You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How Bill Evans Practiced Harmony

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

In this video Adam and Peter talk about Bill Evans' approach to practicing harmony. Adam has a few hot tips to get your playing on track to sound like the jazz legend we all know and love. �� Links from the pod ↓You'll Hear It: LIVE in NYC at the Sheen CenterFriday, April 12, 2024 @ 8pm EST – FREESee the #1 jazz podcast, up close and in-person. Space is limited, so reserve your spot today.Unlock your FREE Open Studio trial to become a better player today.https://openstudiojazz.link/trialFred Hersch's Course at Open StudioHarmony of Bill EvansHave a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

You're listening to the You'll Hear at Podcast. Jazz. Explain. Explained coming to you from OpenStudioJazz.com. Coming to you live, Peter. Yes. On April 12th, 2024. We go live all the time. Well, we certainly go live on April 12th.

Yes. Is that the date? April 12th. Yes, you are correct. April 12th. Friday, April 12th. We're going to be at the Sheen Center in New York City. That's 16 Bleaker Street.

Ever heard of it? In the heart of downtown Manhattan. It's the Sheen Center. Sorry, to interrupt. It's the sheet center for thought and culture. Did you know that? Yeah, I'm scared of that. I don't know anything about thought.

Are we going to be bringing thought? We are. Definitely not. I think that our dear listeners will be, though. Yeah. Get your free tickets. You're going to want to reserve them because it's a small theater and it's going to fill up fast. So make sure to get your tickets.

ASAP, you can go to you'll hear it.com and reserve your seats. New York City, Friday, April 12th, come see us. You'll hear it life. And look, if you reserve the tickets, this is another part of the gala or the gala. Some controversy with the gala and the gala. Yeah. Have you? You just went dark.

I know, I know. You went dark, but you kept a smile going. Well, because they brought up the people. Why do Americans do things? Because we don't know we're doing. We don't know. We have bastardized this language called English. Yeah.

And you know what I love it or leave it? Yeah. You know what our language is? Money. Horrible. Well, are we going to be making it rain on the 12th from the stage? That might be something. It's going to be making it rain notes, buddy.

Money. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to probably be playing. If we can get some instruments in there, we're going to be talking. It's going to be fun. Is there a piano there? Do we got to get a piano? I think there's a piano.

Okay. Yeah, that's going to be fun. But look, part of the gala is that if you reserve the tickets, you got to show up. They seem like they're free because there's no convenience charge or anything. You literally can go on. You can only get two at a time, but you can get if you need to get more. But do not reserve. You are agreeing to go.

To go. Yeah. Something comes up, send them back because someone else is going to want to come. Don't be that person. That reserves your tickets and it doesn't show up. Exactly. We wanted to make this accessible and free to all. So that's part of the agreement is that. It sounds like we're super worried about no-shows.

I am. Well, you know, because if you give something for free, you basically devalued it. And we do feel like they're valued it. We should make them pay if they don't come. That's what I wanted to do. $50 if you don't come to the show. That's what Lou Donaldson said. How would we charge people?

Lou Donaldson had a great line. The great, the legend himself, Mr. Lou Donaldson. He said he heard a, a certain saxophon is play at the village vanguard. Yeah. And we asked him, he said, how did it sound?

He said, oh, it's not okay, but I don't know. This is back, this is back when the great Lorraine Gordon was still the proprietorice there. I don't know about that. Propiatrist.

Is that what you call it? Propriator. Sounds like a kind of hot dog. Propiatrist. Like the little red you get with it. No, he said, yeah,

well, better idea instead of charging people, let them in for free. And then when they try to get it, not charge him to leave after they hear that guy. He wasn't a fan. That's a good Ludelso, man. Let him in for free and charge him to get out.

That's amazing. So, yeah, we could have done that. But no, we trust you guys. Look, we look forward to seeing you guys in New York. This is going to be so much fun. We're going to be, you know, doing our thing, probably making an episode, talking, doing some Q&A. For sure.

But mainly just getting a chance to meet you guys. It's going to be a show. It's going to be a show. You're going to enjoy yourselves. We're going to have a lot of fun. A bespoke show? Well, I got a bespoke episode. I got a bespoke episode.

