You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 2 Minutes From the Past

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Peter Reacts to a Top 2 Minute Jazz from the Past! Peter's original lesson platform.  - You can find the original video right here!Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Yo, what's up, Peter? Hey, how you doing? Wow, still you. Yep, and it's still you. Still here trying to crawl my way out of this abyss of loneliness as I roll. You'll hear it solo style. I'm Peter Martin, and you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast, Jazz Explained. I am here. I think this is going to be our last episode with me rolling solo style. I'm actually starting to kind of like this. There's a certain freedom. There's a certain essence of solitude in doing this. And I do miss Adam, but it's been fun. He'll be back at some point. But what we're doing today is going to be something that I don't think we've ever really done, which is basically reacting to ourselves. In the last episode, I did react to Adam's latest YouTube video. But that's reacting to someone else.

What I'm going to do today is react to a YouTube video of my own. And I'm going to do this with no preparation. I started to watch the video in preparing for this, but I thought it would be more fun if I did it in real time. So if you're listening to this, that means that Caleb, producer Caleb and I both thought this was a smashing success. If you can't hear it and this ended up on the cutting room floor, how did you get in here and what are you doing on our floor? All right. So one of the most beloved, if you trust YouTube views, if you choose, if you choose, if you choose, trust that base level of

um adulation that that shows you um but one of our most viewed youtube videos um from our now defunct two minute jazz um series that we did for many years or for several years um was a video called the right way to practice panatonics and this is a video i did myself just a little background two minute jazz is something that i started actually almost 10 years ago pre-y youtube at least pre-you- us being on YouTube. And basically it was just kind of an idea of how do we give one idea, one little nugget of information that will be helpful for somebody to kind of get over one little problem or issue that they have with playing jazz. And I kind of picked two minutes because I was like, well, people have short attention spans I hear now.

And that seems to be the minimum amount of time where I can, you know, actively and accurately get across an idea and convey something. I mean, you can't learn, you know, all the secrets of jazz piano in two minutes, but you can learn one little secret, right, or one little idea, one little piece of inspiration. And I sort of took it as a challenge at the beginning to see if I could do that because I wasn't sure. But after trying it a little bit, I was like, actually, you can get some things across and

folks seem to be getting something out of it. So I kept it going for a while. And then as people got used to, you know, like YouTube and watching videos online for instruction and inspiration and ideas and education, we started extending them. mile to, I think, what's a more optimal length of 10, 15, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it takes. But it was fun doing the two minutes. But this particular video, for whatever reason, really resonated.

And I never really stopped to think about it too much. But I know it had a lot of reactions, had quite a few views, at least for a two-minute video of ours at the time. It actually came out in 2019. So it's not that old, but it's whatever, going back three years. But like I say, it's called the right way to practice pentatonics. and we'll have a link to it in the description here. But basically, I'm just going to go through and listen to it and kind of react.

And I've got it queued up here. So let's jump right in. What's going on, everybody? Peter Martin here for two-minute jazz. I want to talk to you about pentatonic. I've got a brand new exercise for you over C minor or E-flat major, however you want to think about it. Okay, so already right there, I'm surprised I threw that out there, C-minor, E-flat, and then said pentatronics. Hopefully I'm going to explain that.

but that leaves a few questions. I'm kind of, you know, jumping to the next part without a lot of explanations. So I'm a little concerned about that. But that was part of the, you know, parameters of the two-minute format. And how long is this thing? Two minutes and 52 seconds. I very rarely actually got it into two minutes, but I was always close. But hopefully that's going to become clear what types of pentatonic scales I'm talking about.

And we go through two different levels, three different rhythms for each one. Okay, so two different levels, now I'm remembering this, two levels and three different rhythms. That's a lot for two minutes and 52 seconds. Very interested in how I'm going to pull this one off. The first thing we're doing, we're starting down here, an octave below middle C. Too many of you are practicing only. I like that. I got a little bit, a little bit edgy there by accusing too many of you practicing in the wrong range.

You know, a little bit coming hardcore. That's okay. So obviously this is the C minor, pentatonic. I guess I kind of mentioned that. But I do like, we've got the overhead cam going, that was cool. Don't like the sound of the piano. That piano that we had in there, I was never, it was a good piano, but it was not my favorite one that we've certainly not what we have now. We had it miced okay, but anyway, we've made some improvements, but that's a little bit bothering me.

