You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Ways To End A Tune - #146

Episode Date: June 29, 2018

In this episode of You'll Hear It, Peter and Adam list 7 ways to end a tune. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Anas. And I'm Peter Martin. And this is the You'll Hear It Podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. I'm so glad we're back to coming at you. I missed that one. We had a little bit of hate yesterday. We're back to love today.

I love it. And we're back to coming at you. And actually, we're back to something kind of back to our podcast roots because right now, where am I sitting? At the piano. I'm sitting at the piano. At the Mighty Steinway. Hello. That's right.

Right, where we started. Yeah, well, we thought a little bit of piano might be in order because we have a great question from one of our listeners. Ben Hogg. H-O-G-G. Not sure where he's from, but he, what's up, Ben? Thanks for writing in on the You'll Hear It page, and what he said was, big fan of the podcast. You guys are doing something really unique. I have a question, all caps. I like that. See, that's a man who wants an answer. That's right. One thing I've always struggled with is ending tunes. It seems like a very important part of playing that sometimes gets overlooked in jazz education. I was wondering if

you can make a seven ways to end a tune. If there even is seven, Ha ha, ha. Thanks a lot. Absolutely, there's seven. There's probably 77. Oh, yeah, at least, yeah. Which is really, I mean, a reason, yeah, we'd definitely give you seven because, you know, we love the sevens. But let's remember, you know, I think a big problem with ending tunes.

And I'm kind of assuming Ben is a pianist or is thinking, you know, a lot of times the piano, either for solo piano for sure, but even with the group, the piano kind of leads things or maybe the bass. Yeah. In terms of how the tune's going to end, like especially a standard. tune if it doesn't have a typical ending or even if it does have a typical ending, let's think about some variations because there's so many ways, way more than seven, to end the tune that we don't need to always go to the typical ones. We're going to go through some typical ones.

For sure. We can even throw in a few kind of unusual ones too, so there's some nice options. We'll throw in some cool ones at the end for sure. But don't be afraid. Like what I like to do is really try to be open to the moment, especially for certain types of standards that can end in many different ways. And so it doesn't mean that you have to just do something atypical just to do it. You always want to do what's kind of fit in the situation. So it depends on how you've played the tune up to that point, kind of how you would want it. Like if you've played it very traditionally, there's probably two main ways to look at it. You kind of end it traditionally or you end it with a little bit of surprise and irony, but that has to fit in with your arrangement.

And like everything that's typical, even the traditional, typical endings or anything that's typical, has variations, right, that can make it interesting or surprising. Absolutely. And so we'll kind of throw some of those in, too. Let's throw them in. All right. Okay, so for the first, we were talking about what, well, why don't you go ahead and demonstrate the first one?

So the first one is this New Orleans ending. And what, just kind of describe what those chords are. So this is a, and with a lot of these endings, there are a lot of like sort of logical, stepwise harmonic progressions that really help your listener. get to the ground. That's where you want to go. You want to make a firm period on the end of your song.

And so a lot of these endings help you to do that. And this one is basically a series of dominant chords, you know, if you break it down. But I'm the key of F here, so I'm starting with F7. And then I have F on top on this voicing. My voicing that I'm playing right now is E-flat, A, C, F. And I keep that F on top the entire way,

and I just move everything else down by half steps. So now I have D, A, flat, B, F, right? So this is a D diminished chord. And then I move, again, those bottom three notes down by half steps. And now I have basically a B-flat minor six chord. And then I just finish on F. Yeah, I just made give them the general chorus. You can give them every single note you're playing.

Oh, I was going in. I was going in. So again, it sounds like this. And then I'm just doing a little half step. Yep. Slide there. But what's great about this is, you know, it sounds really, really cool in different inversions. Like that.

You know, there's varying ways you can use this very typical progression. Yeah, no, it's a great sound. Even if it's not a New Orleans tune, I love kind of throwing this on the end to kind of give it that flavor. Even if people don't know, even if it's just kind of like a little thing in the back of their mind, like a little New Orleans kind of roots of the music. Absolutely. And I think, you know, to your point as far as bringing it grounding things, the ending, it's almost like, you know, you've arrived at your destination.

Thank you for flying Delta Airlines. And here you are. Like, everybody knows you're at the end. Or maybe they don't. And they need to be told. If you're hearing this, right? Like if you're... It's like, check please.

