You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Add THIS To Your Playing TODAY

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

In this episode, Adam and Peter present one simple yet highly effective idea that you can add to your playing at any level. With examples from musical masters such as Keith Jarrett and Monk you know this is some good advice coming your way.↓ Links from the pod ↓Interested in OSPro? Join the waitlist to be a member of our community.https://www.openstudiojazz.com/proCheck out the examples we used for yourself!Keith Jarrett Trio Thelonious Monk Trio Live in 66Check out the SoundSlice of Herbie's "All of You"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

It's been a rough morning for me playing. Really? You ever have those days where you're like, you just, I don't feel like my voice is in the instrument today. You know what? The weather. We need to do an episode sometimes about the weather and how it affects us this piano. Because we think we're off the hook that we're not trumpeter. I'm definitely going to be. Or trombone. Trambonist. I'm definitely going to be blaming the weather from here on that. No, I mean, I can feel like it takes me a while. No, I mean, you know, it's, yeah, blaming we can. But it's the adjustments that we need to make.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because sometimes they aren't as maybe crucial physically for us as pianists, but they are important. And so I think even more so just kind of getting ready and acknowledging and, you know, as we know from our meditative practices, like, oh, it's colder. It's drier. You're very gracious here, Peter. I appreciate you giving me a trapdoor out of this.

Myself included, no, I mean, I feel it. You know what I mean? And that's the fun of like working towards being. I think when people talk about, are you a pro or you're an amateur? I always Shafe and Brussels sprouts. You brought out Brussels. As always shout out Belgium. At that because it's a continuum, right?

It's not like you're crossing over a threshold into being a pro. But if there's one part that I do think separates the pros from the amorture. From the cons? From pros and the cons, right? Is like your approach to things like these kinds of potential adversities that everybody has. Like how does the weather affect your hands? How does cold? Whatever.

is how do we kind of get ready for that mentally and say we're going to deliver no matter what. Yeah. You know, because that is going to happen to matter what. Exactly. That's as much as a mental as a physical challenge. And I think when you see people doing, you know, athletic of things that you're like, oh, my God, I can never imagine doing that. A lot of times, they're just the same people. Yeah. As us, obviously they're in better shape, maybe more talented.

But they've made that mindset shift to like, I'm going to do this no matter what the weather is. And so at least we're doing this indoors. But it is something for us to think about for sure. Yeah. Yeah, there were a couple of takes there, just a couple, one that I had to run out of the room from. That was cool. That was cool, but it was something. But today we're talking about, I think, something that can actually be very helpful in these kind of situations.

We're talking about adding this to your playing today. Outer space, right? We're talking about adding some space to your playing. Oh, I thought you said outer space. Outer space. My outer space. That's a nice outer space, actually. Yeah.

Yeah, that's good. No, so this is something that we've been doing over in Open Studio Pro on Feudor. Friday's where, you know, if you're member... If someone wanted to become a part of Open Studio Pro, what would they do? Do they need to donate to the Adam Manus Charitable Trust Foundation? No, they don't need to do that. What do they need to do is click the link here in the description of this video, and you can get on the waiting list for Open Studio Pro.

You know, enrollment is closed most of the time. We only open it up. Now, just every couple of... So you're saying we have a closed door policy over at Open Studio Pro. We have a... Except for members, we have an open door policy. We have a small, engaged... community. And so yeah, we do want to just keep it small and engaged. But our Open Studio

Pro members, they have been playing over on Feedback Friday, which is a class we do every Friday. Feedback Friday's fun. I mean, we have classes every day. But this is a specific class where you can play for the group. You can play for me, get some coaching directly of what you might practice. And I'll tell you what, we've got a lot of good players over there, people that can really play. And one of the things that is my go-to when people are feeling stuck or I can just hear it and they're playing. You've got a lot of language. You can get around on changes, but it's just you're not connecting, there's usually what's happening is overplaying, is there's a lot of run-on sentences, there's not very clear ideas between your phrases. And so I thought today, Peter,

