You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 3 Zones 2 Hands

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Peter and Adam go all in on a technique developed by Open Studio instructor Jeremy Siskind. Check out what the Siskind Shuttle, Three Zone Concept, and more are all about.Check out Jeremy's newest course at Open Studio!Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Hey Adam. What's up, Peter? What are we talking about today? Today, we are talking about the Siskind Shuttle. Oh, I love that tune. I got it right here. Check it out. Yeah, no.

No, this isn't what we're talking about today. This is Sissy Strut by the meters. Oh, I thought that's what you said. Okay, no, I got you. Not what we're talking about. What's it called? The Siskins Shuttle. Oh, yeah, I got that too.

Oh. What? Yeah. Peter, I think this is the, um, is it? Yeah, this is the Super Bowl shuffle by the 1985 Chicago. Is that what she said? No. This is not what we're talking about.

No, that's Jim McMahon. That's not Jerry. There is. Say it one more time. The Siskin Shuttle. Oh, got it. Okay. Again, no, Peter, that's not what we're talking about.

That's the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. Oh, my bad. I don't know what we're talking about. All right, I'll hit you to it. Okay. I'm Adamannis. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at Podcast. Music advice coming at you.

Coming at you. It's sponsored by Open Sucin. studio, go to openstudiojazz.com for a deeper dive on everything we're talking about today. Literally everything we're talking about is in a new course by Jeremy Siskin. You're going to want to check that out as an open studio member. How'd you like that? That was a long road we had to go down to deliver that. It was quite a long walk to get to the intro.

That was good, though. That was good. That was fun. Line. Line. No, that was good. I mean, normally, look, we're either all the way left or all the way right. We're either just like, hey, Adam, 95% of our intros are totally improvised. People think, oh, we don't plan any of that.

Like in temporary American politics, we either all the way on the right or all the way of right. Yeah, we are totally polarized or we over prep as that one of the ways. No, I'm excited about today's episode. We haven't done a good old-fashioned pedagogical nuts and bolts episode in a minute, man. The people have been asking for it. Yeah. And this one's going to be fun because full disclosure, I don't really understand this.

I mean, I understand the concept I think, but I don't understand this way of explaining. So I'm kind of interested in learning myself. Well, like many things that we teach around here at Open Studio, Peter, you do know this concept. You play this concept. And we've actually talked about it here on the podcast, but our brand new instructor here at Open Studio, Jeremy Siskin, extremely incredible jazz piano educator, has a new course with us.

And he talks about this similar concept in a very interesting way. He calls it a shuttle. We've called it here before the three zones. I've heard you call it modified stride. But his take on it, like all the things that Jeremy does, is very thoughtful, very organized. And I thought we could just talk about this really cool solo piano concept today. Let's do it. Maybe I'll do it over Have You Met Miss Jones.

That's the whole, my three. So that's the tune, Have You Met Miss Jones. This is good to come up. Were we shuttling? We were not shuttling. Oh, no. We were preparing to shuttle. We were preparing your ears.

We were moving the shuttle to the launch pad. I was just wanting to play a little bit. That was fun. That was great. Yeah, yeah. So, but we are going to talk about shuttling here. Do folks, can I put a side note in? Do we have time?

Yeah, you do. We are available occasionally for out of town two piano gigs. I'm just putting it out there. We've done it before and we just did it. We just did it. We had fun. Oh, I like it. He got serious.

He's like, we've done it before. And you might not know me as the world's most interesting man. That would be Christian McBride, but we've done it before and we might do it again. Hollette you boy. That was nice. Yeah, it was fun. And, yeah, so shuttling. So shuttling is this great word that I heard Jeremy say, as he was recording his course here for Open Studio.

And I asked him later, as we were kind of having some happy hour time, I was like, is that your word? I've never heard anybody call this shuttling. And he's like, yeah, I've never heard anybody say it either. I think it's kind of my term for it. In that application. In this application. So what are we talking about here? What we're really talking about is shuttling your hand from one section to the other.

And this is really sort of an elaboration, Peter, on what we call around here at Open Studio, the three zone concept, right? The three-hand concept, three-zone concept. And Jeremy has this great way to think about it. We actually used the three-zone concept on our comedy routine coming into this. We did. That's a different to three zones. So if you think about your hand, and he does this with like the mango short,

you remember that? He has three mangoes and he has, you know, we have two hands and we have three things to cover, right? We have the baseline, the melody, and the chords. Oh, but to have three hands. but to have three hands, right? So the way that you can get around this is shuttling and then also using your third hand. So he talks about this shuttling in such a cool way.

So imagine we now, we do three different ways, right? So we're going to do the melody in our right hand, and we're going to use the left hand for a baseline and the chords. And we're going to shuttle between. And you can do this in sort of a modified stride, which is something I've heard you talk about, where you're just kind of simply taking it

from a root note to a chord and this is just straight up stride here if you do it in this sort of like and we're going rootless and up in that tenor rootless in the tenor range and then you want to mix up the rhythm right so it's not sort of like

traditional stride or whatever you want to mix it up so it's like and in this instance we're basically doing it one each per bar which each bar is your have you met Miss Jones is a great way to practice because it works out like that

so you can do this with the melody in the right hand this sort of like shuttle, right? Now that's going to get a little tiresome just going back and forth, right? And so Jeremy has this great way of talking about it where you might go root, chord, chord, root, root, chord. This is like a great way to add a little rhythmic diversity.

