You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Burnout - The Good Kind.

Episode Date: July 15, 2021

There's a good kind of burnout? That's right, Peter and Adam analyze (and define) a "burnout" from the jazz world.Links from this episode:Prefer your podcasts in video form? Watch the YouTube version of this episode hereInterested 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

Hey, Adam. Yeah. Are you feeling burnt out yet? I think I am feeling burnt out, but I'm going to try to embrace the burnout. Yes. Well, we've got a very exciting kind of burnout to add to your palette of being burnt out. So you ready? Let's do it.

Yeah. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Music advice burning its way towards your eardrums from our sheer microphonees. Okay, so sometimes, Peter, when you do as many podcast episodes as we've done over How many have we done? We've done like 750, man.

We've done a lot of podcast episodes, a lot of podcasting. And yet it feels like everyone is the first. No, no, no. Sometimes magical things happen. Like, we meticulously planned out an episode today. Stay with me. Okay. All about burnout.

Yes. And then I didn't get the memo the kind of burnout you were talking about. So I might have put a bad vibe on things. Well, then everything in our lives burnt out here at once. For those of you who missed it live on YouTube, we went to record this episode and everything stopped working. Yeah.

And you saw Adam Manus have a panic attack live on there, a little bit. No, it was actually, it's just part of the gig. When you're doing live shows and people might think there's like three producers in here with us because everything looks and sounds like good. There's two producers. It's just you and I and we do all the music. You're my bro, so we're the broducers.

And to be honest, I'm really just here for the espresso. So it's going to happen. But it was a fortuitous thing today as we started recording this. A what thing? Fetuitous events that as we started recording our episode here on burnout, that literally we started a burnout. But I feel good now, man. I'm ready to go. But you know what?

A nice little side note that we can learn from that. And we just want to talk about it real quick. When you get these little mini burnout situations or little stumbling blocks as performers. And look, we're all about getting better every day as musicians, you know, music advice. That's what we do here. You'll hear it. But it doesn't matter how much you plan, how much you practice, how many voicings you know, scale, fringering, all these great things that we talk about. Once you get into a performance situation, you know what they say.

Stuff happens. And there's even another way that they say it sometimes. Yeah. And so it's not about, you know, are things going to go wrong? Things are going to go wrong on, doesn't matter what level. Doesn't matter if you are, you know, Taylor Swift or Beyonce. say things are going to go awry at some point and then it becomes how do you respond like can you get yourself out of that burnt out that mini burnt out stage back into the zone of being prepared to

edify and entertain the audience because that's what it's about so as much as learning the technical aspects of music improvisation the theory the harmony sound production all these great things those are so important but you want to sprinkle in a little bit of real life like can you can you stoically continue on. Can you soldier on in the face of adversity? I think that we showed today, no, we cannot. No, we definitely can't. I mean, hey, that's part of being an improviser is pending yourself into a corner and seeing if you can get out. That's right. That's kind of the fun of it. So luckily for us today, man, all the heavy lifting has been done by one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, Kenny Kirkland. Yes. So we don't actually have to do very much of anything.

We can just put up here two down one across from Kenny Garrett's songbook album. here. This is a transcription by Max Gameese. Now, before we get into it, I just want to explain the burnout thing here. So when I started working here at Open Studio and we started hanging out and talking about music, you mentioned something from Black Codes in the, Black Codes from the Underground. And you said, oh, it's a burnout. It's E minor burnout. And I was like, I never heard that, I never heard that term before, but I knew exactly what you were talking about as soon as you said it, because that's exactly the feeling that it is. It's a burnout feeling. So maybe you could describe to folks what a burnout might be? Well, I could just play it and that would be even better as a way to

Oh, sorry. Triggering. Again, that's triggering. You know what? This is how this is how we help each other. I joke because I love. Yeah, no. So burnout is, you know, it's a style that really originated. I would say more with, you know, the Miles Davis classic quintet with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, and Ron Carter. You got to put McCoy. And then McCoy Tyner, John Coltrane Quartet for sure. And certainly earlier, you know, Ornette Coleman, I think in certain respects. But I don't know that it was ever called burnout. I want to say that, well, the first time I heard about it and it kind of felt like Went to Marcellus Brand for Marcellus, Kenny Kirkland, Kenny Garrett, and a lot of these great young lions in the 80s are the ones who coined the phrase. You know, maybe a jazz historian from yesteryear could correct us on that.

But that's when I first heard it. That's when I first heard about jazz. do so I don't know but I mean burnout like so it was describing something that the young lions in the 80s kind of embraced and used as a real starting point and a foundation for a kind of renewal of that style and a building upon it as well I mean they certainly like the Wint Marcellus quintet and then this is actually from the 90s so this is kind of an extension not the various earliest days of burnout it even but with Kenny Garrett quartet but I think you know Jeff watch like a lot of times burnout people People talk to thinking about what is the harmonic implications, the melodic implications.

