Just Friends, Melodic 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  "Just Friends." In this Jazz Piano Lesson, you will:

Discover
The classic jazz standard, “Just Friends”

Learn
Melody, Guide Tones, Fingerings, Phrases, and Target Notes for “Just Friends”

Play
“Just Friends” using three different treatments, tempos, and grooves.

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 Just Friends.

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!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 3:05 Discover, Learn, Play
• 6:56 Question of the Week
• 16:56 Lesson Rationale
• 21:23 Today's Educational Agenda
• 25:32 Sonny Stitt, Just Friends
• 32:25 Premium Content Message

Transcript

0:20  
Welcome to jazz piano skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence, it's time to discover, learn and play jazz piano. Well. Last week, we tackled the jazz standard just friends, and we explored it harmonically. We tackled many of the essential jazz piano skills. We looked at the form of just friends, the standard chord changes of just friends. We looked at the harmonic function of just friends, the common harmonic movement found within just friends. And of course, last but not least, we looked at my suggested voicings for just friends, left hand shell voicings and two handed voicings. Right, without question, a ton of information. But hopefully, hopefully this process, this harmonic study that we do every month, hopefully it's getting easier. No doubt about it that since the start of the year we have we have truly solidified a three tier approach, as I like to say, to tune study. Step one is always a harmonic analysis, like we did last week, right forms, changes, function, harmonic movement, voicings. This week we take step two, which is a thorough Melodic Study, and next week we dive in the improvisation. So we're always looking at Harmony, Melody, improv. It's a logical and sequential order that allows us to discover, learn and play a tune successfully. You know, I mention it every week that if you have been a faithful jazz panel skills listener over the past five years, then you've become, you've become intimate, intimately familiar, right with with the essential jazz panel skills needed for tune study. And I also mentioned that if you haven't been grinding along with us, if you're just hopping on board right now, well, that's fine, right? No worries. It's always a great time to jump on board begin developing enhancing your jazz piano skills, because you know, the tune study that we do every month will actually help you sift through and prioritize the last five years of podcast episodes so that you can begin maximizing your jazz piano skills Right now, immediately. So as I always say, you know, it makes no difference if you're jazz piano skills veteran, or if you're a jazz panel skills rookie, fantastic. You're in the right place at the right time to begin a jazz journey that will have a profound impact on your understanding of music, music, and of course, it will have a profound impact on your jazz piano playing as well. So today, today we are going to discover a melodic analysis for the jazz standard just friends, and we're going to learn the melody. We're going to look at guide tones and fingerings phrases, target notes found within just friends, and we're going to play three different melodic treatments of just friends, a ballad, a bossa and a swing. So regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner, an intermediate player, an advanced player, even if you're a seasoned, crusty old, experienced professional, you're gonna find this jazz piano skills podcast lesson exploring just friends to be extremely beneficial. But before we get started, I want to, as I always do, I want to welcome first time listeners to jazz piano skills. And if you're new to the jazz piano skills podcast, if you're new to jazz piano skills. 