There Will Never Be Another You, Pt. 1

Dr. Bob Lawrence  0:32  
Welcome to jazz pm skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn and play jazz piano. Well, Happy New Year. Can you believe it? 2024 is here. The holidays are over. Very sad. I know. And the new year is underway. Even though the celebrations have ended, I'm fired up because we're starting a new jazz piano skills season this year, and the years to come are going to be ridiculously fun as we begin applying all of those essential jazz piano skills we have studied over the past four plus years. And we began applying them to tunes. Yes, you heard me correctly. We're applying jazz piano skills to tunes. How cool is this going to be? All of our chord work, voicing study scales, arpeggios, and improvisational approaches will be implemented and will be put into action. As I have mentioned many times over the past four years, there is a sequential order to learn how to play jazz piano. And that order does not begin with plain tunes. Let me say that again. There is a sequential order to learning how to play jazz piano. And that order does not begin with playing tunes. You know, that approach has never made sense to me. How can you learn to play jazz piano by playing tunes when you have no skills under your fingers? skills that are needed to play tunes. Talk about having the cart ahead of the horse. Wow. Funny, right?

Dr. Bob Lawrence  2:25  
That's That's why this podcast is called jazz piano skills and not jazz piano tunes. The title certainly tells you where I believe the payoff is found. I'll let I'll let you in on a little secret. If you had the opportunity to observe jazz musicians practice you would not hear tunes. Instead, do you know what you would hear? I'll tell you, you would hear some serious grunt work. grunt orcs centering around Essential Skills, skills like scales, arpeggios, patterns, progressions, time articulation, skills that could fit under one very important umbrella called musicianship. And this is precisely why I am so proud of all of you who have been grinding over the past four years to improve your musicianship and to get a functional command of the jazz piano skills needed to embark upon this new and exciting journey we are launching today. Real and rewarding, Toon steady. Now, if you haven't been grinding along with us over the past four years, no worries, this is a great time to jump on board to begin developing and enhancing your jazz piano skills. The tune study we are going to be doing every month will help you sift through and prioritize the last four years of podcast episodes so that you can begin maximizing your jazz piano skills immediately. So either way, an old timer a jazz piano skills or newbie you are in the right place at the right time to begin a jazz piano journey that will have a profound impact on your understanding of music in your jazz piano playing. All right, I'm fired up and ready to kick this new year off I'm ready to kick off this new adventure at jazz piano skills. So today you are going to discover a classic jazz standard there will never be another you and you're gonna learn form chord changes at harmonic function for there will never be another you and you're gonna play. There will never be another you using my I suggested voicings plus five common harmonic progressions for ear training development. So as I always like to say regardless of where you are in your personal jazz journey, a beginner, an intermediate player, an advanced player, or even if you consider yourself to be a seasoned and experienced professional, you're going to find this jazz panel skills podcasts lesson exploring, there will never be another you to be very beneficial. But before we get started, I want to as I always do welcome first time listeners to jazz piano skills. If you are a new listener to the jazz piano skills podcast or if you're new to jazz piano skills, I want to invite you to become a jazz piano skills member. Your membership grants you access to the premium content for this podcast episode and every weekly podcast episode. premium content will help you thoroughly and correctly discovered learn and play the jazz standard we are currently exploring and as the old saying goes so much more. For example, as a jazz piano skills remember, you can access the past current and future educational weekly podcast packets, the illustrations, the lead sheets, and the play alongs. They're designed and developed to help you get the most out of each weekly jazz piano skills podcast episode. You also have access to a self paced and sequential jazz piano curriculum which is loaded with comprehensive courses containing educational talks, interactive learning media, video demonstrations and much more. You also have a reserved seat and my online weekly masterclass held every Thursday evening. If you can attend no problem master classes are recorded. And you can watch and rewatch the class whenever and as often as you wish. You also have access to an online interactive Fakebook containing must know jazz standards with excellent chord changes chord scale relationships, harmonic function analysis, listening suggestions and historical insights. As a jazz panel skills member you can hang out with old and make some new jazz piano friends in the online private jazz piano skills community, which hosts a variety of engaging forums. And finally, your jazz panel skills membership grants you unlimited private, personal and professional educational support whenever and as often as you need it. All of these amazing privileges are waiting to help you discover, learn and play jazz piano. So check it all out at jazz piano skills.com and become a member to enjoy premium podcast content, and all the other privileges I just mentioned. Of course, if you have any questions, please contact me. I am happy to spend some time with you. Answer any questions that you may have, and help you in any way that I can. Speaking of questions, we are on to the question of the week, the first question of the week of the year. And it's a great question coming in at the perfect time with the start of the new year. Michael Doyle from Staten Island New York writes, it's a new year with new resolutions and I want to become a jazz pianist. I am determined and I do not want to set myself up to fail. So I am wondering, what is a realistic playing goal for me to achieve in 2024. I played piano classical lessons when I was in high school, which was several years ago. Thanks for your help. Dr. Lawrence. I am excited to discover and learn and play jazz piano in 2024. Well, Michael, I love your question, ambition and goal. And I also love how you work the jazz piano skills tagline discover, learn and play into your question. Very clever, Michael, very clever. Okay, having some piano experience, even if it was years ago, you'll find to be very helpful. So I am I assume you are familiar with the keyboard, where middle C is located in and the names for all 12 notes on the piano. So with that being said, I think a very good goal for you this year is to get the 60 chords under your fingers in both hands in root position and the three inversions right? To help you with this goal I would suggest the following number one. Listen to the November 24 2019 podcast episode titled chords by family. Again that's November 24. The 2019 podcast episode is titled chords by family. Number two, study jazz piano skills courses one through six. These are the courses, not the podcast episode, the courses one through six will be very beneficial and helping you achieve your goals this year. And number three, invest in either the application, the real pro application or app or the software band in the box. Either one of those will do, right, I real pro or band in the box. Both of these tools will help you place the chords that you're studying into a musical context. In doing so you are incorporating ear training into your practicing. And you're developing time feeling articulation as well. Let me know which one you go with. And I will send you some files that you can begin to use immediately. And if you have any questions on either of those programs, whether it's aI real pro or bandbox, let me know as well. Okay, with that being said, be patient with this goal you have all year. So do not rush through playing the chords grouped by family. In other words, C major C dominant C minor, C half diminished, C diminished, and so on. Right, do a lot of hands separate work, and then hands together. Yes, playing the same thing with both hands. For now. Remember that these shapes are the key to you moving forward forward with your goal of becoming a jazz pianist in 2024. If you have them under your hands, you can successfully move on and if you do not, you will never move on. I'm going to say that again. For you Michael, if you have these chords