And it's really more about the rhythm. You know, it's the speed. It's almost always fast. Yep. At least here, you know, but maybe here. One to do, d, d, ding, or a big, you know, but a minimum of kind of a medium-up situation. It's got some pace to it. It's got a little pacing to it.

And it's usually one chord or even just, even just a note. Kind of one-tonal center. Yeah. A lot of times we would say, yeah, exactly. F burnout, E-flat burnout, D burnout. And I believe, as I recall, man, I used to do a lot of burnout. But I believe like C was kind of the standard. Like if you didn't say, if it was just like burnout, you'd kind of go to C.

You know, not mandatory, but it'd be kind of like whatever the piano player, you know, mash down. Yeah, whatever you hit down on a big old fifth. I mean, it's not too good. But, yeah, so when we did our episode on our favorite albums of the 90s, Kenny Garrett's songbook was on that episode. And Max Schameese, you know, Max, who's our resident transcriber, He'll just like text me like, hey, I just transcribed like, you know, Kenny Kirkland's entire solo from this. And I'm like, okay, cool.

And but he was like, he text me with this excerpt from Kenny Kirkland's solo from two down one across from Kenny Garrett's songbook. Yeah. And he's like, but I don't know. Should I be putting chord changes? He's doing all this harmonic movements. Do I mark the core? And I'm like, he's like, what are the chord changes? And I'm like, oh, this is just E flat burnout. Right.

He didn't know about it. And it's, it was fun to like hear him like stress about like, what are they doing? Yeah. But it's really just you have one. tonal center, as you said, and then you can play off it. Shall we listen to this? Let's do it. What's the way. Here's to hope.

Me likey. That doesn't sound like E flat. That does. And it goes on from there. But again, so, right? So they're not, it's just amazing. So they're not thinking E flat minor this whole way.

Obviously, you can hear Kenny Kirkman. What he's doing there is building tension by taking it off of I mean, most of it is centered around like this E flat minor seven business, right? Yeah, and also that 6-9, he goes to it's almost like, you know, that G-flat C-F. Does he have written? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of that kind of given up that.

And actually, you could see Kenny Kirkland's moving that shape around. But then at a certain point, like around here, like he'll completely abandon it. Usually from one side chromatically or another. Yeah. Or maybe even something like a major third away or something like that, like right around here. And then kind of bring it back home. And then bring it back. Yeah.

Let's hear that again. We'll even pick it up a little bit before. That's very E flat minorish. Right. So what's going on through here? So we can kind of analyze this a little bit here. Yeah. So here, right here, this is definitely, I think, kind of E minorish.

You can see here, E minor, seven-ish. Slipping up. Slipping up all the way up here. So G, B-natural, D-natural to F. And then like F-7-9 there going into the, when he goes up high. Yeah, when he goes up high, F-7-sharp 9. which it might be, he's thinking B7 even. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, all through here. Again, this might be F7. So thinking about slipping up and down chromatically. And then I love this part here as you. And the rhythmic resolution on that. So let's hear that. And then what do you go? I mean, the structure of, like,

because Bernard doesn't have, you know, a set form, or seemingly it does it. But it actually, like, normally moves in units of, four bars, eight bars, 16, which are very symmetrical. So within that, there's a lot of opportunity to really stretch and pull, certainly harmonically the whole time and even rhythmically, but like where it resolves is always interesting. It's very rare that it's like, bibid, dippid, dipid, dip, da, bow, like on one.

It's always like, bidipipit, bang. And it's almost like a New Orleans kind of basterm on the four kind of thing that works into that. So it's interesting. So it's interesting. Oh, is that something that interests you? It is, because in the daily got to practice session, we're spending. all this month on rhythm and we're talking about something that I've been talking about called

the quarter note syncopation and some of you hear it's the it's the big four um um um oh come on now that's my jam what but people like thelonious monk brilliant as he was would take that and of course like write melodies around that quarter note syncopation now we're gonna we're actually we're going to this leads right into 80s burnout right it's the same it's this it's coming from the same place. So if you think about like, gong, gong, gong, gah, that's exactly that big four.

If you think of something like, do-da-da-da-du-da-du-dab-dab-bop, bap-a-da-da-da-da-da-ga-gga-ga-gha. Oh, I love that. That big four. But it's even in things like down, bon-gad-dug-do-d-d-d-d-tog-gaw-g ga. Right?

So he would displace it even. beats two and three and then beats three and four, things like that. And that kind of quarter note syncopation, I think is what really gives this, that swing, that hump. So, like, you described him resolving not on like, doga-d-d-d-dag-dag-d-dag-dha-d-dha.

