You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Break Out of Your Straight-Ahead Rut

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

Peter and Adam make their triumphant return to the PodSuite today as they talk about how to spice up what you're playing.Today's episode is sponsored by MuseScore. The MuseScore sheet music catalog contains over 20,000 unique music scores uploaded by both professional and amateur composers, and is the biggest online catalog of publicly available scores. And thanks to their partnership with the You'll Hear It podcast, you can now get MuseScore PRO for 65% off! Just follow this link and join this rapidly growing community today! And while you're there, check out the MuseScore editor - the most popular free music notation software in the world with over 200,000 downloads per month.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 - Edu Ribeiro's Drum Conversations + Q&A with special guest: Clarence Penn on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkThursday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Guided Practice Session with Geoffrey Keezer (for Members Only)10:30 PM - Live from Spragueland with Peter Sprague on YouTubeInterested 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, Adam. Yo. What you know about this? Not bad. What about something like this, though? Why are you looking down? Okay, well, what do you know about this? Huh?

I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Advice and inspiration for music and life. Oh, that's a nice little catchphrase, buddy. Look at this. And I thought it would be appropriate because we're back on the YouTube's. What's up, YouTube?

Yeah, look at us, too. We are also back in where? The Pod Suite. The Pod Suite. But it's an upgraded pod suite. It's an upgraded and it's a safer pod suite. Like a teller at CVS. I feel.

This is a little weird. We have a piece of plexiglass between us. The listeners can't see you. The YouTubers can probably see. But you know, you got to be safe. Do you see what I have here with me? I love that. We might have to do a little giveaway with that soon.

Because that's the theme song, isn't it? Yeah, I have our theme song printed here on my mask. That's awesome. Which is, yeah. I want one of those. Man, I'm not shy in a way just because we're in a global. pandemic. You got to live your life, you know what I'm saying? You got to live it. You got to live safely though, so we got the plexiglass.

We got every, you can't see over there. We got everything opened up now. So they were and then of course we're social distance here. But we moved, we were in the pod chamber. Yeah. The pot hall. But it was, we had some complaints. We had some complaints. We had a few complaints about the chamber-esque atmosphere. If we were doing a cello duet, I think it would have worked out well. Yeah, most of the complaints were from you. No, no, we got a few, you know. Yeah. It actually did sound not great. It sounded like we need to be doing a lecture, not a, a, podcast with advice and inspiration for music and life.

So we've been developing because we've been talking more about life because music is life. You know what I'm saying? For sure. And to play good music, you have to get better at life. Exactly. So not only do we have the new setup here in the new pot suite, we have a new sponsor. We do have a new. And I'm really excited about these folks because like many of our great sponsors, this is

a product and a piece of software we've recommended it and used here at Open Studio for a couple years now. That's right. Yeah. It's Muse score. And I'm doubly excited because today. is the first time I learned how to say it. I was always like music score.

But you've corrected me and it's Muse score. Muse score. Yeah, it just kind of flows off the time. It does flow. Now that I know how to say it is. So Muse score is like one of the most popular notation software as you can get. It's completely free. It's open source.

Whenever anybody asks me, like what should I get? Yep. It's my, I don't have any notation software. I always say like, well, don't spend 400 bucks on the big, you know, heavy dudes. Yeah. Get Muse score for free. Check it out. Use it.

Learn how to use it. Enjoy it. It's awesome. It has everything you need. It's fast. It's fast and clean. It's fast. You can do almost everything

you would ever need to do on any notation software. It shouldn't be free. It's like one of those things. It shouldn't, right. So a little secret. I actually, I mean, we've got all the, you know, Sebelius and finale licenses here.

Oftentimes, especially if I want to do something quick and simple, I bust out a little muse score instead of some of these, I mean, I want to name names, although I did just name two names. There's some bloat. there's some software bloat going on in the notation world. And if you are frustrated and you're not, I mean, really the thing is when you score,

you can do just about everything you want to do. And it's a community as well. That's a nice part of it. Yeah, totally. It's, they also have a mobile application with an complete score catalog. And I'm talking like, if you are interested in, in things like, you know, band scores, orchestral scores, you know, whatever it is, small group jazz scores, big band scores,

there's all this material on there, 20,000 new scores. every month from living composers just like you. You can share. There's an entire community on there. And we have a link here in the description to save 65% off of the MuseCore Pro subscription that's monthly or annual. Go check it out at MusCore.com.

