You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 60 Second Pedagogy

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Adam and Peter explore the new realm of quick pedagogy that has come into play across the internet. Check out Adam's "Harmonic Warm-Up" short on YouTube. Check out Rick Beato's shorts on YouTube for some guitar chops. Aimee Nolte has some excellent shorts as well for improving your piano skills. Check it out 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 Instagram 

Hey, Peter. Hey. Could you... Wait, wait, wait. I've only got 60 seconds. Oh, we should hurry it up there. Let's speed it along. Let's go.

What do we got? Let's go. Okay. I'm Matt, I met us. And I'm Peter Mark. You'll hear a podcast. I'm trying to speed it along. Yeah, no, I got it.

Music advice coming at you. Did you have to look at your notes for that? I did. I like to confirm. It's called confirmation bias. This is an open studio podcast, of course. So, Peter, what are we talking about today? We are talking about can you learn to play jazz piano?

or can you learn to do anything? Can we broaden this a little bit? Sure. No, but specifically, can you learn jazz piano in 60 seconds? No. I can tell you straight up. No. You'll hear it.

Or I guess we should probably be more aptly named. What can exactly can you learn in 60 seconds? What can you learn? And why are we talking? Why is, is this arbitrary the 60 second demarcation on the clock that we've placed? No, you know what's amazing in our modern world? Yeah. An app like TikTok, a seemingly benign, some would say, is it, is it seemingly benign?

Seemingly, someone say incredibly moronic app of people dancing. That's how it started. It was. It was a lot of the TikTok dance. I love dancing. Nothing wrong with dancing. Nothing wrong with dancing. I love a good dance.

Nothing wrong. But it has changed the way people are teaching, not just music, but a lot of different things because you have to be able to do it in a very short amount of time. Yeah. And it has changed even the way here at Open Studio, we've approached some of our sort of front-facing educational videos. Yeah. And so, yeah, so TikTok's influence is now ubiquitous amongst most social media posters,

especially if you're trying to teach anything. You have to have your shorts game together, right? You are a 60-second or less education game together. And it begs the question, is that valuable? I think actually it is. We've been working on it now for several weeks. Don't give away the answer to this episode already. Now people like, you said it is.

Wait, first you said you couldn't. Now you say you can. Well, yeah. I mean, you can't learn how to play jazz piano in 60 seconds, obviously. Can you learn something about jazz? I actually think in my experience with this, yeah, actually. And the fact that it forces the content maker to distill something down into a very content maker, candlestick shaker.

The fact that it forces us to boil it down. If only we could do that on this podcast. 20 minutes. Do we have a minute of good information on here? Probably. Yeah, but it's just baked into a 35 minute episode. Right, right. Well, we were a little bit ahead of the game,

but a little bit off mark as, well, I should say myself on that. You were very much out of the game. Because 10, 11 years ago, I was doing two minute jazz. That's right. Which felt short at the time. Turns out it was twice too long. Yeah.

Although TikToks can be that long. Can they? Yeah, yeah. It's the YouTube and so can Instagram. Right. We've been doing, and as much as where you've mentioned TikTok, we're actually going to be looking at some YouTube shorts today. Okay.

But the idea is like all these, it's a short format that everyone's talking about. That's right. Vertical format. So to be consumed ideally on your mobile device on your phone. So it's actually, and that's more important than you're going to realize, I think a lot of people are going to realize the aspect ratio. And with our first example, we'll see why. But how you create content as a filmmaker, we're filmmakers.

You're a filmmaker. Did you know that? Sure. That'll put a smile on his face. Let's say that's true. But, you know, if you're doing it in the landscape mode, which was henceforth, is that what Spielberg calls it? Yeah. Cinematic mode.

But now when you go to portrait or vertical mode, it really brings up some interesting issues. If you play piano in terms of like what can be fitted, how you're going to present the material. And you've only got a minute. So you've got to present it in a way that's like instructive. Weirdly, piano works in the vertical mode. Because of the vertical, like if you turn your head like this. Yeah, if you're looking at the keys sideways, it actually looks better because the keys are so, you know, long sideways. As for instance, our keyboards here, if you look at the, if you go back to the main shot, Caleb, like you could see all of the keys here.

Well, that would be a good, yeah, that's kind of what we do. No, there's a great vertical if you come here. You just wanted to get the table. Right. Yeah, which is probably preferable. Yeah. This is gripping content for the pod, for the audio podcast. Thank you guys for being here.

