You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How Do You Find Your Groove? - #22

Episode Date: September 25, 2018

Today, Peter and Adam go on and on about groove. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Ennis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you are listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. There's something going on in my cadence, man. I'm sorry. We're deep in the podcast recording right now, so you know how it goes. It's like the muscle memory fades.

The pod, is the pod cave starting to enclose on us here? It's starting to smell, honestly. It smells a little bit like jazz and man. Maybe it's a jazzy man pod cave. It starts to smell like a kranican box. It does. Man, this is a little musty and musky. It sounds musky.

What's it between musk and musk? A musky is a fish, I believe, in the Baltic region of the world. Really? Man, you are very attuned to the world's fisheries. I'm a world traveler. Musky. Isn't there an old spice musk men's deodorant? No, a musk is like a scent that a mating bull will give off.

I don't know what I'm talking about. Oh, but I think there is a musk. musk scent like old school 70s old spice anyway are we off topic yet 80% of the time that works every time What are we talking about today? Today we are talking about Groove we have a question here from a listener approach on groove Okay how do you find your groove how do you create your own groove when you're playing it and this is a suggestion from Johnny on Facebook Okay, we should probably give this a title look this is gonna be fun this will be a real-time episode in the making here how do you find your groove? How do you find your groove?

How Peter got his groove back. I find. Did you ever see that movie how Stella got her groove? That's what I was referencing, man. That was direct reference. That's the joke. How do you find your groove? How do you find your groove?

See, we're doing this in real time. Okay, so thank you for the question, Johnny, or suggestion, as it were, on Facebook. You can always see this up there. Totally. And this is a really interesting area, really interesting question. We hit on it in different ways, but it certainly deserves its own discussion. And I would just say, you know, kind of first, what's so important is, like, I think confidence in grooves. There's many different kinds of grooves, many different ways to find it, many of different ways to work on it.

But ultimately, what we're looking for is some confidence in groove. I think we should define some terms here before we go any further because some people might be confused about the difference between groove and time. Right. But there is a difference. You want to explain the difference between groove and just time? Yes. So I think groove is, well, this is a tricky one because there's several, it's a word that has several different meanings. Like, because we could say you're in the groove.

It's like a noun that says like a state of being, you know, or that's really grooving. And that could be any type of groove. But then there are many different types of groove. And I think some people, maybe some members of the jazz police might be like, it's either swing or it's a groove. And I think what we believe, yeah, see, I can already tell by your distaste for that. I mean, swing is a groove. It's one of the grooves. It's one of the grooves.

There are infinite grooves, really, because you can make up your own grooves because you're going here. That's right. And maybe that's what this question is really alluding to. But that's right. But that's what we're talking about today, right? Is how do you create your own groove

or how do you find that groove? How do you play in the groove? Maybe he's actually, actually, how do you find your groove much as the Angela Bassett movie about going to the Caribbean after a divorce? A divorce.

Maybe that's actually. were we were overthinking this one plane ticket to st. Thomas please right glouless interest because how do you find your groove or approach on groove so I think I like to look at and I want to talk about time too like as you said because that is a little bit different linked but different I like to think of the things that connect all grooves as opposed to like separating them too much because then we can talk about some approaches some some some things to work on some skills that we want to acquire that are applicable for any kind of groove.

So although grooves are different, there are similarities. And I always think it's fun to discover those and work on them because then it's like, wow, okay, you can apply this in a number of different areas and your playing is getting better in a more efficient way than saying like, okay, this month I'm going to work on my Bosanova group and master that. Then I have to totally erase all that and move on to a samba group, you know, whereas there's so many great connections between them. And I think, you know, this thing I was just starting to talk about confidence in groove.

You can take that from one area that maybe, because most people are like, well, I feel good about my swing groove, but my funk groove is eh. Or my funk groove is really strong, but my swing. And I think that the confidence that you can understand in what a groove is can be applied to a number of different areas if you allow yourself to do that. Yeah, for me, this question kind of alludes to syncopation and eighth-nose. and how to control those things in different situations, right? As you were saying, like, maybe you're confident in your swing groove that you have a groove that you can always lock into and that feels really good to you. But like you said, then maybe you go to like a funk tune and it doesn't feel right because

you're maybe doing the same thing or it's not the same thing, but it doesn't feel like you. And, yeah, I think there's some different ways you can do that. I don't know about you, but, you know, I'm always sort of experimenting on a piano that I'm playing, with like the length of eighth note. I mean, I have my go-to, right? I have my like, da-da-d-da-da-da-da. Like I have that eighth note that I go to all the time. Right.

