You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Back on the Carousel of Comments 🎠

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

Peter & Adam review some of their favorite recent comments.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.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.

Hey, Adam. Yes. Are you ready to join and jump aboard the carousel? Let's do it. I call the pumpkin carriage. That's my impression of me getting on the carousel. The carousel of comments? Oh, yeah, the carousel of comments.

That's right. So this is our new feature where we just kind of, we review comments from our dear listeners. Yes. Not because we're insecure or afraid or... Well, not because we're... Inbittered. Not because we're all those things either.

Well, we're... Well, we become that after we start reading them sometimes. Sometimes. No, we get, you know what? We're going to look at some, some haters and some lovers, but it's mostly love, which is great. But we court controversy sometimes. We do. I don't know.

I don't know. Well, we do like a little bit of controversy. Peter, but here's a pro tip. If we're really scanning all the comments here, unfiltered comments, don't follow any of the links. That's right. If it's just a link, don't follow it. Yeah, so those of you that just consume YouTube and don't have a channel, you might not realize this, but they're.

comments that thankfully the algorithm actually filters out, which is funny because if you think about some of the YouTube comments you've seen as horrible as they are, you're like, what? There's things worse than that. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of, you know, just spam and pornography and different links that you only see on the back end of the YouTube system, thankfully. So we have to skip over those. Here's an address you've never heard of.

That doesn't sound good. That doesn't sound legit. It doesn't sound legit. I mean, our listeners and viewers have some funny handles, but it's a, you know, It's usually not that. They do. Yeah. They do.

Yeah. All right. So how does this work again? We're just going to go through these comments. Yes. Oh, okay. I get it now. And we're going to talk mostly about last week.

So this is YouTube, but this is about, we did an episode, which was really a lot of fun, that got a lot of feedback and a lot of strong feelings on both sides about the real book and about fake books in general. Yeah. And the name of it, it was last week's, you'll hear an episode. Yeah. Was how bad is the real book, comma. Actually. Actually. Yeah.

Which gives it a little bit of, how bad is it actually? And the whole... The implication is it's bad. It's certainly, but... It's pretty bad. Yeah. And the, but the premise of the episode is that we were getting dusty.

We were going back to the original versions of the standards, like all the things you are and but not for me and things like that that. That, you know, down to like, I found a version of Jerome Kern playing something in 1940, you know, of all the things you are. And, like, what does that sound like? But what's great about that is, and this is the slippery slope, which we often slide on here at the you'll hear of podcast. is that, you know, you did a great job of compiling these like OG versions of the tunes,

but they weren't OG enough for some of our listeners, apparently. And you know what's funny. Like we thought we were being really authentic, you know. Well, no, but we even qualified it. Do you remember this? I qualified it by saying, like, listen, some people are really obsessed with the OG versions. We are not. That's true.

I literally spent a couple hours on Wikipedia and Spotify. So if you found OG or versions, let me know. And then still some people were angry at us. We're not having the OG. of the OG version. But a lot of people just let us know, which was actually super cool. I know.

Actually, that's what I wanted. Because I do want to know what are the oldest versions, but, you know, the hate, man, the hate can get you down sometimes. But anyway. So this first comment, I think is just hilarious.

And this is great. We have just a very smart and witty audience, which makes sense because look at us. Come on. You know what I'm saying? Smart and witty. Humble. Humble.

Humble, handsome. Yeah. And smart and witty. So this is, from S2 Turbine. If your real book still has the page for all the things you are, it's either brand new or you haven't been playing.

L.O.L. That's so true, man. You're not going to get all of me. You're not going to get all the things you are. It's going to be so tattered if it is there. You're not going to get a sleeping bee. You might not even get a night in Tunisia. Tunisia. Tunisia. That's right. That's right. Remember

and it had the what is that kind of binder on the real book? You have like that plastic. It wasn't a ring. Well, it was kind of a ring, but it had like an opening on it. It was like from Kinkos. Yeah. You know, the baton music owner would go down to Kinkos.

Right. Had a whole bunch of printed up. I guess it really depends on. Like a trench coat on. Yeah, it depends on where you got it, right? That would make sense. But it was never spiral bound. It was plastic spiral.

