You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Best of: Lists of Seven

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

As season 3 winds down to a close, we look back on some of our favorite lists of seven from this season.7 Best Lists of Seven:7 Secret Ways to Practice Scales7 Practice Strategies You Can Implement Today7 Albums Adam Never Knew7 Hacks to Swing Harder7 Crucial Details for Navigating Chord Changes7 Favorite Scat Singers7 Tracks That Give Us ChillsLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.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, what's up, you'll hear at listeners. Adam Manus here. While Peter was out of town, we thought this would be a great opportunity to wrap up season three. If you've listened to this podcast for while, you know that our seasons are completely arbitrary. They're just when we feel like turning over. So we're going to end season three. We're going to do a couple of best of best ofs. This first one, we thought it would be fun. Well, Andrew thought it would be fun if we did our best of seven lists, but these are all different numbers from different best of seven lists. Just listen and enjoy. I think. think I think you'll like it. And we'll have another best of tomorrow. And then we'll start season four, which we're very excited about. So yeah, hope you enjoy this best of best of seven lists. Well, we got a couple of emails about, you know, and I get asked all the time from some of our open studio members, like, how do I practice scales? We actually have a part of one of our courses, the elements of jazz piano, which is our very fine intermediate course. Yes, yes, right down the middle.

We have something called creative scale practice where we do a lot of, these things we're talking about. Yeah. Because I think, you know, practicing scales is something that can seem tedious, but there are several different ways to do it that it's not just this like up and down linear motion and you know what I mean? Yeah. So number one, I love what you put for number one, which is to practice scales slowly. Yes. So often we're trying to push the boundaries of what we can do, you know, for speed. Yeah. That we tend to neglect what might be even more important. Yeah. Which is getting a good sound. Yes. And to do that, you have to practice slowly. You know, slowly. Have to practice slowly. And then there can be some challenges too when you practice slowly that

are unexpected, especially on scales that you feel like you've mastered. What I'll find I'll do is when I go through, and I actually do a lot of my scale practice when I do it slowly, almost all of it at this point, is just like that's the biggest challenge for me. And then, you know, working in some of these things, we'll talk about later. When you're playing slowly, you can really concentrate on articulation and sound and evenness because you're playing slowly, but you're not playing out of time. Right. And that's the important part. Sound articulation, evenness, that's something that gets neglected if you're just trying to push the metronova up and up and up.

And you can't, sometimes you don't notice it as much when you're playing faster. So this is a time to really be critical and evaluated. A lot of people avoid this because it's difficult actually. It's very hard. And it's exposing. You know, can it kind of expose you for the fraud that you are? And maybe you think like, oh, I'm not making gains, but you are.

You're making more gains than you think you are. Especially if you're concentrating on getting things nice and even with the articulation that you hear. You know, so it's like literally from your brain to your hands to the instrument is uninterrupted and is exactly the sound you want to try to get. That's the important thing, the control. Are you saying you'll hear it? Is that what you're saying? And you practice slowly, you'll hear it. Yeah. Yeah, so we're giving folks seven practice strategies that you can implement today. I love it. Well, number two is

meditation. Meditation. This is, I think, a crucial thing for me, and I know you practice this too, and it's really, really helpful. If you're, you know, We're committed to practicing for the rest of our lives. We're committed to music, and that means that we are committed to working at it. And I think that requires a headspace that is not to conflict with your app here that you mentioned, which is called the headspace. I actually use that. You used the app headspace that you wrote down here. No, but it requires a headspace that's clean and ready to work, right?

That isn't constantly judging or trying to take you away. So it's not as mystical as I think people may think. meditation is literally recognizing when your attention is away from where you want it to be or where it could be and bringing that attention back to a place of calm, focused. You know what I mean? You're staring at me right now. No, I'm trying to explain in a musical way. And we've talked about this, how you could do this in practice a little bit.

It's very simple, actually. When you're practicing, if you're not relaxed and focused, focused on the task at hand. If you're thinking about other things, if your thoughts are drifting, step away. Stop. That's right. Take your hands off the piano.

Number three, stop. Yeah. No, and then get back into a good place where you're focused and thinking about what you should be thinking about or not thinking about anything. Either one of those things are great options. And then go back to the instrument and start again.

