You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How Much Self-Admiration Should I Have?

Episode Date: November 25, 2020

It's another live edition of You'll Hear It where Peter and Adam take your questions. On this episode, Peter and Adam tackle a question on the self-admiration sweet spot, as well as their favorite classical tunes to play and more.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.Wednesday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)6:00 PM - Edu Ribeiro + Eric Harland | Drum Conversations + Q&A on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkLet 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.

Okay, should we do this question about, oh, let's talk about this for a second. Because Joe Brasso brought up Billy Child's lyric, that record. And I know a lot of you are probably on this, but maybe some of you weren't. I got to tell you. And we haven't even really talked about it yet. But I think that, well, first of all, a little backstory. We presented a master class at Open Studio last Friday. Adam moderated and presented Billy Childs, who is just a fantastic.

He's very unique, I would say. in the jazz world because he really comes from a classical and a jazz background. But actually he comes from like an LA music background, a very eclectic music background in terms of like rock and funk and fusion

and R&B. But I think classical and jazz are sort of the things that he's known most for. But a lot of people up until not that long ago didn't necessarily know a lot about his classical kind of compositions. And I shouldn't even say classical

because he's not a classical composer. He's not a jazz basketball. He's a very individualistic writer that's able to funnel in, like he loves Paul Hindemith and he loves, you know, Monk, but he loves like Crosby, Stills, and Nash. And like he has all these different influences like many of us, but he's able to have this kind of singular voice. And, you know, he's arranged for some of the biggest artists since the 70s and written stuff. And now, now, over the last 10, 15, 20 years, he's really had some great opportunities to present,

I think, what his vision of his music is. And it's such a great amalgamation of these influences and of his experience. I mean, he played with Freddie Hubbard for years when he was young. And he used to be the guy that was like, you know, back when touring was like, oh, we're going to the West Coast. I'm going to the West Coast. Yeah, yeah. A rhythm section. You pick up Billy Childs.

You pick up Billy Childs and I can't like Dwayne Dolphin and just various L.A. cats, you know. But anyway, what, but I digress. I regress. No. Oh, yeah. So we did the master class. and he did it we did a kind of composition style and it was just so cool

man he was so he was dropping knowledge I learned so much he was dropping knowledge man and I love what he started with he presented one of his pieces and then he did some kind of critiques or just you know kind of yeah critique I guess you would say of several of our students but and their compositions that they presented but before he played his song he kind of broke down an analysis

that he did and he's like I didn't think about any of this stuff before I wrote it but this is stuff that I noticed very clearly, very thematic. I thought it was fantastic. It was great. Yeah, he had all the themes, like, written out and identified, and then he had this, like, timelines, handwritten structure that he went through on his piece Into the Light, Grammy Award winning

composition. Yep. And it was just very, the whole thing was very enlightening. And, you know, I mean, you and I both do a little bit, a fraction of what he does, as far as, like, writing with orchestras and larger ensembles and stuff. And, and I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I know,

you were geeking out on it as much as I was just to see his string writing and hear him talk about that process and everything. It's just so cool. I've learned so much because I played a lot of his arrangements with the orchestra and so I learned a lot just from hearing it and stolen a lot of his stuff for my string writing.

But also, fun fact that you may not know about Adam Maness about that Friday session. When you started, did you notice that perhaps Billy might have showed up to the before activities maybe five minutes later than you and some other folks? I don't know. Was he a little bit late. I didn't notice. Because, well, he, I don't think he'll mind me divulging this,

but he totally forgot about it. Excellent. And he got an email from Rachel Morgan when she saw that he wasn't there and said, oh, here's the link just in case you didn't have it. And he's like, oh, that's today. Okay, cool, no problem. Excellent. So good thing. He saw that and showed up. But that was a really fun thing. That's awesome. Yeah. Uh, too, I'm just going to work here. Let's see. Do you guys have any? No, let's go back up. Still new to transcribing, but You didn't like that one? Well, I just want to make sure I got all of them. Still new with transcribing,

but there was a line I kind of struggle with until I noticed that it was just over a diminished chord, then I clicked. Okay, that's not even a question. Way to go. I think you need me to pick out the question. Here we go, the funky unit. My favorite of our YouTube.

