You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Guided Practice Session

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

It's a special episode today as we bring one of Open Studio's most popular features to the podcast: Guided Practice Sessions. Play along with Adam and Peter as they show you exactly what to practice.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.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, Peter. Hey. You ready to get to work? Well, I really need some guidance today. I'm hoping you can help me out. That's what we're here for. I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin.

And you're listening to the You'll Here at Podcast. Daily music advice coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open Studiojadjojazz.com to check out all of our courses. And today, we're going to do something a little bit different on the podcast. We're going to do what we've been calling on Open Studio guided practice sessions. This is a feature that's available on some of our courses. It's become a very popular feature recently.

We hear from our users all the time that they just love these. And these are practice sessions where you will actually practice with either myself or Peter Martin here. Today we're going to be practicing with Peter, and I'm going to kind of guide the way. So I'll literally tell you what to play. I have my metronome handy, and you'll play along with the metronome, and you'll play along with Peter. So are you planning on being like one of those kind and gentle guiders? Yeah. Or is this going to be a drop-down and give me 20 situations?

No, no, no. I'm much more. A gentle yoga teacher? Yeah, this is like a yoga video or like a guided meditative. Think of it along those lines. So it's guided practice sessions, GPS. We affectionately call it. And we realize it's really your compass, as in you, the listener.

Your compass to better practice. He's got his marketing hat on. That's really good, actually, your compass. So today we're going to be covering, we're going to start with a chromatic warm up. And I think we should do two octaves because we are a pianocentric podcast, but we have non-pianists that listen to us. And some instruments aren't going to be able to reach the four octaves or beyond that we can on the piano.

So let's do two octave. chromatic warmup. Then we're going to do a series of pentatonic scales. We're going to do four pentatonic scales in a few different ways. And then we're going to do a C blues using the pentatonic scales that we have practiced. Learned to practice it and apply it.

So let's start with our chromatic scale. We're going to do 16th notes. And let's just start vanilla-ass mezzo-forte. Okay. Done. Let's move on. We'll do two octaves up and down. If you're on the piano,

let's do two hands. And let's just do metto forte at an easy tempo, no particular articulation, sort of quasi-lagato. You know what I'm talking about. One, two, da-da-da-da-da-go. Again, two, three, go. Nice and smooth. Make sure everything is even and keep breathing as you're going through if you're on piano. Let's go, and let's go a little bit softer on the dynamics.

Let's go at a piano. Yes, sir. two, three, and. Again, two, three, and. Nice and smooth. Make sure each note is struck cleanly. Continue to breathe. Let's stay piano and let's do staccato.

So detach notes between. One, two, three, and. Again, and let's go back up to mezzo forte, but stay staccato. One, two, three, and. Again, and let's go back to. How malfunctioning. Again, but let's go back to our quasi-legato, just regular space between.

One, two, Metsaforte, and. Good. Let's go stick with Metsaforte, but let's make it even more legato. Let's let those notes bleed into each other. One, two, shh-h-h-h-h-h-h-and. Okay, now that we're warm, let's do that, but let's do that forte,

with some real force behind it. Not as loud as you can play, but we're getting there. One, two, three, and make sure to stay relaxed. Keep all the tension out of your shoulders, out of your hands. Let's do that again, forte, two, legato, and keep breathing. It's loud, but it's controlled, and it's even, note to note. We really want to have a sense of evenness, even though we're loud.

We don't want to be out of control. This is just a louder volume. Two, three, and. Okay, one more time on this, forte, and this time let's do staccato. This is a challenging one, but stay relaxed, stay focused, take a deep breath. One, two. Is he in through the nose, out through the mild? That's a great way to breathe.

One, two, three, and. One more time, two, three, and. Keep breathing. Release any tension. chin in your shoulders and your back. Let's bump it up to 80 beats per minute. We were at 70 that whole time. One, two, three, and.

84. One, two, three, and. And finally, let's end our warm-up here at 90. Let's go back to legato and mezzo forte, nice and smooth and connected, and just at a brisk 90 here. Come up, I'm getting tired, man, come on. Here we go.

