You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Best of Season 5(What The Hell is...)

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

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Hey, Adam. Yes. What do you know about? Baruk, a toy, adenai, alohen. I know how to bless the wine, too. Well, let's do it because it's Hanuk. Happy Hanuk, everybody. That's right?

First day of Hanukkah. Yep. And we have a best-up today, right? We have a best-of all week because we're lazy and want to spend time with our families. Those two are not mutually exclusive. We've proven that. So, no, we're taking a little time off from the podcast. We're retooling the pod cave, right, as we speak.

Oh, my goodness. When they see the flying V. The flying V. That's what I've already christened. What's going to happen? I don't even tell them anymore. No, no, that's it. That's it.

So, anyway, happy Hanukkah. Happy holidays to everybody. Enjoy. What's this best of about this one? We don't know. Remember, they could, it hasn't been edited yet. But it's going to be great. We are so confident.

Whatever it is. I'm sure it's fine. Brought to you by old granddad. As usual. I'm Adam Mannis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to The You'll Hear Podcast. Daily music advice coming at you.

Yeah, man. What the, what the heck? See? It's starting to grow on you like a fun guy. I feel so. Griffith Showish. I know. You know what? We're trying to class it up here, man. Come on.

Hell we are. Hells, yeah. All right, so what are we talking about today? Well, we are talking about what the hell are Peter and Adam practicing? See, what's what I'm saying? Couldn't it just be what are Peter and Adam practicing? Yeah, that's not as fun. See, you're all about the click, baby. I'm just all about, you know, switching it up.

Swishing it up. I like that. Swishing. I'm all about swishing it up. You know, I just thought it's close to the end of the year. I thought maybe we just check in with what we're working on. Yeah. I like it. Okay, so why don't we start with our number one, which is listen. There, we set it together.

Finally, that was beautiful. What are you listening to most right now? I don't know. Well, I've been listening to this McCoy-Tiner. I've been kind of going back into McCoy's. Can't go wrong. Yeah, some classic stuff. And what's so amazing about it is like I've listened to some of these tracks so many times.

Like McCoy-Tiner, Lonnie's Lament from a Crescent. Like, I've studied that, that, and later on in one of my points, we'll get into kind of some of the reasons why I've been practicing that again. But, you know, it's like a lifelong, it's such a great thing because you're taking from it, you're learning from it, but it's so joyous to listen to over and over again. Yeah, but I always find that in terms of what we're talking about here, practicing, the reason we are including listening is for me it, it's, what do you call it, like a companion to practicing? So there's the actual listening while you're practicing, say if you're transcribing, learning a tune or what have you. But there's also the listening in between with an eye towards things that can inspire your practicing or that can make your practicing easier. For sure.

So I always like to kind of couple that with that. All right. Next up from PM, you are practicing. Oh, scales. Scales. Yeah. And that's just kind of an ongoing thing. I don't think there's any time when I'm, I mean, there's been times when I go when I don't really practice much.

but whenever I am practicing, even those are relatively rare, but when I do, I don't think a day goes by that I don't practice some kind of scales. Yeah, that's true. And so I'm cycling through, kind of at the end of the year,

I'm a little bit just playing different stuff a little bit randomly in terms of which ones I do. And then a lot of times at the beginning of the year, I'll be like, okay, I'm going to get regiment and I'll kind of start hitting some I haven't in a while. And then also I see you have Phillips exercises on this. This is something that you introduced me to. These are amazing for finger independence.

They're great. Phillips exercise for independence of the field. fingers and that, you know, I rarely leave the, I wouldn't say I'm lazy with this because I've been diligently doing it, but I don't leave the first page a lot. You don't need to do more than the first, like, five exercises. Yeah. No, the Phillips exercises are great because they, like, it's, basically puts your hand in a position where you're putting down most of your fingers and then having to lift individual ones up. And it just forces independence of the fingers in a way that you can't be just playing, you know, one at a time. It's really cool. Yeah, definitely.

