You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Hackin' The Mainframe

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

In this episode Peter and Adam get into some essential tips that get the creative juices flowing. Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

What's up? You'll hear listeners. This is Caleb Kirby. I'm here subbing in for Adam and Peter today in the studio. And today we're just going to be talking about some piano hacks. Kind of cool, like life hacks, but maybe just a little bit cooler. So these questions are coming at you live from Open Studio Pro members, and Adam and Peter are answering them in real time at the You'll Hear at Live Session. which usually happens on Mondays if we can make it happen. And I hope you enjoy. Thanks. It asks, Peter, could you talk about your motif development? I like how you link together ideas seamlessly, from short ideas, maybe three or four notes, to longer lines.

It's a good question. Yeah. So, you know, one thing that I do, I'm just coming off like six days of playing two sets a night performances, like in jazz clubs with a really good group. And, but some of the same material. Go ahead, drop the names. Christian McBride and Inside Straight.

Yeah. Pretty good. But one thing, like, after, like, just a lot of intense playing and stuff, like, this question that you have is something I kind of think about as I'm improvising. Not so much, like, anymore in as I'm practicing. But I do think that when we're playing and we're performing, especially in kind of a controlled, repetitive environment, as in several nights in a row, and you might play some of the same tunes over and over again,

is like, how do you develop, like what are the mechanics of developing your motifs, your lines, your ideas, and how do you put those together in new and interesting ways? Without, like, like, I always want to be creative and new. And I always think about it. I'm like, I want to play in a way that if somebody comes, like we played four nights in a row in Chicago, eight sets.

If somebody came to every single set, and there were some people that came to like three nights, I don't know about eight, all eight sets, but three or four sets. But I want somebody, if they come to all eight sets, even if they hear us repeat some of the material, to be glad that they came and be like,

wow, that was fresh. That was like, I recognized that, but that was like exciting. Something happens special each time, you know? And so we really, you know, in terms of motivic development, that's just one of the sort of tools that we have in our arsenal to do that.

But I think very much about like, where do I start the solo? Like, what is the idea? What is the motif that I start with? And like, I want that to be very, you know, interesting, but also fertile and like something that can be developed and something that like gets the solo going and sort of sets the tone and gives me confidence and hopefully gives the people playing with me like interest in what's happening. It's like if you start out on kind of a lame note, you know, it's not done. Like you can move on to something else, but you're, you're kind of like, you know, it's like if you're starting a race and you run the wrong way at first, you know, you can get back in the race, but first you got to run back to the starting line.

So when you're going backwards, everyone else is going there. And then you're going back to the starting line. They're still going. So it's like you're actually twice as far behind. So like how we start our, you know, talking about motivic development. It's like what is the first thing that we play? Yeah, totally. And it's not that you have to use that for the whole solo, but that's like, that's

where it starts. And like that's that kernel of the idea. And I think that you have the opportunity to do that at many places within your solo. Totally. If you start it outright, you can, you can ride on that for a while. Think about it this way. like composers when they write these really huge long-form compositions, they're not independently writing every bit of melody out of nowhere, right?

It's all developing the theme. So if you do something just as simple as like as your opening line, right? So like an E-flat, right, that's G, F, G, C. So there's a lot of information in that, look, he's already going, right? So there's the rhythmic shape, badagadu dot. You can use that and you can change the notes, you know? Yeah. Like, however you want, there's the interval shape.

There's just the notes themselves, first of all. You could just do try to keep them going as long as possible. You know what I mean? There's, oh, here's a major second. You know, taking that shape, there's the, oh, here's a perfect fourth, you know. Like there's so much information given to you, rhythmically, melodically, the shape of the line itself, just repeating it in various ways,

you can get through a whole solo that way. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the challenge with that is, with so many different options, is to make a decision in real time. And this you can definitely practice for sure. And it's like kind of about discipline. It's like make that decision

that you're going to concentrate on just, you know, one or two or maybe three different elements. But mainly just one. Like what Adam actually just played there was really all about the rhythm. It might seem like, you might be like, wow, that was cool. Because he's like, you know, the sixth and the third and the second. But then as he started to move it around, until that becomes a pattern or a progression,

it really doesn't matter. That could be any notes. What makes it work is the rhythm. So it's a melody, but it's the rhythm, at least this way of playing in development, I would say. Absolutely. Well, and that's something we didn't even talk. I didn't even mention there. But that, you can fragment that too.

Bada-d-dood-b-d-d-b-d-b-d-b-d-b-d-b-d-d-b-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d... With, you know, paired with, like, the intervals and everything, there's really, from that little opening salvo, you've got everything you could possibly need. And then any kind of, like, language that you put in there, that can, that's just, like, can be there to kind of bind things together. But you can really build a whole solo. I mean, think about Sonny Rollins on Blue 7 or that whole period of Sonny's playing,

you know, where he can just take or a Mad Jamal that'll just take a little kernel of inspiration and can, or Winton Kelly. Yeah.

