member. If you have any questions once you get to the website, by all means, do not hesitate to reach out to me. I'm happy to spend some time with you, answer any questions that you may have, and help you in any way that I can. Okay, so it's on to the question of the week, and this week's question comes from Roy Beck. Roy Beck, living in Palm Bay, Florida

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in Roy writes, I am new to jazz piano and diving in head. First, fantastic. I love your podcast and materials, and I am learning a ton. Thank you. I am curious. Are there other podcast sites and resources that you would recommend to help me with my ambitious goal of learning how to play jazz piano as quickly as possible? Thanks again for your weekly podcast and materials. I love your teaching.

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Well, Roy, thank you for that. Appreciate it. Are there other podcast, sites, resources that you would recommend? No, I would not.

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Sorry, yes, of course.

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So, all right, all right. Well, first off, Roy, welcome to the fascinating world of jazz. You will never regret it. It's it's a wonderful journey. And I'm happy to hear that you are diving in head first because, bro, that's the way to do it, man. You got to soak it in like a sponge. So diving in head first is a great way to go about it, right? Um.

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A couple things, there are some fantastic resources and materials out there for you to use that will help you with your journey. Absolutely no question about it. So with regards to other podcasts, other sites that I would recommend, there are several, off the top of my head. Open studio, great stuff. There's learn jazz standards, great stuff, Amy Nolte music, great stuff. There's a site piano with Johnny that tons of resources, and my good friend Josh Walsh and his site, jazz library.com, and Jazz, Jazz dash library.com,

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Josh has fabulous resources to tap into as well. All of these sites that I just mentioned, and there are others as well, but all of these that I've just mentioned are loaded with great material to help you dive deeper into the world of jazz, into the world of music. So if you're not, are if you're not aware of those, those sites, I would encourage you to check them out and benefit from what they have to offer. They're fabulous. With regards to to like books. There are a ton of books, of course, but I strongly recommend always do, and probably always will,

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the jazz language by DAN HURLEY, the jazz language, this book has been around

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easily since the early 80s, and in my humble opinion, is still the best jazz theory book out there on the market to this this very day. There are others, of course, but if I had to pick one, I would pick Dan's book, The jazz language also check out. I would recommend jazz books.com

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by jazz educator pioneer Jamie aber soul right now, this site has everything. And I mean, I mean, I mean everything, and if it's, if it doesn't, if it's not, at jazz books.com It doesn't exist, I'm telling you. So I would check out Jamie aber soul site. Tons of resources there, play alongs as well the packing tracks that you can tap into. It's It is literally a one stop shop that you should have bookmarked in your browser for sure. Okay, so that's just some information, and that's just some you know, sites and materials that I would recommend off the top of my head. But now, with all that being said,

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I would just little caution here. Just be careful, right?

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It can be overwhelming with the amount of information, materials, websites, YouTube videos that exist today. And just know

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there's not a silver bullet out there that you can find that will help you learn how to play jazz piano quickly. I know that's your goal, Roy, I know that's your goal, but it I've gotta be honest with you, man, it ain't gonna come quickly. It's just not it's not gonna happen in eight weeks. It doesn't happen in 12 weeks, even though I know there's some places that market and promote that I'm just telling you, this may be a shock, that's a lie.

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It's just a lie, right?

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And I think any professional jazz pianist

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would agree with that, right?

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So you can spend a lot of time,

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and you can spend a lot of money

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searching for the silver bullet that, honestly, it does, doesn't exist. So be careful. I would suggest, I would suggest finding a resource, a podcast, a website, a book, etc. I would find a resource that you can connect with, that you personally can connect with, and stick with their program for a while. Right? Find that connection and then stick with their program for a while, because chances are, if you are jumping around from book to book, site to site, podcast to podcast. Chances are you can you will become overwhelmed and confused very quickly. So here's what I recommend to look for, especially considering you are at the very beginning of your journey. Number one, you know, does the podcast, does the book, does the website, the materials, the resources,

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do they have a game plan? Is there a game plan with their educational materials? Right? In other words, is there a.

