You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Best of Q&A's (Part 2)

Episode Date: December 14, 2020

Thanks to all the listeners who've asked us questions over the course of season 7! And now for Part 2 of some of our favorite questions from this season.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.Monday's Open Studio Live Events (All Times EST):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)4:00 PM - You'll Hear It Live on YouTube6:00 PM - Bass Guided Practice Session with Bob DeBoo 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.

Gabriel asks, can you burn some locked hands over rhythm change as an egg? I mean, we could do a lot of things. Oh, yeah, we could. You know. I don't even know what that means. I feel like he's goading us into something. I feel like he's going to. Hey, what's up picking stones here?

What's going on, Alex? Pick and Stone. Yao Ming Hui says, how would you practice a 251 progression from the simple to the more complex? And in what intervals would be best? So you start with 251. Black bear, brown bear, or Battlestar Galacta, which is best. That's right.

No, so how would you practice two five ones? You know, in general, Yao Ming, right now at this point in, I think, our playing, we're really doing most of our practice over the context of a song that we're working on. So I very rarely anymore will just practice two fives just to practice two fives. Like, that's not, it's really not helpful, I think, for me, in the way that I want to play right now. That's not to say that you would never do that and that we've never done that. I've certainly worked on like voicings and actually in some of my open studio courses that are like guided practice session based, we go off of two five ones. I would say that if you're at that stage and you want to work on things in the context of like common core progressions like two five ones or even one four six, you know, one four, three, six, two fives and stuff like that or cold train changes.

Anything like that is to practice it in as many keys as possible. Yes. Practice it in different durations so that it's not just like don't. look bored when you're doing here. I love your board look. But not just that like one bar each, but you know, two beats each, one beat each. All of those come into context in tunes, practice in different tempos. Practice everything you play with your right hand with your left hand. In this regard, you can really, I mean, you have so much to practice in a window. If you think about all the variations that you can put on simple things like a two, five one, and then practice,

you know, identifying where you can use these in tunes you know. I think that's the key, too, is to start to really piece together your voice as a musician. You need to be able to identify these little snippets that we're taking out to work on exercises into, like, actual practical ways. That's great. I like, I mean, the concept of practicing in all keys, sometimes we give it a little bit of short shift, short shirft, whatever that is. We don't give it its due because it's not like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's like practice with a metronome. But this is such an important concept beyond you have to be able to, you want to be able to and you need to be able to play in all keys. So it goes beyond that.

This goes to the core of like how do you get creative and increase your vocabulary and your comfort level over two fives. So by going through the different keys, it's not just about learning them in those keys. It's about forcing you to play something differently, forcing you into an uncomfortable position. So if you're just practicing like, you know, two five ones that are easy or that, you know, whatever, to E flat, to C, you know, to the ones where you are more familiar with, you're going to play the same thing. But if you start doing, if you take that exactly like, sorry, you forgot it. But, you know, like you would take something and then you go up chromatically and start to play that like you're forcing yourself technically. You're forcing your ears into this new situation. and that's what you can really benefit from 251 practice

because, you know, like you say, it could be 1, 4, 3, 6, 2, I mean, there's all different progressions of blues, rhythm changes, all different things. But the thing is like, how do you extend it to start to learn something new, to get your hands into a new position, as opposed to just playing the things that you know in that key already? So, and then down below, I've noticed that Yomeng said,

simple to complex voicing is what he meant. Oh, why didn't you talk about? Oh, why didn't you say that? Why do we read that? This can be very quick because simple to complex voicings are very easy. So start with root, shell, and pretty, right? This is like what we preach to really get you going on good sounding voicings, right? Root shell, right?

Which is, we're going to say it's three and seven here. And then one pretty note. Start with one pretty note. Bam. And then do the same thing on the G7. So here I have D, F, C, E, right? Yes, you do. Root, pretty.

