You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Practice in All Keys

Episode Date: February 4, 2020

Don't just learn a tune once - learn it 11 more times. Peter and Adam lay down the merits of practicing in all keys.Shout out to Rick Beato - you can check out his YouTube channel here and his website here!To see the 30 Day Challenge mentioned in this episode, hop on over to our Instagram account.There's a new course from Open Studio: Elements of Solo Piano! Learn from modern jazz master Geoffrey Keezer as he shows you the strategies and techniques to become a better solo pianist. You'll also get Guided Practice Sessions featuring Adam Maness, where he walks you through how to practice each lesson in the course. And for even more piano courses, sign up for the Piano Access Pass.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.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam. Yes. Do you like practicing in all keys? I do. Oh, okay, good. So this should be an easy and fun episode. I've heard that before. I'm Adam Maness.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Daily Music Advice coming at you. Coming at you today. We're on YouTube again today. Did you know that? Yes, I did. I'm loving the YouTube.

I'm loving it. I'm loving the YouTube. I'm loving the YouTube. I was just seeing if I can get a Burger King. No. No. I'm loving the YouTube comments. Yes.

Because people. People are very honest. They're very honest. And you get a little sensitive sometimes. It's a good test for me. Like, it's a nice way to go and see, and, like, I can see if I can stomach it. It's very hard to do if you're a YouTuber. Any of my fellow YouTubers out there know what I'm talking about.

Yes. It's hard to wade through those comments sometimes. It is. It is. So we, I think, ever since we had the three-hour dinner with our friend, Rick Biato. I'm sorry, who? Rick Beato. Oh, yeah, I've heard of it.

Famous music YouTuber with his channel. Big shout to Rick. Everything music. That was great, by the way. That was great. We had a lot of fun down in New Orleans with Rick and some other folks. But, you know, we thought we had comments problems. He's got some serious comment issues because he's got a lot of traffic over at that.

I mean, you get that little channel he's got going. You get those million subs. Yeah, yeah. All kinds of folks turn out. They don't all love you, man. That's right. But no, no, please leave us comments positive or negative. I love it all, you know.

Hey, by the way, have you seen my shirt that I'm wearing the day? Yes, I did see it earlier. Did you notice what it is? Oh, that's the, is that? It's a theme to our podcast. You can go to you'll hear.com and get the notation on the shirt. Oh, look at hit practicing. They're all 12 keys.

Well, that's what we're talking about. Take it up, buddy. Take it up. Yeah. So we talk a lot about practicing in all 12 keys. You might say that we... Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah.

We talk about it a lot. We maybe talk about it too much. But we talk about a lot because it's so important to your development as a musician. Yes. We maybe don't talk up, we talk a lot about the importance of it and how it can help you develop. We maybe haven't practiced, we haven't talked enough about how to actually apply this to your practice. Yeah, but it's great because we've had some suggestions from some of our users. Like, and one of them you took to heart.

Like we had that suggestion from that guy that was like, just do a key a week. And then every week you change keys and no matter what you're working on, be that a lick or a solo or a tune or tunes, you're just working on them in whatever key. and then after 12 weeks you cycle back around. I think that's a great idea. I think the idea that you are working on right now. I think this might be one of the last days. Yeah, we just finished it. Oh, yeah, that's right.

So it was your January 30-day challenge. Yes. Right? And you practiced something every day in 12 keys. Yes. That was the only kind of parameters for it was that we would. Well, it's funny because it started. It was just sort of a personal thing.

I was like, I'm going to practice something for 30 days. I love these 30-day challenges. You know what, let's do an episode on our 30-day challenges in a couple days. But go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you've got a fun one coming up. I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, it's just a matter of doing something that, you know, practicing in all 12 keys is something I did. But I'd never, like, dedicated an actual part of my practice every day to do it. So if you're going to do that, you can't make it like, okay, I'm going to practice, you know, a 10-course transcription every day in all keys. You're not going to have time for that. It would take over your whole practice. So it has to be the kind of small things. And what I did was, and then I started sharing it, and then I kind of felt responsible as people were like,

oh, I'm following you. I want to do the same thing. So I wanted to put stuff out there that was challenging but doable. So Sundays it got kind of crazy. Like we did like the, you know, the first eight bars of giant steps with the chords and stuff. That was probably one of the harder ones. Yeah, yeah.

