You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Help! Which Diminished Scale Should I Use?

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

Today, Peter and Adam help remove some of the mystery around one of jazz's most misunderstood scales: the diminished scale.Links From This Episode:Want to get every piano course from Open Studio for free? For a limited time, you can! Try out a 7-day free trial of the Piano Access Pass (no credit card required) so you can get a taste of what this pass has to offer.Today's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Adam hosts a Guided Practice Session for non-members on YouTube8:00 PM - Peter performs his weekly Shelter in Place concert series, also on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkInterested 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, Adam. How many episodes of this podcast are we going to devote to one scale? Today or overall? Overall, I feel like we've covered this a few times before, but apparently we still need to. So we're either not covering it correctly or people aren't listening. It's diminishing returns after a while. I'm Adam Manus.

I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Jazz advice coming at you. He's reluctant to say daily. anymore because we are going to pull back on the frequency of the podcast, although we are going to double down on the quality and the length of each podcast so that we can really hit these topics that you all are so into in a real way. And today is as real as it gets. But before we get to today's subject, well, let me just say, let me jump in real quick and just say,

when Adam says double down on the quality, double down on the quality being high, just to be clear. We don't want to make it sound like we're doubling down. Like the quality is getting twice is bad. That's a good, that's, I made an assumption that people consider this high quality. You're absolutely right. Well, we don't, when you assume, we know what happens. It could go either way. And that's a great point. But today's episode is sponsored by Open Studio. We'll go to Open Studio.com slash p.ap dash trial. There's a link in the description. Yeah. This is a link to our piano access pass seven day free trial. You don't need a credit card or anything. You just get everything for seven days for free. I don't know why.

we're risking this, Peter, but we are, and it's because we want people to, I think, because we want people to have access to all these great piano courses and kick the tires on them. Yeah, and we actually are fine. Our hypothesis was that it wasn't going to be much of a risk, and it's proving out to not be in that folks are coming on and then wanting to stay on. And I don't want to say gleefully handing over their credit cards, because by law, we cannot take your credit card virtually, but you can enter your number on our secure servers. We never see it. And no, the idea was that you have seven days without having, I hate that. You know what I hate that when you sign up for something?

And they're like free trial, but they want to know your name and your phone number and everything. All you got to give us is your email. And that's just so that you can log in. You don't have to give a credit card number. You don't have to give your birthday, social security number. I'm tired of all that. And nobody got time for that. We had a pandemic up in here.

And you said this was our hypothesis. So this is just science, folks. It's just science. Exactly. You're part of an experiment, but it's a, it is an anonymous experiment. So no worries. Yeah, and with the Piano X has passed, you've had every piano course that we've ever made, and ever, ever, ever made and ever, I'm just going to slow down, and ever will make,

not only that, but you get my daily guided practice session every day. You get to practice with me, and you get Peter's Weekly Jazz Piano Method lessons, which are by far most popular course. Go check it out. Oh, go to Open Studio. Hey, I've been looking at the numbers, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not competitive at all.

No, go to openstudiojazz.com slash pap dash trial. Yeah, and I'll just say, you know, for the daily guided practice sessions, which have become, talking about popular, I mean, you have some accolites, you have some followers in there, and rightfully so, because, and some of you may have seen the YouTube versions of this, which are amazing and just equally as good. But what you don't get access, but you will get access on this free trial, is the daily version of it, the handholding, the gentle handholding, of Adam Manus and the community. You know, it's such a beautiful community that we're building. And there's no closer part of that community than what you're doing every day. Yeah, we've got a great group of folks over there. And if you don't want to, if you don't know what a daily guided practice session is,

we actually have an episode here of the podcast. Go search the previous episodes. There is a guided practice session where Peter Martin is the guinea pig for the practice session. We had a really good time with that. And you can kind of check out what the vibe of that is. But today we are answering a question that I've been getting via email, via the daily guided practice session, via social media, YouTube comments. Several people want clarification. Actually, I was walking down the street the other day socially distanced on a far sidewalk, and I got with a mask yelled out of question about this.

That's how often we're getting these questions. Was it Gene Dodd Bradford? I know you're in Grand Center. Exactly. Some guy yelled across the street. I couldn't tell you it was. He had a mask on, but he asked about it. And that is the...

So that question, yeah, that question is, what is the diminished scale? Which diminished scale do I use? Help, I need to use the diminished scale and I don't know which one to use. Now... It's like the Rick Moranis movie. Remember that?

The shrinking guy, like the diminished guy. It's like, help. I'm... Honey, I shrunk the kids. Honey, I shrunk the scale. That's right. I've been thinking about ways we can talk about this. Because, first of all, the secret is this.

There's only one diminish scale. That's right. There's only one. There's just two different ways. Well, there's three, actually. Well, yeah, sorry. Stop confusing them even more. No, there's really only one pattern.

There's three different ways. There's three different keys that you can play it in, which cover all 12 keys, really. But there's two different ways to think about this one pattern. And that's why you hear people say things like the whole half diminish scale or the half hole the minish scale. Right. They're really the same thing. Let's just start with the whole half diminish scale. Let's do it.

It's just a series of whole steps and half steps. Right. So if we, let's say we start on B. I got it here on the, uh, on the Hammer 88. Oh, I'm way down here. So we have B, and if we take B up a whole step, we have C sharp, and then if we take that up a half step,

we have D. We just repeat that pattern over and over again. Whole half, half half to E, half step to F, whole step to G, half step to A flat, whole step to B flat, and then a half step back to B. Now this is an eight note symmetrical scale. Again, B, C, sharp, D, E, F, G, B flat, or sorry, A flat, B flat, B.

