There Is No Greater Love, 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. Hard to believe right? Here we are week three of our three week exploration, the jazz standard, there is no greater love. These weeks, these months fly by, it's crazy. I know it. Week one two weeks ago, we took a deep dive into the harmonic foundation of the tune, followed by last week's dissecting of the melody to be followed up today with a challenging look at various ways to use. There is no greater love to help us develop our improvisational skills. Right? It's great three tiered approach, right harmony, Melody, improvisation. It works. It's how I approach study in tunes. And it's a process that once you get familiar with it, it gets easier and easier, at least I hope so each and every month. The other thing that this process does, is it quickly reveals our strengths and weaknesses regarding the various essential jazz piano skills, and how important is it that we actually truly know our strengths and truly know our weaknesses. The bottom line is that there's no way absolutely no way to improve our plane without having an accurate understanding and assessment of our plane. In the last couple podcast episode lessons and today's lesson do exactly that. They give us a very accurate report card. As I like to say, we know pretty quickly where we stand with our ability to play critical jazz piano skills. I made a point to mention several times since the start of the year, that there is a sequential order to learn how to play jazz piano, which really shouldn't surprise you, right? I mean, after all, I cannot think of one high level skill that you can successfully developed without having a strategic game plan. And I can confidently guarantee you that a scattershot approach or what I like to call a You Tube approach to trying to learn how to play jazz piano will only cause frustration, confusion, and ultimately, giving up has happened so many times. So my goal from day one with jazz piano skills has been to not only introduce you to the essential jazz piano skills discover, but to also provide you with a way to successfully study the skills learn and a process for developing a physical command and the skills play. Discover learn play. Now I also mentioned several times since the start of the new year that if you have been a faithful jazz panel skills listener for the past four plus years, you have indeed become intimately familiar with the jazz piano skills needed to successfully begin tune study. And I've also mentioned that if you haven't been grinding along with us over the past four plus years woman, it's no big deal, no worries, it's a great time to jump on board and begin developing and enhancing your jazz piano skills. In fact, the tune study that we are going to be doing every month will help you actually sift through and prioritize the last four years of podcast episodes so that you can begin to maximize your jazz piano skills right now, immediately. So if you are a jazz panel skills veteran, or a jazz piano skills, rookie, it makes no difference. You're in the right place at the right time to begin a jazz piano journey that will have a very profound impact on your understanding of music and of course, on your jazz piano plane. So today you're going to discover an improvisation approach for there is no greater love. And you're going to learn about improvisational zones and patterns and motifs for there is no greater love and you're going to play As solo through the changes of their note, if there is no greater love using melodic boundaries, what I like to call melodic boundaries, and extended boundaries. So as I always like to say regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner and intermediate player, an advanced player, or even if you're a seasoned and experienced professional, it's, you're gonna find this jazz panel skills podcast lesson, exploring, there is no greater love to be very beneficial. But before we get started, I want to as I always do welcome first time listeners to jazz piano skills. And if you are a new listener, to jazz Panthers, a jazz panel skills podcast or if you're just New Jazz panel skills. Welcome and I want to invite you to become a jazz panel skills member. Your membership will grant you access to the premium content for this podcast episode and every weekly podcast episode past current and future. Right now the premium content will help you thoroughly and correctly. discover, learn and play the jazz standard that we are currently exploring. And a whole lot more for example, is a jazz panel skills member you have access to the past current and future educational weekly podcast packets. These are the illustrations, the lead sheets, the play alongs, or the backing tracks that I develop and design for every weekly podcast episode to help you get the most out of every weekly jazz panel skills podcast episode. Now you you will also have access to a self paced and sequential jazz piano curriculum which is loaded with comprehensive courses containing educational talks interactive learning medium, there are video demonstrations of the jazz panel skills in all 12 keys and so much more. 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So all of these amazing privileges are waiting to help you discover, learn and play jazz panels. So check it all out at jazz panel skills.com. And of course become a member to enjoy premium podcast content. Of course, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. I'm always happy to spend a little 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. But before we do the question of the week, I want to announce that this Thursday evening. There will be no master class this Thursday evening. Now Thursday is my birthday. That's right. Yeah, it's my birthday. So my wife said to me the other day, listen, you're gonna have to take Thursday night off. So make sure you let everybody know a jazz panel skills no masterclass, and I'm thinking in the back of my mind. Wow, that's pretty cool. It's good. fancy dinner, lots of presents, cake iced treats, you know, all that good stuff. I'm fired up. I think this is going to be a great night. And then I find out that No, it's my daughter's eighth grade graduation. So my birthday is not even on. It's not even on the table.

