You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Best of YHI: 7 Ways To End a Tune - #89

Episode Date: December 27, 2018

From the archives: 7 great ways to end a tune. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Yo, Adam. What's up? We're getting towards the end of the year. I don't know if you knew that. I realize that, yeah. Because you're getting older, so I've got to remind you to things now. So, yeah, my birthday's on Sunday, and I'm going to be 40, so this has been coming up pretty hard. So what do you want for your birthday?

Not for me, just in general, though. You know what I'd like, truly? Yeah. I'd like to learn how to end a tune. You got anything on that? Well, I think we had an episode that was coincidentally, our fourth most popular episode of all time. Yeah.

Was this season one or season two? Yeah, season one. Season one. Season one that is all about, of course, seven ways. This is after we'd settled into our seven list. We weren't doing 17 anymore. Seven ways to end a tune. I think we were at the piano together.

I think we were, yeah. And you know, this is great. This is full circle for the year. Yeah. End your year by ending your tunes. That's right. Yeah. And I believe that day we sat at the piano

and came up with seven brilliant ways to end. We should have called it that. Seven brilliant ways to end a tune. We undersold but older delivered. I do remember that episode. Well, that's our MO. It is our MO. But we sat at the piano and then we went out

for a long walk on the beach together. That was a really nice day, I remember. Yeah, I don't remember that part, buddy, but... It was like a virtual walk on the beach by playing ending some tunes with you. But no, this is actually good. I'm really looking forward to hearing this because I was on a gig the other day and I ended a tune in a way that I kind of wished that I had.

It was okay, but I remember thinking like, wow, Wow, I want some new ideas. So I'm looking forward to kind of getting back into some of these ideas and refreshing myself, as it were. Cool. Let's check it out. I'm Adam Annis. And I'm Peter Martin. And this is the Yule Yourd Podcast.

Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. I'm so glad we're back to coming at you. I missed that one. We had a little bit of hate yesterday. We're back to love today. I love it. And we're back to coming at you. And actually, we're back to something kind of back to our podcast roots because right now, where am I sitting?

At the piano. I'm sitting at the piano. I'm sitting at the Piano. Hello. Hello. That's right. Right. Right.

Where we started. Yeah, well, we thought a little bit of piano might be in order because we have a great question from one of our listeners. Ben Hogg, H-O-G-G. Not sure where he's from, but he, what's up, Ben? Thanks for writing in on the You'll Hear It page. And what he said was, big fan of the podcast, you guys are doing something really unique. I have a question, all caps. I like that.

See, that's a man who wants an answer. That's right. One thing I've always struggled with is ending tunes. It seems like a very important part of playing. that sometimes gets overlooked in jazz education. I was wondering if you can make a seven ways to end a tune. If there even is seven, ha-ha, thanks a lot. Absolutely, there's seven.

There's probably 777. Oh, yeah, at least, yeah. Which is really, I mean, a reason, yeah, would definitely give you seven because, you know, we love the sevens. But let's remember, you know, I think a big problem with ending tunes. And I'm kind of assuming Ben is a pianist or is thinking, you know, a lot of times the piano, either if we're solo piano, for sure, but even with the group, the piano kind of leads things, or maybe the bass.

Yeah. In terms of how the tune's going to end, like, especially a standard tune if it doesn't have a typical ending, or even if it does have a typical ending, let's think about some variations because there's so many ways, way more than seven, to end a tune that we don't need to always go to the typical ones. We're going to go through some typical ones. For sure. We can even throw in a few kind of unusual ones, too, so there's some nice options.

We'll throw in some cool ones at the end, for sure. But don't be afraid. Like, what I like to do is really try to. to be open to the moment, especially for certain types of standards that can end in many different ways. And so it doesn't mean that you have to just do something atypical just to do it. You always want to do what's kind of fit in the situation. So it depends on how you've played the tune up to that point, kind of how you would want it. Like if you've played it very traditionally, there's probably two main ways to look at it. You kind of end it traditionally or you end it

with a little bit of surprise and irony, but that has to fit in with your arrangement. And like everything that's typical, even the traditional typical endings or anything that's typical has variations, right, that can make it interesting or surprising. Absolutely. And so we'll kind of throw some of those in too.

