You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How To Improv Over Minor 2-5's

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

It's another live edition of You'll Hear It where Peter and Adam take your questions - today, they go over their weekly check-ins and take a couple of listener questions.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.Tuesday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Guided Practice Session with Adam on YouTube4:00 PM - Open Studio Demo & Tour (register here)8:00 PM - Listening Sesh with Peter and Adam 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.

I mean, that's, that's as good as I can kick it. Well done. Was it? Let's see if, I like, I love how we, you know what? Always be learning. You know what I'm saying? Oh yeah, I think we had sound and everything. Look at this.

Come on, man. Come on. That's how we do it. That's how we do it. So, yes, we are here and should we get into some questions? Oh, no, we got to do our segments. Oh, yeah, yeah. So we do have to do our practice check in.

What are you working on this week? Yeah, so, interesting. I was working on, I think you got, well, no, you didn't get to get to hear a little bit of it, but I was working on a little bit of classical. I heard. I had a little bit of a little, not a pressure situation, but a little down to the wire. I was given an assignment to do an accompaniment on a Bartok Romanian folk dances, Bala Bartok, great Hungarian composer, but these are Romanian.

Anyway, violent, well, he did several different arrangements of them. And I remember years ago, I think, doing the piano arrangements because it seems so familiar. But my son needed to do kind of an audition recording and asked me to accompany him on piano while he's playing violin. And I was like, sure, that'll be so good. And we actually just recorded it today. So the last few days, I've been practicing that, trying to get that up. It's always interesting to go back and reading stuff where it's like, is it like riding a bike or not? It kind of is.

It was sort of coming back. So by the time we went into record, it was starting to come back. But then I was just trying to practice on like trying to make it musical. You know, it's like I always think about those portions when you practice. and we talk about this in improvising, like practicing on all the skills you need to be able to improvise. Versus like how do you practice being a creative soul in front of your instrument, you know? So I think with the classical stuff,

and especially when you're accompanying someone and you have to kind of connect through the music, it becomes a matter of, you know, like now I know the music, how do I bring it to life? How do I play it in a musical way? How do I connect with the spirit of Bartok and the Romanian folks' songs and things like that? But I didn't have the music memorized. I'm still reading it. I mean, I barely can get through it.

And it's really funny because I'm putting all these, like, Daniel, my son was laughing because I put these chord symbols, not everywhere, but like places where I'm not sure. You got what you got to do. Yeah, I'd be like, B minor. And he's like, why do you put? I was like, just so that I don't have to think about the accidental, just to confirm it. Yeah, I've already trained what B minor is to me. So I don't need to see BARTAC's B minor here.

I'm just going to trust that the top notice the same. I do that too. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it just kind of confirms and then you see it. And, you know, so yeah, I did. So last few days, quite a bit of classical. stuff and then I did a couple extra solo piano stream things so I was very much solo piano kind of thinking and yeah so that was it what about you practice I've been working a lot on what

we've been working on in the daily guide of practice session which is so we were doing so what last week so what so there's this this uh kieser technique from his course keys to jazz piano here which is the first time I saw this technique where you go through, essentially the John Williams, like you move through major thirds, superimposing these. This is how to take it out over one chord. So in tunes like, so what, where you just have one chord for a long time,

what do you do when you want to take it out? Like going up a half step isn't really good because the bridge already kind of does that for you. You might confuse the bass player, that kind of thing. Well, Kieser has this great way of going through major thirds, which is, again, that John Williams sound, you know. Right?

So you can superimpose that. I feel like a dinosaur is chasing me down right now, man. Totally. I've been working. Exactly. He caught that. Yeah. Or Darth Vader.

I've been working on, first of all, fourth voicings with this, right? So if I want to go from D minor, down a major third and superimposed B flat minor, right, over the D minor, what's the closest fourth voicings up? Right? So I was really working on, right, D minor, B flat minor, F sharp minor. which is just a half step down. Right? So you can, if you add the bass note to it, that's powerful.