It was like that plastic like claw spiral. Yeah. But I think to S2 Turbine's point, what he's talking about is, you know, once you have the real book for, you know, a couple of days. Yeah. That front cover is getting ripped off. That's right. Like it's, because you get thrown in the back of your car with your music stand and your base or whatever.

That's right. And then it just gets torn off. It gets thrown in backpacks and luggage and, yeah. Yep. Would you like to choose the next one? Would you like me to forage, forage or forge ahead? Let's see. Oh, I like this one actually.

This is good. This is from Data and Deto. Data and Deto. So this is, wow. This is from the same episode, how bad is The Real Book actually. And this really has nothing to do with the episode at all. But it's, wow, Peter Martin, I remember recording your entry for the monk competition back in the 90s at C-Saint Studio, then mixed you live in the French Quarter at the jazz parlor on Bourbon Street. Awesome playing is always good to see you.

So you know this? Yeah, well, I'm trying to think who this is, obviously an engineer. And I remember a couple of the engineers. So C-Saint Studio was a legendary studio that was owned by Alan Toussaint in New Orleans in the seventh ward. It was actually right, as I recall, next to or behind his house. and it was a house, which was hilarious. And it was like, if you designed, if you had a bunch of money and taste and class,

like Alan Tucson, are you familiar with Alan Toussaint? Yes. Because I'm never, like, he was a, had some huge hits. Yeah. But it was kind of a regional and a time thing, you know. But just, you know, a huge influence on modern R&B and just music in general. And just a genius guy.

When I was a kid, he was at that age where he was being profiled a lot on, like, CBS news and stuff like that. Right, right. So I would see him on the news. But he was a wonderful, just a wonderful man and was really kind to a lot of young musicians. We used to go over and he'd give us free studio time when we couldn't afford it. I was, you know, Nicholas Payton and Victor Gohens and Brian Blade and Chris Thomas and myself, we'd always be up in there. But he had this really cool studio that literally had shag carpeting on the walls.

Love it. But which was great for absorbing sound and mold. Yeah, of course. Sure. Shag carpet on the walls. On the walls. That's in a studio environment. For those of you who haven't spent much time in the.

puss-filled, smoke-ridden, drug-infested music. Well, yeah, maybe. Yeah. They've seen the documentaries. Yeah. No, that's a bold statement to put the... But I totally forgot about that recording. Yeah, I did the entry thing for the Monk competition.

And then the jazz parlor, I totally forgot about that club. That was a big thing because they wanted to... They had a very nicely financed club. I can't remember who it was, which Mafia group was financing it at the time. but it was like a really nice jazz club on Bourbon Street, which those of you that have been to Bourbon Street, there hasn't been a jazz club there. Certainly not a nice one.

Yeah, I mean, it's like, people like, I want to hear some jazz. Don't go to Burman Street. You're going to hear like Taylor Swift covers and get, you know, 50 cent go cups pretty much. Yeah, I think we did that one night. But remember we walked down Burbank Street? It was like, there's no jazz there.

We did it just to do it. Yeah. I mean, you're just going to get puked on. But they did have this was like in the early 90s. They had a club there for a while, really nice club. Killer Steinway and stuff. So next comment on this video on how bad is the relook actually.

This is, this guy wins, his name is. Boo to Bill. Boob Bill. Boot a bill. Is that Bob DeBoo? It's Bill to Boo. It's boo to Bill. He wins the award for the dustiest comment.

So far. So far. So far. After caveating this with like, we know this isn't like the original. This is just, you know, far back. So we did Stella by Starlight And the one I chose was Frank Sinatra's version Young Frank Sinatra, 1940 something.

I forget. But it was really just a couple of years after Stella by Starlight was composed. It was the first big hit along with Tommy Dorsey's version of Stella by, or Tommy Dorsey? Someone, but it was one of the first big hits of Stella that there ever was.

And this guy says, you guys could have dug deeper on Stella. The Victor Young chords from the original movie version hold the B-flat pedal for four bars then descend with the bass. Then he returns with a C-sharp, diminished seven on the last four bars. It's on YouTube.

