You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Learn New Tunes

Episode Date: July 1, 2019

On today's episode, Peter and Adam answer a SpeakPipe on the best practices for learning new tunes. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Just go to https://youllhearit.com/podcast-contact/.How to Learn New Tunes:ListenStay away from the pages (learn from recordings)Play the heck out of itBe patient (memorize it as you learn it)ULTIMATE TIPThe ending theme song for today's episode is "A Few Blocks Up" by Mike Anderson. To get your music featured on You'll Hear It, send an MP3 recording of your music to [e-mail]'re proud to present the new-and-improved platform for Open Studio: https://www.openstudiojazz.com! Head on over, check it out, and let us know what you like and what needs improvement. (We have over 1000 lessons to move to the new site, so check in over the following weeks as we update our courses)And if a new platform wasn't enough, we have a BRAND NEW course available: Jumpstart Jazz Piano! This is a course for very beginner-level pianists who want to learn the basic fundamentals of how to play jazz. And to celebrate, we're offering an early-bird discount of $10 off for THIS WEEK only! Just go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/jazz-piano-jumpstart and use the discount code JPJ10.Today's episode is sponsored by Soundslice. Soundslice is a web-based music-learning software that is a hybrid audio player and notation viewer that syncs music notation with real audio. To find out more about them, visit www.soundslice.com/transcribe. And check out our Slice of Emotion In Motion (the You'll Hear It Jingle)!Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hurry up, man. You're wasting time today a lot. Okay, let's go. Let's go. I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin. Are you listening to you'll hear a podcast?

Daily jazz advice coming at you. Fast enough for you, buddy? Well, it is. I mean, yeah. We joke because we love. Today's episode is brought to you by... Soundslice.com. Soundslice.com.

Did you forget? No, of course. I go to soundslice.com slash transcribe. Yes. I'm just trying to waste time. Also go to soundslice.com slash community. Oh, yeah. Did we mention that?

I seem excited because I am excited of the community. It's a great place to go check out. Not just because we're featured on it. We are. Open Studios prominently featured. You know, you could check out Open Studios theme song, Emotion & Motion on Science.com as well. What a great sponsor.

What a great tool, a great transcribing tool, great learning tool. Great team. Great software. Oh, man. Elegant software. Developed by musicians, four musicians. Go check it out. Yeah.

So today we're talking about, I don't want to slow it down here a bit. I don't want to freak out. talking about learning new tunes we've got to speak pipe from Pierre. What's up, Pierre? Hi, guys, it's Pierre from France, big fan of the show, big fan of Open Studio. I have a question for you guys.

In a recent episode, Peter started playing Cold Trains solo on Giant Steps, and that got me thinking, how do musicians remember so many tunes? I'm always impressed by musicians who can start camping or soloing on any cold tunes at a jam session, because for me, it's pretty hard.

to remember a single tune for more than a week. So how do you approach learning a new tune? For instance, the melody, the chord progression, et cetera. And how do you make sure it's set in your memory so that you'll be able to play it a few weeks or a few months later? Thanks for your advice. 21 star reviews. That's seven stars for each of you guys,

because they're including Andrew. And yeah, thanks. Cheers. Wow. Shout out to Andrew. A love for Andrew. I like it. Thanks, Pierre.

Yeah, man. Yeah, for all. First of all, I just want to say, I'm so impressed when we, we probably half of our speakpipe voice messages, and I will just remind everyone, you can leave a speak pipe if you want. Yeah. Anybody. Yeah. Not you, not me. We're not allowed to.

I might. Okay. At you'll hear it.com. So please go do that. But probably half of ours are from other countries. Yeah. And the level of English that's spoken, like I speak a little bit of French. I speak a little bit of French.

because I'm American I don't par par bien le franca so anyway like I said yeah but they're English is so much better I know but I'm so impressed

so I want to thank you guys although now I'm thinking I am including Canada in other countries so that's not as impressive but the other the non-English speaking and UK we'll take the international love

wherever we can get in Canada yeah but thank you Pia awesome English and then just talking about remembering things in general I would recommend Ginko Biloba I'm not a doctor and this is not approved by the

FDA, but that's a good way to remember things. No, let's talk about some real ways to remember. And he's talking about, he's asking about learning new tunes, but I think that the real emphasis here is like how to learn them to really internalize them and know them for life. Yeah. Like to long-term memory of a new tune, not just learning a new tomb on a superficial level. You know what number one is, right?