Check at the link here in the description. And yeah, thanks, Bucor. Welcome. Good stuff. Good stuff. So what are we talking about today? Well, we are talking about, well, did we a little bit of allusion to that in our intro as it were, how to break out of your sense?

straight ahead rut. Now what's a straight ahead rut? It's just like, you know, I mean, ruts generally keep you in a straight ahead situation. You know, you ever go to the, well, yeah, we didn't want to say that. You know, Adam Neely will be suing us now for stealing his phrase.

But the thing is, you know, it's like when you go to. He does the, what does he do the? Oh, that's true. Yeah, that's true. You know when you go to the car wash, the automated car wash? Do you ever do that? Yeah, of course.

So you go and you stay in your car and you kind of get put in this little rut and they're like put it in neutral and then you can't go anywhere you can't drive right you are just in a straight ahead rut and so this is the same as if if you're playing too much you know nice stuff but too much of that in your life

I mean I don't know why I'm bobbing my head but you don't play it's fun but it's a little straight ahead it's right if you're only listening to Riverside records from 1956 to 1958 be love you though I know I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff But if you want to get out of that for a while,

these could be some tips to do it. What I love about this list we made is we have all different kinds of ways to do it. And we got a lot too. We got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. So we got to jump right in. Oh, let's get it. Let's get it. Yeah, yeah.

All right. Okay. So number one, this is, and look, these are really a little bit random in a way in that they're like, they're, some of them are rhythmic, some of them are harmonic, some of them melodic. Yeah. But we really tried to mix it up because that's ultimately the best way to get out of your straight ahead rut is to mix up some of these.

Just do something different. Exactly. Exactly. So this one is, I call it the add a four between the two, five, one. You know why? Because that's exactly what you're doing. Just add a four between the two? Yeah.

So if you're going like D minor 7 to G7 to C major, right? I'm straight ahead of you. Yeah, it's very straight. I mean, does it get any more? You know, three, six. So maybe you go three, six, and then you go two, five, one. Fun, but straight ahead. So that all I'm doing is adding in.

I did a little more. But I added in mostly the four. And I went dominant. You can go dominant. You can go major, you can go minor, you can do whatever you want. So you're just adding a four chord between the two and five. Yeah, so you're going to two minor, D minor seven, F7. And you can just do it for like a beat or two beats, whatever you want.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it. You can also do it as a melodic thing, and this breaks it up nicely. Ah, not that. Just a little bit of break up, because we're just, we're easing our way into breaking up from straight in. I like it. That's great, yeah. It's already getting me out of my rut. So next we have the two to three grace note.

What's that all about? That one is, remember that's that. That's one that you do a lot. This might be one you don't understand, but you play. I do do that one. Probably too much. You know what I like to do is the two to three, and then I like the two to three going to the one to two.

I do that way too much. His pearly blues are lighting up there, folks. Look at it. He's looking up to the heavens. He's not looking down. So what are we mean? We mean two to three grace now. We mean so like if we're in C here, right?

And this is kind of a bluesy double stop, right? It is like an inner. It's almost like a suburban bluesy double stop a little bit. That's right. So your target note is E. The grace note is D. And then you have a G on top, right? You can combine it and turn it into it.

And you know what's interesting about this one? Oftentimes you'll do it with triad and you'll think, oh yeah, of course. You could bust out of key chair and triad to get out of your straight ahead rut. But this also could be like a major seven. Yeah. And so a lot of times we're always thinking about what's the voicing, but it's like, how do you play it? Or that one? So that's just like seven, you know, major seven, third, fifth on top.

Yeah. But you're still doing that two to three. You get that with the seventh on top. Sounds really good. Yeah, I did that a minute ago where you were, you were zoned out. That's okay, man. It's good. We've had a big day here.

We built the pod suite. So there we go. Okay, so I love that one. Two to three grace note. What do we got next? Next, we have the first. funk vamp on just one of those things. It could be on anything, but we were thinking this.

So this is really just mixing things up rhythmically over like a standard or something. So we always want to think about getting out of a straight-ahead route. We're thinking harmonically whatever, but it could also be rhythmic. So sometimes I'll do a thing, you know. This is cool. But really, especially for solo piano,

like kind of a, like when there's no drums playing, but you're hearing that, cat with the back beat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you can do a lot of your beat. your straight-ahead type stuff. Serious stank-face. And then you always come back to that.

