You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Best of Season 6: Navigating Voicings and Changes

Episode Date: April 24, 2020

As season 6 draws to a close, we've got a slate of this season's best moments coming your way for the next couple days. Today, it's some of Peter and Adam's best advice on how to find your way through chord voicings and changes.Social distancing might mean going to concerts is out of the question, but Open Studio is still keeping the live music going! Peter is performing solo piano every Friday evening at 8:00 PM EDT on YouTube. To watch this Friday's performance, use this link. And to see his latest solo performance, follow this link.In light of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, we understand that money is tight for a lot of people right now. That's why we've decided that for the duration of this crisis, we'll be running a Choose What You Pay campaign at Open Studio. Choose whichever course you want and then let us know how much you're willing to pay - that's it. For more info, click this link.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.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

And today we're talking about something that we had asked a lot about. These are four common voicing mistakes. These are four mistakes that you might be making. And we're going to tell you some things not to do to make your voicing sound better. We'll get into the very first one. Yeah, which is exactly this is going to work. And that is you're doubling too many notes. You're doing too much doubling, basically.

Right, and you don't have to do this much. You don't have to play as many notes as you think you do. And I hear this kind of voicing all the time. Right? Two C major sevens. stacked on top of each other. Right. That sounds terrible.

That's right. And it just doesn't sound as full as it could sound or as rich as it could sound as if you, say, played like a C major 13. That's a little space. There's some space. There's no repeated notes in these voices. You know, if you usually came up with this system for having voicings with any kind of melody note on top and not repeating any notes. and for me to kind of create that really was a game changer. And so anytime that you can break down what you're playing

and take away the double notes, the repeated notes, it's going to sound way better. And if it sounds thinner when you do that, then you probably have some weird architecture to your voicing that you need to take a note down an octave or up an octave or something like that. All right, number two is only playing rooted or only playing rootless voicings.

You got to play to the sound. You can't just put these hard rules where it's like, okay, there's a bass player, so I'm never going to play roots. Or I'm playing solo piano, so I'm always going to play roots. Don't be so dogmatic with that. Sometimes a good rooted voicing

when you're playing with a bass player just fills out the chord in general. Like it sounds, that sounds one way. But with that root on the bottom, it sounds a completely different way. Another example would be like this C7-11 without the root, right? So if we have a bass player,

that sounds totally cool. But if I wanted a little punchier, I'll throw in that C, it's not too low, it's not going to be in the bass player's range, it just fills out the bottom end of that voicing. On the flip side, if I'm playing solo piano and just everything is just, you know, like has the root on and I'm going down,

it's going to get too monotonous. You can actually come up and play rootless voicings all the time. And learn your inversions for your solo piano voicings. Don't just go, you know, 1, 7, 3 all the time. Like, you can play more than the root. Okay, so the number three of the common voicing mistakes, we hear, things that you don't want to do, and that is not considering what came before and after the voicing that you're playing. Context is king.

Context is king. So what do we mean here? There's a nice F-13 kind of thing, not a lot of doubling, nice kind of sound, and then we're going to go B-flat on a blues. Where are we? What neighborhood are we in? Exactly. We're all over the place. None of those voicings are bad, but they're not part of a logic.

progression. I mean, you might be within the chord progression in the form, but there's not, like, the voice leading isn't there. Now, not to say you can't jump up, but there has to be a musical reason to do it, and you're still considering, it's a dramatic thing. You don't love this sound? Very good voice leading, I would say. Same shape, just moving around. Yeah. I mean, when you start out, when you're starting out, that's fine, but we don't want that. When we, when we are developing our voicing skills, when we're learning how to really comp accompany other people. We want to get great voice leading

with the top voice, with the bottom voice, with the inner voices. That's like inner voice voice leading, that's like pro-level stuff, right? When you're considering every note as its own voice. But you can start in the beginning with just simple voice leading on the top. So number four of our common voicing mistakes

is you're not considering the dynamics when you're playing. Wait, are we supposed to be thinking about dynamics? Yes, we are very much so. So this can work with, if you're accompanying someone or if you're even accompanying yourself. And I think both are important to consider.

So when we're playing big, thick voicing, like if we're playing in a jazz context, like how hard I'm playing should be a consideration with what's going on. I can be much more supportive and swinging exactly with what you're doing. And that's much more effective and actually more supportive

and sounds better than if I'm just constantly, like we're at a mid-tempo, little tipper here and I'm just always like that sucks or conversely if I'm playing for myself like I'm going to cut down there I'm going to bring out the melody you don't you'll never hear me you know

just it forces you to be this player that you don't want to be think about then how you're forcing other players to be yeah you know what I'm saying so the first one the king of the easy court substitution is really the first one like 101 It's rather difficult, actually. It is rather difficult at first to get your mind around.