we could talk about one thing that you can add to your playing today that actually is going to make you sound like 20% better just by applying some principles here. What's that? Minimum. Minimum. No, this won't make you sound a lot better with what you have already. Like you don't need to go learn a bunch of new language or new chords or new licks or whatever with what you have if you apply this principle you will sound a lot better and it's a very simple principle in theory but it's so hard to do in the moment and that's it to add space to your playing and actually we have examples here from three great masters where you can see that they are playing probably more space between their phrases than you are as a beginner or intermediate so what happens is you know as a

beginner intermediate you're often playing like like when you learn these sort of like bebop language kind of stuff or whatever. Maybe you learn like pentatonic language. Make it stop. Right? You can, there's a point where you get good enough that you can just keep going forever. Yeah. And then some people just do.

But when you hear great masters like the people we're going to listen to today, you see that it's a lot more short phrases with space in between. And we're going to talk about ways we can practice that. Absolutely. So this is going to be, I think, kind of an addition by subtraction type of situation, right? You're talking about adding space. Adding space and practicing space. Yes.

And oftentimes that will mean the reality for a lot of people will mean taking, putting space in the place of where you normally would be either continuing a phrase or starting your phrase right away. Because there's so many different ways to add space, which is what makes it such an exciting and useful concept, but also technique to use. Because it's not just about like, okay, make your space longer. For some people, it's literally adding any kind of space. Any kind of space would be nice. But we have, so let's watch the three examples. from these three masters of space and what that looks like.

Yeah. And then at the end, I'm going to give you a very, like, sure, foolproof exercise. Okay. To practice putting space between your phrase. For me or for them or for all of us. For all of us. Good. Okay.

I've got three queued up, and I'm going to let you choose which. I'm going to just lay it out there for the three. We got Keith Jarrett. I ever heard of him. Let me go full screen. We're going full screen. Peter, can you go full screen on this, please? We're going full screen.

L full screen. Oh, that would be F. Okay. So we've got Keith Jarrett. We've got Polonius Monk. Let's go, Keith Jarrett, because I've got it pulled up here. Yeah, yeah. This is a little thing, if I should lose you.

We're hoping this does not get the channel taken down. We're never sure with Mr. Jared, but we hope. He's coming out of the melody here. Classic trio, right? Yes. Gary Peacock and Jack Dejanette. Now listen to the length of phrases. And Keith is, he's not going to, there's not going to be like total silence between,

but he will be holding a lot of notes. Yes. And he's going to be playing. especially in the beginning here and he'll start to elongate the phrases, but even throughout the whole solo, I don't know the solo, but I'm going to guess,

there's going to be a lot of moments where there's short phrases, almost like a machine gun, right after one another. So it seems like, oh, he's playing a lot, and he is playing a lot, but each phrase has a,

has a punctuation to it. Right, and a relationship to the next part of the frame. And so this is where, like, a lot of intermediate players can go from good to great. Absolutely. And like you said, a lot of times he's holding the notes, but that does give the separation.

And it also sets up a pattern because when he doesn't hold the nose in between, it's very different. I'm just going to back it up a little bit. Coming out of the melody. Lift, trying a little bit. But that silence makes him

what he plays even more powerful. And I just want to back it up too. Like as he's coming into that second A, I love when he'll leave this space that feels like it's going to be right up until the next A section. So like eight bar harmonic phrases. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But then he'll kind of come in with the phrase a little bit earlier. But because he laid out that, separation, that space before it, it works, right? You can pick up in the jacket inside snare. Listen to the ends. You can kind of feel him in the trio listening to. You can.

I mean, this is what I'm saying, is there is a musician who's at a certain level and you never hear them play with this much space because they can now play continuously. Yeah. And it takes some work to get back to this. Right. Absolutely. He's playing. So by far, that was the longest phrase he's played.

And even in the middle of it, he's still holding a note for a fort. beats. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a progression with little mini, many, many fragments and riffs within that. But it's like you're already at the place in the form and the solo where it feels like almost anticipatory of where things are going. Yeah. Still exploratory for sure. That's why it's so important to transcribe people or at least like sing along two albums. Because I remember when I, the first transcription of Keith Gerard, I did, I realized like, he's playing short little phrases. And they're, they're happening faster than I would play next each other. So he does have big moments of space, but these short little phrases, one after the other.