That's powerful. But it is very powerful. And then when you solo, you can keep it very simple. You can just do one if you want. It's a really great way to get that going out sound without just like randomly going out. There's some structure to it, which I find helps me in the going out and coming back.

back in. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I think that that's always, you know, taking it out is such an interesting thing. We get so many questions and it's been going, like, I've been thinking about it since I first kind of heard recordings where I didn't even know, you know, I heard that sound. And I was like, it's kind of like you see a color before you know what the name of that color is. You're like, wow, that's cool.

You know, what is this here? This, boom, this kind of light blue, whatever. Teal. You know, someone's like, that's. teal oh wow but you identify what it is so it's like taking it out going out and all the many different things that that can mean you we have like a lifetime to explore ways that we hear somebody else do it ways we hear it on a recording ways that we might want to explore and so it never should be it's definitely an area for like growth mentality because it's it's such a broad concept which is what

makes it great you know but there's it's never like oh i've mastered take playing out i know the 17 secret scroll ways to take it out. No, you might create the ultimate way that's just for you. Like a lot of times we think everything's been played because people like me and you say everything's been played and it has. So this is a little confusing. But not all concepts have been sort of, you know, actualized by you in your own unique way as part of your story.

That's never been done before. And you could pick whatever you want out of that too. You don't have to like take everybody's everything, right? You take the parts that you are drawn to that speak to you. Right. You can kind of turn them into your own thing. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

And so taking it out is one of those broad areas that we can always be, always be exploring. For sure. So fitness and diet check-in. Yes. Maybe my favorite part of the show. What do you got? Okay. So I'm coming up on and I saw Joe here.

He was just saying, because this is topical as well, he's on a similar trajectory, hurling himself towards a half marathon this weekend as am I. Nice. So we might end up in hospital beds next to each other. This is your fifth half marathon? Is that true? It is my, yes, fifth. Is that right?

Yeah, fifth. Thank you, Joe. Good luck for yours as well. Yeah, so I'm kind of in the taper mode with Coach Ian in terms of yesterday. So last week I did the longest run I've ever done in my life. So that was very exciting. Coach Ian happened to be in town So we did it on the Katie Trail

14 miles and I've done Half Marathons which of course are 13.1 But he took me out a little bit of a challenge of 14 So that felt good, got that done And Oh somebody was asking who was number one and number two So Adam was number one and I was number two Sorry we should have said that earlier

Yeah so I did that And it's been kind of tapering I did a workout on Saturday The kind of difficult four by eight minute one But we got that one in the bag, hit my numbers on that. And so for the rest of the week, I'm running, I'm taking off today and then running each day, but kind of less and less. And then Sunday half marathon. Real, in person. Although that is subject to change, apparently.

The city has provisionally approved this to be done. But if it's not done, I'm going to do it virtually on my own at Forest Park. No, so by virtually that means that you're hanging with other people. You're running with other people, but in different places. No, no, means you stay home and you do it like a video game. You have a track. Oh, I can do that. I'm in.

I've been training for that my whole life. I've been training for that my whole life. No, virtual just means you can do it any time you want, wherever you want, basically. And just check in with your times. Yeah, cool.

But supposedly this is going to be happening in person, so we'll see. Awesome. Yeah. Well, that would be cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm, uh, so you mentioned coach Ian there. Like, I'm, I'm, I was lucky enough to meet Ian.

Oh, that's right. On Thursday, we got some coffee. We're talking about some very exciting things to, to happen at Open Studio. He's a mindfulness coach as well as a running coach. Both, really. Yeah. And so he hit me to some pretty good reading for my mindfulness.

So again, that's what I've been focusing on, just getting deeper into it, longer sits, that kind of thing. It's been fun, man. It's been great. Hey, Adam. Yeah. Don't mind me. Okay, that was a joke. Was that a mindfulness joke?

