You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Is Composing Improvisation?

Episode Date: November 5, 2020

It's another live edition of You'll Hear It where Peter and Adam take your questions - on this episode, they discuss what they do while improvising and if composing music is a form of it.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.Thursday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)9:30 PM - Peter Sprague & Camarada | The Sanctuary Suite 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.

Just to follow up real quick here, Picking Stone, well said here. I got to adapting musicians mindset to my work environment a little more. I would just say that, yes, and part of the musician's mindset, certainly not exclusive to musicians, but if we think about the artistic mindset, I think it's definitely like a growth mindset, but even more, it's like it's a lifting everybody up. What do they call it, the rising tide lifts all boats. It's not a zero-sum game. It's not like you're slicing up the pie.

what's in it for me. I got to get my part of the pie because it's going to run out. The musician's mentality is really about like helping others, serving others, helping other people to get better to, knowing that there's room for everybody. And it's hard because like we look at the world of music playing jazz as being a very competitive feel. And it is because there's so many people that want to do it in comparison to the number of jobs, gigs, teaching gigs, venues, especially obviously right now.

But just in general, it's very competitive. so it's hard to get on this mindset where you're not like, it's me against every other piano player. But once you make that turn, it's a really exciting thing when you realize, like we're all in this together, we can all help. And I just have to say, like spending, you know, many of my formative years, I mean, from age 20 through 35,

basically in New Orleans, living in New Orleans, helped me so much because New Orleans is a very unique place because the musicians, the jazz musicians, And New Orleans is one of those places where people actually don't talk about I'm a jazz musician. Like everybody plays a lot of different kinds of gigs. Yeah, yeah. So you just have to know the New Orleans stuff because that could come up in any moment. They're just New Orleans musicians.

Yeah. But the piano players, everybody, like, it's not really a competitive environment there. Like, I was tighter with the different piano players there than I ever saw in New York. New York is more like, don't take my gig. I'm not going to tell you about this. New Orleans. Now, part of this is there's so many gigs in New Orleans. Like, there's more gigs than there are good players.

So, like, we're always needing each other. Like, can you cover this gig? So, like, part of it comes out of that. But what was fun about that is... What a piano tone, too, really. Yeah, but there's just so many things going on. So I got used to that and then forgot that that's not the norm. Like other places, it's like, oh, I got to protect my turf.

But I think that, you know, that leads to a less interesting kind of musician, a less interesting kind of artist. So absolutely try to take that to any kind of situation because we're all in this life thing together, as we say. Turn on Cordy. They want to see Cordy. What's up with that? Well, we got to do something. Cordy-esque.

There's Cordy. Look at that. Bam. I'll do this. See, if you can... Do you want to do some cordy? Do you want to do some... No.

Yeah, I mean, just play up. I'm off my game, man. I'm off my... That's all right. Well, you got to have the right kind of question for it. You can't just be like, Cordy, I'm going to do it, you know? That was hilarious, though.

I just started up, I was like, do you want a cordy, buddy? Do you want a cordy? Yeah. Okay. Let's see. Tarique asks When you're improvising,

do you think more scales or covering chords with melodic cells and odd groupings? I don't think about any of those, but this kind of follows, I certainly play some of those things. Cells, what are melodic cells?

Oh, I guess that's like shapes, right? Yeah, I think so. So, you know, this is, okay, I'll turn on a little cordy. Right? There you go. There you go. Do you want to do some cordy?

So this is another one of those things I think comes out of more like when we're practicing. So like Adam's restrictive practicing that he was showing before, you could apply that to say a shape. So I've got let's take C minor. Hey man, why you take my cordial away? So C minor 11. Wow, you even called it that. So I just, this is sort of popped in my head. I don't know if it's going to be the best thing to demo went on.

But that would be a shape or a cell as it would. were and like how do we make that into a melodic thing it's a fun chord right so I might say like how like give me a little c minor groove whatever you'd like to do mr. adam um what November 2nd and I'm grooving what hey so everything I played there was in that shape except for that one wrong note I played which was kind of interesting actually but but so I'm restricting myself to that shape but then it's like how how inventive can I become with I don't have a lot of melodic elements. But I play piano. I can play two notes at once.

But rhythm becomes very important. And you know, the more you practice like this, it can be very like, wow, I'm so restricted into this thing. But it causes you to activate your creativity in so many different ways than what your kind of initiative would be as you come to it. So I might be like C minor. and you know, playing all sorts of like different melodic ideas, but whoa, now I'm restricted.

