You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Burning Questions: How to Get Wined and Dined

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

Peter and Adam are going to be streaming and taking your questions live on Open Studio's Instagram every Saturday for the duration of the global health crisis. Today, Peter and Adam take questions on how to approach diminished chords, their favorite Herbie voicings/techniques, and Adam shares his horror gig story.Links From This Episode:Open Studio now has an app! Getting your regular practice in has never been easier thanks to our Guided Practice App - featuring Adam's daily Guided Practice Sessions, lessons from our Piano Finger Independence course, and more practice adviceThere's a new course from Open Studio: Rhythm Section Workout is available now! Play along with Peter Martin on piano, Reuben Rogers on bass, and Gregory Hutchinson on drums as they teach you the tips and tricks to playing with a bandToday's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)4:00 PM - Open Studio Demo & Tour - Register Here8:00 PM - Peter & Adam's Listening Sesh - this week's album: My Funny Valentine by Miles DavisFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkIn 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.

Hey, Adam. Yo. Do you know what week of the pandemic this is? This is, I think, yeah, I do. It's week 3,586, I believe. Wow, so oddly specific and exaggerated. I keep good records. LPs.

I'm Adam Annis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the witty banter of the You'll Hear It Podcast. And you're also listening to Adam and I talk and about jazz music. and all things music. That's right. Coming at you. Coming at you.

today sponsored again by AnyTune. Go to Anytune.us. You'll hear it to check out what I think is the best tool for learning jazz. It's an amazing audio device that you can slow down your tracks. You can isolate instruments

in such a beautiful and easy interface to use. It's really something, man. I'm so happy they're our sponsor because I believe in them so much. I've been a user of theirs for years before they were our sponsor. I love them so much.

And I'm so thrilled that we get to plug them on our show. Yes, and you can isolate. This is a great time for social isolation, so they were ahead of the curve. This is like instrument isolation, isolation, social isolating for your jazz practice. We're going to give them a new.

They go by music practice perfective, which is pretty darn good, but it's also social isolation for your instrument. So anytune.us slash you'll hear it. That's right. And we're live again on, not you'll hear it, we'll live again on Instagram. Doing a you'll hear it.

We're doing our Q&A. Go check out OpenSudiojazz.com slash live. If you ever want to know where we are, we do these every Saturday at 2 p.m. Eastern over on the Open Studio IG channel, and we take questions from our users. We get a lot of good ones lined up right now. So far.

So far is from L. Walters' music. And L. Walters asks, what different ways do you approach diminished chords when improvising on different tunes, such as caravan, right? So notoriously, Caravan is sometimes played with a diminished seven chord. I've seen other chords marked for that C that marks the head. But if you see a diminished seven chord, if that's the vibe that everyone's doing around you,

there's really one great option, and that's the diminished scale. The whole half diminished scale is probably your best option. Now, I've actually seen, I don't know about you, Peter, I've seen C-13 flat 9-sharp 11 on this chord as well. Yeah, yeah. That's the half-hole diminished scale. That's the altered scale, right? It could be the altered scale, yeah.

Oh, no, no, no, you don't have a half-hole, right. I've seen all three. I've seen actually probably five different C-7s or C's on caravan, depending on who's playing it. Yeah. So, but if you see just C-diminish-7, and I believe that's what you're talking about, really the whole half scale, C-D-E-flat-F, G-flat, A-flat, wait, yeah, C-D-E-F, G-A-flat-A-B, and that's your C whole-half scale.

Yep, yep. Yeah, and I actually think, you know, on Caravan, all three of those ways that you mention are really good to get in your hands to be able to play over this tune, actually. Because if you think about it, well, I mean, a lot of great recordings of this, I'm thinking about the Art Blakey, Freddie Hubbard, is that, or is that Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter,

like that arrangement that they have with the Art Blake and the Jazz Messengers. different soloists play at different times and even within the same solos over all three of those sounds and because two of them are diminished bass I mean the alter is a little bit of a different thing but it works really well especially at the last part

like if you think about the C altered scale over that the last part as you're going to the F minor you know the last couple of bars because you're sitting there for so long so it's good to kind of have a couple of different approaches to it and even within the the anything that's diatonically the same as that g diminished whole half we would normally think

oh that's just the same you know like like c half whole diminishes the same as g whole half but it's not in terms of conceptually for improvisation because we know that like notes in a scale diatonically do never just sit there like they are their own thing you know and and like we use them in ways that are based around where they start and where they end and that's how we tell our story with them. So taking these and like improvising and practicing improvising over caravan over just that G diminished for a while is good. And then think about over a C diminished and then think about creating ideas over that C altered scale. And then you start to get some different ways to play it so that you're not just running up and down the same thing. Like like when you're on so what for

16 bars on D minor. It's like that's a Dorian. So I can only play Dorian and I'm going to run up and down it. Boring. You know, you've got to find different interesting shapes and ideas and melodic things. And then, you know, you can play anything in the chromatic scale. You've got that as well. But you want to have these different areas that lead somewhere that can work, especially over challenging tune like that. We never think about it being challenging with just one core. We're like, oh, it's easy.

