Special Guest, Brad Hawbaker

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:01.577)
Brad Hawbaker. Man, I'm doing great. Man, I have been threatening you for a long time that I was gonna have you on jazz piano skills. And here we are, finally. Your nightmare has come true.

Brad (00:05.479)
Bob, how are you, sir?

Brad (00:13.619)
Cheers. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:26.181)
So man, you know, we've known each other for a long time, man. You've been, we've been studying jazz piano together. How long now,

Brad (00:34.803)
Exactly six years. We're starting your seven year, yeah, November of 2018.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:36.602)
Six.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:41.725)
Wow, man, that's unbelievable, And it's been a fabulous journey just watching your growth from day one from our very first lesson six years ago.

to the current time. It's just been a joy, man, to watch you, I mean, literally hit the grindstone, man, and you've been humping it, busting butt for the last six years, and it shows in your playing. And we're going to talk about that. before we do, this is one of my favorite things. I love having folks like you on Jazz Piano Skills because your journey, your experience is a

journey and experience.

shared by many jazz piano skills listeners. So it's always a thrill to have somebody on like yourself to kind of share that. So we all, know, all of us as aspiring jazz pianists realize that we're not in this boat alone, right? We all experience a lot of the same hurdles and the same frustrations and challenges with this journey. And so it's great to have you on Brad. I appreciate you taking time today to carve out some time to share your

your journey and your story with us. So with that being said, what I want to do is kind of turn the microphone over you and kind of, mean, and I'd love to know this too, man. Just a little bit about how your background as a child, music, your family's background, how in the world did we get to this point where you decided to study jazz piano? So my friend, the microphone is yours. Tell us your life story.

Brad (02:24.481)
Okay, well, so we had a piano in the house when I was a kid, and it was kind of a piece of furniture. Nobody really played it. And I was just fascinated by it, and I just thought it was just a really neat machine. And you would look at it, and it just looks like, how does somebody even begin to play this thing? And...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:35.115)
Wait.

Brad (02:51.816)
Eventually they got rid of it and they got me a little keyboard as kind of a consolation. when I was a child, asked my parents, know, hey, do you think I could get piano lessons? And they were like, I don't think you're going to like that. So that didn't happen. But they did get me a violin when I got to sixth grade so that I could get into orchestra because I wanted to get in there.

And I was in orchestra for four years. And I started, I started working, you know, non-professional jobs, high school jobs. When I was 16 and by 18, I decided that I wanted to get, I wanted to get a piano. And so I bought like a keyboard, like like a Yamaha weighted keyboard and

Bought it at a brick maze, had it on layaway and I'd come in with my paycheck and eventually I brought it home and I decided to start taking lessons, because I don't know anything. So I started taking classical lessons. And when I had originally had this conception in my head of what I wanted to do,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (03:56.618)
There you go. That's awesome. Yeah, right.

Brad (04:20.963)
I had a very naive idea that I wanna be able to just sit down and play. I did the classical lessons for a couple of years and I got up to kind of an intermediate level and I was starting to get to the age where I had to start to like pick a major. So I go back to my parents and I was like, think.

I think I'd like to study music. And they were like...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (04:52.11)
I know what's coming.

Brad (04:54.67)
Yeah, yeah, they were like, well, do you want to teach? No, not particularly. Do you think that you have the chops to be like a performer? No, not really. It's like, well, this is a great plan you have here. But tell you what, if you want to do that, you can take out student loans. However, if you would like to come to your senses, we'd be more than happy to pay your way for a business degree or an engineering degree.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (04:57.205)
You're not gonna like that.

Brad (05:24.596)
I went to North Texas because I wanted to be near the jazz program, but I ended up not taking any stuff there, any classes. And I got a business degree. And so, yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:30.604)
Yeah, right. Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:36.343)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:41.942)
Yeah. Well, I wonder how many guys and gals holding business degrees and engineering degrees that would have been great jazz pianists if their parents would have only allowed them.

Brad (05:55.099)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I will say this. So, I mean, I was still taking lessons and eventually I decided that, you know, the classical lessons, they're not getting me towards my original vision of where I wanted to go. And, you know, I was like, who can just sit down and play, you know, and, you know, it's like, well, jazz musicians can sit down and play. And later on, I found out, like, that's the thing that people can teach. Like, they can teach that? Like, how do you teach somebody how to make something up?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (06:12.377)
Alright.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (06:24.017)
Right. Right.

Brad (06:25.467)
How does one even make something up?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (06:32.56)
How do you go about that? Yeah, right.

Brad (06:35.748)
Right. Yeah. And it's like, they can teach that. Okay. Well, so I started taking lessons there and eventually school started getting hard. And so I shifted my focus there and I stopped taking lessons. And eventually I hit a plateau with my own plane because I wasn't getting guidance and I didn't know that I was doing the wrong things.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:01.393)
All

Brad (07:05.883)
I just stopped playing. my mother, she decided that she wanted to buy me a piano. She wanted to buy me an acoustic piano. She was like, yeah, you know, have the Yamaha and that's fine, but I think you ought to have, you know, an acoustic piano. And she's, you know, searching out for like a deal. She wants a deal. So she's like looking and she'll like send me, you know, this post from Craigslist or, you know, you know, this post from this other thing. And I'm like,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:07.621)
Right.

Brad (07:35.3)
I don't know what you're looking for, but I'm pretty sure you get what you pay for.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:36.401)
Your mom's got a guilty conscience right now because she's trying to... I see what's going on here. She's feeling guilty after all these years going like, I'm going to buy it.

Brad (07:41.308)
You

Yeah!

Brad (07:48.103)
Maybe, maybe. Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe. one day, you know, we buy this house and we move in in like August of 2018. And she calls me one day out of the blue and she's like, I found a grand piano. And I'm like, okay. And she's like, it's a Steinway. I'm like, okay. And she's like, it's in a consignment store. And I'm like, you found a Steinway in a consignment store. It's like, yeah, yeah, I think it's pretty good. So why don't you come down here and take a look at it?

So I go down there and she's like, what do think? like, I don't know. I don't know anything about a piano. So I call up a previous teacher who was also a piano tutor, piano tuner, sorry. And I was like, hey, can you come out here and check this out? So he sends a tuner out and the guy, and I'm like, well, what do you think? He's like, well, look, if you don't buy it, I will. So I was like, So it's actually sitting here. We're sitting right here. This is it.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (08:36.391)
Right? Wow.

That is fantastic, man. That's awesome. Yeah.

Brad (08:46.033)
It is the greatest gift anybody's ever gotten me. So, and shortly after that, I started taking lessons with you. And I think the other part of your question was other people in your family. I have half siblings. I have a brother that plays guitar. I have a sister who plays piano. I have another sister who in high school played flute. My mom used to busk in Zurich. She lived in Zurich for four years and she would busk and she would, my mother's kind of tall.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (08:56.423)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:01.512)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:04.84)
Yeah.

