You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Most Influential Solos for Us

Episode Date: July 15, 2019

Today, Peter and Adam answer a SpeakPipe and list the most formative solos for them in their early years of playing jazz. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Just go to https://youllhearit.com/podcast-contact/.You can check each of these solos out for yourself with this handy Spotify playlist we made: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6LH6N9f2no096myPQXuAdj?si=iI2cogtITn-aprhOzJ1P_g7 Most Influential Solos for Us:McCoy Tyner - "Lonnie's Lament"Keith Jarrett - "Autumn Leaves" (Live at the BN)Charlie Parker - "Now's the Time"Herbie Hancock - "Actual Proof"Art Tatum - "Willow Weep for Me"Chick Corea - "Matrix"Thelonious Monk - "I'm Confessin' (That I Love You)"BONUS SOLOLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Pete. Hey, ma'am. How hot are you scale of 1 to 10 right now? 11 a.F. I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hearer podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you.

I'm so sorry, listeners, that we're still talking about how hot it is in here. It's so hot. Are we getting a little delirious? A little, what do you call it? I mean, I'm... I got to play tennis in like an hour. You're going to be warmed up for that game. I don't know how you're going to do it, man.

Yeah. Because I'm already sweating so much. I know. This is crazy. We just ran out of water. Man, we were talking about abundance and scarcity the other day. I think I'm going to change my mindset. All right, let's get to it.

Before we get into it, though, go to Open StudioJazz.com to check out all of our courses on our brand new lightning fast platform, brand new features. Check out the Jazz Piano Jumpstart. This is, I would say, definitely a hit of our new courses. It's for novice jazz pianists. If you're like a bass player and you've always wanted to be a better pianist, it's for you. It is for, yeah, it's for everybody, truly. It's really affordable.

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So we want everybody happy and we think you will be happy with a jazz piano jumpstart. All right. So today we got a speak pipe. Yes, let's listen. Check out this speak pipe. It's from Jack. Hi, Peter. Hi, Adam.

Love your podcast. Listen every day. They're fantastic. Seven stars. I was wondering if you could list the seven best solos. that you each have copied that have really helped your playing or your vocabulary

once again, great job thanks for your podcast, love them. Great question, Jack. Yes, thank you, Jack, and thanks for the love, thanks for the kind words. And, yeah, I mean, this is cool. So best soloes you've copied, most influential and have helped our playing.

I mean, look, we probably both could, when we were talking about this, could come up with 20, 20 or so. Yeah, for these are somewhat random, but I mean, they're definitely on our,

on the more important scale, I think, for both of us. Agreed. Let's start it off. I'll start with McCoy Tyner, Lani's Lament, from the album Crescent. I love this solo,

very influential on me because I probably spent more time on this solo, learning it, learning the left hand, the right hand. It's not the most complex solo, but it's got some stuff in it.

But it's just such, the architecture on the solo is so genius that I can, can't tell you how much it's affected my playing. Not only like the specific things that I learned to do in it, but just like how to tell a story as a

jazz pianist like within that kind of classic quartet situation. And I think McCoy did it so many times. It's still doing it today. But that solo, because it's the one that I learned, it's just, it's been the most influential on me. Probably a day doesn't go by that. I don't think about it or reference it in some way. It's a fantastic solo. We should say that we will have

check the description here. We'll have a Spotify playlist for you. For those of you on Spotify with all these solos. My number one here is Keith Jarrett's Autumn Leaves from the Live of the Blue Note. I think it was the box set that I used to have as a kid. And it's a long solo. And then there's even a solo at the end where they go into this groove thing. Right.

And it's so... It's like second dinner, second solo. Exactly. I mean, it was so influential in like his ability to combine modern jazz piano language with bebop with like pop language. Yeah. Clarity. The clarity, the technique, the short, beautiful. like it's like a solo filled

with like a thousand short beautiful phrases just each one building off the other until there's like this you know epic Keithish climax Jared had such a what an intersection of just pianism is that word like a it is now but yeah pianism and creativity

totally I mean that's like I mean everybody you know all these people are going to be amazing of course but I mean I always think of that with him those that intersection now did you learn that solo or was that just one that you I think I did learn it I think I could probably play some of it now, but it's long. And it's one of those two where, like, I started it.