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. Now, the premium content helps you thoroughly and correctly discover, learn and play the jazz standard that we are currently exploring, just friends and a whole ton more. It's like, for example, you have access to the past, current and future educational weekly podcast packets. These are the illustrations, the lead sheets, the play alongs, the backing tracks that I that I design and I develop for each weekly podcast episode, so that you get the most out of each weekly podcast episode. As a member, you also have access to a self paced and sequential jazz panel curriculum, which is loaded with comprehensive courses, all the courses containing educational talks. There's interactive learning media to help you conceptually digest the the jazz panel skills concept. There are video demonstrations in all 12 keys of the skill and so much more. As a member, you also have a reserved seat in my online weekly masterclass, which is held every Thursday evening, but if you can't attend, it's no problem. The master classes are recorded, so you can watch and re watch the class whenever and as often as you wish. You also, as a member, have access to an online, interactive fake book which contains must know jazz standards, all of them with excellent chord changes. The chord scale relationships are mapped out, harmonic function analysis is done. There's listening suggestions and historical insights. And finally, as a jazz panel skills member, you can enjoy the jazz panel the private jazz panel skills community, which is online, host a variety of forums, and it's a great opportunity for you to meet some new jazz friends, hang out with some old jazz friends. It's a fabulous, fabulous forum, and I encourage you to take advantage of that. And as a jazz I almost forgot, as a jazz panel skills member, you also have access to unlimited private, personal and professional educational support whenever and as often as you need it. So all of these amazing privileges are waiting to help you discover, learn and play jazz piano. So check it all out@jazzpanelskills.com and, of course, become a premium podcast content jazz piano skills member, right? All of the other privileges that I mentioned are bundled in there as well. So I encourage you to go to the website, poke around a little bit if you have any questions. Once you get there, of course, I'm 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, so we are on to the question of the week, and this week's question comes from Vicki Alvarado, living in Blacksburg, Virginia. And Vicki writes, I have recently started the process of trying to understand and play altered chords. And honestly, I am confused. I'm not surprised. It can get very confusing, Vicky. It appears to me that there are a lot of alterations and combinations of alterations making it challenging. Is there a specific way you would suggest practicing alterations to help me begin having some success with this skill, which at the current moment feels very daunting, of course, Thanks for considering my question. I listened to you weekly, and have learned a ton Well, Vicki, I totally, totally and completely feel your pain. Alterations can be confusing. In fact, I have, you know, I've told this story many times that I can remember, when I was young and I was learning how to play jazz piano. I had no idea, right? I'd see, I used to call them fancy schmancy chords. I didn't, you know, I'd see something like a c7 sharp nine or sharp 11 or flat nine, flat 13, I had no idea. I had no idea what they were. I had no idea how to play them. So I did what I think every sensible, logical jazz pianist would do. I ignored them, and I just played, I just played the chord, right? So, I mean, I went out and did gigs like this, right? So I remember, you know, showing up on a gig, and the the the band leader would hand me the book, you know, and sure enough, the very first chord I'd see, it would have something like a c7, sharp 11. And I can remember thinking in my mind, literally, I would think in my mind, well, not tonight. Tonight, you're getting c7 you're not getting any sharp 11. So I understand it's it is daunting, as you put it, it is daunting and it's very confusing. Because where do you begin? How do you start to wrap your mind around the concept of alterations? Again, I used to think they were something that musicians just kind of made up, and they were kind of unlimited possibilities or combinations, as you mentioned, right? And, of course, that's kind of self defeating, right? If that's if that's the case, if it's unlimited, if it's endless combinations. I mean, holy cow, how, how

