Wave, Improvisation

Dr. Bob Lawrence (00:32.855)
Welcome to Jazz Piano Skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn, and play jazz piano. And man, am I ready to play jazz piano today? Today is April 15th, tax day. I hate April 15th. So I'm just going to pretend that it's not April 15th and just focus on jazz piano. Just a much, much better option, right?

So here we are, week three of the month of April. And of course, week three of every month, right, we dedicate ourselves to improving our jazz improvisation skills. Week one, we always do a harmonic analysis of a tune, which of course this month we're Antonio Carlos Yobeim's Fabulous Bossa Wave. So we always do a harmonic analysis. Week one, week two, we do a melodic analysis of the tune.

And then week three, this week, we devote ourselves, our undivided attention goes to the development of our improvisation skills. Our harmonic analysis, as we do with every tune, we explored the form of wave, the changes, the harmonic function of those changes, common harmonic movement, and of course, the voicings, right, our left hand voicings, two handed voicings, and our melodic

study our melodic skills. We look at the lyrics, melody, and we looked at the fingerings and the phrases and the melodic and various melodic treatments. And today, of course, our improvisation skills, we will challenge ourselves today with an examination of the chord scale relationships and take a look at what harmonic and melodic shapes are hidden

within those chord scale relationships, you know, right beneath our nose, that we need to be aware of that invaluable harmonic and melodic shapes, invaluable shapes to help us develop our improvisation skills. You know, and then on top of all that, right, as we always do this week, we will have a rhythm challenge that will help us develop our improvisation skills as well.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (02:55.903)
Of course, the study and practicing of all these essential jazz piano skills, whether they'd be harmonic or melodic or improvisation, right? The skills all must be governed by a crystal clear thought process that simplifies music conceptually, right? So that we actually have a legitimate chance of developing musical skills physically.

So if it's confusing upstairs, we have no shot downstairs, as I like to say. And we achieve this crystal clear thought process by making sure that all that we do musically, conceptually and physically, all that we do plugs into or adheres to, say it with me, the seven facts of music.

And what are these all important seven facts? Here we go. can recite them together because I go through them every podcast episode. Number one, music is the production of sound and silence. Sound being major, dominant, minor, half diminished, diminished. Number two, sound is produced harmonically and melodically. Shapes. And number three, the shapes of harmony are called chords, voicings.

Number four, the shapes of melody are scales and arpeggios. Number five, when playing our scales and arpeggios, we move in one of two directions, right? We can only go up or down. Fact. Right? Number six, we decorate or we camouflage our scales and arpeggios with tension or chromaticism. And then finally fact number seven, to make facts one through six interesting, we add

rhythm. That's it. These are the seven facts of music, and all that we do musically should be framed by these seven facts of music. And that is precisely why we approach our tune study every month centering around the seven facts of music using three distinct learning phases. We have our harmonic analysis, our melodic analysis, and improvisation development.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (05:15.146)
And then on top of all that, we make all of that interesting how fact number seven, we add rhythm. Wow. That is why more than ever, I am excited about our game plan for this year and every year really moving forward, right? We have an amazing, educationally sound three tier, three phase approach.

that is formulated from a clear understanding of the seven facts of music. The seven facts needed to illuminate essential jazz piano skills needed to successfully discover, learn and play jazz, to discover, learn and play tunes. Right? So today, we tackle improvisation development. So today, we're going to discover wave improvisational.

