Jazz Piano Skills
A podcast introducing aspiring Jazz Pianists to essential Jazz Piano Skills. Professional Jazz Piano Lessons by Dr. Bob Lawrence, President The Dallas School of Music
Jazz Piano Skills
I Wish You Love, Harmonic Analysis
Welcome to Jazz Piano Skills; it's time to discover, learn, and play Jazz Piano!
Every Jazz Piano Skills weekly podcast episode introduces aspiring jazz pianists to essential Jazz Piano Skills. Each Podcast episode explores a specific Jazz Piano Skill in depth. Today, you will discover, learn, and play "I Wish You Love". In this Jazz Piano Lesson, you will:
Discover
A classic jazz standard, “I Wish You Love”
Learn
Form, Chord Changes, and Harmonic Function for “I Wish You Love”
Play
“I Wish You Love” using my suggested Voicings plus Six Common Harmonic Progressions for Ear Training Development.
Use the Jazz Piano Podcast Packets for this Jazz Piano Lesson for maximum musical growth. All three Podcast Packets are designed to help you gain insight and command of a specific Jazz Piano Skill. The Podcast Packets are invaluable educational tools to have at your fingertips while you discover, learn, and play I Wish You Love.
Open Podcast Packets
Illustrations
(detailed graphics of the jazz piano skill)
Lead Sheets
(beautifully notated music lead sheets)
Play Alongs
(ensemble assistance and practice tips)
Educational Support
Community Forum
SpeakPipe
Episode Outline
Introduction
Discover, Learn, Play
Invite to Join Jazz Piano Skills
Lesson Rationale
Exploration of Jazz Piano Skills
Conclusion
Closing Comments
Visit Jazz Piano Skills for more educational resources that include a sequential curriculum with comprehensive Jazz Piano Courses, private and group online Jazz Piano Classes, a private jazz piano community hosting a variety of Jazz Piano Forums, an interactive Jazz Fake Book, plus unlimited professional educational jazz piano support.
If you wish to donate to JazzPianoSkills, you can do so easily through the Jazz Piano Skills Paypal Account.
Thank you for being a Jazz Piano Skills listener. I am pleased to help you discover, learn, and play jazz piano!
0:20
Welcome to jazz piano skills. I'm Dr Bob Lawrence, it's time to discover, learn and play jazz piano Well, hello, August. The start of a new month is always exciting at jazz piano skills, a new month, a new tune, it's a time to move on a fresh start, if you will. It is so important to have these feelings right when tackling a high level discipline, such as jazz piano, so important to constantly create, as I have mentioned several times, forward motion. Forward motion motivates. The opposite is also true. The feeling of running in place or no forward motion allows stagnation to set in, which is the kiss of death to our motivation, and that is why we do what we do at jazz piano skills, we move on. So today we're moving on to a new tune to help us accurately assess our strengths and weaknesses as jazz pianists, as jazz musicians, we are constantly searching for accurate answers to all the important questions. And the most important question is, of course, what jazz panel skills do I have a command of and which ones need attention? So important, right? So important that that we're capable of successfully answering this question, and if we can answer it, there's hope we know exactly what we need to practice in order to improve as a jazz pianist. We have spent the past four plus years right tackling essential jazz piano skills, scales, arpeggios, chord scale relationships, harmonic function, piano technique, fingerings, improvisation approaches, and I could go on and on right, all of that preparation, all that preparation so that we can do what we're doing this year, learning tunes correctly, and that we have the skill sets needed in order to learn tunes correctly, right? So since the start of the year, we have dissected seven is that right? Seven jazz standards. We've done so harmonically, melodically and improvisationally, right? All in the effort to illuminate our strengths and weaknesses, the jazz piano skills that need attention, conceptually or physically or both, I think, for you jazz piano skills members who have faithfully followed the agenda, you can honestly say that you have taken your discover, learn and play approach to study in jazz to a whole new level, and I'm absolutely thrilled about that. So here we are right a new month, a new tune, and in a few weeks, we'll have an updated assessment of our jazz piano skills. Now this month, we're exploring one of my personal favorite standards of all time. It's a masterpiece. It has a gorgeous melody, beautiful chord changes, heartfelt lyrics. It's awesome, played as a ballad, as a swing tune, as a bossa. It has it all. And it's hard to find a tune, I think, better than the 1942 classic, the 1942 standard I wish you love. We will start, as we always do, with a harmonic analysis of I wish you love. We'll take a look at the form the chord changes, harmonic function, common progression and voicings, left handed shell voicings, as well as two handed voicings. We'll do that today, and next week, we will follow up with a melodic analysis, which will involve learning the melody