Or I'm leaving before the check comes. Yeah, yeah. We're at the end. Good stuff. All right. So for number two of our seven ways to end the tune. We've got what we call the tag ending. Can you demo that, Adam, please?

Yeah, you can really tag forever if you want to. So great examples on My Funny Valentine and Four and More Miles Davis of some great tag endings, very extended. I mean, like three, four minute long. Yeah, yeah, yeah, if I were a bell. It actually becomes part of the form where they're soloing and they cue the tag. Yeah, yeah. And so tags are great. And tags are great for when it's like a jam session or like a singer sitting in or somebody

and you don't have time to really kind of work something out to be queued from the piano. Yeah, that's right. And normally, you know, what you were just playing is a 25, 3, 6 tag, and they can be extended for, you know, more numbers of bars for each. They can be compressed into just like two beats each chord.

That's right. A lot of flexibility with them. One thing I'll say to listen for if you hear a tag start to happen at the end of the tune is that some people, you know, if they do a 3-6, some people do the half-diminished. Yeah. Which makes sense because you're going back to a minor chord,

I guess, but some people don't. Some people just do this straight up. Right. You know, so keep your ear open for that. Because if the horn player plays an E flat on that A, you know that it's either half diminished or, you know, you can turn it into a dominant chord too. That sounds good.

Yeah, good variation. So you got some kind of timing variations on how long and some harmonic variations on alterations to the actual chords. And hey, look, if you're the pianist in the group, you definitely have, I think, some freedom at the end to sort of lead the band in the harmonic direction. What do we all say on here? We're the boss. That's right. If you want to start taking it in a bunch of dominant chords, it actually sounds super hip.

Yep. Do some chromaticism. Be careful. We might get into one of this. We might go from the seven, seven ways they're into two, the seven reasons people hate jazz. All right, good. So now let's go to number, oh, we're only at number three. Okay. We're going to pick it up now. Yeah, we're going to pick it up. So this is a very simple one, but very effective, especially on ballads.

You've got to really listen for a good time to put this in. But that's the half step above kind of with the Formata. Half step above the tonic where you're going, usually with a major, right? Yeah. And I would say this one could actually be used in conjunction with pretty much every other ending on this list. But this is a very common thing. So if you're, you know, like you said on a ballad. And especially effective like you did it there with the Lydian, Sharp 11 kind of the sound.

It's a way to set that up, that Lidion up actually. pretty effectively yeah and I think the key is like what you did there is to always be thinking you're not necessarily moving the melody up although you could sometimes yeah like ending the melody where it is and then you know depending on what what note you're at using the root is a half step above where you're going the tonic but the the tonality the harmonic structure could be based upon what that is it could be like a sharp nine even but a major seven is always nice yeah major seven I like the you know if you use the

this Lydian sound, you can go right in, you know, the bottom note goes down, the top note goes up. Yeah. Yeah. It's always a good sound for me. Divergent. Diversion. Okay, number one, three, four, we've got, okay, this one I really like, I mean, it's like Tommy Flanagan, Hank Joan. I mean, classic, yeah. Classic ending. And this is, I think about it starting on the flat fifth, the tritone away from where you're ending up. And there's some different timing variations, but once you show them how this one sounds. And it's great, too, because it's sets up that kind of break, almost like a little mini solo break at the end, which is often used with this.

Absolutely. I love this one on ballads, too. There's some really rich harmonies you can get. Is that legal? We're losing listeners. Nice. So, yeah, and that one's great, too, for cadenzas. I mean, that's almost like a little mini piano conenza, but I've heard a lot of good saxophone

players play this in their cadenza on a ballad, kind of go through these changes. You're basically starting at the flat at fifth, and then you're going down a half step, down a half step, down a half step, down a half step, down a half step, and then you can go down, yeah, exactly. And you can use any kind of tritone substitutions within those half steps to make it like a succession of two fives if you want. Yeah, it's one of my favorites, for sure. And that's definitely one of the traditional ones, but the ones that works really well. Yep. Oh, then we've got number five, we've got the bassy ending. It doesn't get any more typical, but really you do this at the right time.