We did the crazyology. Just the first eight bars. That one was. that one tripped up some folks, you know. Yeah, for sure. But the idea about it was, yeah, take anything. Oh, we did some voicing sometimes, you know. You know, just to get around the keyboard

and then identify those areas that are more challenging. And like we talk about a lot of times with practice, it's not about going through the ones, the things that are comfortable for you and that are easy and that are already in your hands. It's like what I was finding when I practiced things in all keys, no matter what the challenges were, there was like two or three keys,

sometimes one key that would trip me up. And usually it was more, like a lot of this stuff I can kind of hear in different keys pretty well, but there'd be some fingering issues would come up. And so I'd really kind of work those out. And it was amazing after 30 days how much more comfortable I was sort of getting around those keys that were really providing those kind of challenges.

Yeah, that's great. All right, well, let's talk about some actionable things that you can put into play when you practice to help you hit these keys. The first thing that I think of is I know that you like to practice 12 key. a lot of times chromatically. Right.

I like to mostly practice them in the circle of fourths. Yeah. And I was doing something. I've been coming around to that too. I like that as well. But I've been coming around to the chromatic thing because I think both... Maybe it will be in the middle.

Well, I think both have advantages. The thing with the circle of fourth is, it's a great way to get through to focus on sort of hard keys at one time. But most people are starting to practice. Like if I'm practicing scales, I'll start on C. Yeah.

Don't do that. Don't do that. Especially if you're practicing the circle of fourth, try starting on D-flat, right? Yeah. Because the next key is G-flat. And then the next key is B. Right.

And then the next key is E. Now, those are four of the hardest keys, for sure, but even A after that. But that way, you're not front-loading easy keys like C-F, B-flat, E-flat, A-flat. Keys that all jazz musicians play in all the time. Start all your practice sessions, especially technique practice or whatever you are working on that you're going through all 12 keys and you can in one session,

start it on D-flat and work up and force. That way you always hit those hard keys first. That's right. And in case you get distracted or something you can start tripping up. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

So you're going to have to. And then by the time your mind is kind of about to explode, you're getting to some stuff that you can kind of drift through a little bit easier as opposed to the opposite. I love that. I think it's also good. And part of the reason, even for stuff like this, that it's good to do it in force is the challenges that I was telling you about, that I was talking about with fingerings. Like that builds in a better progression of fingering.

So if I go, that's a D flat. Like that's, you know, the main challenge. I know what the notes are. That's pretty easy to do. But to get the finger is so different. Whereas if I go up to G flat, and actually that's got its challenges too. but the fingering is closer than moving up chromatically.

And you definitely see that with your scales. You'll see that with, you know, anything that's kind of based upon sort of diatonic melodies or moving around the tonic in that kind of way. If you move through the force, your fingers will make more sense. Sometimes, though, if you choose to move chromatically, you can kind of get this rhythm of easy, hard, easy, easy, hard. You know what I mean? Like you have this more natural flow. I like fourths, too, for practicing things like voicing.

Like if I'm going through a certain tune or something, I like to practice that tune in fourth with the voicings because I'm usually guaranteed to do different inversions that way. Right. And I'm not just moving my voicings up chromatically as a shape. It actually makes me have to think harder about what I'm doing, which is what I want to do when I practice. I want to be kind of thrown off a little bit so that I have to figure it out.

Yeah, and I think that by that same token, if you take a voicing like this, just kind of force with the major third on top, you know, two, three voicing. And, you know, that's very easy to play. Right. Then you're not learning anything, actually. But to do it, that's a more challenging moving in those kind of force. Yeah, because you have to kind of like, if you're not familiar already, you have to be like, okay, that's the 13.

You know what I mean? So that is the kind of work that needs to be done in the practice room. Yeah, and it gives you different places like, or even if you did like whole steps, even though you'd have to come back around and move it at a half step at some point. So you take that same voicing and you move it down in whole steps. And then you get here and then you maybe move up to A flat minor and then move that. It gives you a different perspective on these beyond just the chromatic. And really you want to have all those different perspectives because you're going to have chances to use those.

And remember too, you're especially for voicings like this, two-handed voicings, but almost anything outside of maybe scales, I don't know, that you would practice in 12 keys. It's as much of a technical challenge like I'm talking about with the fingers, but also like with this, like getting your hand into position. so you can move those things around in a way that your hand gets used to the spacing and stuff. So it's kind of an ear thing, I think. And that's why I recommend when you're doing stuff like melodies, however you go to the next key, if you go up a whole step, don't think about I'm going up a whole step.