But this is part of it, though. Like, you know, you have to think about how it's presented and what the, what the frame looks like. Yeah. I think the vertical video is not bad for the piano, actually. Yeah. Well, let's jump into some examples, and we can talk as we go. First up, we have our friend, friend of the pod. He forgot about the pod, but he's back on board with the pod.

That was so hilarious, man. Rick Beato, who, of course, we talked about last week with his really important interview with Keith Jarrett. But Rick has done for quite some time. He was kind of a pioneer, at least in terms of what I saw with really quality. Of course, this is guitar. mostly guitar one minute quick lessons he calls them he put them all together as a chorus in fact yeah but really getting some interesting information and when we talk about the aspect ratio you see here how he's already having to get the guitar because you know some guitars are like showing you

cool stuff yeah but they're not they're holding it more comfortably for them i think this is harder on guitar than his piano ironically right right and he actually talked with him about this he he went to great lengths to get it so that you could see the hands and that you could present things in a way The thing to practice when you're warming up is taking a one to five to one to five progression and practice improvising over it so that the listener can hear where the chords change. I'm going to start on A minor and go to E7, go to A minor, go to E7. So I mean, this is probably a great, you know, this is one of the great examples of like, you know, just do one thing.

You could learn that. I mean, a guitar player, especially, this is not necessarily a beginner, but it's a little bit more beginner-esque, right? Because you're reading off the tab. I would say it's like an intermediate lesson. Beginners couldn't do this, but if you can kind of play, this would help to unlock some sort of theoretical things as well as some practical, I can play this kind of thing. And some good stuff to practice, and then,

because it's guitar, you can go into other keys too then, right? Just by shifting over now. So, but that's good. And it's presented well. You can see the tab. You could see his hands really well. Also, it's a good exercise to be able to outline chords clearly. I remember when I was a student,

I took a couple of lessons with Aaron Goldberg, who's actually not that much older than me, but Aaron's great, you know Aaron, right? He's a great pianist. And he had me doing this on rhythm changes very deliberately. Like, can you outline these changes very clearly?

Right, right. And then I guess the question becomes like, in seeing a video, if you don't have access to Aaron Goldberg sitting right there with them live or Rick Biotto, like watch in one minute something that you might be able to practice if you're at this right level for this for like an hour. Yeah, if you really pay attention.

This puts more on the student. That's right. Right, to really watch, because he can't explain, you know, everything about put your hands. He's explaining one thing and there's a lot of assumptions in terms of correct technique, but he is showing that. So it's not like you're just reading written instructions for it. And what I like about this format, actually, and we can get into it. I know we have one of mine queued up somewhere around here, but yeah, this one. So I've gotten some, not a lot, but a couple of people who are like, hey, can you either give the sheet music of this?

Yeah. Can you slow this down? But I'm what I, and I won't because what's so great about this is, you know, they just loop over. They're short and they just loop over and over again. So if you're really hungry for this information, you can just keep watching again and again and try to get it. And that's actually more valuable than, you know, a piece of sheet music or something of it. And I like this format. Part of the learning process.

Right. It's part of the learning process. I think it's easier to communicate that to students in this. format that it is in a 20 minute lesson where it's like just listen to it again and again well who's got time to listen to a 20 minute lesson right 10 times yeah it's like what's time to do this 10 times right what's the proportion of teaching and viewing which could be watching as many times as you need to go back or whatever um and I should say we're not going to get into it here but there are ways just so you know they're very easy to search and find out to slow these now a lot of people like can't you slow it down

how do you slow it on these videos Google it well you can't remember actually if you're on your phone here you can simply and if you don't know this like on Instagram and I think on TikTok and YouTube shorts, you can simply hold your finger on the screen and it'll pause. Right. But I'm saying you can actually slow these down without changing the pitch. Really? Yeah.

Oh, on sounds nice. On Chrome. On Chrome. Yeah. That's that. Key of F, diatonic seventh chords. This is great. Now we have the secondary dominant for each one.

Except the seventh. The seventh kind of sucks. Now we put that secondary. Why you thumbs down it, bro? We want a little bit more of a modern town. the move cord. So one danger, I love this, it's such a good thing. One danger for students, for all these kinds of videos, not just Adams here, but like, if you

find something that you like, and this is a great one, you can learn so much from it, go through it the way that the creator presented. If you trust enough to practice this, like sometimes people watch stuff, oh, this is cool, I'm going to move on, or wait, I want to learn how to do that. This resonates and you trust Adam, which you should, then go through how he does it. I fear some people will try to be like, oh, I love that move. I've never known how to do that and jump right to this. And then they're missing a lot of what you're giving.

