You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Approach Pop Tunes in a Jazz Setting - #76

Episode Date: April 16, 2018

Today, Adam and Peter discuss some ways to approach modern pop tunes in a jazz setting. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Today we're going to talk about how to approach pop tunes in a jazz setting. Good, because I've been wanting to play the greatest love of all by Whitney Houston for like 20 years. And no one will let me do it on the jazz gig. Well, man, it sounds like a solo piano favorite for you to throw in there.

I'll work it up. I'm going to work it up. Let's do it. So the first thing that we can do is to choose the right tune. You know, I do this a lot with my music. trio. I actually have, we're like 81% modern pop tunes right now. And some of the ones you've been doing. Well, we

do, so we do some nine inch nails. We do nine inch nails closer. We just added this great arrangement of Katie Lang's constant craving. I'm very 90s heavy right now, but we do like some outcast. I thought you said of this day. We do some outcast like Lana del Rey. And you know, there's a, you have to approach it differently.

Everybody wants to rule the world. I think I heard you. We do the Tears for Fear stuff. And, yeah. That might even be 80s, my friend. 80s. We go all the way back. But, you know, I mean, like, how many 25-year-olds know the days in wine and roses? Like, they don't really know that as a popular tune. They just know it is something they hear from jazz combos at restaurants.

But we try to kind of put some things in that maybe people might recognize from popular radio. So the key to this for me, though, at least the way I approach it, is, you know, one of the most important things is choosing the right one. You can't just choose any modern pop tune. I mean, you could. but for me, if it's going to be good, I have to really love the melody, first and foremost. It has to be a melody that, like, sounds good when you play it instrumentally.

A lot of modern pop tunes, man, they don't have, like, the strongest of melodies. Yeah, it's got to be melodic. I guess it would be in the baseline. I mean, that's the one advantage that if you're a jazz musician pulling modern pop tunes in the 50s, you have a wealth of, you know, all these like Jerome Kern and the Gershwins and all this great musical theater stuff that has these really melodic melodies. these melodies that just soar all around. But I think jazz musicians, even back then, too,

were very good at picking out the ones that would fit. I remember my dad telling me when I first kind of got into jazz. I mean, he's a musician and knows a lot about, you know, a lot of kinds of music. And I was saying to him, I said, man, back when you were coming up in like the 50s and 60s, there were so many great pop tunes. All the pop tunes were so great and they adapt so well to jazz.

You know, great harmonic content and great melodic stuff. And he was like, no. he's like, he's just like the jazz musicians took those. Those are the only ones that survived. He's like, we had a bunch of crap back then as well. It's the same thing, too. So if you're choosy about what you're going to pick and try to arrange, this could really work well.

And then, you know, for me, I look for great melodies. You can look for great changes, although as a jazz musician, I'm prone to make the changes, you know, my own anyway. And we're talking about harmony now. Yeah, we're talking about harmony of like the chord changes. Yeah, harmony. That's less important to me, the complexity. we can always add that.

Like, you know, we're going to do it anyway, so. We do a steely Dan, we just threw in a steely Dan version of Black Cow. It's awesome, but we haven't changed anything about it because it's like the changes are great. Right. That's already kind of a, that's a jazz influence pop tune. Already, right. So I'm almost ready to throw it out because it's like, well, we're not making it our own at

all. We're just kind of playing it how they would play. You know what I mean? Right. So there's something to be said of kind of making something in your own like this. There's some interesting things. I was just thinking about like Billy Childs is really good at doing arrangements of, well, basically he was doing, I don't know if he's still doing this, but he was doing pretty current pop tunes. Like he did an arrangement for Diane Reeves of In Your Eyes.

It's just fantastic. And it's almost like it's still a groove, but it's a little bit different of a groove. And it's not even like a jazz arrangement. I mean, there's a lot of complicated written, you know, kind of through written material in it. But it's very much based around, I mean, that's a different thing than Trial because, you know, you know, you're not. You still have the lyrics because those four vocals and stuff. But it's sort of taking what's there and then adding some harmonic complexity and some interesting rhythmic things and a bunch of counter melodies and stuff

and kind of turning into its own thing. The only thing remaining is the original melody and lyrics kind of soaring above like a new composition almost. Yeah, it could be a really cool thing. I did a little bit of that with Aaron Bodie when I was in her band for a while. It can really work well. Yeah. And then, I mean, I think that, you know, I like your thing of looking for great melodies

and possible interesting harmonic things or places to go. But I think that if you layer that with things that you're passionate about and that resonate with you somehow, those kind of songs as well, then you'll get into something where you're going to enjoy playing it, enjoy experimenting with it, enjoy extending it in a way that will really work in a jazz environment, I think. Yeah, it's totally true, man, it's totally true. Yeah, I mean, I did a video of a tune last year from La La Land from the movie,

and it was kind of, it wasn't really a joke because I actually enjoyed the movie a lot and I enjoyed some of the music, but what I was trying to do with that was almost like the reverse in a way because the movie was about jazz, like the story was about jazz, but the music in the movie was not really jazz.