I was definitely more on the beginning. I think I was in high school. Yeah. And I started it thinking like, oh, this is an easy sounding solo. Yeah, yeah, right. And then you get into it was. Yeah, and you get into it. Oh, no.

But you know what? I think that's cool. Like, I don't preach that, we don't preach that here and in general enough, but I want folks to know, there's nothing wrong with learning half a solo or a third of a solo. No, or four bars of a solo. Whatever you can get. I mean, when you go on a deep dive, sometimes that's great.

and like the Lonnie's lament I did because I was just obsessive at that time. But to me, it's even getting to be like that with books. I've been reading so much more than ever because I actually have not been afraid, especially like nonfiction stuff. I'm not afraid to like only read a third of a book. Put it down. Get what I want.

Yeah, come back or just jumping to the places because, you know, beginning to end. Yeah, of course, if you can, but it's not always necessary. Agreed. All right. Number three,

what do you got? Number three, I've got Charlie Parker's now the time. Who? Who? Charlie Bird Parker. I've ever heard of them. I've heard of them.

So like this solo. again, it's just so influential because melodically, like when I learned this song, I learned a couple of Charlie Parker's solos but that, you know, bo do, boo, boo, boo do do, bo do, do, the simplicity. Oh, I hear it at every jam session. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just like

and I'm, yeah, I mean, a little bit of shame that it's the one, but it just, the way he played that, like, that's what really taught me how to swing, was one of the big parts. There's other ones, too, but it just had a huge outsized influence on me. I love it, dude. Yeah. Okay, so my,

The second one is the number four here is Herbie Hancock solo on actual proof. Road solo. Absolutely unbelievably, ridiculously, beautifully, courageously beautiful. Yes. And funky and fits perfectly with the craziness that's happening underneath. Yeah. And just so grooving. And I still rip some of those lines, some of the Herbieisms.

You and everybody else. Every single gig. No, it's great stuff. And, I mean, talk about the interstellar. Like, Herbie was such a, that period. I mean, always. he's still doing this, but it's like the intersection of just straight, funk, and crazy stuff. Like, he really defined how to do that as a piano.

I mean, not just him, but I always think about him as one. Textures and language, and it's all mixed together. That's great. Okay, so number five, we have Art Tatum's Will Weep for me. And I put this, this is one that I did never learn the whole thing just because I'd probably still be working on it now. The solo piano version from piano starts here. I love this way he arranges, so I learned, you know, a big part of the whole kind of first chorus or whatever in the intro. But again, that kind of gave me

so many ideas structurally on how to play solo piano, the possibilities for playing these kind of tunes that are very traditional. And it's Artaeum. So I mean, like, it really can't go wrong. It stretched my growth mindset for like what the piano could do. What even I could do. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, a lot of times it's easy to be like, oh my God, that stuff's on playable. And it is like Artato. But if you put, I mean, Artatim put his pants on just like we did, one leg at a

time. I think I went in for Artatim on somewhere over the rainbow. I transcribed a little, I didn't do it. I don't think I did the whole thing. But it was one of these things of you start to believe, I think I can do this. I can fly. I can fly. It's possible. Little boys and girls, age 8 to 12, you can fly.

But sometimes you just got to go for it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my next one, number six, is Chickoria solo on Matrix. This is the first track of now he sings, now he sobs. Yeah. I was just in love with the sound he was getting out of the piano on this whole record. I couldn't believe when I first heard it

because I'd been listening to like a lot of Oscar Peterson and Bill 11s. I was, you know, pretty young. Yeah. And I think I listened to this for at least a month before I realized it was just a blues. Right. Like I couldn't hear. It was too advanced for me a little bit. Yeah. And then I transcribe it maybe a year or two later. And I just, I still love this solo. It's great. It's great information for playing simply adding complexity to a simple form. Yes. I love that. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And that's another one that, I mean, look, we've got some on here like now is the time that Matrix solo actual proof. Like these are like, heavy transcribed in references, but for a good reason. For sure. You know, for a good reason.