I got a bespoke concept here. I've been making bespoke arrangements. How about that? That's four bespoke's in 30 seconds. Yeah, don't overuse that word, please. Yeah, okay, I'll try and not to. No, I've been doing a lot of, I've been doing a lot of ranging for orchestra, specifically,

and I've been working a lot on voice leading, and I thought we could talk a little bit about concepts for how you can apply what's basically, you know, choral writing for the piano. And I think about this all the time, because when I was in high school, I got a super thick intellectual book that I was not ready for, and I'm still honestly not ready for, called The Harmony of Bill Evans by... I thought you're going to say the Holy Bible.

No. Well, by a pianist and composer named Jack Riley. And it's a great book. I recommend checking it out, even though it's very heady and can get into the weeds a little bit. But there's some interesting things in this book, and it's something that I work on always. I've also heard people talk about this concept that we're about to work on in other contexts. People like Russ Ferranti will do voice leading exercises.

Claire Fisher has a great book on voicing exercises. And so I think it's always something in this pianist. It's something that we can do. I mean, as we start with Bach and two and three-part inventions when we're children, you know, and it's something that we are always working on. And it's something that we can do when we're working on standards. And so I thought today we would talk about how we can create harmony using four-part voices. And you don't have to think about this too hard.

I think just diving in is kind of the first step, right? So I don't know. Is that something you might be? That's not... Would that be something you might be interested in? Question. Yeah.

Are we going to the high diving board or the low diving board? We're going to start out the low diving board. We're going to start out with Stella by Starlight. Okay. We're going to start out with one of the voices is the melody. So one of the things that you can think of that I often like to think of is the range of your voices, right?

So, S-A-T-B, right? Soprano-Alto... Set-Pa. Soprano-O-Tenor, baritone. Yeah. Base. Berytone. Bottom.

Bottom. That's it, soprano, alto, middle, no, soprano, alto, tenor, bottom. So we're going to put the easiest way to start is to put the melody in the soprano. Okay, so it's easy to take a tune like Stella by Starlight, and we're going to think about these four voices in the choral range. So we're going to be thinking SATB. You know what SATB stands for? Satpa.

Satpa. Yeah. It's not an actual word. It's an acronym. Sopernino, altissimo, tenor, and bottom. Bottom. Yeah, no. Soprano, alto, tenor, and bass.

Right? Barra, Barat. And baritone. Baratone. Soprano, alto, tenor bass is how we're going to think about it. What's that? Four part harmony, baby. I was just, I wasn't interrupting.

I was just interjective. Guys, he is so in his head about interrupting right now. Preferred to last week's. It's amazing. It's been fun because you have conversations with Peter now and he's like, he's like waiting for you to finish. It's amazing. Right.

So let's back to our four-part harmony, Peter. Thanks for interrupting, buddy. This guy, can't my right? Okay. So let's do our four-part harmony. We've got our soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. We're going to put the melody. The easiest way to do this is to, first of all, go very slow.

We're not going to put this in time. We're going to be nice and roboto. We're going to figure out each chord, and we're going to really try to make the voices move in ways that makes sense. So that if you were actually singing each voice, you could sing it. It's not like, no. you know, like all of these jumpy things or things that... Right.

It should sound like music. It should sound... It should sound... It should sound... It should sound... As much as you can. As much as you can. And the better you get at this,

the more you can do that, right? So we'll start with a very rigid structure, which is the melody in the soprano. And then we're going to put... In the alto and tenor, the middle voices, we're going to put... At first, we'll just put the third or the seventh of the chord,

you know, on either one of those voices. So here we have our E minor 7 flat five. I realize this is not the original chord. of Stella by Starlight. We'll use the real book changes just to keep it simple for everybody. What's the original? One?

It's a B-flat diminished. Oh, that's right. Yeah. But for this purposes, we'll just use the sort of like jam session changes. Jazzy version. So here we have the melody is A. Yep.

The alto is D, the seventh. The tenor is G. And the bass is E. And we're going to put, the base is always going to be the root for now. This is root and shell. It's basically root shell and the melody on top. Yeah.

So even that, you can, yeah, it already, that's the thing is it already sounds good. And we're going to go slow here, Rubato. How do you feel about the tenor staying on the same note? You're okay with that? Yeah, I am okay with that. We don't have to do this always, right? Once we get better at moving notes around, we can realize that each degree, if we're on the third of the two chord, we can do things with that. We can move things, you know, all around.

And we can do things with each degree. Bill Evans has entered the house. Exactly. But we'll start here with the basic. So we'll go from our E minor 7 flat 5 to an A7. So the bass is going to go to A. The G stays the same because the third of E minor 7, 5 is the 7 of A7. The D is going to go down to C, right?

