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Are you a beginner-to-intermediate level piano student wanting to play classic jazz standards with a professional sound? If so, then you’ll love today’s Quick Tip in which Jonny May explains How to Play “Summertime” in a Jazz Piano Style. Jonny’s easy jazz piano score for “Summertime” features the perfect blend of accessible piano techniques and rich jazz harmonies. You’ll learn:

• Intro to George Gershwin’s “Summertime”
• Easy “Summertime” Piano Score in 3 Steps
  • “Summertime” Melody on Piano
  • “Summertime” Basic Piano Chords
  • “Summertime” Jazz Stylization

Intro George Gershwin’s “Summertime”

“Summertime” is a popular jazz standard composed in 1934 by American composer George Gershwin for his famous folk opera Porgy and Bess. The lyrics of “Summertime” are adapted from the novel Porgy, by Dubose Heyward. “Summertime” was premiered and first recorded in 1935 by soprano vocalist Abbie Mitchell in the role of Clara, who sang the lullaby in an operatic style accompanied by Gershwin on piano with orchestra. Subsequent early recordings by Billie Holiday (1936) and Sidney Bechet (1939) were among the first to interpret “Summertime” as a jazz tune.¹

The original key for Gershwin’s “Summertime” orchestral score was B minor. However, most modern fake books publish “Summertime” in the key of A minor. Even so, historical recordings of “Summertime” by jazz legends represent an even greater diversity of minor keys. For today’s lesson, our piano score for “Summertime” is in the key of C minor, which contains 3 flats (B♭, E♭, A♭).

Due to publisher’s restrictions, the melody has been omitted from the examples contained in this blog. However, Jonny’s full “Summertime” piano score with the melody is available through our partners at MusicNotes.com.

Easy “Summertime” Piano Score in 3 Steps

In today’s beginner piano tutorial, Jonny teaches Gershwin’s “Summertime” in 3 steps:

1. Melody
2. Chords
3. Jazz Stylization

Piano students who learn to think of tunes like “Summertime” in these broad buckets tend to have greater success at learning to play piano by ear and are usually able to retain repertoire over longer periods of time. Therefore, let’s take a closer look at each step.

Step 1: “Summertime” Melody on Piano

Gershwin’s intention in creating “Summertime” was to compose an original song that resembled an African American spiritual. Such a melody would pair seamlessly with Dubose Heyward’s libretto for Porgy and Bess, which is set around 1930 in Catfish Row, a fictional Depression-era black community in Charleston, South Carolina. In fact, Gershwin, who was a New Yorker, traveled to with Heyward to Folly Beach in Charleston county, South Carolina to observe the musical heritage of Heyward’s hometown community before composing the music for Porgy and Bess.²

Gershwin’s immersion into Charlestonian musical heritage led him to compose the melody of “Summertime” almost exclusively from the minor blues scale. For example, the C minor blues contains the notes C–E♭–F–F♯–G–B♭.

C Minor Blues Scale

Gershwin’s “Summertime” draws so prominently on this scale that only one note of the melody contains an exception—the note D at the conclusion of the second phrase. In fact, familiarizing your ears with the sound of the minor blues scale will go a long way to helping you memorize the melody of  “Summertime.”

Step 2: “Summertime” Basic Piano Chords

Next, let’s examine the harmony of “Summertime.” In total, there are ten basic piano chords that you’ll want to know in order perform Jonny’s beginner “Summertime” piano score. The following illustration shows a keyboard diagram for each of these ten chords.

One important observation about the chords for “Summertime” is Gershwin’s prominent use of minor 6th chords. However, some piano students may not be familiar with this particular type of chord. Simply put, a minor 6th chord is like a minor triad with an added color note, which is a major 6th interval above the root. To learn more about this topic, check out our Quick Tip on 6th Chords – The Complete Guide (Int).

Song Form and Harmonic Structure

In many ways, the harmonic structure of “Summertime” resembles a traditional minor blues form. For example, it begins on the minor tonic chord (Ⅰm) and moves to the minor subdominant chord (Ⅳm) in measure 5. In addition, some reharmonizations of “Summertime” (including today’s lesson) also include bluesy movement from the ♭Ⅵ7 to the Ⅴ7—another staple sound that is associated with the minor blues.

Of course, the obvious difference between “Summertime” and a traditional blues is that the form of Gershwin’s tune is sixteen bars long, whereas a traditional minor blues is only twelve bars in length. Moreover, “Summertime” employs some beautiful modal interchange leading into the final phrase which adds a few extra chords that are typically not found in a minor blues.

For further analysis and discussion about the form and harmony of “Summertime,” check out our Quick Tip Play Summertime Lead Sheet on Piano (Int).