A little, little bit of information and spread it out over this beautiful, this beautiful soul. I got to mention something about Winton Kelly in Chicago, but I was just thinking on this,

like, the rhythm is so important and has so much more to do with the development because by like pattern develop, I mean, as you move through the core changes on a tune like this,

that's going to actually define where your melody can move, but you can still, still use the rhythm to kind of change things up. So it'll start to seem like, wow, he's kind of with a cool, like, melodic movement. But actually just the changes kind of define that. So the idea is, Beid Luda.

I mean, even that stuff, I'm just going, I'm just, there's lots of choices, but that's just stuff that the harmonic flow kind of gives you a possibility of. Yeah. But it's that same rhythmic motif. And then when you, when you loose, like if you go,

like you can kind of play with a pattern just of the rhythm too, So it's like you're messing with the actual melanchino's based upon the harmony. Yeah. But you're also messing with the rhythm in terms of like, let's let it progress. It's like because what you don't want to do is your whole solo is like, but do do do do bu do bap. No.

But debo do bap. And then, you know, you're changing one thing. But debo do bu do bap. But you've got to do something. There's got to kind of move things along with, yeah, the development with the rhythm as well. Yeah. But you can take, I'm sorry, but you can take like one idea like this and practice this for like a long time.

I remember doing this. Just see how many hundreds of things you can come up with, not just doing the same thing over and over again. How much can you stretch this one little phrase again and again? And by the way, you don't even have to make up the phrase because we're all playing tunes that have melodies. Use the melody. You want to play more melodically?

Try the melody. Right. That always works. Can we get a quote card? Yeah, yeah. Adam Manus, 2022. Luchats asks question, can you share? some nice catchy piano live hack.

Like, for example, Sharp 9 is the same sound as the third minor. It changed my life, and I need more. So my first thought of this is always Lou C-Cats is if you are playing anything that is, like you can play a pentatonic scale over, like you play a C minor. And so you can play like this C-minor pentatonic C-E-flat F, G-B-flat. This is the magic voicing system. You can play a voicing with those five notes. So if I take that scale.

and I start from the C up here and I skip a note going down. It's a C minor 7 voicing. And then if I move each one of those notes up the pentatonic scale, there's five different voicing shapes. And then the top note of that is a pentatonic scale, right?

So this is like an easy life hack. Same thing you can do. So if you do like an F major 9, it's a C major pentatonic scale that you would improvise over it. You can make voice. things out of that. And you've got five of them. That's great. That's great. So I'll throw out one that's a little bit of a variation on that, but it's related. So if we stay in C minor,

um, if you if you think about the minor third and the perfect fourth, which are really just the next notes of the pentatonic scale. So we go C and then we go to E flat and then you take a triad there. So your E flat triad. And like with a lot of these things, any of these kind of, embedded triads, I guess I will call them. You want to learn them in like a number of different ways and become very, like, give yourself a chance to be able to get some facility over these. So in other words, it's like, don't just learn it in root position, learn all the inversions. Don't just learn it going one direction, you know, skip a ride.

So like really get them in your hands. But you've got E flat and then you got F. And then, you know, the foundation of it is the C minor triad. That's kind of your home base. So you got C minor. E flat major and then F and then there's a bunch more fun ones that you can throw in but just those three And even just the two because you know the C minor is so basic like you're you're always gonna be there but if you just take those You have so much great melodic content and then and that I guess that kind of hack part of this too is that

You can break up you know a straight minor pentatonic really nice with this because it includes the a right So like a lot of times, like that kind of playing is really fun, but when you add it, like as soon as you go to but I'm always like linking it up with that triad. And when you shift back down to that minor pentatonic, it gives you a really nice thing. And then you can do some more like advanced uses of where it's like, you kind of combine them. And then start to add it just like, you know, just little approach notes and stuff. But that foundation of it. And like I was saying, you learn them in all the different inverts.

but you also learn them by stepping up like you're going on a ladder. So if you go E flat, then you go F, we don't jump up here to E flat. We go to the closest one. So look at the notes on the bottom. Same thing coming down. You're going to whatever is the closest inversion next. You can practice them. I've actually never practiced them like that, but you can't and you should.

And that's definitely the type of thing I would think about when I'm practicing this stuff. like how can I make it fresh how can I change it up yeah that's great stuff man great stuff great stuff so that'll just about wrap it up for you'll hear it this week remember to like and subscribe and that just really helps us out and keeps us going also if you haven't checked at open studio dot com you really should if you want to improve the relationship between you and your instrument until next time happy practicing