of I wish you love by ear, plus proper fingerings. And we'll explore some various treatments of the tune as well. We will then enjoy the grand finale, as I like to call it, week three, focusing on improvisation, development, right? We use patterns and motifs and common tones, common zones, and, of course, tension and. Out if you haven't been a faithful listener for the past four plus years, no worries, right? The tune study that we are doing, the process that we have implemented will help you sift through and prioritize the last four years of podcast episodes so that you can begin to maximize your jazz piano skills immediately. Now, if you have been a faithful jazz piano skills warrior and been working hard over the past four years, you know you're set. Right? You were in a great spot, regardless, though, whether a jazz panel skills vet or a rookie, right? I always say it makes no difference, right? You are in the right place the right time to begin a jazz piano journey that will profoundly impact your understanding of music, and, of course, your jazz piano playing. So today we begin our harmonic analysis of I wish you love. Today you are going to discover that classic, 1942 standard, one of my favorites, I wish you love, you're going to learn form, chord changes and harmonic function for I wish you love, and you're going to play I wish you love, using my suggested voicings, left hand shells and two handed voicings, along with common harmonic progressions For ear training development, a lot to do, no doubt. So, as I always like to say, regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner, an intermediate player, an advanced player, or even if you're a seasoned and experienced professional, you're going to find this jazz panel, skills podcast, lesson exploring. I wish you'd love to be very beneficial. But before we dig in, before we get started, I want to, as I always do, welcome first time listeners to jazz piano skills. If you're new to jazz piano skills, you're new to the podcast, welcome. I want to invite you to become a jazz piano skills member. Your membership grants you access to the premium content, not only for this podcast episode, but for every weekly podcast episode, and premium content will help you thoroughly and correctly discover, learn and play the jazz standard that we are currently exploring and so much more. For example, as a jazz piano skills member you can access the past, the current and future educational weekly podcast packets now, these are the illustrations, the lead sheets and the play alongs or backing tracks that I develop, I design for every weekly podcast episode to help you get The most out of it, right? So you should absolutely have these podcast packets in your hands when listening to the episode, and of course, have them on your piano when practicing as well. Now you also have access to a self paced and sequential jazz piano curriculum which is loaded with comprehensive courses, all of them containing educational talks. There's interactive learning media to help you digest the jazz panel skill conceptually. There's video demonstrations and all 12 keys of each jazz piano skill being explored and so much more. Now you also have a reserve seat in my online weekly master classes, which are held every Thursday evening, and if you can't attend, it's no big deal. It's no problem, because the master classes are recorded, and as a member, you can watch and rewatch the class, the video of the class whenever and as often as you wish, right now, and you also have access. Let's just keeps, keeps going on and on. You also have access to an online interactive fake book containing must know, what I call must know jazz standards, all of them with excellent chord changes. Chord scale relationships are mapped out. There's harmonic function analysis that are done for each standard listening suggestions and historical insights, as well as a jazz panel skills member. You can also hang out with some old jazz friends, make some new jazz friends in the online private jazz panel skills community, which hosts a variety of engaging forums, and it's growing on a day to day basis. And finally, your jazz panel skills membership grants you unlimited private, personal and professional educational support whenever and as often as you need it. And all of these amazing privileges are waiting for you, waiting to help you discover, learn and play jazz piano. So check it all out@jazzpanelskills.com
