You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - It's Not All On Paper

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

Peter and Adam dig in to see if you can fully learn jazz just from sheet music. Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioCheck out Open Studio's latest video The 3 principles of Herbie HancockLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hey, I'm going to write something down here. Okay. I want you to try to say this just from the text. Ready? Yes. I'm Peter Martin. Oh, that's interesting that you put that I'm Peter Martin.

So do it one more time. Okay. Say this. I'm Peter Martin. Okay. Interesting. All right, one more here. Okay.

How would you say this? You'll hear it. One more time. You'll hear it. Okay. I'm Adam Annas. I'm Peter Martin. Wait, wait.

Oh, sorry. I'm Peter Martin. Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Music, advice, commentary, and conversation. Oh, boy. Come on as you. Why don't you like it when I ask?

It's going off the rails. I'm going to add that. He can't stick to one for more than two episodes. Well, you know what I realized? Like, we do give music advice, but that's kind of, that's underselling. It's yet, it's both, it's simultaneously overselling and underselling. You have to explain the whole thing, man. You could just say, what's up.

What's up? What's up? Okay. So we are brought to by. Do you got the Cheetah fans out there? I'm just going to leave. Leave it at that. We're sponsored by Open Studio.

Go to OpenSudioJazz.com. Yes. To learn more. So today... Wait, wait, wait. Don't jump off at that quick. We don't have to go all deep into... No, no, but folks might not have heard.

We are not a sponsorless podcast. We are a solo-sponsored podcast. We're sponsored by OpenCodeo sponsor. We're sponsored by OpenSodiojazz.com. That's right. Yes. OpenSidioJaz.com, which is more than just a URL. It's more than just a website.

It's a whole community. You got to check it. There's courses from people. Peter, from me, from Fred Hirsch, from Jeffrey Keiser, from Christian McBride, from Ron Carter, from Gregory Hutchinson. The list goes on and on and on. Right. The list goes on and on, but the exciting thing that pulls it all together is the amazing community and the pinnacle, the penultimate level being Open Studio Pro. Penultimate? Ultimate. Ultimate. Ultimate. What's penultimate? Five, like, devil's ultimate? Ultimate. Ultimate is the last possible. Penultimate is the one before the last possible. Yeah. So it's like a penultimate. So it's like a

Antigram. No, not related, sorry. Okay. Anyway, the top level. The ultimate level. Yeah, is Opens to you a Pro headed up by none other than my comrade here. Comrade. Comrade. Comrade. A comrade. Adam Manus. That's right. And yeah, no, it's just an amazing place. Please come over. If you enjoy this podcast and you're looking to get better and you're looking to connect with others from around the world that are getting better playing jazz, getting better playing music, this is the place for you. That's right. Today we're talking about, speaking of getting better.

Yes. We're talking about all the amazing music that you can't learn from the page. So one of the hardest things to teach, and some of the hardest things to learn as we play music, are really unwriteable. Yeah.

They're unreadable. Yeah. And the reason why, whenever we do a list of anything here on the You'll Hear a podcast, we start with number one. Listen. Sorry.

Peter, are you listening right now? No, you want me, you want me to tell you what I'm actually good? What are you doing? What are you doing? Okay, I'm on chat, GPT. I'm obsessed with chat, GPD. I just asked it. I was going to ask it about Open Studio because there's some funny stuff, but I'm going to be, can we do a little sidebar here? Can we do that? We got time for this? No, but go ahead. Okay.

I said, chat GPT, I said, who is Adam Manis? Okay. You want to know what it said? Oh, boy. Adam Manis. Well, some folks might not know you. Adam Manis is an American pianist, composer, arranger, and, and, and, and, and, and, educator. He was born on January, wait, can I say this? Yeah. January 23rd, 1983? Is that correct?

Not even close. Really? No. But January 23rd? Nope. Okay. In St. Louis, Missouri? Correct. Or High Ridge? St. Louis. St. Louis. St. Louis. St. Louis. St. Mary's Hospital. And began playing at a young age. Manus has been praised for his technical proficiency and his ability to seamlessly blend jazz, classical, and popular music. Interesting. Stiles in his playing and compositions. Manis has released several albums as a solo artist and as part of the of the Adam Manistrio. Interesting. Well, are you part of the Adam Manistria?

Yeah, but I've not released any albums as a solo artist, not one. Which, the Adam Manistria, which he co-founded. Did you co-founded it? I would hope so. He has also worked... I'd be weird if I didn't found the Adam Manist trio. If someone else was like, listen, I'm starting the Out of Manist trio. We're going to need you in it.

