You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Get Your Funky Pop Stuff On!

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

We've done plenty of episodes on how to spice up your jazz playing, but how do you add some flavor to pop music? Today, Peter and Adam tell you how.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.There's a brand new course from Open Studio: Jazz Chords for Beginners. Learn from YHI's own Adam Maness as he teaches you the important chords you need to know to play jazz. You can also follow along with Adam thanks to our Guided Practice Sessions™, where he'll teach you exactly how to practice the concepts of each lesson. And as a response to the tough times many of us are going through these days, we've decided to launch this course at several different price points. For more info, follow 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 and leave a comment for this episode.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast. Daily Music Advice coming at you. And you might be watching the You'll Hear It podcast on YouTube because we're on YouTube today. We are. We are a minor YouTube sensations. I'm going to adjust my... We're not minors.

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Good stuff. Yeah, yeah. What are we talking about today? So we're talking today, you know, kind of just, I thought it'd be fun to go through some kind of pop-ish stuff and how you get there. Funky.

I mean, I never, to me, it's never about. about like you play like this, you play like that. But like the way we, and we just made that up, you know, we don't know what's going on here. As we would not. You know, it's a Friday here. We're just chilling. No, but I mean, like, how do you get out of just the, you know, we love playing like that and the voicings and all that stuff?

But what do you know about? Oh, you're talking about simplifying. Simplify and isolate. But also, you know, kind of just talking about how you get that sound. And it doesn't have to be just the slow kind of, you know, it can be like. I think I know. I think you are talking about here this little gray zone that a lot of jazz pianists kind of find themselves themselves rubbing up against, right?

Yeah. Which is like maybe I'm playing a top 40 gig or I'm playing a gig with a pop band. Maybe I'm a whirlie out and I'm playing with a singer-songwriter. Yeah. And I can't be all. No. You can, but you're going to get some blank stares and some no-boinos. It's not good, right?

So what's a good approach to that? First of all, like we do with everything, listen. You know, find your pop pianists and find your pianists who play this style a lot and what you like about them. Right, right. And I was just thinking of a few simple things and then as we started kind of going over this,

I realized a lot of it has, for me, kind of has strong gospel sort of roots in terms of like how you could do that. But just some general things that are fun, of course, okay, how do you not play? So take away the seventh, and if you're just going to try it, but you don't have to,

It doesn't have to be just, it can be like, that's pretty different, isn't it? Yeah. You're talking about that little grace note in there? A little grace note. Yeah, yeah. By the grace of God, goeth I. Let's talk about some of the gospel influences that are surely in almost all pop music at this point. The first one that comes to mind, you did a little bit there in the intro, and that's using those triad pairs in order to...

One four, one for one. This is one two, right? C, we're in the key of C. Yeah. C, a major triad, and then a D minor triad. Oh, yeah. And through all the inversions. Yeah, I like it.

Like, that's not something that we do a lot in a jazz piano context. No, right? Like, we're not playing, like, all the things you are and doing those kind of triad pairs. We're doing far more distantant triad pairs, frankly. Or it'd be, like, the closest thing would be like, so what voices kind of. Right.

But we don't play anything. Yeah, we don't have play rhythm changes and be like, as much as if we're playing, you know, a pop tune, like, those come in handy very quickly. So I would say get those together in all keys first. Like those sort of gospel triads that you can throw in, the major triad pairs that C major triad to the D minor is a good one. And then the relative minor, A minor to G major.

It can be very useful on a minor chord that. And do you think about them as going to the closest, like you were going down there? So A minor and then G. Yep. I mean, that's one way to do. just learn them, but there are several ways you can practice them to just, the goal of practicing all this is to get it in your hands so that it comes out as language without having to think

about it. Yeah, because I think ultimately, you know, it can be nice to think melodically, even as you jump down into the different voicing. And that's where I find, like, you can get some sort of magic area where you can throw in a lot of the jazz harmony within that as you're in those transitional place, even when we're back can see. See? Now here we, yesterday, or the last episode, we did YouTube, we, my buddy, we talked about

the blue scale. Stuff with the face, though. We talked about our friend Warren Wolf and his major blues scale idea. This can really be handy, you know, as we're playing these podcasts. I use this all the time when I'm doing stuff like this. And something I hear you do and you're writing and you're playing and I really like doing too is like taking the bluesy stuff, combining it with the, you know, real triad stuff,

and then going to like a major two, major nine over the three. Dude, you know that's my jam. That's my jam, yeah. I like that one. You know what I mean? This is that chord is what you're talking about, right? Yep.

Would you call that a C2 over E? That's exactly what I would call. And that goes nice to a four major nine. Oh, you wouldn't, you wouldn't, Sharp 11. So this is my second favorite one is a major 7 over E, right? So like E, C, then G, B. That voicing there, if I'm going to the four, right?