You're moving through it relatively quickly, but it's very clear. So people, you have, in order to get the most out of these, you have to have the discipline, I think, of to work through it. It's kind of like when you go through the textbook and then you see a picture on the fifth page, but you haven't really read and you want to jump to there. You're not going to get as much out of it, I think. Yeah. Take your time.

Yeah. Well, what I love about this is this is kind of backing up what I said at the beginning about. I think the value of these shorts is that the creator does have to break it down because you know this is from a 45 minute session on open studio pro yeah that we've been doing you know whenever we do a new song on the repertoire club at open studio pro like we were to do when we did out of nowhere I did this exercise I think the second or third session for out of nowhere in the key of G because I find that for a lot of people it's helpful to if you're especially if you're a beginner to be like okay we're in the key of G what are the diatonic seventh chords so that's

that first part of that right yeah what are the diatonic seventh chords in the key of G and then what are their secondary dominance? Because like 90% of standards are diatonic second chords and secondary dominance in some way. And then you can work on the various voicing structures in there as well. So having to put a 45-minute session

into a 60-second block came up, you know, I came up with this really nice exercise with it because it forces you to be like, okay, what's important about this? So it's important that you understand this is all based off of just secondary dominant, or sorry, diatonic seventh chords.

Yeah. And secondary dominant chords. and then the different voicing structures of the secondary dominant chords. And that's music, maybe. Yeah, that's all it is. Well, and I think these are the kind of exercises and, you know, presentations that really,

I would encourage folks to look out for because you can get so much for them. It's like content, I mean, we used to look at these in different technical exercises or etudes or could be a lot of different things, but things that you practice that teach you concepts without you even realizing, You understand the concept from the material.

You might understand all the words or all the stuff that's actually not that important but it instills in you these very well they're not necessarily basic principles because like this is a fairly advanced kind of a thing but they're very fundamental. Right. Fundamental things to be on the lookout for as you're going on.

And for your ear to understand it for your hands to make connections. And it kind of forces you to fill in some of the blanks although you're showing everything to play there but because you're not going through it in 45 minutes, it forces the student to be an active student, an active listener, an active participant to be curious. And that's what I love about the short format. Because when we have unlimited time, like this podcast, we kind of over-splained

some time. You've heard of mansplained? We've done this on the podcast, and I mansplained my way through it on that. You over-splained it. Yeah, yeah. All right, let's go to another one here. Let's go to Amy Nolte, friend of the pod, friend of this friend of Open Studio. She's done some master classes for us.

She's done some Masterclass, and she's really crushed in this short game. She's got this format here where she's obviously holding her camera in front of her hands at the piano. I've done that look before, but I don't... My chubby little paws don't look as elegant as her finely tuned piano technique does. And that's a kind of blingy ring she's got on two. She's always got really good concepts as well, you know, with these things, with the one-handed thing. Which is hard to do, by the way. Come from diminished scales.

You build them by stacking minor thirds. on top of each other. Just clear, clean. All four notes can be found in that scale. I wish somebody explained this to me when I was trying to find that out.

That another diminished chord can be built from the same scale. Diminished chord. So awesome. Yeah, and I mean, look, this is another kind of way that these shorts can excel. Just explain one

one concept in really a different way, because no one never explained it to me like that with the other. I mean, I kind of figured that out. And some people might say, well, isn't that better if you figured it out? Maybe, maybe not. There's still a lot that this will unlock more things for you to figure out by that limitation of the minute. Yeah, I mean, most people are not going to come away from the 60 second video and be like, oh, I finally get diminished scale harmony from that 60 second. But it's like the repetitiveness of it, keep coming back to it. Someone from this short, after probably hearing this sound or knowing about this maybe, someone from the short had a big light bulb moment. Yeah. And then it, like,

locked in. Exactly. Can you learn this in 60 seconds? No, but can this be unlocked for you in 60 seconds? Right. And can it give you 60 minutes or even six days of practice? I mean, you take this through all the keys, although diminished. That's another thing.

There's only three. But, I mean, it's kind of the difference between, I would almost say, I don't want to speak out of turn and create new terminology that we didn't approve before the podcast. But it's like jazz piano porn versus jazz piano instruction or just music. instruct. It's like so jazz piano porn is like if you go through and you see Herbie playing for a minute like ripping through or Bill Evans or Oscar Peters. It's great. It's like food porn. You know, but then the actual. Why doesn't it sound dirtier when you say jazz piano porn? But people say food poured all the time. They do. And it's like totally a non-issue. But for some

reason it sounds sketchy when you say jazz piano porn. But the idea of like it's great. It's fun to look at but you're not getting any. Well, yeah, of course you're getting something out of it. seeing Herbie Hancock Rick for a minute. Yeah, but like this is sort of like with food porn versus these TikToks and shorts