You actually do something very similar, Peter. You do short phrases one after the other. So you can kind of practice with all the greatest players. I never knew Keith was stealing for me, but thank you. Yeah, yeah. Boop. Scooby-dibid up. Oh, man. So good. And then, like, you know, so let's just talk a little bit about left hand because the way Keith Jared, I mean, everybody deals with this differently, but there's so much clarity, like that first whole half of course, I don't even think, I mean, it looked like he was playing if you listen, he wasn't actually playing anything with the left hand. Yeah, yeah.

So even now as he's putting it, like, he's being very judicious in terms of, like, how much he, you know, kind of jumps into that space with, like, knowing that when you come with the left hand, you're still, you're not getting in the way, but you're saying something about the spacing, especially because of what he's set up so far where he wasn't comping in between. So it becomes a great little dramatic thing, but also, like, the possibility of, like, do you disrupt this? Like, what does it do to the flow? Not disrupt in a bad way.

But, like, now it becomes a thing of, like, is it with the snare drum? Is it between the phrases? Is it along with the phrase? So many great possibilities, you know? Like, you can almost be like he's making a decision to not play at the left. Based upon what's happening in the trio. Just a little bit.

So it's so clear here with Keith, with Keith playing. Let's go on to our next master pianist so that we can hear more examples of how. you might apply some space to your phrases. This is Herbie Hancock. Ever heard of him? Do we have anything new to do? Now, Peter, this is something you've been talking about

the last couple months is Herbie Solo on all of you from the, was it Miles Davis My Funny Valentine album? Yes. This is My Funny Valentine. Herbie Hancock. And this is coming right out of George Coleman Solo. And this is our transcription from Max Camese. So we can actually see here.

Yeah. Okay, so this is cool. When you see things, it's really the same things that you're hearing, but it does, I think, put things into perspective, especially with this discussion of space and what are you doing before and after the space. So obviously we've got like this part here. Boom, boom, boom. There's space coming out, not a lot, though, coming out of the saxophone solo, but check it out. Like, look at the length of this phrase and just what he's kind of planned. So like, baby-da-da-d-d-d-d-d-d-space. there to dump bomb like down bump bump like setting up the thing but this is a little bit of a different kind of space I know this is not traditionally what we talk about space in terms of rest but this is kind of spaces things by pulling apart yeah with them a little bit the melodic rhythm it's a four four over three situation here right yep and then that kind of sets things up and then And, you know, talking about the left hand, so Herbie's doing a little bit more than Keith was doing there.

But the way he's playing that he's honoring like the melodic space, right? And kind of complimenting it. Well, and in the right hand there on that F minor 7, you know, it doesn't look like there's any space. But the way he's playing that, holding that note out, it decays so rapidly that it is space. But there's not like continuous eighth note. Yeah, because that's really the end of this phrase, right? This long, bobo dobo da da da da da putta da da da da Yeah, the

Bobby de do do is almost a response to that phrase. Yeah, yeah. Boop did it do a dom. Scooby-de-bo-do. And then, okay, let's just listen to it. No, you should sing the whole thing. And then this is like, this is kind of using almost like some sort of more like meta,

think a patient within where the breaks are. Bip-d-du-ba-d-break, break, break. Keep playing, Peter. We're leaving too much space here on our. Playback. Yeah, and look at that. Well, I mean, I was going to say you can learn everything you need to know about space in the first. So here he's like, bap-b-dub-up, left hand, so check it out.

There's, he's jumping in with the left hand very purposefully in between each of the little wrists in the right here. Real mind. Yeah, notice that all of the left hand. But then here, nothing is the left for two beats. So it's like when you, sometimes when you get in the space and then you get out of it, that explains the space even better, right? For sure. and makes it like,

sometimes people be like, man, I learn the notes, how come my stuff doesn't have purpose on a bigger level? It's like you got to pay attention to these details.

You don't have to do it just like Herbie or just like Keith, although you wouldn't be doing a bad thing, you know? Is that something you'd be interested in? But the idea is that you start to see these different possibilities

and so how we talk about addition by subtraction. That's a perfect example. Look at this here. These two beats here, buddy. Let's play these over. What do you notice?

