You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - "Aha" Moments Through The Years

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

Adam and Peter talk about their favorite "Aha!" moments that opened new pathways in music. 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

Hey, Peter. Hey, what's up? It has been a minute until we've speak into the pipe. Until? Or since? Since we've, wait. I don't even know what speak pipe is.

It's been so long. I know. Well, we're going to have to catch you up. Let's do it. I'm Adam Ennis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Music advice coming at you.

Coming at today, we are sponsored by Open Studio. Peter's just left. He's gone. Where are you going, man? I didn't check my phone. Sorry. All right. Don't put the camera on me.

Good. Yeah. I'm checking my phone. Go ahead. We're sponsored by Open Studio. a feature today, feature, feature, feature, that we haven't done in a while, we're going to listen to a couple of speak pipes. We get a lot of speak pipes. So if you want to leave us a voicemail, and if you're new to the show, you might not know this. You can do this. You go to You'll

Hearit.com. Yes. And you can leave us a speak pipe. Do it. It's been, you know, it's funny. We've done 1100. We've done 1,100 episodes of this show now. What? Yeah, 1100. 1,100. How many are good? What's our batting average? I think we had 17 or so that are about good. Is that get us in the MLB? No, it's really low average. But we have sort of in peaks and valleys used this feature speak pipe and taken voicemails. Sometimes we do a lot of them.

Sometimes we hardly touch it at all. It just kind of depends on how we're feeling if we're going to try new stuff. We've been listening to a lot more music lately, which I think is good. Translation. Caleb, Adam, and I all forgot about speak pipes. We totally forgot about it.

But now we're back in the saddle. Well, this is what happens. Then when we forget about it for a couple months, we usually get a ton of good ones, and so we get more inspired. So we're going to take a couple here. Our first one is from an open studio pro member named Dailen. Shout out to Dailen. Dailen is a great member of our community, Peter.

He is always participating in things like the Piano Masters Club and in the repertoire club. He is an exciting young musician, so let's check out Dailin. Hey, Peter and Adam. I hope you're weeks going well. I have been an open studio pro member for about five or six months now, and in that time, I've had so many beautiful, epic musical revelations, just really big aha moments in regards to my perspective on music and my approach to my instrument and how I see my instrument. And I thought it would be really cool to listen to you guys about some of your biggest aha moments that you've had growing as a musician, whether that was when you were young or maybe even some that you're currently going through right now or have just experienced. Anyway, I thought it would be a cool topic for you guys to talk about and I'd be stoked to hear your response.

Thanks. Thank you so much, Daly. Yeah, I mean, there's there's so many in my musical life, Peter, on this journey that I've had. Can I, I'm going to, how long if we try to name each others? Oh, okay. Well, just one. I'm going to see if I can get one. Okay, sure.

I'm just going to give you a hint. Okay. Is the first word like indicative of a waterway that is perhaps in a low-lying, area and has a swampy swampish feel to it i.e. swamp rat. Oh. Yes. An estuary from secrets. Surrounded by. Yeah, totally. That's definitely an aha moment. Yeah, for sure. Look at him light up. He's lighting up like a Christmas tree. Yeah, let's listen to it right now. He's lighted up like a tacky Christmas tree in South St. Louis. So true. Wait, can I say that? Yeah, no, I, that was definitely in a, of course you could say tacky Christmas.

Yeah. That's part of my whole identity of tacky Christmas trees in South St. Louis, buddy. Right. And cool, and long, uh, cool 100s. So part of my life. Long walks along river to pair as it's, as it's a cool one hundred. As a estuary, speaking of swamps, my dad drives by in a muscle car for sure. Totally. Um, so yes. Okay. No, but, but go ahead. I don't want to put words in your mouth. Well, there's, that was one of them. There's, I love that when, I mean, isn't that an aha moment when we just get a look on our face of joy? Just, oh, yeah. The feeling of it, the recollection of it, the connection to the music. I love that. I love that. I, I, I love that. I

wasn't even thinking more of like music that I've heard that's an aha but it's such it's so true you ever listen to something and you're like I didn't know we could do that yeah like I remember like unlocking oh yeah it's like a key like a master key to a whole area I'll never forget actually the first time I heard um Matrix on now he sings now he sobs I've never heard a piano sound like that right and I just remember being like wait wait wait wait wait wait like you can make a piano sound like it's almost like a like a marimba or something yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so percussive and clean and going up way up here. I remember the first time I heard Amad Jamal, but not for me.