Then. root G Shell F and B 7 and 3 and then pretty E which is the 13

and then I don't know What about like I like it Right C E B D right Root Shell pretty I've actually been

I haven't even told you about this yet I have a new concept on extending this So that's root shell Pretty Yeah Roots

No not in that order Not that's right Root Shell pretty No No, root. And so, like, what if you want to go Root Shell instead of pretty, you want to go

Purdy. Oh, that's Purdy. Like you're down south, you're going purdy. Peter, that's so purdy. Oh, Peter. Oh, that's my Tennessee. So that's the way I talked. Fun fact about Peter, talking about myself

in the third person, age zero through five, I talked like that because I was born in Central Florida, which is a scary place for accents. But there is a point, Yao Ming, and I don't know, I mean, I know this is how you think about voicing somehow, but I think about it like this too sometimes

where you just have the sort of the color palette of the chord change, right? And it eventually just becomes of the melody and the tune and everything, where you can just kind of cluster some things. Like, I know I can make some good voicings kind of by laying my hands where, almost intuitively,

I mean, there's definitely some principles working here that start with root shell pretty but you get to a point where I don't have to follow those rules and break some things to where you know you go herbie Hancock level of just like oh you want a D minor how about this you know and it sounds amazing right that kind of thing that's root shell extremely purdy that's just all purdy it's just all purdy which is great well we got a couple questions here on YouTube already we have actually several questions that we could totally hit and the first one was from Raphael and he says Yo, I was wondering if you guys can go over some Joe Henderson stuff.

I'm working on Serenity, and it's a really hard tune. That is a true statement. Yes. And, you know, so, yeah, see, that's as much as... So, that chord right there, Joe Henderson, show me this. It's actually A half to minutes. I think it's wrong on, like, a fake book chart or something. And then A flat, mine, and I can...

Something like that. Yeah, yeah. Complicated with the melody. So I must be assuming that Raphael's talking about the changes. Yeah. You know? And just how fast some of these, like that thing, right? That old chestnut.

Yep. So, I don't know, did he say anything about these when you played with Joe when he was talking about this? He didn't say anything except for that. Except that one chord. And I played C minor. And he was like, yeah, I think he just like sat. He's like kind of over at my shoulder. The piano was just like played that.

Or maybe he said a half to min. And I was like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if, I want to say that they, on that original recording, played it wrong or something. Because there's been several instances where he's like, yeah, just because they played it right. You know, he was such a laid back. I don't think I've ever played it with an a half diminished there. It's always been a C minor.

Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely definitely a half to me. But do you think that these, and I'll have to go listen to what was being played on the piano on the original recording, with this like Aflab, major 7-ch-11, is it that kind of, is that kind of, you think it's that kind of inner urge sound? that sound yeah I think so Joe was known for yep I think so but it leads so nice

that it a half a minute to that to the A flat minor on that that yeah yeah woo yeah

that's nice little yeah yeah so how would you approach something with all these false cadences and then some like like that whole step movement you know what I mean

yeah I think yeah those kind of false resolutions or non-resolutions, false cadences, I think it's important to really, like we're always trying to think melodically, of course, but like as you improvise over this, this kind of a tune,

is to really think about some kind of longer phrases that can stretch over those chords because you don't want to segment your playing because it just makes it more obvious that there's not a connection there. And really the melody, just like the actual melody, as you're improvising a melody,

is the thing that connects it and makes it such a pretty cohesive form, you know. So you have to just really think melodically and be, you know, fearless like Sonny Rollins to be able, like Joe Henderson, to play over those chords and to kind of get into some situations that you may not be exactly sure where you're going in reality. Let's break that down a little bit. Like, what does it mean to you to play melodically? I think it's really, it's really thinking. horizontally instead of vertically.

Like no chord running, no scale running. Like really creating melodies. So I think you have to know the form so well that you're not thinking about the chords at all. Because as soon as you start thinking about where you're playing vertically over each chord, you might play some cool stuff. You might play the chord changes right.

And you might kind of luck up on something. But it's not going to be melodic in the truest sense. Like I think one thing you can think about, Raphael, when you try to play over this, is maybe thinking of using themes, not based on scale or chord, but based on rhythm and interval, and trying to overlay that over some good sounding notes over the changes.

So instead of like running scales, running chords, scale, running, chord running. You might think of like, you know, like really trying to focus on coming up with themes, especially when you practice that stuff. Like, you know, you wouldn't necessarily want to think that hard about it as you're performing. You just want to let it go and play. The point of practicing in that way is to get yourself in the, that mode where you're like, okay, I don't want to be, like, sometimes it's, I think it's cool

to think about what you don't want to do, right? I don't want to be just running scales up and down. As you said horizontally and, you know, as opposed to vertically, like, I don't want to be just like, or just whatever that is, like doing my insert bebop lick here or whatever. You know what I mean? That's where it kind of gets to be a pretty rough situation, I think, especially on a tune like this, where it's like that functional harmony doesn't really serve you. Right.