Yeah. Love it. And then throwing Warren Wolf's major blues scale. All of a sudden. It's still on the tonic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I love the... That's going up to the dominant seventh in the room.

So now this, this is what. one that's kind of a variation of that major two. Yeah, what is that? So that's the major seven over three, over the third. So that's like an F major seven. Yeah. Or you can do F major nine over eight. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then this gives some interesting kind of stacked stuff. Or, um... Those shapes become super cool. Yeah. Man, you've got such a great feel for, like, maintaining, like, your jazz piano sensibility as you're playing this bob stuff. Yeah, because I might be like... It's a stain pedal on it, too.

You're just like... Wow. One thing that I think, how do you feel about this kind of thing? We talked about this in the video we made about triads, and then you kind of alluded to it with your little scoop there. But this idea of anything in the triad that we're playing, when we're playing a triad, we can borrow from a neighboring note of whatever note we're on.

So any of these three notes can be, this works especially effective in triadic sort of pop music. You know, as long as you're not messing with anything under the melody, I think it's cool to kind of create little melodies. Yeah, because you got so much more space and attention there. Yeah. You know, all of these neighbor notes is what we'll call them. Any note that's to the neighbor of one of the notes in the triads, I think it's fair game.

And you can use little scoops. Yeah, scoop it up. Think about how a guitar player uses a hammer on like that. Oh, the monk hammer. We got the monk hammer. I have no idea why this became a prop. Yeah, Andrew's been calling it. at the monk hammer.

Yeah, just a hammer next to monk. Monk is laughing at us because of our substandard playing here and there's a hammer there in case he wants to get I would love to hear Monk playing on some like triadic 90s pop music. I think that'd be all over. So the other thing I was just thinking

that what we were just talking about that's a way to get to sneaking in some major sevens like you don't want to be like it's all about using your ears. It's all about having intention behind what you're doing and making sure that your audience is aware that you're going to take them somewhere safe. safe.

Come to my safe space, baby. It's all in the open. There's a safety net waiting for you. I don't know what that is. One more thing that I think you can think about, just as we think about mimicking, and a lot of this, because pop music is so guitar heavy, is mimicking guitar sounds.

Like one thing you can experiment with is trying to voice like maybe a guitar player would voice, like with kind of an open sound, right? Certain things we... Yeah. Right, like mimicking the open strings of a guitar voice. You can't do all that what you're doing in the left. No, you see, they can't do that.

The left hand? Oh, you're just talking about the right hand. Yeah, yeah. You know how it's like you have the open, especially with the fourth on top. That's how guitar is set up or whatever. But... Get your capo going, baby. Yeah, I wish we had a capo.

Actually, some things not to do. I hear a lot of cats doing. That's the transpose button. Come on. Come on. All the keys, but you got it. So, let's talk a little about Suss course, because this is another way to get a little jazz street credit.

A lot of the pop and gospel guys and gals like trying to, like they look at it maybe a little different than us. They're like, how do you infuse that jazzy? What do they call them the slick? The slick chords and the sticky, what do they call them? They've got all sorts of things. You don't know what you're going with this. It's like salty chord, something.

You know what that is? No, come on, man. Why are you looking at me like that? Pretty chords? What are you talking about? Pretty, but there's something else that they say. Here, talk about it. Play some of what I'm talking about.

I'm going to look it up for you. Stingy chords. Stingy chords. I think that's more like... Oh, I got Alex. Oh, we got him. We have literally the most unprofessional audio engineer. Oh, my gosh.

You know. He just lasts. And up until recently, he was... At least his work was very professional, but he actually lost one of our episodes, apparently. Didn't he? So not only is he unprofessional in terms of... Yeah. No, but you know what I'm talking about it?

It's like the, what are the gospel guys called the super slick, you know, like when it's like, you know, they're, oh, the sticky, sticky. Come on, keep playing, man, I'm going to find it. Gospel. What a fan here for you, because I want you to turn this around. I got you, man. Oh, you're going to, and I'm going to find it, and you're going to be like, yeah. Not passing course, R&B court. No, jazz, gospel passing course.

You should know. Okay, tell them what they're doing though, man. That's some sweet. I'm not doing anything we haven't already talked about. Yeah, but break it down, Paul. I'm not going to break it down. I think we should talk about maybe some things not to do. Like, number one, don't go on a deep Google search in the middle of the middle.

No, you got to find it now. Isn't this interesting to watch on YouTube as I try to find this? Man, when I say it, I'm telling you guys are going to be like, oh, yeah. I do think that this is an interesting. Sick? Sick slick R&B chords? Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Well, when we find it, we'll definitely add it to the description of the video. Oh, Neal Soul Cords. That's what you were looking for the whole time? No, but that's the closest I can fire at it. Sickest chords. Come on, man. It's kind of neo-soul. I don't know.

No? Maybe. It's close. Yeah. Yeah. Well. Well, until tomorrow. You'll hear it.