Let's throw them in. All right. Okay, so for the first, we were talking about what, well, why don't you go ahead and demonstrate the first one? So the first one is this New Orleans ending. And what kind of describe what those chords are. So this is a, and with a lot of these endings, there are a lot of like sort of logical, stepwise harmonic progressions

that really help your listener get to the ground, right? That's where you want to go. You want to make a firm period on the end of your song. And so a lot of these endings help you to do that. And this one is basically a series of dominant chords, you know, if you break it down. But I'm in the key of F here, so I'm starting with F7. And then I have F on top on this. voicing, my voicing that I'm playing right now is E-flat, A, C, F. And I keep that F on top the entire way,

and I just move everything else down by half-steps. So now I have D, A, flat, B, F, right? So this is a D-diminished chord. And then I move, again, those bottom three notes down by half-steps. And now I have basically a B-flat minor-6 chord. And then I just finish on F. Yeah, I just might give them the general chorus. You can give them every single note you're playing. I was going in. I was going in. So again, it sounds like this.

And then I'm just doing a little half step. Yep. Slide there. But what's great about this is, you know, it sounds really, really cool in different inversions. Like that. You know, there's varying ways you can use this very typical progression. Yeah, no, it's a great sound. Even if it's not a New Orleans tune, I love kind of throwing this on the end to kind of give it that flavor.

even if people don't know, even if it's just kind of like a little thing in the back of their mind, like a little New Orleans, kind of roots of the music. Absolutely. And I think, you know, to your point, as far as bringing it grounding things, the ending, it's almost like, you know, you've arrived at your destination. Thank you for flying Delta Airlines. And here you are. Like, everybody knows you're at the end, or maybe they don't.

And they need to be told. If you're hearing this, right? Like if you're... It's like, check please. Or I'm leaving before the check comes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're at the end. Good stuff.

All right. So for number two of our seven ways to end the tune, we've got what we call the tag ending. Can you demo that, Adam, please? Yeah, you can really tag forever if you want to. So great examples on My Funny Valentine and Four and More, Miles Davis, of some great tag endings, very extended. I mean, like three, four minute long.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, if I were a bell. Yeah, yeah. It actually becomes part of the form where they're soloing in the cue the tag. Yeah, yeah. And so tags are great. And tags are great for when it's like a jam session or like a singer sitting in or somebody and you don't have time to really kind of work something out to be queued from the piano. Yeah, that's right.

And normally, you know, what you were just playing is a 25, 36 tag. And they can be extended for, you know, more numbers of bars for each. They can be compressed into just like two beats each chord. That's right. A lot of flexibility with them. One thing I'll say to listen for if you hear a tag start to happen at the end of the tune is that some people, you know, if they do a 3-6, some people do the half-diminished.

Yeah. Which makes sense because you're going back to a minor chord, I guess, but some people don't. Some people just do this straight up. Right. You know, so keep your ear open for that. Because if the horn player plays an E-flat on that A, you know that it's either a half-diminished

or, you know, you can turn it into a dominant chord too. That sounds good. Yeah, good variation. So you got some kind of timing variations on how long and some harmonious. variations on alterations to the actual chords. And hey, look, if you're the pianist in the group, you definitely have, I think, some freedom at the end to sort of lead the band in the harmonic direction. What do we all say on here? We're the boss. That's right. If you want to start taking

it in a bunch of dominant chords, it actually sounds super hip. Yep. Do some chromaticism. Be careful. We might get into one of this, we might go from the seven, seven ways they're to end to two, the seven reasons people hate jazz. All right, good. So now, so now, Now, let's go to number, oh, we're only at number three. Okay. Well, we're gonna pick it up now. Yeah, we're gonna pick it up. So this is a very simple one, but very effective, especially on ballads.

You gotta really listen for a good time to put this in, but that's the half step above, kind of with the Formata, half step above the tonic where you're going, usually with a major, right? Yeah, and I would say this one could actually be used in conjunction with pretty much every other ending on this list. But this is a very common thing. So if you're, you know, like you said on a ballad. especially effective like you did it there with the Lydian sharp 11 kind of the sound.