That's two square, right? But this resolution with this, like, syncopating the quarter-note, do-d-d-d-d-dag-do-d-d-dag-dha-ca-ch-ca-ca-c. Like, that's answering yourself with that quarter-note dissipation. And he does it right here in that section we just listened to.

with these octaves. Like, not only is he taking it out harmonically, but rhythmically, too, he resolves himself. And, you know, just to be clear on this, like, the reason what Adam was just describing, what you were just describing, the reason the syncopation still resonates on the fore because we might think, well,

don't we want to be on an upbeat of, like, the eighth note? But because it's, like, whether we're slowing it down to kind of hear, well, like, when you're singing, Bup-Bel-B-Dibidi-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d. Yeah, exactly. So it's a little bit of a longer syncopation. You always still have those opportunities for the smaller syncopations with the eighth-nose things that you're playing, but that foundation underneath is over the quarter note. Yeah, come join us over on Open Studio Pro to practice these things.

We were also kind of geeking out on the... Again, it's a quarter note syncopation. It's like that quarter note is used at the end of the rhythmic phrase to put a punctuation on it. It's not the same as like an eighth note syncopation. It's almost not as powerful. Like an eighth note syncopation is almost like these jabs. And then you throw the haymaker with the quarter note. It's just a nice period on the end of the sentence.

Yeah. And I think that you can, I mean, and you'll see that monk did this. great in terms of the way he would build up his solos and that he'd have that underlying quarter note syncopation going. Yeah. And then he'd move away from it and be doing like faster lines or eighth notes, but you still would feel that. And sometimes the drummer would play it. But even if it wasn't played, it was still kind of resonating there and is really part of the form. But I think for this, you know, for the burnout, that's the whole thing because it's like the drama of it is that it's set up very square in a way, eight bars, eight bars, eight bars, eight bars, eight bar, because it almost

always resolves like that. But in actuality, Kenny Kirkland never resolves it like that. And Jeff Watt, I mean, look, Jeff Watt is really the captain of this burn out. But they're using this. So this is the thing. All these guys are totally schooled in like the tunes of monk. Yeah.

And B-Bop and exactly what we're talking about here. So it's when they resolve. Can I play this phrase here with the quarter notes? They don't. Like, to your point, it's not so square. Just like the harmony is not so square. It's always E-flat, minor, robot. Check it out here. Oh, that left hand.

And then he resolves before he gets there actually. Well, that's just so cool. And look at what he does to resolve. Right here, dot, dot, gong, it's the big four. It's a big four. It's a big four. It's a big four. If you did one more, five, if you get one more, it's a big five, you'd be on a safari in Africa.

No, then you'd be on the one and that'd be lame. But, I mean, honestly, if you want to, I mean, that's what's so beautiful about these great players. It's like, you know, you talk about how, I mean, how advanced is this. and contemporary, especially for its time. Yeah. You know what I mean? But how much it's still like the history of the music, that swing, that syncopation is always there.

Yeah. It's really... And then look at that. He hits that in that next bar. Can you just play the last two bars? Right right where you were on that line. Yeah. So there he's going right in.

He's already into the eighth note that the very next bar, the eighth note syncopation. Bip-b-do-bang. See on that and the three. Yeah, yeah. But look at all this. Look at how he uses this. the double stops, there's still that quarter notes of patient.

And then spreads it out. And then McCoy. McCoy Tyner. McCoy comes to town. Don, don, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, don't. Yeah. It's awesome, man. And it's really, it's fun to, uh, you could pretty much take any Munk tune and find

this like this quarter note. You can find the big four or the big two or the big three or whatever it is you want to to call it. Yeah. But to hear. That's so cool that it's like now we're seeing, this is the first time I'm realizing that Monk might be the originator more than even Miles or McCoy or Coltrane of the burnout era. I mean, it's the reason why his original compositions, I think, are so influential.

If you learn them, you essentially learn the rhythmic vocabulary of the music. Right. You know what I mean? Well, fun fact, during this time, kind of mid-80s, when the Wint Marcellus quintet, Bramford Marcellus, Charonette Moffat on bass, Kenny Kirkland on piano, of course, Jeff Watts, on drums, while they were playing all this great burnout and really, you know, kind of codifying that sound Monk was telling me

and a number of other young aspiring musicians Monk check out Monk check I remember I was always like wow that sounds burn out why isn't he and I would be like what about Herbie Hancock

because I'm like This is why Witten asked like told you when you were a kid right Yeah well yeah exactly Think about that He didn't explain the other part But I just blindly follows

So that was good But it's like a whole education I mean you can think about but doga doga do ba doga doga do ba doga do da But doga doda Doga do da It's all that

It's giving you that big those big tools and you could you could take pretty much any monk tune but um you can and it's so cool to hear that and what we would think is this like oh it's like you know this this this is edgy random burnout music can you put it back up here we can listen to it one more time but it's all of that is here that rhythmic vocabulary is here in the history of it and then combined with all of that harmonic vocabulary of taking it out slip and slide let's hear it one more time Okay, wait, hold up. We got to play.