But it's a hard chord. I mean, it's a diminished. It's like no one knows what the hell that is. Well, now they're confusing myself talking about. That's right. Now you know, knowledge dropped. Peace. You're spinning yourself.

What's up Warren Wolf? Oh, what's up Warren Wolf? What's happening? Evan, Dan Mercer, asks what our favorite voicing slash techniques are. Our favorite Herbie Hancock voicing slash techniques are. I actually have a favorite voicing. And I forget where I got it.

It might have been from one finger snap or plug nickel. Some Herbie thing I transcribe. But it's a B-flat minor 7, starting with your left hand only. Four-note voicing. G, A-flat, D-flat, F. Right? So you think about like there's a D-flat triad, right, in the second inversion, with that G, with that cluster ripled floor.

I love that voicing. I ripped that off all the time. It's a great one. And, you know, I mean, Herbie is, that was one of the main sort of voicing principles I've stolen from him, is taking a triad plus one note, you know. And it's a cluster usually. It's a cluster. It's usually like a, yeah, exactly a minor second.

And there's so many different ways once you start thinking about this concept that you can test it out and kind of come up with your own, it's still Herbie-esque. But the thing is, a lot of them don't sound good. So that's fine. Like we were talking about yesterday, you know, the whole process of going through voicing is trial and error, which is giving you great ear training kind of as you go.

But I love taking concepts as opposed to just. I mean, it's also good to just take voicings and learn them and apply them at different places. And we've all heard a great classic recording like plug nickel or something. You're like, man, how does he do that?

And then, but when you go to find it, you're like, wow, that's just a triad plus one note. But that opens up a whole world because we, you know, triads are not.

copywritten and so and there's a lot of them and there's a lot of different inversions of them. So it's a simple concept that's got a super cool sound and that you can start to learn the shapes and learn how they feel. One other thing that I would put on there is like a herbieism that I have ripped off and I hear a lot of people rip off. It's kind of started on I think on Maiden Voyage, but he's done this throughout his career. Anytime it's like a Suss 7 chord, right? So if you have F, F, Suss 7 or E flat major 7 over F or whatever it is, he does that movement

and you can hear it on on main voyage. He does that movement where like the B flat is on the bottom. So maybe like he has F in the base and then B flat D, E flat G, right? Another triad plus one right there. And he moves that B flat up half steps. So it hits, his B flat goes to B natural. That's that Herbie sound. You can hear then all over the headhunter's stuff,

even into like later one plus one stuff with Wayne Shorter, stuff like that. He still uses that voice in quite a bit and I love it. Possibilities, man. That to me is one of his. most like overlooked albums because you know he he he kind of because of the nature of the repertoire and the guests and like how they're presenting the music on there he's conceptually coming from a different place but things like this like how he uses voicing how he does like very small minor close um not minor key but you know small um

inner movements on his voicings that create little melodic movements but very small, nothing even to the point of what he technically could do, but so interesting and so nuanced and so much using, you know, touch and sound and voicing that's different, not these kind of voices, but voices in the classical sense as far as different kinds of touch, even within the one hand. You know, he does that, you can hear it so well on that, but it's these same concepts, you know, triads, a lot of, like, really strong foundational harmonic principles, so they're great. Love it.

U.N. asked, what's up, Ewan, a big thing that people recommend. is playing along with your favorite records, but I'm not sure what to play when I do because there's already a full band playing so it can sound messy adding myself in. Okay, first of all, this is funny because I love, I do this too sometimes.

I love when people write casually online, but he wrote out this whole thing with the correct words, nothing short in text style, except for the word because he put C-O-Z. The one thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He saved like two letters on that. That's awesome.

what to play Okay, so well first of all If you're a pianist If you're any any instrument Find something Find a record that your piano is not on You know And you know

Sunny Ronald's Live at the Village Vanguard The great trio records Without piano That's your that's your perfect chance To jump in And not get in the way Of the other pianists

Because there isn't one If you're Warren Wolf Who we're blessed with at this session One of the world's great vibraphones A lot of records don't have vibes So hello You know I'm sure I'm sure young prodigy Warren Wolf was able to practice along with those.

We were just talking about the plug nickel. Herbie actually doesn't comp a lot on the plug nickel recordings. You can get right in there with that. That's right. If you ever felt that there was not enough copying, you can provide it and see if you can do better than when he was laying out. That's right. But also I think I think that playing along with recordings of things that you've learned,

things that you've transcribed or just learned by ear can't be undercounted. because you can turn up the get some good headphones going on or get the volume going good and just play along. There's nothing like getting caught up in the spirit of the music. It's like when you go running with somebody who's just a little bit faster than you, or even if you go running a race and you kind of get caught like the energy of everybody who's around you,

you just sort of go with that and it's great. And so there's nothing like learning the phrasing of say, Chickaria comping. If you were to learn a chorus of his comping, or maybe his solo and his comping his left hand or whatever it is and then play along with it you don't have to worry as much about like how did he phrase that how did he accent that you're just going more in the moment like am i playing what he's playing it if not you do it again you do it again you listen you play it separately but then you put it together you just try to get that mob the mob mentality going but a positive mob mentality love it love it let's do one more from that boy tom that boy tom has been on like the last four of these so what's up big shout out to tom man what's a brother uh do you guys have any horror You talked a little bit about this, but I have one that I'm, I don't know if I've mentioned. Horror gig stories.