It's on YouTube. YouTube. Now, okay, so here's the thing. Okay, boomer. Okay, boomer. No, as much as that is a very, he led with you guys could have dug deeper for still, which he's true.

He's true. He's true. We try to caveat that. But I learned something here. I didn't even think to look on YouTube for these dusty versions. I was looking at like sheetmusic.org. I was looking like, you know, of course, Wikipedia was Googling like crazy. But I didn't really think about YouTube for looking for original changes from,

especially from some of the movies. That's a great idea, Buda Bill. Thank you. Yep, yep, good stuff. When I go to get dusty again, I'm going straight to the old YouTube's. Exactly. Okay, so here we've got, this is just kind of a complimentary one of you, and I wanted to highlight in case folks on the pod here,

because we're going straight audio right now. Might not have known about the great video you did about the Clavenet grooves. I really enjoyed that one a couple weeks back. And Alvaz said more videos like this, please. Thanks. See? That's just like, it's a request and it's a thank you in advance.

I love it. You got some more coming like that? Yeah, I'm always thinking of like different ways to get some of those. I really actually want to do a whole series of grooves. I was thinking about doing a Brazilian one. Because you know, that course we have with Aalvo-Vez, Brazilian jazz piano, available exclusively on Open Studio. He does all these play-alongs with these, like,

three different kinds of Basanova groove. samba grooves, bayao, bion. Bayonne? Yeah. Bayon? No, that's Germany. Oh. Baya.

Bayer. That's the Monsanto out in Alabama. Yeah, exactly. Bail, Afashe. A ton of different stuff. Hey, what you call me? I was thinking about doing a Brazilian grooves one. I was also thinking about doing just straight up like, so the whole, what I did with the clavinet groups is we just looped like superstition and used me from Bill Withers.

and a parliament groove. I think I could do a whole thing on the meters. Oh, come on. Count me in. You know what I mean? Count me in. Because it's just... The meter made.

I got some for you. They're just hanging out on those grooves for a long time anyway. You could loop it like three times and it'd be like four minutes long, you know? Right? You know what I'm saying? Or what if I did one on like Prince? Prince. Gros.

Wouldn't that be like synth grooves? But it was all like Prince or Morris Day in the time. I have some ideas on more groove work. Get your Minneapolis vibe on. You know what I'm saying? And then, oh, you know, You could also. Put your North Face jacket on.

Of course. You could also do James Brown, but, you know, a lot of... Get up off of that thing! Not a lot of keys in the James Brown, but have you ever practiced some of those clues? A lot of D. A lot of D. Yeah. No, but practicing some of those guitar grooves on the keys even.

Discipline. You could do bass and guitar on the piano. Really hard to do, but really, really good stuff. That's great. You could have just left it more to come, as it says. But thank you for that deep dive on what's to come. I appreciate it. Thank you for plotting it out.

No, you know what it is? So if you, if you, I just, I'm so passionate about this, Peter. We talked about this a little bit. If you haven't practiced, like just groove-based playing, you're missing out. That's a lot of fun. No, it's true. And it's very much like when we talk about restrictive practice, which we're big believers in, it's one of our mantras here at Open Studio. Groove practice really lends itself to the, because you're restricted to grooving, you know, and you don't need to be moving around a lot.

That's why the James Brown, something meter, a lot of that stuff is great. You know, there's a time to practice harmony and moving around. But there's time to practice grooves as well. Okay, so back to the How Bad is the Real Book episode from last week? We had music. Now, how did they get that handle on YouTube? Music. They must have been an early adopter.

They must have. They said, I think they meant fake books, what they called it in those days. So this makes me realize that we have some generational gaps. Yep. You know, I think music's trying to say, okay, boomer to us, basically. Maybe. Because we said Real Books. They're like, oh, they're fake books back then.

But the real book was a thing. Right. It was a specific fake book. It was a brand of fake books. Yeah. It was... Fake books was even earlier, right? I believe the origin of the real book was from Berkeley College of Music.

