You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Left-Hand Voicings

Episode Date: June 19, 2019

Old to us, new to you. Peter and Adam talk (again) about several voicings that you can use for your left hand. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Check out the bottom of the page at http://www.openstudionetwork.com/podcast.Special offer for our You'll Hear It listeners: For $129, you can get both Jazz Piano for Beginners and Elements of Jazz Piano ($320 value). Just add both courses to your cart and apply promo code "BOGO" to get this deal. Visit https://www.openstudionetwork.com/courses/Be one of the first 20 people to leave us a rating or review at https://www.youllhearit.com/sticker and you can score a FREE You'll Hear It sticker.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, Adam. Hey, what's up, Pete? I feel like we've done this episode today already. Yeah, I feel like maybe someone might be in a little hot water. Dun, dun, dun, done. Where's Andrew, by the way? Oh, I don't know. I'm Adam Manus.

And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily Jazz Advice. Coming at you. Coming at you today's episode is sponsored by SoundSlic. We love SoundSlic around here. Hey, go to SoundSlic.com slash transcribe. Okay.

You can get started right now on a transcription. You can add a video, whatever video you want. YouTube from Vimeo, from Wistia, whatever you got, your own video. Yep. And then you can transcribe right there in their handy notation software. It's browser-based. You don't have to download anything. It's all right there.

And then you can watch that notation. Scroll along with the video. We use it every day here on our courses on Open Studio. It's one of the most popular features of our courses. Yep. By the way, check those out, all using SoundSlice. Thank you to Adrian for the support of the podcast here. We're loving it.

Yeah, yeah. Check it out for sure. And when you first look at it, you're going to be like, wow, this is complicated, but I can tell you it's so intuitive on the way they've explained things. I mean, it's all laid out there, but you can also just create a free account and jump right in and start playing with it. I find that it's a, it's one of those finely designed and crafted software tools that really lends itself to just being able to play around and learn it as you go. And then you'll be discovering cool little features. It's got so much power to it. But just to get the video

and the notation, sinking is a lot of fun to start out. Totally. We'll include a link here. Soundslice.com slash transcribe. Go check it out. Good stuff. So today we got a redo. We do. We're redoing this entire episode. How are we going to make it sound fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh? Are we redoing the entire podcast or just one episode? Like, should we start from the beginning? Yeah, we're going back to the beginning of last year with the other bad mics and everything. Oh my goodness. Okay. Yeah, we did this episode. We recorded this episode last week and then somehow the audio from the keyboard Yeah, yeah. And didn't we do a bunch of like really cool stuff? Oh my gosh. It was the best episode, I we've ever recorded. Best episode ever!

What our beautiful, gorgeous M-A-A-O-A-O-A-C keyboard here with our logic sounds. Oh, man. I feel like that I felt erased. It got erased. And so we were like... I feel like I'm at the Wiki-Wiki room at the Ramada north by the airport right now. It's very exciting. So we're going to have to redo this. This is from a speak pipe from Jacob.

Let's check it out. Okay. Hey, Peter and Adam. My name's Jacob. I'm from New Jersey. I'm in high school. And I don't have the opportunity to play with a band, and so I'm often by myself. But I feel that left-hand voicings for me are often very limiting, and I don't really know where to start

building a left-hand voicing vocabulary. So what would your fundamental left-hand voicings be for piano? Thank you. It's a great question, Jacob, and I think we can get you going straight away here because this is what we do. That's right. This is how we do it.

Should we start Jacob on maybe some two? Oh, you're really into it. Sorry. Lomontel, George. That's our celebration song. around here by the way. Whenever we release anything new, we got to have some Montel Jordan. This is how we do it. Okay, go ahead.

Left-hand voicing. So left-hand voicings, Jacob, I would start, and don't, all jazz pianists, don't sleep on these two note, root-and-seventh or root-and-third voicings. You can do root-in-six, too, for like a major chord. Nice voice leading there, sir. Yeah, those two notes, root-in-seventh or root-in-third, or sometimes root-in-six, if you're doing like a major-six. that can be such an amazing foundation.