Brad (09:14.697)
So she would busk and her and her friend would go and busk with their guitars and then they would go and buy beer with their earnings. She was 14, I think.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:18.727)
Wow. Wow.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:25.397)
She was a jazz musician then, right?

Brad (09:28.805)
No, maybe, maybe, Yeah, I don't know what she was playing. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (09:33.053)
that's hilarious, So, okay, so back up a second. The violin, I'm curious about the violin side of things. Okay, so no piano as a child, right, they discourage you from that, but you started playing violin, right? And how long did that last? Four years. years, wow. And obviously the violin instruction was, that was traditional classical violin lessons.

Brad (09:41.522)
Mm-hmm.

Brad (09:49.266)
Yeah, yeah.

Four years.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (10:01.27)
Yeah, yeah. And during that time, were you thinking like as you were sitting there, you know, bowing back and forth, were you thinking like, all I wanted to do was play the piano and here I am.

Brad (10:01.599)
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.

Brad (10:14.816)
No, I think I kind of made my peace with it. I mean, I still had the keyboard around and I would tell you that like, my issue with the classical education is you can get up to speed really quickly and you can play songs, but you don't understand the mechanics of it. And you're just like, this is magic.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (10:22.175)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (10:36.757)
Right.

Brad (10:39.861)
I don't understand what's happening. I don't understand why that note sounds good and that note doesn't sound good. It's just magic.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (10:46.807)
Yeah, it's what I call pushing dots and playing dots and buttons, right? That dot means push that button and that dot means push that button. I don't have any idea why they work, but I'm gonna just follow the directions here and push the buttons as I'm directed to do so. So, so was it your desire to, you had this,

Inkling right this notion that you wanted to play music, but you wanted to as you said You wanted to be able to make things up

right? So somewhere deep inside you man this was I mean the jazz musician was there right because you were like wow you know very similar when I was a young kid I remember telling my parents that I wanted to be able to I didn't say make things up I said I wanted to be able to play by ear.

That's another very common expression, right? Play by ear. make stuff up, play by ear, it's kind of pointing us all in one direction, right? It's pointing us to the study of jazz, right? So okay, so that's fascinating. So now here you are an adult, you have your Steinway piano that your mom with a guilty conscience bought you because she's reflected upon the child abuse that she's inflicted upon you from that.

Brad (11:56.705)
Absolutely.

Brad (12:07.84)
You

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:15.064)
Not giving you piano lessons. So now you got your Steinway and Off to the races you go to study jazz now you had before you before you and I hooked up you had I remember you You said you had another piano teacher, right? You were you studying jazz with that piano teacher?

Brad (12:35.309)
I had classical teachers and I had, started with classical teachers and then, you know, going back to, you know, the magic, like not knowing how this stuff works and realizing that it wasn't really getting me closer to where my vision was. I jumped ship and I went to jazz. And then I was taking lessons in that basically until I had to shift my focus to my studies and, you know, let the dream die a little.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:50.007)
Yeah.

Yeah, good, good.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (13:04.78)
Yeah, right. Right. But now, but now, man, I got to say, now you've been gangbusters, man, ever since you and I've connected, you've like I said, nose to the grindstone, you've been cranking, man, you've been cranking. So we're gonna, we're gonna talk, we're gonna talk about that.

Brad (13:04.82)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (13:24.714)
and your approach and I want because I want you to share that with listeners because I think so many people will benefit from it because Because you're very organized. You're very structured Which I'm preaching all the time about things have to be formulaic very Simplistic conceptually so that you have a shot at it physically you do all of this very very well But before we talk about that Share with everyone what you do for a living

Brad (13:52.709)
I am a programmer. I work for a software consultancy and yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (13:55.738)
Yeah. Yeah. Which when you came in and you told me that what you did, I said, bro, perfect. I you have the brain for jazz piano. mean, you have the brain necessary to make things up. Because let's face it, man, as a coder, what are you doing all day? You're making stuff up, man. You're just making it up. That's you do. That's right. That's right.

Brad (14:18.606)
You're solving problems. Yeah, yeah, you're just solving problems out of thin air. Yeah, it's very, they're very related skill sets in a way, in a way.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (14:27.291)
very, very much so. You know, it's funny, I don't know if I told you this, but you know, 33 years ago when the Dallas School Music started, now think about this, man, 33 years ago, we're talking about what, like 1992 in that area. And so you know that we were trying to figure out how we were going to do scheduling, you know, and...

Brad (14:30.36)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (14:54.274)
and I was trying to find some kind of software and this is at the beginning of remember those stores like CompUSA and Computer City, you know, you'd walk in and they have software applications and I'd spend hours in there looking for, I'd be in there spending hours looking for the application that was capable of doing scheduling but with certain parameters and there was never any canned software that would do what you, that was a perfect fit. They always had limitations and so I started

I you know, forget this, I'm gonna write my own software to do the sketches. So I bought a book, you're gonna laugh because you're like a real coder, I was a pretend coder. I bought a book on visual basic. Does that language still exist, visual basic?

Brad (15:32.952)
Abysses.

Brad (15:44.774)
Okay, yeah.

It still exists. It's not as popular as it was in the 90s, but it's still around and there's still quite a bit of it. In fact, if you wanna do macros inside of like Office applications like Excel, for instance, if you wanna make Excel macros, then you're doing it in basic. I think they support other languages now too, but for the longest time it was only basic.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (15:55.331)
Yeah,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (16:06.864)
That's right, well...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (16:11.537)
Well, that's exactly what I did because I used Microsoft Excel as the engine. I used Visual Basic as the language. I it was called Visual Basic for applications, something like that, VB? There you go, man. So you'll get a kick out of this, literally went to Barnes & Noble. bought a book on, you know, like...

Brad (16:21.414)
Yeah, yeah, VBA, yeah. I have a book about it, it's not over there, yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (16:32.934)
Visual Basic for Dummies. I said that's it, right there, that's my book. So I got that, I got a couple other Visual Basic books and I started reading about how to use language to have the computer do what I needed it to do for scheduling. And I remember sitting at the kitchen table reading Visual Basic coding and doing a little examples to see how it worked. And I literally remember this thought.

Brad (16:37.201)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (17:02.511)
I leaned back in my chair and I said to myself, I know this. I've been here. This is the same thought process, a different keyboard, but still a keyboard. It's still a keyboard, right? And I remember consciously being aware of that, that the skill sets.

Brad (17:17.209)
And it's still a keyboard, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (17:26.429)
very the thought process and solving problems and thinking things through and options and and I remember it very vividly thinking wow this is very very very similar to jazz and so I wrote I wrote a whole application that ran our scheduling for years.