You can mix it up, right? Then you can do root chord, root chord, and you just start mixing that in. And then if you're just doing this naturally, where you can kind of let go of the restrictions and do whatever, then you can do root chord, root chord, root, cord, root, cord, root, cord, root, Chord, chord, chord, cord, root.

You know, all of that is fair game. And you'll notice, even when it gets to where the chords are moving quicker, like, it's pretty simple to kind of conceptualize this when there's one chord per bar, like this starts out. But when you get to those last two bars before it goes back to the second A, and the chords are moving every two beats, don't be afraid to resolve or to move that chord. You don't have to go back and hit every single route.

I think that's where a lot of people get tripped up. right, you can just actually start with just the rootless chords. Like our ears are attuned to hear that root for us. And I think an important thing about this, I'm just thinking in terms of practicing this. And I always wish that I'd understood some of this stuff better when I was trying to figure this out, because I was like so much doing it like by instinct or stuff that I thought I would hear on records. You know, it's like your ears are never as good going into like a listening experience of

trying to transcribe something as they are coming out. So the concepts of it, it's like afterwards and you have some. time. You can be like, oh, that's what Oscar Peterson did on this or whatever. But it's like, you know, you can practice these things in a pretty, you know, simplify and isolate type of way like we like to say here. But like that end result is very much based around like what you just did when you were like making that decision of like, when does your ear want to hear that root? When does it need to be?

It's not that you're trying to avoid it. It's that we don't have to be cookie cutter with it. But we might be cookie cutter when we practice it so that you can start to shuttle around. Dude, even just this restrictive practice with just the left-hand shuttle technique where you're shoveling between the root. And by the way, you can add like notes to the root too. You can do fifths. Yeah. Tenths. You can do thirds if you want. You know, and they can be rather high. Sevenths. Sevenths are great. Like that kind of stuff is where we really start to get some freedom in there. And that's just the, and again, you know, this is the three zone concept where you have to hit

baselines, uh, chords and melody. And that's just shuttling in the left. hand, right? So we're grabbing root notes, we're grabbing rootless chords, and we're just leaving the right hand alone from melodic content. But you can also do the same thing with the right hand. So imagine you have like a, like grabbing, shuttling down from the melody down to grab chords down below. Or you can even do that at the, you know, at the bottom of your right hand. Yep. Like grabbing some of the notes. Like, you know, again, like blending those zones together by using that bottom part of your right hand. And this is especially effective when you're soloing.

You can keep a consistent baseline going. Yep. And also give yourself some space, right? Yeah, it's a great kind of way to force yourself into really articulating your solo lines and breathing. So just practicing, grabbing some of the chords, comping for yourself and going back up, shuttling back up there.

Yep. And then grabbing some of that right-hand melodic content. It's such good practice. And again, then when you get into, once you have the left hand shuttle going you've got the right hand shuttle going then when you go to play you're starting to blend all of it

there I like that eventually just becomes good solo piano eventually it's just you're covering all of these bases you're not thinking about I'm shuttling with the right hand I'm grabbing the cord with my left you're just sort of filling in you're hearing but you have to practice hearing this stuff which is where restricted practice like this comes in

and then the third way is of course grabbing one thing for folks because they might be interested in what you were doing there with when you were doing the kind of two feel with the left hand, soloing with your right hand, and then jumping down to the middle zone with your right hand. That's going to be hard for some folks. So like one way to, so instead of... So a way into that, I think, is to forget about the left hand.

Just one, two, three... Oh, sorry. Let me get on mic with my illustrious voice here. Here we go. Thank you, Caleb. Calip. Okay, so if you could just go, one, two, three, four... Totally.

Totally. Absolutely. So that's even like a further simplification. And what's great about that is you're kind of, you're forced to kind of hear that, you know what I mean? You could actually do this with either. Because you hear it before you see it. You could do this with either of the left hand or right hand shudeling.

You can do this with the baseline too, you know? Yeah. Singing the melody. And because, you know, this is a little bit of a hybrid concept, this shuttling because the right hand and left hand cover that that third zone it's not two zones up here and it's not a cookie cutter yeah symmetrical i mean it is symmetrical but being able to hear it feel it and play it in different ways as you practice is so important to putting the whole thing together yeah there's also a very and then we're going to get back to point three i'm sorry to me the side

track but um there's a technical aspect to this that will be developed um kind of in line as you're practicing, which is really, I mean, we always talk about different technical challenges of the piano, you know, like finger position, coming under with scales, you know, all the different things that we can set ourselves up for success, you know, how deeply we are in the, how deep am I in the key bed, how we do not know. Yeah, but this one is really about distance. So like if I'm going, and you know, you can, we talked about this before, but if I close my eyes, oh, that was horrible. see. Okay. Getting that spatial awareness. Yeah. Aaron Parks talked about this when he recorded his course here, playing blindfolded actually so that you have to feel. And one technical thing is just like,

I mean, of course it's going to be easier. You're going to be able to see, but sometimes you're doing whatever you want to speed it up. You want to have that awareness. And at this tempo, this sort of medium tempo or slower tempo, what Jeremy made a great point about this. What you don't want is this. You don't want to be trying to hit these things as you're moving. So look at what you did when even when you had your eyes close, you moved your hand in front of that, right? Before, like your fingers are on the chord. Right, you go by feel. You're not just like making a big arch and then like doing that.