This is, we're doing this in real time. This is kind of a risk. What if we get to some, like, legal entanglements? It could happen, man. I have not been an angel in life. Which he co-founded. He has also worked with a number of notable musicians and groups. Okay.

Including Aaron Bodey. Yep. Brian Owens and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Correct. That's all correct. In addition to his performing and recording work, Manus is a faculty member at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Hello.

Is that true? That is not true. And teaches private lessons. Nope. Overall, Adam Manus is a respected and versatile musician who has made significant contributions to the contemporary jazz and popular music scenes. That is correct.

That's chat GPT right there? Yeah. Excellent. It got everything right except for the, for the birthday. We're going to do you next episode to see what they come out. Yeah, that's, you know, the chat GPT is creepy. It's almost right. It's creepy.

It's almost right. Like, I wouldn't write that bio like that at all for myself. Some of it was correct. Some of it was, there were huge omissions. Yeah. I don't think I've been to University of Missouri, St. Louis more than three times my whole life. But you're not against it.

I'm not against it. I'm certainly I haven't been a faculty member there. Yeah, how does it get that? It's interesting. Yeah, very interesting. Yet we diverge. Big time.

So wait, what are we, what is our actual question that we're going to answer today? I don't know. Should we just talk about chat? Well, no, let's just start putting all of our questions into that and see if it can answer it better than us.

So, I mean, we're talking today about how you, you know, all the things you can't learn from the page. Okay. Can you learn? learn jazz from, what do you say, like music notation? From sheet music. From sheet music, gotcha. So should we do our answer first, or should we do chat GPT's answer?

I think we're on the chat GBT train now. Sorry, did we go off the rails here? My bad. Okay, chat GPT, can you learn jazz from sheet? That's my chat GPT thinking. While it's possible to learn some aspects of jazz from sheet music, it's generally not the most effective or a comprehensive way to learn the genre. Interesting.

Jazz is an improvisational art form, and much of its style and nuance comes from the performer's ability to interpret and express the music in their own way. This means that jazz musicians often rely on a combination of formal training, listening to recordings, playing with other musicians, and developing their own sense of style and improvisational techniques. I can, it's pretty accurate. It's like it's omitting something. things, but that's pretty good actually. While sheet music can provide a good starting point for learning jazz, it doesn't always capture the full range of musical ideas, techniques, and expressions that make up the genre. Jazz is often characterized by its use of swing rhythms, syncopation, and improvisation, which can be difficult to accurately, to note it accurately in

sheet music. Additionally, many jazz musicians rely on a deep understanding of harmony and chord progressions, which may not be fully conveyed in sheet music alone. In summary, I've got to just show you this, because it's actually talking to me, right? In summary, while sheet music can be a helpful tool for learning some aspects of jazz, it's generally best to supplement it with other learning methods and to focus on developing a well-rounded understanding of the genre through listening, playing, and studying with other musicians. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah, okay, well, episode over. ChatGBT, BT is taken over the podcast now. That's right. That's right. Oh, really?

It's pretty much it. No, no. Unlike your bio, we may, I mean, I think we can expound upon this in a little bit more of an illustrious way. But I don't know that, is there anything you heard there that you disagreed with? No. Right. But the bio, you disagree with it due to inaccuracies. Inaccuracies, yeah.

But no, that was pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty good. Yeah. Okay. So now the pressure's on. Can we answer this better than chat GPT? I don't know, man.

Well, let's talk about phrasing, because they didn't really get into the phrasing at all. Yeah, so if we had a... Wait, I think... Are you okay? I'm a little in the woods now. Honestly, I'm a little thrown. There's been nine minutes of just chat GTP-G-T, and I'm just processing. You're not processing this. This is why AI is going to win. I can't process in the same time. So let's take a phrase.

By the way, don't turn around, but there is a giant robot about to push you off of your chair. So if you were to play that phrase, right? You just saw that written, a C-7, and you had two beats. Right? You could play it like that. But most musicians are going to play it a little bit differently every time. And this is why listening is so important, because you get a sense of style, a sense of characteristic to where it's like, are you going to like slow it down and do some sort of triplety things at the end?

Are you going to phrase it in a way that it rises, or there are going to be little staccato inflections in there? All of these things are kind of idiomatic to different eras, different players, different sort of sub-genres within what we're talking about here. That all is almost impossible to translate the notation. If it is translatable to notation, it becomes so unreadable that it's not practical.

