You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Big Band Playing

Episode Date: June 17, 2019

Today is another SpeakPipe question, and Peter and Adam give their take on playing in a big band. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Check out the bottom of the page at http://www.openstudionetwork.com/podcast.Be one of the first 20 people to leave us a rating or review at https://www.youllhearit.com/sticker and you can score a FREE You'll Hear It sticker.Today's episode is sponsored by Soundslice. Soundslice is a web-based music-learning software that is a hybrid audio player and notation viewer that syncs music notation with real audio. To find out more about them, visit www.soundslice.com/transcribe. And check out our Slice of Emotion In Motion (the You'll Hear It Jingle)!Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.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, Pete. Hey, man. What's the biggest band you've played in? Big band. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hearer podcast. Daily Jazz advice, coming at you?

Coming at you today? Etcha. Brought to you by SoundSlicse. Check out SoundSlice.com. Follow our link here so you can see, transcribed and in SoundSlice, the You'll Hear a theme, a motion in motion, and get a feel for how it works. You can navigate this beautiful notation that follows the video in SoundSlice. You can click and drag to loop section. You can slow it down without losing pitch.

There's so many cool options. You can do notation in the actual slice itself. It's one of the most useful tools we have here at our Open Studio bidness. Absolutely. And, you know, SoundSlic, we've been thinking about this a lot since the sponsorship started this week. It's such a cool and intuitive product that it's kind of hard to explain in words. It's just like, just go play around with it. Yeah, go mess around.

You know, and it's got so many cool features. It's such a well-designed. piece of software and a brilliant idea. But like one thing you can do, as you mentioned, is just sort of highlight some of the notes in the notation and then press play. And you'll, you just press your space bar. And then you'll hear that looped and you'll see the video and the audio that all stay together. Great for practicing little portions or learning something.

You can add that with the slowdown and a lot of stuff. But it's one of those things that the deeper you go and the more you play with it, you know, I'm still finding cool little features and they're always adding nice stuff. But it's super simple and elegant well-designed software. A plus. Soundslife.com. Go check it out. Okay, so today we have a speak pipe. Speak pipe.

What's up? Speaking to the pipe. From, okay. From Martin. Oh my goodness. Hello, Peter and Adam. This is Martin, drummer from Germany. I follow your podcast since last summer and it's really great and fun to hear you guys talk.

I think even when I hear you guys talking, it's a bit like a concert. You can feel the creativity and the inspiration. and listening to each other and the great sense of humor, so keep up with the good work. My question would be, I play combos, but also a lot of big band stuff. I think you never did a podcast about big band. I really enjoy it and find you learn some important stuff

when you play big band. So let me know, what's your take on big band playing? Thanks, and at least seven stars. At least. I like it. Thank you, Martin Flattery. will get you everywhere. Absolutely.

Not only are you our favorite drummer, Germany is our favorite country for now. Keep them coming, buddy. And Martin is already my favorite name, so that's all my favorite. Oh, boy, okay. Fun fact about that, Martin, he's Martin in Germany,

which is, I'm sure, his first name. Yeah. That's a very popular first name in Germany. So when I check into hotels in Germany, I often have my surname and my given name reversed. Oh, nice. They think I'm Martin Peter.

Martin Peter. Yeah, that's funny. I'm Peter Martin. Martin. Yes. Big Man playing. I don't think we have covered this. Well, the reason is is because, well, we've never,

I don't know if we've ever nailed this down. I love Big Band. I hate playing piano and Big Man. It's a thankless job. It's a thankless and listenless. Listenless. It can't be heard, basically. But it is a very specific role.

It is. And it's different than playing in a tree or. It's based upon the specific is. That's it. Those two chords. Count Basie. For drummers, though, this is like a, a glam gig.

You know what I mean? That's why Martin in Germany is so excited. Absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, I really like playing in big bands, only because I like being in the middle of these big sounds. You know what I mean?

Same thing with orchestra. You never really get to do a lot of cool stuff with orchestra, but it's cool to be in the middle of everything. And we're joking, actually. I mean, I was joking. I said I hated it and now I say I love it. It's a love, hate. There's some great music made by big bands.

And it can be really fun. You know, but as I alluded to, I think the thing we could talk about a little bit is how the role changes for each of these instruments. For drums, your job is to put this monster on your back, dragging along. A good band will help you out with that. But brass players got to breathe.