One, two, three, and. One more time, two, three, Relaxed. Let's do one more time at that tempo and let's start piano, crescendo up to the top, and decrescendo back. Last time, one, two, three, and. Nice and even in control. Beautiful.

Okay, that is our chromatic warmup. There are a million ways to do this. I love doing the chromatic warm up because it really focuses on things like your articulation, like your volume. The fingering that we're using, if you don't know, is usually one three, one three, one, three. 3-1-2-3-1-3-1-3 on the piano. And it's great because it kind of takes any notion of notes out of it. It's a big motion on your hands

and really just lets you focus on how your hands are hitting that keyboard. And I was doing two octaves apart, parallel motion, parallel movement between right and left. Easier variations are one octave, of course. You can make it more difficult by stretching out more to three or four octaves. And then, of course, go hands alone. If this is too much, this is all about warming. up getting the vibe going, getting the feeling in your hands.

That's right. All right, let's take it back to 70 beats per minute, and let's go with our major pentatonic scales. We're going to start on B-flat, and let's start down here, Peter. Yeah, yeah, down here, and let's go two octaves on this as well. It's not going to line up exactly time-wise. I like that. Let's go up to the third then.

That way it'll line up with the metronome. Okay, let's go 70 beats per minute with... 70 beats per minute with 16th notes, just like we were doing the chromatic warm-up. It's going to be a little bit harder because it's a little bit more spaced out. If you're a pianist and you want to do both hands, great. If you can't yet, just do one hand at a time.

And we're going to do these a few times so you can even alternate hands if you want. If you want to play both hands together, you can't. This is the B-flat major pentatonic scale. Again, B-flat C, D-F-G, B-flat. We're going to 16th notes still. We're going to 16th notes. We're going all the way up to D, two octaves up.

Cool. Get your fingering together. Okay. Here we go. Just mezzo forte, nice and smooth. One, two, shasha, shh, shah. Good. One, two, again, and.

Let's do it staccato. One, two, three, and. Nice. Let's do it ultra-legato. Very connected. One, two, shah, yeah, jah, ja, ja. Let's do it piano, nice and legato. One, two, three, and.

Just add, always. a challenge when we're practicing forte or piano the same thing. Do not link up the tempo with the dynamics. There should be no connection. There's a natural inclination to play a little slower when it's soft, but you don't need to do that. That's right. Let's do piano one more time. Make sure you're connecting with every note that every note is ringing true and that it's even throughout your hand and throughout the scale. One, two, three, breathe. All right, let's go back to Mezzo Forte. Let's take it up a half step. Let's do the B major. pentatonic scale. Just take a minute to get the fingering together.

For piano, I like one, two, three, one, three, one, two, three. But everybody's different. This is a tricky one piano fingering-wise. I think on our pentatonic course, we go deep on the, is that the one we go deep on the fingerings? We do a bunch of guide of practice sessions on the pentonics course. But let's do just B major pentatonic, nice and easy. 16th notes here at 70 beats per minute. One, two, Metsoforte, and

One, two, again, and. One, two, again, and. Let's do it, forte. One, two, relaxed and loud. Let's keep it legato. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Back to Mezzo Forte. One, two, three, and. All right, let's do the key of C. Let's take it up a half step. If you could see the finger I just did, you'd be very disrespected. Hornet age. Good thing these mini keyboys don't have fingering off. The key of C is our most basic.

All white keys, but let's do that same pattern, two octaves and a little bit more, up to the third, and back down. Mezzo forte and nice and connected. One, two, relax and breathe. Again, three, four. Again, piano, four. Let's go expert level, piano and staccato,

short and detached and soft. One, two, three, breathe. Make sure everything is nice and even and connected to the click. One, two, again, breathe. And one more time, let's go back to quasi-legato and mezzo-forte in the key of C. One, two, three, and. Good. All right, let's kick it up to the key of E flat.