And you still hear, I mean, it's good enough for Monk, it's good enough for Bud Powell. That's right. It's good enough for Red Garland. It's good enough for you, Jacob. That's right. Yeah, and they're truly foundational, right? Because a lot of things,

it's great to sort of have building blocks that you can add onto as your knowledge base expands, but that you can also just use these as well. Because remember, like left-hand voicing's, just like any kind of, voicing, two-handed voicing, right-hand, split voices, whatever, they, it's always about where you're coming from and where you're going. So we don't want to get stuck too much in just, like, let me learn 30 different voicing for G7 that are two-note or three-note. We want to be

thinking about moving up chromatically, whole steps, 251s, 3625, one, four, three, you know, all the different possible situations you'd encounter it. So you can get that hip voice leading going, which is really going to make it work. Yeah, for that, Jacob, you might consider going slowly through, like, a rhythm changes. Slowly through the rhythm changes. Slowly through the rhythm changes. All those work, and then you can really, or blues, you know, whatever. Any of those two-note voicing sound great in those situations.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't seem excited about them, though. I think you're already thinking that there's some stuff we can do to add to them. Well, I have to be, man. I'm hosting the show right now. Single-handedly. So, okay, let's move on to the next steps from there. Something else you can do.

And by the way, you can use all of these together. Everything we're going to show you today. We all use them all the time. You can and should. Interchange them. You may. You may, and you ought to. You shan't.

No, no. So let's talk root and shell. This is a concept we've covered several times here. The great Chris Thomas, my friend, basis, friend of the show calls this root and shiel. Root and shiel. Yeah. Easy, peasy, lemon, squeezy. The shell, of course, is the third, the seventh.

seventh of the chord or the third and the six if you're dealing with a major six chord or a minor sixth chord but if we're on a f blues here yeah got my root got my F seventh got my third nice noise noise all root and shell my left hand all right got a little hipper at the end but that was all root and shell up into that point I think you went to a modified root and shell in that last couple of bars I might have I can't help it man I got to interspers I can't help it. So did that make sense?

We were just going root and shell. And then you can, once you get good at this, Jacob, you can move that root around and do actually like a walking two baseline and a two feel. Comp for yourself. Right. Almost think about it as two separate entities a little bit, right? Exactly.

You got your root in your shell. Let's talk a little bit about, because I know we're always getting questions, what if I can't reach the 10th? What are some options there? Well, this is the great thing about all of these voicings we're talking about is you can roll them. Oh, come on. Give me some butter, because I'm on a roll.

Your audience will still have that root in their ear. I mean, you are hilarious, Pete. I'm looking for affirmation. You can roll it, and the audience is still hearing that down there. You can also, if you can't reach something, and I do this all the time, go back to our good friend, the two note. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.

And hit the ones you can reach. I think you can also, you can roll it, but you can think about the roll as splitting. I mean, you got three notes, root and shell, so it can be root shell, not the one. boom, boom, too. Like that, right? Yeah. And then the ones that are easy you can do. Right, put it down the octave, so it's all within an octave.

Yeah. But sometimes it seems like, you know, you'll hear a nicely laid tenth, and if you can't reach it, it's like, wow, that's that perfect sound. But it's usually not as imperative. Like, if you roll it, if you split it up, if you bring it down within an octave, it's often just about as effective. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. And, you know, if you want to go lower, especially,

Especially if you're on a real grand piano, I don't mind playing in the dirt down there with like, it sounds crappy here on our key station. Right. But on a nice, on a nice grand piano, that sounds just fine. That's right, absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, you can hear it. Like, in terms of people are often asking, like, how low can you go with, you know, thirds and tighter voicing? It really depends on the piano.

I mean, as you go down, you'll start to hear when it gets too muddy for the kind of clarity that you're looking for. But if you're jumping on these quickly, too, that's another reason. that you can actually go lower than all. Just use your ears. Number one, listen. So some rootless voicing that I know you use, and you do this all the time, you'll throw in a root if you're solo piano and then maybe a four-note voicing.

