You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Getting the Most Out of the Half/Whole Diminished Scale - S3E33

Episode Date: February 13, 2019

Piano Week continues with Peter and Adam showing off one of their favorite scales to use.The ending theme song for today's episode is "Stretch" by David Zeltner. To get your music featured on You'll Hear It, send an MP3 recording of your music to [e-mail] 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, Adam. Yo. Have you ever noticed I'm kind of a diminutive gentleman? Have you noticed that I'm more whole than I should be? I'm Adam Annis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily Jazz Advice.

Coming at you. Coming at you from Open Studio headquarters. Coming at you from our Steinway here in the studio. Yes. Well, Steinway and Sons. Yeah, we're the sons. Well, they've got to be long dead the sons. Yeah, they're onto the grandsons and even the great grandsons.

That's good point. Cool. You know, we come at the piano occasionally because you always, all like it so much. And so we thought we were crowd pleasers. We give the people what they want. Yeah. If we're up to us, we do this at a coffee shop and probably not talk as much about jazz. Exactly. I feel like we're at it. We're at a virtual coffee shop. Yeah, totally. Today we're talking about the half whole diminish scale, which is why we were saying diminutive and whole. So this is nerd Tuesday then. In other words, this is nerd week. We just talked about how to play softly on the

piano yesterday. Yeah, well, that's got like a romantic thing for, you know, for Valentine's Day. This is just straight out nerding out, you know. Nothing romantic. Oh, is that playing softly? There's nothing romantic about piano technique. Oh, you still have something to learn. Something to learn about the young man. All right, all right.

You know, no, so we're doing this week because I had watched you play lots of concerts in the past three weeks or so, starting at your live stream from Mesrow and some gigs you did with Diane Reeves and Sean Jones. And I kind of was taking notes for the podcast, right? Seeing like, oh, what can I get out of Peter? What to do and what not to do? Yeah, yeah. That list is extensive and they don't even know about that. But just trying to squeeze as much juice out of this rock as I can get. So what do we got here?

We got the half hole diminished. I saw you several times over the course of these weeks on. Resort to overuse. See, how can we say? You have overextend myself. You have seemingly endless ways to use the half hold diminished scale on dominant courts. It's really awesome. And like, I love that sound.

I don't have that sound nearly as much of my playing as I like. And I wonder if we could talk about. you know, what you're thinking of when you get into. You can be talking about that one, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. The diminished scale that you would play over like a C-7 flat nine. Yeah, C-7, right.

So, yeah, well, the first thing is, I think, you know, if you know the scale, you can jump into some kind of more advanced applications and we'll run through some quick stuff today. But the idea is that if you're learning it for the first time, I think it's good to place it in some actual usage situations instead of just playing it on your instrument. And this is obviously with the piano,

but this, I think, applies to every instrument for using for improvisation. The things that kind of apply more to piano and guitar, possibly, you know, is like thinking about chords, which I don't necessarily do a lot, but I do play. I mean, I don't think about them connecting to the scale,

but there are some nice things that fit in there. Like thinking about broken chords, right? Well, no, I mean, actually, like, voicing and stuff. Oh, okay. But then, yeah, correct, like putting them into the right hand or maybe even left hand, breaking them up as part of a melodic thing. I understand. That kind of stuff.

So that seems to be the thing that, for me, provides the most variety, is that you rarely are just like running the scale up and down, right? You have a few different ways that you can play over it. So I'm assuming that you've worked on it in thirds, in triads, in these chord shapes, right? There's so many cool shapes for the half-hold image that you can get. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, this is one that works, that it gets cool quicker than most of the other ones.

Partly, I mean, it's an octatonic scale. So we have eight notes in it as opposed to seven, which is all the diatonic of the majors. So things that are like the double broken thirds or what broken triads, I guess you call them. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of interesting and usable in a way that more sounds like a jaunt around

a V&E's playground in the 1800s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think everything, I mean, there's more, you know, all the more advanced ones, but I think even the basic ones, when you think about the different directions and stuff, Hey, how are you doing?

Kind of. This can be extremely, extremely useful. You know, one that I really like to think of on these diminished scale things is using, and this kind of goes back to like our secret blue scale thing, but using what is like a major triad and a minor triad together. Yeah. So like. Yep.