Yeah, based on Visual Basic, yeah. So anyway, so when you came in and you said you were a computer programmer, went, bro, I mean, come on, man. You're gonna be playing Oscar Peterson here shortly. So that.

Brad (17:50.056)
That's awesome.

Brad (18:03.017)
I've relayed that to a couple of my coworkers and the programmers, always love that story. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (18:09.753)
I bet they do.

I bet they do, yeah. That's awesome. So, okay, so this is what you do for a living. you're a computer programmer by day, you're a jazz pianist by night and on the weekends, because honestly, man, with the work that you do, every week when we get together for a lesson and you come in with your binder and all the stuff that you have done, dude, that's what you, you only do two things in life. You go to work and you code, and then you come home and you practice piano.

Is that about right?

Brad (18:44.893)
I have a couple of other hobbies, but this is a primary thing. This is non-negotiable. This happens every day.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (18:53.215)
Yes, I know it does. So, okay, so let's talk about your journey. All right, so you came in, let's talk first and foremost, when you started, at the very beginning, what were some of the revelations that you had that you thought to yourself, wow, wait a minute, I've been here before. This is kind of like what I do, but a different keyboard.

So what were some of those aha moments in the beginning that you thought, wait a minute, I can do that. I can be successful. I can do this. I actually can make things up.

Brad (19:32.107)
You hit so I start I started taking

jazz piano lessons before I really started getting to the point where I was a programmer. And so I'll just start from the point where you and I started taking lessons. So.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (19:51.69)
Okay.

Brad (19:57.11)
For the longest time when I was learning how to program, it was, I don't get this. It's very abstract. I don't understand how you use the things that are here to solve problems. And eventually I got to a point where someone had pointed me towards a language that's very simple and honestly a lot like basic.

and I kind of had, was, it was so small and so self-contained that you could, you could kind of get to a point where you could get a degree of mastery with it. And I think that comfort level got me to a point where I'm like, okay, once I've made the problem small enough, I can start to see how people would use this to solve problems.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (20:49.795)
can start to see how people would use this to solve problems. And I think it's kind of the same thing there. When we first started taking lessons, you were like, look, there's only 12 keys. You held up the circle of bits, and you did like a little pie slice, a pizza slice with your hands. And you're like, what do you see?

Brad (20:54.573)
And I think, you know, it's kind of the same thing there. And when we first started taking lessons, you know, you were like, look, there's only 12 keys, you Look, you held up the circle of fits and you did like a little pie slice, a pizza slice with your hands. And you're like, what do you see? And I'm like, I don't know. You're like, well, that's a two, five, one. I'm like, okay, is that good? Do we like that?

I have no idea what you're talking about. But now it's like, yeah, you're showing me, this is like the eye above the pyramid. This is, it's all connected, man. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:27.556)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:32.205)
video.

Yeah, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:39.62)
Your expression that you just said, by the way, a couple minutes ago, is absolutely golden, man. It's spot on, and I'm gonna use it from now on. Of course I won't give you credit for it, I'm gonna, because I'll take credit for it, but it's a great expression. You said, as soon as I was able to make the problem small enough.

small enough, right? So I think that is the key to study in jazz. We have to make the problem of creating something out of nothing, the improvisation, making stuff up, we have to make that challenge, we have to make that problem small enough so that we can succeed. And the problem in studying jazz is it typically goes the other direction.

Students students get into studying jazz. They don't make the problem small enough. They make the problem too big and it becomes Enormous and it starts getting out of control too much information Fragmented data all over the place to where you're drowning in it. You're drowning in it, right? So your expression that is absolutely golden, right? We have to make the problem small enough and I think you know If you remember your first

lesson right one of very first thing like you just said 12 notes five primary sounds 12 times 560 chords this is where we have to attack we have to start here right so it's the process of making the problem small enough and I remember you grabbed onto that very very quickly very very quickly

Brad (23:24.367)
Yeah, I think it helped that I had taken lessons before and when I stopped taking lessons, I hit a plateau. And so when I came in, I was like, I'm just gonna do what the guy says. I'm gonna stop pretending like I know things and I'm just gonna, I'm paying good money. I'm just gonna do what the guy says and I'm gonna trust the process.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (23:31.715)
Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (23:38.668)
You

Dr. Bob Lawrence (23:46.963)
You know, that's another great line that I'm going to use with new students. Just shut up and do what I tell you to do. I'll make the problem small enough for you. Just keep your yap or shut and do what I tell you to do. How's that?

Brad (23:53.999)
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it'll go over well. Yeah, yeah.

Brad (24:04.238)
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (24:07.587)
Yeah, that's good. okay, so right from the very beginning though, I remembered you and to this very day, six years later, same way, you come in, I wish I had a picture that I could hold up and show everybody, but you come in, man, dude, you always have in your left hand, you have your notebook, your right hand, you have your pencil, and you immediately begin taking notes, jotting stuff down, things we discuss, you make a reference to it.

Talk to the listeners about that process for you, why you do it, how is it beneficial, how do you use it throughout the week when you practice. And it's funny, you're writing stuff down, I don't even know what you're writing down, man. I'm talking and you just write stuff down. And so I go, man, he's writing something down that's gonna be very valuable for him during the week, practicing. So talk to us about that whole process for you, how you do it, why you do it, and so forth.

Brad (25:06.827)
yeah. So as far as like the journaling, like during the lesson, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to like latch on to something, that I can turn into an exercise. And I would like to take credit for that, but honestly, I got it from you because you would say like, I want you to do exactly this thing, especially in the beginning, in the beginning, you're like, we're going to do exactly this thing. There's no.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (25:32.093)
Right.

Brad (25:36.092)
There's no variations. We're gonna do, you know, boom, boom, boom. It's gonna be very clear success, failure, whether or not you were able to execute that so that you have that immediate feedback to say like, okay, well, I didn't get it on that try, but I'll try again and I'll, you know, eventually I'll get it enough times that I feel comfortable moving on. And so what I would write down is like notes that would help me to help draw my memory.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (25:37.874)
All right.

Yeah. Right. Right.

Brad (26:03.952)
and say like, what was the exercise that he was trying to teach me how to do? And I would write it down, you know, basically in English rather than attempt to do it in music notation, which I'm kind of functionally illiterate, but I'll write out basically like, here's, know, we're gonna work on, we're gonna work on chord tones today. We're gonna isolate, you know, this chord, we're gonna work on chord tones. We're gonna do them ascending and descending. We're gonna play them.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:18.812)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:27.604)
this morning.