We are going to learn the chord scale relationships of wave, and we're going to play the various harmonic and melodic shapes hidden within those chord scale relationships found within wave. And then of course, I'm going to give you the rhythm challenge that you will be able to tap into for additional improvisation development. So as I always like to say, regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner,

intermediate player, an advanced player, or even if you're a seasoned, experienced professional, you're going to find this Jazz Panel Skills podcast lesson exploring the great standard wave to be very beneficial. But before we get started, before we jump in and get after it, I want to, as I always do, welcome the first-time listeners to Jazz Piano Skills. And if you are indeed a new listener, if you're new to Jazz Piano Skills,

I want to invite you to become a Jazz Piano Skills member. Your membership keeps Jazz Piano Skills podcast 100 % ad free, which has been my goal from day one, right? No ads, 100 % educational content. Now, on top of that, your membership comes with many membership perks. Number one.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (07:36.713)
you as a member have access to premium podcast content. And what that basically means is that you get to listen to the entire podcast episode. Now, the first half of every podcast episode is free for everyone to enjoy. We deal with the question of the week, we lay out the educational agenda and the lesson rationale. And the second half for members only, we deal with the lesson content, the demonstrations,

exploration of the podcast packets, the illustrations, the lead sheets, the backing tracks, the play alongs. And then of course, we have our weekly rhythm assignment as well. Jazz Panel Skills members also enjoy in addition to the educational podcast every week, they enjoy the courses, educational courses that are comprehensive and self paced and sequential that are online and accessed through the website as well. Members also

can enjoy the reserve seat in the weekly master classes that I host every Thursday evening, 8pm Central Standard Time. Now, I realize that this is not the greatest time for everyone from around the world, certainly, but the master classes are recorded and you can watch and rewatch the video of those classes whenever and as often as you wish.

As a Jazz Piano Skills member, you also have access to the private online Jazz Piano Skills community, which hosts a variety of educational forums, podcast specific forums, there are general jazz forums. It's a great environment to meet new folks, to offer member feedback and assistance and also to receive feedback and assistance as well from the community. And then finally, as a Jazz Piano Skills member, you have unlimited educational support.

private, personal, professional support whenever and as often as you need it. So all of these all of these perks are waiting for you to help you discover, learn, and play Jazz Panel. So check it all out at JazzPanelsKills.com and of course become a member. And if you have any questions, once you get to the website, any questions about the various membership plans or educational content, by all means please reach out, contact me. I'm happy to spend some time with you and answer any

Dr. Bob Lawrence (10:00.115)
any questions and help you in any way that I can. Okay, so on to the question of the week. This week's question comes from Paul Conway. Paul Conway living in Cleveland, Ohio. Paul writes, I am a jazz piano beginner, played trumpet in my youth many years ago. I am learning my chords and enjoying making musical sounds again.

I'm extremely excited about learning how to improvise. Are there any beginner jazz improvisation etudes I can practice to begin developing this skill? I know I may have the card ahead of the horse, but I thought I would ask anyway. Thanks in advance for your help. Great question, Paul, and welcome back to music. I'm thrilled. I'm always excited to hear somebody

coming back to music and getting involved again, that's awesome. And I'm also thrilled that you are a member of Jazz Panel Skills and that you're tackling the chords to begin your journey. You're spot on, 100 % correct in doing so. And you know what? You can begin, you don't have the cart-headed horse. You can indeed begin practicing your improvisation skills right now. Heck yeah. Even at the beginning stages of your development.

And in fact, no better time to begin improvising, quite honestly. Now, when it comes to improvisation etudes, there are no better etudes than the ones you are currently playing. In other words, the chords, your 12 major, 12 dominant, 12 minor, 12 half diminished, 12 diminished chords. These are the best jazz improvisation etudes.

we have nothing better. In fact, I should I should actually start calling them the 60 jazz improvisation etudes instead of the instead of the 60 jazz chords. You know, I preach it all the time that when you are learning your block chords, you are really whether you know it or not, you're really doing an improvisation exercise. In other words, that

Dr. Bob Lawrence (12:25.265)
the shapes of the chords, root position, first inversion, second version, third inversion. These are the shapes that you need to have a command of to begin exploring the art of improvisation. Without these shapes, quite honestly, without these shapes, you're just like simply throwing darts at the dartboard, hoping to hit something that sounds good.