We're using these four because we're going to use them in our C blues later. So key of E flat, again, two octaves, and then, up to the major third and back down, just mezzo forte and quasi-legato. One, two, three, and. You need to pause and figure out the fingering. Go ahead and do that now. No, I can mess it up with that finger. Let's do it the same way.

One, two, three, and. Nice and smooth. Keep breathing. Stay nice and focused and relaxed. One, two, three, and. Again, two, three, and. Good. Okay, let's take these four pentatonic scales.

and put a kind of practical pattern on them. Let's start again with B-flat, and let's go in groupings of four. And then we get to that second octave. We're going to go up to the C, or the second note, the nine, and come down, going down. So we go up in groups of four.

We come down going down in groups of four. So it should sound like this. Let's go up to that third again. That seems like it's going to work. And then back down. Just a real basic way to group these pentatonic scales. Let's start in B-flat. We'll stay at 70.

There we go. One, two, ready, and. Again, two, three, and. Now we're in the thick of it. Let's take it up to B. Two, three, and. Stay nice and relaxed. Remember to breathe.

One more time, it's actually easier in B doing this. On the piano, yeah, fingering. One more time in B, two, three, and. Let's take it up to C. Two. Oh, a little steep. Nice. Let's do it in C.

One, two, three, and. One more time in C, two, three, and. And finally, let's go up to E flat, same pattern. One, two, three, and. Let's try it again. One, two, three, and. I like this much, I did twice. That's why we practice.

Make sure to breathe. Stay relaxed. relax, make sure there's no tension in your body. We want to be controlled, but loose, relaxed. Good. Okay, so those are our four pentatonic scales up and down, and in this pattern where we take it in groups of four.

Now we're going to apply this to a C blues. So we have the B-flat, B, C, and E-flat pentatinex scales. All of these can be used on the C-Bus. The B-flat will use over the C-7 chord as almost a suss sound. You don't actually have to suss out the chord if you're You can play it over just a C7, but it's a great sound. And we can mess with all kinds of different patterns for this,

but it's going to get us this slick sort of pentatonic sound. On the F7 chord, the 4 chord, we'll use the E flat pentatonic. On the two chord, which is the D7, we're going to use the C pentatonic. Oh, yeah. And then we're going to do a tritone sub, D flat, which is the B pentatonic, or C flat pentatine. Yep. Back to that C7, which. which is the B flat.

So we're going to do this at 140 beats per minute, which coincidentally puts the 2 and 4 at 70, which is where we've been this whole time. I'm going to give you, first we're going to have Peter Martin play a couple of choruses of this using these pentatonic scales as well as anything else that you normally would. You don't want to be super dogmatic about it. You want to try to mix these in an organic way, in an organic way.

All right, Peter, you take a couple choruses using these concepts, and then we'll talk about it. All right. One, two, three, four. Oh, it's that easy, folks. Again, on the C-7, that's the B-flat pentatonic, on the F-7, that's the E-flat pentat. On the D, the two, that's the C-penetonic, and on the D-flat, the B. And you did it so beautifully, yeah, that that's exactly the sound that we're going for.

Now, if we were, like, actually playing a solo, you wouldn't be so rigid with this has to be this, this at this time. I am going to use the pentatonics I learned. That was the hardest part of it, I think. For sure. But that's why we do it so that we get on the gig and we hear those sounds. as is. All right, let's do four choruses and Peter's going to

walk a baseline for you, just a simple two-field baseline. You do this exercise now, four choruses of the blues in C and try to use the pentatonic that we practice on the session. Cool. One, two, one, two, three, and...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I hope you've enjoyed this example of a guided practice session. If you're not an open studio member, we do a lot of these, and they're really fun for us and they can be so varied in what we talk about and cover so go check those out if you haven't already and thank you peter i've never uh never thank you for guiding me through my practice i've never had now for the day see i got all my practice it's awesome yes peter to uh ask peter to practice you get some good results here is awesome uh cool well until tomorrow you'll hear