And then we, by the melody in our soprano, we go to our C minor 7, right? C, we've got the tenor is E flat, alto is B flat. And it's another 2-5 movement. So I write the third. stays the same as the seventh. The C goes down to F, the B flat goes down to A. Right, the melody is... That's great.

Right, you're already seeing some basic voice leading here. So, however, so here are F minor seven, right? F in the base, just really keeping the structure very rigid. The B flat 7, the E flat moves down to D, the F goes up to B flat. The A flat stays the same, and the melody, of course, is in the soprano. For our E flat major chord, you can do a triad. Do not sleep on triads. I was transcribing some Duke Ellington.

I was doing actually some score study on some Duke Ellington big band arrangements. The man uses so many triads. Major chords, dominant chords. I mean, like a five chord, like a G7 to C. Yeah. Trombones are playing a G triad. Yeah.

Straight up, and it sounds awesome. Right. So instrumentation is so important for that. Well, and just like what our ears hear. Like, we fill in the gaps more than we think we do, right? And this is a good time to interject that. Where are you coming from? down that triad.

And then Duke Gallatin, of course, as a master, this is like coming from something with more tension. Like when you're studying these kind of things, that's an interesting thing to think about. So, like, if we're on this 2.5 to E flat, the end of the first phrase, right? F minor, 7, B flat 7. Here my B flat 7.

You got too many notes. Okay, there you go. Right, I've got the bass is B flat, the tenor is D, Ealtose A flat. The melody's up here on the G. Like, the melody is going to go down to the B flat, which is low. Yeah.

Right. So from here, like, if you try to cram in a big fancy E flat major seven chord, it's not really working. Like this D wants to resolve up, right? So it actually takes a little bit more maturity to hit this triad. And then where you're going to go after that, that's as important as where you're coming from. Right. Right. You can do. And if you want to move this down, you certainly can. Yeah. I always say like really good voice leading. And that's what we're talking about. I mean, we're talking the verticality and how it creates the voice. Great voice leading, the better you get at it,

the less choices you have. Not the more choices, I think. There's just things that are pulling you. Yes. Right? When you study the fuck's book, you know what I mean? Yohan fucks the...

It's not a curse for it. It's a man's name who wrote the book on counterpoint. Right. I'm probably not saying it. It's probably like fuchs or something like that. But it's FUX is how you spell his name. Can we say this on the podcast?

Of course. But if you study that, you get pulled in these directions. You start riding like Haydn. Like you start sounding like these people with the counterpoint. And it's a similar thing here. Everybody wants to hear Stella by Starlight and Haydn-esque style. There's nothing better than that. Well, okay, so if we just take these first eight bars, Peter, with what we just had, right?

So let's just listen to what we had. Like that's really all you need. But we can start already moving things around, right? So here if we have our E minor 7, pick one of the first. of our middle voices. Yeah. Right? I'm going to take this D.

Instead of going right to the C, maybe I do a whole little phrase here around this, right? So I'm moving it up a half step, just kind of rocking it. Where you place it rhythmically has a big difference in the feel of the line. I can do the same thing on the F, right? So I'm just taking the seventh of our two chords. Yeah. And I think that one is like, like that C monitor.

Like if you would do we, that's a little bit, it's a little bit different. It's not right or wrong, but it's good to kind of hear that so that you'd have that choice. That's right. So you can already start moving voices. You can do it. You can start picking your voice, whatever that is you want to move around and just practice moving around. And then I think probably the most impactful thing you can do. And I tell a lot of our piano students here at Open Studio to not sleep on the different.

inversions in the bass, especially when you're doing this kind of work. So if we start here, we'll start in a root position. But let's see if we can add some interesting things with our root movement, right? So here I'm going to add, I'm going to do the A7 with the C sharp in the bass, right? And I'm just going to, instead of adding, so I have the root here in the melody, I have the third in the bass, I have the seventh in the tenor. in the tenor. I can,

the alto can really be whatever. I'm choosing the five, because the five is like a second, it's like a second root. Yeah, and it's a singable melody. I'm already thinking about where we, right? And now thinking about where I'm going, I'm going to do a different inversion here on the C.

Right? So I have E flat here, B flat. So the third and the seventh, but I went from here to here. And then for our F7, I'm going to keep the C as the base, changing one note.

Same thing for here. Right? So for the F minor, I have the base in the 5. Petal point happening. Maybe we'll do our thing on the 7th. And then for this, again, the 5 is in the base on the E flat.