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and of course, become a member to enjoy all the premium podcast content, as well as the other privileges that I just mentioned. Of course, if you have any questions once you get to the website and start looking at the all the offerings, and I. Benefits of becoming a member. I'm always happy to spend some time with you and answer any questions that you may have, so please do not hesitate to reach out to me. Okay, on to the question of the week. This week's question comes from Jamal Lloyd, living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Jamal writes, I have been practicing voicings, scales and arpeggios for the fully altered dominant sound, and have hit a brick wall when it comes to the scales and arpeggios when trying to become, as you say, root independent. By becoming comfortable with playing arpeggios and scales from various entry points, such as the root, the third, the fifth and the seventh, I have difficulty determining which altered fifth to use. Do you have a preference, and if so, which one? Wow. Okay. Great question. Jamal, the fully altered scale, right? The fully altered sound, does, indeed, I agree with you, it presents some unique hurdles to deal with, and you touched upon one of the biggest, biggest one of them, right? And that's dealing with that altered five, that altered fifth. So for those of you who may be listening and are not familiar with the fully altered dominant sound, I'll take just a minute right now to give you a quick overview. First, when you hear jazzers talking about the fully altered dominant sound. They are referring to the dominant scale that has the ninth and the fifth of the scale fully altered. In other words, the scale has a flat nine and a sharp nine. The scale has a flat five and a sharp five, right? The ninth and the fifth are, as we say, fully altered. Right. Now, you may hear various names for this scale I grew up. I grew up with it being referred to as the Super Locrian mode, which I just thought was a cool name. Never knew. Couldn't tell you what it means, but it's a really cool name, super Locrian mode. But I think a much easier way to think about it is to simply think the root the third and seventh of the dominant scale that you want to fully altered and then insert the altered nines between the root and the third, and insert the altered fifths between the third and the seventh. For example. If we want to learn the C, fully altered dominant scale, we're going to begin with the root, which is C, we're going to add the third, which is E, and then we're going to add the seventh, which is B flat. So we have our root, we have our third, we have our B flat. Now we're going to add the flat nine and the sharp nine between the root and the third, right, so the ninth is D, so we are going to insert a D flat and a D sharp, so now we have C, D flat, D sharp, E and our seventh. So we have our root third, seventh, and we have our altered, fully altered, nines. Okay, now we're going to insert the flat five and the sharp five between the third and the seventh, so between the E and the B flat. Now the fifth is G, right for C dominant, the fifth is G. So we're going to look put a flat five in G flat and a sharp 5g sharp. So now we have the complete scale. We have C, D flat, D, sharp, E, G flat, G sharp, B flat, the there's our C dominant fully altered scale. Now, the spelling of the scale may look a little funky because we're not using every other note of the musical alphabet when spelling spelling it, but we are not trying to win a spelling competition, right? We want to get to the fully altered sound as quickly as possible, and once we have the notes, we can begin practicing and learning the shape. And that is our goal. We want to know and learn the melodic shape. We want to get that melodic shape under our hands. And we want to get that sound, that fully altered sound in our ears. Okay, so that is a very, very quick lesson on how to build an altered dominant scale as easily as possible, without getting into all the theory and getting into mode conversations. Okay. Now, when it comes to becoming root independent with our altered scales and arpeggios, Jamal I, I would recommend practicing the altered dominant scales, using the alterations as my entry points. So practice the fully altered dominant scale from the flat nine, from the sharp nine, from the flat five and the sharp five. All right, likewise, practice the arpeggios of the fully altered scale from the flat nine, sharp nine, flat five and sharp five. So let me take just a really a quick minute and demonstrate. Okay, so let's begin with just the scale from the root. So I'm going to play the c7 in my left hand, third and seventh, and I'm going to play the fully altered scale. Okay, obviously, we want to practice it from the root and get familiar with the sound, but now I might focus on my entry point being the flat nine. Do the same thing, play the chord start on the flat nine. Gives me a totally different feel and sound. Or the sharp nine, which is the E flat again, play my dominant chord. Or from the flat five, or from the sharp five, right? So those are my four entry points for my scale. Those would be my four entry points for my arpeggios, right? So my arpeggio might be maybe, if I'm thinking triad, a C sharp minor triad, or an E flat minor triad, or a G flat major triad, or an A flat major triad, beautiful, right? So I'm practicing, I could practice triad arpeggios over my fully altered. If I want to make those four note arpeggios, I'm going to practice C sharp. It would be like a C sharp, minor with a major seven, love that or an E flat, minor, seven or a G flat or F sharp, 7g, flat, seven or An A flat, A flat dominant, A flat seven,