Just run. and Tony. No Herbie. Because he's leaving space, right? There's a lot of space. It looks. Tons of space. But it feels spacey. Dynamically, there's space. And then look, this is huge space. And then that comes in with the first, like, overtly blues phrase.

So it's like, it's so purpose-driven. I love it. And what it does is it opens up the possibilities of what you can do. It's not like you have to do blues. It's like, what do you hear there? You've just left some, you know, it's like having a conversation with someone. If you shut the hell up and listen to what they say, and then they get tired talking, it's actually going to be nice to hear your voice at a certain point. Adam, you should try that in the podcast sometimes.

I'll try, I'll give a shot. I know I'm kind of a blabber mouth. And there's nothing like using space when you're developing an idea to make it even better. Oh, no, keep talking, please. I don't mean to get in your head there, buddy. Oh, no, I feel self-conscious better. Can we check out some of the next artist and then we'll talk about ways we can practice? Okay, let's go on to Monk.

No, it's, I mean, this is the thing. We literally could have just, We did sort of randomly pick these. You can randomly pick any of your favorite artists, and they probably are leaving more space than you are. It's a part of art. It's just like it's a part of nature. It's a part.

I mean, there's nothing that's, and it's not to say that there aren't times when things are busy. Yeah, and artists that are busy, and that's their thing. But in general, but if everything's busy all the time, then nothing's busy. That's right. Play the space is sort of the... Space is the place.

Charlie Rao is a map. No, Monk leaving so much space. He stood up. That's a good way to leave favor. It has a punctuation to it. The silence in between where you get to just enjoy the rhythm section makes what Monk plays

more powerful. More with you. It sticks with you. It's more memorable. And I think it's like you get, you even get power of things that were played, you know, previously, right?

So the phrase is like, like those great phrases, you know, and then when you have the space, you get a time, time to enjoy. It's like, yes, you're in the moment, but that's still floating out there as the last notes that were played. And then the, you know, bass player drummer are like complimenting that, which may just be like swinging right along or a little bit of a tag or something. It's like, it's so commensurate with the amount of space needed to absorb what just happened

and what's about to happen, you know, and there's no formula for it. But when you hear it done like this, you start to think maybe there is a formula for it because it seems so mathematically perfect as to what that space, like, once you start to analyze it, you're like, oh, yeah, he's got to come in right then. And then there he is. He comes in. There's actually a lot of good choices, though. Yeah. And they're his choices. And they're good. Because a lot of what's happening here, this is the first, he hasn't played any comping or any chords at all in the soul. So now he's playing two notes, the first chord. So that becomes its thing and clutters up in, I think, a good wave, in my opinion, but like, does clutter up the space a little because now you're getting some vertical collision as everything has been single lines.

So he's kind of highlighting that and then using the space on either. You get kind of low over there, buddy. I'm getting prepared to play, man. I want to give some examples here. Yeah, we can work with it. Look at the idea, both. These great players are using these. Their phrases are separated by varying lengths of space.

Yeah. So how do we practice that? I like that. You're very purpose-driven. So, well, I think that your idea I've heard you say. I'd love for you to talk about. There's a bunch of ways to practice. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I'll just say the first thing, and then you should jump on this, is this is a fun thing to practice because it's so simple. Like, the biggest part of it is thinking about it before you practice. That's right. So, like, slow down for a second and say, okay, the theme for everything that I'm going to practice today is addition by subtraction of space. Yeah. So the idea being like, don't wait until you're playing, you know,

Blue Monk at the end of your thing trying to imitate the Lone's monk in your scale. leave some space. Like you're literally leaving space in everything that you do so that it starts to become a habit so that your ears start to acclimate. You have to hear yourself doing this. You have to hear yourself.

You have to get comfortable with the silence. You know what I mean? So the first way we can practice this, Peter, is just on, let's do a B-flap blues. Okay. And I will practice the space

if you can accompany me. Yes, sir. You can do this on your own as well, but it's got two people here, so let's practice it. So the first way you can do this is literally two bars on, two bars off. Okay.

