You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Arranging for Solo Piano

Episode Date: August 2, 2019

On today's episode, Peter and Adam answer a SpeakPipe on what to do when arranging for piano. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Sign up for You'll Hear It Premium to access our SpeakPipe hotline! Go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/yhi for more info.Like those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet 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, Peter. Hey. Now that we're premium, do you think maybe we could also get like a La Coy sponsorship? I hope that. Well, this is good. That's the premium version.

This is the normal version. Snooks. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hearer podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. It's up with your janky carbonated water over there, man. The Snooks brand, eh? Well, schnux, the friendly stores in town.

Uh-huh. This is a very inside St. Louis reference right now. Very inside. Since 1939. This water tastes like it's been fermenting since 1939. I have the nice name brand LaCroy Orange over here. I'm just saying, LeCoyeux. But I'm just like, is Shooks a local or regional grocery chain?

Do they really have a water factory? Are they just relabeling? No, it's one of those things where, like, you know, every grocery store around the country gets the same one from the same bottling plant in Wisconsin or something. And they put their own label on it, and that's it. And so, yeah, there you go. So enjoy that. Yeah.

Today we're talking about arranging for solo piano. Oh, we're not talking about sparkling water? We were. But hey, before we get into that, this podcast is sponsored by Open Studio, but we're also launching something very exciting this week. You'll hear at Premium. It's $10. You get access to a bunch of archives. You get access to our private Facebook groups.

You can leave us speak pipes, which we're kind of on our last speak pipes here for non-premium members. That's right. They slipped in under the radar. You can get a ton of bonus content. We're going to have our premium episodes over at the piano, you know, some worksheets from those things, some PDFs. Full access to the archive. That's right. Going back all the way to episode number one.

Do you remember episode number one? No. Well, you're going to have to buy a premium membership, my friend. I've blocked out like the first 200. Giveaways, Q&A's. Yeah, giveaways. You can get a vial of Andrew's tears from editing. Wow.

Yeah, that's a little bit of sec. That's weird. So go to you'll hear it.com to check out. You'll hear it premium. Get on for the charter member. That charter membership you can get on. But do it quick. because we're not keeping.

This is really for the diehards, the everyday listeners that have been asking for this, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you a premium member of any podcast? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. No, but you can save. But now I'm learning about it, I want to be. For our diehards, for our long-time listeners,

you could save basically 50% off of membership forever. So get on board of that now. So we have a speak pipe here from Mellie. Let's check it out. Hi, Peter. Hi, Adam. This is Melody from Malaysia. I really love all of your podcast.

they are truly amazing. I would like to ask a question. How to arrange or finding different textures when comes to solo piano. And also when it comes to improvisation, how do I solo it? Do I just play the bass, no, and comping? And also, like, how do I practice it? Should I, like, practice in different textures or just keep finding the right sound? Yeah, so that's all.

hope to hear from you guys. That's a great question, Melody, from Malaysia. This is awesome, man. Listeners all over the world. I know. Killing. It's, thank you so much for listening, and your support. It means a lot to us, no matter where you're from. We had a lot of California love last week.

Great to have a little love from Malaysia. But wonderful question, melody. I mean, this, look, this is the thing about this music, jazz and piano. You know, how lucky are we to be playing this instrument at this time? For sure. With this wonderful music. For sure. I think all of us, this is what unites us,

and that's why we're listening from around the world and we're talking about this stuff. And so we're honored, you know, to even, that you would listen and to come to us with these questions. So we'll try to do right by giving you at least one little, one or two little things that'll help with you practice. Hopefully. But I think, actually, I was just writing down a couple of things that you said,

Melody. I think you may be on to some really good ideas already for your practice. You mentioned about, like, practicing with just the bass note and comping. I love doing that. And that's part of the whole, like, really breaking things down, simplifying them enough to really being able to hear those textures that you're asking about and work on them one at a time, really work on your solo piano. I mean, look, feel is so important for solo piano. And it's so easy for us to get sidetracked on, you know, being able to play more complicated things and voicings and left hand, right hand and counterpoint and, you know, independence of the hands. And all that stuff's important.

But what's wrong with just some really good feel? nice bass line, little two feel. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. And I mean, that really showcases what the instrument and what we bring to the table, hopefully, as we build up our skills to be able to do it at the piano. I mean, how lucky are we to play an instrument

that you can actually kind of exemplify that? I mean, you talk about saxophone players that are amazing. They'd love to be able to do that. And only a couple of them, like, you think about like Joe Henderson or John Coltrane or something that can kind of replicate those bass lines and comedy. I mean, that's amazing. But on the piano, it's just like, we can do that.