That's the tritone substitution. You've probably heard this if you heard anything about jazz theory before. Did we actually play this one in the intro? Because we did some complicated ones on the... I forget, but I forgot it was easy. There's a couple of ways that you can think about it. The tritone substitution means that you're substituting on a dominant chord on a five chord. In this case, if we do a 251 in the key of F, we have our G minor 7.

We have our C7, and then we have our F. plain but acceptable Major 7 Yeah plain but acceptable Now on the 5 chord That C7 We can substitute that C7 Here I have a C dominant 9 chord

For the dominant chord A tritone away In this case G flat To the... Oh sorry That's right, it's easy The G flat to the F So instead of G minor 7 to C7

To F We have G minor 7 to G flat 13 in this case G flat dominant seven. And a lot of people would say, wow, it sounds like you hardly change things, but that's because not only did you change the root, you use good voice leading to keep things close,

so you didn't go. Well, the reason why this works so well, if we look at the third and the seventh of C, right, we have E and B flat. BKA, the shell. The shell. And if we look at the shell of G flat, we have F flat or E and B flat.

It's the same notes. So fussy with your F flat. Well, it's true, man. It's true. but it uses the same shell, and that's why it sounds perfectly acceptable to... Although, if you play the violin, an F-flat, and an E-natural, slightly different.

Slightly different, right? Fussy, fussy, fussy. You think I'm fussy. So that's our kind of first level of easy chord substitution. Can I just throw a little next-level advanced thing that you can do? We're going to get letters. No, no, no, no. It's still, no, because this way maybe we can satisfy everybody.

Okay. Because it's still basic. It's still easy. So G-minor 7. F sharp But think about going to the F sharp as your tritone substitution But keep your chord voicing the same

As you would have over C7 So maybe you go G minus 9 to C13 To F major G minor 9 Do a C713 in the right hand And go to F sharp and left hand Oh crunchy

Crunch Crunch Crunch Crunch Captain Crunch That sounds awesome Yeah that sounds awesome And so basically I've got the same voice thing I did Here but it gets crunchy

when you go down there And it's actually kind of an easy way to get into some more alterations on the tritone sub. So that's your basic tritone sub. You just borrow from the dominant chord. What's great about it, too, is it gets that nice half-step motion down. You can do stuff like that. Please don't ever do that. Our second level is the five of five.

Level two. Level two. Five of five. Well, what do we mean by five of five? Again, on a two-five-one, we have our two, we have our five, we have our one. Our two chord is almost always a minor seven, a Dorian sound. Now, one of the first substitutions we learn is to take this two chord, and instead of a minor seven, we make it a dominant seven.

Yep. Thus making it a 505, right? A 5-5, right? Now, this dominant seven becomes like a 5. It acts as a dominant chord to that 5, to that 1, and you just keep going. Forever. But the 5-of-5 is a real thing, and you can actually go, to a minor sound first if you want,

but you could just go straight substitution, you know, even when you're blowing changes. Like, these are all substitutions you can make without really working out anything with the bass player or with the horn players. So why don't you give us number five? So number five is using the flat three diminished instead of a six chord.

So when we have our 3625, here in the key of F, we have A minor seven, and then you might have D7 altered, and then G minor seven, and then C7, 2R1, right? 3, 6, 2, 5, 1. Hear that all the time. A great substitution that works,

especially in this scenario, is you could do a tritone sub to just A-flat 7, right? That's totally legal. Jazz police will not arrest you for that. Well, yeah. But a great use of the melody, usually, is with, instead of that A-flat being a dominant chord

to make it a diminished chord. There's so many great voice-leading opportunities here. Yeah, so that, if you want to know, is A minor 7, and then A flat, diminished, A flat, F, B natural, C flat, D flat, G natural, B flat, D flat, all these great extended diminished sounds. G minor 11, G flat 13, sharp 11, that's the tritone sub of the 5, and then F diminished. Those are like everything we're talking about. here. Actually, let me make the G minor 7 a dominant chord. Now we'll have all of them. The piece,

the rest of the solst, the five easy... Is that a hat on a hat on a hat? It's five hats. You just put five hats on and pulled it all. You know, John, if you really want to get some solid hip voicing that you know are like at least going to be good, right? If not, it's hip

every time. Really try to find these fourth voicings, these non-doubled two-handed voicings. Another go-to for me, if I want to sound hip quote unquote and this is just of our generation probably so excited about signing quote unquote hip I just feel I just feel so not hit by saying this but I think just for even our generation of pianists and musicians okay we're any kind of cluster will always kind of yeah yeah cluster on the bottom now define cluster what you're saying just so because I know that I'm a little misunderstood

on what that means I know what it sounds like but is there what would you call cluster you know A cluster in a voicing could be in any kind of voicing, but it's really just either half step, sometimes a whole step, depending on how you use it. But these three-note clusters, especially, where you have a cluster of a second, either minor or major, and then you can do thirds or fourths or fifths above that cluster, and you can just move those around.