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So I'm going to be attending my daughter's eighth grade graduation this Thursday evening. So no masterclass. So we'll pick up with the master class and discussion regarding this episode The following week. Okay. All right. So now on to the question of the week. This week's question comes from Marty van Blair living in Munich, Germany and Marty writes, I have been checking out your podcast episodes dealing with fingerings. You stress the importance of intentionally inserting hand shifts when practicing arpeggios. I'm intrigued by your approach because this has never been stressed to me. In all my years of lessons, I've always practice playing arpeggios across the entire hand, before moving up an octave, and repeating the same arpeggio and fingerings. Can you take a few minutes in an upcoming episode to explain why the insertion of a hand shift is important? And how you would suggest practicing hand shifts? Well, excellent question, Marty. And of course, I'm happy to explain my approach a little more. All right, so let's begin with scales. That's right, we're going to begin with scales. Now I find it interesting that every major and every minor scale that you will ever practice, there is a hand shift actually already built in to the finger. For example, I think it's pretty universal. To play the C major scale as 1231234, right? 123, then the hand shifts to three. Okay, not from under, literally, the hand shifts over. Now, that's a topic for another day, but thumb under, not so good, right tension. So you want to release and shift, but 123 Hand shift 1234. Now, likewise, I think it's pretty standard to play the F major scale as 1234 and shift 123. Right. So we can examine every major and every minor scale and find a hand shift already built into the fingering. Now a scale or melodic sound, as I like to call it consists of seven notes, not counting the note in octave above the scale root on that double counting that right, so we have seven notes in the scale. Seven notes played using stepwise motion with a built in hand shift. Well, guess what? an arpeggio like a scale consists of seven notes. The notes are just played using a skip motion thirds, instead of a step motion, whole or half steps. So if a hand shift is needed to play seven notes of a sound using step motion, then I think is safe to say and, and very logical to assume as well, that a hand shift would be needed to play the same seven notes of a sound using skip motion to prep you for this type of hand movement needed to play an arpeggio from the root to the 13th. Right, that's all seven notes root to 13. We should begin incorporating this approach from the beginning when practicing a four note arpeggio root to seven. So let's take a look at this using our C family of sounds C major C dominant, C minor C half diminished, and C diminished. Okay, so with C major seven, C E, G B, right, I would recommend playing that as fingering that as 1313. Not 1245 Playing across the hand as you said Marty, I would play 1313 Because I'm prepping you to be able to play one to 13. Okay, now the dominant would be played the same way. C E, G, B flat 1313. The minor same way C E flat, G B flat 1313. And then the half diminished, I would recommend the exact same fingering. See E flat, G flat, B flat 1313. So you're gonna have to move the hand inward on the keyboard, get the thumb up on the onto G flat to finish that arpeggio 1313 And for the diminished, C, E flat, G flat a, I would recommend practicing it as 12411241. So we have this attentional shift now the reason And for that, as I've mentioned, I'm prepping you to be able to play the entire sound all seven notes. With a fingering that's going to allow you to play with a jazz, proper jazz articulation. So if we go back to that major, I'm going to play 1313124, all the way up to 13. For the dominant, I'm going to play 1313124, again, all the way to 13. Minor 13123124. For the half diminished 1312413. For the diminished, I'm going to use 1241313. Now there is simply no way that I can play from the root to the 13th with the same cleanliness and the same articulation using playing the arpeggio across the entire hand, and then skipping to the second octave, and playing the same arpeggio again, right. So in other words, if I use C minor as example, if I'm trying to go 1245, and now shift from my fifth finger to my thumb on c an octave higher, that's going to be very awkward. Let me do it with route to 13. So I'm going to go 1357 Now I'm going to shift my thumb to the note D. Right to Try to finish out the arpeggio very clumsy and I'm trying, right I'm trying to play that very cleanly and very smoothly, legato. Not happening, right, but now if I play with my intentional hands shifts in here. Yeah, much cleaner, right. Much more accurate, much cleaner, and much more with a jazz articulation. So

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with the intentional hand shifts, I'm actually it's, it's makes my job much easier to play all seven notes of the arpeggio just like all seven notes of the scale has a have a hand has a hand shift, I want hand shifts taking place with all seven notes of my arpeggio, ascending, and of course, descending. So I can honestly say that there's no way I could play the entire sound the entire arpeggio from the root to the 13th, with a jazz articulation using a classical approach that you mentioned in your question mark, do you have an approach where you play across the entire hand in other words, before moving to the next octave, and then repeating the same fingering and honestly, I feel that it's clunky. It's a clunky approach that will not serve you well when trying to improvise. Okay. Now I know it takes time to get used to my intentional hand shifting approach, especially if you're coming from a classical background, but I promise, give it a try. And you will feel and hear the difference in your plane. I guarantee it. Well, I hope this helps Marty. And as always, if more clarification is needed, do not hesitate to reach out to me. I'm happy, happy to help you. With any questions that you may have, okay. All right. So let's discover learn play jazz piano let's discover learn and play. There is no greater love part three, and improvisation approach. Two weeks ago, I presented my outline for studying and learning any two? Well, I've actually presented the outline multiple times since the start of the year. Right. And of course, the genre makes no difference. I don't care whether I'm trying to learn a jazz tune or rock tune and pop tune. r&b Tune country tune folk tune makes no difference, right. Number one, I always listen. Number two I determined form number three. I learned my chord changes and voicings number four, I focus on the melody and developing various treatments of the tune. And then number five, explore improvisation. That's it. Right one listen to determine form three, learn chord changes and voicings for