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Step one, step two, step three. Is there a sequential and logical learning process, right? These it's important to to assess,

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to get answers to these, these questions, right? Is there a continuity to their teaching approach that ties the various aspects of jazz together, harmonic development, melodic development, rhythmic development, improvisation, ear training technique, right,

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if it's a scattered shot approach to presenting material, right, scattered shot teaching produces scattered shot results at best. So find the resource that again, that you can connect with, and make sure that resource has a game plan that works for you, that makes sense to you. And then, guess what? Go to work. Go to work. It is important that you land somewhere. Listen, this is important. It is important that you land somewhere where you can now spend more time practicing essential skills, rather than searching for information or searching for specific skills, right? It is far too easy to tip the scale the other way, where you are spending far more time searching than practicing. Don't let that happen. Okay, so Roy, that awesome question. Congratulations on taking the big step and starting your jazz piano journey. I think it's awesome. Your question is a very important question, and if you want to

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kick this can around a little more, feel free to give me a call. Right my number here at the Dallas School of Music, my office 972-380-8050,

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my extension is 211, by all means, please. That is an invitation. Feel free to give me a call. I'm happy to discuss this with you in more detail and and help you determine the best direction for you and what is best for you. Okay,

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all right, so let's discover, learn and play jazz piano. Let's discover, learn and play September in the rain, here we go. Part three, right? An improvisation approach. I have presented my outline for studying and learning any tune from any genre several times. But you know what? It never hurts the review. That's what that's what good teaching does, right? We constantly review. So let's do that when learning the tune,

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genre again, makes no difference. I don't care whether it's jazz, country, pop, R and B, folk, whatever, right?

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I approach it the same way I listen. And I listen to a lot of artists, not just jazz musicians. I listen to various artists from various genres perform the tune, the more the better, right? Vocalist, instrumentalist, and, of course, pianist.

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When listening, I always tend to first and foremost, check out the form. I want to know the form of the piece, right? Is it classic? A, A A B, A A B, A B, A B, a C, right. Every tune has a form. We need to know what that form is. Number three, I turn my attention to the harmonic foundation of the piece. What are the chords? What are the chord changes? Progressions? Right, 251145,

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right. 3625,

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right. What are what? How are the chords moving? And then, of course, I like to

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explore voicings while doing that as well.

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Then finally, four, I learned to turn my attention to the melody and various treatments of the two, right? I like to explore everything from ballads to Bossa to swing various treatments, and then finally, I'll explore various improvisation approaches as well. So it's kind of like a five step process, right? I listen number one to determine form. Three, learn chords and voicings. Four, learn melody, various treatments. Five, explore improvisation. That's it, right? Nothing more,

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nothing less. So you know what we did two weeks ago? We focused on gaining a harmonic familiarity and command of September in the rain. So what? What did we do? We listened. We determined the form. We explored the chord changes, harmonic function and voicings. Last week, we focused on an in depth melodic analysis. So we looked at everything from guide tones and phrases to target notes, fingerings, right interpretation, the treatments, the.

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You know, and now today, we're going to turn our attention to the improvisation. So our goal has been, and will always be, to keep things very organized, very structured, very sequential, systematic, clean and tidy, as I like to say. And we we approach everything that way, whether it's a skill, a specific skill that we're studying, or a tune, right? Again, makes no difference. So we've come to realize that our conceptual understanding of all that we do musically, right, must, must be structured and must be simple, so that, so that we have a shot at developing it physically, right. And again. Being structured and simple allows us to replicate the process over and over and over again, right? So you all can attest to the fact that, you know, I've said it many times over the past five years, that if your conceptual understanding of music, right, or any musical skill is not simple, right? If it's not structured, if it's not simple, then it's unorganized and confusing. And if it's unorganized and confusing, conceptually upstairs, right? You have zero shot of getting it out in your hands downstairs on the piano, right? So conceptual understanding drives physical development. So therefore we always will keep our tune study very structured,

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very organized, so that it becomes simple and replicatable.

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So the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we are going to begin part three of our exploration of September in the rain, an improvisation approach. Number two, we are going to listen, of course, to a definitive recording of September in the rain. Number three, we will discuss, as always, the importance of establishing intentional and formulaic approaches for developing improvisation for we will stress, again, the importance of gaining a command of harmony from which melody flows. Harmony. Your harmony is weak, your melodic ideas, your melodic capability, your improvisation will suffer.