So, big, gang, like, the way that Kenny, like, Kenny Garrett's rhythmic, you know, the saxophone is an instrument that really just blossoms and shines when it's being played with, like, a rhythmic kind of clarity that we would normally associate with percussion instruments. But Kenny Garrett, Steve Wilson comes to mind, of course, John Coltrane, Wayne shorter, but that, like, Kenny Garrett, right there, gets that rhythmic flavor in a way almost like, bick, do gang, and then Jeff Watts, and it's not about, like, robotically playing it together, but they set it off so well. It's beautiful. Let's hear it again.

Can you pause for the second? Yeah. Okay, I want to say, can I say something controversial? Please. Is this social bubble here? No one's going to hear it outside of this? Be careful. We're live.

So I would just say this, since we did talk a little bit about failure today. Kenny Kirkland, obviously not failing here. Wait, who's failing? But there is a little bit of, of, hey Adam, over here. There's a little bit. He's kind of, dare I say, floundering a little bit.

Not floundering in that he doesn't know what he's doing, but he's not quite digging in. Check it out. I'm going to stop you right where I hear it, if that's okay. That's right in there. Killing all that. So that little part there, like he's a little tentative, right?

Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, this just shows you like, you can, like, he doesn't let it phase him at all. and it still sounds great because of what he goes into next. It's almost like a dramatic thing. He probably implanted it like this, but he's a little bit rhythmically unstable, but because he's got that core time and temperature.

Controversial. I love controversial. Sorry. I don't know. Play it again. Tell me if you don't agree, we can duke it out as you say. I mean, he gets right back in there so fast, though.

I'm not criticizing. I'm actually saying it adds to it, you know. I mean, it's because it's only juxtaposed because his regular ath note is so heavy and so locked in. Exactly. That's what I'm telling like, I tell a lot of students, I'm like, once you get good and you're locked in, it's almost harder because you, if you very, I mean, if anybody else played those lines like that, you're like, oh, that's pretty nice. That's good because that's kind of their normal flow. But because he's so locked in, when he gets a little bit.

But it's the beginning of the solo. Maybe he was adjusting his headphones. Who knows? But it just shows them. I mean, I love that. It's kind of like a great basketball player. dribbling that slips up and like lets his dribble go for a second. He doesn't let it

phase him or her. No. You know, they pick it right back up and they're like coming even harder after them. Man, this is improvisation. This is not meant to be perfect. And also, by the way, he starts playing with it too, right? I know. His little slip up actually feels pretty great. And then just heavy, heavy. And then he's just like, oh,

you thought I was slipping up? I got you. Let me remind you that I'm Kenny Kirkland. He's setting it up already here. On this next part. Oh, I was kidding. I said of it. No, man, I mean, but you could go through here and like, you know, that, again, that big four. Mm.

Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Even that, you know, like a three two clave. Mm. Mm.

Mm. Mm. These, like, standard bits of rhythmic vocabulary are all throughout this. Even when you're slipping out in all this crazy harmony that makes, you know, like crazy sense that's why these masters sound so good and you know what this is all within our grass too like we we

this stuff is super you know advanced conceptually but there's a simple simplistic execution to them and sometimes looking at the transcription actually reveals that I'm always surprised because like a lot of times the transcription can make things until you dig a little bit deeper

it can make things seem more complicated I mean just the fact that you got six flats up there that's already making me nervous and all these natural and stuff. But if you look at like the structure of the solo and how it fits in within this kind of unstructured well it's not totally unstructured like we said eight bars eight bars E flat

but unstructured in terms of where you want to go the architecture and the arc of his solo starts to be revealed within the transcription. That's great man. So we will have this whole transcription available to here in the link once this is published. Thank you so much for sticking with us folks. Peter we did it. We pulled it out

man. I was getting burnt out. I was a little worried that it wouldn't This episode wouldn't even happen because of all the technical. Well, did you press record. Yes, you did. So let me check. There you go. Okay.

Yes. We recorded that. Thank goodness. Good. Well, until next time. You'll hear it. Shoot. Sorry.

Hold on. Made it all the way through. That's how we did it. Without even any noodles available to us. I did air noodles. Air noodles. Good. All right.

Well, thank you guys. YouTube. I appreciate you guys sticking around and coming back on the other stream. You know, that's how we're. we do it. This was all set up for you guys to learn about burning out. Congrats everybody for making it through. That's actually really great. I mean, like I said, man, in the show, it's like you're dealing with some Kenny Kirkland on. Kenny Kirkland makes it all right. I mean, it makes it all right. It's like it's cool.

All right. Well, till next time.