Like try to get that next key and hear it. Like, where is that major seven? Oh, so this is important. Try to hear it before you see it. You see it, exactly. Or even feel it. Exactly. And then you have to move.

through the keys fast enough and I think we did that on the yeah today's well the one of the final challenges on the craziology on that melody what I challenged everyone I was like it's tough don't think about think about how it sounds

don't think about transposing because you're not going to have time on on a melody like that so that's B flat first of all you hear boom in relation to the tonic so if you do it in G and you can pick something that's kind of unrelated like try to and

and sing it because you can usually hear it by singing it a lot better than you can just by thinking about the notes. Like, I'm on the third and I'm on the fourth. But then just sort of charge right through it. You're going to make some mistakes. Go back and catch them. Identify those keys as we talked about that are more difficult and really hone in on those.

And it's amazing how this can develop your ears, your technical things, and your ability to play in these other keys. Yeah, this is the fastest way to do that. And, you know, as we're talking about this, I was just thinking maybe the most important factor for doing this is that really committing to the mindset of doing it. So that any time that you discover something new, whether that's a new lid, that you have the wherewithal to start transposing it as soon as you have it in your fingers. Like really, or just as soon as you hear someone else play it. Yeah.

No, but that idea of like, okay, I have this new thing. And before I get all excited and I just play it in a B-flat blues for 30 minutes. Right. You know what I mean? Which is fun. Let me take this through all 12 years. Because you're really going to learn more that way. and you're really going to lock that lick in more that way.

And then, you know, some of the most challenging things with this, you can overlook. But if you think about, like, from our episode the other day about the bluesy jubble stops, if you think about... I was one of our best. You know, hell off, once we got to take 29, it was. No, but, you know, like things that are very comfortable and feel good in certain keys, like, you've got to really force yourself.

So if you talk about... So that's F, you know... Yeah, but can you? There you go. I mean, that's hard. That's a little easier. But I like your idea of starting on D flat and go and let's start with the hard ones. Like, no, those probably sound good, but I can tell you the way they feel,

they don't feel comfortable to me. So that means I know that I just need to go through that. So true. Repeat them because then I have a chance when I'm playing, even over a blues, you know, to kind of spice it up with a little bit of chromatic. You can do that. Yeah, why should I not be able to do that just because it doesn't feel comfortable in my hands, you know? Because normally it's like we.

go to, because that's something that's like comfortable over that key. And that's fine. But maybe you hear it. Gotta be able to do it. You got to be able to do it. Gotta be able to do it. It's really, you know, we talk about the superiority of jazz musicians and we are better than most. Why are you getting so quiet about it? Because I feel a little embarrassed, to be honest. No, but one of the things I think that makes

the masters of our music so great is that they're able to do that kind of stuff. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it's just part of the tradition of the music that we have that kind of musicianship here. Yeah. You know what I liking it to is, you know, you've been around a great conductor that can look at a score. No. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Oh, we're going to have to do a seven best conductors now. That's good. That's brilliant conductors. No, they can look at a score, a full score, full orchestral score and just sit down and reduce it and play it in real time. Yeah. All those transposed. I mean, it's an amazing. Yeah,

transposing the horns and all that stuff. But that's part of the gig. And so like this is really part of the gig, especially as pianist. Yep. Yeah. Cool man. Well, This was really fun. And hey, if you want to see Peter's 30-day challenge where he was doing all of this practice in all 12 keys, go to the Hey Open Studio Instagram account. That's right. Hey, Open Studio is our handle.

And actually, by the time this is on, I think we're going to have it on YouTube. We're going to put them all together as one. Are we really? On the open studio. Oh, that's exciting. Yeah, each day. I mean, they're super informal.

I was like in the lobby when we were in New Orleans doing them, you know, kicking the little kids off the piano. We have a lot of fun on them. If we have that ready, Alex, put a note to link to that YouTube video here in the description. Yep. And if it's not up by today, it'll be within the next couple days for sure. But also another good reason

to go to our Hey, Open Studio account is that I'm starting a 30-day challenge. We'll talk about that more. February 1st, right? February 1st. So that's already going on. Drop to 30 days. Drop and give me two.

That's so much easier than the boot count. Everybody can do that, I feel like. All right. Hey, man, we're feeling it, big guy. And we're back on track. We're back on track. I think this chocolate, where does she get this chocolate from?

That was good. That's going to be another, hopefully, a sponsor. Who is it? I don't know. I purchased it at a, A small boutique I have a relationship with called Whole Foods Market. That's very good. It's pure.

Wow. And until tomorrow, you'll hear it.