Dr. Bob Lawrence  12:00  
at the end of the year, the 60 chords and their inversions under your hands you will be able to successfully move on move forward. And if you do not, you will never move on. So this is a huge and essential step. Learning these 60 chords, practice each chord family and each inversion as well. And if you are unfamiliar with inversions, do not worry, I explained them in the courses. And there are video demonstrations in those courses for you to watch and play along with as well. If you get a real handle on the 60 chords and root position and inversions, you can begin to group the chords by type. In other words, practice all 12 major chords in a grouping, then all dominant chords in a grouping, then minor, and so on. Again, you would tackle these grouping types in root position and inversions. Now the final thing I would encourage you to do when when using Ireo Pro or band in the box is to challenge yourself various tempos and various groups throughout the year. Do not allow yourself to get comfy with one tempo, and one groove and then self determine that you now have the 60 chords comfortably under your fingers. So create various plane scenarios to see how well you respond and how quickly you can play the various shapes and sounds. This is a great goal for you as you set out this in this new year to achieve your personal goal of becoming a jazz pianist. I think it's fantastic. Of course, if you have any questions as always, or concerns at any time along the way, do not hesitate to reach out to me Michael, I'm happy to spend some time with you. answer any additional questions that you may have, and help you in any way that I can. Okay, let's discover learn and play jazz piano let's discover learn and play. There will never be another you. Okay, I'm going to cut to the chase. Here is my outline for learning any to the genre makes no difference to me. jazz, rock, pop country folk, r&b, it makes no difference. Here is how I go about learning a tip number one, listen. Number two, determine form. Number three, learn chords. voicings number four, learn melody. Number five, explore treatments, improvisation. So when I say listen, I'm talking about various artists vocalist, instrumentalist, and of course pianist When I'm talking about form, I'm talking about your classic forms that are found just about an every tune within the Great American Songbook, a ABA form or ABA B form, etc. learning chords voicings, right common harmonic progressions to 51145 and so on. Learn melody, we're going to do it using a single note vocal like plane, right. In other words, we want our lines to sound vocal like no improvisation. By the way, we're going to play the melody. And when I talked about explore treatments, improvisation, various treatments swing Bossa, right various Latin grooves, and so on the test our skills test how well we truly have a command of the song. So again, listen the term and form learn chords, voicings or melody, explore treatments and improvisation. That's it. That's it, nothing more, nothing less. That's it. So this week, this week, we are going to listen determined form and learn the chord changes voicings this week, right next week, we turn our attention to melody, the following week, we turn our attention to treatments and improvisation. But this week, today, we are going to listen determined form, learn to chord changes and voicings for there will never be another you. Again, we're going to keep things clean and tidy. With our approach to all things music, whether it is skill study or tune study, it makes no difference our conceptual understanding of all that we do musically must be structured and simple. So that it can be replicated over and over and over again. I've said it many times over the past four years. If your conceptual understanding of music, or any musical skill is not structured and simple. It it is unorganized and confusing, right? If it's not structured in simple, then it's going to be unorganized and confusing. And if it's unorganized and confusing conceptually and upstairs right you have no shot of executing it in your hands on the piano downstairs. Therefore, therefore, we will keep our tune steady structure simple and replicatable. So, the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we are going to begin part one to discover learning play there will never be another you number two, we are going to listen to a definitive recording of there will never be another you number three, we will discuss the form of there will never be another you And number four, we will discover learn and play the chord changes for there will never be another you. Number five we will discover learn and play the harmonic function of there will never be another you. And number six, we will discover learn and play my suggested voicings for there will never be another you. Wow. So if you are a jazz piano skills member, I want you to take a few minutes right now hit the pause button. I want you to download and print your podcast packets, the illustrations, the lead sheets and the player logs. Again your membership grants you access to premium content for every weekly podcast episode which includes of course, all of the educational podcast packets and I mentioned it every week you should have these podcast packets in your hands when listening to this episode. And of course you should have them sitting on the piano when practicing Okay, now that you have your podcast packets in front of you I want you to grab your lead sheets your lead sheets packet and you should find in this packet you should find five very specific lead sheets. lead sheet one diagrams the form of there will never be another you lead sheet two gives you the chord changes four there will never be another you lead sheet three provides you the harmonic function of there will never be another you lead sheet for highlights five common progressions that we will use for your or training purposes. And number five lead sheet five, I give you you should see, I have my voicings mapped out that I use when plain there will never be another you. Wow, we have a ton to dissect today. So let's get busy. What is the very first thing we should do when studying and learning it to? The very first thing? Well, I hope you all are saying, listen to it seems kind of obvious right? Listen to it. Because without question, listening to various renditions of the tune is not only the first step, but I believe is the most important step. I can't even imagine attempting to learn a tune before spending time becoming familiar with before spending time absorbing it. I like listening to different artists perform the tune and typically typically I turned to vocal renditions first, because vocalist for the most part vocalists remain true to the original melody, especially vocalists like Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Nancy Wilson, Dinah Washington. Heck, if I really want to hear a straight version of the melody, I'll check out people like Andy Williams, Doris Day Sammy Davis, Jr, Perry Como. Then after I've checked out a number of vocalist, I'll turn my attention to instrumentalist horn players right

