Ju Ju: Journey Through The Real Book #198 (Jazz Piano Lesson)

A jazz piano lesson to help you learn Wayne Shorter's jazz standard “Ju Ju.”

You'll find my book, The Inner World of Piano Improvisation, on Amazon.

Going through the entire Real Book 0:00
Learning jazz standards in a deep way 0:16
Overview of Wayne Shorter’s career 0:51
The JuJu album 2:16
The use of whole tone scales in Wayne Shorter’s “Ju Ju”3:23
Debussy’s use of the whole tone scale 4:22
The harmonic vagueness of the whole tone scale4:38
Mozart’s use of the whole tone scale in “A Musical Joke” 4:45
Starting “Ju Ju” out of tempo 6:01
Play the 2nd chorus with a jazz waltz groove 6:50
The beginning of the solo section 7:27
Trills 7:57
Improvising with 3rds 8:54
Playing flurries of notes, a la Wayne Shorter 8:45
Developing a motif 9:10
A left hand melodic line 9:39
Left hand clusters 9:58
Emphasizing the swing groove 10:14
More legato 10:19
Continuing the pianistic texture into the next chorus :22
Improvising in the style of Ravel and Debussy 10:27
Gradually getting more rhythmic 10:50
Reprising the tune’s melody with the left hand 11:14
Extending the ending 11:47
Concluding the arrangement with the whole tone scale 11:58
The time I met Wayne Shorter 12:30

Thanks for joining me on this musical adventure, and please LIKE, COMMENT and SHARE this video with your musical friends.

Enjoy the journey, and "let the music flow!"
Ron

[lavenderfana]

you rock, as always. Very Inspiring to see such a great player talking history, theory, and technique.

[nicolasparadoja]

What a sweet anecdote at the end, really put the passion and expression of the performance in context.

[AFSoar]

So cool! I love the history and the theory that you shared with the song as well...

[julianfay]

Bravo, what a wonderful inspiring interpretation and performance, thanks Ron

[JohnsonSmithson]

Thanks for the video, I really enjoy watching them and learning the history of the tunes/artists

[arineimming]

Thanks for bringing Debussy and Shorter together into one piece of music! Wonderful. Ju Ju now will be my next tune.
And have a great time in Alaska.

[nilskreb]

I have always approached the first two chords as altered chords, which do not resolve or go anywhere, but especially your explanation with Mozart makes way more sense (seeing the chords as a weird effect or color not going anywhere); so thank you for that ;-)

[nomennescio]

I was with a woman I'd endearingly call Jo-Jo and among other rather unsupportably false accusations she dismissed me as being excessively cerebral and unfeeling when I'm most certainly not (we could play, not play music but just *play* (like kids do), well together) and I'm sending her a recording of me playing this tune in a most abstract and cerebral manner to prove her right out of spite. Thanks for giving me some ideas! You play well!

P.S. a JuJu is like a MoJo--it's a magical object