Definitely talk about getting out of your comfort zone. All right, what's our last one? Okay, the last one is I've been practicing, diving back into a little McCoy-Tyner for my transcript. For my transcript because I haven't done it lately. I'm so excited about our sponsor, Anytoon, and having the app that they so graciously gave us. It kind of reinvigorated me to go back and to be able to,

I realized, I was like, well, I learned the solo, but I still had some questions. Now, this is like 30, is that possible? 30, no, more than 30 years ago, I learned this, which is crazy because I'm 30. Isn't that wild? I was seven years old, man. No, but I, you know, I realized

I was never, I mean, are we ever 100% sure we have everything when we learn a solo? No. No, but we feel like, we're like, if you get to like 98, 99, you feel good. So I was never sure how accurate I had it. And I was like, now I have this tool

to really be able to hear that. And so I've been going back and then I realize I don't remember the whole solo. Although it's amazing how much of it I still kind of know. After 30 years. Well, how much of it comes back? Now, I've listened to the recording a lot since then. But that's been a lot of fun

And it kind of reinvigorated that as part of my So I'm thinking about next year Like doing some getting back into transcribing You know? Look at you You know what I'm saying? Going old school Put on my little elementary school

Bridges and get my lunch pail out Going old school I never talk about my McCoy Tiner lunchbox It's valuable man No way No I'm just kidding That would be awesome Get like a blues on the corner

Lunchbox Yeah man I would be all over that You know Well maybe we'll include that As part of a 2020 Challenge of Building a McCoy Tiner lunchbox? Actually, if there's any artisans out there

that want to build us to McCoy-Tiner lunchbox, we would totally take it. But I feel like you could order that from some Chinese like Alibaba or something where you just like upload the logo. I don't think you have to be an artisan. Ryan, order us a McCoy-Tiner, Blues on the Corner

lunchbox. Oh, that would be incredible. And put a link below. I'll take a real McCoy. I want a Herbie Hancock Headhunters lunch pail. That's got to go. With vegan leather trim on it. You can do it. You could do that.

Not to eat. Just as trim. Anyway. Hey, Adam. Yeah. Have you come up with the theme song yet for the What the Hell series? Yeah. What the hell is the difference between a sharp 11 and a flat phone?

Yeah. I feel very lucky because when I was very young, someone kind of explained this in a way that really made sense to me. It was Buster Williams. And you know it's legit. Whoa, wait. Hold on. We just dropped the name on the ground here. Yeah.

When I was a little boy, I asked my daddy what the difference between us. a flat five and Sharp, he said, go ask a pro. Buster taught us in his combo class of the new school back way, way back in the day.

Oh, that must have been awesome. It was incredible. Joe Henderson's Inner Urge. And so Inner Urge has these series of Major 7 Flat Fives, and, you know, he kind of laid it down

what the difference is between the flat five and the Sharp 11. And it's actually, as pianist, it's really easy to see because it kind of kind of implies a very specific time, actually a very specific sound to that time around inner urge, and it's this shape.

Right? So here I have an F, major 7, flat 5, and the shape I have is F, A, B, natural, E. Right? So this is what you would hear over inner urge as it moves down in whole steps, right? And so the idea is, if I say major 7 flat 5, not only is it implying this Lydian sound, but it kind of gives me an idea of the shape that there's no nine, in this situation. An 11, a sharp 11 implies there must be a 9, right?

That's what I learned. If there's 11 or 13, the 9 has to be in there. So this implies it in the voicing, there doesn't necessarily have to be a 9. But it also implies one other thing. So Buster told us that the scale we use over this is the D melodic minor.

So one of the first comments on Kurt's tweet the other day was, yeah, like, what, are you not going to have the natural 5? Well, in fact, Snarky puppy? No, we're not going to have the natural five. Snarky, uh, Kurt? That's right.

We're going to have the flat five and the sharp five because of the scale, right? If F, G, A, B, natural, C sharp, D, E. And you know why, from a theoretical standpoint? I have no idea. Because it sounds good. It does sound great. It does sound good.

But it's a different thing. So if this was an F-7 or F-major 7 sharp 11, there would absolutely be a natural. It implies that. There's that the C is in there. but the 11, the B-flat is just B-natural. But the, again, major 7, flat-5, could be called flat-5 sharp-5, or flat-five.