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Number five, we will explore five essential steps to apply to the form and changes of September in the rain for practicing improvisation. Right now. I will be playing demonstrations today at a very relaxed and comfortable temple of 85 and you will see why here shortly. Okay, so we have, 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. I want you to hit the pause button. I want you to download and print your podcast packets, the illustrations, the lead sheets, the play alongs again. Your membership, right? Your membership grants you access to the premium content for every weekly podcast episode, which, of course, includes all of the educational podcast packets. And you know, I mention it every week that you should have these packets in your hands when listening to this episode, and, of course, when practicing at the piano, right? But these podcast packs will help you maximize the benefit of this episode and get help you get the most out of it for sure. So if you are listening to this podcast on any of the popular podcast directories, such as Google, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, I heart Pandora, the list goes on,

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then I would suggest going directly to jazz piano skills podcast.com

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jazz panel skills podcast.com

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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 convenient bundle. Okay,

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all right. So now that you have your podcast packets in your hands, I want you, as always, I want you to grab the lead sheets, because we're going to go through each one of those today. You have a killer illustration to work with this week that I will talk about a little later, that will help you digest today's lesson conceptually and equip you with the skill sets that you need to maximize your improvisation development, for sure, but let's start with these lead sheets and.

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And you should have five lead sheets, five lead sheets in your packet. Okay, so if you take a look at lead sheet one,

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you're going to see lead sheet one is called quarter note string, and you can see that just in the first a section of the tune, you can see that I'm creating a quarter note string. You can see in the rest of the lead sheet, you can see that you're gonna have to fill in the blanks, right? This is very challenging. We'll talk more about that here shortly. Lead sheet two, the insertion of mathematical silence into our quarter note string that we're using through September, no rain. Lead sheet three, you'll see that we now turn our silence from mathematical to be in random silence. Number four, you have a lead sheet that incorporates quarter plus eighth notes plus random silence for developing our improvisational lines. And then finally, lead sheet five has the quarter notes plus the eighth notes, plus the random silence plus tension that we are now incorporating to develop our improvisational ideas. So this is going to be fun today, because we're going to take these five steps, one at a time, obviously, and we're going to go through them, and I'll give you some insight with regards to how to approach practicing it, practicing these lead sheets and getting the most out of them so that you can maximize your improvisation development. Okay, so what is very first thing that we do when studying and learning a tune? Of course, we listen always. We did it last week. We did it a week before that, we did it the month before that. We did it the year before that, right? We do it every week, and we're going to do it again today, because we should always be doing it. I stress last week that listening to various renditions of the tune is not only the first, but I believe, personally, I believe it's the most important step. And again, I can't imagine ever attempting to learn a tune before spending a lot of time becoming familiar with it, absorbing it through just simply listening right? And as I've mentioned, I typically listen to vocal renditions first, followed by instrumentalists, followed by pianists. But bottom line is, I listen, and that's what we're going to do right now before going any further. You know, two weeks ago, when we started our study of September, no rain, we checked out a rendition by Julie London and then a rendition by Joe Williams, both really tasty, really swinging renditions of September in the rain. Last week, we enjoyed tenor saxophone and Scott Hamilton performing September in the rain. And today, we turn our attention to none other than the great Oscar Peterson playing September in the rain. And this is when Oscar, I think, was at his very best back in the 50s and the 60s. It's just something about that period when he was playing that spot on right? So, as always, I want you to grab your favorite beverage. I want you to sit back and relax. It's about a three minute rendition of September in the rain, performed by The one and only Oscar Peterson, check This out. You.

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Wow,

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yes, Oscar at his best, right? Hey, did you catch that quote of undecided in his solo? Very sneaky. So. Oscar Peterson, September no rain, what a talent he was,

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what an inspiration he has been for all jazz pianists for many, many decades. So okay, so let's begin now that we've done our listening, let's begin our improvisation development. Okay, so I want you to grab lead sheet one.

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Now lead sheet one.

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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

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Visit jazzpanelskills.com to learn more about membership privileges and become a jazz piano skills member. Thank you.