Do you guys have any horror. Please pronounce that. Correct. Horror. Do not make that one set one syllable, man. Come on, dude. It's a whole different podcast. I have one on the road on a tour with, um, uh, the singer I used to play with a lot.

And we had a bunch of great anchor gigs on this tour all through the upper Midwest, like around, you know, we started in St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, I think we went to Minneapolis. I think we even went to South Dakota on that tour, but just a trip around that area where we were driving in a van. And we were filling out some of the bigger, better anchor dates and club dates with some little places. We played in a great place and like, oh man, where was that? Some place in the middle of nowhere, it was just a beautiful little music club, like on a river. It was gorgeous. I forget what it was called. But then we played in Appleton, Wisconsin. I'm not going to mention the venue because it's not fair if whoever is there now. But this guy, we get there, we get to the gig for Soundcheck at 5 p.m., right? It's a Sunday.

There's a church service going on in the bar. In the bar. Church! There's church happening, which is already enough to kind of put you off a little bit. But the guy is like, guys, don't worry. There's going to be a ton of people here. We're going to get you set up, get the stage over there. I'm going to whine you and dine you. Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. So we're waiting around. We went about three hours, about 8.15, and we're like, hey, what's going on? Are we about to play? And where's the people? And is this, do people know about this? You know, where we, we've been advertising. Is anybody going to come? And he's like, don't worry, guys. The sound guy, he had to leave because his wife had to go to the hospital. So there's no sound,

but you just get up on stage, get ready to play. I'm going to whine you and dine you. I get up there. There's no piano. There was supposed to be a piano. I don't have a piano with me. He's like, oh, I got a piano. Problem is. It's in the other room. So you and I are going to have to move it up on stage ourselves. And I was like, okay, this is, this is, he's like, but don't worry, I'm going to whine you and dine you. Why do you and die you? Church service has ended, but everybody is stuck around to get wasted after church. And so those are, that's, that is the only crowd. We finally, me and him get the piano up on stage. Sound guy comes back. He looks just terrified because his wife is in the hospital for some reason. I assume meth or something.

Um, and then we play a set. Nobody is lit. To pick up some meth. Yeah, exactly. Not for withdrawal. It sounds terrible because the guy's head is in it. The sound guy leaves after the first song because he's got to get back to his meth-out wife. And we finished just like a 40-minute set. Nobody's listening.

The church group is just wasted and loud and doesn't give a... That we're there. And we kind of rejected, I'm tired. I think I pulled my back out from getting the piano up on stage. And the guy who owns the club's like, I'm so sorry about this guy. This is not how we wanted this to happen. We were so looking forward to having you here, but don't worry, I've got to wine you and dine you. Oh my God.

This dude brought out five Yeager shots for the band and a microwave pizza. Oh, that's great. That was the wine and dine. And I think it paid the door and it was just like a church collection bucket. Did you feel wine and dined? I mean, I had some drinks because I was so depressed. I'm not going to lie. That's awesome.

Well, I got a bunch. Well, I got one really good one in particular, but we're going to do it tomorrow because we're running out of time today. Plus, that's a little showbiz thing we do. It's called the cliffhanger. We, so tune it tomorrow. We'll start out with one of my horror stories. Warren Wolf was actually at that.

He was not the cause of it, though. Sweet. So we are brought to you by two great organizations today. The first is AnyTune. Go to Anytune.us. And someone was just asking Joe, our friend Joe from H-Town in Texas, was asking, can you isolate instruments? Yes, you can.

That's one of the game-changing. Definitely in the Mac app. I'm not sure about on in the apps. I mean, on the Mac actual computer app, that's where you're going to want to do it. It's really powerful. I don't know if the actual iPhone and Android app do it. But yes, you can isolate something.

You can eliminate something. So you can isolate the main way I've used it is by like eliminating the piano. Actually, this is the answer to the earlier question. How do you practice along with stuff where you get in the way? Get any tune. Hello. Ask and answered. You're welcome.

Yeah. But it's just a game changer. Go ahead. Yeah, sorry. I was just saying it's a game changer. Go to anytune.us slash you'll hear it. Please enter the portal through that. And go to OpenStuiojazz.com.

That's our other sponsor. And we have a brand new app. It's a guided practice app. It's filled with a bunch of guided practice sessions by me. I'm literally telling you what to practice, how to practice. It's a bit of a drop down and give me 20. No, it's actually way more gentle than that. But go check that out, openstudiojazz.com.

And until next time. You'll hear it.