Brad (26:32.103)
these different kinds of ways. We're going to do these kinds of approachments. We're going to allow this kind of variability in here. And then there's going to be a goal.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:35.531)
Right?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (26:41.234)
Right, right. So you're making, you're making, you're jotting down notes to reference that. So when you're home and you said another key phrase here, whatever scale that we're attacking, whatever scale that we're attacking, the immediate question always has to be answered is, how do I practice that?

How do I turn that skill into an exercise that I can actually practice? Correct? Yeah.

Brad (27:13.258)
Absolutely. Yeah. So I mean, the conceptual stuff just isn't that hard. You know, it's, you know, we're going out on YouTube and we're buying all these books and, looking for, you know, the golden ticket. And like, the answer is the fundamentals.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (27:32.09)
gosh, man, Brett, right? You know, I do this little routine. I've done this shtick with you before too, right? We do it, in fact, we've done it together. We do it together all the time. We're going like, look, you know, we have 12 notes, we have five sounds, those sounds can be played harmonically, those sounds can be played melodically. When played melodically, those sounds are played using either scale motion or arpeggio motion that either travels up or down.

That's music. Can you do that? If you can't do that, if you can't produce the sounds harmonically, if you can't produce the sounds melodically and then play those sounds melodically using scale or arpeggio motion that goes up and down, I don't think we need to talk about doing anything else, do you? I that's really where it starts, right there.

Brad (28:27.157)
it. And then you you you nail you nail down like one one part of it. You have you have an exercise you do and you've nailed it and you think you got it and then you just tweak one aspect of it and then it's hard again.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (28:38.826)
Yeah, right. That's right. That's right. You know, yeah, something that you've always embraced to in our lessons. I want you to talk about again for the listeners because I think it's so important and you you you get it. In fact, you welcome it. You actually self-impose it, right? These and this is this idea, the concept of self-imposed

Brad (28:40.95)
It's like, is now a challenge again.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (29:08.534)
constrictions, restricting yourself to some kind of criteria that allows you to accurately measure success or failure. So talk a little bit about that because we talk about it in our lessons, you've gravitated toward that from day one. talk a little bit about that for you and how that's beneficial for you in your practicing.

Brad (29:37.043)
So like kind of recalling those parallels with software development, know, one approach, and it's not necessarily an approach I always take, but it's an approach that I like and I subscribe to is what's called test driven development, where you write the test first, and then you write the code to get it to pass the test.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (29:52.898)
There you go.

Brad (29:54.263)
And so the idea is like at the outset, you're creating your success criteria. And for a practice session, the success criteria is I have an entry every day in the notebook that says, this is what we're going to do today.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (30:00.182)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (30:08.909)
you

Brad (30:10.361)
And so once I have that success criteria, I'm going to go through this number of keys, I'm going to do this kind of exercise and that's the really structured stuff, you know. And then there's more, you know, there's more variable stuff that you can do. mean, but you also have to do the structured stuff because if you don't, then you can kind of convince yourself that you're doing better than you really are.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (30:19.841)
Yeah, right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (30:28.172)
Yeah.

Brad (30:38.646)
Because you could say like, well, who's to say I didn't mean to do that?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (30:38.754)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (30:44.627)
Yeah, you know what that's like. That's like the student always says to me, I turn on a metronome or a backing track and two measures into it they stop and they go, you know, play, I got to tell you Dr. Lawrence, I perform so much better without a metronome or without a backing track. I go, well, of course you do. Of course you do. Yeah, of course you play. We all play better without that backing track and without that metronome. Yes.

Brad (31:02.498)
Yeah, because it's exposing the problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brad (31:11.318)
Right, right, right, yeah. Until you listen back to a recording of yourself and you're like, oof, yeah, my time is off, yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (31:13.238)
Right. yeah, wait a minute. Yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe I should welcome that backing track to help cover up some of this.

Brad (31:26.967)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (31:28.752)
So anyway, self-imposed constraints, right? Self-imposed constraints that without them, it's really, it's next to impossible to be able to measure, accurately assess, pass or fail. And I guess some good examples would be, you know, improvising using just the root, third, five, and seven of a sound, right?

So you restrict yourself to four notes. again, oftentimes when I ask a student to do this, they're measure into it and all of a sudden they're playing 12 notes. I'm going like, what are you doing?

I mean, then we just say like you can only use the root third, five and seven. Yeah, yeah, but you know, I'm more creative with, I said, no, you're not more creative. You're not more creative with 12 notes, you know, use four notes. So we use these self-imposed constraints, right? In order to actually measure success, a pass or fail, or, and like we've discussed that actually the ability to make things up, the skill to make, to develop the skill to make things

comes from imposing limitations upon yourself. Not abundance. Not abundance. Limitations. That's where creativity comes from.

Brad (32:50.117)
Yeah, right, right.

Yeah, because if I have only four notes, like I can't just play them all as eighth notes. I can't play them all. can't, you know, if I, if I play 12 notes, I can just play, can just, just do runs, you know, and I could just play all the notes and do runs. But with four notes, like now you're forced to like confront the fact that you have, you have a very finite set of pitches that you're working with. How do I create something interesting with that?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (33:20.435)
And in doing so, I have always found that with self-imposed constraints, it forces me to develop two aspects of playing jazz, of improvising, that we rarely talk about and nobody ever talks about how to practice it, and that is repetition and the use of space. So when you have very little to work with, you find out that you start repeating.

And people often think that repetition is a Repetition is not a bad thing. Repetition is actually a very good thing. That's vocabulary. That's vocabulary that you're leaning on and you're developing, right? And space, Learning how to play space, vitally important. So.

Through limitations, I have found repetition and space surface as two skills that are being developed that would never be developed if I just gave myself unlimited possibilities to ramble, to ramble, to ramble on and on, to doodle, to doodle endlessly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, okay, very good, man. So, all right, so let's talk about some of the skill sets that you've been working on.

and share with, then we'll share how you're practicing some of these skill sets. Okay? So let's start with voicings. Voicings is always, know, piano players are always talking about chords, piano players are talking about how to voice those chords to sound like jazz. So share with us a little bit about your voicing approach, your voicing, how you practice voicings on a week-to-week basis.

Brad (35:09.693)
Brad (35:13.472)
So you have kind of stock voicings that you've shared, you know, in like early episodes of the podcast, you had stock voicings that you shared. eventually you get to a point, I guess, with most students where you're like, okay, those are the stock voicings. And now I want you to go and create the other voicings using similar structures that would allow you to target any

Dr. Bob Lawrence (35:21.649)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Brad (35:42.663)
note inside of a chord scale relationship.

And the goal there being that eventually you want to get to a point where you could use those voicings to outline a melody. You could play a chord melody or melodic harmonization, whatever you want to call it.