Yeah, it's really bad. Wow. Okay. We will remind you that you can email us at YHA at open studio jazz.com. If you like to ask a question or you can just do it here. like you have. You can also call in, and I was just checking,

nobody has called us and left us a voicemail. Thank you. What up with that? Thank God. What up with that? Isn't that an S&L sketch? What up with that?

314-282-6-4-37. Why are you so anti-voicemail? It's so funny. Like, we're sitting here, streaming to YouTube. You can literally put it up. Put the new gadget up on screen. You can literally see what chord I'm playing.

Right. Complicated. And you're like, call us on our. landline phone number. Actually, it's not a, well, is it a land? No, it might be. We don't know. Maybe I'm missing, maybe I'm not in the right area.

I don't think. Drop a comment if you left a voicemail or otherwise, just, you know, call us. 314, 282-6-4-37. That's 3-14-282-6-4-37. Should we get to some questions? Let's get to some questions. Way up at the top. Are you recording?

I'm recording. Okay. Way up at the top, Yao Ming-Hui. Yeah. How can one approach practicing improv over minor two fives, e.g. using harmonic melodic minor scales and other options. So what's up, Yao Ming? You're definitely an open studio regular. So the way that I like to approach it from the start with beginner players,

and if this is like, if you want the 101 version of what's a minor two, five one, let's do it in the key to C, right? So we have D half diminished or D minor seven flat five to G7, either G7 altered or G7 sharp nine flat 13. Now we'll say G7 flat nine sharp nine, sharp 9 flat 13, just to be accurate as heel. That's what it says. Perfect.

There you go. Or we can even add. Right. 2C minor 6.9. Right. That's our minor 251, right? So it's the key of C minor, 251. So what do we play over that?

So I like to think about this D minor 7, sorry, D minor 7 flat 5, this D have diminished. The kind of starting point for this, I think, after years of teaching this, might be F, minor over D. And I might start about thinking about this as like an F-Dorian sound or a delocrian sound

over the D, right? Now there's going to be prettier notes than others. But I think this is a good starting point. Because if you think about it, it's like a two going to the relative major of C minor, right? Right? 2.5 to E flat is F minor 7, B flat

flat 7, E flat. 2.5 to C minor, it's relative minor is f minor over d to g7 and i've heard uh that bbott musicians used to think about they didn't have half diminished they just thought about it as f minor sixth over d right okay so let's say lochrean then over that d half diminished or f dorian over the g7 um g7 flat 9 sharp 9 sharp 5 here but I would say in flat 13 um there's a couple ways you could go see harmonic minor starting on g which sounds great i actually like one additional note to make this an octatonic scale add that sharp 9 in there because now you have all these great you can still get this sound right but it's not an altered situation an altered situation might be a little more advanced for a beginner it's fine

but it's but like that d flat unless you really know what you're doing you're not going to be able to make great sounding melodies with that d flat in there like get used to making good sounding melodies and with our harmonic minor or what we call the secret harmonic minor with that x added b flat you can still have that d you can have the c right yeah like the the altar the g altar doesn't have a c in it we're in the key of c you know so like it's nice to have So we're really nerding out here, Yao Ming. Sorry. And then one more, C minor, 6.9. That's for me.

That's all melodic minor. And I used to say, all ascending, but the older I get, and the more herbie I listen to, the more I realize that you can actually do the way that's taught in classical theory, which is melodic minor ascending, natural descending. Listen to that. Even if I have a natural six in the chord.

Right, because you're passing through. You're passing through. So you can go up C, D, E flat, F, G, A, natural six, B, natural seven, and go back down, C, B flat, right, flat seven, A flat, flat six. I think getting used to these sort of things and thinking about this melodically and not so square, put the numbers in the box kind of way, is the way to go on this. Awesome. Well, you know what? I have nothing to add because that was an exhaustive and encyclopedic. Sorry, I've been thinking about this a while.