Yeah, and I think if you see, like, if we take the cue from the melody... Oh, well. Now you're talking. So that, okay, this part, and then this is kind of like the sub-melot. You know, it's really all one phrase. So you got...

Like, if you take out, like, all the things that are leading to different places, the longer notes. So that's sort of the shape, and it's stretching out over those whatever four bars. So when we improvise, and if you think about the way that the song is constructed, too, it's waiting. It's like doing pickups to the next chord. So as opposed to just once you get to the solo, like one, two, three, four.

Like where everything's starting on the thing, you might be like, one, two, three, four. Yeah, like that. Whatever that is, I want to do that. Yeah, you're waiting and you're delaying. And sometimes even either delaying or anticipating the next chord before you get there. That's the thing. You've got to be fearless about that. So you're on D half diminished and it's going to G, you know, whatever that is,

kind of sharp 9, flat 13. So I'm already kind of playing over that G before I get there. So that's already one way to connect it. You know, don't be like so robotic where it's like, I'm not at the chord, that's why I'm not going to play it. That's the quickest way to make your playing vertical. Let's connect this question to a question here from Jeff. It's actually, it's literally the...

Oh. We can have nice things, but they don't always stick. See? I need some packing tape up in this. So Jeff asked something that's kind of along the same lines. He says, can you guys talk about playing over rapidly changing major seven chords? Started working on steps by Chick-Korea. Turn around goes A-flat, E, D, B.

I can do this okay on this slowed down, but this tune is really fast. So I don't actually know, do you know steps? I don't know steps. But I do know inner urge, and there's a similar situation. Yeah. It goes through this, this pattern here. And this actually kind of ties into that Joe Henderson question, too, in that when I'm playing that, I don't want to be doing this.

Right. That's the last thing that I want to be doing it. Well, and I think, too, a lot of times, like, you might have some good melodic content in there, but if you do want to do some kind of, you know, little triad, one, two, three, five kind of things, is use rhythm then to make it more melodic. it because that's the whole thing is like the goal is to create melodies over this stuff and not get not just arpeggiate chords or run up and down scales so you can use you know something like um oh you're doing another so like if you think about it i don't know i'm just kind of making stuff up now but you know like if you're thinking about that end result of that melodic thing you can actually use some triadic stuff just don't play it in a symmetrical way like a way that's going to launch it. you in. Yeah, and Jeff, you can find you that with that, leading right off of that, you can find common tones amongst the triads. Like if we're doing this, you know, I can kind of lean on a couple of different notes. I just lean on looking at your shoes if you keep playing like that too.

Oh, I can do that all day. Come on. But this is a great way, I think, for me, so that I'm out of this like, like, you know, I don't know, just doing these like throwing your hands at it in a way that doesn't seem like it's you're actually making music. Yeah. Again, I'm feeling so inspired by Sonny Rollins today that I just kind of want to play different versions of Sunny's solos. I know, I know, I know. And then the other thing is you can take some of these, you know, so you got D half diminished. Is that right? Yeah. So you might take something that's a little bit unusual, but really commit to playing something nice melodically.

So like I would actually think about like a C triad over this, oddly enough. So you've got C triad over that D triad. half diminished, right? And then you go to the G7, you've got a D flat try. Because, I mean, what's, what is, what's easier to make, there's nothing easier to make sound melodic than a triad, you know, but what you don't want to do is, well, you know, how gasey do we want to get at our feet? Because we could do. Yeah, okay. No, we don't. We don't. We don't know. We could. I mean, I mean, this is all, but it's like, so. But I'm thinking about big melodic phrases. I'm not thinking like, let me do something on the second and the third.

fourth beat of the first bar stretching into the second. I'm thinking about like, how do I stretch this all the way into the whole next phrase, you know? And you're going to make some so-called mistakes. But the more melodic you get and the more you commit to it, the more you can get away with just like totally, as long as you know the form. As long as you know the form and you're still playing it with your actual melodic improvisation, your story, you can waver far from that.