that actually teach you how to do something. Right. You know, I've learned stuff from those. It's like watching those food instructional things. It's like the difference between watching Anthony Bourdain eat a delicious meal

in Thailand. Right, where it's so beautifully film. And he's like, oh. And then watching like Jacques Papin quarter of chicken, which is not as like, right. As maybe is like

unbelievable. But you could learn how to make your dish better so that when you present your food porn it works and i mean that's the thing i think that amy is hit here is like visually this is all about learning it's not about like you know she's such a great player and singer and stuff she could like just sort of play and sing and it's going to look great and sound great but this is really about showing like she's really nailed exactly what you need to see she's got the text up there nothing fancy but the but the instruction is very fancy and very beneficial i think um nari so okay so this

I really love, Nari Sol is a fantastic pianist. I encourage you to check her channel out. She's got really good long form videos. But I think she does cool stuff with the no talking style of which we've tried to steal. She's brilliant in it. Her graphics are so good too. Very clear, enjoyable. Also, this is a great lesson.

A great lesson. Throw a little cabin in the mountain at the end instead of the beginning. But I like that idea. Yeah. But so, yeah. So this is, I think, is an example of the type. And we've done some of these where it's like one kind of. that you can apply to many that can like to your point about unlocking something but

unlock to potentially many different ways to practice and this is yeah and such a great concept too this is this has been a game changer for me over the years of having to remind myself that like you don't want to play loudly you want to play strong or you want a brave and bold sound not not loud right or instead of soft think gentle right like it can be it's a subtle shift right but it changes how you your hand moves on this thing. So this is brilliant the way she just and look at the elements of this, right?

She's demonstrating. She's showing you how you can hear the difference. She's showing, not telling. I mean, she's telling a little bit with the text, but basically she's showing. She's showing, but she's also showing you the difference how it goes and like giving you a structure of how you can do it. It's really, really smart and well done. Yeah, because she's repeating the same thing, but showing you different ways. And I mean,

her technique's so good. And I think anytime you look, it's kind of like what you were talking about with the food, with the chefs or whatever. When you're watching somebody with really good technique just by observing that you're going to learn a lot because you start to see what the possibilities are. The possibilities of playing the piano or the trumpet or the saxophone or the souffle machine is not... Suflee machine? Is that not a thing? What's a suflet machine? What's the equivalent of a... No, no, no. What's a suflay? You put in a suflay machine. Do you talk about an oven? Put it in a pan, mother. Like our friend that cheetah says. No, an oven. Right, exactly. An oven. It's just

It's just a jewel. Also known as a suflay machine. Hashtag suflay machine. What is the equivalent in cooking to an instrument? Like an oven or a range or a grill? I like to make it sound fancier than your basic terms. Okay, suflame machine. Anyway, so we look at the possible,

look at all these possibilities of this. No, this is just a bunch of buttons, right? Yeah. And the oven is just, when you, put the oven in my hands, it is not a suflay machine. It's a burning apparatus. It is a house. It is a house destroyer. Exactly. It's a dangerous thing. But, you know, when you have great YouTubers, not YouTubers, this is great pianists that. Also great YouTuber. That are also great YouTubers. Yeah, but demonstrating stuff. That's about showing you at the possibility. So then

you can take that to your practice no matter what level you're at. I mean, I got a lot out of seeing this. I was like, yeah, I mean, because I love these foundational ways of just like practicing something that's very basic, but taking it over like super, it could be very advanced stuff, whatever it is that you can do. Totally. She nailed it on here. She did.

Let's see. Okay, so this is another one that I liked. I actually know Jeremy. This is We Art Play. He has a really good Instagram thing. But this is, check this out. I love this, too.

We're going to get copyright thing. We've got to talk over this so we don't get copyright thing. That's right. I love me some silk. Sonny. And the guy with the funny handle drums. All right, stop, stop. Stop singing or stop the video?

Oh, man, the auto plays on going crazy. Okay, so this type of video, I think, is really good because it shows you one, like, basic thing. It's almost like a little bit of a cheat code, right? A little bit of a cheat sheet. So, like, oh, I love the way that sound is. So this, I mean, I don't want to say this is for the more lazy player, but it is a little bit.

And this is a little bit of a danger area, I would say. because ideally you're listening to this and going over and figuring this stuff out and developing your ears as you go, right? Yeah. So maybe this isn't a great one. No, this is good. You've got to meet people at all levels. And even if they get interested,

I'm shocked at the amount of people that don't know that they can do this themselves. Right. And so sometimes you have to see somebody doing this to realize like, oh, this is something that people do. They go to records, they get it, they figure it out. Right. I can do that.

