You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Keeping time like Chick Corea (without a metronome!)

Episode Date: January 26, 2022

Peter & Adam address a listener's question on how to practice keeping time, using Chick Corea as an example. Quote from Chick on rhythm:"I don't know any rote ways to improve your rhythm. I personally don't advise using a metronome, you'd be following the metronome and you want to be creating your own rhythm. One way to do that is to make recordings of yourself and listen to yourself back and try to see how you can improve what you want to improve about that. But rhythm, in general, is something that you build little bit by little bit by just doing it and correcting yourself and getting better at what you see."Video Links: Chick Corea Live in Marciac • Why Chick doesn't practice with a metronomeHave a question? Leave us a SpeakPipeWatch Live: YHI LIVE Mondays at 4pm ET on YouTubeWant more of Adam and Peter? Check out Open Studio Pro hereWoosh or No Woosh? Hit us up on Twitter and let us know which team you are onSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com 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.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Yo. It's your favorite day of the week. It is one Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Sass. Wait, which one did I miss? Speak pipe. Speak pipe Wednesday. Yes, that's it.

Hump day. Yes. I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Music, advice, listening, fun, and other things flowing at you, inspiration, all that kind of good stuff. I'm still working on that. You caught, well, yeah, the day that you nail the tagline, the first try.

Music advice and inspiration. That's it. Daily Jazz advice. That was the former one. No, that's, that was the old one. Yeah. You've already thrown me for a loop in the intro because you correctly identified Wednesday as hump day. I know. I've been wanting to do that.

Friday was hump day for the longest time. It still feels like it to me. I feel like hump day is, no, it's a flexible thing. Just like we've talked about this before. What's the first day of the week? Monday. Okay. See, a lot of people say Sunday.

A lot of calendars. Think about you get a planner. I know. I know. A pill box. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people say Sunday. Some say Monday.

You're familiar with the Grig. Gregorian calendar? No. I'm not either, but it's a thing. I guarantee you there's no hump day on Wednesday. Humpty's Thursday in the Gregorian. Do you really think Sunday is the first day of the week? No, I don't, but I'm saying that some do.

Some people do. And you think that hump day starts on Friday? I'm saying some weeks hump day feels like it's Friday. I'm never going to come around to this. I'm just glad you got to write this one time. That's right. But it is Wednesday. Hump day.

This week. Not every week. Buddy, that's just... Okay. It is Wednesday. That we don't know that every Wednesday is. Yeah, for sure. That is... It might be interested in.

Yeah, of course it is. I'm always interested in hearing from our dear listeners. And we've got a great question today from George. We're also going to be doing a little bit of listening today. Per George's suggestion. Check this out. Hi, this is George near Boulder, Colorado. I watched a performance on YouTube of Chick Korea and Jazz and Marseille.

It's about an hour of Chick-Plane. Wait, was it? It's... Jazz and Marseille? It's Marciac. Marciac? But I can, that's a common mistake because, you know, well, we'll talk about this, but Marciac is a very teeny town, even a lot of French people.

I remember one time I'm on the, coming on the train from Paris, and I'm talking to this French couple, they're like, oh, where are you going? You like that accent? Yeah. And I said, I'm going to Marciac, and they say, oh, Marseille. I said, no, no, Marseic. They're like, oh, no, you're saying it wrong. It's Marseille.

Because Marseille is a big, yeah. And we were actually on the, on the Tejave, and going in that direction. Right, right, right. And so they thought I'm a stupid American. So you showed him a little flyer or something? Exactly. Well, I don't think I had anything. They just didn't believe me.

They were correct about me being a stupid demel. I can, but not for this reason. Marciac, yeah, it's not a well-known city, but it's a wonderful festival there. All right, let's check it out. Playing solo piano. At 1450 into the recording, he plays Waltz for Debbie. After a brilliant opening, he goes into a long solo, and throughout the entire performance, keeps incredible time.

Again, it's just him. on a stage, no one else. And yeah, he plays around, takes liberties, plays sections with Roboto. But his internal sense of rhythm and time blew me away. My question is how do we practice to develop our ability to keep internal time like that? Is it hours of metronom work? And if so, how do we do this without becoming dependent on the metronome or a rhythm section? Thank you.

Look forward to your insight and advice. Well, George, it's a great question. And before we get to talking about it, why don't we listen to a little bit of Chick Korea live in Marciac solo piano, 2015, playing Bill Evans' brilliant composition, Wals for Debbie? This is Bill's Waltz for Debbie. I love it.