So it's important to realize that it's so important to realize that improvisation is not a guessing game. Improvisation is not a mystery. We already know the notes, Paul. We already know the notes. We need to play with each chord. Right? Makes sense, right? We play the notes of the chord. In other words, if you are trying to improvise over the C major seven sound,

then you should probably use the notes of the C major 7 chord, the notes C, E, G, and B. And quite honestly, we should not make it any more difficult than that. In fact, I would go as far as to say that if you cannot improvise something melodically, something beautiful, using the notes of the C major 7 chord when improvising over the C major 7 sound, then

you really shouldn't even consider trying to use additional notes. Right? Why would you? Adding more notes never, never makes the challenge of improvising easier. Okay? And I say it all the time, musical interest is created rhythmically and not with the notes that you are playing. Notes do not have any emotional triggers.

I want to say that again, notes do not have any emotional triggers. No one, when hearing the note C, no one hears the note C and exclaims, wow, I love that note. And then when hearing the note D flat, express disappointment because they do not care for that note. How incredibly silly is that if you just stop to think about it?

Dr. Bob Lawrence (14:53.237)
You know, it's what we do rhythmically with the notes that creates musical interest. All that to say, Paul, that as you begin the development of your improvisation skills, do not become fixated on notes. Much better to lock in on rhythm, which is dependent upon time, feel, and articulation. So we can simply take the notes of any chord. Let's use C major seven.

and begin to use it as an improvisation A2 to begin developing our time, feel, and articulation. So you would just use the notes C, E, G, and B. Now, let's keep this simple. We're going to begin our improvisation development by just simply playing the notes of the C major 7 chord, ascending, and then descending.

That's it. But we're going to do that with the proper time and in time with the proper feel and articulation. We're going to ascend in one measure, rest in measure two, descend in measure three, and rest in measure four. And then we're going to repeat that one million times, at least at least one million times. And when you can do this in time, ascend through the C major seven sound.

descend through the C major seven time sound in time with the proper feel and articulation. When you can do this, then a huge congrats to you. You are now improvising. Right. The next step after this is to begin rhythmically modifying the four note arpeggio ascending and modifying the four note arpeggio descending. Right. And today's episode, quite honestly,

Today's episode is going to be absolutely perfect for you, Paul, because in essence, that is what we are going to be doing today with the chord changes of wave. We are going to illuminate the various harmonic and melodic shapes found within the scale and begin exploring various rhythmic ideas to those shapes, right? We're going to start exploring and applying various rhythmic ideas to those shapes.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (17:19.817)
Paul, you're going to learn a ton with today's podcast episode, but please, please, I beg you, begin by playing the notes of the chord you are playing straight up and straight down, right? With a measure break at the top, a measure break at the bottom to rest and assess what you just did. Was it good? Was it bad? Was it ugly?

make any unnecessary adjustments and dive right back in. I tell every student to do this. And they shake their head up and down in total agreement and proceed to study George Russell's Lydian chromatic concept and Ramon Rickers pentatonic scales for improvisation as launching points for their improvisation journey. Do not make this mistake. So Paul, what I'm going to do

instead of taking up a lot of time in this podcast episode, I am going to do a video modeling exactly how to begin practicing improvisation. And we'll post it on the Jazz Piano Skills homepage for you later today or tomorrow so you can actually watch me practice the approach that I just walked you through, right, the approach that I am recommending for you, right? The

very best jazz improvisation etudes available today, tomorrow and forever are the chords, right? Are the block chords, roots, thirds, five, seven, fifth and seventh, right? Wow, Paul, great question. Welcome back to the wonderful world of music. I hope my answer helps

gives you some direction as you begin exploring and developing your improvisation skills. And all as always, right, if more clarification is needed, please let me know. I'm happy to dig deeper with you. But be sure, be sure to check out the video that I will post later today or tomorrow morning. Okay, it will help you a great, great deal. And then again, let me know if you have any questions.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (19:34.887)
Alright, so let's discover, learn and play jazz piano. Let's discover, learn and play wave. Let's have some fun with improvisation. Okay, so when studying when learning any tune, right, we have our approach that we do, right that we that we utilize every time. And again, genre makes no difference. We don't care whether it's jazz tune, a rock tune, pop tune, country rock, R &B, whatever, right?