Yes. And thinking like, wait a second, hold on. Stop the, because I was so into bebop at this point and playing a lot, you know, and like long lines or whatever. And I was like, stop. Everybody stop what they're doing. Has everybody heard this? Turned that everybody had heard it, but me.

But remember thinking like, oh, my gosh, like this guy plays a phrase and then he just strolls for like 30 seconds. And then we'll like repeat this phrase in shape it. It's really mind-blowing. The first time really getting into Monk, I didn't understand it the first time I heard it. Of course, I was a teenager, had no context for it. But as I listened to more bebop and listen

to what was happening around it, first time I heard Monk and was just like, this is so genius, like the way that he approaches rhythm, the way he approaches composition, the way he approaches, the whole spirit of how he's playing music is what I wanna be a part of. Yeah, I mean, isn't that what it's about though? I think all those things you mentioned,

like the aha moments, It's like as a musician, it's about, there's some element of unlocking possibilities. Like what you said about Matrix. It's like, wow, I didn't, it's like something like the blinders are taken off. 100%. But I think there is a combination of what some might perceive to be nostalgia also, but not in the way necessarily. I think it is, aha moments are a little bit different than like, oh, I remember that summer of my first true love when such and such song was playing. Ribbon in the sky.

You know, it's like, you'll always connect that with, it is different, right? This is like revealing a world. And it doesn't, I mean, for me, it's not even specific to, like, these jazz musicians. Like, I remember listening to Genesis or Phil Collins. Is it Genesis or Phil Collins, hold on my heart, you know that song? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold on my heart. Yeah.

And, like, where the bridge goes on that. And I was just like, I didn't even know you could do this with a pop song. Like, it's like such a revelation sometimes when you're listening to music and people open up these possibilities. And that, you know, we're talking about an 80s, pop hit, you think have these restrictions, and they are working within a framework, but the way they do it, you're like, oh my gosh, the world is our oyster. Yeah, it's like, we can do whatever we want. And I think depending on where you are in your sort of musical development, different things, because you're talking about pop songs, like, when I was really, I mean, pretty early on, like,

trying to not even just figure out jazz, just trying to figure out music. I was playing like classical music, but I didn't really know, you know, I knew a little bit of like kind of harmony, classical harmony, but I remember DeBarge, L. DeBarge had a record, where they had a bunch of really cool records like early 80s but even though like I'd listen to a lot of like Michael Jackson Stevie Wonder and thriller was big like for some reason DeBarge you're talking about going to the bridge like because their stuff was pretty complex for me especially at that time where it's like damn I want to figure out what they're doing yeah and then like it's weird like some of that even unlock more things than later on like felonious monk for sure which did very like more sophisticated

kind of piano specific jazz piano specific things yeah also but some of the stuff I'm even thinking like Stevie Wonder ribbon in the sky for me I was like make a piano just a solo piano can have the sound like at the intro um where you can just seemingly get the attention of everybody yeah you know what I mean like you can hold the audience in your hand totally even before Stevie comes in you know and then I remember like figuring those chords and I was like man these aren't that hard I mean it took me a minute yeah these aren't that hard but it's like how do you get that vibe you know it was and it's not that different than like chikeree on matrix and like for me that was was never a track that had an aha moment for me. I think just because I didn't interact,

I didn't intersect with me at the right time for it to be. Later on, it did. It's so funny how it's timing. But it wasn't one I would name. Yeah. Timing for aha moments is everything. Exactly. Because you have to be at a certain place for it, for you to even know why it's important that you understand this. You can be too early. You can be too late. Exactly. Yeah. Well, and you, and sometimes you can't see what you should be seeing. We, Caleb and I were just talking about this new Nintendo game, The Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom. And, It's based off of this other game called Breath of Wild, Peter. You guys have talked about video games with me.