And it's the kind of thing you've got that one element that you've gotten out of straight-ahead. Yeah. The rhythmic, the groove. Yeah. That opens up to play all your straight-ahead stuff floating on top of it. Love it. Yeah. And this one that's like, use your imagination.

There's so many different ways to do that. I love it. So next we have, I love this one too. Now, yeah, this is the first time I've heard this term. I love this. We're going to call this. shoegaze vamp. We could also call it the meldo shoegaze vamp. Now this is the one that I did in the intro of the, uh, kind of a shoulder shoe kind of, yeah. It's a very introspective. But so basically,

yeah, you do this little like broken arpeggio thing. You know, I mean, it's like, it's not quite that. There's usually some kind of common note. You could do this over standards too, like if you did like, minorish too, right? What is that tune? Days of Wine and Roses. It's like a little bit of an impediated guitarish kind of riff. Oh, the shoulder. There goes the shoulder. Oh, the gaze. We have shoulder, we have gaze.

But you're out of the rut. I'm out of the rut. It's actually a really cool way. Like if, you know, even to get out of not just straight ahead, but just like, you know, you can. Oh, you're gazing at your shoes. You're gazing at your toes in the sand in Rio on the beach. That's what's happening. I love, I love me a shoe gaze vamp.

Of course, now that'll get you out of your straight ahead rub, but we're going to have to do the next episode, seven ways to get out of your shoegaze wreck. Because that one, you can get stuck in that one. Adam's been in bed for weeks. He just started playing shoegaze vamps. Now, did you just make that term up, or is that a thing? Because I'm always missing out on stuff.

No, shoe gaze is like a, it's a genre of music of that sounds a lot like that. It's a lifestyle. It's like indie rock, shoegaze. You're just, you know, you're apathetic. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Okay.

So then here's one. And I had to write out specifically so I wouldn't forget it. Yeah, what is this one? Okay, so this is like, okay, say you're on a blues, a little E-flat blues. You're on a blues, yeah. So you're bluesy, which doesn't really get you necessarily all the way out of that straight-ahead group. It kind of does. Yeah.

But you can add little elements and stay in the bluesy kind of straight-ahead thing, and it can work nice. Subtle elements because you're already, the blues is already breaking up. So maybe you're like on the one core, and then you're on the four, and then you go four. Oh, no. way we do it going back one and then we go four yeah d flat seven then back to one so you just do a little flat seven thing yeah little flat seven so and maybe after you sitting on the four for a little bit throw it in before you go back to the one so the flat seven thing that takes me to my next thing which is the the high ridge special here did i play it on the intro i meant to yeah you did oh i love it

when you get real straight ahead of it uh wade your hands in the air There is B where you add. You're almost getting a little bit straight ahead. It's B-Boppas with your funky baseline. You can get away with kind of like I'm saying. Depending on where you're coming from. So that's just like you go to that dominant set. Or you go to that sus chord off of the minor seventh.

Like we're in the key of F here. So you go to E flat sus. You resolve to F. I overuse that as well. I overuse all these. Funk groove activated. A whole step down. Stankface activation.

And then it's one of those grooves that once you start it, you just know the tunes. going to be 10 minutes longer than it was going to be. That's when the real tune starts. That's when the real tune. It's like at the end of every Keith Jarrett, Blue Note. Live at the Blue Note, you know. Syncopation.

See, this episode is already going to be 10 minutes longer. All good. I like it. Next we got, oh, well, this is really just adding some gospel. We were going to do a whole episode just on this, but we didn't think it was needed. This is more about. Add some gospel. Yeah.

It's very specific. It is very specific. But, I mean, you know what I'm saying? Like, there's so many different ways to do it, but you just want to take that one idea. So if you're like, um, now you're not necessarily playing gospel, it might just be, oh, you know what you could do like, um, uh, let's see. Embraceable you? Yeah, yeah. Place to do it yet, but it's coming.

Oh yeah, so here we go. It's two five down to C minor. You go. Nice. What was that? So that's going up to G7, like F over G. So you wouldn't even think that's gospel, but it is. because it's that resolution, that four to three,

and then you're going to the C minor, right? It's beautiful. Plus you give a little walk-up. A lot of places to put it in. So that's like you take something very straight ahead, put some small little gospelisms in. Maybe we'll still use a whole other episode. Man, we're already on number eight.