The funky unit. Uh, uh, uh, uh. The funky unit. In the house with a good-ass question. Where you are? Where you're at the funky unit Oh boy Beidi be didi be dee lily little lily funky unit

Do you guys have any favorite pieces From classical repertoire that you like to play That may compliment your jazz playing. Thanks. You know... Favorite to some other genres That's what we like to talk about With the funky unit.

You know what the funky unit? You know what you check out If you haven't checked out much of Some Chopin nocturns. You're going to thank me later for that. Showpan nocturns aren't funky at all But that's okay. You got to check it.

Oh, they're super vivy. It's like the original shoe gaze. Yeah, that's right. No, that's a great one. That's a great one. And it's pianistic as hell. As heels, yeah. And you like the Bach two-part inventions, three-part inventions.

I like to slop my way through those on a fetter roads. I love the well-tempered clavier, obviously, clavier. Oh, that sounds great on a hammer 88. Nothing sounds better. Any good tips on this is from Ye-Yo. Yayo. That was the nickname of... Yeah, oh! Any good tips or recording for transcribing to get better at rhythm changes at the piano,

still having a hard time. Yes, I've got a good one for you. Well, Olio action, right? Yeah, and Miles Davis to solo. Exactly. Relaxing. Yeah. Yeah, I can't remember it now. It's so lyrical and it's so...

We got to get the thing where we can just start playing stuff on here. Well, we can barely get the stream started. So we'll do that later. I mean, we can play two pianos on here and then we have courting. Damn it, Peter. What else do you want from us now? I want to be able to play Miles. I want to be able to play Miles.

But it's such a great solo. And I would recommend that. What else? There's some good Oscar Peters and stuff, but that's like super advanced. I mean, that's wrong. Noreko Mendez. What's up, Noriko? Question about...

Oh, sorry. It's from Live at the Black Hawk. Did we say that? I said relaxing, but I like your... Oh, that one's good too. That one's good too. Noriko says, question about mentality.

How much of self-admiration is proper in general do you think? Well, you're asking the right guy over here. Oh, my gosh. If you guys could see how long we have to do his lighting and focus set up before. That's why we can barely get the stream. He's like, hold up. Put it up one more time. Let me see.

Wait. A little more yellow. Start from not. Start from not. Bring up the Kelvin. Kelvin 4,700. We all need to have some guts to jump in jam sessions, et cetera, if we have. If we have too cautious.

Wait, hold up. You didn't answer the other question. Self-admiration. This is the second part of it. Oh, we all need to have some guts to jump in, jam sessions, et cetera. If we are too cautious or coward, we'll lose our chance. But if we have too much self-admiration, we'll miss the opportunities to learn. Well, I think, Noriko, you are answering your own question here in my experience. Takes pressure off us.

But you know what? Something to think about Noriko. What helps me think about this is asking myself, who am I doing this for? for me or is this for the music? Those are really our two options for me. You always want to serve the music first. And that means that you can actually be, have some self-admiration, be confident, and be braggadocious without being cocky even. You can, yes, you can be, you can feel good about what's going on and feel good about what you're playing without it being self-serving. You can still be serving the music and the experience of your listener. It's a fine thing to walk,

But if you can answer the question, honestly, am I serving myself in this moment or am I serving the music right now? You will hopefully get to a place where you are more than often serving the music first and serving yourself second. Yes, I would agree totally. And I would say that you could think about it like, you know, if you are able to settle into this mindset of serving the music, then you don't have to worry about self. admiration as much because like if you play something that sounds good if you're fitting in with the like if the if you're doing your contribution whether that's soloing or leg back or whatever but it's something good you can smile and you can enjoy it and it's not coming across as braggadocious because it's about the bigger thing now some people may think it comes across that way but i i really

think that that's that great intersection of confidence and not being you know kind of humble bragish and so once we are really putting ourselves in that position of service and that mentality and this takes a little bit of a time because it's it's not it's like as we're developing as players we're also trying to always constantly develop as people and as humans and you know we're here to serve and so yeah I love this love what you said out about serving the music just like you serve a guest first but if you really get into this thing of you're always serving the music it just becomes fun you know and for me it's yeah it's the better you get the easier that is to do, but you start to realize that you don't question things in a way that you do

when you're trying to serve your own ego, you know? Now, you can't get thrown off the scent by this from others because sometimes people will misinterpret this. And you know what? My mom told me once, son, there's always going to be haters. Always going to be haters. Wait, Rose said that. She did say that. She was very literal about it, I think, more so than the way we use it. People are going to hate you. I was like, yeah, mom, they're going to be haters. She's like, no. They're really going to hate you. Ooh, Kevin has a good question. Tips on connecting chords while soloing.