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right? So those give me some really solid shapes to work off of to become root independent, plus really great shapes for helping me develop improvisational ideas and jazz vocabulary over the altered sound, thinking in terms of what melodic, what scale, what does the scale look like starting on the flat nine? What does it look like on starting on the sharp nine? What does the scale look like on the flat five or the sharp five? My arpeggios? What do my triad arpeggios look like from the flat nine, sharp nine, flat five, sharp five, what? What do my four note arpeggios look like from the flat nine, sharp nine, flat five, sharp five. There's a lot of work right there, right Jamal, a lot of work, but, but that is how I would work around thinking just root third, five and seven when it comes to the fully altered sound, to get a to get a handle on it. It's a fantastic question, and I hope my quick answer provided you with some helpful insight that will help you become, of course, root independent with your fully Ultra dominant scales and arpeggios. As always, if you have additional questions or need further clarification, by all means, do not hesitate to reach out to me, happy to spend some time with you and, of course, answer any additional questions that you may have and help you in any way that I can. Wow. Okay, let's discover learn and play jazz piano. Let's discover learn and play. I wish you love Okay, quick review. I do it every month. Want to do it again. Here today, my outline for learning any tune and again, genre makes no difference to me. Could be jazz, rock, pop, country, R, B, folk makes no difference. Here's how I go about learning a tune. Number one, I listen all we. Is always, always listen various artists. I like to check out vocalist, instrumentalist, and, of course, pianist, performing the tune. After I've done my fair share of listening, I will then determine the form. Is it A, a B, A, a B, A B, A B, a C, right. Every tune has a form. I need to know the form. After I've listened, I've determined form, I will turn my attention to the harmonic structure of the of the piece, the what I like to call the harmonic DNA, right? The chord changes. I'll look for the common harmonic progressions, 251145, 251145, etc. Right now, after the harmonic foundation has been laid, I'll turn my attention to the melody. Learning the melody, of course, by ear, by ear, and that should not be if you've done your fair share of listening to a tune, when you start to learn it, you know what? Learning by ear will be much easier than you think. I'm always you know, typically, when a student has difficulty learning a tune by ear, they haven't done enough. Has nothing to do with their ear. It's the fact that they haven't done enough listening to the tune so they don't really know the melody. And then finally, I like to explore various treatments of the tune and focus on improvisation development, right? When I say treatments, everything from ballad style to swing style to Bossa style
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and and different temples as well, okay, but that's it, right? Nothing more, nothing less, right? So this week's harmonic analysis will have us listening, of course, determining the form, learning the chord changes, harmonic function, common harmonic movement and the voicings my my three note shell voicings that I use, plus my two hand voicings. And next week, we will focus on the melodic analysis. Two weeks we will turn our attention to improvisation. Right? As always, we're keeping things very structured, very formulaic, very organized, clean, tidy, with our whole discover, learn and play approach. And again, we do this what with a tune. We do this with skill study. Again, it makes no difference. It's our conceptual understanding of all that we do musically, right? Our conceptual understanding must be very structured, and honestly, it must be simple, so that it can be repeated over and over and over again. I have said it many times. In fact, I stayed every podcast episode that if your conceptual understanding right for any musical skill, if it's if it's somehow not structured, it's not simple, right, then it must be unorganized and confusing. And if it's an organizing and confusing, conceptually upstairs, I got bad news for you. You have absolutely no shot zero shot of executing it in your hands downstairs on the piano. Therefore conceptual understanding always drives physical development. Always right in tune. Study is no different. We want to keep it very structured, formulaic, very simple and, of course, replicatable. So the educational agenda for today is as follows. We begin part one to discover, learn and play. I wish you love number two, we are going to listen to a definitive recording of I wish you love number three. We will discuss the form of I wish you love number four, we will discover, learn and play the chord changes for I wish you love number five, we will discover, learn and play the harmonic function of I wish you love, number six, we will discover, learn and play my suggested voicings, my left hand shell voicings, as well as my two handed voicings for I wish you love. So no doubt we have a ton to get through in a very short and very fast hour. 