You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 1 Hip Drop-2 Trick

Episode Date: March 2, 2020

Drop-2 might sound complicated, but on today's episode, Adam and Peter show you why it's an easy tool you can add to your piano toolkit.Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Oh, what? And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily music advice coming at you. Now, we have a listener named Byron Lovelace. We ended yesterday's episode talking all about Byron. And Byron, we appreciate the review. It was constructive criticism.

Oh, oops. I should be. No, it's all right, man. Byron Lovelace. Byron Lovelace. Your name, Byron, is so much fun to sing that we just had like a... It's an awesome name to like an eight-minute jam. It is.

I hope it's real. But it's funny because his comment was about not playing behind each other when we're talking. But it's hard not to... Barrett Lovelace. Bariot Loves. Anyway, we got to stop. We got to stop. I tried to throw in some drop two in our intro.

That's right. Because this is supposed to be about Drop 2. We're on the YouTube today, which is why I wore my blues hat. What's up? And that's why I have my... What is this? Oh, Open Studio hat. But look, I'm trying to get my hat game.

How's my hat game? It's a big hat. I'm going to be honest. Yeah. What about that? Go up higher with it? Because I know I didn't have 20 minutes to print my hair. hat and like you probably ironed your bill

before you come out, you know? Like he's checking this, yeah. I am actually. It's a big hat. Should we go Salls? Saul's or Salsa? Keep it. Keep it. It looks great. Let us know in the comments what you think of Pete's hat. He's like, no, leave it in there. I love it. Byron Lovelace is going to be like, please don't wear that hat while Adam's talking.

He's really distracting. Who? Byron Lovelace. Barron Lovelace. That's awesome. All right. Well, thank you, Byron. Please write us again. It doesn't work.

Martin. No, it's not nearly school. Byron Lovelace is one of the great names of our time. It was amazing. Today, though, we are talking about drop two. I don't know if you know this, Peter. You don't pay attention to anything I do,

but I've been like three quarters of the way through of a February challenge. Dude, I've been watching daily. On our Instagram. Yeah, you don't see that one view every day. One view, one view. That's me, buddy. I know. It's sad.

No, it's been hundreds, thousands. It's been awesome. And thanks to everybody who's commenting and playing along. We had some great uploads to our Facebook group appear at Open Studio for people play in their version of Drop 2. You had some hardcore, like, following along. You had a bunch I could tell at the beginning that dropped off. You know, those are always the wannies.

Well, it's a very nerdy thing in the drop. It's a nerdy thing. And it's a commitment, you know, even just to kind of keep up, even if, you know, just doing every other day or whatever with you. It's super, super hard. I mean, you did, what was the giant steps yesterday or the day before? Yeah, I did a locked-hand version of the giant step. That's not the easiest thing there.

And just reading it, a lot of people like, ugh, that's not for me. But it's fun, though. It's fun. When you're in this challenge mode, you know what I mean? you're like, what can I do today? Yeah, exactly. But one thing that I've kind of had to break down a couple times already this month that I thought we could just do a podcast episode on

is this one hip drop two lick that I'm not even sure where I learned this or if I just kind of figure this out on my own. But I use this all the time, and some people have been asking about it. It's a thing you can do over a dominant seven chord going to a one chord. And we've talked about it a little bit, but I just want to break it down a little more. So here I'm in B-flat and I'm an F-7 altar. Now, actually, this is so lush. I know, it's so lush, right?

It's actually best seen, like some things in drop two or best seen as locked hands, as octaves first, right? So if I build this up, and on YouTube, you can see the keyboard. Right, this is my A7 altered. I have A-flat, A, Fla, A, Fla, and then A-flat, right? Now, my outside notes are going to go down the diminished scale. You can go all the way down. The inside notes are going to stay the same every two.

chords, right? diatonically? Or the actual chord? So my inside notes, the A, D flat, and E flat. Stay the same. That A flat goes down to G flat. Don't go changing. And then I just take this entire lick down a minor third.

There's a lot of symmetry and connection between the tension and resolution of the melody and the harmony there. Right. So this is not exactly melodic minor. It's not exactly diminished scale. And it's sometimes inside the changes of an F7,

sometimes it's an F7 alt, sometimes it's totally not any of that, depending on which one of the quadrants you're on. But it sounds great. And I think it's because of that pattern, it takes you a little bit out, it takes you through this sort of altered sounding thing. And it's just an easy way to work in these licks

that we do all the time anyway. So that's the Locked version. And it's easy to hear at that point. So the drop two is a little bit different actually, because we don't have some of the notes that we have. This happens between lockdown and drop two. The drop two is F, A, D, flat, A flat, to E flat, A, D flat. A and D flat stay the same.

Those outside notes move down in tenths in the diminish scale. And then down later thirds, right? Hold on there. You went off the reservation for that little. I did. I just did. I like that. So, and then when you can kind of get this going on

the way up, then it really starts popping. And then you realize on the way up here, I have, this chord is actually an F sharp minor six. Makes sense, right, over F7. But those movements up really start, man, that sounds so good. Like when you can start doing that kind of stuff, around this scale. Yeah. Now you have one super hip drop two trick. This is, I'm thinking, And, you know, for sure, I've heard Oscar Peterson, gentleman out of Canada, Montreal, a master keyboardist. We'd go into this on like ballads real quickly,

I'm thinking, right? For sure, yeah, yeah. You hear this all the time in comping. You know, when people start locking in with the drop two thing, that kind of motion. But yeah, I just wanted to kind of reveal what this was because a lot of people have been asking about it.

And there's been some controversy in the... There's always controversy. People have opinions, man. Oh, really? On social media? They have lots of... Everybody's so supportive of each other. No, so if you are into Drop 2,

let me know how you use it, because I've been kind of, in my February challenge, I've been teaching sort of this French sound that I like to do, where the middle of the chords stays the same, just like we were talking about.

And then some people are really into that Barry Harris six-dimnish, right? Yep. And then some people are very anti in the Barry Harris' six-demeh. We're finding out, which is pretty cool. Like our friend, B.L.

I love the friction. You know why? Because it's music. That's right. No one's right. And isn't there room for both? Yes, there is. You know what I mean?

We've only got 12 notes to deal with. There's different ways to put them together. They both sound awesome. Right. You know my favorite part about this episode is though? What? Just you are just sitting over there pie-eyed because you just zone out on drop two. No, I'm trying to understand it.

It's just so confusing to me. Plus, I'm thinking about Byron Lovelace too. Our boy. Our boy, Byron. Come on now. He's just like, can we just go get the granddad and just sing more Byron, please? What's this drop-D? stuff. I don't care about this.

Oh, here we go. Come on. Adjusting the mic. Well, Byron Lovelace. Well, until tomorrow, Byron, you'll hear it. Byron Lovelace.