Well, you're a huge video game fan, but you're such an expert. We get intimidated talking about it. No, but so it's an open world game, and I just saw this video on how they solved this problem of having an open world game, and they did it with these landscapes, so that there are all these places you can go, but there are these mountains in the game. And so you can't see everything from where you are. You can see a little bit, and you can actually see little clues in every shot has something that's of interest, but not everything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's not until you get to a vista where you can kind of see, oh, that is so cool. That's where I'm heading. Like, this is the point. And I think it's a similar metaphor in that, like, sometimes you don't even know why something is so cool until you've sort of reached the vista of like, oh, this is why that debarge thing is so cool. Right. It's because of this. And, you know, it doesn't even have to be as old as 80s music.

Like, I remember the first time I heard Sullivan Fortin'U. with Roy Hargrove here at the Bistro. I had forgot that you could articulate a piano in that way. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's a piano you had played a lot. That's a piano I'd play all the time. It's a musician who's 15 years younger than me.

And I was just like, oh my gosh, this is great. The first time I heard Jacob Collier talk about tuning using alternate, like not just 440, 442, but tuning chords in a way that's against, you know, the... I'm still not ready for that. Dude, I was like, who? told this kid he's allowed to do this. But it's so inspiring and just like, and it sounds amazing too.

You know, it's pretty cool. About that video game just so I know, because I am in sure, I'm behind you guys on this, but just let me know. Do you have a Nintendo? Should I get, what kind of cartridge do I get? Atari, Nintendo or Sega? Which one should I get? What's it? It's available on all three? It's on. Good.

Download it. Nice, nice. On your Sega. Boom, boom. No, that's great. So some other ones that I'm thinking of that might be, well, I'll start off with one or continue with one that's probably I know I've mentioned before

he's a huge aha moment for me at the piano in life just aha in that I want to do that not knowing what that was but that's Herbie Hancock's introduction to Stella by Starlight on My Funny Valentine Live at Lincoln Center of course

with Miles Davis Quintet That was such an aha moment very similar and I guess yeah a little bit later but to hearing the Stevie Wonder Ribbon in the Sky intro like how can the audience How can everybody just be so focused on something so beautiful?

Like I am, not how. I want to know how. And I love that. And I play piano. Wow, there's some, like, that was always an aha moment for me when it was like, wow, wait, I could be connected with that somehow. It was never like, oh, I know I can do that. But it was like, the piano can do that. What about any theoretical or like nuts and bolts aha moments?

I'm thinking now, I'm old enough and I've been around. And I think about this kind of theoretical stuff for my job here at Open Studio and Open Studio Pro. I have like conflicting ahas. Like I remember when I realized, oh, these chords are built from a certain scale. So like if I have this C7, you know, flat nine, natural 13, sharp 11, that's built from the diminished scale, right?

And then not a year ago. I was reading this book by this arranger in the 50s, Russell Garcia, who was actually doing this stuff along with like Barry Harris. and it's not based on a scale. It's based off of what we can now call it OpenC2 Pro, the hinge concept of like a 1,357, and things are moving based on this thing.

And I'm like, that's a new aha. Like I was kind of taught sort of, I think, from the 70s, Mark Levine, every scale is representing a... Right. And that's not how... It's not the way it has to be. It's not the way it has to be.

It's a way it can be. Right. But it's not the way it has to be. And that was a new aha, just this year of just like, Oh my gosh. It doesn't have to be associated with scale at all. In fact, sometimes that can be very liberating.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Cool. So what was some other ones that we? Oh, I was thinking, oh, actually this is kind of, I think, along those lines. And I love like when you can learn about theory and have a theoretical aha moment like that after you kind of understand. Maybe you can even play something, maybe understand how it feels, how it sounds. But that was Sir Duke, Stevie Wonder. Yeah, so good.

Where I was like, I don't know why it took me so long, but I was like, oh, that's a pentatonic scale. We, you know. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, then I was like, penitonic. I never thought about it because I didn't, I knew a lot of scale, not a lot, but I knew some scales because I'd been practicing since I was young

in a classical concept. But it was pretty much all, not even like diminished scales. It was just like major, minor, melodic minor, ascending, harmonic minor, like whatever was in McFarren. That's what I do. They were no pentatonic scales in McFerran. And so I would hear that panatonic. And I was like, you know how like when you're younger, you're kind of afraid to ask about something?

But it was like before the internet. So you couldn't really find anything out unless you went to the library. There was a lot of just guessing and you're confident with it. Yeah. But then, you know, you're at that stage. You're like a teenager, preteen or whatever. And you're like, I don't want to look stupid. So I always thought like the pent.