And we're almost always rootless on those, right? Yeah, there's not, yeah. I mean, maybe you can even do a root, but it doesn't really matter. It's kind of more like just a cop. color than, you know, but these kind of cluster voicing. I mean, have Herbie Hancock and Chick-Korea done more for the cluster voicing than anybody probably? That's what I was saying.

It's like our generation of pianists love these because of Herbie and Chick or whatever. So they might even be a little dated. Complexity, I don't think equals hipness at all. Like you don't think you have to have, you know, flat 9, sharp 11 on every voicing and that makes it hip. That's not exactly. That's not at all. And I think when you get into the more complex voicings, be it more, well, first of all, a lot of very complex sounding voicings don't have as many notes as most people think. Because there's a really good quality in general.

There's so many exceptions. When you get into voicing, lots of exceptions. Even like with doubling notes, because sometimes I can work great. I mean, you talk about, you know, block chord voicings, you know, within the, you can have some doubling in there and it can sound beautiful. But the complicated voicing that, you know, the context of how you play becomes, I think, even more important. Agreed. Because you're, especially if it's like a dominant chord complex voicing like you just hit. You're going to have a lot of tension.

there. So if it's a time that it needs it, a lot of tension, it's going to be great, you know? That's true, but it doesn't necessarily automatically make it. One of my favorite voicing is this. I like that. And I consider this like an F add 2 over

A, right? But it works in great context going from Right. Now you're going into a church that's not in Minnesota. It's a different neighborhood. But isn't that, that's wonderful, right? That's such a hit movement. Well, that's a true example of context because if you sat on that first like that's the thing about triads

it sounds fine on its own yeah it's almost like when you have straight triads they can work so great because there's nothing stronger in kind of western tonality than a triad right yeah um especially after all this yeah yeah but it's almost like the opposite if you think about like you know bach might go into some some very complex for the time certainly um harmonic area and then you finish on a triad right it's a sort of a typical way. Now it may not be this expected try, but you finish there. Whereas in this kind of playing, like more, you know, modern contemporary music, you can start

on a triad and then start to move away from it. And maybe you come back or not, but it's almost like you hark, like that second chord you did made the triad hip, even though it happened afterwards. Right. Totally. Totally. Yeah. That B flat triad now. Yep.

That's, that's the contextual aspect of any kind of. And that's why I still believe that, like, it's very hard to isolating any of these. That's why I was come back to like voicings, chords, voice leading. So important. Like, like thinking about this music horizontally as opposed to vertically, when you get into chords, it's always going to benefit you for sure. So true. Yeah. Cool. But today we're talking about four tips for making your diminished chord sound hip. And this came up because we got a comment in one of our previous YouTube videos

from a few weeks ago where I think it was the one on substitutions, Peter. And you were playing that substitution of a diminished chord instead of a one major chord. You know, the kind of like, and then resolving. Right. And someone was like, wait, is that a diminished chord? Why would you call a F minor major six, a diminished chord, whatever, because you played, basically you borrowed some other notes that weren't strictly those notes. We didn't really get into it that much, but I thought we could talk about ways to make the

diminished chord sound hip. Because to my ears, when I hear like intermediate players, the minish chord is always the last thing that gets hippified. Everything sounds like they could be playing some slick ass. And they get to a diminished chord and they're like, it's root position ronald right there. Root position ron. So a lot of folks don't understand until they get a little bit more advanced

how this chord can become something like, say, this chord. Oh, me likey, be likey. Isn't that nice? And how they work together. Yeah. So if we take our diminished chord based off our diminished scale, right, and we use the notes that are missing from that diminished scale. Yeah.

In this case, D, F, A, A, flat, and B, that's the other notes of a diminished scale. And that's a whole other diminished chord. Yes. Those notes are the extensions that we can be. put on top of a diminished chord. So if we have our C diminished, any note from D diminished is fair game to put in our voicing, right?