First of all, can we just say that she's in one little sentence there, thick Boston accent. Oh, so great. He's like, this is Walsford Debbie. And after we're going to have some. chowda. Oh, it's amazing. Jeez, Luis.

This tempo. Okay, so just before we get too deep into this, which is, it's amazing, right? What a master solo piano. Yes. Incredible. And I think, you know, his live, well, actually, there is a fair amount available, not only certainly on YouTube, and we'll link to this recording for sure, but, you know, live recordings.

I think that's where his solo playing really shines, you know. Just his ability to be in the moment. It does it all the time. I mean, it's really incredible. And I love all the little signature chickisms. You know what he's got a really great one of? He's got a really great grace note from above. That's a signature chick sound.

You know what I mean? He did it a couple times in there. So beautiful. It's just such a part of his musical personality. You know, it's not a little trick or affectation or anything. It's just a part of the way he talks. It's like the way he talks. Totally.

Totally. And, you know, this is not. a super complicated way that he's approaching the solo piano playing. For all of our Open Studio Pro members and people that have checked out a lot of your jazz piano method, I mean, he's just very simply this kind of stuff. Yeah. You know what I mean? Just breaking up your hand into different, so that's just taking basically left-hand chord

voicing. Yeah. Breaking them up. Ruted or otherwise. Yeah. You know, he was doing a lot of that kind of thing. And to George's question about how you practice. So his time is rock solid.

And is it, you know, the George's question, is it hours and hours with a metronome? What do you do to get that kind of rock solid time? I would say my first answer to that or instinct for answering that is really it's just making up your mind that that's something that's important to you to have. Yes. Like that's the first step, George, is saying like, oh, I'm going to be able to play. Commit to it being a priority.

Totally. Commit to it being part of the sound that you want to have. That's really the biggest. think, Chick famously talks about practicing without a metronome. Someone who you think is so like, who is on the time, like perfectly on the beat, was an advocate for not never practicing with a metronome, but using it as a tool to check where you are. Yeah.

Which can be very, very effective. I don't think there's any one right way to do any of this stuff. So some people are like, like, use a metronome all the time. Some people like Chick are like, like, use it to check where you are in your time. But I think really, George, this is about practicing by, keeping that groove solid. You are a big proponent of that, I know, Peter. Yeah, and I love this idea of starting with making it a priority and committing, like,

because it seems so simple. A lot of you will hear that. I know I've been guilty of this in other areas where someone will say something obvious. And when you're wanting to learn, you just say, oh, yeah, I know that already. Give me, give me the next part. Give me the secret part. Yeah. It's like, hold on a second.

That first step is actually the most important thing. Do you embody that actually? Yeah. And just because you did it. time or you acknowledge that you agree with that doesn't mean make it any less important. I mean, we have to re-center, refocus on that. And think about how many times would pianists or just musicians that geek out and love Chikaria, for instance, get together and talk about, man, look at that voice.

And they did look what he did. But we don't talk enough about, you know, this great question from George focusing in on his time, on his group. Because like we take that as a given. I mean, it is very much the way he presents the music. But for ourselves, if we want to tap into that, it's not about like, well, let's steal all of Chick-Korea stuff. Yeah, as much as we can.

You're still not going to be Chick-Korea. But how do we tap into his innate sense? And I think George has really hit that with this question. And we should all use this to refocus us and to say like, okay, something that he would give the listener, like how does he come to a festival like Marciac? And just to paint a picture here, it's a very teeny town, but it's a big festival. It's like, I want to say six or eight thousand people in like a tent, but it's one of these huge like kind of almost permanent type of tents.

Really well done. The production is great. I mean, you can hear on this video. You can see the video, audio, everything is. Chick looks very relaxed. It must be a nice place. Very relaxed. But I mean, they'll have like, you know, he might have been playing right before, you know,

Kamasi Washington and his 12 piece band or something. Like it's a big festival. And so for him to get up their solo piano and I'm sure just to have the audience in the palm of his hands. Of course. You know, it takes a very, very deep connection with groove and time and then all the other things that are layered on top of that. But I totally agree and say that like the commitment to this is the most important thing. And that is not, then you have the execution on that. But if you think about it by making a commitment to prioritize developing your sense of time, your sense of groove, the actual application of that in different performance situations of which I would say solo piano, it doesn't get.

any deeper than that. It's so important. Because you're that, yeah, it's all on you. Um, but that commitment to that, I think what has to be part of that is a sense of confidence. Yeah. And so then that brings up the quandary of like, well, how can I be confident on it when I know that I suck at it or like, you know, why do I suck? In the words of a YouTuber I know, why do I still suck? But you can work on something. I mean, that acknowledgement of there being a golf between where you are and where you want to be. A golf? A golf. A golf. A golf. You know, not like... Oh, a golf.