our approach that I have been stressing, you know, that that I personally do, and I'm hoping that you're adopting this approach. Number one, as always, listen, I listen to everyone I can. It's like, for instance, anyone that's performing wave, since that's the tune of the month, I listen to any anyone from any genre performing the tune. And I usually like a

I've said in the past, I usually start with vocalist, then instrumentalist, and then of course pianist. always step two, I always do a harmonic analysis like we did a few weeks ago where we look at the form, the changes, harmonic function, common harmonic movement, and then of course, voicings. play around with voicings. And then I will turn my attention to a melodic analysis like we did last week. I'll transcribe the melody by ear.

I'll listen to the phrases and the target notes within those phrases, and then I'll explore, have some fun exploring various treatments of the tune. And I typically just turn to the standard jazz treatments, you know, like a traditional swing groove, a bossa nova, or a ballad. And then finally, after I feel I have a handle on the tune harmonically and melodically, I like to have some fun with improvisation, like we're going to do today. Look at the chord scale relationships.

study the arpeggio and scale movement through those chord scale relationships, and see what I can come up with. And that's exactly what we're going to be doing today. So it's a pretty thorough, it's a pretty complete approach from listening to the harmonic analysis, the melodic analysis to improvisation development. So this week, right, as I mentioned, we turn our attention to the improvisation. So the education agenda for today is as follows. Number one, as always,

Dr. Bob Lawrence (21:56.966)
we're going to listen to definitive recordings of Number two, we will determine the chord scale relationships found within wave. Number three, we will illuminate the harmonic and melodic shapes found within the chord scale relationships and then use those shapes for the development of our improvisation skills.

And then of course, we will wrap things up with a rhythm challenge that will help us develop our improvisation vocabulary using the harmonic and melodic shapes that we've discovered within the chord scale relationships. So if you are a Jazz Panel Skills member, I want you to just take a few minutes right now, hit the pause button, and I want you to download and print out your podcast packets. Again, the illustrations, the lead sheets, the play alongs.

Again, your membership grants you access to the premium content in these podcast packets for every weekly podcast episode. So you should absolutely have them in your hands as we go through the episode so that you get the most out of it. And of course, you should have these materials, these podcast packets sitting on your piano when practicing as well. Okay, now that you have your podcast packets in your hands, I want you to grab

your lead sheets first, and you should have two lead sheets in your packet. Only two, but great things come in small packages. Lead Sheet 1 is an outline of the chord scale relationships found within WAVE, all of them, and we're going to walk through those today. And then Lead Sheet 2

takes the very first chord of wave, the D major 7, and we strategically extract the essential harmonic and melodic shapes hidden within that chord scale relationship. And then we're going to use that same process for the remaining chords found within wave. So we got a lot to do. The illustrations, great illustrations this week as well.

Dr. Bob Lawrence (24:13.977)
to help you with your paper practice, nailing down these harmonic and melodic shapes that we are about to discover, to help you nail down those shapes for all the chords within wave. So have those illustrations, those worksheets, that paper practice close by because you will want to use tap into that this week as well. Now, typically, at this time, I would play

as you know, definitive recording of the tune. But as I have decided to do this year is to place my listening suggestions in the Jazz Panel Skills Community Forums. And again, a couple reasons for this is number one, I want to be able to suggest more than one tune to listen to to check out. And number two, I want to preserve as much time as possible for the educational content within the podcast. So

head on over to the community, spend some time listening to the recordings that I have provided links for before going any further. And then once you've done your listening, come on back and we'll get after this. All right, so let's grab lead sheet number one. And lead sheet number one has all of the chords found within wave, spelled out for you, laid out for you, and

the modes or the chord scale relationships that we are going to apply to each chord. So let's take a moment and walk through this, okay?

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