Yep. You know? Yeah. I'm using my right hand. That kind of thing. Yeah. Or. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a great sound. What I like the ones you were doing there with the two. Right. You know, you've got that fourth interval. That's definitely one that there's a lot of cool, like, cordial permutation and stuff. And then, you know, you're not that far off from the, the Stravinsky kind of sound. Both of those, because of that whole stuff between the fifth and the sixth,

they're kind of different, but they can be used together because, I mean, all these, It's a lot of tension to go down to there, basically. Exactly, yeah, yeah. But that's such a melodic, you know, in so many different kind of cool places. And what's cool about all of these shapes, but especially the four-note shapes, like what's cool about that is,

and you heard me do it a little bit, is you can also just move this up a minor third. Yeah. You know what I mean? Exactly. And it's, you know, it's that same thing. Just keep going. Yep. Yep.

And it works. Yeah, I mean, almost anything, you know, when you're starting basic, you're just actually going through the diminished. But if you move it up a third, I mean, minor third, we're basically going through the diminished pattern, and this being a true diminished scale, eight-note scale, any of these kind of shapes, or even if you break them up, will work there.

They don't necessarily all sound good, but given the right situation, they can. But it'll be fine, yeah. I mean, especially like, so I like to do things like make little melodic ideas out of it. You know, so if I'm like... Yeah, kind of thing. Yep. Like play around with that going in the minor thirds, and that's a easy way to get around.

Yeah, yeah. And then there's also some... you know, some interesting triads that are all actually within the scale. You were just doing A triad. A major and E flat major. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like those.

And they're, I mean, look, even if they don't fall within the scale, they could still work. It's not about, like, you have to check these boxes. But they do. And so when you start to get some of these voicing, you kind of know that they can work, depending on the amount of tension that you want. Yeah, yeah.

Let's talk a little bit about voicings using maybe some of the notes from these diminished scale. Yeah. I mean, we kind of already did one of my favorite ones, which is like this kind of sound. But do you have any that you... Yeah, I love all those ones that that, that, that, like anything that has the same interval on the outside and then like a perfect fifth or perfect fourth in the inside.

Yeah. Usually works really well. So that one, you know, for sure. I think this kind of, where you got an E-flat triad or an A triad, that's a little more attention. Yeah, yeah. And then here it's just like your traditional kind of, what do you call that? What do you call that? When it's the tritone or the perfect fourth, you know.

Oh, like a sharp nine thing? Yeah, sharp nine. But it's also, you know, like the 13 voice. Right, right, right, right. Tritone stuff kind of thing. Okay, so these I like two. These are kind of like block chordish where you take the same, and it could be that with the two minor thirds with the perfect fourth.

But I'm thinking the diminished triad and then the perfect fourth. on top and then you just double that root on the bottom which you wouldn't think does that much but if you voice down on it yeah yeah take it up you know it's almost like a modern block chord kind of vibe because you got that octave around it and you can resolve it yeah yeah yeah and these are all like resolves in the major well they don't necessarily resolve great to the minor for some reason well it's because it has that that like natural six you know what I mean yeah you would you'd use more of like an altered yeah exactly exactly traditionally traditionally nothing's wrong nothing's wrong folks there's no wrong notes that's right and then I think

interesting things I'm just moving up just for fun but like so D flat I definitely take advantage of like any kind of triad action I see happening totally and there's tons there's you know whatever and whatever you do there's three other options exactly moving up yeah yeah And then, like, so we haven't really talked about, but a little bit on non-scale tones. Yeah. Which you wouldn't think you need. And you don't necessarily need, but it's still. Actually, what would I do?

Yeah. That ninth, that's a real tense one. Like the major seventh is more just sort of passing through, but the ninth. So if you're. Because that's such a strong. The sharp nine, the flat nine. Like that gives you a lot of tension. So if you want to kind of push like double tension on it, I think the ninth is a good.

good place. That's almost like the secret half. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, because you've already got the major. So do that in C again. You were just doing it in D flat, but do it in C. That's intense. Yeah. Because you've already got the major and the minor third. So that's not really any. Yeah. But, you know, thinking about it, though, if you can do the ninth, right, as a little tense note, then that probably means you could do the same thing there, there, there, right? So like the natural seventh. Yeah. I like that. To get into it. Yeah. Yeah, because you're a half step above. love. Yeah.