Brad (36:04.177)
And so in order to get that kind of fluency with those voicings, then you need to go back and say, well, I'm going to use these voicings. I'm going to play, for instance, a sound like C minor, and I'm going to play the leading tone of each one of those voicings and outline the chords and outline the scales and move between the

Dr. Bob Lawrence (36:19.252)
Yeah.

Brad (36:33.368)
the chord tones and move between the scale tones and do approachments and have different starting and ending entry points. All the stuff that you talk about, like we're going to enter the sound, we have to be able to enter the sound from any point because we don't know where we're going to be.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (36:35.412)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (36:52.97)
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting, Brad, because you're right. You know, I usually start with stock voicings like and I call them like option A, option B, option A, option B. And then what you're talking about is after you have the option A's and option B's down, immediately begin, go, those turn into four. And the four that I always turn those voicings into is that sound with the root on top, whatever, like the minor sound.

with the root on top, minor sound with the third on top, minor sound with the fifth on top, minor sound with the seventh on top. So now I'm outlining the arpeggio like you're just talking about. Now I'm actually playing an arpeggio. So going back to our improvisation example for a second, if I'm improvising, if I work on improvisation using four notes, C, E flat, G, B flat for C minor.

and I'm sitting there and I got a nice groove and I have a nice articulation and I have a nice feel and I'm improvising, I'm using space and repetition, using those four notes as single notes, the idea, what you're talking about is, now, shouldn't I be able to do that with those same four notes but have those same four notes harmonized? As opposed to a single note?

And of course the answer is yes. So now stock voicings become four. Four voicings, they turn into four, and those four that I always like to teach are four based on the primary entry points, root, the third, the fifth, and the seventh. And then those four turn into adding the passing tones between those four, which now become the scale harmonized.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (38:38.487)
So that's where you are. That's the kind of stuff that you're doing right now and you're doing it beautifully, right? You're starting to really settle into being able to understand this kind of a chord scale relationship or a sound scale relationship and being able to then harmonize the notes within that sound. And do you ever stop and think about that for a second about how far you've come to be able to that you're actually doing that and practicing that as opposed to, I mean, thinking back

to when you, thinking back to when you were going like, okay, C minor is what now? C, E, flat, G, right? From that to what you're doing right now. Yeah.

Brad (39:16.471)
Yeah.

Brad (39:19.769)
Right, yeah. When you first start doing it, it's very... It takes a long time to just make the shape. And you have to like sit there and think about, you know, where your hands go for every single note. And eventually you get to a point where you've done this so many times, you've used these voicings in so many different kinds of ways.

that your hand just makes the shape and you can start to outline chords and you can do it pretty quickly. And you get to a point where you move beyond thinking about individual notes. You're playing the entire shape at once. I don't necessarily even see the notes. I just feel them.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (40:01.261)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (40:06.655)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Boy, that's great too, right? You don't see them, you feel them, right? The hands, it's almost as if the hands say to you, hey Brad, relax man, we got it. Relax. We'll take, we got you covered, don't worry about it. We got you covered. Yeah.

Brad (40:20.408)
Right, yeah.

Right, right. Yeah, I'm not consciously. Yeah, when you're very early in your process of learning a new skill, you're very conscious and deliberate and you're very analytical about it. But then you have to get to a point where you've ingrained it to the point where you don't have to think about it. And if you do have to think about it, you don't know it well enough.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (40:45.23)
Yeah, and you know what? You just touched upon another point that's very important, right? Quite often...

The individual studying jazz at the beginning wants to skip over that analytical part and get to that instinctual muscle memory, oral memory part, right? And it's the analytical part that's so crucial that I call it the grunt work, right? Where you have to kind of sit there and think through it, map it out, get your notebook out, get your pen out, sketch it out, draw it out, spell it out. And oftentimes the student will say to me,

Do you really think like that when you play? And I go, no, I think like that when I practice so that when I play, I can actually do what you're talking about where the hands take over and I'm feeling the shapes as opposed to thinking about, I'm not thinking about the individual notes in the shape, right? Yeah, that grunt work, man, that conceptual grunt work is so important. You the paper practice, as I like to call it, so important, right?

Brad (41:45.999)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (41:46.171)
There's really no, you think you can, right? I had a teacher who used to say, Bob, the longest way to get anywhere is a shortcut. So hey man, you better just sit down with a pad of paper and sketch this out and start thinking through this because otherwise you're taking the long way around and you'll never get there. So.

Brad (41:55.717)
You

Dr. Bob Lawrence (42:07.216)
Okay, so you're doing fantastic voicing work, know, very high level stuff. Okay, let's talk about just some good old fashioned grunt work, your scale practice and arpeggio practice, right? That develops technical agility, technical skills, hand mobility on the instrument. What kind of things are you doing during the week to cover this aspect of playing, these skills?

Brad (42:33.383)
So recently we've been working on just we're going to isolate a sound and we're going to play the the chord tones of the sound or we're going to move through the sound in sevenths from the root to the seventh and the third to the ninth and the five to eleventh and the seventh to the thirteenth. We're going to move through that sound and

We're going to play five different ways of outlining either the chord tones or the extensions. And we're going to play them ascending. We're going to play them descending. We're going to play them a single note. We're going to double them. And we're going to play like a red garland kind of root five root.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (43:13.959)
Yeah.

Brad (43:28.583)
block in the right hand and where the roots are going to be, you know, the root, the third, the five, the seventh. We're going to do locked hands. We're going to do two-handed voicings. We're going to do all of those and the goal will always be the same. We're outlining the root, third and five, seventh, and we're doing an ascending or descending or we're doing, you know, three through ninth or whatever. And we're going to go through and...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (43:28.797)
Yep.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (43:35.186)
Yep.

Brad (43:57.608)
do all five of those skills, the single note, the double, the red garland, the locked hands, and the two-handed voicings, the five-note quartal two-handed voicings.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (44:08.051)
My entity.

I'm sitting here holding back tears man, because I just want to cry. I just want to cry with joy. Because I'm telling you man, this is what's so funny. I just love this because you know again I had a teacher who used to say Bob I know how you're progressing by the comments that you make and the questions you ask. And of course when I was a kid I had no idea what the heck he was talking about. But you know it's so true right. All I got to do is listen to it. All I have to do is listen to somebody describe what they're practicing and how they're practicing it. And I can tell you exactly where they are in the process.

And the fact that you have such a laser, know, accurate pinpoint accuracy in terms of, okay, I'm practicing a sound. I'm actually taking the primary, you know, the fragments of that sound, whether it be the root to the seven or the third and ninth and so forth.

