All the Things You Are

Welcome back to Tea with Liya! In this post, I'm playing a song called "All the Things You Are," composed by Jerome Kern. If you've listened to a lot of jazz standards, you've almost certainly heard of this one. The song has made it to a lot of lists of "Jazz Standards for Beginners" and "Songs Everyone Needs to Know." I hope you like it!


Listen to the song here
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All of Me

It's September already! Whether you're coming back from summer vacation or simply a well-deserved long weekend, I hope this jazz standard called All of Me will brighten your day a little bit - even if the rain clouds are rolling in. Composed by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons in 1931, All of Me became one of the most recorded songs of the '30s, and was often sitting at the top of the charts.

Jazz musicians consider this song an important one to know, as practicing it with 100% effort (or should I say "all of you?") can help you play better jazz solos. Listen to this piano cover of "All of Me" right here on Tea with Liya!

Just like you have to put 100% effort into practicing All of Me in order to solo on it better, you have to put 100% effort into the decisions you make here on the WWW.... or do you?


Listen to the song here
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Pennies from Heaven

Many times, you can find meaning in music by listening to it and seeing what emotions your brain generates. But sometimes, you can find meaning in music simply by looking at the lyrics.

For example, the lyrics to this song talk about a time when the best things in life were free. Blue sky, shiny moon, bright yellow flowers, just enough rain to keep plants growing.

Perhaps if you hate pulling dandelions out of your lawn, bright yellow flowers aren't too appealing. Image by pixel2013 from Pixabay

But eventually, people settled down in their satisfaction, and forgot to give thanks for and appreciate all the things around them. Why appreciate a sky that is always blue? They thought that they had everything they needed, that life was perfect, that they had nothing to worry about.

Some Other Spring

If my computer had accidentally mixed up the digits of the current date, I wouldn't have been able to post this song before summer started on June 21st. I usually try to post songs when their title matches up with the current season. (Of course, for those of you who are receiving this post from across the equator, it doesn't match up with the current season at all. You could call it Some Other Autumn, then.)

When I looked up this song, I found a page on "KeyboardImprov.com" that said:

Harmonically, “Some Other Spring” is really interesting. It’s as if composer Arthur Herzog Jr. said to himself in 1939, “So many songs use the same chord progressions, so let’s see how different I can make this one!” Things begin pretty conventionally, which makes it all the more surprising when the harmonic twists and turns start happening.

I think these twists and turns helped me learn a lot from this song. When I'm making improvised solos (i.e. coming up with melodies on the spot - making really good ones is harder than you think), learning to play on top of these harmonies can help me play more songs than just this one.


Listening back to this later, I think I still had a hard time soloing on these chords.


Here's an explanation you might connect with better. If you always drive on roads like this:

then it'll be much harder when you get to a road like this:

But, if you practice driving on that road, it will be easier to navigate this one.

Really, that's why we practice. We play songs faster than we'll actually have to perform them, so that we're comfortable with the song at its original speed. Sometimes we play songs really slow to get the rhythm under our fingers.

If there isn't some reason why we're forced to practice, we do it because we like music and want to get better at it.

And hopefully, you're listening to this song because you like music and want to be a better listener.

If you're working on improving a skill right now, what motivates you to keep practicing? 

Keep filling your teacup with music!

~Liya