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 print your podcast packets, your illustrations, your lead sheets and your play alongs again, your membership, as I mentioned earlier, grants you access to premium content for every weekly podcast episode. And the premium content, of course, includes all of the educational podcast packets. And I mention this every week as well. You need to have these podcast packets in your hands when listening to this episode to get the most out of it. And of course, when. Practicing as well. Okay, so now that you have your podcast packets in your hands, I want to, I want you to grab your lead sheets. We're going to start there. And you should have seven lead sheets in your packet, seven lead sheets right. Lead sheet one diagrams the form of I wish you love. Lead sheet two, if you're taking a look at it, identifies the unique chord changes found within I wish you love lead sheet three, a lead sheet with the correct chord changes for I wish you love lead sheet four is the harmonic function of those chord changes for I wish you loved and then number five, lead sheet five highlights six common progressions that we will be using for ear training purposes. And then lead sheet six and lead sheet seven are our voicings. Lead sheet six focuses on the left hand shell voicings, and lead sheet seven provides you with the two handed voicings that I use when playing I wish you'd love So wow, we do indeed have a ton to get done, so let's get busy. So what is first thing that we do when studying and learning a tune? Of course, right. We listen to it because, without question, without question, listening to various renditions of the tune is not only the first step, but it's is, in my opinion, the most important step. So create your Spotify playlist. Do whatever you need to do, but do a lot of listening. And I can't, you know, I I can't even imagine attempting to learn a tune before spending a lot of time becoming familiar with it, absorbing it, just through listening, listening to it. And of course, I like to listen to different artists performing a tune. And typically, as you all know, I turn to vocal renditions first, because vocalists typically remain pretty true to the original melody, especially vocalists like Sinatra or Nat King Cole right? And if I really want to get a straight version, a really, really straight version of a melody, I'll turn to folks like Andy Williams, Doris Day, Julie London, Peggy Lee, right, Perry Como, right. Nothing wrong with that. I want to get a really accurate understanding of the melody. Once I've listened to vocalists, then I'll turn my attention, of course, to instrumentalists. And of course, I love horn players. I love listen to folks like Chet Baker and Stan Getz and Clark, Terry Coleman, Hawkins, Lester Young and then last, but certainly not least, right? I check out many, as many pianists as possible. So the bottom line is, I listen, I listen, I listen. And that's what we're going to do right now, before we go any further. You know the challenge though, with selecting recording to listen to, there's so many good recordings of this tune, so many wonderful renditions to choose from.
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But one of my favorites is from one of my favorite vocalists of all time, and that's the late great Nancy Wilson, so we're gonna check this out. I want you to, of course, as always, grab your favorite beverage, get comfy, sit back and enjoy this really swing and rendition of I wish you loved performed by the one and only. Nancy Wilson, check this out.
28:50
I wish you blue birds in the spring to give your heart a song to sing and then a kiss. But more than this, I wish you love, and in July, I'll eliminate to cool you in some leafy Glade, I wish you health. And more than wealth, I wish you loved. My breaking heart, and I agree that you and I could never be so with my best, my very best, I set you free. I wish you shelter from the storm, a cozy fire to keep you warm, but most of all, when Snowflakes fall, I wish you my breaking heart and light. Green that you and I could never be. So with my best, my very best, I set you free. I wish you shelter from the storm. I close it fine to keep you warm, but most of all, when Snowflakes fall, I wish you love, but most of all, I wish you
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love. Wow. Does it come any better than that? Does it right? That's two minutes that that arrangement is right around two minutes. That's two minutes of perfection. The arrangement is perfect, the musicianship playing the perfect tune with the perfect vocalist, two minutes of perfection. Of course, I could listen to Nancy Wilson all day, every day, so maybe I'm a little biased, but now that we know how this tune goes, let's explore those lead sheets. So I want you to grab lead sheet one. Let's take a look at the form of I wish you love before we go any further now, I wish you love is a standard jazz form, and we've had this. 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 jazzpanelskills.com to learn more about membership privileges and become a jazz piano skills member. Thank you. You.