That's like a crowd pleaser, for sure. But on a slower tempos, maybe it's a swinger, little head bopper right here. A little head bopper. I will give either some, I'll either, depending on the mood I'm in, experiment with, and work on, da-da-da-da-da-da, you know, really whiting and,

widening and narrowing the groove. Same thing with the funk stuff. And then there's the other thing of putting that sort of laying that back, leaning forward on it and like a chick style. Yeah. Chickaria. Yeah, Chickaria style. There's different ways of working these grooves to your advantage.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm just thinking this is a little, well, no, it's not off topic. It's right about groove. But I just want to, before I forget this, because I think this might be helpful for somebody looking on how to find your groove. the great Hurlin Riley, drummer extraordinaire from New Orleans. That's a groove right there. I mean, like when you think about, if you were to say,

who's the grooving as drummer? You can name a lot of people, but no one would argue if you said him. But something that I learned from him, I love learning these kind of like musical life lessons that you can take and apply forever. It's just like somebody gives you a gift of like, here's a million dollars. Put that in the bank and then just draw out the interest every year

and you don't have some money, you know. It's like they're giving you a gift. But, you know, I had played with him. And I mean, I met him when I was in my, well, I met him when I think I was about 18 years old up in New York when he was working first with Wint Marcellus. But then when I moved to New Orleans, you know, he's like a legend there and I got to play with him some over the years quite a bit. But something I learned about groove from him took many years until I actually had a discussion with him about it. We'd been on some different grooves and one thing that I always have some different gigs. something I admired in him was his ability to like really seemed like masterfully

and in a very authentic way master all these different grooves Brazilian grooves. Of course New Orleans grooves straight ahead funk like and he had so much confidence in how he played. I'm like man, he must have just studied all. I mean obviously he studied all these grooves but I had never seen a drummer or been around a drummer that could play them all so authentically and so joyfully. But still have their personality. And I was always like, man, he must have just, like, found the essence of each one as he got into it.

And, like, or, like, travel to Brazil and talk to the special people, traveled to Africa and got the secret scroll. And, like, I don't know. I was like, how did he put all this together? I'm like, well, he's a little older than me. Maybe he just was working hard at it. But years into our, you know, kind of friendship and musical relationship, I kind of talked and we were working with Jazz and Lincoln Center together. And we did something like with this Cuban Montuno thing, which I was really didn't know what I was doing on it. And I remember we were kind of just sitting there.

I said, man, Hurling, could you kind of help me? Like, what's the official Montuno? Which one is it on this? Because, like, he was sort of playing it perfectly and linking up. And he was like, and I don't want to misquote him. But he was basically like, what's a Montuuto? He's kind of like, what do you mean, you know? Just play the group.

And I was like, what do you mean? I thought, like, he had the exact textbook definition and could, like, delineate, you know, just break it down like that. But he was just sort of like, you'll hear it. basically what he would say. But it started to realize, and I asked him some more things. I was like, what about the Brazilian thing? So then I started quizzing him about all this, how did you learn those things?

And it was all like, you really listen and you try to find the connection between this other nationalities, grooves, and what you already know, and what you already feel. And so he was always relating it with New Orleans music because he's from New Orleans. He's from a lineage of great New Orleans musicians going all the way back to, like, the beginnings of jazz. That's an advantage. But also, you know, like he always connected it some way with something that he could already do confidently. And so he never was like, I have to be a scholar in Brazilian music to know the difference between a Bayonne and a samba.

I'm going to listen to it, see how it connects with what I already know with groups, find what's similar instead of what's different. And they just play it my way in a confident way. That's awesome. And so, like, I started doing that since then. I never have achieved the level of authenticity that Hurling Riley does. But I grabbed the, I stole a little bit at it, and I always think about him. So just taking from what you hear from that groove, different groove that you may not be an expert on,

but keeping that part of yourself, that stuff that you already know and applying it to it. Exactly. And like some of the things you were starting to mention about syncopation and different things, like these are all the same elements that are used to put any kind of groove. And yeah, you have to learn it and a certain amount of, you know, academic information about it can help.

