You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - All About Diminished Chords

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

It's another live edition of You'll Hear It where Peter and Adam take your questions - today, they take a question on when to use diminished chords, how to practice guitar for a whopping 8 hours, and the worst $28 beer Peter ever drank.Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Tuesday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Piano Guided Practice Session with Adam on YouTube4:00 PM - Open Studio Demo & Tour (register here!)8:00 PM - Listening Sesh with Peter and Adam on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

M2J what's up says smash the like button from Baghdad Iraq. That's what I'm talking about worldwide. You know what I'm saying? Big shout out to Baghdad. And yeah, hit that like button. It's not going to hurt you. It's not going to hurt you. It helps us spread the love.

Pay it forward, right? Now, this is going to be good because I think only I can put the comments on. We need to get this over to you next week. No, you got it. If you tell me. You put some comments on. You got to read them before you do because I'm at a bit of a delay here. Okay, got you.

Okay, here we go. So now we're getting into the meat of this situation. Janet asks, please, can you talk about the different uses of diminished chords? When are they really dominant 7 flat 9 chords and when are they not? Oh. So I think that they're diminished when the root. So what I'm playing here is G7. Just kind of a crappy root position situation, right?

root 7357 flat 9 so that's a flat 9 when you put the put the root on b that's it diminished right yeah yeah no yeah we i think we talked about this just trying to remember what we've said about this yeah it's the same it's the same thing right so this right if i if i have b d f and a flat B diminished

And I just put this G way down low just as you were doing These are the same thing They actually function a lot in the same way Like this goes to C minor Yeah

And this goes to C minor Man your voices are as crappy as mine today Well yeah I'm not Fred Hershing it I'm definitely just giving some basic bump But it's also the same scale Just starting at different places B half hole

for the diminished G whole half sorry B whole half my bad B whole half and G half whole So really when you see a diminished seven that means it's whole half starting from the root of that diminished seven

When you see dominant seven flat nine That's half whole starting from the root of the But they are really the same A lot of the same notes Not exactly but a lot of the same You know, they're twins, you know, they're fraternal twins. Kissing cousins that we stay down to the south.

Yeah. Yeah. We also call that brother and sister, a little inside southern Joe. Hey, hey, hey, I'm from Florida, lived in Louisiana. My parents from North Carolina. Okay. So I would just add one other thing. Sometimes I'll think about the same example.

Like when it's diminished, B diminished, diminished. And we go to that major seventh, which is part of that same diminished scale, half whole, whole half, depending on if you're thinking about it from the G or from the B. that if you layer that on the G and the bass is a sharp 9 so that's a little bit of a difference even though they're complementary and they're both in their flat 9 or sharp 9 but that to me gives it more of that diminished and if it was a true beat diminished it might go up to c minor major 7 or minor 6 yeah you know it's a small small little thing but I think important um cool thanks for the question janet so okay let me let me finish janet's second question when are

they really dominant 7 flat 9 chords and when are they not so when she sees a b diminished yeah when can she just assume that it's a g7 so actually janet never never right yeah it is always usually especially in like modern real books yeah that is meant to be a diminished just know that it's very similar in function so like if you say for instance if you see b flat major 7 to be diminished to c minor 7 to f7 right and we have this over and over again so you say you You wouldn't, you could substitute out of G7 for sure, but you wouldn't assume that. You would just do a B diminished, but knowing that it's really functioning the same way as that G7 flat 9. That's it.

Cool, cool. So actually I threw up another question by accident from Janet, but we're going to go with this too. I know you guys think why are we giving Janet so many questions? Well, that was an accident. Oh, Janet's great, though. Yeah, Janet's great. Yeah. I'm not watching this live, saving it for the podcast version.

But how much am I missing? How edited is the podcast compared with the YouTube live? How are you asking questions if you're not watching live? That's incredible. But maybe she's just typing them in, but like, I'm not listening. Honestly, I'm not seeing Janet's questions in the chat. So I'm wondering where you're getting them from. I have, I don't, they're showing up in this, this program you told me about.