I'm at the phase in my improvisation where I'm just babbling instead of saying coherent sentences. A few of you, Kevin. One thing we like to work on for that, Kevin, is what you want to do is map out the geography of your changes. So if you have a tune like so that you're not battling that you understand what's happening, we like to do this thing called scale running, right, where you kind of establish what are the scales I'm going to use over each chord. Now, this is very basic and this is very basic. and this is very clinical and it sucks, but it'll get to where you need to go for this, right?

Hey, you need a little more self-admiration. Self-affirmation. I'm serving the music here, and I'm serving Kevin here. So what I'm going to do is, like, I start with a B-flat major scale because it's a B-flat major seven-core. So every time the chord changes,

I don't stop the scale, and that was very fast, but I can do it much slower. I can do quarter notes. Right, you don't even, and you can change directions wherever you want. Yeah. E-flat, Lidian, dominant. A flat, Lidian dominant, C harmonic minor, C Lidian dominant.

You can make different shapes. C, Dorian. A, half-hole diminished. Or F, half-hold diminished, sorry. Back to B-flat major. But basically, and you can go that slow. You can go half-notes. Yeah.

You can go as slow as you need to, Kevin. But what you're doing is practicing changing the scale with the chord. It's like the most basic Bob. Shout out to Bob DeBoo. Basic Bob way to understand these. These are my note choices. Shots Bob De Niro from me. Bob De Niro.

Now this is like some people consider this kind of like too. Hedy or like not raw enough or not. So you might consider that too. If you're struggling understanding the inner workings of music, this can be really good. If you want to sound better, start transcribing more. Yep, absolutely. Somebody made a note.

Luke said, Adam's bebop course is great. I found it really helpful for my lines. I would concur on that. I mean, I've heard that from quite a few folks. because I think that's the specialty of that course. Bebop Basics, right?

Hmm, yeah. Cool. All right. Chris, see, that's what I'm saying. My mom said there's going to be haters. Chris says Peter's singing,

might get y'all some dislikes. Your mom was right about so many things. Hey, don't talk about my mama. Adam, so she was right. Yeah, you're right.

You know, we're just, we're having fun. It's Monday. It's, in America, it's Thanksgiving. Oh,

man. Do you ever feel like, I feel like, and this is a holdover from, elementary school. This week is kind of free week, right? I mean, we still have a bunch of work to do and there's always stuff to do, but it feels like we're already on vacation. Or at the Martin house, we call it Toferky week. Toferky week. Dude, we're heading this way. We got a real turkey this year, but I don't know about next year. Did you go with a small bird? Dude, so we've been doing-

because I heard that's the thing this year, is the small bird. Well, we got, you know, we have our groceries deliver because we're super conservative, as you might notice by the huge thing of plexigas between us right now about the coronavirus. I thought you meant politically conservative. That as well. No. And the person who, our shopper, who bought our turkey, found the most gigantic, probably genetically modified bird you'd ever seen.

I mean, it could barely fit in our fridge, dude. It's ridiculous. Well, it was funny. My mom yesterday. There's four of us and two of us are under 80 pounds. But not the bird. No, not. So my mom yesterday told me, she's like,

can you pick me up? Are you going to go grocery shopping for us this week? And she said, can you pick me up a cornish, a small cornish? Because she's literally the only one in the, you know, because my dad, vegetarian, dude, for many years. Yeah. And so she's just like, I want to have the little, I said, you know what?

I think those might be in short supply this year because that, with the smaller gatherings, you know, people have been going with the little Cornish hands. Perhaps a K-Pond. This might be a K-Pon. You know, our very own Open Studios very own, Rachel Morgan has requested a Cornish head. for her Thanksgiving.

She might be dining alone, as we all should be. D.K. Sound System said, Chip Crawford, Porter's pianist. You should invite him. Yeah, Chip's great. We should get him on the show. Chip can go dark, though, can't he? I think I've... Maybe I just seen him in an airport at the wrong time. Let's find out. Let's find out. The funky unit just got the theme song for the new sitcom. Totally true.