I'm going to take the entry points within that geographical range. I'm going to orchestrate. I'm going to orchestrate.

that range, that region of the sound. I'm going to orchestrate that with using a single line, single note line to a unison line like an Oscar Peterson would play, both hands, the red garland style, the George Shearing locked hand style, or the quartal voicing more contemporary, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea kind of approach. The fact that you can catalog all this, the fact that you can label it, the fact that you can describe it in relationship to

Dr. Bob Lawrence (45:44.013)
how you're applying it to a sound, right? Do you ever just stop to think about just, wow, how far you've come? I mean, to have that kind of organizational thought process is what, honestly, and I hope you would agree,

Honestly, that's why you're having the physical success that you're having on the instrument because guess what? It's organized, it's clean, it's tidy, it's structured up here conceptually so that when you do go to the keys you can maximize your practice time by applying what you've already thought through conceptually. Thoughts?

Brad (46:27.923)
Yeah, that's fair. Because I mean, these scales aren't ends in themselves, right? But the idea is that you can reuse them in different contexts. can play any one of those five things that we just rattled off, any one of those can be used to play a melody.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (46:37.876)
Right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (46:51.941)
100%. That's why we're it. That's why we're doing it. Right.

Brad (46:54.574)
That's exactly the reason why you do it. Yeah, exactly. Any one of those five things can be used to improvise.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (46:57.345)
All right.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (47:00.919)
That's right. That's right. Yeah.

Brad (47:03.021)
And some of them even harmonize, you're playing the chord tones, you're playing the changes. So you're both improvising and providing harmonic support at the same time, in some cases.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (47:18.209)
Yeah, and think about this, Brad. Think about how this points back to the very first days, the very first weeks of lessons. Remember the 60 chords, root, third, five, seven of major, dominant, minor, half, diminished, diminished, and then the inverted shapes of those chords? I tell every student when we start right there, I said, you don't know this, you don't know this, but this is the best improvisation exercise you'll ever do. And they're going, huh? Because they think of it as,

You know, you're plopping your hands down on the piano going, kunk, kunk, kunk, you're thinking that you're playing chords. You're thinking, I'm practicing chords, right? Yes, but it's those shapes, those shapes that you hold onto, that you hug forever in developing advanced skills because those skill sets, those advanced skills are applied to those shapes.

Brad (48:13.005)
Yeah, if you're not playing them on some level, then you're not playing the changes.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (48:17.891)
That's correct. That's exactly right. 100%. That's right. And don't you find too, I mean, you came from a classical background, right? I know you had the classical lessons, you had the violin lessons and that, but I think also it's so important you had just mentioned root to seven, third to nine.

five to 11, seven to 13, these various entry points and destination points. I think that the biggest mistake that, or I think the biggest transition that a jazz musician needs to make from the classical world to the jazz world is to stop thinking of playing your scales from root to root over and over, again and again, somehow thinking,

that this is going to turn you into Oscar Peterson, because it's not.

Brad (49:11.535)
You're the only person I know who teaches it this way. I've had a handful of piano teachers and you're the only person I know who talks about this.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (49:21.807)
Yeah, yeah, and it's mind blowing to me because that's when my ears really started to grow was when I started to become consciously aware of an entry point and a destination point. I'm traveling from the third of the sound to the ninth of the sound or from the fifth to the 11th because now I'm listening for that. I'm actually consciously listening for those sounds, right?

And if when I was playing scales and believe me, I did it faithfully man for years route to route, route to route, route to route, route to route. And.

I can remember sitting there thinking, man, I don't know how this is going to help, but everybody tells me to do it, so I'm just going to keep doing it. But my ears were turned off. My ears were turned off. They were just hearing tonic to tonic, tonic to tonic, tonic to tonic, tonic to tonic, up and down. So I'm not saying there is any value in that. I'm just saying from a jazz musician's perspective with the development of the year.

strongly advise this, the various entry points, so that you get used to practicing the entire sound from the root to the 13th of the sound.

Brad (50:27.58)
Yeah, if for no other reason than it changes the success criteria and you're going to have to sit there and listen and make sure that you're doing the exercise the way that it's supposed to be.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (50:38.533)
Yeah, so okay, so let's talk about, let's move on and talk about, because we have been hitting it hard in your lessons, applying all these various skill sets that you've been working on, actually applying them to tunes, playing tunes, a lot of different standards. You came in with a top 10 list of standards that you wanted to attack, which were all like golden, you know, great standards.

and you were very successful learning them and playing through them. So talk to the listeners a little bit about your approach when you decide I'm going to learn such and such standard. What's kind of the agenda that you have in place that you utilize to start digesting this tune?

Brad (51:31.153)
Well, the first thing that I do is I put together a playlist of a bunch of different versions.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (51:37.031)
You gonna make me cry again,

Brad (51:41.818)
Yeah, and some of those actually are out of this.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (51:53.608)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brad (51:53.841)
Joy is the jazz standards. Yeah, he has like some information about the tune and then he'll have like his recommended recordings. And so I'll make a playlist and I'll usually start with his if it's in the book and sometimes it's not. And then I'll go out and try to find versions from different artists. If there's lyrics, I'll try to learn vocal versions.

And then I'll just look for names that I recognize or artists that I like and I'll have a playlist of, you know, anywhere from five to 20 songs or five to 20 versions of any given song.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (52:24.293)
Good, good, very good.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (52:41.586)
Yeah, and I'm assuming that you're doing with this playlist, sometimes you're doing active listening, sometimes you're doing passive listening. You could have it on in the car while you're driving or doing dishes or whatever, right? I mean, you just start listening.

Brad (52:53.148)
It's mostly passive listening. Yeah, yeah, it's mostly passive listening. Yeah, and I'll just sit there and have it on repeat for a day, two days, it kind of depends on how complicated the melody is, but yeah, I'll just sit there and listen to it over and over and over again. And I'll do different versions of it so that I don't get sick of hearing the same song over and over and over again. And if there's lyrics, I'll try to learn the lyrics.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:02.622)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:08.04)
Very good.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:17.608)
Yes. Yes.

Brad (53:18.67)
And because it not only does it tell you like the emotional content of the song, but it creates that it helps just ingrain and lock in the melody, you know, if you know the words.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:30.682)
And the phrasings within the melody, the various phrases. So when you go ahead and do that melody, I'm curious, I'm curious, I think I know the answer. When you start learning that melody on the keyboard, are you reading that from a fake book or are you sitting there poking it out and finding it based on all the listening that you've done?

Brad (53:33.948)
Absolutely, yeah. So.

Brad (53:55.092)
Yeah, I don't use the fake book. I used to like years ago, no longer. You're kind of cheating yourself by taking the easy way out, right? You're kind of cheating yourself.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (53:57.258)
Thanks.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (54:15.898)
Yeah, not only from an ear perspective, but you're cheating yourself from the perspective of sounding like a jazz musician as well, because if you're gonna try to read it, not, it just will not be the same. It's just not the same.