Right, right. So the more that people like you and I preach, like, yeah, that's the way that you actually learn how to do it correctly or the way that you learn. That's good. So this could inspire people to be like, oh, I can figure that. I think so. And it demystifies it, as to your point, meeting people where they are. You got the dopio keyboard so you can see what's happening. So those on the pod here, basically it's just there's no video. I mean, there's video. It's just playing on the key, showing the exact basic voices with this, you know, massive hit by Silk Sonic, Bruno Mars, whatever.

But it's showing the core change. It's like a very simple lead sheet. That's right. Yeah, and you know, what's cool about this one too is like it could also, I think, first of all, it's good to like give Silksonic and modern music this kind of treatment because there's so many people who are like, nothing good has ever made anymore or whatever. This is like a huge hit. The Jazz Police come after this. And this is like really interesting chord progression, really interesting chords, great production, like really good stuff. And I would challenge some of the jazz police that come after this stuff.

Can you sit down and hear this by ear? You know what I mean? In all keys, you know, in all microtones. You know, depends on how. Challenge, except. Exactly. But I mean, this is, I probably learned more to develop my ears. Because I was doing it earlier.

Like, like from Michael Jackson Thriller. Like that record came out when I was 12 years old, 12, 13 years old, right? Ever heard of it? Thriller. That's a lot of copies. I've heard of it. But like learning those tunes or trying to off the radio. And then I had the, the, the cassette recorder.

but I remember my parents got back like you can't record it that's piracy but I was recording because I was trying to go back on the cassette so I could hear it because otherwise before that

I was literally you'd wait till the song was gonna come on and like beat it was I mean it would come on every hour and then I'd go over to the piano and try to catch the chords so I mean

I really learned a lot I couldn't play a lot of it but that's that kind of beginnings Those are good chords too They are good chords Okay we're gonna try something a little bit fun here Let me see if I can do this

Oh instead of drudgery That we usually Do we hit everything we wanted to? I mean, there's so many different other ones, you know. No, I think we got it. Okay. So we're going to come here. Let's just go to, let's get that back up.

We're going to go, just go to YouTube here. And we're going to search jazz piano chords. And we're just going to see what comes up and look for one more. Because some people discover these. You know, we're going to some of our favorites. But there's a lot of people just sort of slopping around the internet, if you will. And because, oh, that's one of ours. Well, how did that happen?

But we're going to come down here to shorts. And we're going to go to, which one do we want to check out? This one has 634,000 views. That's a lot. So we're going to hope that this is going to be brilliant. Oh, Bill Hinton. He's got good stuff. Oh, no.

Worst chord ever. Oh, that's... Okay, so... That's a good chord. Okay, yeah, let's talk about why is this... This is a pet peeve of yours, isn't it? This is not a set up. I kind of got in trouble for this one.

A lot of people... Middle C, so that's good. He's giving you some visuals. That I don't like this chord. That's terrible. because root position. It's a stack of thirds. Easy jazz piano.

So why does this have so many views then? Explain that. Man-splain that for me. Jazz-splained. Listen, everybody starts somewhere for sure. And I don't, I'm not trying to belittle you if you're... But then you go right into this rootless F-7 with the 9 and the 13. F-13.

Like, why couldn't you make the C? Just move one note. Right. Or even... Just take a note on 3-7, right. Interesting. That's all you got to do. Let's critique this.

Keep repeating that pattern. And with your right here, play any note between these two E's. Not bad, actually. Try two notes. This feels like it's longer than a minute. Okay. Now maybe.

Full tutorial on my YouTube channel. There's some ideas. I like the... But is this how it's done, really, though? Is this how it's done? Is this how beginners learn about improvising? Maybe. No, start with a song.

Start, you should start by learning a song. With a baseline? No. That is more swinging and will teach you more about improvisation. I'm not, I'm not being pendentic here. That will be teaching more about improvisation and swing. Yeah. And how the world of melody and harmony works.

Even if you did one three seven, right? Even if you did one three seven. Yeah. Then I think that. And no, I'm not trying to discourage anybody for doing what you want to do or how you want to do it. But just so you know, starting with a song will be more effective. Yeah. And we'll teach you more deeply and faster.

Yeah. I'm going to do a short with C. Jam Blues. There we go. Big shots you do. That's what I'm talking about. Well, the other thing is... Peter Martin should do a short with C.J.m. Blues. We're doing that today.

Yeah, do it. It's coming at you soon. Come on. Because you'll hear it.