Yep. Do you have a favorite Afro-Cuban jazz pianos? In the House. Funky Unit. Avi says, do you have a favorite In the house, Fungry unit Avi says, do you have a favorite

Afro-Cuban jazz pianist really enjoyed the new Gonzalo Rubikaba? Rubikaba. Gonzalo is one of the greatest pianist alive right now. Agree or disagree? Oh, absolutely. I mean, he is.

He's a force. Have you heard him live before? Never. Oh, man. So, dude, you're going to go, I mean, as great as he is on recordings, hearing him live is like that's the kind of pianists that really you got to hear hear him live it's it goes next level but yeah I totally agree I love Gonzalo

uh Chucho Valdez I think is if you would put him in the Afroca I mean of course you put in the Afro Cuban place but I I would just say Chucho is one of my favorite pianists right now period yeah you know for doing anything and he can play a lot of different things obviously playing Cuban music and Cuban jazz in particular and what we would call often Afro-Cuban music is certainly something that he excelled at. But I wouldn't say that that's even the only, it's definitely not the only thing he can do. I don't even know if that's the only thing that he excels at.

I mean, he's an amazing classical pianists. Of course, his father was the incredible pianist. But, I mean, he's just such a great jazz pianist. And so I think that it's just, you know, he's one of those, I really put him, and I don't talk about him enough. I would just say, I think back to about a year ago, when I got a chance to hear him ride, you know, not 50 yards from here at Jazz at the Bistro. And I want to go, I mean, I've heard him live so many times.

So many, never enough. But I remember I wanted to hear him that so much that that I got back in town that day and had to do a bunch of stuff. I knew that was his last night over there. It was Saturday night or maybe even Sunday. It might have been a Sunday. Whatever was the last night. And as I'm pulling up here, I was so excited. I hit a curb over on Grand and I popped a tire.

You know when you know you hit a flat tire. I was like, uh, and so I was like, you know what? On my mind, I was like, let me just get close enough to the club where I can park somewhere safely. I left the car there on the side of the road and ran over the club to hear the set. And like the joy of the music was so great. I forgot about the car when I came out at midnight afterwards and got a chance to hang with Chucho. And I came out. I was like, oh yeah, I got a flat tie.

I got to figure out how to get home. Man, I want to give a shout out to youngish Cuban pianist, youngish because he's my age. Manuel Valera. We went to school together. he is amazing. Yes. Cuban Express. There's a long tradition of great pianists from that little island man.

Yeah. Almost every, you know what I've never heard is a Cuban pianist that did not have monster technique. It's crazy, right? Yeah. And I know that part of that, I mean. Yeah, Manny too is ridiculous. Yeah, part of that is just they have such a great piano.

And apparently a lot of it, like they had these great Russian teachers down there. I know a bunch of them came up. But they've got a really good music school program that identifies these top talents at young age and funnels them to the best teachers and stuff. It's a pretty amazing system. Oh, there was one question out here. We only have a few more minutes. So apologies, we didn't get your question.

We're going. So can we get Peter's opinion on Phoebe Bridgers? That would be funny. We should do that. I've always said we should do a show. Yeah, exactly. No, you have no business knowing with it. It's just like an early 20s singer-songwriter.

It's shoe gaze like to the max. I'm all about the shoegaze. You kind of are. But it would be fun to just, we introduce each other to music that we think the other will not like. Right. That would be fun. That would be great. Zach says,

I've been trying to improve my feel for many years. I know that I play on the front side of the beat. I've been told to lay back. It seems my pursuit of this is some serious fine tuning. I've been transcribing for many years now. It seems to help. I really want to get a handle on this. Can you help me?

So, Zach, first of all, I want to just say some advice that came down to me when I was young that was very helpful with this, everybody has their own feel. So even if you are on the front side, maybe that's just Zach's rhythm. Maybe that's how Zach feels it. And that's totally cool, man.

and let that be a fingerprint a little bit. Yeah. I mean, that's why we have personalities. I mean, that's not the only part that defines your personality as a musician, but that's one of the parts of it. And so I think you've got the awareness of it. That's the important part,

is not, is it better to be behind the beat, on the beat, or ahead of the beat? There is no right, but there's the awareness of it. Like, I play on top of the beat, but I don't always play. I mean, I try to fit in with the music for sure, but given my natural inclination,

And you can hear it like every time we start playing something together and I'm walking. It's like it probably feels like I'm pushing and rushing, you know. If I have any fault, it's that I push and rush too much. Just can't wait to get there. But that's also only on certain types of grooves and things. So that's just what it's about is having that awareness. Now, if you hear that you're on top of the beat, but you're here, like that you're playing on top of the beat, but you're hearing the music more like somewhere else, but you can't seem to match that up.