Routine. No, that was yesterday. Listen? Listen. Listen. Yes. We are so darn consistent here. Number one is listen always.

and it includes learning new tunes because if you could sing it, you should be able to play it. Right. You know, if you can, if you have listened to a tune so much that you, you can hear where the changes are going to go,

you know where the melody's going to go, even if you've never played it. Have that ever happened to you where someone calls a tune that you really don't play at a jam session or on any occasion, but you've heard it so much on a recording, yes. You can pick it out, no problem.

Yeah, yeah, it would at least give me a little bit of, you know, courage to be able to try to do that and then you're kind of listening in the moment and so it's kind of a combo listening thing that really helps you push you over the finish line.

But having that deep understanding of the tune because you've listened to it a lot because you understand it, that really helps me. So I would say, Pierre, when you're learning tunes, and I love to do this anyway, go find as many versions as you can,

find the ones that you love the most and listen to them as much as you can as you're learning the tune. And you will absorb it in a way that's deeper than you're not. And maybe away from, I mean, certainly at your instrument, but even more away from your instrument. I mean, I always think like the ideal way to learn a new tune

is to know it so well, never sitting down at your instrument first, that you've got such a head start to learning it. Now, what happens is we get excited about stuff, we hear it, and we immediately want to learn it. There's nothing wrong with that too. But in an ideal world, I think you want to be kind of constantly listening to, you have to be careful because you don't want to be listening to so many different things that you're not listening deeply or repeatedly where you can get to that point of like true absorption of it before you start.

So you have to limit what you're listening to, which is hard nowadays when you've got access to, you know, so much great music from so many different directions. But you want to listen to it over and over again, as you alluded to stuff that you really like, stuff that you love, and so that you can have that head start, have it in your ears. But I would say, what do you think about this? I mean, this is something I've never been that consistent with, but I've done. some that kind of like when you cross the line from listening to a tune that you want to learn into actually kind of trying to start to figure it out maybe map out mind map out the form a little bit start thinking about like some strategies for learning before you even hit the piano yeah no I'll think about the form for sure and I'll try to pick out changes if I can yeah definitely before I hit the piano yeah but this brings up another great point yeah and this is still dealing with listening is don't learn the tune ever if you can't help it off of a real book or sheet music. Right, right. Go to the source of the tune that you want to learn, the version you want to learn.

Is that Evian in France? In false? The source for water. No, but learn it from the recording. If you have to reference it with the chart later, first of all, the real book is wrong in a lot of these cases. It's not as accurate as the recordings are going to be. Exactly.

And you will, again, learn it so much deeper by picking it off from the recording at your instrument. And this is after you've already kind of maybe mapped out the form in your head away from the instrument and can sing the melody, you know how it's gonna go. Right, right. There's no surprises.

And then you sit down at the piano and you figure out, oh, okay, that's an E flat nine, not an E flat minor nine, okay. Right. You know, little details, maybe the intros, all the things that get lost in the real book. Yeah. The counter melodies, all of that stuff.

Well, and then certain, like, like, that's such a great way to, such an organic and lovely way to learn music. And it really, you know, when we talk about different ways to learn and kind of progress and move through anything in the arts or sciences or, you know, poetry or really anything in this world, but kind of absorbing it and learning it in a way that it's best presented. So we would think about like sculpture. Like how can, what would be the best most organic way to learn about sculpture? It might be like feeling it. You know, like, what does it feel like as opposed to like reading about it or listening to a podcast about it or whatever?

And so like music, the reason we're always like, listen, listen, listen, is because that's the medium that music is presented. We're not like watch, watch, watch. I mean, you can do that. You can watch videos, but it's really about listening to the music because that's our creative process is coming from that. So it's like we're reverse engineering the whole process of what the hell we're trying to do.

No one who's not a musician sits there and reads music for fun to get that information. They listen to music. And so we need to, and especially this is the tradition in jazz. I know it's different in classical. music, but non-classical music, pretty much across the board, we have to listen to this music. We have to learn it by ear. Well, I think classical music was actually not, originally not that different.

It was just that it came up in a time when there weren't recording. So, like, you know, because people talk about, well, you know, classical conductors are reading the scores and stuff. But they're also listened. Like, when they look at a score, they're hearing it. They listen to a lot of different versions as well. They go hear live versions. They listen to famous recordings.

