Every jazz musician has heard the advice: “You need to practice your arpeggios and scales.” Good advice—but incomplete. Arpeggios and scales are inseparable. Two sides of the same coin. Two elements of a single musical skill: melody. Arpeggios outline the chord tones. Scales fill the space between those chord tones with passing tones. Together, they produce the raw material of improvisation. If you want to improvise, you must practice these two elements as one musical m

Why Etudes? Improvisation is not random inspiration—it’s controlled musical decision-making rooted in: Harmonic awareness Melodic motion Rhythmic vocabulary Balance of scale + arpeggio movement Etudes allow us to isolate specific aspects of improvisation and develop them with intention. Rather than simply “soloing over the tune,” we construct lines that reinforce essential musical behaviors. For this episode, four short harmonic phrases from A Beautiful Friendship were se

Welcome to week two of our monthly jazz journey! I’m Dr. Bob Lawrence, and this week on Jazz Piano Skills, we continue our exploration of the timeless standard “A Beautiful Friendship” with a melodic analysis. If you’ve been following along, you know our process — every month, we study one tune from three critical perspectives: Harmonic Analysis Melodic Analysis Improvisational Application

A new month means one of my favorite things—we begin exploring a brand-new tune. And as I like to remind all of you: new tune, same comfortable, familiar, skill-centric approach. It’s the consistency of this approach—thorough, organized, structured, and most importantly, logical—that allows us to learn jazz piano the right way. Because learning tunes isn’t really about the tunes at all. It’s about the skills that tunes illuminate.