It's a way to set that up, that Lidian up actually pretty effectively. Yeah. And I think the key is like what you did there is to always be thinking, you're not necessarily moving the melody up, although you could sometimes, but like ending the melody where it is, and then, you know, depending on what note you're at, using, the root is a half step above where you're going, the tonic, but the tonality, the harmonic structure could be based upon what that is.

It could be like a sharp nine even, but a major seven is always nice. Yeah, major seven. I like the, you know, if you use this Lydian sound, you can go right in, you know, the bottom note goes down, the top note goes up. Yeah, it's always a good sound for me. Divergent. Diversion. Okay, number one, two, three, four, we've got, okay, this one I really like.

I mean, it's like Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones. Classic, yeah. Classic ending. And this is, I think about it starting on the flat fifth, the tritone away from. from where you're ending up. And there's some different timing variations, but why don't you show them how this one sounds. And it's great, too, because it sets up that kind of break,

almost like a little mini solo break at the end, which is often used with this. Absolutely. I love this one on ballads, too. There's some really rich harmonies you can get. Is that legal? It's more losing listeners. Nice.

So, yeah, and that one's great, too, for cadenzas. I mean, that's almost like a little mini piano canadenzas. I've heard a lot of good saxophone players play this in their, cadenza on a ballot kind of go through these changes. You're basically starting at the flat at fifth and then you're going down a half step, down a half step, down a half step, down a half step, down a half step, and then you can go down. Yeah, exactly. And you can use any kind of tritone substitutions within those half steps to make it like a succession of two fives if you want. Yeah, it's one of my favorites for sure. And that's definitely one of the traditional ones, but

that ones that works really well. Yep. Oh, then we've got number five. We've got the bassy ending. It doesn't get any more typical, but really you do this at the right time. This is a cool thing. Yeah, so, I mean, the very basic one,

well, I mean, the very, very basic one, Bacey himself would sometimes even just go, you know, something like that. Yeah, just single notes. But usually you can get away with something like this. That's three notes. That's, you know, I'm doing G, B, flat with an F on top, and then moving the bottom two notes.

up a half step. Yep. So that, you can do it with four notes. My favorite voicing for this is with, in the right hand, I have F and F in an octave with a D. And then in my left hand I have G and D flat and I just move that up, that left hand up. He's giving away the man of secrets up in here. That's a good one though, right? That is very good.

The spacing of the resonance, that register of the piano is great. That's what makes it work. That's what makes it work. Why don't you just show them coming out real quick of like a tag ending. How would you set that up with the break? Yeah. And so normally, I mean, of course, like all these many different ways to do it, but the typical but effective way to do it is like that way it's like boom, boom,

bang, and then you're ending on the four. Not like the anticipated four or the one, but on the four. It really sets up that rhythmic resolution at a very interesting syncopated place. Syncopation, baby. Yeah, and I think that's what makes, you know, when something is super typical, but it's got a hip little twist on it like that, it can make it, again, as long as you use it at the right time, the right place and combine it with the right thing very effective. All right, let's hip it up a little bit. Okay, hip it up. All right, so we got, yeah, we got two more.

Let's both see if we can come up with ones that are a little bit off kilter. I'm thinking of one. Let me, I'll demo it here. We're going to do some incredible, look at that. Now he's over. Like a magic trick. We switch spots. it's work. We'll stay in F. So this

is like when you might come out of a standard and a typical thing, you know, maybe a tag again either whether it's part of the tune or not. And then you end it, you go, as opposed to, you know, we're doing

something nice like that. You go, you actually end it on the one. So you're kind of going through. And I like, I always think about it as like tell me a bedtime story. Yeah, yeah. Because It's, you know, Herbie with that, you're basically going through a bunch of major seven chords that are very unrelated, but have some kind of a root movement that's actually melodic. So here, the one I did was I'm going down a minor third and then a major third and then a major third. So, you know, F major, D major, B flat major, G flat.