Right. That's great. And I mean, the reason that we have these first two specifically listen and meditation as possible strategies for you to be able to do today to enhance your practice, that actually have nothing to do with the instrument or can be done away from the instrument, but we really feel strongly that this can enhance, like this is a very thoughtful way of kind of strategizing your practice session,

because normally the thing is like, okay, I have to, you know, I want to practice today, I want to get something to accomplish, let me immediately sit at my instrument and do this scale or practice this tune. And that's great stuff, but these are things, these two things listening and meditation are things that we can always do, and we can definitely start today, but they will enhance whatever we do. do great practice if it's like, eh, I mean, there's always going to be peaks and valleys. But if you start to incorporate those two, at a minimum, I think it'll enhance, you know, even

like you're kind of off days with practice when you're not feeling it, you'll still be able to really get something out of that. Totally. Or a small amount of time, too. Right. Imagine if you had, you know, 20 minutes and you had an off day and you couldn't even get to the piano. Yeah. But you listened to something that was like you hadn't really checked out and you'd really

deeply listened to something that was important to you. That would be great. And that could change. And when you listen, not to jump too much back to number one, but But one thing to think about there is you might just get one little phrase or something. Like say you're doing the rhythm changes. You're listening to Clifford Brown and you're cycling through or whatever. You might have one phrase and you don't even know it. Maybe you can't even get to the instrument, but you just sort of write that down or write the time down or sing it.

I mean, just, you know, one thing that you can take with you for a long time to develop your ears to develop your vocabulary can be really a game changer with your playing. Yeah. There's no bad listening. No. Yeah. Well. Sometimes it is. That's a whole other episode That's right

What are we talking about today? Well, you're not going to be talking about much Because you don't know nothing about this Man, I'm a little nervous about today's episode Because, you know, this is revealing Well, look, we don't know what we don't know And I think this is going to be fun I'm not wearing pants?

I can't tell. It feels like one of those dreams. Look, we all, this is the great thing about this music It's an endless well And we were, you know, having drinks yesterday And I think we talked about I mentioned an album or you said somebody had mentioned an album which gave us the idea for this episode, which was, you know, what to me was like a seminal recording, which you had never even heard of. I know.

Yeah, yeah. Which is no knock on you. In fact, I'm looking forward to maybe we'll do this next week. We could do it the other way. Oh, we're doing it next week the other way, for sure. But I think some of these, I tried to put a nice mix together. And full disclosure, I did check out with you that you didn't, you know, I called out and said, you know this one?

So we are, these are confirmed ones that you never. knew. Yeah. Like you were like, what? Huh? Now we're going to do a little buckshot LaFunk and this was funny because I was like, have you heard of what? Yeah, you were like, what? And I was actually surprised you hadn't heard the name, but I realized that this, so this is Brand for Marcellus. He had a band called Buckshot LaFunk and that was actually,

I think they did two records. This is from the first record. That sounds like some crazy New Orleans guy that they actually knew, you know? But he put this whole to band together. Our friend Reginal O'Neal was the original bass player. Cool. And then later on, Eric Revis. And then it kind of moved in back when he went back to having his quartet.

But this is when Bramper was like, I'm not going to do the jazz thing straight ahead. I want to do kind of a hip-hop funk kind of New Orleans. I have no knowledge of this. Okay, well, you're about to. Knowledge is about to be dropped. I'll tell you what, man. I am a sucker for this, like, organic 90s conscious hip-hop.

I really am. I could. And I'm just going to check here. And this is super... How do you do the thing where you make it softer? Oh. This is my first time DJ. We should talk about that.

Yeah, yeah. Not on this album. You're not doing a very good job. Well, I was just looking because I thought that was DJ premiere. And I'm just confirming that before I screw up. Yeah, he did most of the programming and, you know, the drum tracks and stuff on here. So then there is there points where Brantford, like, blows over that? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So let me see if I can jump. jump to that. And this is actually Breakfast in Denny's, which is funny because it's kind of an ad on track. There was a, it's like a different version. There was another one that was on some movie they came out where it got a little bit of notoriety. But this is from that first Buckshot LaFunk record. I mean, it was like, man, Buckshot LaFunk. Yeah, let me see if I can get a little bit of solar. I gotta get the album. This is kind of, and he's played this tune before. Rohar Hargrove, a bunch of, you know, slick horn stuff. But Kenny Kirkland's on this record, too.