So I have to activate and tap into like the rhythm and like taking that shape and molding it in different ways to create that melody. So I think that's a great way to do it. And that kind of practice makes it so you don't have to think about odd groupings and cells or any of that when you play because those things start to become a part of your

improvising personality as it were. And that's what we're really looking for. And that's like kind of the theme of a lot of the things that we talk about is like, do we practice in a way so that we can activate our story to be able to come out through our instrument like what are the specific specific things we can do as we practice you know so that we can get creative and get jiggy with it without having to be thinking about you know stuff that's a little bit you know bleh I mean it's not bleh it's just kind of like it's time for practice like you

you want to be able to get in the vibe you know what I mean well absolutely yeah I mean it's kind of like you know if you if you get some clothes and you're like okay I'm going to go out of on a date. I've got my clothes. I got my jacket. I don't know. What the hell would you wear on a date? Just clothes. I've been on a date in 17 years. I know. I know. I've been new. But I'm like, you know, whatever. You, okay, you want to, or say you want to go out with your spouse and you want to look good. You want to have your clothes together so that when you put them on, you can just be out and just like gliding through the room. You don't want to be thinking about, yeah. You don't want to be thinking about, yeah, you know what you brushes and, yeah, is my, is my button off or whatever. You just want to have it all lay on you nicely.

And so that's the kinds of things that we want to do. So you also have to adopt that mindset of like, You want to have it all lay on you nicely. Byron Lovelace knows how to put some fine vines on. Come on. LOL sounds like an ambient independent French film. That's slick. That's dressed in slick.

That's Zee Kavarichies with a gold chain. That's right. Are we still doing a show? We just have fun. You know what I'm saying? Come on, Byron? In the last, we got a question. Have you?

All right, we did that one. We did that one. Bati asked, do you think that the act of composing is almost always a form of improvisation as well? I mean, I think it's a form of, I think they're both forms of creativity. Composition is very much, you know, more crafted, more calculating. I mean, I think improvising is a specific type of composition more than, you know, composition being a type of improvisation, right? Absolutely true. Yeah. And just like if you, as an improviser, you collect sounds that you know that you're going to use later in your improvisation.

You know, everything we just played, for instance, it's not like we just invented all of that stuff on the spot, right? We study all of this and we collect things that mean something to us. We stole it. Of course. I mean, someone said, sounds like Herbie. Yeah, you think. But, of course. But it's the same thing. with composition. You collect ideas, you collect things. I mean, like you would make any piece of art. You think about what it is. You want to say how you want to say it, how you want to frame it, the context and the color that you put on there. You try to create something spontaneously when you're doing it. But then, you know, the difference with composition is you go back and you, like you said,

there's the cabinet maker aspect where there's a craft to it, right? So I have this great idea. I can mold this into something a little bit that makes more sense, you know, than just what I had in the moment, although the spark in the moment is very important. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. That's a new little composition I've been working on, but then I realized I think it sounds like Herbie.

I had another way where it was going to be. Let me hear it. That's a new composition. Well, no, that's tell me a bedtime. I was going to say, I was like, you were writing something like, oh, that's so great. And you're like, oh. I'm the guy who wrote,

We are the world. We never hip that loopie high Just keep on giving Need to get them some You need to get them a cronos So they can really get Herbie Yeah we gotta get Herbie up in there And I had this other bass line

Where it was gonna be like What was it? It's too close though, right? Yeah, yeah No, it's I mean, but it's It reminds me of my tune That's, it goes like this

Close Oh, good. Good stuff. Well, it is 4 o'clock. Bye. Thanks, everybody. We want to tell everybody, can you play actual proof? Which, is that, um, uh, that's, uh, babu-ba, da, do the day. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I don't remember that. No, we can't. Um, yeah, asked and answered. So we want to say, look, we want to say, piece of love to every day. We want to say, go vote. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. If you haven't voted yet.

Have you voted yet? I'm going tomorrow morning. Oh, it's election day tomorrow. You're late, man. I know. This ain't the year to be going on the day of, but it's all good. Yeah, go vote no matter who you're voting for. Just vote.

And what else we got? Okay, so the SESH tomorrow, should we tell them about that? Cancel. It's canceled. We canceled it because, I don't know. We just felt like there's a lot going on. And we don't want to, I mean, we want to uplift, but we want to stay in our lane. and we want to just let everybody process things

as they need to process them. Including us. Including us, right. But we're going to be back next week for a brand new session. Might be KOB, might be something else. We keep threatening KOB. We should do that.

How could that ever be a threat? A threat of greatness. I know. We should do, well, let's talk. Let's talk after tomorrow. Yeah, we'll talk after tomorrow. Emotion and motion. I know.

I remember when I wrote that, I was like, wait, did I steal? Like, you got to really go off, off the rails. I probably did. That's got to be some herbiism too, right? Peter Martin. I can't talk and play in seven.

And I can mix too. Oh, Courtney can't keep up. I can't keep up. Cool. All right. We are going to see you guys next week. We'd like to remind you that we are not only a live YouTube channel, we are a podcast, too. So if you haven't gotten into a podcast, maybe this will be a good time to get into it.

Go to Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Google Play. Look up, you'll hear it, and you can find us. And we're about to record some right now. Did you know that? I know we're going to do two right now. Yeah, we do exclusive things that are only available over there, audio only. So, you know, we turn off the lights and, you know, do our things. So please join us there.

Please stay safe. And until next week, you'll hear it.