What it's meant for. It's what it's meant for. For sure. And that's, but what goes along with that, lots of kind of possibilities and availability that we have with this instrument is a lot of responsibility

to really nail it. So that's why it's a great way to practice and really concentrate on that feel. With great piano power comes great piano responsibility. That's right. That's right. Yoda said that, right?

Yeah. I would say first... Shout out to Yoda! First and foremost, melody, exactly what Pete said. You want to make sure that everything feels right. No matter what you're practicing, that's the most important thing.

The feel of it is the most important thing. But if I were you and I wanted to really get the most out of my solo piano practice, I would actually start with the baseline in my left hand and a melody in my right hand. Little counterpoint action. A little counterpoint action, right, two voices, bass and melody, root and melody. And then we add in that third zone. This is our infamous now, three zone concept. That's right.

Zone one is the root. Zone two is the melody. And that third zone is split between. your two hands, right? This could be, we could think about this as the Malaysia. This is the, what do you call it? What's the ring around the earth? The equator?

The equator, exactly. You know Malaysia's right on the equator. Oh, yeah, yeah. So the first, the treble zone is kind of the North America or the Northern Hemisphere. Everything's America with you. I'm sorry. So centric. Northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere, and then we've got the Malaysia.

We've got that equator. Equator. That's our third zone. And that's what your two hands split between them can cover comping, independent both rhythmically and harmonically from what's going on. So if you have, if you're playing Autumn Lee, he was one of the 17 great tunes we mentioned earlier in the week. That you got to know.

You got to know. You can do the melody with your right hand, the root with your left hand, and comp for yourself with the two hands on the inside, like thumb, index finger, middle finger. That activity, that practice can get you so far. That can get you so far. That's right.

And especially when you're combining that with really concentrating and practicing your feel. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? So like that's that's. Two feel. Start with a two feel. Two feel.

And then even like, you know, as you're so called, you know, mastering or even getting better the different feels, there's always a different feel that you could do. Yeah. But whatever it is, you're really thinking about that. So you're keeping how you're comping and even as we, you know, you mentioned about texture. I want to kind of zone in on that in a minute. But you're never getting too. complicated with what you're doing in those three zones or even two zones that you're not

feeling in control and concentrating on the field and really prioritizing the feel even it's better to have everything else simple and just slowly build that up and don't don't like build that up and then say i'm going to go back and kind of work on the field no we're always like that's our north star that's our north star or i guess if you're in the southern hemisphere is it a south star i don't know but that's you know what the The good thing about this, the good news about that statement is, is that if you are feeling good, you don't have to play anything too complicated. You can play very simply and get away with it.

If it feels good, you can just play extremely simply, and it's going to be very, very effective, and you're going to like the way you sound. Yeah, and I think that's a great byproduct of practicing like this. So, like, we're really focusing on this, and that's kind of like almost a self-discovery, I think you go through as, you know, any musician, but especially solo piano

because we have this ability to control and complete the whole vibe. We can do so much, so much power there. So as you start to discover, wow, because my skills in terms of feel and being able to bring out the melody and have a different texture for that middle zone and a different texture for that bottom zone,

that's actually more complicated than it seems. So as your ability to control those through that really regimented slow and thoughtful practice, then you also are gaining at the same time almost like subconsciously you're gaining the confidence to play less because your feel is so good. Then you're like, oh, I can just chill out. I can just relax.

Everything that I play is just like falling into place. And you get into that kind of flow state in that zone where everything is just happening. But when you go back and think about it, you're like, wow, I didn't play everything that I could. But it's okay. It's actually great. You know, I just played what was needed. And then another byproduct, then everything starts lining up because then you're actually playing stuff that you can connect with the audience. because you're inviting them into your playing

because you're playing simply enough, not simplified, but you're playing organized and simply enough that the beauty and your ideas and your story can really start to come out. You can do more with less. I think it's a great point, man. Well, Melody, thank you so much for this message.

You know what we're going to do with this, actually? We can... We're going to turn this into a premium at the piano episode because this three-zone solo piano concept. We get asked about this all the time. It's easier, showed than said. That's right.

And so if you are a you'll hear it premium member, we'll be on the lookout for that episode coming very soon of this three zone concept that we'll take from Melody's question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And please keep the questions coming. We love to talk about these things. That's what we're here for.

We have our own ideas, but we love to kind of fill in some gaps and we hope we did that for you today. For sure. All right. Well, till tomorrow, you'll hear it.