Like the Persian golf. Okay, got it. Yeah. He said a golf, like a Volkswagen golf or the sport of golf. You know, to me, they're interchangeable. I watch public schools, my friend. So you should know that. You did too.

So, yeah, so there's the place we want to be. And then there's a golf, a golf between that that engulfs our lives at times. So, you know, sometimes folks are like, well, I'm just never going to get there. It's going to be a long time until I get there. But this is where confidence comes in. And I think what has to go along with confidence, just like anything in life, is a certain sense of faking it. Fake it until you make it.

That's right. And you know what? I think we can all relate to this in some part of our lives. You know, think about, you know, especially as you get older and things that you want to be able to succeed at, or times when you start to realize, you know, somebody that you really looked up to in any area, you know, be it your parents or whatever. Like you idolize somebody or you think that this person does this. And then you kind of realize like, wait, do they really know what they're doing all the time?

You know, and that's okay. They're still the end result is great because maybe they're extending their confidence in their commitment. You know what I mean? Once we prioritize something, we've made that commitment. We don't have to wait until it's been fully realized or actualized in our skill set. Well, and sometimes people love watching you try to keep your commitment to this, even when you're not a master of it yet. And they see your, that's what people say when they see, oh, they were really reaching. they were really going for it.

It's because you, the artist is committed to something that they can't quite get yet, you know? And that is a beautiful thing to watch, especially for people who are very serious about it and very skilled at reaching for things just beyond their grass. So George, how do you work on this?

Like, what's a practical way to do this that doesn't really involve a metronome? Listen, metronome practice is important. You can definitely, I've been working on actually, I just noticed playing with you, Peter, in one of our things. I tend to rush my quarter note triplets in groups of four. I mean, I just noticed.

I was like, I was rushing the shit of that. Like, you know, and so I've been working with a metronome just to try to, in different tempos. It's a great tool for that. See, out that Russian dressing down in those South and dressing restaurants. But it happens, you know. It's something that we have to address.

But how do you, how do you make the decision? Is it in the flow of the music? Like, is that something you listened back to or you felt as you were playing? Yeah, no, I heard, I well, no, I saw a sneaky side eye from you. But then I, no, no, no, but I just, I kind of heard it in the,

moment and then I went and checked back. That's important though hearing it in the moment. It is. I noticed in the moment that something wasn't quite right. And I was like, what was it? Am I rushing? I didn't know exactly what it was. So I went and checked it out.

And I was like, it's corner note triplets. They're a little ahead. I'm going to go take care of that. But you don't have to. Can I interject something right there? Just because I found this quote I was looking for from Chick here. I think it kind of applies to what you just said and can lead to a really good template of how one can practice this.

So Chick says, I don't. know any wrote ways to improve your rhythm. I personally don't advise using a metronome. You'd be following the metronome and you want to be creating your own rhythm. One way to do that is to make recordings of yourself and listen to yourself back and try to see how you can improve what you want to improve about that. But rhythm in general is something that you, that you build little bit by little bit by just doing it and correcting yourself and getting better at what you see. Yeah, you have to keep an open ear and don't rely just on other people's feedback. Really try to hear yourself and what you're doing.

So how would you practice this idea of committing to it, George? I would say, like, one thing that you hear a lot of pianists do, which is this, to practice it like something like, I don't know, that wasn't right. So starting a song solo piano and then figuring it out and stopping when you mess up and starting again. Yeah. Here's something you can do right now. Start the grid.

And then if you get off from that grid, Keep the grid going. Yeah. You just have to find your way back to that. So that's kind of like committing to the form in real time. So if you do something like, Ah. Yes.

Keep the time going in your head. Even stopping and starting and keeping that going. So that doesn't stop. The time that's behind the curtain of everything that you're playing is still going. And you find your way back to that. You know what I mean? That's sort of like the, I think, a way we can practice is once you start the grid going on your soul. little piano performance, it doesn't stop.

Okay, everybody, this was, that was some gold right there, drop. We can take six months off. Hey, all right, good night, everybody, Venmo Adam, at Adam, man. Please, if that helps you. No, but that is like, you got to fix that for you, right? He just fixed that for you. No, that's such an important way to practice. And I realize that's something that I've done on and off over the years.