Right? So you're talking about melodically what you'd be playing. Melodically, which is, I'm just going to play. So, of course, a B-flat blues is 12 bars. So I'm going to play, I'm going to fill the first two bars of every four-bar phrase and then leave space the last two bars. And this is just an exercise so you can hear yourself doing it. This is the simplest way to do it.

And then we'll go to, I think, the most effective way right after this. Ready? One, two. One, two, three. It's challenging to put your, to put handcuffs on. yourself and not be allowed to play in those bars. It's like a framework. It's a framework, but it's good to hear yourself doing it.

So that is something that's so easy to do because you could really be like, I'm just going two bars on and two bars off. And you notice I'm not exact with that. It's not I'm playing over the bar and I'm starting before. And that's all fine. You don't have to be super strict with it. It's more about the intent behind it. Now, the most effective way that I found to give people to do this is what you might

call the negative space game. So we'll do a similar B-flat blues. And now the rule is whatever phrase, I play, however long that is, I'm going to sing that back in my head, at least rhythmically. And I'm going to make the space between the phrases as long as the phrase that I just played. So if I play, however long, I do that, da-da-do-d-a-un-un-un-a-un-dda-da-da-da-da-da. You know, I'm, however long my played phrase is, my silent phrase has to be as long. Okay.

So, but they can be any length, even from the beginning in terms of the phrase. It can be long. They can be short. But if you play a long phrase, you have to put in a period of silence that's about equally as long. Yeah. You're going to try it? Yep. One, two, one, two, three.

And that game, if you try, you want to give a shot? Yeah. Give it a go. One, two, one, two, three. And here I'm singing it. It's tough. But that kind of restrictive practice, just hearing yourself do that, it reminds us and it puts in our mind's ear what it sounds like to have some space when we play phrases. And then you can just practice playing space.

So considering space part of our musical statement, right? And what might that sound like? So this is an artistic choice now. This could be like, I'm going to leave a long Miles Davisy length period of space as a choice, you know? Well, one thing I just want to note about that that I noticed that I think would be helpful for folks. As you're doing that, the exercise we just did, the negative space cancellation exercise. Yeah, yeah. I noticed what you did.

I think this is important. If you play a phrase that say like a three beat kind of phrase, so if it's like one, two, three, four. Bebe do bubup. That's be beba do bubub. The tendency would be be be. Ski-bado da. Ski-do-da-da-ba-da-ba. Which is fine.

Same beat. Yeah. There's no wrong with that. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're practicing this and you're like, I got it. Always be thinking of little ways to kind of go next level to challenge yourself. And I noticed what you did was on a three no phrase.

You were like, B-D-D-D-D up. Yeah. You started right on the next beat. So that's a good way to get out of that cookie cutter. Like every, because sometimes we'll be like, okay,

I'm not going to do a two-bar phrase like the first example. I'm not going to just do a two-bar phrase. But then sometimes people keep doing a two-bar phrase. they just play for six beats and then wait out the next like they start to segment everything in how the bars look on the page and i think that if you listen to great improvisers they rarely do that because they rarely practice like that you know what i mean it's just something to be aware of let's go out on let's go back to uh no greater love that today we did that yeah let's go out on that and let's practice this is another great way to practice space imagine that you're giving a speech

Imagine, you know, some of your favorite speakers, Martin Luther King, amazing public speaker. I was taught when I was giving a speech to imagine the entire audience in underwear. Is that what we're doing? You could do that. And that might help your playing. But for adding space, imagine that you're giving a monologue or a speech, that you're, you know, a public speaker or an actor.

And you are speaking for a very long time, just you. And you're not going to be speaking like this just without taking a breath, without taking a pause for effect and for just physical reasons, because we do have to breathe when you speak, right? So as pianist, we get into the typewriter mode, and that's a killer. A way to think about this is as a monologue, and like you're giving a speech,

and you're using that, you know, as you would see a great speaker paused for effect. You can do that as you play. Nice. Let's practice that. Cool. I'll go first, and then you got it. Okay.

Changes to no greater. I can get a baseline? Yeah. One? One. two, one, two, three, oh.