It was kind of Broadway. Totally. So I wanted to take one of the songs and sort of do a jazz version of something that wasn't jazz, but then everybody thought was jazz. And then everybody started coming out because I put it on YouTube. Everyone was like,

man, this is such a great jazz version of this jazz tune. I'm like, that's not really what it is. Yeah, if you haven't checked this out, it's called Another Day in the Sun. YouTube search. Another Day of Sun. Another Day of Sun? I think so. Peter Martin.

Another Day of Sun. I don't sing on it. No, but he does the solo piano version that's like unbelievable. Anyway, a little plug there for. And then I actually pulled that like on the recording or in the movie, as I recall it, it's almost like a kind of big bandish, swing feel, but it's real Broadway-ish. And so I sort of changed the groove further away from jazz and away, but made it more jazz piano.

Yeah, no, it's way hipper with what you did. Oh, thank you. Well, and this brings us kind of to our second point, which is to experiment with the grooves and the orchestration and the form. You know, and this was done with standards with, you know, what we consider American songbook standards by jazz musicians, you know, throughout history. And you can do that, too. You know, if they're playing something, like you said, with the Billy Child's thing, like you don't have to play in the same groove at all. Right.

You know, you can give the bass player the melody, although I don't recommend that. No, you can experiment with how, who plays the melody, who does the counter melodies, how it feels, the tempo. You know, one of the things we like to do in my trio is to, like, play something that's usually fast, slow, play something that's slow really fast. It's really refreshing and can kind of, like, spark something interesting. Yep. Good stuff. I think it's, yeah, I mean, what, you know, experimenting is important, too, because you got to figure, as jazz musicians, everyone already thinks we're just playing a bunch of random notes,

and sometimes we are anyway. So if you bring in just a little bit of recognizable pop tune or something, they're going to be so happy that you can pretty much do whatever you want. Just giving them a little bit, they're like, oh, thank God I can hold on to something. But I mean, I think for pulling people in at gigs, I think it's really important because, you know, I really know this music pretty well. I know the recordings. I've been playing it for quite a few years.

But sometimes I go hear like, you know, some, especially like a young band and like they're playing all this original music and I'm just kind of lost in it. I mean, unless it's just perfectly sculpted and I've got so much concentration, you know, ability at that time, I mean, I'm just, I want something that I can kind of hold my hands onto a jazz standard, a pop tune, something. And I mean, I'm an informed pro at this. So you figure your general audience, let's give them a little bit more, nothing wrong with that. Yeah, absolutely. That brings us to our third point, which is to. Wait, we've only, I feel like we've done like seven. That brings us to our seventh point.

This is the last thing we'll talk about. And this is, again, something that we've both done quite a bit. And that's, you know, you have this great melody. You have a song that means something to you. What we have the luxury of is jazz musicians. And what's sometimes necessary if we're going to improvise over this is to re-harmonize the chord changes around the melody. You know, everybody has a different level of comfort with this, of going outside.

I like to go pretty outside when I re-harm the core changes and give myself something with sort of the improvisational section in mind, right? Some changes that I want to play over. It can be really difficult to play over one four or five's. You know, that can be maybe something

that you don't want to do, although sometimes that can be really freeing occasionally. But, you know, oftentimes I'll try to come up with some kind of alternate chord changes that have some nice little things in there for me and for the band to like grab onto when we're improvising that isn't just

you know the basic straight pop changes also again traditionally done all the time with American song book stuff so you know why not do that again with modern pop tunes well and it's important and works well too because normally you know no matter how you arrange it and reharmonize it still a bulk of the performance is going to be improvisation in the solo section so you that part has to sound good. So, you know, if you add some re-harm, like, you don't want to just do that on the soul section for something that you want, it has to fit in with the melody, because you still have to have a cohesive thing. It can't just be like, you know, like you're playing giant that says, be-de-de-de-do-de-do-de-d-d-d-blues. I mean, yeah, that's easier, but that's not

going to fit together. I think I know a cat that does that. I think so, too. And we all do, You know, but yeah, so I mean, don't be afraid of the pop tunes, have fun with it, and you'll hear it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hear It podcast. If you liked what you heard, please leave a rating or review. Yeah, I liked what I heard. I'm going to leave five stars, but you guys can do whatever you want. Today's episode was brought you by Open Studio, Jazz Lessons from Jazz Legends. Check out our brand new All Access Pass.

All Access. What is that, like one or two courses you get? Dude, I said All Access. It's Access to Edel. Everything. Every course, hundreds, thousands. Tens of thousands of last. Wait, tens of thousands. Back up. Back up. Definitely hundreds. We're getting close to a thousand. Everything from Christian McBride, Peter Martin, Romero, LaBombo, Gregory Hutchinson, Miles Davis, Meadlux, Lewis, Jelly Roll, Martin. Just getting ridiculous.

No, some of those, the first couple, we've got them. Check us out. OpenStudionnetwork.com.