This now opens up a world of possibilities. Well, this is like, you know, we're talking about a lot of more kind of angular, a lot of higher drama harmonic stuff, which, of course, the diminished lands itself. But one of the areas that we use it, like, you know, where we go almost as a passing substitution when we get to a one chord, two,

five. So if we look at E flat diminish, that's the minor six, right? Yeah. Or the, yeah, minor six. Ah, sorry. So,

what did I say? Minor six to natural six. Yeah, so up to here, that kind of thing. I suppose it just sitting within that. I love it, man. Love it. Oh, no, there is two.

That makes sense? It does, man. sounds so great. Well, this was fun. I hope this cleared up some things and hopefully opened up some doors to other questions that you might have. Awesome.

All right, what's number one of R? Are we going to jump right in? Yeah, number one is classic slick turnaround. This is, if you know the tune, Lady Bird, classic bebop head. You might recognize this turnaround. It's one, flat three, flat six, and flat two. Now you could do this as a series of major seven chords, as I just did.

You could do this as a dominant chord. And then a dominant chord, yeah. All of it is kind of fair game as you get into it. But practice both, for sure. Having this dominant system is really nice to have under your fingers. And then just being able to kind of blow through a series of major seven chords in that structured way. I almost thought you played, but I was hearing it too. what good one on variation is the

major yeah little suss little suss and you could even go oh I don't know why it brings out a little vocalese I love this

go another suss is that legal I don't know it could be what I would hear would be like major suss and then maybe major again

and then maybe from our last YouTube or previous sharp 11 low creet no not low liby and dominant This is level one slick turnaround.

This is like your high school player. You hit the jam sessions. Right, right, right. No, I'm sitting on my, on our turnaround, man. No, I'm not hating on it. It's classic, classic. Okay. And the next one, you know what?

The next one we should call, we should call the yard bird suite. The yard bird's suite. Right. So this one is four minor to flat seven dominant. Yep. This has a little relation to something you're going to be doing later too. We'll talk about that later. We'll talk about that later.

But what's great about this is your classic borrowing from the four minor, borrowing from really key of E flat, if I can see here. But this four minor is a powerful way to get outside of that harmony of C major. And then that B flat 7, we call that a false cadence. Hashtaghtag false cadence. Hashtag false cadence. Because it sounds like you're going to go to E flat, right? And which you very much well could, but that would not be where we're going here with the turnaround, because we didn't really mention turnaround in general has the implication, if not 98% of the time, has been proven to end, no matter where false it goes or wherever you think it's going to go, it ends back at the tonic.

That's why you're turning around. It starts and ends. Turning it around. That's exactly correct. Yes. So the third one, this is the flat five descending. Now, this is one that you play a lot. Right.

So you start on the flat five. So if we're in the key of C here, that's G flat or F sharp. Well, let's change it from C. Maybe that's why it sounds so plain. Let's do it in like D flat? Yeah, D flat, cool. So we're going still, flat five. Flat five, so you've got your G, usually half diminished.

Usually have to diminish. And then you got your G flat, usually minor, could be dominant. Either works. Yeah. And then you got your three, which could be minor or it could be like a one over three if you really were going to speak. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, so you got this sound.

Oh, come on now. And then you got. You're more like, that's like you moved from the Ramada in north by the airport to like the W hotel. On the other side. Like in the hotel. So, all right. So we had flat five for. Minor three now.

Minor three. Yeah. This might be a good. Minor three, which is usually diminished, but also could be dominant altered if you wanted. That's why I was thinking even dominant, Lidion. Lidion dominant. Yeah, yeah. And then two.

Typically minor. Miner 11. Could be dominant. This is why the Lidian Dominus, man. I mean, we didn't talk about this in Lidian Domit. Agile. We could talk about the two. Yeah.

We could go the whole way. You could. But the reason why this works so well, I think, is because you can keep that tonic on top, right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. So then as you just finish, the flat two major seven. Yeah.

Yeah. Which could be. Yeah, you could do. Dominant. I'm on a little bit of a linear and dominant kick. And now this whole cycle, too, we should just say. It could also be. Yeah, I know I spiced it up a little bit

But basically, oh, I started the wrong place too Oh no, I started So instead of like, basically you're just going 25, 25, 25, 25, instead of just going down descending, right? So it'll be like... Good. Good. I like it.

That's the, what are you going to call that one? I just have flat-flat. The stando. The stando. The stand-o. I think this is the name. No, we should call it the Ramada in North. The Ramada in North.

Okay. That one will be called. Robota North Airport. Okay. Yeah.