But would you want to answer that one? Because I actually, I don't even know. So I'm not saving it for the podcast version, but how much am I missing? How edit is the podcast? It's not really at all. Andrew just breaks it up. He's not editing anything out.

So it's the same version. Okay. Yeah. So there you go. Yeah. Okay, here's from Yao, maybe a different Yao. We have another Yao friend who often shows up here. How to plan eight hours of guitar practice routine.

How to organize this time. Eight hours of guitar practice. Adam, you're a guitarist. Don't. We stump you that? I've never practiced the guitar for eight hours in a row. Because you kind of view it a little bit as a second. It is a second age.

It is literally just a songwriting. that I, it's ended up on its way to gigs. So somehow. So, yeah. Well, this shouldn't be that different than how to plan eight hours of guitar practice. I mean, again, what you want to do, first of all, is take this in 50 to 90 minute chunks. Don't try to practice eight hours in a row because after about two hours, it's going to be diminishing returns. Take lots of breaks.

Make sure that your breaks planned in where you are not thinking about music and maybe just section it off into tunes, scales, rhythm work. Yeah. You know, that's what I would do. Maybe composition and performance at the end. Yeah. I would say I think the only thing that's necessarily different for different instruments for practicing for large chunks or really any kind of practice concepts would be any kind of physicality. Obviously, if you're playing a wind instrument, you have to think about your breath and the physicality that that demands. For guitar, I think, you know, there's always physical challenges and just not even challenge, just physical situations.

for every instrument right so you want to be taking those breaks at at at at places but the main thing that's the same from all instrument is the mental side right so once you've kind of captured what you want to do in terms of how the physicality of the instrument is going to affect your practice routine most of it is about the mental side when we talked about earlier of like acknowledging that maybe 60 to 90 minutes is going to be your your peak time of productivity in your practice, a lot of it, like this can take years, if certainly not months, and it can certainly be years if you're younger, where you get to the point where you're able to even begin to identify that on it and to predict that.

Like, like, there's nothing wrong with practicing eight hours, and I didn't mean to suggest earlier. I mean, everybody that knows me for years, knows that I'm a big proponent of practice, practice. I'm just like, you can't practice too much. But you can practice a lot. It's not necessarily too much, but you can practice too much without hitting. that peak amount. Now that peak amount might be 20 minutes something. Yeah, yeah. It might even be five minutes, but you've got to start to figure out once you're going next level with your practice

so that you make sure that that is your most uninterrupted. And I don't just mean by your phone buzzing, but I mean by like your brain being most attuned to be able to maximize what's going on if you're composing something, if you're ranging, if you're working on a specific technical challenge that's like overarching and more important than anything else you're doing. You've got to make sure that that is compartmentalized into that time, at least that you have the best chance of it being, you know, within that, that optimized time. So I would say when you're planning for eight hours, it's almost like, you know, try to plan the meat of that, wherever that's going to be around what you're really, one of those big two things like you talked about, Adam for the week. You know, make sure that it's based around that so that you're hitting that so that there's nothing wrong with practicing eight hours and only one hour of it was super productive. That's great because sometimes you have to practice eight hours to get to that.

I mean, if it was as easy as just like I'm going to get into it and as soon as I start, it's going to be, I'm going to be on 11 and then 60 minutes later, I'm done. That's great too if you can do that. But you have to kind of feel it or feel around. And then you want to be doing stuff that's fun and enjoyable for most of that time anyway so that you're enjoying the process. So that even when you're not making huge progress, you're having a good time. You're acclimating your ears.