Bob Hurst plays some on it. Um, actually, Is it Bob or Reginal? Reginal played in the band when they went live. Jeff Watts. I mean, a bunch of cats. It was just a cool thing where Bramford kind of brought his whole Orban, DJ premiere, and Victor Wooten's on some stuff on bass. Like, he just really like a very produced kind of early jazz, hip hop, whatever you call it.

Synergy. I love. I love. I love fun. And it's cool, too, because it sounds dated, but not in a bad kind of dated way. Like you brought it up, that kind of early 90s sort of vibe. late 80s, early 90s. Another good practice technique and our number four here on our seven hacks to swing harder is to

practice with a metronome. Oh, yeah, I like this. And a lot of people think this is sort of anti-swing because they're like, a metronome is robotic and robots can't swing. First of all, do we know that robots can't swing? Has anyone programmed a robot? I'm sure. MIT's working on it.

I bet Jazz and Lincoln Center and MIT are doing like a joint project on that. Oh, man. When robots learn to swing, we're all out of a job. That's right. Oh, boy. But yeah, practicing with a metronome. I love that one. the one that you probably heard

is with the metronome on two and four. I definitely like that. It's right. It's right. Yeah. But it's not the only way you can do all four. One that I like doing, or used to like doing, when I was a little bit more disciplined with my metronome practice. You sleep on the metronome? I'm not sleeping on

it. I probably should sleep on it with an on, but is having it on just four. I was going to say the same thing. Yeah, yeah. Hey, man. Yeah. So it's just like one, two, three, click. Because this can, you can work on your time. I mean, the metronome is never going to make you swing. but it can help you to swing in time,

which is important, because that is a part of swing. Unlike other grooves, they can be more kind of forgiving in terms of give and take with the tempo. Swing's not really one of those, at any temple. I had a conversation with a kid at Berkeley,

and all the Berkeley kids do weird things like on beat four, but every four bars. And they try, or every two bars and every four bars on faster tempos, and they really try to line it up. No, I mean, good for the kids. Yeah, I guess.

Can they swing, though? Today we're talking about seven. Seven crucial details for navigating core changes. Number five, half diminished. How does they work? How does they work? Okay, half diminished. This is something that I struggled with,

just like I think most people, to make them sound good. And so I think, you know, we're talking about navigating chord changes. So this is definitely one that we don't want to think about in isolation. We're always thinking about the progression, where does it lie?

The most obvious place for this is as a two in a two to five to a minor chord normally. So some of the techniques we talked about earlier as far as even like with the Frigian and stuff that you're thinking about over that 3625 kind of where you're going that could be done with this as well where you're thinking about maybe a Dorian or even a natural minor of the one that that two half diminish would be eventually getting to. Either that or you could think about the Dorian from so. Well, that would actually be the Frigian too over the two.

Exactly. That's what made me think of it with your, with the other one, right? Well, I think what I was thinking on this is there's two different scales that most people kind of associate with this. The first one is the more traditional, where you actually think of this as like a B minor. Yeah. Over, or sorry, B-flat minor over a G. Yeah. Right?

And so you hear some B-Bop musicians play B-flat minor. Yeah. That kind of sound. Yep. So that would be this scale. Right? Yeah. That's the...

Locrian. Lockean, exactly. But that is also the... That's the Phrygian, isn't it? of E flat? No, because it's got that. Oh, okay. Oh.

So that's the seventh degree from the A-flat. Okay. Yeah, that's true. You know, because we're in F minor, relative major, A-flat. Yep. And then the Locrian... So it's the natural minor of where we're going, actually. Exactly, yeah.

You could use the harmonic minor. Right. Or you could use the melodic minor sound, what people call. the Locrian sharp 2, which is the same scale, but you have a natural 2 instead of that. Right? So the first one is G, A, A, F, B, B, F, C, D, D, F, F, G. And the second one just has this, it's the same thing, but with an A natural.

And I like using that, but I don't always like to use it at the bottom. Like, that's something that I heard Herbie Hancock do where you're putting it at the top. And I think about it is, well, it is the ninth. What are you talking about? Yeah, yeah. And like all these different things, we always want to think about it. It's not just, like, when we're navigating, it's like, how are we using them, like, in what order on the top as part of a shape or as part of a scale? Like, sometimes when you just play as a scale, you're like, ugh.