learn the melody various treatments. And five explore improvisation. That's it. Right nothing more, nothing less. So two weeks ago, we focused on gaining and in our harmonic familiarity and command of there is no greater love. So what did we do? We listened to We determined the form, we explored the chord changes to harmonic function, common harmonic movement. And of course, voicings, for there is no greater love the end last week, we focused on an in depth melodic analysis of there is no greater love looking at various guide tones, phrases, target notes, interpretation fingerings. Right, very thorough. Our goal has been and will always be right to be organized, keep things really clean and tidy with our our study approach. And whether it's a skill study or attune study, right, it makes no difference, our conceptual understanding of all that we do musically must be structured. And honestly, it must be simple so that it can be replicated over and over and over again, just as we are doing with our tunes study each and every month. Y'all can attest to the fact that I've said it many times over the past four years that if your conceptual understanding of music, or a musical skill is not structured and simple. It is then unorganized and confusing. And if it's not organizing and confusing, conceptually, right conceptually, then you have no shot, you have absolutely no shot at executing it in your hands on the piano. No way. So therefore, we always want to keep our tunes steady, very structured, very simple. And, of course replicatable. So the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we are going to begin part three to discover learn and play there is no greater love using an improvisation approach. Number two, we're going to listen as always, we're going to listen to a recording of there is no greater love. Number three, we will discuss as always various zones, patterns motifs. Number four, are going to unveil what I like to call musical boundaries, melodic boundaries and extended boundaries to help us develop our improvisation skills. And number five, I'll be playing all the demonstrations today at a tempo of 120 using a traditional easy swing groove. So as always, we've got a ton to get done. So let's get after this. Now if you are a jazz piano skills member, I want you to take a few minutes right now hit the pause button. And I want you to print your podcast packets, the illustrations, the lead sheets and the play Long's again your membership grants you access to premium content for every weekly podcast episode, which of course includes all of the educational podcast packets. And I mentioned every week I mentioned it to you every week that you should be using these podcast packets to get the most out of every podcast episode when listening and of course you should be using these these wonderful materials when practicing as well. Now if you're listening to the podcast on either popular podcast directories such as Apple or Google you know there's a million of them right Spotify I Heart Radio and Amazon Pandora and so on. Then go directly to jazz piano skills podcast.com And you'll find the active download links for each of the podcast packets in the show notes or you can just simply log into your jazz piano 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 now that you have your podcast packets in front of you, I wish to grab your lead sheets and you should have six lead sheets in your packet. Just want to walk you through these real quick lead sheet one provides you with what I call inverted arpeggios for the chord changes of there is no greater love and lead sheet to provide you with inverted scales for the chord changes for there's no greater love along with the chord scale relationships okay. So now, lead sheet three provides you with as always ascending patterns and motifs focusing on various target intention notes for the chord changes of there is no greater love. lead sheet for provides you with descending descending patterns and motifs again focusing on the various target intention notes for there is no greater love. lead sheet five presents the melodic boundaries for there is no greater love that will help us develop our improvisational skills and lead sheet six extends those boundaries, those melodic boundaries, for there is no greater love. And again, based on these are all based on the inverted arpeggios and inverted scales presented in lead sheets, one and two. All right, so there's no question about it some invaluable tools to discover, learn and play today. So let's get after this. What is the very first thing that we do? Right? We listen, of course, right? We did it last week. We're going to do it again today. Because we should always be doing it always right. I stressed last week that listening to various renditions of a tune is not only the first but app, I believe, I personally believe the most important step. Again, I can't I can't even imagine begin to begin learning a tone without spending a lot of time listening to the tune, becoming familiar with the tune, absorbing the tune by listening to various artists perform the tune. Now I typically listen to vocal renditions first, followed by instrumentalist, and then followed by pianist and you can you can listen to it in any order you want. But that's, that's the order that I typically follow. The bottom line is I listen. And that's what we're going to do right now, before we go any further now, two weeks ago, we checked out Dinah Washington, singing there is no greater love last week. We enjoyed a very hip vocal rendition of there is no greater love performed by the University of North Texas jazz singers. And today, we're gonna listen to the great Kenny Barron one of my all time favorite jazz pianists performing there is no greater love from his 1984 album titled, green chimneys. Kenny is joined by Buster Williams on bass and Ben Riley on drums. So as always, grab your favorite beverage beverage and I want you to sit back and get ready to enjoy Kenny Barron sounds fan tastic check this out.

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Wow is the only thing I can say right wow and so tasteful. If you're not familiar with this album green chimneys, I want to strongly encourage you to check it out. Every cut is fantastic. Softly hasn't a morning sunrise skylark Straight No Chaser when lights are low, right to knit to name just a few. I promise you this will quickly become one of your favorite jazz albums. Okay, so now, let's explore those lead sheets. We've done our listening. Time to dig into the lead sheet so grab lead sheet one. Let's discover how to properly begin developing our improvisational skills using there is thank you for listening to jazz panel skills. The remaining premium content of this episode is available to jazz piano skills members at jazz piano skills podcast.com Visit jazz piano skills.com To learn more about membership privileges, and become a jazz piano skills member. Thank you.