Exactly. Something like that, right? So now this becomes this. Again, just working through the tune. And you can do this on any tune and go slow. Like really go slowly. you can keep this going in any way you want,

working through root movements, finding your way, you can start adding a fifth voice to the equation, which Bill Evans apparently did. He would do a four-voice SATB thing, then he would do a five-voice and even sometimes a six-voice treatment of whatever tune he was learning, using different bass inversions,

really practicing your choral writing, but in real time. And for me, this is like such, it's like such wholesome work to do. Like it pays so many dividends in so many ways. Like, ear training. Ear training is incredible. Finger independence.

Hand independence. Hearing inner voices. Oranging. What's that? Voicing. Voicings. So many great voicings. And I think a great way to be able to start to slip in and out of rooted and

rootless voicings without worrying too much about like, I'm staying rooted. I'm not going rooted like because this kind of, when you let your eating, is guide you by how these, the voice leading goes, you stop thinking about it's their root on the bottom. That's more like what's going to sound good from where I'm coming from. Well, you just did this great video about like baseless ballad playing, right, where you're not playing the root of the,

of whatever you're playing. And it's a similar concept here. Once you start embracing that, you realize how much your ear fills in for you. Yeah. And how it actually just creates like a different sort of, a different sort of counterpoint. Like, it's a new voice when you can move the base around a little bit.

And it's a great skill. try it. Give it go, man. I don't want to interrupt. No, no, no, go. Go, go. Go, go. So I'm going to, I'm going to take the restriction. And as you said, later on, moving away from the four voices. But I think it's a great thing. Even if you feel like, well, I've got the four voices, I can do cool stuff. Restrict yourself to that because that's going to force your ears into really developing, if you can do single moving lines in the middle, start to do two or whatever. But like, having something restricted like that is important. When you have, even if you just do like the eight, the first eight bars here, like you work on an eight. bar passage and you come up with like a really nice little choral arrangement of what you're doing. Yeah. See if then, and you talk about this, but like a really interesting thing to do then is to sing each part. Yes.

Can you sing each part? And if there's too much that's not singable or doesn't sound like a melody, you can start changing things around. You can certainly start loosening sort of the inner voice movement of like it's got to be a third and the seventh. That can go away very fast. Yeah. Because I always think there's two sides to like, do you have a great melody?

And that an inner voice melody is just as much. if not even sometimes more important to develop that as a great melody, because it has to be so strong to be able to work as a musical moment when it's not at the top. Well, and then you get out of, like, if you read any great hymnal from the great hymnal traditions, you know, whether that's like, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran has a great hymnal. Right.

Obviously, Catholic has a great hymnal. But like, you will see, too, the voices over a lot. We love all the denominations, by the way. Well, no, every, a lot of the classic denominations actually have amazing music traditions, especially voice leading wise, but you will see voices overlap a lot. And so don't be afraid of that. If something is feeling like the line is drawing itself

and it's going to overlap, don't be scared. Oh, no, and that's some of the most interesting, not only choral things, but that work pianistically, and you can see Bill Evans for sure was a master that. When four voicings all of a sudden for a chord become three and then split, that's some interesting stuff. Yeah. All right, Peter, give it a go.

Okay, now I feel, ooh, The little pressure with the restriction. Take your time, man. Go slow. Cat already has better inner voice melodies than me. Oh, let's see. That's fine.

It's annoying. It's hard not to cheat sometimes. Well, and this is good for your ears too. You need to write DeVisi. Right, right. Half of the choir. No, but this is why it's important because then you got to,

but I don't need that too. I mean, it's nice, but it's like, no. And then remember when I was saying before, like, somebody just forces you in to like some choices. And they're good choices. Be do, it's got to go there. Come on, baby.

Chromatic weight. That chromatic weight draws you down. But it still wants to go there, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is an example of like once you, you know, like where you may want to avoid, not for your playing for all the time. Of course, I would do this sort of thing.

You would do that. That's fine. But for vocal writing, this is not the greatest thing to do. It's tough. All that parallel movement. And it's not even about like, yeah, there's no octave or fifth or whatever. you're asking everybody to, like, it's going to be so, such an affectation to hear a whole choir

to do that. It can be an effect. It can be an effect. It's a great effect, but for just voice leaving principles. I mean, the thing is, too, with this is like, you can do whatever you want, but this is like the foundation. Yeah. Right. So like learning just basic voice leading. And like I said, you know, get that Johann Fuchs book and then check out. You become like an 11 year old boy every time you say that. I feel like my mom is watching it. Your beard dissolves the way. You're pre-present.