But I do like that we have the overhead so you can see what I'm playing so that, you know, in this short video, somebody can stop it, slow it down, pause it and see. it's always easier to show and to see what something is something that's happening that you're trying to learn, I think, than just to talk about it. I obviously talked about it too, probably over talked about it, but it's like, show me, don't tell me, or tell me, but then show me mostly. So I'm liking that so far. In this range of the instrument, and then you end up solely only in these two options. I'm not talking about like what the, you know, C3, C4 or whatever. I'm showing it on the keyboard. That's good.

We got great stuff down here. great little tenor region of the piano we want to explore. So if you want to play it, you got to practice in there. Okay? So we'll go. Ooh, coming hardcore again. If you want to play it, don't just be a play ya, be a practicer. Going up. And then we're on four coming down and don't like the way that C sound. Was that out of tune? Let me go back. And then we're on that unison is off. Four coming down and here's our shape skipping. Lots of use of the four. A lot of you are just playing with one, two, three and there's some false information going out here that you only have to use.

Wow, I'm a little dogmatic back at this period. I forgot about that. False information coming, a little conspiracy theory on the fingering. I like it. There's three fingers. We've got five fingers. If you're not going to practice.

Thank you, Captain Obvious, for telling us that we have five fingers. Master of Anatomy, Peter Martin, M.D. The fourth and the fifth, they're never going to get strong and independent and be able to at least come close to equaling one, two, three. It should be noted as sort of a side note, if nothing else.

Kind of a fashion faux pond this one. I've got my typical uniform of open studio blue shirt, but I have some blue pants on that are conflicting with some of the other colors in the room and kind of washed out look, not liking that. But anyway, so many situations. Okay, I do like what I'm doing here. Sometimes people are like, you're playing too fast. I can't keep up, whatever.

But what I try to do on these, and I've gotten better over time, but my pacing might have been a little off on this. but, you know, show, it's kind of like you're jumping to the end of the story to kind of show people what it can be instead of just being like, okay, stay here. Yes, I show how to practice it and I'm looking at, I've got this written out, but is there probably a PDF available for this or something, hopefully. But it's like you got to give people kind of what the promised land is, you know, where they're going and why. Otherwise, no one's going to practice this stuff or learn it. It's just me up there saying, you got to know this. Why?

So that you can play stuff like this. So you can apply it in this way. Well, we have to be able to place with strength and agility with our fourth and fifth fingers. So we've got to practice it. So I've worked that. So that's good because I'm telling you the reason why do you have to use all five fingers? Why do we have to use the fourth and fifth? Why can't we just use the strong?

One, two, three. And I think I'm giving a pretty good reason why. Into the finger here. We're just changing up the rhythm. Okay, now I'm kind of remembering why I think this resonated with people. folks love the pentatonic sound for improvisation for so many things i mean there's so many different types of music that effectively use pentatonics um you talk about stevie wonder um you know a lot of his great melodies are based on pentatonics um but in terms of improvisation people want to use them

and they learn the scales but they don't know how to practice them and so like what i'm already introducing is a very simple concept of skipping but skipping a note and then going back and you know, just introducing a different pattern, even before I get to the different rhythms. But it's an obvious thing, I think, but it's not that well known to people, which kind of surprised me. But that's why it's important to get this information out there

and to share it. Level 2A, same thing going up straight. Level 2. Now we've got a new shape. And these shapes sound pretty good too, you know. And this is really based upon something a lot of players use it. Again, I'm jumping to the end to show how do you actually use this? Why are we going to practice this? How would it actually sound

in an applied improvisational situation? Up half step. So it gets your hand ready for that. And now we're introducing a lot of fifth finger. Also, I did have the fingering's in there. That's good. But the idea is we want to keep that wrist smoothly gliding up and down. Again, kind of jumping to the end, showing with some pretty good technique, a little faster, even, hopefully even sound. When you're learning this, it's going to be hard to play it like that. First, I practice this a bunch, but it can show where you can get to, you know, which I think is important. And I kind of messed up there, which I think it's good to show too. Why not?

I did all these unedited, totally unedited. Unlike Adam Manus, who heavily edits this video. Panetonic. Happy practicing. Okay, so that's an interesting video. I mean, there's a lot that I left out, but like I said, it's two minutes. I think it's a good intro. I would give it like kind of a B minus maybe because

well, I mean, at the time I think it was good and it did definitely resonate with people. People seemed to like it. But I did, I think I did a deeper dive on this, a full lesson. But,

you know, the idea is like introducing these concepts, showing how to practice them, giving them some resources, giving them that end result that they want to go to. I think as far as that's concerned. You know, it did pretty well.

So anyway, we'll have a link to that if you want to, to check that out a little blast from the past and hope everybody's doing good out there next episode we look forward to welcoming back my partner in crime mr adam manis until then you'll hear it