Okay, for our last one, and so we get to our bone, I got a good bonus one. Oh, sweet. All right, all right. But for our last official one, number seven, I'm going to go a little bit unusual here, but super influential for me, and that's the loniest monks.

I'm confessing that I love you. And I think this is from solo monk, I believe, Columbia. And this, I learned a couple, this one I did learn all the way through, and, like, it's interesting. Like, I got a real concept about playing stride, actually from this.

And this was kind of a good entry point for me to, like, I don't know, I kind of got in my mind that I needed to learn stride. It turns out maybe I didn't use it as much as I thought. But I did, you know, and the way that he played is, and to play like a standard in a really quirky, like interesting, swinging, grooving, like, and like to try to learn, I really focused in on trying to get those sound of the instrument that Monk out that was so individual and figure out what technique he was doing. Like, that's a big part of transcribing this kind of thing.

And also, I remember, it was influential on me. This is when I started realizing that we don't need to use a whole bunch of notes and voices to make them if you choose the right ones to make them sound full. He did very little doubling. And so whenever I try to figure out a chord like in the left hand or a two-headed voicing, I'd always start with too many notes and then kind of break it down to less, you know? I love that, man. And that's a great solo too. It is. So before we do our bonus one, don't forget to go to openstudiojazz.com.

You saw. You know what I was working on today was that course keys to jazz piano. It's live now. You migrated it over. Jeffrey Kieser's course. He recorded it himself on his home piano and we've kind of enhanced it a little bit.

But speaking of like learning things from the masters, he has some great stuff about like block chords from different styles some stuff on Phineas Newborn. I mean like really, really hip stuff. You did some transcribing on that as I recall. I did quite a bit of transcribing on that one.

It was great. So go check that out. Open StudioJazz.com. We have all our piano courses up right now. Check out Keys to Jazz Piano. tons of great information like like tons of information oh and all new pricing on almost everything all new lower pricing we didn't raise the price on anything and we lowered the price on a bunch of things I don't know why I know I know why because people turn out they like

cheaper no no but I mean we're kind of starting to get to the point where it's I mean everybody's always like your courses are expensive I'm like yeah we got Jeff Kieser we don't we don't have you know Joe Blow from the wiki wiki wiki room at the Ramada in north yeah we got Diane we got the A team you know but we are really working very hard to make this as affordable as fast as possible to make the platform. I mean, this stuff causes money to do. We are going next level, though.

We're going next level. So we want you to join us and become part of the Open Studio movement up in here. That's right. Okay, so for the bonus, what I was thinking of was, I don't know how I forgot this one. I came up with the other, I mean, they're all influential. But this is Miles Davis solo and Thelonius Munk solo, both of which I learned on Bags Groove. Nice. These were very, I think the Miles Solo especially was so important.

And I learned the baseline, too. I think it's Percy Heath. I remember writing out. That's kind of how I learned up walking. You did the whole thing. I know, I know. I should have. But, I mean, it's very simple and easy to hear.

I even tried to do take two because I had like an LP with take two on it, but then I kind of got confused between take one and take two. But, I mean, I learned so much about just simple swinging lines from Miles on there. It's such a, it's such a quirky period for him. I think it's, I love that early kind of Miles period. Very, I don't know, it's just exciting to me, but I learned a lot. And then Monk's solo. Monk's not comping behind Miles because Miles didn't want.

to the comp apparently. Mung plays this great group. Boop. Scuba. D. D. D. D. D. Really simple. Easy to learn. Not easy to play as good as Monk, but easy to learn. So that's my little bonus, bruh. Love it, man. Well... And one secondary bonus is the bonus Jonas from the Jonas Brothers. No, we're going to stay away

from Transcarbby. Okay, buddy. All right. Well, till tomorrow, you'll hear it.