I think actually some pretty famous musicians might have been involved in compiling it. And they love Steve Swallow, apparently. I think Steve Swallow was one of those musicians. Really? Perhaps, yeah. I think Pat Metheny might have been involved in putting together the first real book when he was a child. Did he go to Berkeley? I think he did, yeah.

I could be wrong. Someone will correct us, but I heard some lore about it. But, you know, before the. real book there. That's from the 70s and they had great intentions. They were trying to get the changes from things like bebop charts, right? From bebop records. Oh yeah, somebody tells us this a little later. We're going to get to that. Yeah, yeah.

But before that, you know, there were all these regional regional fake books, mostly for any kind, well not mostly, for literally any kind of music. Right. Like, so if you played in an Italian accordion ensemble, there were fake books for that or Poka ensemble. There were. Really? Yeah, fake books for every kind of music. Because there was, I don't know if you knew this, Peter. Not for funk. You can't fake the funk. You can't fake the funk.

There was a whole class of working class musician back in the day before there were, you know, stars. Well, no, before there was like... Rick Biato and... Computers. Okay. Oh, computers got it. No, but like back in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, but there was tons of bands, tons of live music, tons of people playing these tunes and all these fake books came up. There's...

I've seen some regional dance band fake books I played out of one time. Wow. From the 50s that were incredible. Really? They were just, it was like. Precision? It was like being in a Wes Anderson movie of adorableness, right? Just like the fonts and the insignia and everything.

You know what I mean? Like it was, it was very cool. Very cool. That's awesome. So this comment I like from Vin about the real book episode, I use the real book for framework of it if I need to learn a tune on the stand. All the tunes I actually play myself, I just learned from my favorite records and throw a spin on it.

That's really cool. And I like that, you know, Oh, I thought this was from Vin Diesel, the actor. It's from Vinduzel. So no relation, maybe. But I think that's probably, I know we're very dogmatic about the not using the fake book stuff, but that's probably more most people's actual usage of this, you know. And that's great.

Like when you go, you know, make that effort to go and learn it off the recordings, but don't use the fake book as a total crutch, I would say. Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. Now, Dar Z3 says, if one is talking about jazz, today's players do not care about harmony so this discussion is academic. I saw that. That's silly.

That is. I mean, players, no, of course not a harmonic. Yeah, I guess. You think Sullivan Forger doesn't care about harmony? Well, you're talking about the good players. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean, I just, I think it's. And then I had a little bit of personal, a little accusation. Jim Baker, the famous preacher. The famous reverend. Reverend Baker. No, I think he had two Ks or two A's or something.

Peter, please stop touching your freaking keyboard while music is play. Okay, so you know what? He said freaking. He is a preacher. This is the thing, Jim. Mr. Baker, sir. Players got to play. You know what?

Sumi, I love to play music. No, actually, we have to play a little bit so we don't get copyright strikes. That's not true. You just made that up? Well, you know, hopefully if you play along with it, it sounds different and it can't pick it up. We don't know. I like to play music. I'm sorry.

Yeah, no, sometimes the spirit moves you. I don't, man, I like it when you play along. It sounds great. Loser, loser, droop. Loser, that's a good name. Luser droog says, St. Louis in here, what's up? Digging all the local references. I got my real book at Baton, too.

I once found six original Beatles records in the free banded vintage vital. Yeah. Water damaged covers. That's, those are, you might as well, he might as well just said, toasted ravioli, emo's pizza. That's right. The Arch Forest Park. That's right.

Delmar divide. The only thing St. Louis people are. Where'd you go to high school? Yeah, exactly. Okay, so here's, I like, you know, when people make a comment on a video that was so long ago, or episode, it wasn't even so long ago. We've just done so many. We totally forgot about that.

Do you remember our how does that work series, our franchise? Nope. Oh, you don't. We used to do a little thing called, how does that work? And with such subjects as playing out, how does that work? And we did one. This might have been Adam Manus, solo episode. This was a solo you'll hear

episode. Do you remember this was season five episode four? Do you remember Peter? Because you would sometimes do we do this thing where you would go to the airport you'd get on a plane. You'd fly somewhere. You'd play music for the people in that city. If you'd come back home to your city, it was a whole thing. While I'm doing that, you're here

sneaking in an extra bonus episode. Well, I got to keep the you'll hear it or is happy. Right. A podcaster's got to podcast. So Crawford made a comment on that playing out. I mean, we've done other playing out episodes. Said that try the concept is awesome. Never heard of doing that before. Super cool.