Brad (54:28.565)
Yeah, if you play out of the real book and you play the notes literally like they are written, it sounds unmusical. And it's not that it's wrong.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (54:35.468)
Yes.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (54:39.658)
No, but it's mathematical. It's just mathematical. That's what music notation, that's what it is. Yes, it's mathematical. That's exactly right. Yeah. that's excellent. So, okay, you start poking the melody around, you do the chord change. It's something that I know that you do, which is really, really, really good. I want to bring it up so the listeners hear it.

Brad (54:42.322)
Right, it's notation. Right, yeah, it forces things into a box.

Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (55:04.67)
You have the iReal Pro app, which is very popular. Everybody seems to have it. It's a great practice tool. But what I love, and I mentioned this to you years ago, and you made the switch and you haven't gone back, and that is you have iReal Pro set up as the default being number notation. You don't record changes.

Brad (55:30.292)
No, no I don't. And it's the same for Band in the Box. They're both set to Nashville notation.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (55:35.018)
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome, So you just read it. Again, you're doing a great favor for the years. You're doing a great favor for the years, man.

Brad (55:38.463)
Yeah

Brad (55:42.974)
Right. Well, and to be able to just see the structure of the song, because if I switch over to the chord symbols, like the actual chord symbols, I mean, I can work it out, but you're not seeing the underlying structure of how you're moving through chords, how you're moving through keys, how you're going out and coming back. You're just seeing chord symbols and that's

Dr. Bob Lawrence (55:49.387)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (56:09.067)
Yeah.

Brad (56:12.931)
Again, you're shortchanging yourself if you're not.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (56:15.499)
Yeah, because chord symbols do not illuminate relationships. They don't. The numbers illuminate a relationship. One to six means something. Two to five means something. Right. If you're reading just chord symbols and you see D minor seven to G seven, what's the relationship there?

Brad (56:20.778)
No they don't. No they don't.

Brad (56:28.085)
Right.

Right.

Brad (56:38.327)
Right. And if you go from one song to another and they change keys, you don't know that you're, these are the same relationships.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (56:46.535)
There you go. And then your ear locks into those relationships. start, wow, okay, now I know what that is. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. So I think it's fabulous because I love it every time you pull up your iReal Pro or whatever, I look over and there's the numbers. Yeah, very good. Excellent, excellent.

Brad (56:53.494)
yeah, that's a 1625 or that. Yeah. Yeah. Or whatever, right? Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (57:09.417)
So, okay, so fast forward a little bit. So you got the chord changes, you got those under your hands, you got the melody, you've done your listening, you've got the melody put together. Then wait, where do you go from there?

Brad (57:24.491)
Okay, so we have, we've learned the melody, right? And maybe I have to slow it down, you know, if it's particularly tricky, I'll use like a slow downer app and like loop it if I need to, or, you know. But eventually I get to the point where I'm picking it out by ear on the keyboard and I can play through it. And at some point I'll switch over to doing it

I'll do it with the recording and then at some point I'll switch over to doing it with like band in the box or backing track or something like that.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (57:57.963)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Brad (58:03.449)
I would like to get to a point where I'm learning the changes by ear as well. I've done it in some cases, but I'm just not doing it consistently.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (58:19.113)
Yeah, yeah that comes that that in fact it's coming I mean it's already you're hearing I guarantee you you're already hearing things like wait a minute that's a 251

Brad (58:22.144)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (58:30.162)
Like you said, that's what I want to say. so you're already, you're already, because you, for that to fully come to the surface, you have to hear root movement. You got to hear root movement. That's why having everything in a number of notations is so important, because now your ears are starting to hear the root movement. Then after you hear the root movement, then you can start to go, that's major, or that's dominant, or that's minor, right? But yeah, the root movement is absolutely the very first step, necessary, yes.

Brad (58:30.643)
absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brad (58:42.32)
Right.

Brad (59:00.207)
Yeah, so I'll have the changes, right? And I can play with the recording and I can play with the backing track and I agree with the changes or I don't and I'll look around and try to tweak them and I'll cross reference with a couple of different sources or however, or I'll just say, hey, can you send me these and you'll send them.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (59:26.127)
Yeah, yeah.

Brad (59:28.837)
But in any case, I'll be able to play the melody with the backing track. And then I'll start to add in root movement in the left hand. And sometime I'll literally just play the root and be able to do that while also playing the melody in the right hand. And then I'll add in shells later. And I'll have shells in the melody.

It depends on how on the context in which I want to play it, but I might, you know, play through and do voicings, you know, just like two-handed voicings like I'm copying with somebody. Yeah. And...

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:00:11.833)
Yeah, very good. Yes, very good.

Brad (01:00:19.551)
Then from there, you start to build out like a treatment of it, an arrangement, a head arrangement of it, whatever you want to call it.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:00:26.184)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So you have these steps that you're going through. One of the things that you've started doing now that we've started doing that I think is having a very profound impact on your treatment, your delivery of the melody and playing of the tune is actually playing the melody right hand only as you sit on your left hand. No left hand at all, just playing the melody of the tune.

Brad (01:00:32.616)
From there, you can apply these different skills. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:01:01.919)
Right? Talk about that for a second because we just recently started doing that. What have you discovered? What have you discovered by just saying, you know what, I'm going let Band in the Box or I'm going to let IRL Pro do the heavy lifting. I'm going to let them, I'm going to let that software play the changes and establish the tempo and the rhythm section and so forth. And I'm going to be the vocalist. I'm going to be the instrumentalist and I'm just going to play this melody in my right hand.

Brad (01:01:02.802)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:01:32.154)
Talk a little bit about what you've discovered since you've started doing that.

Brad (01:01:36.286)
Okay, you you lower the water level and you can see the cracking, you know. So...

Brad (01:01:49.552)
If you're not, if there's less going on and you're not trying to do too much, then you're forced to confront the inadequacies of the way that you're playing the melody. And you're forced to try to play it as well as you can because there's nothing else.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:02:12.94)
else exposed exposed

Brad (01:02:14.482)
So, right, yeah, your playing is exposed. And the question that you have to ask yourself, especially if you're recording it and listening back to it is, does this sound musical?

Brad (01:02:32.37)
does it sound like music? And if the answer is no, then, you know, okay, why not? And what would you have to change to make it sound, you know, you're never gonna be totally satisfied, but what would make it better?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:02:36.158)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:02:46.476)
Yeah, yeah, a good question. When I do this kind of work, the question I'm always asking myself, Brad, is this. Would I sit and listen to somebody play melodies of tunes all night like I just played it? Would I do that? And if the answer is no, I got work to do. FYI, the answer is always no. But anyway.

because you're always wanting to get better. the point being is that if you're playing that melody really, really well, if you're swinging that melody or you're playing a ballad and it's emotionally locked in, you're not going to miss anything else. There's nothing that's missing.