Yeah. Which is usually shell plus two color notes, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like either the ninth or the 13th or both. Yeah. Again, you can use these in a combination of it. Yeah. Those can slide around really easily.

So just that shell, rootless, here is like a F7, I have the seventh and the third, E flat and A, and then I'll add the ninth, G and the 13th D. Yep. And those kind of voices are great. Like play that again. And now leave off the 13. So, you know, that's a similar sign.

I guess that's more like a cluster kind of thing. Yeah, definitely. But you can go back and forth between that and with the 13. It's not a big change, but it gives it a little bit of a different kind of flare and feel. It's not always one or the other. It can be back and forth, I think it's nice. Yeah, if we were doing like an F minor seven, this is a good cluster here.

Yeah. G, A flat. C, leaving off the seventh, but you can then put that back in. Yeah, you can also, that's nice. And that can be used for like A flat major, you know, even though it's got the root in the middle. I think it's nice.

Totally. A lot of options. A lot of options. But remember, try to play these like Adam was just doing, you know, on a blues, on rhythm, on some kind of chord progression, because that's really the best way to develop any kind of voice in his left hand. I mean, it's good to get the shapes and then move them around chromatically so you can learn them in all keys.

That's fine. But even that's a progression. It's a chromatic progression. But, you know, we're always trying to get out of this too much of a vertical way of thinking about these chords because you can lull yourself into a false sense of security of like, oh, I have a good voicing. But then it sounds whack. And you're like, why doesn't that sound good? Because you didn't learn it in the flow of a progression. Yeah, yeah.

Like you're going to actually play it. And if you want to hit all the keys, hit a tune like tune up or all the things you are, something that cycles through some different keys and then just take that through a few keys and you'll hit all of them. Exactly. That's great. That's great. Yeah, because it's like this is vocabulary you want to build up. You want to have these different options that root in the seventh, root in the shell,

four of voicing, clusters, a whole bunch of others. Different inversions, you know. Different inversions. And it's like building up your vocabulary of words. You're adding a few, but you have to think about the words in sentences. You're not just like, you know, throwing out random words to impress people. Well, you can. Works good at dinner parties. So in review, our two-note voicings with the root and one of our shell notes,

either the third and the seventh. Yeah. We have our root and shell. Root and shell. Don't forget, you can then move that root around. Oh, hey. Come on. Key Station. You can separate them out like that. And then finally our rootless shell plus two, shell plus one. And then drop in roots where you want, especially if you're solo piano.

You're just dropping root bombs all up in there. Dropping bombs. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Thanks, Jacob, for the question. Yeah. And you're welcome for two complete episodes, one of which was lost. Thank you, Andrew.

Yeah. Oh. Oh, hey. Hey. So where could someone go if one wanted to leave a speakpipe for us? Speakpipe.com? No. Oh, no.

Okay. I think we made that joke on the scrapped episode. Oh, good. See? We're recreating it nicely. No, they would know. They would go to you'll hearit.com. How about that?

You'll hear it.com. I hear that's a nice place. It's a nice place. That's a safe place. That's a safe place for records and voicing. There's so many root and shiel. How does he say it? Root and shill.

Root and shill. That's pretty good. Yeah, you can check out a bunch of blog posts over there. You can check out all of our You'll Hear at episodes too. You can leave us a speech pipe. You can leave us a message. Hey, go to your podcast app. Leave us a rating and review.

We love seven stars. We do leave. We love and live for seven stars. We leave for anything less. That's right. Speaking of seven stars, there's a piece of software that I would like to award seven stars right now. Is that okay? Is it Outlook?

It is not. It is not word or Outlick. I would give that one and a half stars. Is it Adobe? This is not. It is a little thing called SoundSlice. Ah, yeah. You're familiar with that?

I'm very, very familiar with Soundslice. That is our own seven star, uh, notation. and, you know, we always struggle with what to call it because it's such a cool thing. It's a great transcribing tool. I was thinking about this. I've transcribed or used it in transcriptions on hundreds of transcriptions in my career here at Open Studio. We use it on hundreds of lessons. You can transcribe in it.

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