It was awesome, man. That's so good. We're going to get some more questions. So we've got Jared who says, what's up, Jared? Jared McQueen, any relation to Steve? Steve McQueen, perhaps. What are some tips for getting more fluent in your weakest keys? Okay.

So you're not going to want to hear this, perhaps some of you. But the only way to do this, this is like how do you become a more patient person? You have to be patient. Yeah. You know what I mean? You have to practice your weakies. You need to be thinking about this almost like your hands. You have a dominant hand.

What are they called dominant hand? A non-dominant hand? Yeah. You know, right and your left, whatever. But as pianists, or perhaps if you're a MLB pitcher, do they still have switch? What do they call them? Switch? No.

Well, they switch hitters. Do they switch pitchers? There is one or two major league pitchers that can pitch with either hand. Okay. Which is crazy. When they go with one, are they like, eh? No. No. They're like equally good.

So that's the way we want to be with the keys. It's the same kind of mentality. So I don't think that people that are switch hitters or that can pitch with two hands, they still have a dominant hand that they're born with, I would assume. Is that correct? We don't know? Some people do. So, yeah, there's actually a term for this because I am a little bit at this.

I don't know if you knew this about me. No. But I play golf right-handed. I play tennis left-handed. I play- Do you play any sports? I do play sports. No, I right-left-hand. Right handed, but I throw a baseball with my right hand.

I do things with both sides. You're ambidextrous. It's not ambidextrous because I can't do everything with both. Okay. But I do some things right, some things left. What do you eat with? Left. Left.

Wow. But I throw with my right. That's bad manners, my friend. I know. Yeah, if this was the 18th century, they'd break my left hand. So, okay, well, regardless, the idea is that we want to get as close to that with the keys. And so it's very much a function of, like, what you're practicing. So you need to get methodical about,

your weakest keys. You need to first make a list of those, even if that's a mental list, if that's some posted notes, whatever. And you've got to be concentrating on those weak keys. And you have to say this week, no pun intended, I'm going to practice. That's a good pun.

That was pretty good. You're going to practice perhaps exclusively, if not exclusively, let's go 80, 90%. Can we do that? So you're spending much more time. You're trying to make up. It's like if you're in the gym all the time and you're only working,

you one bicep, you're going to look weird. You're going to look like a weird dude because you're going to be muscular and weak looking. So we have to... Rafael on the doll. He's got that left arm. Does he really? He's a left arm. Lefty?

Yeah, it's just huge. And his other arm's just a little baby. I bet if Raphael walked in here, you wouldn't say that to him. Yeah, he would kick my ass for that. But so it's really just a matter of like, you know, practicing on these weak keys. And so you're going to want to start with stuff that you know really well. You're going to want to start with your blues. You're going to start with tunes that you know.

know so well you don't have to think about the form you certainly don't have to read then and then you're going to have to force yourself into those uncomfortable keys and i think it's really important to go to the most uncomfortable one so if you're playing a tune um like let's name a tune adam give me a tune stella by starlight okay so b flat typically right yeah so now i'm going to practice this another key i know it in b flat but i'm not going to go to like e flat or or F or something else that's going to be relatively easy. Like, I'm thinking about what is the most, I'm going to go backwards from the most uncomfortable and then there's only 12 keys and I already know one at least.

Yeah. So I'm going to go to the most comfortable and work my way back from that. The reason being, as it becomes more comfortable. The most uncomfortable, you mean? I mean the most uncomfortable, right? You're going to end up spending more time practicing on that one. It's kind of like if you're looking at, this is something I learn from practicing classical music or any kind of written music.

Everybody wants to learn from the beginning to the end. But if you do that every time you come to practice, you're going to start the beginning and play through and like, okay, you've learned the first page. So then the next day you're working on the second page. But what do you do? You go play the first page and then you get to the second page and you work on that.