You know what I mean? So listening has to be such a huge part. And it's such a hard thing to get to because we think that the information is what's going to solve everything, but it really is an experience. And I think that's what I was trying to get at with the title of this. It's not about sort of the information of this. Yeah. But it's about experiencing it, you know, as an organic, living, breathing thing. And then putting yourself in there and letting yourself flow out, or get it.

and living and breathing. And that's hard to do if you're just learning things from reading them and trying to replicate them as they're written. Yeah. You don't have, first of all, you have just a fraction of the actual information of what's going on in music.

But then it also sort of blocks something in you. Like it blocks the part of you that is, I mean, it blocks the sort of the mind's ear, right, that comes from the soul, comes from the heart that is trying to come out. So that only comes out from doing just a ton of listening, you know? And so things, like rhythmic vocabulary are so hard to get things like instinctual phrasing like being able to have a

conversation as you improvise it's so hard to get yeah things like obviously how you interpret a phrase so hard to get without because then you're just thinking about it or you're just trying to regurgitate something you saw instead of heard but how do you how do you how can we best recommend ways to sort of jump that chasm between it's so hard to get obviously it's so hard to get just you well you can't get this stuff just from the page that's the first thing but how do you make it past that point where you can kind of you can sort of peek at the promise land so if it's like how you play a phrase you know if it's like a bebop thing and you hear that on a recording by listening and you're like okay now i can i can see i can hear how that's supposed to sound

i know i can't get that from the page but i can't play that yet and there's no way that i can play it like that today. Like, what can we do to help folks? I'm thinking things like being able to really identify to sing. That's why singing, I think, is so good because that might be something that you could do today. As you work out the technique, as you acclimate your ear and your hands and, you know, your mouth if you're trumpet, like all the different elements that have to come together

to actually be able to execute on playing with these subtleties. Like, if you think about the thousands or tens of thousands or maybe millions or hundreds of thousands, whatever it is the possibly infinite different ways to phrase a line, like there's a number of correct choices and then there's an even bigger number of wrong choices. So it becomes as much about like, no, that's not it. And by it, it's not this one way of playing it, even what you heard on a recording. There's a range. But it's like how do we, through experience through sets and reps and these things, get to the

point where our ears can actually have the taste or culture or whatever it is to be able distinguish that, even just for one phrase, but then add on to that to be able to constantly be that barometer as you play. And then, okay, well, now that's how you phrase that? How do you phrase the next one? Because you have choices. It's never about this is the way to do it. Even with something like a Mendelssohn symphony, if it's being like a different conductor of a different approach, there are wrong ways to do it, not just wrong notes. There's wrong ways to phrase it. You can't say everything works all the different time, but you also can't say the right way is sitting there on the page just executed.

There's no humanity in it. You almost have to use it to develop your taste. Like that's what you're doing. You're developing your attitude. You're developing a point of view. Isn't that kind of like culture, the culture, the music, the vibe, the sound? It's developing the art of it. Because the art of it is the choice, right?

So just like learning what notes to play is just the tools. That's just like the craft. Right. But the actual putting it into art, and this is where a lot of, I think, especially intermediate players, stumped. big time is they don't have a perspective or a point of view or a voice of their own. They don't understand how other people have their own voice. And so they're either...

But they can hear, they can see that mountaintop. So it's like they can kind of see what it is. So they know they're not there maybe, but they get lost in how it didn't get there. The phrasing can be so weak, though, because it's not confident. Right. But if you're intermediate and your phrasing is weak and you can't hear that, are you really truly intermediate? Like if you don't even know that?

I think that's the definition of an intermediate. Okay. Yeah, I think. I was going to say more beginner, but... Maybe a beginner, but, like, I think there's a lot of people who can play and who understand some of the theory and have good technique, and they still don't have, the phrases seem... They can't hear what a good phrase should sound like still.