There's nothing that's missing. if there's somebody that can play melodies all night long, that sounds fantastic. I will sit there and listen to somebody play melodies all night long that plays them well. And we don't need anything else. Because as you said a few lessons ago, because the melody is the tune. It is the tune. That's the song. That's the song. That is the song. That is the song.

Brad (01:03:55.795)
is the song.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:03:59.233)
Right? So I can't encourage folks to do that enough, right? Right hand melody work, sit on the left hand. And plus, you know, we've talked about this too, right? It puts chords back in their proper perspective. It puts chords back in their place, right? It puts voicings back in their place. We tend to as jazz pianists, we put these chords and these voicings up on a pedestal and we kind of worship them like, wow, man, look at this voicing, look at this chord, look at this, right?

Brad (01:04:29.323)
We have an embarrassment of riches.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:04:31.025)
Yes, exactly right. That's exactly right. it gets... That's right. That's right. That's right. We can hide. We can hide. And often we do. Piano players often do. get the left hand is way out of control, way too busy, just way too much going on. It's just out of control. So...

Brad (01:04:35.201)
And the single note players don't.

They're forced to confront it. We're not. We can hide.

Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:04:59.795)
So yeah, your tune work that you've been doing over the last several months has been fabulous and I've just witnessed a ton of growth with that as well. Man, can you, do you sometimes pinch yourself? Because I mentioned to you a couple weeks ago, I mentioned to you, I hey Brad, you know what? I can't remember what tune we were doing but.

We just finished, I said, dude, if you had a couple dozen tunes like that, dude, you can go out and play gigs all night in the Dallas area. I mean, you're at that level where you're playing and it's very enjoyable. And you sometimes pinch yourself that you've gotten this far.

Brad (01:05:40.484)
I think that's a good goal, honestly. Yeah, I think, you know, not anything fancy like, you know, like a background wallpaper gig, you know, whatever you want to call it. But I think that that keeps me on like, you know, making sure that what I'm playing sounds like music. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:05:59.214)
Yeah, dude, you're real close man. Having a little trio, doing a little coffee shop somewhere man, playing a little couple sets. That'd be awesome. That'd be fantastic. I'll be there. I'll be there man. I'll be there with my favorite beverage. So, all right man, what else?

Brad (01:06:08.91)
Yeah, yeah.

Brad (01:06:15.288)
Yeah.

Brad (01:06:18.98)
Yeah, no, I'm pretty happy with where things are. And, you know, it's always like, it's always 10 yards from where you currently are, you know, but you have to appreciate where you are.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:06:24.111)
You sh-

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:06:28.994)
Listen, I...

Yeah, because, right, I mean, we're in it for the long haul, right? It's, you know, the study of jazz, jazz pianos, it's a long game. It's for life. And there's always room for improvement. There's always room for growth. That's what makes it exciting. That's what makes it fun. We're always chasing, like I like to say, we're chasing that dangling carrot. And if that wasn't there, if this was like a model airplane, put it together and put it on the shelf and we're done. I mean, we wouldn't be here right now. mean, who

pairs, right? You know, so yeah, it's a life long and you know what? Aren't you glad you have something like this for the rest of your life? I mean, really.

Brad (01:07:12.802)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, like he said, there's

You wanna be able to be, it's the journey, not the destination. mean, it's kind of a cliche, but it's absolutely true. Like you get more enjoyment out of the pursuit of the thing. Once you have the thing, you're like, what's next?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:07:26.52)
Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:07:33.83)
What's next? Yeah, what's next? We got to go on to the next challenge here. So, all right, man, what words of inspiration, encouragement, support would you offer up for jazz, piano skills, listeners from around the world that are checking this out right now and listening to you? What advice would you like to offer up, man?

Brad (01:07:35.596)
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right.

Brad (01:08:02.735)
If you want to do this.

you're probably gonna be capable of doing it. And you're gonna get stuck. And that's fine. And when you get stuck, sometimes you just gotta grind through it and sometimes you need help. And...

But I think that more than natural talent, whatever that means, desire, know, and the wanting to do it, whatever it is, it doesn't have to be this, but whatever you wanna do, if you wanna do it, you're gonna figure out a way to become decent at it.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:08:44.305)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you do not have to play like Oscar Peterson to play good jazz.

Brad (01:08:53.639)
No, you can, Yeah, I'm not necessarily saying that if you want to do it, you're going to be, you know, super pro level, but you're going to be decent if you want to do it and you work hard enough and you work long enough.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:08:57.682)
Right?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:09:07.047)
That's true.

Well, that's right. That's exactly right. Oftentimes folks will ask me, they'll come in and they go, you think I could actually learn how to play the piano? I go, hold up your hands. They hold up their hands, I count the fingers. I go, yeah, you qualify. You qualify. You're good.

Brad (01:09:26.213)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:09:28.365)
So, so man, I'll tell you what, man, it's such a joy. Listen, I can't thank you enough for, like I said, carving out time to come on and share your story and your thoughts and your ideas with the Jazz Piano Skills community. So many folks are gonna benefit from your pearls of wisdom today. So I can't thank you enough. And on a personal note, Brad, I gotta thank you for the last six years, man. It's been a joy to work with you and share jazz piano studies with you and watch your grow.

and just watch you develop into a very fine jazz pianist, man. And I can't wait to see where we go from here. But congratulations to you and thank you again for coming on Jazz Piano Skills. Very much appreciated.

Brad (01:10:12.935)
Thank you, I appreciate everything that you do and I wish you success with jazz piano skills and the Dallas School of Music. I think you guys are doing great things.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:10:23.669)
Well, great man. Hey, I would be remiss if I didn't say this. Remember when you came in for your lesson one time and I was recording something? And I said, you said, what are you doing? And I said, hey man, I'm kind of thinking about doing like this audio lesson, know? And you literally go, well, that sounds like a podcast. I said, I said, huh, maybe I'll do a podcast. That was the start, dude.

Brad (01:10:30.207)
Yeah.

Woo.

Brad (01:10:39.07)
Yeah.

Brad (01:10:43.209)
Yeah.

Brad (01:10:48.082)
Yeah, yeah, that was, yeah. And you're like, you gave me the idea. And I'm like, I thought that's what you were describing.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:10:55.264)
I was thinking around on my computer going like can I record my voice just saying something that you know share with somebody and that was so funny because you said that sounds like a podcast I guess you're right

Brad (01:11:10.186)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:11:14.592)
And as the saying goes, and the rest is history. So anyway, all right Brad, have a great weekend my friend. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family and we'll see you after the holidays.

Brad (01:11:30.346)
All right, happy Thanksgiving. I'll see you on Tuesday.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (01:11:32.552)
Yeah, thank you, man. Bye.

Brad (01:11:34.59)
Bye.