And they're trying to interpret the actual sound of it as well. Yeah. But you're right. there were no recordings when, especially like the romantic, the classical period, all that stuff. And so that was a tradition to hand down the music. There was no other way to pass it down. I forgot I was winning that. Big shout out to Adidas, by the way.

No, but the other part about staying away from the page as long as you can or as much as you can is that certain kinds of tunes, many tunes, can, can appear more complicated than they actually are. and certainly less organic than you might be feeling them as you're listening and kind of loving and passionate about that music and then you're trying to kind of translate it to your instrument. So it can become a barrier and make something seem more complicated than it is.

Kind of like if you learn how to, you know, directions based upon some very intuitive sort of feeling like where the sun is and like to how to drive around town or walk somewhere. And like you use, I don't know, like the sun and the time of day, like things that we've kind of.

kind of gotten out of the habit of actually because we're like, I just go to the GPS. But I mean, if you do it like that, then it can be much more intuitive. You know, so like if you're looking at... You're actually getting more information. You're getting more information in the right medium. And so like giant steps on paper

can look super complicated. And look, it is a complicated too. No, but if you read it on paper, you're reading but if you listen to the recording, you hear immediately that first difference is that baseline and the way that changes how you hear it. Yeah, now you're just getting into the inaccuracies of or just the inability for the chart, even a well-made chart, you really represent everything that's like that you could really do that in a lead sheet and be accurate with it.

It would be hard. And if you did, it would become very complicated. You'd be overwhelming. But that's why we go to the source. That's why we go to the recording because that little bit of information is great to have, even if you don't play that, to know that that's where the original sounded like is good to have. Hey, Manjara. And what?

That's Nigerian for Go to the Water, to the source. Yeah, Amandjala. The other thing I would say on this, I mean, and I know listening took up most of this, and it's true. But the other thing that you can do that I like to do is just play the heck out of it. Call it at every jam session you go to. Put it in your set list every time you play. If you're playing a duo session with a friend, call it. Don't be afraid of it.

Ooh, I've got a great ultimate tip today. You're going to like it. You know it, but you're going to like it. Did you think of this before we started? I just thought of it. Ooh, me likey, me likey. But don't you agree that like you got to play it? Repetition.

Different scenarios, make your friends learn it, make sure that you're all playing this stuff. That's what all people who are learning a repertoire are doing. Faith comes by hearing. The good book told you that one. And then, you know, other than that, obviously take it through different keys, learn different versions. But really be patient. Yeah. You know, I think you'd be surprised at how many great musicians don't have a huge repertoire.

I mean, of course, there's the classic stereotypical New York pianist who knows, you know, 385 tunes. and all the verses and intros and can play it in all keys with any singer ever. Yeah. But we're not all Bill Charlap. Exactly. I was just thinking of Bill. When you, what you just described, I'm like, me, Bill Charlott. And all his buddies, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, they're great pianists who don't have a huge repertoire.

They have their repertoire that they like and that they want to present to the world. And that's okay, too, you know. And plus, I think what we just outlined and what we're talking about today is really a way of deeply learning tunes so that you will remember. That's really what Pierre was asking about, too. like where you really know them and you can recall them years later, months later, weeks later, totally decades later. That's different. I mean, you could go through and learn hundreds of tunes but not learn it the right way or push through it so much.

You didn't really learn it. You know, and this whole thing of like memory, I'm a big proponent of trying to memorize the tune as you're learning. It takes a little bit longer. And so that ties into this whole thing of like going straight to the source, trying to stay away from that lead sheet as much as possible. Yep. So that you can, I mean, then you're forced to memorize as you go. So at least you don't have to go through that step because a lot of people get stuck on learning it. And then if they don't have the music, they don't, I'm like, you don't know it.

If you're read, that's just reading the music. If you're a good sight reader, and, you know, we know some great symphony players, they can cite read anything. So in theory, they know an infinite number of songs. If that's all it takes to know a song is to be able to read it. But that's not what this is about. That's not what this is about. And it's really about finding your repertoire.

It's about finding those tunes that are going to stick with you. Do you think there's ever going to be a part in your, a time in your career where you're not going to play sophisticated lady at this point? No. Because it's part of you. It's part of your, what you present to the world and you do it beautifully. And I have those two, and that's what we all are trying to shoot for, is not to just no tunes, just to no tunes, but find the music that we want to put out there in the world. Speaking of that, our sponsor, Sound Slice, we'd just like to mention them.