Okay? You don't have much to add to that. That's okay. It's all good. No, it's really good. I'm looking over some comments here from, so I did learn the first chorus of giant steps in 30 minutes last week, which was really, really fun. And Shayla, who, shout out to Shayla, she's on a lot of our lives on YouTube says,

I've got smaller hands. I can only reach a ninth, C to D. So I use a lot of arm weight, concentrating on chord shapes, lifting and rolling my hands. so the changes otherwise I cramp up. And then Sam had a really nice comment here. The great pianist and composer Scriabin could only stretch a ninth, and his music is incredibly challenging. I also have small hands stretching only ninth.

I just keep working at it. I think that's really great. That's some positivity and some YouTube comments. That doesn't happen every day, and I love it. That's awesome. Here we go on the, also on the Giant Steps 30 minute from last week that you did GPS. from Dave Hill. That was so fun.

I made Chewbacca sounds trying to reconcile the fingerings, especially over the F-sharp D-flat chasm with a 2-4 finger combo and my raccoon-like mitts. Leave that alone. Interesting transcribing saxos to the piano.

They force some tough fits. I kept waiting to hear. I don't think the Empire had wookies in mind when they designed her chewy. Don't get it, actually. I don't get it. But you know what? And I know Star Wars.

That might be a quote, actually. The only thing about it. I don't know. Yeah. But Dave makes a good point. And we like playing around with this, you know, transcribing different instruments, the things that it technically requires of us.

Of course, you're getting the great concepts of John Coltrane harmonic and melodic ideas and rhythmic and all these fun things. But just the things that it forces us to do hand position-wise and technique, I think is really important. All right.

Let's end here with one last comment from how bad as the real book actually. And this is just, this is the kind of love that I love to see on YouTube from David, David Friel. The question is, does it fit the tune and is it in the style? Correct, don't mean shit. Lionel Grigsin and Dick Hyman had better books,

but they aren't giant doorstops, so idiots who love paper and hate storage space no longer buy them. A good guide for jazz players is, if you can't hear it, you shouldn't be playing it. If you need a book, you've picked the wrong tune. Now, let me just respond to that. I can't tell.

Do I totally agree with him or I totally disagree? If he would have started with the last two sentences, a good guide for jazz players is, if you can't hear it, you shouldn't be playing it. If you need a book, you've picked the wrong tune. But I've already kind of decided I don't really like David by the time he said, so that idiots who love paper and hate storage space no longer buy them, I just feel like, I mean, you're not wrong, but you're just seemed kind of angry there, David. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, we can't end on that. We can't end on that. All right. How about the next one from John? Fabulous, guys. Keep them coming. You'll hear it. You'll hear it.

Hey, Adam, got two of your courses. Terrific, thanks so much. How about stride piano lessons? That would be a fun thing for us to do. Oh, here's a good one to end on because we're going to pay it for it a little bit. Guitarist Mike Moreno has a fantastic series, Standards from Film, where he transcribes actual film scores with soundtracks ending up as jazz standards, as in the old version of the mummy with the song Beautiful Love. It's true.

Mike Morano, who's an amazing jazz guitar. in New York City has a great series called Standards from Films. Go check it out. It really is special. Yeah. That's awesome. All right, one more, paying it forward to our friends. What software do you use for the slowed down notes and audio? This is

from your giant steps. We use it on many of the videos, especially the GPS, is that sound slides. Our good friends. Adrian out of Chicago and Amsterdam and his wonderful team over there. Check them. We have a channel over there where we put up different things and stuff. All right, are you ready to

disembark the carousel. Slow it down. Slow it down. Are you ready to hop off that little pink unicorn you jumped on? Watch out for that horn. Don't hop off until the ride has come to a complete stop, Peter. That's right.

It'll hurt yourself. That's right. Well, until next week's cavalcade of comments on the Carousel of Dreams. You'll hear it.