Yeah, exactly. And they take a little time sometimes. You're truly driving the band and pulling them and, yeah, as the level goes higher, there's more help just like with anything. But, I mean, drums, I mean, it's got to be the funnest thing, playing with a good big band, and you're a great drummer, a great big man. You can set it up.

You know, we have a local guy here, Kevin Giannino, who's a master at this man. I love playing big man or orchestra gigs with Kevin because he's just so tasty and precise in the way he sets up every single hit. And it makes the band just kind of float along. Like that's really the work. He doesn't have to worry too much,

I think, about setting the time because he's just setting up their phrases so perfectly they have to put it in this place. It just feels right, you know? Yeah, and I think we, you know, it's easy for us to think about, okay, drummers that are really, you know, have a really strong groove and loud and like that's how you drive. That's not really what it's about. It's what you were just talking about, which is really about understanding the architecture of the tune and being able to find those places where you're going to give the big hit.

But a lot of times it's just a little, like you're setting up, you know, the trumpet section. Yeah, great section is going to come in together and in tune and with the right voicing and stuff. But when the drummer sets it up, it makes it feel so much better that they can play so much better. and it's really a, I think it's more of a form and balance and architecture thing for the drummer. I think for the pianist, like, we often understand that. Shoot, we're a lot of times the actual arranger of the composition or the composer of it.

It's a fun instrumentation to write for. Right, but if we're playing with it, we don't have that kind of control that a drummer does, and I guess that's where we do get a little frustrated sometimes. How do you... I wonder how you approach comping in a big band because I've come to the realization probably too late in life

that it's really... really less is more situation. Yeah. Most of the harmony is taken care of at all times. And you don't really need to be in there propelling things or adding too much to that harmonic map. So really the role becomes more of just coloring some things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Trying to pick your spots, not overplaying, you know, that kind of thing. And then like you said, then you're nice like at the end sometimes. We got to humble. You got to be humble to be a pianist and a big band. Unless it's called named after you, the Duke Ellington band. But you know, it's interesting. You know, some of the funnest music I've played in big band. And I actually haven't done it a lot.

You've probably done it way more than me. I mean, of course, we did it in high school, I think, with our high school band. It's a middle school for me. And then I played with Jazz Lincoln Center for about a year. So that was sort of the most I did. That's a good big band. Yeah. And I remember doing it, yeah.

I mean, we did some everything from some super-com. complex original premieres of Wint Marsalis' music like All Rise. We played that and recorded that, which is actually with big band and orchestra and choir, I think. I mean, it's just like, I mean, talk about being outnumbered at the keyboard. But that was a lot of fun. But also we did, I remember playing the Nutcracker Suite, the Duke Gallington version of Chikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. That's fun. It's fun.

And we did it juxtapose each movement, Duke Gallington version. Then I can't remember the order. I think it was back and forth. Chikovsky version, original version, back and forth each movement with the New York Philharmonic all on stage together. Nice. So not really playing together, but going back and forth.

That was fun. But there's so much tacit, like the part, because these were transcriptions, or maybe they had the original music from Duke Galaxy. I'm not even sure, but it was his version. And most of the movements were like tacit, tacit for piano. So I would sort of play just to see if anyone would know.

I'm like, hey, I'm up here. I'm not going to play anyway. But there's not a lot of places. I mean, Duke, I mean, part of it, he was conducting and stuff, but he didn't write a lot of stuff for him. There's just not a lot of room for the piano, especially if like you got a guitar too. You know what I mean? It's like once you get in those zones, it's just like chill out.

You know, you don't have to do full, thick chords all the time. Let them have it. Yep. I haven't, I had never been a member of a big band or whatever, you know, obviously in high school. In high school, I played in mine and I played in a couple of colleges. I played in Wash U's big band in when I was in high school and community college big band. Those were fun bands, actually. Yeah.

And then I played when I was in college at the new school in the new school's big band, which was Killin. Yeah. And that's pretty much it. Then just subbing randomly, you know, more orchestras, really, than anything. But it's the same kind of principle. Yeah. In the orchestra, too, if you get one of those gigs, it's like,

you don't have to overplay. You don't have to drive everything. It's probably covered. Right. Just do your job. Fill the role. I think, too, and look, Martin asked us about Big Man. I don't even know that he made.