And there's a lot of ways you can be like, it's just a bad, it's just trial and error, but you want to go to really unveraged. related sounds. This works really good on ballads and then you get where you're going. But this is a really good one for pianists, guitarists, and horn players too, they can sit down and get a little bit of piano to try out a number of things because you want to, like these, I almost never do the same way. But I've got, you know, you want to develop a little bit of understanding of what they sound like so that when you go from one to the next, you can be like, whoa, okay, now I know I can go here. Man, I love that one. All right, we got one more? We got one more. Why don't you give us one of your hip ones? All right. This one, I always

like to do, because it can set up a really nice vibe at the end of a tune. And this is, so if we're, yeah, you know, I mean, it's almost the Keith Jarrett thing at the end of those standards records, like at the end of those tunes, they always go into this like super funky groove on the band. I like the, you know, this is my... And a different groove from the tune. Usually a different groove from the tune. I, you know, this is like my most basic one. You know, if you're on a two five and F, G minor, C7, you know, usually the melody, you know, it's a melody, is the tonic, right? Yeah.

If you go to an E-flat suss. Whole step down. Whole step down. Yeah. But you can even take this further and, you know, I've done like a B, D-flat, E-flat. Yeah, take them somewhere. It's about the high-reach-in-back. You can do A-flat.

There's really, it's endless. Whatever F works on top of, basically, you can create a little chord change pattern. This is super fun. especially if you have a regular group and you kind of get a bag of these together. Yes. You know what I mean? A little bag of groups. I think that's the general concept on that is that.

I mean, it's kind of making a joke as you're playing, but that's really what it is. It's like the after party. Yep. It's a little bit counterintuitive in that you think the ending needs to relate to the tune and draw it all together. But it's almost like, you know, the plane trip is over, but now you're going into the arrival lounge. Yeah, that's right. A little special bonus for some of you. And so again, if it's done at the right point,

like probably you wouldn't do this at the end of like this long form, complicated arrangement and all that, but like a simple tune where you feel like you don't want to end it, but you want to go somewhere different a little bit. It's like a tag, but not the tag ending. Yeah. It's like another little thing. So you've got a different harmonic area

that you're still relating to the main area, but a different groove entirely, which sets it off nicely. Same tempo, but different groove. Yeah, I think it's great. Well, that's seven. Thanks everybody for listening. We hope you enjoyed this one. We're thrilled to be back at the piano on this podcast.

I know. This is fun. It's been a minute. And you guys are hearing this. Well, yesterday's was darn near live. But today we're a few hours behind. But we are like, you know, the week of whatever this is, June 27th and stuff. So if you're listening to this, although we know this podcast is going to last for years and years to come.

Yeah. Yeah, man, sure. But we're right with you. And speaking of that, we have. have a few reviews that we've started reading. We're going to kind of highlight one each episode. Oh, do you like reading reviews? I like reading reviews.

These kind of reviews I like to read. So we had one from three days ago, and this is from DZung, or DZong. And I think this might have been one of our listeners that, maybe Zoom, maybe not, because it's from Vancouver. Maybe we got a lot of listeners up in Vancouver. No, I think this is Zoom. This is Zoom. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

So the title of this is, it's five stars, by the way. I mentioned that. Not seven? It's not seven, but I'm looking on here. It looks like he tried to press seven, and there was something broken on the system. So it's possible. But he says, the title is my favorite jazz podcast of all time. Thanks for such an educational and entertaining podcast.

I've learned lots and laughed along the way. I love how you share your own experiences and opinions. I'd love to hear more musical examples, clips, and demos of the tunes and concepts you talk about. That would make it come alive even more. Six stars. Look what we're doing today right now. Yeah, that's right. So that's six stars.

So thank you, Zoom from Vancouver. Much love to Canada, north of the border. We love you guys. Yeah, so please leave this rating and review. We love getting them, obviously. And then you can go to you'll hear.com to suggest future episode subjects. You can just ask us a question. You can ask us a voice question.

You can say hi and pop in. And there's a little community there of people who are You'll Hear It fans. That's right. That's right. So please join us again tomorrow and You'll Hear it.