You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Improv Over Sus Chords

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

Peter and Adam take You'll Hear It live to YouTube and answer some listener questions - on this episode, they answer how to improvise over tunes like "Maiden Voyage," what they do when they play with a guitarist, and receive a question on enclosures.Monday's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)6:00 PM - Bass Guided Practice Session with Bob DeBoo on YouTubeTuesday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Piano Guided Practice Session with Adam Maness on YouTube4:00 PM - Open Studio Demo & Tour - register here8:00 PM - Listening Sesh with Peter Martin & Adam Maness on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkInterested 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.

We got another question from Dan. Dan's, I think, a long-time open studio follower. He says, how do you improv over a stagnant suss chord vamp? Like Maiden Voyage. How do you create voicing movement in the left hand over that stagnant chord? Yeah, you know, so I always think of like stagnant chords. I mean, susses, I think that there's at least three different kinds. And as we go through these, we'll probably discover even more.

But I think about like, okay, so Maiden Voyage, you've got, this is what I call like kind of your real happy optimistic right? That's your happy optimistic suss. And it's a major sus. I mean,

let's be honest. There's either major or minor susses, right? I know we're not supposed to say that. It's in the jazz police. But if you just see D7 suss, I'm thinking it's a, it's a seven suss.

Like it's a D7 sus. Exactly, exactly. But the whole point of it is that we're not, we're not revealing that. Right. We're just, we're occasionally revealing it. I'm saying that. Right.

But, but we're also like the dominant, no pun intended, the dominant, the dominant major sound to me is actually a whole step below. So you've got D-suts, but it's really C-major 9. It's so interesting. You think about it as C-major 9. Yeah. Yeah, because those two triads, that gives you the resolution. You got C-tri-and, and then you got D-triot. Doing more C-tri-tri-ed that, you know, I'm always thinking.

I'm a basic guy. What can I say? I'm a basic guy with basic needs. Basic pop. Yeah, yeah. And so it's really more C. And then you've also got, you know, a G triad in there. Of course, there's that as well.

What about left hand movement? So when they're talking about, like, you could definitely, like, just kind of plain. Plaining. Yeah, plain. Where you just, like, if you go on, like, a D dominant scale, right? And you just move the voicing around that. Yeah. You definitely do that.

But there's also some little, there's some little melodic things that can happen that you hear, especially like on Maiden Voyage, I always think of that between, so here I have. But that's really, that's all triad based if you think about it. I mean, you know, E triad, D triad, C, try it. Like that's the actual sound.

I hate it when you're right, you're right. Well, no, no, it doesn't matter if you think about that or not, but I think that that is, it's such a foundational sound that when we find those. See, this is so weird because when I think about this, and I play Maiden Voyage a lot, when I think about it, I think about it as A minor 7 almost A minor 9 to like A minor 7 major A minor major 7

Yeah but that's just the C major That's just a variation of the C major You know A minor C major It's just a different inversion of that jazz arpeggia But I think that like which one you go to I do hear different Almost like Little mini progressions within there

So like it might be like even B minor 7 you are a triad machine on this stuff but it's really fascinating and then I like the ones where you're actually suspending the third even without the fourth so over the D and like you know to the point of what you were saying about the voicing's in the left hand

if you look at and I'm going to put it in the right hand just for fun because it's a melodic thing too but you got D Suss if you go C F sharp B like you can go up and down from a triad again to the g triad or even the c major and like create a little bit of tension and resolution so when you're that kind of party and then you got another party now you got the f yeah and they i'm all like e flat triad f tried f tried e flat c minor g minor the real question is on maiden voyage is when is the point on that d that you just you just give up and you just go

Well, we can always call that an homage to Herbie I mean how many different places are there The one that you should not do is Well actually that's okay That's the one I started with The F sharp How can we always get that look at it? You know, we always get that

I don't know you know what Herbie doesn't do that You know what Herbie does? I know I know But sometimes he gets that super like joyous He does like he's even surprising himself with some herbieisms. All right, nice. I'm a guitarist.

This is from Asher. I'm a guitarist who went to his first jam session last night. Nice. Congrats. Man, where would a jam session be? You can't describe a jam session anymore like you could six months. I went to this smoky club in the windowless basement packed and everybody was just breathing on each other.

It must have been an open air or something. Yeah, maybe like an open air thing. Anyway, we're not judging. I'm a guitarist who went to his first jam session last night. What's your approach to playing and comping with a guitar? Do you comp with a guitar, trade, or any thoughts? So this has been, like, we've been asked this so many times that we've talked about it.

It's something that we think about a lot because we both play with. Oh, you're in fact, a guitarist, and we've played together. You on guitar and me on piano, and it definitely has its potential for pitfalls, as we would say. It's one of the most challenging situations, I think, that either party can be in. but we both have done it a lot. You've done it with Romero LeBombo, who's amazing.