Step 3: “Summertime” Jazz Stylization

Once you’ve learned the melody and chords for “Summertime,” anyone who hears you practicing will be able to recognize the tune…and that’s wonderful. But we’re not done yet. We still have to stylize the tune. Specifically, we want to play the song in an interesting and compelling way. Therefore, the final step is to apply Jonny’s 3 Plug-And-Play Techniques from today’s lesson.

In other words, we are going to interpret the lead sheet for “Summertime” according to a style formula or template. This process will enable us to take the melody and chords for “Summertime” and transform them into a beginner piano arrangement.

If you’re brand new to reading from a lead sheet, then you’ll likely need to see the final “Summertime” arrangement as a print or digital score. Fortunately, today’s lesson sheet PDF includes both the lead sheet format and the full piano score. However, with practice, students can actually learn to improvise or “fake” an arrangement on the spot. Nevertheless, this type of skill only comes after lots of experience, so don’t be discouraged if you’re not there yet. Instead, look on the bright side—you’re gaining valuable arranging instincts just by working through this lesson!

Now, let’s take a closer look at Jonny’s 3 Plug-And-Play Techniques.

Easy Piano Left Hand

Since the scope of this lesson is limited to solo piano playing, we’ll want to play the roots of each chord in the left hand. However, if we we’re playing in an ensemble, we’d would use a different approach (see our course on Summertime Band Accompaniment 1 to learn more).

In addition to playing the roots, we’ll want to incorporate some rhythmic activity that helps propel the tune forward. Tempo is a big consideration here, since a tune’s tempo usually determines which types of left-hand technique are appropriate. Since our target tempo is a bluesy jazz ballad of about 70 BPM, we’ll use a dotted quarter note followed by an 8th note as our default left-hand rhythm. This will keep our arrangement moving forward without adding too much complexity.

When a chord lasts for two beats, we can simply play the root of the chord with our default rhythm. However, in some parts of the tune, a single chord lasts for more than two beats. In most of these cases, it will sound more interesting to move our left hand to the 3rd of the chord on the back half of the measure (as in bar 5). The following example provides a demonstration of what this approach looks like for the first 8 bars of “Summertime.”

Next, let’s turn our attention to the right hand.

Easy Piano Right Hand

In the right hand, first and foremost, we’ll want to include the melody if we’re performing a solo piano version of “Summertime.” In addition, we typically will want to include some additional chord tones in the right hand to fill in some of the harmony.

Melody + Bass

It’s important that we practice playing the melody with just the upper portion of the right hand, especially the pinkie and ring fingers whenever possible. However, sometimes we’ll need to use the middle finger also. Here is an example of the first two measures of “Summertime” with both the left hand default rhythm and a melodic excerpt.

You can already hear how the arrangement is starting to take shape with just the melody and this simple bass line. However, it admittedly sounds a bit sparse at this point. Therefore, we’ll want to fill out the arrangement a little more by adding some additional chord tones.

Melody + Bass + Chords Shells

Sometimes, when beginners play from a lead sheet, they assume that they need to play every note in every chord. Ironically, that instinct often causes a student to sound less professional rather than more professional. Instead, just a few well-placed chord tones is all that is generally needed to fill in the missing harmony. In fact, professional jazz pianists use a technique called chord shells to delicately embellish their performances with beautiful chord colors. Chord shells are a minimalistic chord voicings that contain just 2 or 3 notes.

In the following example, we’ve added chord shells on the “and of beat 1” and the “and of beat 3” in each measure to fill out the arrangement. The specific type of chord shells used here are called guide tones, which are either the 3rd + 7th or the 3rd + 6th.

Believe it or not, Jonny’s entire “Summertime” easy piano score in today’s lesson sheet has been created using this simple plug-and-play approach! That’s the power of style formulas.

For a deep dive on additional methods for how to play piano from a lead sheet, check out our Lead Sheets Learning Tracks:

🔎 Lead Sheet Learning Track 1 (Beg/Int)
🔎 Lead Sheet Learning Track 2 (Adv)

Conclusion

Congratulations, you’ve completed today’s lesson on How to Play “Summertime” in a Jazz Piano Style. With the concepts and skills that you’ve learned in today’s lesson—and a bit of practice—you’ll be able to share this tune with family and friends before you know it!

If you enjoyed today’s lesson, then be sure to check out the following PWJ resources:

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¹ Gioia Ted. The Jazz Standards : A Guide to the Repertoire. Second ed. Oxford University Press 2012, p 411–413.

² Raskauskas, Stephen. “The Surprising True Origins of Gershwin’s Classic ‘Summertime.’” WFMT.Com, 10 Sept. 2018.

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