9:46  
would you go about studying alterations? How would you go about learning it? If that, if, if that was indeed the case, right? If unlimited possibilities, unlimited alterations, right? So fortunately, I. Can say Vicky that that's not the case, right? And it's a lot less confusing than what it initially appears. So let me I'll give you some advice that I think hopefully will help you and get you on track to wrapping your mind, wrapping your ears and wrapping your hands around altered sounds. The very first thing I want you to do is take any fake book that you have, any book with chord changes, you know, lead sheets with chord changes, so they can be the real books. They can be the omnibooks. They can be any book that you have with chord changes. And what I want you to do is I want you to take a pencil, and I want you to circle every fancy schmancy chord you see, every chord that says you know, sharp 11 or flat nine or sharp nine or flat 13, flat five, sharp five, whatever, right, anything with fancy, fancy alterations attached to it. I want you to circle it, and I want you to do this for for a dozen tunes. You don't have to do it for the whole book, of course, although that would be fun, but just do it maybe for a dozen tunes, and then after you have all the fancy schmancy chords circle, I want you to go back to the very first tune, and I want you to go through and I want you to tally up. I want you to write down on a piece of paper the five primary sounds, Major, dominant, minor, half diminished and diminished. So then I want you to go back that first tune, and I want you to start tallying it up, the quality of each chord that the alterations are attached to. So if you see a c7 sharp 11, you'd put a tally in the dominant column, right? If you see a, you know, a major sharp 11, you'd put a tally in the in the major column, right? So I want you to go back through all the 12 tunes. I want you to tally up all the alterations and and see what column at the end, when it's all said and done, what column has the most tallies in it? Now I will just, I'll spoil it for you, right? I want you to do it, but I'm going to spoil it for you. It's kind of like giving you, telling you the end of the movie before you see the movie, I want to tell you right now, the column that's going to dominate all the other columns with the most tallies, by far, I mean, by far, is going to be the dominant column, the dominant chord, the dominant sound, right? So as I tell students that I work with that the dominant chord is the chord, or the sound that offers the most flexibility with regards to alterations. With a dominant sound, you can flat the nine, you can sharp. The nine you can sharp. The 11, you can flat the 13. You can have combinations of sharp fives and flat and flatten sharp fives and flattened sharp nines, right? There's so much we can do with the dominant chord that you cannot do with the major, the minor, the half, diminished and diminished. And so I tell my students all the time, well, maybe that's why they call it the dominant chord. Okay? So I don't want to spoil the end of the movie for you, but I want you to do that exercise, and what you're going to find out is the dominant chord is king. And so we need to, when first starting to study alterations, that's where you need to zone in, right there on the dominant chord. And I would tell you right now that what you want to do is look at, if you, if you looked at the dominant or the altered sounds that that come from the major scale, harmonic minor scale and melodic minor scale, for the dominant you'd find, here's what you would find. There are no alterations that come from the major scale, 00, so if alterations don't come from major scale, they must come from minor scale. Which they do, they come from the harmonic and the melodic minor scales. And if you went through and you looked at the sounds that are produced by the harmonic and melodic minor scales, you'd find that in the harmonic, in the harmonic minor, you'd find that we have a flat nine, flat 13 sound. And then you would find in the melodic minor, we have sharp 11 sound. We have a flat 13 sound, and we have a, what we call a fully altered sound. We have the sharp, not the altered fives and the altered nines. It can be flat or sharp the fifth and the ninth. So we have a pure dominant sound from the major scale. We have a dominant flat nine, flat 13 coming from the harmonic minor scale. And then we have a sharp 11 sound. Sound, flat 13, sound and a fully altered sound coming from the melodic minor scale, right? So all in all, we have five, I want you to think of it this way, Vicki, we have five dominant sounds that we need to deal with. We need to deal with the pure, dominant, dominant flat nine, flat 13, dominant sharp 11 and then dominant, flat 13 and dominant fully altered. Okay, that's where I would start, and that's where I would end right now with your study of alterations. I would attack the dominant chord. I would attack the five dominant sounds, from the pure to all the alterations, and then I would not even concern myself with anything other than that right now. Okay, let's start there. Let's do that for a few months, and then let's check back in and see how it's going. But I'm serious. I'd like you to take that real book, or fake book, whatever book you have go through there, and start paying attention to where all those what sounds, all those alterations are attached to it will be eye opening and validate the reason why I'm suggesting to you start with the dominant chord. And let's get that. Let's get that under our hands, sorted out in our mind and those sounds into our ears. Let's do that first, and if you do right, the mystery surrounding alterations will start to disappear and it will not feel so daunting. Okay, so great question. Vicki, I hope my answer helps. If you want additional insight, please do not hesitate to contact me again. Happy to answer any of your questions. Spend a little time with you and help provide even more clarification if needed. Okay, so let's discover, learn and play jazz piano. Let's discover, learn and play. Just friends. A melodic analysis. Last week, I presented my outline for studying and learning any tune. I also presented it the week before that, the week before that, the month before that, and the month before that. My point is I presented every week. Why? Because it's important. Having a process of learning a tune is so important, and then utilizing that same process every time that you begin studying and learning a new tune. Now for me, my process makes no difference whether it's a jazz tune or a rock tune, pop, country, folk, R and B makes no difference. I do five things. Number one, always listen. I listen to various artists, vocalists, instrumentalists, and of course, yes, pianist. I listen. After I listen, I determine form. I lock in on the form. What I mean by that after I listen? What I mean is, when I start listening to tunes, first, I just start listening them very passively, right where I'm just have them playing all the time. I'm just learning. I'm just listening and absorbing the tune. After I've listened to several renditions of the tune, and feel like, wow, I really, I really have a good handle on how this tune goes. Then I turn my attention to determining form. What is the form? A, a B, A, a B, A B. Again, every tune has a form. I need to know what it is. After I have form, because I'm a pianist, I turned to the harmonic structure of the tune. I learned the chords. I learned the voicings. I listen for and identify all the common harmonic movement within the tune, classic progressions like 251, or 45116251, and so on. After I have the harmonic Foundation put together, then I turn my attention to melody, like we're going to do today, and I work on learning the melody of the tune, no improvisation. That's the very last step, where I explore various treatments, and then eventually I look at the improvisation. So I listen, I determine form, I learn my chords, my voicings, I learn melody. I explore various treatments and improvisation. And that's it. I do it. That's my process every single time. And last week, we focused, of course, on gaining a harmonic familiarity in command of just friends. So what, what did we do? We listened, we determined formed. We explored the chord changes.