That's the whole half diminished scale. I consider this the diminished scale, right? Because, well, we'll get to that in a minute. So let me just make a quick note on that. This fun fact, I consider this not the, this is not the first one I learned. So I always think, like if someone would say play a diminished scale, I would actually play the half whole. You play the whole half.

It actually makes no difference and there's no wrong or right. Yeah. But probably connected with how we first looked at it, right? Here's why I consider this the diminished scale, quote-unquote. It's because if we skip a note, if we start on B, right, we're on the B whole half-diminish scale, the one we just explained. If we skip a note. Yeah. And skip a note again, and skip a note again, we get a B-diminished chord.

Right? Well, that would work either way. But I still consider this the first diminished scale, but maybe because it's the first one other. So on a B-diminished chord, right, we use this. the whole half diminished scale, right? So if you ever see B diminished, the diminished scale you want to use is the whole half. Fairly easy, right?

Fairly easy. Yeah. There are really two types of chords that we use the diminished scale on. A diminished chord in which we already know, we're going to use the whole half, right? Whole step, half step. Now, if I were to play a B-flat-7 chord, a dominant chord, our dominant chord,

is the other kind of chord we use a diminished scale on, and we use it from the other way. It's actually the same notes, the B-flat dominant chord, we use the same diminish scale as B, but starting on B-flat, it's half-hole, right? So it's just that same B-diminished, but starting a step down. So it's B-flat, half-hole.

So B-flat, B, C-sharp, D, E, F, G, A-flat, and then we're back to B flat. So check it out. That's the B flat hole half. Here's the B half. Sorry, that's the B flat half hole. Confusing things even more. Here's the B whole half.

So just practice going between those two, right? It's the same notes, but starting in a different place. And you're going to kind of get a feel for. On dominant chords, we use the half hole, and on diminished chords, we use the whole half. That's the lesson. That's it. Am I right?

Am I wrong? You are right. Asked and answered. I'm right as can be. We should put this to bed. I feel like this will not put it to bed. It should put it to bed. But it is, it is a challenging scale formation, I think, for a lot of people.

That's why it comes up. Yeah. And once it clicks, it clicks. Like once you realize, if you could sit at the piano and play a B flat in your left hand and a B diminished in your right and you hear the relation between a B flat 7, chord and a B diminished chord, the notes that are the choices become a lot clear. You're like, no wonder why it's this. It's because it's pretty much the same thing. It's just depending on where the root is. Yes. So there's that. And this, yes, this may be the last episode we ever do on the

diminished cord. I highly doubt that. I know, I know. But just try to memorize. Diminished chords is whole half. Dominant chords is half whole. Yeah. And apologies if I'm repeating something that you said, but people often need to hear things twice anyway. Plus, I was doing a social media post while you were talking just now. Sorry. Excellent. But anyway, no, I think that for me, we always want to look at different ways to look at these things and to learn them, you know, visual hearing, whatever.

But I would say for that point, the diminished being whole half, like, if you think about the beginning of a minor scale, which is also the beginning of what is going to happen with your diminished pattern as far as so for C, C, E flat, F sharp. So that kind of obviously leads from a whole step or half step standpoint. Actually, you know what, I'm screwing up. Because either way, you'd get to the minor third there. If it's half whole, ooh, I just confused. I was clear on this until I said that.

Are your eyes crossed right now? Man, I just bedazzled myself. I'd forget that. No, no, no, but that is one way that you can... That is one way you can actually think about building like this B diminished whole half, right? The first four notes of B minor. Yeah. And then the first four notes

of the minor scale a tritone away, F minor. Yes. To memorize what the notes are. Right. Well, I think too, what I was doing, I was taking all the way up to the fifth because they both, the half hole and the whole half both have the minor third. But I actually don't hear that

on the half hole as the minor third. I know. It's more like the sharp nine, right? Right. And yeah, and if anything leading up to, yeah, leading up to the leading tone resolution to the major third. Well, we're going to have to do an episode to clarify this episode. And so this won't be the last question. Because we keep answering it in such a confusing way contradicting each other.

Well, it's such a symmetrical circular scale that we keep going round and round and round. I swear. It's a wheel within a wheel. Just keep spending some time with it, folks. And it does lock in. Eventually, you just kind of see it. You kind of hear it. Really, if you hear it, that's the most important thing.

But often if you see it, then you hear it. Oh, there it is. go whatever you want to do. We actually have a ton of lessons on this on openstudiojazz.com. Go to openstudiojazz.com slash pap dash trial to get your piano access pass trial. And you can learn, I mean, in seven days,

you can maybe get a little closer to understanding the minus scale. Oh, definitely, definitely. You have to unlearn some stuff that we showed you. Did you talk about the octatonic nature of the scale, Adam? Yes, I talked about the octatonic nature. It's an eight-dose.

Symmetrical. Skip a note. Either way, it's a diminutive. core we talked about all that okay b flat 7 flat 9 that's where you want to use your b flat half whole diminuscale good B diminished 7 that's where you want to use your b

whole half diminished scale both of those scales are the same notes just starting in different places well dang there we go we did it so let's talk a little bit about something that has not been diminished but has been augmented that would be our listeners admiration and love for us as evidence I got a feeling that they leave on a little place called Apple Podcasts. I have a feeling you're about to read some rating and reviews.

Is that true? I wasn't gorging, but not that you mentioned it, I think I will. I really, I hope this tradition that's started in episode two. I hope it never does because I believe it was one of our mothers left the first review and we read it on the second episode. That's right. That's right. And we've been building ever since.

No, but we invite you to leave a rating or review. We'll talk about that at a second though. We're going to read this first of all. This is from Alex Horky from UK. He says he or she. he, I guess. Essential listening for thoughtful musicians, five stars. Unfortunately, there seems to be an issue with the star system,

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