Wow. Like we're flying through these. This one is great, too. Small harmonic alteration. So you had something on Stella by Starlight for this, right? Oh, right, right. So, you know, you've got... Gorgeous.

It's gorgeous. So all you have to do is take one. one chord that is you know very specific to the tune the first chord this is such an unusual place because you're starting the tritone with the half diminished but how about

instead of you do just minor 11 because that's such a modern sound that that immediately takes you out of that straight ahead thing so then you can cycling it out of it I mean that's the thing is all of these kind of stuff I was just thinking like you could do

some shoegaze you could shoe gazer you could gospel shoegays Gospels you guys Oh another gospely thing like I did there too is like you can always If you know how to do it you can take A 2-5-1 and make it a 4-5-1 instead

So it's like Oh yeah I do that off the top And a little pro tip on that one is When you go to the 5 instead of dominant You go Um 4 over 5 So you got B flat major Instead of G minor

And then you go B flat over C It's like simplifying everything Yeah And you can also add like we talked about before on the blues, you can G minor, you can do both to the B flat, B flat over C. And then if you want to play around with it, up to the relative minor, and you can go, you feel like you're out of that rut? Throw some shoegaze on it.

Throw some shoegaze on it. He did it. I've never heard you play like that. That's so funny. That's so great. Well, hey, we have one more, but before we do that, hey, how about a like and subscribe? if you found this at all useful Oh I forgot to tell you

I just heard from one of my big YouTuber friends We're not supposed to be saying Like and subscribe anymore We tell them to watch the next video We tell them to watch the next video So no like and subscribe Just watch the next subscribe too

We don't have to tell them They were like they know that already Okay Yeah You're so man you're up on all the YouTube game Look at you man All right next video Watch the next video

Because it's all about how to up your YouTube game starring Peter Munn So this last one This is hilarious because you just have random minor 11s. Yeah. Well, that was just an idea. Random subs.

No, this was yours. This was yours. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, it came out of your... Oh, it's like subbing on every single... You can, yeah. Like, that's the thing is, right? Like, you can play any chord with any melody notes.

So, you know, you could be like... Ooh, I feel I'm not in a rut. You know what I mean? Yeah. Combine it with a little... A little shoegazing? No, but just literally Jacob colliering your way To an entire arrangement

I do this more than I should probably Because I personally You're very good at it. It's very tasteful, I think Oh, thank you very much No, I think it's an easy way to kind of get you out of like Nothing wrong with this, right? But if you take it a little bit You know what I mean?

Beautiful. You're going somewhere. Especially solo piano-wise, it's easy to do. And with all these, you know, use them at the right time, of course. You know, we're listening. But I think especially with this one, you have such an ability then to go back to something very, you know, like you could start out your soul. Like if you come out of, you know. Don't hurt them, Peter.

Nice contrast. Yeah. You kind of set you up for being able to go back and get back in your rut, but it still sounds fresh. Yeah, it's awesome. Every note can go over every chord. So try it. Yeah, that's fun. Good stuff.

Awesome. Well, thanks YouTube. Thanks Peter Martin. Yeah, thanks Adam Maness. Thanks, New Pod Suite here. And thanks to Muse scores. We're so glad to have you guys on board. I know that you gave your first little plug slash rant about them.

Not a rant. It was a happy rant. It was just like, I love you so much yesterday on your own, which was great. But I'm really excited to be here and to be exploring the Muse scores. You know, I was looking up earlier too just to mention about them. And definitely go to the link below. It's a little bit of a complicated link, but we're going to nail it in there so you can see it. That's how we're, why we don't want to mess it up by saying it.

But, like, I was searching for some Thelonious Monk. And because I always feel like if you go to a community where people are putting up charts, there's some excellent transcriptions and like, you know, much better than the real book kind of situations in their community area on some of the monk tunes. You know, Pistafee, somebody did a really nice thing and there's cool arrangements and stuff. So it's really a great way to kind of explore, especially during this time where we're all sort of separate where you can connect with folks. Even if you don't meet them or talk to them, just to kind of see the way people interpret the music and transcribe it. and then you can kind of use that to get into the notational abilities and to learn yourself.

Good stuff. Until next time. You'll hear it. Dobio.