And you know what's a challenge with that? You know, just as a, as kind of an overriding principle, is that very simple things, especially within jazz, like, and this can be like straight eighth groove, swing. Boston. I mean, it doesn't matter it's not just about swing, but it's like very simple phrases are actually harder to play with like great

phrasing and a great sound and a connection to the culture than more complicated phrases a lot of times. So it's like the things that you can play as a beginner are very exposed and very simple. And that's what we talk about, playing something just simple and beautiful can be, and the slower it gets,

the more of it challenges. So I think we want to keep a perspective to know that we will get there. Don't get frustrated, but do be aware of where you're at, because that's the only way you can make these improvements and keep yourself spirited and knowing that you're progressing. Not every day, sometimes you're going to feel like you're going backwards, but to kind of keep that end result in mind,

which is not necessarily Keith Jarrett being able to play like Keith Jarrett, but you can phrase with that kind of, not exactly how he phrases, but the way that you need to be able to phrase it to be connected with the culture in the same way that Keith Jarrett is, is connected in a different way than Chickoria and Herbie Hancock or Art Tatum. I mean, think about the, or Mendelsohn, you know, like the variations of how this is, but they're all, you know, connected to a culture or a vibe.

Yeah. So I think the lesson here is to, you know, if you really want to grow, if you really want to get better, spend less time on the page and just less time with information, right? Once you have a certain level of knowledge of the theory and technique, you know, spend time developing your point of view. Yeah. What's good? What's not good?

according to you, you know, and then really lean into the things you love, you know. And I wonder if it would be. Spend time with them. Yeah. I wonder if it's helpful, too, to think about it, you know, from kind of a higher view in terms of how you allocate your practice time and even just your thinking, your concentration time on getting better as a player to, you know, certainly theory and repertoire and learning stuff from the page or whatever, but phrasing as being a big part of your practice time, you

know, like how do you phrase? That's the way, like if I have a great vocabulary and I understand grammar and everything, if I don't know how to put these sentences together in a way, even if I can put a sentence together, but if I can't put it in a way that's effective phrasing, and maybe to circle back to chat GPT, that's the problem. Chat GPT has all the information, but not all of it's right, but it can make it sound like it's right because it puts it in like paragraphs and stuff. But when you actually start to see, it doesn't have that human element of like confirmation of like, yes, this is it. And that yes, this is it is all about phrasing, and it's not the same for everybody. But because you've done this front-loaded listening and constant like listening, you get to that point where you're like, you understand if you're there or not and whether or not you're in the ballpark at least.

This thing is just going to keep spewing out stuff thinking it could be right or wrong. It's a mirror of us, I guess, or whatever. But I think that, you know, allocate that time to really just listening and singing along and they're just getting part of your phrase where you're connecting with that. If that's a transcription of Winton Kelly where you're playing along and you're like, wow, I can kind of match that phrasing. You don't have to be able to solo like that. You're never going to be able to solo like that. But if you can connect with that kind of phrasing, you'll be able to take those little elements without having to think about it a lot and say like, oh, should I do a dotted 16th triplet here because that will make it swing?

You know, you're never going to want to do that. But so that you can see a simple line or core progression on the page, learn that internalize it. Get it to 80 percent and then get away from the page. You know, don't be like, I've got to memorize this. Get away from the page. Get away from the page. No pens, no page. But, I mean, like, because we're so quick to hold on to that,

but to not put that time and effort and, you know, bandwidth on phrasing. Because you're never going to get that from the page. You're going to get it from listening. Yeah. Listen to yourself. Listen to great recordings. Listen to your voice singing. Yeah.

Because that's going to get that phrasing. Well, this takes us back, Peter. We can have a nice little book in here to our sponsor. Open studio. Jeep. Oh, not chat. We don't sponsor Jet VPC. Well, we are sponsored by Open Studio.

In fact, it's our only sponsor. And in fact, after we record this today, we're having a listing session. We're listening to McBride, Blade, Meldow, Redmond. Yep. That's the weekly listening session with the Open Studio community. We also have Open Studio Pro where there's a ton of talk about these kinds of high-level things that aren't just information that you can't just get from a PDF or a book or a YouTube video. But it is more about the experiential.

experiential way of learning the music. We're so proud of that over at Open Studio Pro. So go to Open StudioJazz.com. Check out the regular membership where you can just get all of the courses that we have or check out Open Studio Pro, which is more intense, more committed version

where you have to show up to the live classes and enjoy the experiential learning. You don't have to. You don't have to. You don't have it available. I mean, it depends. You want to be good? You want to be good or great.

You want to be good or great? You want to be good, go to the other side. You want to be great. Come to Open Studio. And good. Well, I was just going to say, Open Studio Jazz is an online music education platform that offers a wide range of resources.

Now it's kind of stumped though. It's stopped. The cursor stopped. We stumped chat GPT. You have to come tune in to the next episode to find out the rest. And until then, you'll hear it.