But it's mainly about listening to it, imitating, playing along with it, imitating people that can play it well, but then connecting it with something with some groove that you are confident in so that you can kind of put your own little take on it as well. So let's connect this to maybe his question here about, you know, finding your groove in your playing, finding that sound, that feel for you. Yeah. I think it's all about listening.

I think it's about finding the players that you connect with, you know, that really hit, have a groove that you love. Yeah. And then mimicking them, playing along with their recordings, transcribe. them, listening, listening, listening to them, getting that language of their groove in there, getting their eighth note in. Yeah.

You know, it's incredibly effective. Yeah, and it's almost like, you know, like if you're really trying to get voicings, like two-handed voicing, so you're learning some transcriptions that, you know, you're learning by transcribing, and then you're focusing on that part of the pianist playing. You're trying to get your bebop lines

so that you're focused as you're learning that or listening to something. It's like you're doing that with the group. you are focusing in on your instruments playing in that, but then really focusing on what the feel is. And when you focus, I think, on feel, and look, so much of groove is about the feel. It's not as much of an analysis as some parts of the music

that maybe the harmonic or the melodic areas. Well, because you can't teach it. You have to just hear it and do it. That's right. If you're learning a language, that is the fluency. Yeah. But there's definitely an ear training aspect to this, I think, that sometimes gets overlooked.

so that the same ways that we work on our ear training for expanding our harmonic, you know, normally we're associating that with harmonic things, intervals, chord structures, you know, melodic things too. But I think the rhythmic concepts that are the biggest part of how you can play grooves effectively does come from ear training of what the grooves is. So the same kind of things, listening over and over again, being able to identify different ones, what makes things differently, how they sound different, you know, identify

and then trying to put them into your playing, playing along with recordings the same way you would do with the transcription, that kind of thing, and really getting it through that kind of feel. Yeah, so, you know, Johnny, it's not an original answer for us to just say listen, but that to me is, I think, the only way you're really going to get it. You know, you have to have a bit of awareness

about the groove of musicians that you like and identify those, pinpoint those, listen, steal, Yeah. Apply them to your own playing. And when you're working on this part of your playing, just like any other kind of like focusing on the players and I mean, because we're pianists, we're always going to, well, let's talk about a trumpet player. So if you're a trumpet player and you really want to get your groove better, there's so many

great trumpet players. But go with, like really focusing on, say, Roy Hargrove. Yeah. Because like he's grooving all the time. It's not to say that like Miles or Winton or all these great trumpet players aren't grooving too. But I mean, like that's a core part. part of Roy's playing.

And he plays a number of different groups. If you listen to his hip-hop stuff, like listen to the way he plays on those DeAngelo recordings. Like, he can fit into a lot of different grooves in a very authentic way. He's always Roy. He's always a jazz player, quote, unquote, but he can play any groove. He's just a grooving, you know, I mean, person. Yeah, his, I remember when I work with him, I think, like, what did the checks come from?

I might be divulged. It was like, his company's called like hard groove productions or hard groove enterprises or something. Her group, you know, and so it's like, you know, and it's not to take away from other players. It's just you want to focus on that. You know, if you're a pianist, Wynton Kelly. Sure. He's grooving.

Or any of the, like, New Orleans players, in terms of groove, you can't go wrong because if you're a drummer, Hurley, right, like he just, you know, I gave the whole story about him. It's Shannon Powell. The groove is strong down there. You know, so, yeah, it's a great area to think about it can, I think the confidence thing, too. I don't want to, I don't want us to, I can't overemphasize that too.

This is an area for some reason. I see a lot of players are not as confident as they can be. And I think the way to do is to take that area that you are, that groove that you are confident with, find something to kind of move it over to those areas that you're not and fake until you make it. That's so great, man. Well, thank you, Johnny for the question. And, you know, as always, if you want to ask us a question, you can go via Facebook to

the Open Studio Facebook page if you like. but you could more directly go to you'll hear it.com and ask a question there. You can leave us a voice message. You can buy one of our t-shirts, which are beautiful. Right. Yeah. You can buy us one of the T-shirts. I mean, I got to stop.

I feel bad even asking for it. But I do want one. I'm going to order one. You know what? I'm going to order one. When's your birthday? August. I know.

Thank you. I do celebrate Hanukkah, Ramadan, Christmas, and Cwanzaa. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, yeah. Do you get more gifts? It's fun. That's great. Well, I know what to get you now in December.

All right. Until next time. You'll hear it.