That's a problem. And that's where you want to make adjustments. But if it's, as you're saying, just a part of your musical personality, if it sounds good, what's the problem? Yeah, you know, our good friend, Aalves, who is one of the best pianists I know, he has a much different feel than almost any pianist I've ever heard. You know what I mean? And sometimes I can't even figure out what's going on. And it's not that it's like he's out of time or anything, or it's, it's just his own feel. And that's totally cool.

In fact, that's, like you said, man, that's how personalities work. And so I would say, who asked this? What's this? What's my man's name? Zach, I would say, Zach, you know, as much as you can, hang on to some individual feel. If it's a real big problem, like Peter said, make sure you have control first and foremost. But other than that. Absolutely.

Pickin Stone, Alex, Space Man, what's up? He says, who has the most happening left hand? Adam and Petey. Petey. Okay. That's quite informal, Alex. You've already done this once to Jeffrey Keatser, buddy. Just because you have the most number of voicemails.

What do we call those things? I lost you. I lost him. I lost him. Where you had, Adam? I'm sorry, I'm reading comments here. Just because you have the most number of voicemails. What do we call the voicemails?

Speak pipes. Speak pipes. Come on, of all time. That means you can call me. See, he's already like, uh-oh, keys, yeah. So it's funny because we were on a YouTube live stream and Pick and Stone called Jeffrey Keys or Keys. And Keyes was like, well, that's a little bit informal.

That's great. That's great. Okay, so who has the most happening left hand in your humblest of opinions? So, well, of course it's going to be humble because we're going to be making opinions. I mean, I guess he means don't say ourselves. That wouldn't be a very humble opinion, right? It's not me. It's definitely not me, but it is definitely Art Tatum.

I mean, does it, I mean, does anybody else really pop to mind, Oscar Peters and maybe compared to Art Tatum? I mean, I'm going to give, I'd give a shout out to Brad Meldo on this, too. He's got a pretty, he's got amazing hand independence. I don't know about chops. It's pretty good, man. It's pretty good. I would also. Because he's gazing down.

The only reason he happens to see it is because he's looking at his, yeah, he's looking at his shoe so closely that he. I mean, Gonzalo. Oh, yeah. Gonzalo, you know, the most happened. But now happening. Benny Green. Yeah, Benny. Now, so maybe we should, Jeff Kieser, what are we talking about?

Jeffrey Keezer? We've watched them doing it. Actually, yeah, Jeffrey Kieser actually in, I've never seen a left hand better than that in person. Yeah. No offense, Peter. No, no, absolutely. I mean, it's crazy. But if we look at this, let us dissect this question a little closer, shall we, homie.

Who has the most happening left hand? Maybe we are skewing, as it were. Herbie Hancock has the most happening in left hand. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. that's that that that that's not subjective that's an objective truth that's that that's an aristotleian um uh uh uh oh g truth um absolute truth yeah i mean the most happening i think that the most

happening can be i mean to me thelonious monk had it extremely happening like there's very little that thelonious monk played with his left hand that i'm not like that is so cool and artful and so fitting for what he's playing overall so i mean i think that um I'm going to give a shout out to Fred Hirsch for his left. When you talk about control, about feel and dynamics, I mean, he and I think Keith Jarrett and I would put Kenny Kirkland up there too as far as just control with their left hand. Yeah.

Ridiculous. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, I think we're nearing the end of our little you'll hear life. Thank you guys for making the trip over to. We'll be called Take 2. But do be da-de-lid-lubid-de-bob.

But it's next week. Wait, this thing's still on? Yes. Join us next week for another you'll hear it live. We start every week at 4 p.m. Eastern Central time. You're going to want to catch the wonderful Adam Manus and the handsome Peter Murphy every week. Have a great Thanksgiving, y'all.