But if you play the games in the book, you start to really understand very simple counterpoint principles. It's not that complicated. And you can really, like, get something out of it fairly quickly. Like, in an afternoon, you can get something out of it.

And I think that this way of practicing this ballpark combined with, like a really strong understanding of root movement with the melody, which seems more, and is more basic. But you start listening, you start hearing and filling it. Yeah. Another thing that we should mention that Fred Hirsch talks about, who Fred

Hirsch is, of course, a master at this sound, is, and I've done this, you buy a book of the Bach Corrals. Yeah. And then there's piano. I got my blue one. Yeah, me too. I got the blue one too. And the piano arrangements in there of the Bach Corrals. Yeah. And you just sight read them. And you don't even have to know the rules, but you get the sound in your head. And then you kind of know when you're faking it or not. Like if you can play the real deal and you hear the real deal for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, you start to be like, oh, I know when I'm not doing this and when I am.

And you also learn a bunch of like cadence stuff of like how Bach uses these voices and resolving voice. And when he breaks the rules, if you're not paying too much close attention, that just sort of becomes part of because he does. Well, he breaks your heart when he breaks the rules. That's the thing is you're in this like mathematical equation. and then all of a sudden, like, the heavens open up. And you're like, what is happening? Yeah. You know, we're all humans. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. It's amazing. And, no, that's great. I used to do a thing where I would sing the tenor part. Yeah. And leave that out playing us and then move up to the alto, move down to the base and see how much of that I could cite read. And especially the ones that I started to know, it's like, can you sing those parts and

stay within that? And that forces you, you're reading horizontally and vertically at the same time. And you're hearing, starting to hear both ways as well. See, this guy's some. dance stuff right there. No, no, I was so lucky. My dad was like he gave me that book when, I mean, he knew like,

I was playing classical and stuff too, but he knew for, he's like, man, ear training, absolutely. Voicing, check this out, you know. It's Bach. Like, it's good for everyone. Like, it's,

there's no, it's good for making you better at music. Right. That's, you know, end all and be all. And it's beautiful music too on top of that. Yeah. Oh, and recommended for every,

especially the Bach Cres, you might be like, well, I'm not a classical musician. I'm not even a pianist. that's some of the easier stuff to learn than even like the well temper, for sure, the well tempered clavier, even like the inventions, people think that's basic.

If you're a non- pianist, that's not that basic. But the Bach choral, you can go through out of time and play. And yeah, it does get some plaques of places. It's easier than the well-tempered clavier. Like it's... And if you can sing some of the parts, too, that would be a great thing. And then, you know, if you're an open studio member, check out Fred Hirsch's course,

thoughts and experiments in solo piano. He has a lot of this on his course about voice leading. and how he approaches it. Very, very helpful. Fred is a master of this. And then if he... He's lesson on Panoneka. He gets into some of this stuff.

It's great. It's so good. So if you're an open studio member, that should be like your first stop because it's there. And we have the PDFs and the transcriptions and everything. But then also check out

Russ Ferranti has, I believe, a book and maybe even a class on like my music master class on this kind of thing, which is great. Yeah. And then... He's so awesome.

He's amazing. The Yellow Jack's, Yellow Jackets, Pianist. And then Claire Fisher. Amazing songwriter, composer has, I think, at least one or two books that are just has like atudes and exercises that are amazing. I forget what it's called, but someone will put it in the chat here what it is because it's pretty famous. Awesome, man. Great episode. A reminder about the gala. You've got two gala.

Is it gala? Is it gala? Who cares? Okay. I'm not a fan of gala. If you're listening to this free podcast, yes, it's free, but it's not free for you. We freely give. You, freely received and you have payment that needs to be made now, which is going to the YouTube channel. Leaving your comment? Well, no, they don't have to do that. They just have to subscribe. I thought it was part that they had to leave gala.

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That helps spread the word. And come join us in New York City. I got an extra gala that they can do. If you're listening this far, then you're a true fan. Or you're stuck in your car. If you have your tickets for April 12th, put Gala 412th, 4-12th. Now you're just confusing people.

Gala 412. Like Gala, F-O-R-12. No, no, Gala number four. Oh, April, like April 12th. Like 4. And that's for people who aren't in America. That's how we do the month first in the day. This is going to be interesting to see how people do this.

Yeah. But yeah, I like it. If you're in 14, you guys. Go to y'allhere.com and learn some more. Until next time. And get your tickets. You'll hear it. Dot com.