But then you can choose those notes in a melodic way with a shape that actually works really good. Scababababudu B-Tweedah. What's up, Peter? Adam, this is Charles in Atlanta. I'm curious to know who you guys's favorite seven and a bonus, Scatters are. As always, the podcast is great. Keep up the fantastic work. Thanks.

One, two, three, four, five, six. We're number six. We're exceeding our allotment here. Gotcha, Charles. Betty Carter. You ever heard of her? Betty Carter. So, you know, she's somebody that, I mean, look, a list of giants here.

She really is a giant. It may not be quite as well known or heard. I've been noticing, especially with the younger generation. That's crazy, right? So we need to lift up her name because, you know, Betty is right in there in the pantheon of incredible improvisers. I got a little chance to play with there in 1991 for about nine months of such an education for me. But hearing her, like, she was a true improviser because she always, she hated doing stuff the same way, but she liked doing the same repertoire. She had a big repertoire. So it was so

exciting because she had these very specific arrangements, but then she wanted it to just be, I remember she would tell us before she came out like for the first tune. She's like, just play noise. And I was so terrified because I was like, what do you mean? She's like, just play something. And then she wanted it to be dramatic and like, you know, we try to do a groove. She's like, no, no, no, just play. Everybody on the whole tree. And then she'd come out and it forced us to kind of build up something that we thought was sort of random, but we had to make some music. And then she would like lift up her arm and it would come down and then we're right into the groove, like swinging, like, spam, bang.

But she understood like the drama of the music and it was the same way she would improvise and the same way she would scat. It wasn't just, I mean, yeah, she knew the changes and all that, but it was like, how do you create something? She was always about creating something. That's awesome, man. Yeah. All right, we alluded to some chills today.

Yes. And that's because we're talking about seven tracks that give us chills. Yes, and by that we mean like goosebumps, like the hairs on your, on your neck stand up. That's right. And I mean, the tracks are all great, but we're even talking about specific moments. Right. We're breaking it down for you. Maybe we should call it seven moments.

Should we call an audible and change it or no? I don't know. No, I'm down. Let's do it. Okay. Seven moments. They give us chills. Seven moments on tracks.

Wait. Okay. We'll just do moments. Yeah. For people to hear our thought process of the production of this, I think is exciting. Oh, it's enlightening. It's enlightening. All right.

For number seven, we're really going to the mountaintop on this, in my opinion, just to a moment on a solo that from Louis Armstrong, this is I got a right to sing the blues. Kind of a corny tune. But what he does with this, and this is the OG version, like this is the old one. I want to, I'll look in a second. No, I won't. I don't even care. But it's the older one. He did one later.

I was going to say the 30s, 40s. I don't know. It's old, old school. But the whole thing about this is just. what he plays and what can we play a little bit before but when he when the band breaks again a transition and he starts to solo and like you got to keep in mind like how corny stuff was being played during this time period and the way that he plays we've talked about this before with with pretty much all of his solos like he was so ahead of his time but just in terms of like standing the test

of time and just some beautiful like the phrasing the freedom the swing the feel his confidence within that the musicianship the tone the whole thing the best yeah Here we go. And what he, he sings the melody before. It's incredible. Like, his phrasing and harmony is, like, super advanced. But then when, I mean, this is the moment right when they break. Did he just make a one, one hell note swing a little bit?

Yeah. Yeah. He literally plays a whole note over two bars, and it's swinging. And then he goes into the next. And then he's, we got to go back here to get. I know, no, no. But then when he starts soloing, like, I mean, obviously he's the one pushing, if you hear the whole track, pushing everybody to swing.

but he starts solo he starts floating above the time immediately. I've never heard this. I think he uses that vibrato to make this whole note swing. Yeah. That's insane. That just swings harder than what they're doing. Chills. And this break. Dang. And then goes right back to floating. So it's like he goes

into that real traditional New Orleans kind of break thing and then goes right back to floating over the time. I mean, you know, I really think that he set the tone phrasing-wise for singers, for horn players, for people. For everybody. I mean, it was a life full of giving people chills for sure. It's almost like, you know, jazz or whatever they were calling it then or, you know, could have devolved into some kind of corny dance music. And he just, like, you know, elevated it.

Elevated the game, for sure. For real.