You're doing some good physical stuff that's helping to improve. But you might think about too with the eight hours thing. building up to that if you if you haven't maybe you are maybe you have built up to the eight hours because if you're you know if you're doing eight hours and one hour is focused that's fine but at that point you might consider working on your concentration yeah a little bit you know so that you're you can you can extend that out without having because you're not going to have eight hours for the rest of your life probably right because i'm thinking like really i mean if you're If you were saying, like, I had eight hours to practice,

I would recommend probably about 90 minutes to two hours of that just being technical practice, just on a percentage basis. You know, because I feel like if you practice four hours, you might want to do 45 minutes, even an hour. I would certainly think about doing technical. The thing is two hours, you can't practice technique on any instrument for two hours straight. You've got to take a break well before that

or you're going to hit some physical limitations, most likely. So, you know, there's a limit to any of these things that you can do. Now, when you get into like composition and that area, that's an arranging, which I know you've done a lot of this, Adam. That's what you can really extend for hours and hours with some really good productivity. Because to compose something, you might spend seven hours of just failure. Like, oh, I've got this great thing and you write it. And that's two hours. And then you look at it.

You're like, oh, that's a Charlie Parker tune. Oops. Yeah, I've done that. Bro, we are the world once. Man, and you felt great. You were like, oh, my God, this is going to be a hit. Yeah. And I was like, oh, I just wrote, We Are the World in 2012.

How hell's going on? It was a hit. You were right. So, yeah, hopefully that helped a little yow. Let's jump to, well, just a nice comment here from Jan or Jan, most likely. Regarding diminished chords, Barry Harris talked about moving a note from diminished chords to create dominant seventh chords. And that's kind of what you were alluding to. And yeah, we should definitely give props to the master, Barry Harris, whose concept on

this is truly masterful and I still don't understand for some reason. But I will one day. Okay, here's a good question. A little bit of a throwback to our earlier check-ins. You ready for this? Yeah, let's do it. This is from A practice, like first initial A, last name practice. How much beer slash wine do you guys drink?

Whoa. Smiley face with laughter. Okay, why are you trying to pigeonhole this as like beer and wine guys? Why can't we be fancy bourbon guys or like champagne or champippo? I mean, the truth is we're all of those things guys. I know. Well, you're very disappointing in this area because why don't you answer this one first? Because you have a very interesting perspective. No, I haven't had anything to drink this entire pandemic. So I'm pretty much giving it up at this point. But before that, it was quite a bit.

Yeah. But I preferred wine. Yeah. But you're very knowledgeable on beer. I went through a big beer phase. Should I tell them the... In my 30s, I discovered wine. The Belgian most expensive can of beer I've ever... I can't believe you didn't like that, man. That was amazing.

I can't believe you? Okay, can I tell the story? Yeah, go ahead. Real quick. Okay. Yeah. So Adam, we were going to eat. I was going to meet somebody at a great restaurant here.

Are they still open? I hope they are. I think they are. I think so. Ruben? Were you meaning Rubin? Was it Ruben or Sean? I can't remember.

Maybe both of them. But what's the name of the place? I haven't been there in so long now. I wanted to shout them out. Olio. Of course. Olio. Over on Tower Grove here, great.

Kind of Israeli. restaurant israeli inspired delicious delicious um but i said i was going over there to grab some grab a drink or some some dinner or whatever we were doing and adam was like oh i'm not going to be able to make he's like but make sure you get this great what's the name of it uh i'm gonna forget which one it was but it was a belgian sour beer in a can and he's like but he tells me the name he texted to me but you got to ask him for it because they don't have a lot of it's kind of a known thing yeah you had i forget what it was it's one of the famous belgian sour's someone on here is probably going to know it.

And we didn't actually have access to it here in St. Louis, but this restaurant had gotten a hold of a couple of cases. And so they had it, but you had to ask them because they just had been using it in a dish. Right, right. It was like a whole thing. And he's like, they only have it and it's in a can. I was like, ah, man, this guy, get a can.

When I get a PBR or whatever. So I asked him for it. Probably would have liked the PBR more. And so it comes out and it was not good. It was amazing. It was not amazing. Sour. Sauer really, really, I think, described it nicely.

But basically, not only was it not good, it was $28. And so I kind of complained. I didn't really complain. I was like, well, I mean, I asked for it. It was from behind the counter. I was like, thanks, Adam. Appreciate that, man. Yeah.