I knew like a pentagram and like Dungeons and Dragons. Like the demonic. You thought it was a devil's thing. But I, but it was a little unclear about it. Interesting. So it was a different time. And so I just was like, let me stay away from that. Not that I was, heck, grope in an overly religious household, but.

Speaking of Stevie, I remember being obsessed with chord changes like this, you know, that kind of thing. With this sound. And I remember the aha of realizing, oh, all the core changes that I like, they're in one key, and then they borrow from the key a minor third up. Isn't that interesting? You know what I mean? Like, that's a thing that is so prevalent in the music I love. I'm trying to think when I first heard, because I've always loved that.

I mean, use this, like, in a rate. I mean, just, like, spontaneously. If you think you of C major, yeah, a lot of the compositions and the sound I like are borrowed from E flat major, and then you go mix and match between C major. Yeah, well, that's just the, what I call the reverse dopio relative minor. So it's like it was E flat major, it'd be C minor, but it's actually C major. But I've always loved that one to minor for it.

I'm trying to remember the aha moment when I first. I played it with somebody, and we just, I mean, I'm sure I played it a bunch, but you're not like you do something and then it becomes codified for you. I mean, I remember transcribing Jimmy Requoy's space cowboy when I was 15, and it kind of does that thing. Man, that stuff sticks with you. It does. And like, sometimes you look back and you're like,

that wasn't necessarily even the greatest thing traditionally that I ever studied, but it had the greatest impact. I was listening to something that had the influence of something I would later discover, but, you know, when you're a kid, you're just... Yeah. I remember when I realized, and not even like from a very specific theoretical, standpoint or even technical standpoint that there was a specific rhythm to that, that it wasn't.

Like that playing it with the actual funk precision and like you hear like Mike Clark and the way like the back beats come. That if you fit it right within that, and I guess I wasn't looking at the, I wasn't looking at any truck because I heard it all the record. But it was just something about like when I like to get right in there. And I played that. It was like the biggest aha moment than somebody explaining, well, to be funky, you have to understand 16th notes instead of 8th notes. It wasn't that, but it was just something about hearing the way it was on the record and then connecting with that. Yeah, that's another big aha moment for me is when I was a young musician. I played a lot of dance music.

I played in some bands that were like James Brown Parliament cover bands. Yeah. And played all around this area, you know, the Midwest. And for mostly clubs, people dancing. Right. And that was a big, like watching how music can move people. Right. And how, like, how important it is to stay in the groove.

And if you don't move, you might get shot. Well, it's just like, I mean, if you don't want to. They're not going to dance. Exactly. And you're not doing your job. Like, so, like, just hanging out in a pocket and how important that is. I remember we were in eighth grade. Did you guys just have like, maybe this was over by them, but like house parties.

Like, people would have like parties in their base. If their parents would let them have it, you know, sometimes like be out of town or whatever. Yeah, totally. But I remember we got hired, but just meant, like, I got my sister to drive me over with the roads to a young lady's house in U-City. It was kind of friend group or whatever. It's like, well, I'm at a party. Would you play jazz for those people?

Well, this is the problem. We got there. We only knew a couple of jazz. We were like a fledgling jazz man. Who wasn't? Chris Thomas. I love it. Ever heard of it?

Jeremy Davenport on trumpet. It's great. David Berger on drugs. So we're down in the basement and like, you know, we got a bunch of like pre-pubescent. I don't know. I guess we were pre-pubrescent at that point, eighth grade. Whatever. Did you play like some?

We played a chameleon for like a house. We're straight. This was one of the only, like, we were, like, backbeat songs that we, like, we kind of knew Stevie stuff. We didn't really know it well enough to play. You didn't know any Wham or anything? No. I mean, we were like, I mean, we kind of knew all that stuff. We were very good, I'm gonna tell you. We were like a C minus jazz man, which made us like a D minus. But I remember playing that and then like, come on, we got a groove because like, you know, all the girls are kind of like, you start to play. And if you sold it too much, they just sort of drift away from you. And it was, it was, that was trial by fire. That was great. Yeah, in my high school in High Ridge, you just had to know just a ton of Steve Miller band, which is funny because it was in the 90s. So a little behind. That's good. Well, this was fun. Why do we save the next speakpipe for the next episode?

Let's do it. Okay, until next time. You'll hear it.