You're a master of it, man. I watch you do all these solo piano concerts and your grid never stops. Even when you get off from it, you find your way back from it. And usually it's one hand, will be, you know, we'll find a way out of it or whatever, and your left hand is still in that pocket. But that comes from the first thing we said, like commit. Commit to on a big above the clouds level to this being an important thing. And then what, what is that, what flows from that? You know what I mean? It's like, that means that once you start something, it continues to go,

you don't get sidetracked by other things. Yes, you have to think about the harmony and the melody and your touch and all that. And we hear somebody, see, what can be hard is when you start thing about the gulf between us and chikorea yeah is you hear chik korea not really struggle like reaching at least a par five yeah yeah i mean it's like he's not struggling yet he's reaching also yeah he's not like going off the grid and you know so like so many things are locked in but we can commit to that same thing we just need to kind of pull back on the amount that we're playing but then also to push ourselves as we're getting that you know because the thing that we're trying to get is to be able to commit to that time, commit to that form, commit to the rhythm, commit to the groove,

and continue on. And that's something that any of us can achieve today at the level we're at. Totally. Totally. And that doesn't require, George, like, you know, years and years of working with a metronome. And in fact, you know, to Chick's point, like you might not want to do that. That might hurt your time. I've had other people famously say that that can can hurt. I personally like, like I said, I like to use it as a reference. I do too. And I think it's, you know, and I think even the way the chick has, and you know what, we'll link to this too because he has a great video on his channel talking about why he doesn't practice with a metronome, but I don't know that he's ever like, no one ever should. Yeah. And regardless, you know, I mean, his whole vibe about

teaching everything was introducing different elements and then you have to find the things that work, you know, for you. But it's, it's one of those things that we know it's not going to, on its own hurt or help. It's how you use it. And you don't want to overuse it. And it's never a silver bullet. But I think what you're saying, this way to practice, at least a point. portion of your practice, an important part of your practice, every day where you commit to the grid and standard. Now, that is going to help you. Like, that is going to put you in a whole another place and highly recommended. And you can build that up with, you know, root and shells, you know, going through the form, a lot of different ways to do it. But it's a concept that can

work great. And I think what it does, too, and I would just, you know, mention one thing about the question in general. It's important, like, when we look at these big issues and, like being able to play like as an example what we just listened to the master chikaria where you're playing with a sense of time and groove and what does he call it um internal sense of time that internal clock where it's so obvious and strong and like irrefutable you know um that the the problem that each of us has and what george's question is like how do i develop that and it's so cool because he's not like saying like how do i play like chikorea it's like how do i get it. And that's exactly the way to look at it. So when we, a lot of times people look at the

solution to a problem. So the problem is I don't have a good sense of an internal time. So they spend all this time thinking about the solution. Is that a metronome? Is that meditating? Is that getting a Adam Manis Trio CD or red hat? Yes, it is. I'm just saying stuff I'm looking at. You know what I mean? But it's like those are all possible solutions. Available in Apple music? Spotify. These are all solutions. It's like we spend 80% of the time thinking about the solutions and 20% of the time thinking about the problem because we think that's solution-based, whatever. But no, no, no.

We have to really, really think about the problem more. What was that? Einstein had some kind of thing. I mean, we think about this only applies to math and physics, but I think it very much applies to music and a lot of things. But he said something like 99% I think even was like, you know, because they were like, how did you come up with the, I'm paraphrasing and screwing this up?

It was Albert Einstein. Oh, this would be fun. Go ahead. He was a bass player, right? Al, Al, Einstein. No, but he was basically like, they're like, how could you come up with the solution? That's so amazing. How did you figure the solution out?

He was like, I wasn't thinking about the solution. I thought about the problem. I worked on the problem. It's like, here's the problem. Let me figure it out. Let me look at it from different sides. Let me know what it is. Let me, and then maybe you get lucky and are able to be revealed to you as a solution there.

Totally. And I think with this kind of thing that's so big and potentially impactful on your playing, it's a wise way to look at it. George, great question. Peter, some good stuff there. Peter, if someone wanted to ask us another question, where might they go? They might go to YouTube. They might go to Twitter.

There's a lot of places. But if they want to do it via voicemail or voice memo, go to you'll hear it. com. Speaking to the pipe. Yeah. And you can go to Twitter. Hit us up there. I mean, we're on and off.

I'm not going to say we're always there. It really wants to get our Twitter game going. I mean, you know, it's funny. I say it and then I don't go on there. I know. Because there's so much just mess on there. It's pretty bad. Is your Twitter a mess?

I don't have a Twitter anymore. Oh, you don't. But you've got the you'll hear of Twitter. Do I, though? We're going to get on there. But yeah, leave us to speak pipe at any time. And as we always say, don't feel like you have to have your question finally refined because you have several chances to ask it. That's right.

Yeah. Cool. Until next time. You'll hear it.