And then, of course, chromatic stuff is great as like a bridge. So again, to, you know what's funny about that is now we're using literally every note on the piano, right? Yeah. That's all like, just use a chromatic. Because the half whole diminus scale is already these, you know. Well, it's the whole concept. And then if you're like, oh, but you can also throw those in.

Now we're done. Now we're done. Class dismissed. So, yeah, just use every note. Yeah. There's no wrong notes. No, but that is really cool to just throw that little chromatic thing in there or lean on some tension. Yeah, I like that one.

All right, much to shed, much to shed. Cromatic. Much to shed. Thank you, man. That's awesome. And then we do have a, you know, in our week here, we're just starting. I don't know if you've heard about this, but we're starting to play some tunes that we've gotten from our Yule Head listeners. If you have a tune that you want to hear at the end of one hour episodes, just send it to Andrew at openstudionnetwork.com.

Andrew is our esteemed producer. You know, Andrew's been doing this thing that has gotten attention on YouTube where he, we, we, we, Whenever we on the off chance that we let a curse word slip by. Andrew will put in sometimes giant steps to censor it out, sometimes something else. So I just wanted to experiment today just by going, shit. Well, it's very interesting because just for you folks, I'm going to do it uncensored now.

So don't censor this one, Andrew. What he just said was, darn it. No, I didn't. So I just want to give Andrew a little more opportunity. That's good. Yeah, no, that's been fun. I've been catching some of those. And the Microsoft, so for real hardcore, you'll hear it listeners.

How many of you noticed the supple chimes of 1987 with the Microsoft 95 reference from two weeks ago? That was brilliant. That was brilliant. That was brilliant. Yeah. Nice job, Andrew. Okay, so before we get into this soon, though, let's talk a little bit about rating reviews, but let's not talk about rating and reviews. I want to talk about our rankings.

Oh, man. We've never. We've never. We've never knew how to find it. Never knew about it. We literally, we look, we're like, there's no other jazz podcast. But then we checked and for music podcasts,

we are number, we're hovering around around like 132. But that's for all music. That's not just jazz. Yeah, like if this were like the billboard charts, for a jazz tune to be 132 would be unbelievably great. Well, it would never happen. It would never happen.

Never happened. But for us, we feel humble that we're even so far up. But we want to break into the double digits. We want to at least overtake 131, which is the bump and grind R&B hits from the 9. That's literally what it's called. I don't know.

How's that a podcast? That's one of my favorites. It is good. It's good. No, so, you know, we thought if, if we always ask for rating reviews and they do help. So please continue. And people are really coming through now. We have a lot of ratings to reviews all five, seven, sorry, seven stars.

But we're going to ask you if you know a jazz musician to tag them. Go ahead and tag them. Share the podcast that you'll hear a podcast with them. Subscribe and like. What else? We're desperate over here, man. Send them some links. And we have something.

That's right. And next week, I don't know if you know about this, having been in and out of the office recently, as have I been, we have something very exciting coming next week. What? Am I allowed to talk about it? The sponsor?

Our first. Our second, not our first. Our first. Our first. Our first is our first. And we'll always be first in our heart. Woo! That was closed.

Yeah. Okay. Oh, we have a new sponsor. We have a new sponsor. And we're not going to announce you yet because I don't know if the ink is dry on the deal. Is it real money or they're giving us like monopoly money? It's not about the money.

Maybe we don't do any this for money. Yeah, monopoly money. Exactly. It's not about the money. It's about keeping the, keeping this rolling. No, but I mean, it's very, okay, it's not what people are expected. This is not going to be for like a jazz ear training app or something,

although that would be interesting. This is something that I think our audience, I think there's already some overlap with this product. And it's something that we're very passionate about. And it's not just jazz related, but it's actually super, super cool. I'm so excited, man. I don't want to jinx it. No jinxing, but coming next week.

Yeah, well, thanks very much. Thanks for everybody who sent in tunes, by the way, for our N-Tunes. Again, Andrew at Open Studio. Oh, we didn't say what this is. No, no, no. This is from our friend. Yeah, David Zeltner, long-time listener, long-time Open Studio member. From North Carolina.

Yeah. My family's home state. Oh, nice. Yeah. Again, send your tunes for the outro music to Andrew atopensudornetwork.com. This is David's tune Stretch. Yep. And you'll hear it.