You know, I'm a fancy guy. He is a fancy guy. All right, let's get back to some music questions. How about that? Sergio, okay, this is a question that we get a lot over the years and is an important issue from, Sergio as pianist, how do you interact with guitar players in a comping situation? So I'll just throw out a couple of things.

Every situation is different. There's no, like, it really comes down to number one, listen. You have to listen to what the guitarist is doing. I mean, obviously with pianists and guitar, you have a situation where, you know, you can really clash, but I look at it as just an opportunity to really blend. You know, it's like a smile is just a frown turned upside down. You ever heard that one, Adam? I have, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, take advantage of your colors, Sergio. Make sure that you are taking full advantage of the range. Yes. Because we have notes that the guitar can't hit. Right. And so we can work our way from the ends. And, you know, just be very mindful of what the guitar is playing. That's not to say that you both can't play thick chords at the same time.

You totally can. Right. But there's more to it than that. Right, right. Yeah. And I think, too, I love that, you know, the range thing. But it's a great opportunity to really listen. And like you got to learn the guitar at least a little bit.

So that you understand how they put voicings together, then you can understand, you can start to guess until you can actually hear exactly what they're playing. So like if you can't hear what they're playing, you're not going to be able to fit in with them except for going out of their range. So once you understand how voices are put together on a guitar as opposed to the piano,

like there's just certain things that guitarists can't do that we can do certain ways. So once you start learning that, you'll better be able, you'll be able to have a smaller range of possible, voicings when you hear one to be able to figure out what it is and then it's just becomes a matter of trial and error but if you're listening don't be one of those where it's like okay would you want a cop or you want me to cop no i mean although there's times when that works and if the music calls for

that but don't just do that because you're lazy or scared yeah yeah although if you're lazy or scared don't play yeah yeah no you're gonna have to figure out eventually and it does there is a way that it works really really well yeah we're let's get back up towards the top because we did paul makes a good point that we skipped some i'm sorry man i'm learning this thing up top, is there a good way to practice hearing lines or phrases that are outside of the changes? Wait, let me find this. What's the name? Paul. He's a longer question between. Oh, Paul. Okay. I see. I'm not cool. I got it. I got it. I'm all over that. I'm all over that. Let me read it so I understand it too. Is there a good way to practice hearing lines or phrases

that are outside of the changes or is playing out more of a technical concept, moving a shape up or down? So that's a good way to think about it. I would say that important way that I've thought about this and probably practiced it at one point to a degree is to try to combine those. So yeah, it's a technical concept, but don't just think about it. It's not technical as in like something that you need to learn, work on your technique. Moving a shape up or down, but it needs to be a melodic idea based on a shape. It can't just be a shape. So in other words, if you're, you know, if the shape is this over a minor, you don't want to get into a thing

where it's like I am playing out right but if it's so I'm basing it on a shape and really for me I never feel that constricted by the shape is just the jumping off point but even as you're practicing it

and working on that hear it melodically so that you're shifting of it the connector becomes the melody because the trick to playing out is being able to play melodic Like let the melody and likely the rhythm, although the rhythm can be something that you play with too, but the melodic content be the connector between when you're in and when you're out. The harmony is going to be out.

So something has to link it together unless you're just going to go totally random with everything. Yeah. But the melody has to be strong. And so a shape on its own is not necessarily melodic. It has to be linked up with a rhythm and some kind of turn in the, you know, something that turns that shape into a melody. Yeah. And actually, the sort of sense. simpler you can play this, the more effective it can be. I just did a GPS here on YouTube on Friday

on a Brad Meldow lick on Solar, which is all about Brad playing out and how he approaches it. And so the lick itself, you know, it does two bars of C minor seven. And then, you know, a two five to F. And instead of F, it goes to F sharp. You know, everything else is in F, but he's implying F sharp minor. because it's going to F minor eventually, right? Yep. And so when you practice that, your instinct is to be like, you know, on the 2-5, which is fine. But the simpler you can make it, the more melodic you can make it, the more effective going out actually is.

So people are expecting that they get, but there's melody being created there even though you're taking it out. Yeah, great stuff.