You know what I mean? Yeah. It's got this. Does it make sense? It does, yeah. And that's interesting. I've never, I've heard it like that, but I've never actually kind of theoretically thought about it at all.

But, you know, I'm thinking about this more of, like, if I'm soloing in my right hand, what do I do rhythmically with my left hand? It's a question we get asked a lot here at Open Studio. So I just wanted to talk about it a little bit. You've got a great left hand. Thank you. It's always...

I was at the pedicurist. It's always grooving when you're soloing. I think a lot of, especially beginner and intermediate players, either get locked up in fear about it or paralyzed, or they just, like, overplay with very poor dynamics, and they're not swinging at all. That's kind of worst-case scenario. It's a really bad thing.

Well, you're talking about only 10% swing or 0% swing? Like, you know, Sebelius 0% swing. Something that actually Jeffrey Keiser talks about quite a bit. And I think it's very eye-opening that to Keyes, this is a very important part. And you realize this, the better at this you get. But dynamics play such a crucial role in comping for yourself and what your left hand is doing. So what the hell do I do with my left hand? Whatever it is, make sure that you are under whatever the, if that's your,

soloing with your right, you need to not be competing with your own left hand for that. So you have to work on dynamics. It's hard to do. You couldn't do it with the key station. No, no, no, no. We can't even fit both hands on there. I think it's horrible. But you can't bring out melodies in your left hand. And like practicing those dynamics, like coming up when

the left hand is going to be featured. Yes. But then going back down in this space. How about what the hell to do with your left hand? How about a little melodic playing when you're playing a baseline? I love it. Are you allowed to do that? You can play the melody, even. Did you know that? Yes.

The left, it's, well, depends on what state you're in. There's a couple of southern states that have made that illegal recently. They're not enforcing that law. Technically, it's still illegal. So you check your local laws and regulations, people. Hey, Adam. Sorry to disturb your practicing. What are you playing there?

I don't know. Some secondary dominance. Is that like playing second fiddle? It is on this podcast. All right, so today, I got an email this morning from a, I don't think he's, He's even a you'll hear it listener, but an open studio customer. He was a bill collector.

You got that wrong? I get those emails every day. But, no, asking about how to deal with a series of consecutive secondary dominance. Yes. It's not something we've touched on very much here. So I'm talking about things like the tune, All of Me or... All of me. Just take all of me.

That tune? Yeah. Or the bridge, most famously, the bridge to... It's putting the gain down all of me. my mic I see. Sorry, did I spark some excitement over in the engineering department? The bridge on rhythm.

Thank you very much. Sorry, I don't even know what that is. I keep going on. I don't know what's going on. So a tune like all of the... I love a parade. Sorry. That just popped in my head.

There you go. You done? Yep. Okay. A tune like all of me? Yeah. Or like the bridge for rhythm changes. Something where there's a bunch of dominant chords

that seemingly... Whoa. Don't go together. Right. I had the Oh, you're modulating. Pink-ponged trumbo on. Nice.

Or like, you know, you know, these are all going around in the circle of fourths, right? Yeah. So back to the one. Okay. What do you, this person want to know, what the heck do I play?

What do I practice on something like this? What the hell? So it's what the hell do I play over a second dominant? Secondary dominant. Hey, listen, we're talking about playing the bridge to some rhythm changes. If you're not a grown-up enough to use the word hell. It's an adult show.

Yeah, that's right. Hide your wild. and cover your kids' ears. No, but so check this out. I was going to, you just answered the first question that I had, and this is going to be part of a series, I understand, right?

The what the hell series? Oh, yeah, we're doing this all week. What the hell? Yeah, it's a slow spiral down into the 80s. But my question was going to be, what the hell is a secondary dominant? Maybe we should answer that first. That's a great idea, actually,

to define what a secondary dominant is. So a secondary dominant is not in the tonic key of whatever tune you're in. So a primary dominant in the key of, say, B-flat is F, right? The secondary dominant would be, say, in the key of B flat, a C-7.