This is a cool thing. Yeah, so I mean the very basic one, well, I mean the very, very basic one, Basing himself would sometimes even just go, you know, something like that. Yeah, just single notes. But usually you can get away with something like this. That's three notes. That's, you know, I'm doing G, B flat with an F on top, and then moving the bottom two notes up a half step.

Yep. So that, you could do it with four notes. My favorite voicing for this is with, in the right hand, I have F and F in an octave with a D. And then in my left hand, I have G and D flat, and I just move that up, that left hand up. He's giving away the man of secrets up in here. That's a good one, though, right? That is very good. The spacing of the resonance, that register of the piano is great.

That's what makes it work. We want you to show them coming out real quick of like a tag ending. How would you set that up with the break? Yeah. And so normally, I mean, of course, like all these many different ways to do it, but the typical but effective way to do it is like that way. It's like boom, boom, dung, gang, bang, and then you're ending on the four. Not like the anticipated four or the one, but on the four.

It really sets up that rhythmic resolution at a very interesting syncopated place. Syncopation, baby. Yeah, and I think that's what makes, you know, when something is super typical, but it's got a hip little twist on it like that, you can make it, again, as long as you use it at the right time, the right place, and combine it with the right thing, very effective. All right, let's hip it up a little bit. Okay, hip it up.

All right, so we got, yeah, we got two more. Let's both see if we can come up with ones that are a little bit, a little bit off kilter. I'm thinking of one, let me, I'll demo it here. We're going to do some incredible, look at that. Now he's over. Like a magic trick. We switch spots.

So since we're, we'll stay in F. So this is like when you might come out of a, standard and a typical thing you know maybe a tag again either whether it's part of the tune or not and then you end it

it's as opposed to you know or doing something nice like that you go you actually end it on the one so you're kind of going through and I like I always think about it as like tell me a bedtime story yeah yeah because it's it you know Herbie with that

you're basically going through a bunch of major seven chords that are very unrelated but have some kind of a root movement that's actually melodic. So here the one I did was I'm going down a minor third and then a major third and then a major third. So you know F major, D major, B flat major, G flat. And there's a lot of ways you can be like it's just a bad, it's just trying to trial and error but but you want to go to really unrelated sounds. This works really good on ballads and then you get where you're going. But this is a really good one for pianists, guitarists, and horn players too, they can sit down and get a little bit of piano

to try out a number of things because you want to... Like these, I almost never do the same way. But I've got... You know, you want to develop a little bit of understanding of what they sound like so that when you go from one to the next, you can be like, whoa, okay, now I know I can go here. Man, I love that one. All right, we got one more?

We got one more. Why don't you give us one of your hip ones? All right. This one, I always like to do... Because it can set up a really nice vibe at the end of a tune. and this is so if we're

yeah you know I mean it's almost the Keith Jarrett thing at the end of those standards records like at the end of those tunes they always go into this like super funky groove on the band I like the you know this is my And a different groove from the tune

usually a different groove from the tune I you know this is like my most basic one you know if you're on a two five and F G minor C7 usually the melody note is the tonic right you go to an E flat sus whole step down whole step down

but you can even take this further and you know I've done like a B D flat E flat yeah take them somewhere take my high ridge and back you can do A flat

there's really it's endless whatever F works on top of basically you can create a little chord change pattern this is super fun especially if you have a regular group and you kind of get a bag of these together? Yes. You know what I mean? A little bag of grooves. I think that's the general concept on that is that I'm going to just kind of making a joke as you're playing, but that's really what it is.

It's like the after party. It's it's a little bit counterintuitive in that you think the ending needs to relate to the tune and draw it all together, but it's almost like, you know, the playing trip is over, but now you're going into the arrival lounge. Yeah, that's right. A little special bonus for some of you. And so again, if it's done at the right point, like probably you wouldn't do this at the end of like this long form, complicated arrangement and all that, but like a simple tune where you feel like you don't want to end it, but you want to go somewhere different a little bit. It's like a tag, but not the tag ending. It's like another little thing.

So you've got a different harmonic area that you're still relating to the main area, but a different groove entirely, which sets it off nicely. Same tempo, but different groove. Yeah, I think it's great. Well, that's seven. Thanks everybody for listening. We hope you enjoyed this one. We're thrilled to be back at the piano on this podcast. I know, this is fun.

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