I think it just takes, first of all, I don't think that it's an either-or situation. I know some people think, like, well, if the pianist is playing, I'm not going to play, or if the guitarist is playing, I should lay out. That's the easy way out, right? And that's a sometime situation. Like, that's the thing is,

what you want to do is take advantage of all the different possibilities of textures that you have, right? So that's one texture. If, like, just one of you is comping, that's a single texture. Yeah. What I hear you do a lot and what you might hear like, you know who does this, I think, as a keyboard player, almost better than anybody, is Larry Goldings.

If you check out, he did some, he did some producing for Michelle, was it Michelle, no. Oh, Madeline Peru, right? Madeline Peru out of Canada, or Northern Borders. He produced those albums, her hit albums, right? And they are amazing, production-wise, I think, like, for like a poppy thing, for sure. and the whole foundation of it is the guitar is like taking the meat of the chords and then Larry Goldings is coming in and out

in these really spooky ways that he's so good at. That's another way you can do it is you let one of you take like and we could actually do this two pianos it's a very similar situation right? If I were to start playing like now you imagine there's a horn player

playing the melody here we could still do this it's fine. I was doing the horn too my bad. No no notice that Peter didn't come right in with exactly what I was doing. Right? You didn't start.

And if you did that, I would probably then just like, you know, do something sparkly on top. I was trying to trick you that. I started doing sparkly. You went low. When you go low, I go low.

When you go high, I go high. That's not the way to do it. I've always said you are the opposite of Michelle Obama in anyways. But that's, I mean, I think it takes like every part of playing music

in any situation, you really need to listen. And for the guitar, piano thing to work, both parties have to be listening, not just to each other, but to what's going on in the entire situation. But think about it like this. Just try to add up all the different options that you have, right? You have, I could go, they could go, they could take the meat of everything and be really busy, and I can do little sparkly things or little octave things, you know, a little shimmering.

Or I could take the meat, or maybe I do an arpeggio in the middle high range. Like, there's so many options. Right. Learn the range of the guitar. That's important. That's right. You know? or any instrument actually learn the range of the bass as well learn the range of the drums like learn where they're resonating and try to stay out of that what's that? I thought drums didn't have notes

they don't have notes but you know what I'm saying no but they do sometimes you can actually play you can actually fit your way into the sonic palette with the drummer too knowing where their tom's are tuned if they're like you know if a drummer's like down here on a tom like yeah

you might not want to stick around here or do you know I don't know stick around I hear you drummer sticking around I hear you. I hear you. No, that's great stuff. And I would just, the only thing I would add is that, you know, there's different levels that we approach this with. And, you know, it has so much to do with how well you know the guitarist. And really a lot of this, even for two pianos, you know, holds true.

And for any instrument. But piano and guitar, like how well you know, not them personally, just their style. So how much, the better you know and the better you can hear what their. playing, the more you can play right along with them. Yeah, you can go high when they're low. That's not necessarily the safest way, but that's the best way to come in as you're learning it. But then what's fun is when you start to find those times when you can duplicate services, you know, and go in and out of that because you don't want to just play it safe all the time. I mean, that's fun. But you want to be able to go in and try some challenging things

with each other, I think. Awesome stuff. Oh, this is a kind of a topical question here from Austin that I think I'm going to throw your way Adam because there may be a course that you're working on yeah I'm recording this week okay does Austin have some inside info did you share some intel perhaps okay but I've talked about this before I'm trying to incorporate some enclosures to my free improvising any tricks for playing it off when you accidentally hit the playing it off I get it when you accidentally hit the target note mid

enclosure am I just playing too freely ha ha ha ha ha so when you, Austin, you might want to clarify, when you say free improvising, do you mean like, like free, like no changes? Is that what he's implying? I don't think so. I think, I mean, how do I know? But, yeah, I think more just freely improvising maybe. Yeah. So one thing that it might be just in general to get your head around whether you're free or whether you're just blowing over a tune is that it doesn't really matter. You need to make either way work. So if I do like, right? Right. that's two, three, four. Right?

One, two, three, four. Right? So, or I have, that's taking out one note, right? So now my target note, B flat is on the upbeat. That doesn't matter. Like, so if I'm like, like, that's fine, or that's also fine.

You know what I'm saying? I kind of messed up the baseline there, but you can end that phrase however you want. So, or, like, I just put a little, little eighth note rest in there. So when you're doing enclosures, like some of those were on the beat, some of those were off the beat. It all made

me get that sound, right? That ducking, that bobbing and weaving sound. That's right. Great stuff. I was going to add something to that, but I couldn't think of anything. So there you go. That's how we do it, right?