When learning a new jazz standard, should you begin by memorizing the chord changes or by understanding how the harmony works?
In this Jazz Piano Skills episode, Dr. Bob Lawrence begins a four-week study of George and Ira Gershwin's Our Love Is Here to Stay with a comprehensive exploration of its harmonic architecture.
The lesson examines the musical form, unique chord changes, harmonic function, common progressions, and practical jazz piano voicings that establish the foundation for melodic development, improvisation, and solo piano interpretation.
More importantly, Dr. Lawrence explains why harmonic understanding involves much more than identifying chord symbols on a lead sheet.
The objective is to recognize the musical relationships that connect chords, organize harmonic movement, and make unfamiliar jazz standards easier to understand.
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What You'll Discover
How Do We Actually Learn Jazz?
Dr. Lawrence begins a four-part educational discussion addressing one of the most important questions in jazz education:
How do musicians actually learn to play jazz?
Traditional advice frequently encourages students to listen to great jazz musicians, transcribe solos, memorize phrases, study recordings, and practice musical ideas in different keys.
These activities are valuable and remain essential components of jazz education.
However, Dr. Lawrence challenges the assumption that learning jazz is primarily a process of collecting musical vocabulary from other musicians.
Consider the distinctive musical voices of Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Bud Powell, and Herbie Hancock.
These musicians worked with the same fundamental musical materials, yet developed remarkably different artistic identities.
Their recordings demonstrate more than musical vocabulary.
They reveal what is possible when harmonic understanding, physical command, rhythmic imagination, and creativity come together.
The educational objective should not simply be to reproduce the musical decisions of others.
It should also be to develop the ability to make musical decisions independently.
Learning Chords Versus Understanding Harmony
One of the central themes of this episode is the distinction between chord identification and harmonic understanding.
A lead sheet may contain 32 measures of chord symbols.
Students can attempt to memorize every chord individually, but that approach often creates an unnecessarily large amount of musical information.
Harmonic analysis offers a more effective alternative.
Instead of asking only what each chord is, students begin asking:
Recognizing these relationships transforms a long sequence of chord symbols into a smaller collection of familiar musical patterns.
The objective is to simplify the music conceptually before developing it physically.
The Five-Step Harmonic Analysis Process
Jazz Piano Skills organizes harmonic study around five essential objectives.
1. Identify the Standard Key and Form
Establish the musical framework of the composition by identifying its key, number of measures, and formal organization.
2. Identify the Unique Chord Changes
Determine how many distinct chords appear throughout the composition rather than treating every repeated chord symbol as new information.
3. Analyze Harmonic Function
Understand how each chord operates within the harmonic environment.
Develop the ability to recognize function from chord symbols and translate harmonic function back into actual chord changes.
4. Recognize Common Harmonic Movement
Identify familiar progressions, including ii–V–I and other recurring harmonic patterns.
These relationships appear throughout the jazz repertoire and provide valuable opportunities for developing transferable skills.
5. Develop Practical Jazz Piano Voicings
Apply the harmonic understanding at the piano through traditional block voicings, inversions, shell voicings, and two-handed chord structures.
This sequence connects conceptual understanding with physical development and musical expression.
Understanding Harmonic Function
Harmonic function explains how chords relate to one another within a musical progression.
For example, a progression containing G minor 7, C7, and F major 7 can be understood as a ii–V–I relationship in F major.
Rather than processing three isolated chord symbols, students learn to recognize a familiar harmonic movement.
Dr. Lawrence emphasizes the importance of developing two complementary skills:
See chord changes and recognize harmonic function.
See harmonic function and recognize the corresponding chord changes.
Developing both abilities strengthens harmonic fluency and prepares students to apply familiar musical relationships in different keys.
Recognizing Common Harmonic Motion
Jazz standards frequently contain recurring harmonic relationships.
Identifying these relationships makes the music easier to understand, remember, and perform.
Dr. Lawrence explores the importance of recognizing circle motion, diatonic motion, chromatic motion, and common progressions such as ii–V–I and I–IV–VII–III–VI.
Rather than viewing harmony as a long collection of unrelated chords, students begin recognizing familiar patterns that appear throughout the jazz repertoire.
These discoveries help reduce the apparent complexity of a tune and strengthen the ability to approach unfamiliar compositions.
Developing Jazz Piano Voicings
After establishing the harmonic structure of Our Love Is Here to Stay, the lesson moves from conceptual understanding to physical application.
Several essential voicing approaches are explored.
Traditional Block Voicings and Inversions
Develop familiarity with fundamental chord structures and their inversions.
Traditional Shell Voicings
Explore simplified harmonic structures emphasizing essential chord tones.
Contemporary Shell Voicings
Expand harmonic possibilities through alternative chord structures and voicing relationships.
Two-Handed Voicings
Develop broader harmonic textures by distributing chord tones across both hands.
These approaches allow students to express harmonic understanding physically while developing practical skills that transfer to other jazz standards.
The Seven Musical Facts
Dr. Lawrence revisits the Seven Musical Facts that establish the educational foundation of Jazz Piano Skills.
For harmonic analysis, particular attention is given to chord structures and harmonic motion.
Understanding how chords move and relate to one another helps students recognize familiar musical principles within unfamiliar compositions.
The Gershwin Legacy
Our Love Is Here to Stay, also known as Love Is Here to Stay, was written by George and Ira Gershwin for the 1938 motion picture The Goldwyn Follies.
The composition holds a special place in the Gershwin catalog as the final song the brothers wrote together.
Following George Gershwin's death in 1937, Ira completed additional work associated with the composition.
The song later appeared in the 1951 motion picture An American in Paris, introducing the Gershwin music to another generation of listeners.
Its enduring popularity has made it an important part of the Great American Songbook and jazz standard repertoire.
Jazz Standards as Musical Laboratories
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