19:47  
We looked at harmonic function, and, of course, we looked at voicings. This week, we turn our attention to the melodic analysis of just friends. Our goal always, right? We're. My goal, your goal, our goal, keep things clean, keep things tidy with our study always and it makes no difference again, right? Skill, study, tune. Study makes no difference, clean and tidy, our conceptual understanding of all that we do musically must be structured, must be simple, right? So, so they can be replicated. And y'all can attest to the fact that I've said it many times. I continue to say it many times, that if your conceptual understanding of music, or any musical skill is not structured, it's not simple, then it's the opposite. What's the opposite? The opposite is it's unorganized and it's confusing, and if it's an organizing and confusing conceptually upstairs in your mind, I guarantee it, you have no shot, zero chance of executing it in your hands, downstairs, on the piano or on your instrument, it's impossible. So therefore it is essential. It's absolutely essential that we keep our tune studies structured, so that it becomes simplified for us conceptually, so that we can replicate it, repeat it over and over again, so that we can have success as A musician, learning tunes and success developing our skills. So the educational agenda for today is as follows. We're going to begin part two, a melodic analysis to discover, learn and play just friends. We're going to listen to a definitive recording of just friends. We're going to learn the melody of just friends. We're going to discuss melodic fingerings for just friends. We're going to look at the melodic phrases of just friends, the target notes found within just friends. We're going to combine our melody with the voicings that I introduced last week. We're going to put put it all together, Melody and chord changes and voicings for just friends, and then we're going to take a listen to three different treatments of just friends. I'm going to play just friends is an up tempo swing groove, pasta groove and ballad, and this tune works for all three. So we have a ton to get through today, as we do every week. 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 your podcast packets. These are the illustrations, the lead sheets and the play alongs. And again, your membership grants you access to the premium content for every weekly podcast episode, which of course, includes all the educational podcast packets. And I mention it every week that you should have these packets in your hands when listening to the episode to get the most out of it. And of course, you should have them sitting on your piano or your music stand when practicing as well. Now, if you are listening to this podcast on any of the popular podcast directories, and there are many, many, many Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Amazon, Pandora, the list goes on. Then I would make things simple. I would go directly to jazz panel skills podcast.com and you'll find the active download links for each of the podcast packets in the show notes. Or you can log into your jazz panel skills account and from your dashboard, just navigate to this episode, where you're going to find one convenient link to download all three podcast packets in one convenient bundle. Okay, so now that you have your podcast packets, I want to focus today on the lead sheets, and you should have six lead sheets in your podcast packet. Lead sheet one is a fantastic template for helping you learn the melody of just friends using your ears. We're not going to read the melody from a fake book, right? We've done our listening. We've listened to several versions of this tune, so we want to pick out that melody by ear, and lead sheet one is a great template to help you do that. Lead sheet two provides you the melody for just friends with the lyrics. Very important. Lead sheet three, we have the fingerings. We have just friends, the melody mapped out, plus the fingerings with for every melody note found within just friends. Lead sheet four, if you take a look at that, highlights the phrases that I will be suggesting that you practice for learning just friends, and then lead sheet five illuminates the target notes of those essential phrases to help you digest the melody and also prepare you for improvisation development, which we'll take a look at next week. And then. Finally, lead sheet six combines the melody and voicings for just friends. So we're going to be taking the voicings from last week, the harmonic study that we did, we bring it forward, forward to today, and we put the melody that we've just learned, that we're going to learn by ear. We're going to lay that melody on top of those, those voicings. So no question about it, some invaluable tools to help us discover, learn and play, just friends. So we have to get busy. Let's get after this. So you know, the very first thing we do always, right? We listen. We did it last week. We're going to do it again today, because we should actually be doing it every day, and I stress it all the time that, you know, I can't even begin. It's beyond my comprehension. I can't even begin thinking about learning tune without spending a lot of time listening to it. In fact, I I've said this many times as well. I think that's the most important step, all right, listening. So I mentioned I typically like to listen to vocal renditions first because of the lyrics. I want to know the storyline. I want to know the lyrics. The lyrics help me digest the phrasing of the tune. And then I turn my attention after vocalist. I like to turn my attention to instrumentalists, followed by, of course, pianist. But the bottom line is, I listen, and that is what we're going to do right now. Before going any further, you know, last week we checked out Tony Bennett with his pianist, Ralph Sharon, giving us a fabulous rendition of just friends. And this week we're going to turn to an instrumental treatment, and I have selected there are many great there are many great versions of this out on the internet that you can check out. But what I've selected for today is a version by one of my all time favorite jazz musicians, Mr. Sonny Stitt, who I actually think, dare I say I actually think was better than Charlie Parker. Now I know it. I just spoke jazz. Blasphemy, blasphemy, right? I should, I should have never said it. I'm gonna get a lot of emails now, but for some reason, I gotta be honest. For some reason, I've always felt his plane was, first of all, it's every bit as technically fascinating as Charlie Parker's, but to me, his plane was more sensitive and more soulful. It's just my humble opinion. So don't shoot me. I'm just giving you my opinion. So anyway, this is from the album saxophones supremacy. It's recorded in 1961 1961 and it's got Lou Liddy on piano, along with Mel Lewis on drums. So as always, I want you to grab your favorite beverage. I want you to sit back enjoy this iconic Group performing just friends. Mr. Sunny Stitt, Wow. Enjoy My

31:40  
A classic indeed now, if you haven't, haven't spent a lot of time listening to Sonny Stitt, then I would encourage you to begin listening to Sonny Stitt. He swings as you've just heard. He swings very hard, and is one of the most melodic players of all time. Right. Now, I would also encourage you to listen that recording over and over again, because, as I've mentioned before, every time you do, you're going to hear something new. You're going to hear something new in his melodic lines and his plane. So spend some time with Mr. Stitt, and it will have a profound impact on the development of your treatment of this tune. It will have a profound impact on the development of your plane period. Okay, all right, so now it's time to dig in. So let's explore those lead sheets. I want you to grab lead sheet one. Let's discover how to properly begin learning.

32:41  
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.