It's not like, you know, cartoon stride piano super fast tempos where that happens. But if you're going, especially at first, if you're just new to this, like whenever you go to this baseline, exactly, like get there first, get to your note first, move your hand in position. and then striking up. Even when you're going down. Like when you're hitting the baseline, right? Like my hand is on these keys before I hit them. It's not like I'm just doing this. Because it's really two technical sensations that we're working on

and that we're also going to use for success. For either hand going down, there's the feel. Like what does it feel like? So the more you can kind of stay in there. And if anything, if you do have to lift up to go quick, you're still feeling once you get there, right? Like you're feeling that. But then there's also just, you know, the memorization.

on a very intuitive level of the distance that you're going, right? So those two elements go together. So in other words, if I go from here... But you have to experience that. You can't just contemplate that. You actually have to practice. But I mean, it's just like, you know,

if you're in the gym and you're like, okay, I'm going to do 50 pounds, some, you know, like you already, if you've done it enough, you're picking that up, you know what it feels like. So if it's a day when you're like, wow, that feels slightly heavier than normal. Like, that's from experience. That's from like handling it.

I'll let me move my hands out just a little bit. Yeah. I'm getting into bodybuilding. No, it's all good. It hasn't manifested itself yet, but it's coming. It's coming. I mean the conceptualization phase. The third way, and this isn't really the shuttle way, but this is like the third hand way,

is to, you know, we have the three zones, right? The root, the melody or melodic content could be improvisation to melodically. And then you have the chords. And then you can use the split the hands. Mom, I split the hands. I smoke the TV. Right, where you have the root down here in the bottom part. If you see here, I have the chords split between the left hand and the right hand.

The melody is being played with the top three fingers. And I'm even like, I'm kind of avoiding, like, you don't have to hit every two or every five, right? Five suck. You know what's so important about this too is for duo playing. Not only dual piano, but like accompanying a singer. Well. Coming a horn player because you get that right. A lot of people, they develop all these great voices with their left hand,

and then their right hand voicing suck, which really you can use the same one, so you just have to get used to it. Yeah. But you know what I mean? They come down and they're like, yeah, all like it was shells.

No, you have to practice. So this is a great way. And this isn't, again, this isn't really part of the shuttling, per se, but you need this for the shuttling, is to practice the baseline

and then chords in your right hand. I think that's a very important. Like, that's isolating everything except the melody or the solo on top. Absolutely. Yeah. So important. Yeah.

Well, if you want to go on an even more accurate, I mean, not that it could get any better than what we just laid out. But Jeremy Siskins course really is great. The members have been loving it. I know. Join us a member. Come on over to Open Studio.

Like the water's fine. Like we don't talk about it enough on here. Some might say we over talk about it. But I would just say that like we're really excited. We're about to hit 5,000 members over at Open Studio. I don't know if you know about that. From around the world. By the time you're hearing this, we might have 5,000 members.

Yeah, maybe you'll be the 5,000th. Yeah. But there's no obligation outside of being a good community member, which can be whatever you want. When I joined Open Studio, I remember it was our dream, our dream to one day have like 400 members. Right, right. And 5,000 is incredible. It's a dream deferred.

Yeah. Right. But come on over to Open StudioJazz.com. You can become a member. Check out all of our beautiful links. Maybe think about becoming an Open Studio Pro member. Oh, if you want to do that, do you know about this. Of course you do, because you're the head of it.

We are temporarily closed. Yeah. Enrollment is closed for Open Studio Pro currently. Right, but you should still go to Open Studio. As of October, 2023, we should say, because maybe someone's listening to this far in the future. That's right. But we're anticipating at least one time by the end of the year. Yeah.

What happened was it's so popular. Yeah. Because it's all of our live classes, six days a week, sometimes seven days a week. And we do want to kind of control when people can come in so that people are starting around the same time. We're looking for an optimal experience. And it's working so far because very few people leave. Like, that's how good it is. It's kind of an extremely low churn rate.

Yeah. And so, but what you can do is go to Open StudioJazz.com. slash pro or just search Open Studio Jazz Pro and sign up because we are going to be letting people in as they sign up for the waiting list. But that'll give you a chance to like maybe become a regular member and then when we open it up, you'll be towards the top of the list. It doesn't cost anything to sign up for the waiting list and then you get first access when we do open that gate. Right. Because we're going to let people in alphabetically, right?

No, we're going to let them in by how, like when they signed up. But also, you know, I'm teaching over there, you're teaching over there. Chris Parks is teaching over there. Jeremy Siskin is teaching over there. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Until next time, you'll hear it.