You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Live From Instagram (5/9/20) - Part 3

Episode Date: May 15, 2020

Peter and Adam are going to be streaming live on Open Studio's Instagram every Saturday for the duration of the global health crisis. On the final part of this week's edition, they'll answer questions on how to deal with quick chord changes and how to make a living as a jazz pianist.On the calendar for Open Studio events today: at 4:00 PM EDT, Peter, Reuben Rogers, and Ulysses Owens, Jr. celebrate the newest Open Studio course (Rhythm Section Workout, available now!) by hosting a Q&A on YouTube. And at 8:00 PM EDT, Peter's weekly Shelter in Place concert series continues on his YouTube channel. To keep up on all the live events from Open Studio, check out this handy calendar - we're adding new events regularly so pop in to see what we've got in the pipeline.In light of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, we understand that money is tight for a lot of people right now. That's why we've decided that for the duration of this crisis, we'll be running a Choose What You Pay campaign at Open Studio. Choose whichever course you want and then let us know how much you're willing to pay - that's it. For more info, click this link.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 Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey Pete. Yes. You think we can cram some life-changing jazz piano advice into 11 minutes? Let's do it. Start right. Bam! Now. I'm Adam Manus.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily. Music advice coming at you. Bam. Music advice coming at you today, sponsored by AnyTune. Go to Anytune. You asked to check out the most amazing musical tool for transcription,

really for hearing music in a completely different way. What's their tagline again, Pete? Music practice perfected. That's so true. And that's cocky, but you know what? It really is right. I mean, this is, you know, we preach very little about bringing in external tools and your phone and all this stuff when you're practicing. But if you're going to have one thing, or I would say two things, a metronome and any tune, that's really all that you need.

The rest is all about being at your instrument and being present. But this is truly an app, a tool, a beautiful piece of refined software that's going to enhance every part. of your practice routine, especially any kind of like for any type of transcription, trying to learn a tune, that kind of a thing. Man, I am digging these Q&As. We're live again on Instagram. If you're listening to this podcast, every Saturday at 2 p.m. Eastern time, go to the Open Studio Instagram channel.

That's Hey, Open Studio is the handle. And join us for Q&A. Ask your questions. Hey. Hey, open studio. And so we've got a couple of really good questions here right now that we were saving for this last one for this session. And the first is from.

Coldiada? I don't even know if I got even close to that name. IG handles are, they're often too woke for me because... Col diada. Col dia. What? How do you deal with changes of many chords that go by very quickly, like rhythm changes? And I think this is a great question.

I remember Ethan Iverson had a blog post about how rhythm changes is actually much harder than something like Giant Steps or 262. That, you know, core changes that have been. landmarks like like a wane shorter tune or like cold train changes are actually once you kind of get in the thick of it are pretty straightforward right you just play what's over the chord and you change it everything your brain adjusts very quickly but playing over functional harmony that moves by quickly like a rhythm changes or even Cherokee when it gets up to like 350 or something like that is much more difficult because you get in this pattern of like well b flat major scale just works and so you know

And so, but that's not essentially musical or in the bebop language. So I think this is a great question today. Yeah, and I can tell you one thing. I bet that Ethan Iverson blog post didn't go by quickly. Hey, now! Well, he is a thorough writer. He's a wordsmith. He is.

Yeah, so I mean, I think that the, you know, for me, the biggest thing that that can help with this, with this challenge is, you know, like kind of overall, because you talk about a lot of, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's. so varied. You talk about giant steps. You talk about rhythm changes. I mean, anything could go by quickly in a way, right? But I think overall, finding those sections that you can treat kind of as the same, I mean, I hate to say just harmonic area, but that is kind of initially how you're going to look at it. So, you know, common notes between chords, of course, we're looking at that. But even in terms of where they lay within the structure of the form, you know, is a good kind of entry point to finding those. So what you need to do is actually slow things down a lot and really understand what the

form is as opposed to trying to do all this in, you know, fast and in real time. What will happen is like as you deepen your understanding and I shouldn't even say understanding, I think just your your ability to feel the form at an unconscious or subconscious level where like you know it so well. It's just there. It'll get you closer to that point of when you. are playing it fast, you know, when you hear people say like, man, it's like everything was going by so fast, but all of a sudden, like, somebody's pitching 102 miles and like, you're so in the

zone as a hitter. It's like the ball's coming at you slowly, you know? So we want to, how do we get to that point when we're playing over fast rhythm changes? And it's like knowing the form so well that you're not having to think about it at all. And so then you can slow things down in terms of what you're playing. And, but you have to have practiced it at that slower rate so that when things do start to slow down a little bit, you'll be able to have some ideas and to start playing over those bar lines, identifying those areas where you can just create melodies with interesting rhythms, not really worrying about what the harmony is below. That's right. And then once you get there, like once you have that form ingrained, not only can you slow down what you're playing,

but you can start simplifying what the changes actually are. Because let's not forget that, you know, in rhythm changes, we have the two bar chunks that's like a 1625, right? But really, functionally, that's just a one, a bar of one, and a bar of five. Right. And once you realize that, that those big movements can happen, and that you can just play one for a bar, like a B-flat for a bar, and then you could play F-7 for a bar. Yeah. Or however you want to approach that, that becomes a whole thing.