It's going to seem like, wow, well, how do they fit into this? Actually, they fit very nicely. Very nicely. Because. Yeah, you want to learn a new tune. Yeah, everything is based there upon the audio or the video version of it, then being synced up with actually transcribed notation, sometimes lead sheets or whatever. but that can really give you that framework to have the notes there to assist

but you're never losing track of that reference recording which I love I mean it's such a great way to learn and that if you want to do some transcribing and documenting of something that you learned a new tune or solo whatever they've got the premier system for doing that getting that input and synced up

in a beautiful and elegant way awesome software highly recommend sound slice we use it we use it all the time love it okay so what's our ultimate tip okay well before we get to that we got to talk a little bit about our other sponsor studio because this is a very exciting week for us. We kind of, you know,

slid right into our new platform and announcing that because we really wanted, we're so excited about our new course, jazz piano jumpstart that we collaborated on, our most structured and beginning, you know, for the novice, for the neophyte for the ultra beginner of jazz piano mastery. Come on. Get off your couch and get on the bandstand. Lawyers won't

actually let us say that. That's right. Oh yeah, I forgot also, it's not true. It's not true. I'm sorry. I totally didn't. Yeah, yeah. You're right. No, but it is seven weeks, 77. $7, typically. Typically. Yeah. But not for our listeners.

We're giving them $10 off. Yeah. How do they do that? We committed to doing it. Coupon code, offer code, not a coupon code, offer code at the top of the checkout page, JPJ10. That's right. Right. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. And it's on our brand new platform, open studio jazz.com. Right. We're so excited about this because it's like, I mean, it's like driving a Ferrari. It's so fast. It's fast, A.F. And it's, and it's beautiful. and simple AF.

And I know a lot of you are going to be like, what about the old platform? This is the same open studio, the same great teachers, Christian McBride, Diane Reese,

Peter Sprague, Adam Manis, Gregory Hutch, everybody's coming over and we're going to be sliding over over the coming weeks, but really this

jumps, this new course is our opportunity to present the new platform and the new course and we think it's going to be the beginning of some great things. We're going to be able to add sound slice,

of course is still there. Sound Slice is still a big part of it. We're going to have great new features like practice routine. quizzes. I'm really excited about all on this new platform. Oh, the new All Access Pass is going to be the bomb. We're not ready to know. It's not ready yet, but it's going to have a whole,

you'll hear it component. That's going to be very exciting. But go over to check out the jazz piano jumpstart kick tires for us a little bit. Exactly, exactly. Ultimate tip. We got. I forgot what, oh no, I remember. Okay, so for learning a tune, you mentioned something

that was just in passing that I think is important as far as learning it in different keys. That's actually a great way to learn the tune, even if you only played in the original tune. original key. If you perform it in the original key. If you only perform in the original key, learning it, at least practicing at some of other keys,

does something to your brain where you really kind of know it long term because you're learning it in some different ways. So that's really good. And then the other side of that that I love to do is learn, especially if you're a pianist. Well, even if you're not a pianist, do it on the piano or the guitar. Learn the melody and the root movement first and only those. And then take those through a few different keys.

Don't worry about the inner harmony or anything. Once you know that, know the form better than you think. And you start to, what it does is it forces your ears, number one, listen, to be able to fill, to have to fill in that harmony. So you're kind of holding back a little bit on that. But I find that you learn a tune, especially standard tunes, bebop tunes, a lot of different kinds of tunes, but standards, kind of more standard repertoire, you learn it in a way so deeply that you'll never forget. I still think about giant steps like that. Oh, it's so true. Yeah, you learn that melody, that baseline. That's like three quarters of

the way there. That's right. Yeah. That's right. And we've got a great listener song going out today. We've been having some fun with these. We get some compliments. Folks are excited to be on the podcast. Yeah, you can, if you want to have your song played at the end of the podcast, just send a MP3 to Andrew at OpenStadionnetwork.com, email him at MP3, and if it's good enough. Yeah, maybe we should be like a shark take type of episode. A competition. Yeah, sometimes. It'll be fun. This is, this is great. This is a few blocks up by Michael Anderson from Brisbane, Australia. Thank you, Michael for sending this in. Check it out. Until tomorrow, you'll hear it. Thank you.