We're only talking about the pianist role. because that's what we're thinking about it from. That's all we care about, frankly. No, that's not true. Not at all. No, but we talk about drums a lot at the beginning, but I think, too, that in most big band situations, there is going to be a time where there's really, as pianists,

we're called upon. It's almost like, you know, the lead alto player in a way. Well, no, maybe like the second alto or the second tenor that maybe has one or two solos. Yeah. And then otherwise you're playing ensemble stuff that's important, but, you know, you're not heard as much. but like how do you really optimize that one or two chances and look for piano often it's actually more than that

you have some solos and more than just the ending so it's I always had fun with that of like okay so I'm not soloing on every tune so now I want to really concentrate on on just those solos and making them great I mean hopefully we do that all the time but if you're soloing all night in a small group you do get the feeling of like

staying in that mode but this kind of takes you out of it and then let's make it a really special moment yeah I can think of some tips for piano especially in Big Ben just recalling some situations I've been caught out in. Number one listen is super important. And when you're rehearsing, take notes. We talked about this a little bit in our opera post-game yesterday's podcast.

But so one of our pianist's major roles and drummer and bass player and guitars too is to comp for the solos. Sometimes there's a lot of solos in a row or you know what I mean? You get the barn burner at the end of the night and everybody wants to go through and blow or whatever. So if it's not in the music, and sometimes it's not, make sure to notate in some of those hits that the band will do over those solos, because you don't want to be clashing with that at all. And in fact, you can play with them on those hits or just lay out when the band has hits. Yeah, you got to know what's happening even when you don't have something.

Got to know what's happening. So take detailed notes. It's the pro thing to do. Absolutely, absolutely. And I was just thinking back to the, if you don't have a lot of solos, I definitely learned a lot from Wintmarsallis watching. He actually with the Lincoln Center did not take a lot of solos. He wouldn't even necessarily take any more than the other trumpet players.

I'm thinking like Ryan Kaiser and Marcus Printup at that time. But he was so good. Like you could almost see him start focusing like five minutes before a solo like zoning. And he had to kind of lead the band, although he was not like out in front. He was very much like lead from the back and playing his parts. He really took a lot of pride in like playing his parts, which was not lead trumpet. It was like whatever second trumpet or whatever he was doing. But like when he was ready to solo.

even though it wasn't his band where he could solo all the time. He could have. But man, he was like, talking about optimized that time. Yeah. It was on. It's a good. Concentrating. It's a different kind of soloing.

It's almost like playing a soloing on a pop gig or something where you have. Yeah. A very short window. It's not like a trio gig where you got all night to figure it out. Right. Like you've got to come in and make a statement and you got to take in what's happened before, what's about to happen after in the tune. D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D.

It's kind of like that. Bood-D-D-D-Careless whisper. Come on, man. You're out with me? I got to go. You know what I'm saying. Thank you, Martin, for the speak pipe. Great question.

I hope we took care of that for you. At least now you know what piano players think, Martin. Right. And now, and everybody knows that Martin is a first name in Germany. That's right. I want to say Martin Martin, because it is sometimes uses the last name there. Yeah, Martin Martin. Yeah.

I actually, half of my family is German, but not the Martin side, which is unusual. I mean, there could be Martin Martin's here in America. Sure, right? Yeah. Yeah. They're members of the world's most unimaginative family. Okay, so if you want to leave a speakpipe, where can people go? SpeakPipe.com?

No. No, they would not go there. Well, maybe, I don't know. No. That would probably go to them. Go to you'll hear it.com. Exactly. That's what I meant.

And you can check out our blog there. There's a bunch of free stuff up on the blog, content, arrangements. I don't think people like free anymore. They want to pay. No, they like free. Oh, they do like free. They do. Also, check out soundsslice.com.

Check out emotion and motion. transcribed up in soundslice where you can see it beautifully scrolling along with the video. It's awesome. And check out their awesome community. And kick the tires. I think they have a plan that starts at free. You can start it free. It is cheap enough for most people.

Start it free. You can put in your own video, transcribe it, whatever you want to do. It's awesome. And then, yeah, until tomorrow. You'll hear it.