So you basically go B-flat, F-7, B-flat-7, B-flat-7, E-flat. And now you're through a whole A-section playing half the changes that you thought you had to play. yeah yeah and I think even for tunes where you know you're moving through seemingly you know violently different harmony quickly so like a giant steps violently I like that yeah I mean it's like but if you think about the root movement of that I mean this is like I was like to think about challenges like yeah this is a hard thing but like sometimes that if you look at it upside down there's some part of it that's actually easier so like when we're playing really fast it's like oh it's so hard

because how do I keep track of where I'm at? Well, what's the advantage to that? Turn it around. To the listener, it's going by so fast that you get to the next place a lot quicker. So if you think about the first phrase of giant steps, B, D, D, boom, bomb, you start on B major and then B, do, do, do, bang, E flat major. Like, you're from B major to E flat major very quickly. So one thing you can do is just improvise over the B major and go right to that E flat major

because you can still be on one phrase, even if you're playing an instrument that you have to physically breathe in, you can actually go way beyond this. So you can skip over some of those other chords there. And that's like you don't want to always do that because then it sounds like you don't know the changes. But you need to have the ability to do that

and to play it in a meaningful melodic way with great rhythm laying into the groove and all that kind of stuff so that you can do that. And that can be a very great way to navigate quickly moving changes. And then if you want to get to the point where you can play all the, the changes and even more. You have to practice being able to play chord tones from each one of those,

and you have to do that slowly. So if you're doing giant steps, then you want to hit all those changes, which, by the way, I think that strategy that you just mentioned is similar to the rhythm changes one that I was talking about and is the most effective and probably the most used by like real players when they, you know, things start going by fast. You just start simplifying things. But if you want to be able to just nail everything, you got to just hit chord tones of each of those changes, start slow. literally just do like how the melody is, or even other chord tones of those half notes, which is what the melody is,

and just practice making sure you're on some kind of relevant chord tone to the chord that's under you. And you'll start getting a feel for it, then start doing quarter notes. And then start doing eighth notes, until you're really playing over the changes. It's going to become very clear

what you have and what you don't have when you start doing. doing this. Yeah. Great stuff. Great stuff. So Esco asks, how do you make a living and get into the jazz world as a pianist finishing music studies? First of all, just a little reminder, we're never finishing our music studies. They go on forever. It's like potty training when you're a little kid. You still got to use proper potty technique the rest of your life. Oh yeah, yeah. I was like, wait. But no, but I would say that the mindset of staying a student of music will serve you well and will be one of the most important things to help you to keep making a living.

I really strongly believe that. So try to ship that mindset a little bit. But, you know, right now is just, it's such a crazy time to even think about how you make a living as a musician. So I think we need to wait and just until all this kind of global upheaval shakes out a little bit. I think that there's, like when you tap into sort of the needs of what music are and how that serves people, the listeners, you know, and the audiences, I think that we'll see, you know, in the, you know, new ways to reach people and a lot of the same old ways kind of coming together in some interesting ways. So the main thing is that we, you know, try to just be as attuned to people's needs for

music and getting that music to them however we can because that's how you're going to make a living. That can be through teaching. That can be through performing. That can be through helping others, collaborating all the different ways. The better you are and the better of a collaborator you are, I think the more chance that you're going to be able to have to be able to really make an impact. And when you, so it's kind of like, you know, the goal like we talked about before is to make a living as a pianist. But don't get obsessed just with that.

Get obsessed with how, who can you collaborate with? Who can you learn from? Who can you serve? Who can you help? Who, you know, who can you hook up with musically to further your understanding of reaching an audience and all these things? And then I think the make a living part will come along with that. And I think just we just a little bit of time left, but to put a button on that too is if

the earlier that you can find out who you are as a musician and a player and what you can bring to the music, the farther you're going to go quicker. So if you can really develop your own sound and your own personality and let that come through in your music and start working on that, I mean, that takes work just like anything else. Start working on that now. You'll be fine. All right. Great. Well, man, these were fantastic questions as always. Adam, our listeners and our IG viewers here are woke, wouldn't you say? That's the word of the day is woke. Yeah, no, I love the Instagram questions.

They are a little bit different than any other format we do. And I think actually they get some different responses out of us. And I think that's kind of a cool thing about it for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it harkens back to the speakpipe days, but it does have a little bit of a different twist on it, right? It does. Yeah. I mean, at first, it's way more personal.

on is live. So again, join us over on Instagram every Saturday at 2 p.m. Eastern and ask us some questions. It's where Peter and I are recording our, you'll hear it's for the week, most weeks now, as we're sheltering in place. And then, yeah. And oh, join me over on the guided practice session, the daily guide of practice session of your piano access pass member. Every Monday, I'm starting a transcription club. And we're, of course, going to be using Anytune. So go to anytune.us to check that out. But join us. We're going to be just transcribing little chunks of solos every week. hoping to kind of keep each other accountable for our transcribing work every week. Yeah, and the feedback we're getting from members on the daily guided practice sessions has just been amazing and hats off to you, Adam, for that.

I mean, I would say that consider joining Piano Access Pass just for this. I mean, of course it comes with way more, but this is well worth the price of admission. So get that while you can, as we say. And we're sponsored by any... My hat never comes off, by the way. My hat is always on. That's right. We're sponsored by Anytune.

Go to Anytune.us or you can search in the Apple App Store for this wonderful app. It's also a Mac app, which is a Mac piece of software that we highly recommend. It comes in a free version and a pro version. And regular listeners know how much we're in love with this. And I'm amazed, Adam, how much I still discover about what they do. And in really just like creative, we talk about creative scale practice. This is a great tool to foster your creativity. take it more. I mean, we talk about, of course, the ability to slow things down and identify them

and even isolate them different instruments as we're transcribing, which we're big fans of using this app. But also when you combine that with, you know, marking up and looping within that, that's when it really becomes a game changer because your practice just got automated. You know, talk about drop down and give me 20. I know I'm not supposed to be going back to that, but this is a way to make yourself drop down and give you 20 as you're trying to learn to transcribe that phrase. So true, man. Go to Anytune.us. That's right.

And until tomorrow, you'll hear it.