And then the third day, you're going to work on the third page. Start the beginning. You know that. Then you get to the third page. Then you work on that. So cumulatively you end up spending much more time on those first two pages than the third page. Typically, that's not the hardest part

or even the part that requires the most work. So what I was taught to do, And I didn't always do this, but when I did, it was to great benefit in my development was to look at a piece of classical music first and say, what is the most difficult part? Go directly and learn that part first. Yeah. Don't start at the beginning of it. Because you've got to learn it all at some point, but you're going to need to spend more time on the most difficult parts. That's great advice.

Yeah. Yeah. And so in terms of the keys, same thing. So we want to be spending, we've spent so much time on the one key that that's the easiest. And we're like, okay, the other ones are my weak keys. Yeah, of course. because that's the muscle that you did. So I would do more like...

Well, I'm curious to see which key you're going to pick as the hardest one to start at. Well, they're all... They're all pretty easy. They're all... They're not, but I mean, so I would say G flat. I was going to say, for me it would be E or G flat. Okay, so if we do...

Which one you want to do? Do G flat. G flat. Okay, so I'm practicing on just that, you know, until... And it sounds beautiful in G-flat. It does. That's the other thing you get to, you know... Now, this tune I know really well.

Put up your key thing while you're doing. Oh, key. Gotcha. Awesome. But it's going to be like, you know. Oh, wait, what do I do it right if I don't play a room? G flat is gorgeous for Stella. Why are we playing it B flat?

Exactly. Oh, I should take off the comment here. Man, that's so great, dude. But yeah, so the idea is that you're going to go in and practice the key. And it's going to be hard. Like, if you take a tune that you don't know that well. Well, first of all, you want to take a tune that you know, but you're not going to know these other keys. But so I would start with that.

I would go G flat. And then the next day I would practice D flat. And I'm talking about only. Okay, maybe a little bit at the end, go back to the original key. But you're only practicing. Then I would go D flat, and then I would go just keep going in the circle of fifth. Or you could go up chromatically. I mean, you can do it however you want, but you want to be hitting those keys.

And then, so if it takes you one day to kind of get G flat or let me, let's say two days, and then you move on to the next one, review that before you start. And then you review each of the ones. Just play one chord. So then you're building up, spending more time on those weaker keys, pretty soon. they're not going to be weak keys anymore. Because the thing about it is technically on the piano, and every instrument has specific things

that make different keys and specific compositions easier or harder. But from a technical standpoint, G flat is actually kind of an easy key on the piano. Like, to be able to execute things, C is sort of the hardest in a way all the like you. You know, it's worse is having to play something blazing speed in the key of C is horrible.

Right. So although Stella's going to seem, until you get some experience with it a little difficult at G flat. Once you start to do, you're going to be able to find things that you can do that you normally can't do. So that's an exciting. And then, Jared, I think really you're asking this question is such a good sign. When people say, like, what are some, you know, are there any shortcuts to becoming a better musician? There are no shortcuts.

I mean, no. Sorry. But if you want the shortest route to being a better musician, especially pianist, practice the hard keys. Get familiar with all 12 keys. a lot of people put that off. They put off transcribing. They put off all the hard stuff that makes you actually better.

Yep. When you're going to have to, you're going to have to peel that bandaid off. You have to do it. Go for it early and you will be better faster. Yeah. And I would just add that, you know, there's no shortcuts,

but there are, this is like more of an efficiency thing. So like you're going to take the amount of time that you would spend learning. This is sort of the quickest way to get to the point of like not really having weak keys, at least over particular two. and then it starts to snowball at a certain point.

This is the most efficient and quickest way to get there. You never want to rush these things because the process, you don't want to over-optimize your practice because the struggle is where the joy and the development and the real movement in your creativity occurs. So it's like we would never want to like, for instance, what would be the most efficient way to practice if you're somebody who's very rich?

Pay somebody else to practice for you, right? But that's not going to be. I mean, like, you're getting the practice done, but so in other words, we want to find that sweet spot where we're efficiently practicing. And that's basically just not spending too much time doing stuff that you know already. Yeah.