It's kind of a side-hustle dominant. It's a side-hustle dominant. It's a side-hustle that young folks would understand. And it's really just any dominant that could be part of... A progression. A progression that's not in the tonic key. So that's why this bridge for rhythm changes

in B-flat starts on a D-7, goes to G-7. These are all secondary dominance. If we were just diatonic, the D would be D minor. The G would be G minor, and the C would be C minor. And correct me if I'm wrong, but often we wouldn't even know or the listener wouldn't hear that it's secondary. So play the first, the three chord at the beginning of the bridge there, and now resolve that to where it would be expected to go.

Right. So if it did that, it's actually not. It's almost like a deceptive second because it resolves where it expects to go to a minor or a major. Right, right. So, yeah, could have done. So, yeah. And then it's like a key change kind of. Right.

But if it goes to here, that's what makes it secondary. And then that, because these are all wanting to go somewhere, right? Maybe even tertiary, what do we call that? Terserary? Terserary. Well, that too. And you see this with the cycle of force, circle of force often because, you know, like the D is the 5 of G. The G is the 5 of C.

Yeah. So really you're just putting like 5, 5, 5, 5.55. So we're all heading towards B flat. Yeah, you're delaying the inevitable. You could do this. You could keep going with this in forever. I mean, it just could keep going, going, going. We don't have time.

We don't have time for that. And so when you've got, for instance, on that bridge, you've got the four in a row, the way you would play over the final one where you know a resolution is coming, yeah, is going to be different. And so it's almost like you look at that secondary dominant, or in this case the several secondary dominance,

as a setup, you know, a chance to still be, be unresolved, you know it's not going to be resolved harmonically because anytime you're on a five chord unless you're really giving it like a bluesy one type, one chord type of feel it's not going to be stationary. It's already got some momentum.

Now can you make a dominance chord feel like it's stationary? Yes, of course. The blues is a perfect example. But the idea of like how these are set up when they are secondary, it's going to have that forward momentum harmonically. So the easy answer or the simple, simplistic way to

look at it as like, oh, okay, so then we're going to play kind of in a rambling way along the courts. Well, maybe hold your horses there, buddy. G. Gawler, baller, what the heck are you doing there, buddy? Oh, sorry, that was kind of old-timey. No, but, you know, what's fun sometimes is to play against what that harmony is with your melody. The main thing is you're aware of it. So, like, you're able to hear, and I know it's a little bit esoteric, but you're able to hear kind of what that general harmonic structure is and that there's not a stability. There's a constant kind of wanting, there's a transition and there's a wanting

to resolve, but you know you're not there yet. So you can use that to your advantage if you understand that and can hear it with how you craft your melodies. That's right, yeah. I mean, the first way that I think about doing that is to understand, especially when it's going around in these force like on the bridge to

rhythm changes, right? You can establish this as like a as a one as a one chord. But then before you go to the next chord, you can turn this into more of a dominant seven sound. So you kind of went blues.

Let me just do a little playbop. A little blue scale, and then you went half hole. That's right, yeah, yeah. Diminished. Or you could go altered. Which heightens the kind of transitional quality of the dominant chord. Right. So even in that sense, too,

I would say your first step in treating this circle of force like this is you can even think about the first measure as like, an A minor 7 over D A little suss action and then do some kind of five thing to the G and you can think about this too

as like a like they can all be both tonics and dominance within this sequence you know it really depends or if you're Oscar Peterson you can they almost all have a blues tonic feel to it right

well that wasn't that yeah and that's actually very connected with your first example there right before that with Oscar Peterson thing because you were using the blues usually as the thing that established it as a tonic. Yeah, that we're in a one zone. Yeah, and that's, I mean, for the listener,

that's the main thing that makes a dominant chord. I mean, I'm trying to think if there's other times. I'm sure there is other times. But it's a primary way to kind of connect with, like, we're here for now. Like, the blues pulls it to makes it the one. Whereas most, like, kind of more bebop playing or like you were doing the suss and those different things,

they have that kind of transitional thing or floating along, which is great. Yeah, you can, that's a cool thing about it is you can do either or. Yeah. But you have to be, you have to be purposeful when you do this. You have to be very intentful. Yeah. Oh, well, until tomorrow. You'll hear it.