Dr. Bob Lawrence  21:49  
like Chet Baker Cannonball Adderley. Clark Terry Coleman Hawkins. Last but certainly not least, I check out as many jazz pianist as possible bottom line I listen. And that is what we're going to do right now before going any further. So here is the great Joe Williams with the Count Basie orchestra in 1957 performing there will never be another you sit back relax check this out so good

Speaker 1  22:34  
there will be many other nights like this and I'll be standing here with someone new there will be other songs to sing another fall another spring but there will never be another you there will be other lifts that I make his but there's won't thrill me like yours used to do yes, I may dream a million dreams. But how can they come true if there will never ever be?

Speaker 1  24:34  
There will be other lips that I make is but there's won't thrill me like yours used to do. Yes, I may dream a million dreams. But how can they come to if there will never ever be

Dr. Bob Lawrence  25:15  
okay, just stop. Amazing, right? I absolutely love it. I want to encourage you to listen to this version over and over again, as well as other versions, right that you discover. But listen to this version over and over again. And I promise you, I promise you, every time you listen to it, every time you actively listen to it, you're going to hear something new. And you'll enjoy it more and more. And on top of all that, listening will have a profound impact on your treatment of the two. I promise I guarantee it. So now, let's explore those lead sheets. So grab the lead sheet one, let's take a look at the form of there will never be another. Thank you for listening to jazz piano skills. The remaining premium content of this episode is available to jazz piano skills members at jazz piano skills podcast.com Visit jazz piano skills.com To learn more about membership privileges, and become a jazz piano skills member. Thank you!