You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 4 Ways to Change Keys Without Sounding (Too) Lame - #46

Episode Date: March 17, 2018

Adam and Peter discuss their favorite ways to change the key during a tune. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Menace and I'm Peter Martin and you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Today we're going to talk about four ways to change keys during a tune without sounding too lame. Without how about is there a way we can do this without sounding lame at all or are we just going for not too lame? No, you're always going to sound a little lame. Okay. We're going to talk about the four ways to sound the least amount of lame when you're changing keys. So we're just trying to minimize risk at this point. We're not eliminating risk. No, I'm kidding. Like I actually am a firm believer that changing. keys can be a very powerful musical device.

And here's some ways to do it that I think are not lame at all. Lameless. Lameless. So the first one, this is an old trick that jazz musicians have been doing for a long time, and that's the up a minor third trick, right? Do we call that one the old up a minor third trick? That's what we're going to call it the old upper minor third trick. It sounds like a card trick that a guy on a boardwalk would try to like pull on something.

Here's the old upper minor third trick. Or like a directions to a movement. Sunshine establishment in North Carolina. You just go up a minor third. And then the establishment is there. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is, I mean, some people literally will play the head of a tune and then play it again up a minor third.

So like you play whatever, you know, time after time in C and you play it again in E flat. And then, you know, Bill Evans would do this where he would, he would do it in the solo as part of the form. Like he would do the first half in C and the second half in E flat and then go back to C. when the head came back around. Right. And I think, I'm thinking of another one

that's sort of related to the old upper minor third trick, and that's the old upper major third trick, which isn't used as much, but it kind of works nice as well. That sounds really good, actually. A little kind of modern thing,

and I just realized Billy Childs does that on a great arrangement he did for Diane Reeves of Embraceable U. Yeah, yeah, yeah. E-flap major, and then the piano solo or guitar solo is in G major. I didn't even think about that old

up a major third trick, but that is a good one. an old cousin of each other, I would say. Okay, so another way not to sound too lame with the changing key is to go down a half step. And so this has a certain hip characteristic to it in that it's just like all things, hip or hipster. It's the opposite of what you would expect. Yeah, this is a modern thing for sure. Yeah, instead of shaving, grow a beard.

So this would be, you know, normally kind of the Hollywood thing is to go up a half a step, but this is to go down a half step. And so, you know, what I find with this, it really works different in different keys. So you have to try it, you know, in the particular situation to see how it's going to work. But it gives it that same totally different change because you're normally going from like a flat key

to a sharp key or no key signature to a bunch of, you know, sharps or flats. So it's very different, but it's not that kind of lift up of like Hollywood, aha, going up. Yeah. So it's changing. And so it's a little moodyer at times, but it can be very, you know, modern and interesting. You know, I found this one is most effective in like small chunks, right?

Like in like the end of a phrase, you know, to have an arrangement where you just do the end of the phrase down a half step. I feel like that's, you know, the best way to do it for me. Right. The next one is the good old up a half strike. Now, up a half step trick, sorry. Why are these all tricks, by the way? Because we're tricking people. That's right.

I mean, when you change keys, it's not much of a trick. I mean, they get it. You're tricking the audience and thinking something has actually happened when really nothing of importance. Same tune, right. Now, this one is tried and true. You really can't go wrong with it. You can say that again. This is you take it up a half step.

It doesn't really matter how the hell you do this one. It's always going to sound uplifting because you're literally lifting it up a half step. Right. I just played this arrangement of the great Charlie Chaplin song, Smile, with our friend Brian Owen. and he does it every chorus, it goes up a half step. No matter how many solos, you know, Brian has his incredible vocal range,

remember how many choruses the solos are, he's going to make it happen by the time he comes back in. Yeah, I like that. It was pretty dangerous with Eric Slaughter on the gig who can extend the solos quite a bit, but it worked. Well, we've done a, there's a duo that I do sometimes with Diane Reeves on Misty, and we do kind of a variation on that.

We start to go up half a step on the last, I guess it's coming out of the last bridge. Oh, so you got to. your hip. And then we go up, we continue going up a half step like every phrase. And then we actually switch to a whole step. And then we, I think we go down a major fourth. It starts to get crazy. But the idea is that the first half step lift makes the listener feel like, ah, it's the old up a half step trip. But then we give them a little bit of imbalance by going somewhere else, you know. And in fact, it all started because Diane kind of queued it. I went up, you know, I prepped it with up a half step.

And then she went up another half step. And then she just went somewhere else. And I tried to hear it. And we just started playing around with it. But, you know, if you've got that confidence and you've got that kind of, you know, symbiotic relationship where you can hear that stuff, you got to go out on the ledge a little bit. But it can be some very interesting things, all starting from the old half step trick. Now, see, the real trick with that one, though, is that you have to have Diane Reeves to really pull that.

That helps. That helps. Like her intonation and, like, her ears, like, you can play something and she'll find it in there. it can be very exciting. But actually, we kind of do it. So, Seth Reed, use Diane Reed? Exactly. No, but I think it's something that can be worked on.

You just have to be open to doing it. Because we definitely, early on with that, I mean, now every time we do it, people are like, oh my God, that's amazing. I love the way you guys do Misty. And I said, it's not an arrangement. It's just sort of something we became open to hearing. But we definitely fell on our face,

you know, flat on our faces a few times at the beginning. You have to be willing to risk that so you get to that kind of rapport. That's true. Well, our last one, this is one that I always have fun with, is to, you're changing keys, but you're not really changing keys in a traditional sense. You're going from either major to minor or minor to major. This is a fun one to try, especially on simpler tunes, especially if you've already established the original tune to then, you know, if something's, if you're playing softly as in a morning sunrise, and you just go to it in major, there's something about that that's a little kitschy. this is one actually that's really hard not to sound lame.

I might retract this. Well, no, we just promised that you wouldn't sound too lame. You will not sound too lame. You'll still be lame. You're still going to be quite lame, but not too lame. Right, that's right. I think the main thing with all these things is listen, listen, listen, so that you'll hear it.

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