You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Live From Instagram: Q&A (4/25/20) - Part 1

Episode Date: May 1, 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. Here's part one of this week's episode, and be sure to tune in tomorrow, Saturday, May 2, for another livestream.Social distancing might mean going to concerts is out of the question, but Open Studio is still keeping the live music going! Peter is performing solo piano every Friday evening at 8:00 PM EDT on YouTube. To watch tonight's performance, use this link. 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, Peter. Hey, Adam. Why am I always late on the latency? Well, you can't spell latency without L-A-T-E and then some other letters as well. That's true, actually. Yes. 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. Coming at you today, we're doing our live Q&A on Instagram. What's up, Instagram? What's up, IG? If you're listening to this podcast, if it doesn't work. If you're listening to this podcast later in the week, please know that for the next few Saturdays at least,

we're going to be live on Instagram, 2 p.m. Eastern time. Come for your Q&A. Peter, we've already got a bunch of good questions in here right now. I know, I know. I want to jump right on. Should we do that? Let's do it. Is the water fine?

Are there sharks? Yeah, there's some really hard-hitting musical and piano questions. Like, what's your favorite ice cream flavor? Really? Is that on there? I didn't see that. Yeah. Okay.

You know what? Should we tackle that one? Oh, yeah. What's your favorite ice cream flavor? So I love my favorite all-time. It's not even ice cream. It's frozen custard. Ted Drew's Oreo concrete.

Oh, that's a good one. You know what? Back in my milk and dairy-consuming days, I love that one. I loved all the concretes. That's a famous St. Louis thing. But now, you know, you would think, ha, ha, ha, you're plant-based, Peter. You don't get to have any fun with ice cream. Oh, contrary, my frere, as they would say in France.

because there's some beautiful plant-based alternative ice creams. Coconut milk. I don't know if you know about that. Coconuts are not just used as bowling balls in the South Pacific. They're actually used to create plant-based milk. So, yeah, we're getting, I don't know what brand it is, but a coconut milk, like cookie dough. Oh, man, it's great. It's happening.

Yep. Yeah, sounds happening. You're like, yeah, whatever. I'll stick with my concrete, thanks. Got it, got it. All right, I saw a question here about, that was really interesting. I don't know how much, maybe between us, we can come up with it. This is from Nice Court official.

That's a good name there. How do you go about practicing 16th note lines? Are they anything different from 8th note lines? And so I'd like to give this one a try. I think, you know, from the standpoint of if you go in half time, there is no difference. A 16th note line or a half as much as the temple as an 8th note line. It's the same. But normally we're thinking about these things, an eighth note line, a 16th note,

you know, within the same time. So like if we're here, a one, two, three, four. Badu, bud, do, badu, bab, bab. That's an eighth note line, whereas the 16th note line would be, stupid. Dibba, bu, bab, but do that liba. So the way I think about it is that the urgency of, you know, the kind of swing feel that holds together those lines is already naturally heightened in the 16th note's line as opposed to the eighth note. So you don't have to work as hard for that kind of part of the dramatic flare of the groove. But the reality of like how you use 16th note lines usually or oftentimes is is about going in and out of eighth note lines. So it's not just okay, yeah, you can go into a double time feel and then that just is its own thing. You know, the rhythm section maybe goes with you, maybe doesn't. But if you think about it.

the transition from eighth notes to 16th notes. And one way I like to practice it and encourage people to practice it is to use the eighth note triplets as kind of a bridge between the eighth note and the 16th notes to give it more of a natural thing and to not make it just a straight double time.

So then you can incorporate them both into the same line. So it might be like, one, two, three, four. Bo do, ba-do-do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-dd-d-d-d-d-d-ddd-dd. You know, so you've got... I started there. I was kind of corny. But it's practicing. No, it's an exercise. So you're starting with the eighth-node-note-old-triplet part of the line, then to the 16th notes.

So I love thinking about, even if you feel like it's too much for you to handle it, sing it's simplified it. simplify it even more than that and do it like what I'm doing, sing it. Because a lot of times we can sing stuff and understand it and comprehend it and pull it in before we can actually play it on our instruments. That's so true. I've had teachers give really good advice to things like, you know, you can practice fast lines like and if you're practicing them as eighth notes, doga doga doga doga doga doda doga doga dot doga doga doga doga.

It's actually much harder than if you were to think about it in half time. doga, doga, doga, dada, and we tend to be freer when we're thinking about those big movements. So that could be one way to think about what's the difference between practicing 16th notes and 8th notes is really think about the speed of the individual duration. So if it's da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. It might be easier to work on the line to think about it as a sort of bigger two, a halftime. Dug-da-da-da-da-dun-dug-da-dun as opposed to do-da-da-da-da-da-da. I even do this. If I'm going to play Cherokee,

do, do, do, do. I'm not thinking like, one, two, three, one, two, deep, one, two, deep, you know what I'm thinking like, yeah, and, uh, uh, uh, uh, don't go, don't, don't, and that way those subdivisions line up in a much more relaxed way.

Yeah, that's great. And I mean, I think that in general, this kind of, you know, 16th notes, if you're a slower tempo or playing fast tempos, you know, the further, the great thing about developing really solid time, practicing with the metronome, practicing with recordings,

really concentrating on your time. is that you'll get to the point where you can feel the primary beat, like what you were just doing further and further away. So if you think about Cherokee, you know, and even further than that, but still keep the confidence of the groove within that, then you'll be able to more naturally, more relaxed, play the lines no matter what tempo you're playing at.

It's awesome. So we have another one here. Ideas for practicing comping inner voice melody. So I'm actually going to take you over here. I'm set up here because I've been recording this course. And I think I'll be able to hear this on Instagram. But one of the first things you can do to get some inner voice movement going is realize you have this middle hand, right? You have the outside of your hand, which can be either the baseline in your left hand or the melody in your right.

And then you have these inner two, your thumb, first finger, maybe your third. One of the first movements you can practice is whatever chord you're in, let's say we're playing like a scene. minor 7 here, right? You see that? I'm going to go like kind of cross-handed. Right? I got like a D-E-flat, B-flat. Or maybe it's just this, right?

C-E-flat, B-flat. Let's pretend like I have like a G and a F in my left hand and I'm doing some comping. One of the first melodic devices we can move is any of these notes either up a diatonic tone. So here if we're in C Dorian, I can move that C up to the D and back, like rock it back and

forth, or down a half step or a combination of those. So like this, C, D, C, B, C. That's like a classic melodic device. You'll notice this device in like Great American Songbook standards and things like that. This idea that you can go up a diatonic tone and rock it back and forth or down a half step. and rock it back and forth, or a combination of those things, you can use that to your advantage for these inside movers, right? So you can play any voicing you like and take one of the inside notes and just kind of rock it back and forth, either up a diatonic tone or down a half step and back, and you're going to hear that sound that I think you're going for. Awesome. You could rock it like we're rocking these open studio t-shirts. What? What? Come on,

now, we rocking it. That's awesome. Got underneath my sweater, promise, promise. All right. These are great. Let's try to fly through because we got so many great questions. I'll just cue up another one. Efficient techniques to learn and memorize transcriptions. Okay. So we're always talking about learning solos.

Now, I'm going to take your question apart a little bit and try to give an answer. Memorized transcriptions. We don't want to memorize transcriptions. We want to learn solos. And it's a slight little thing. But if you get it into your mind, a little twisting when you start it can be more difficult so if you think about learning a solo the most important thing is that you in that you internalize that solo before you even attack it

at your instrument actually so you're listening to it so much and you know we always talk about this is actually the most efficient way to learn a solo um everybody wants to jump right to their instrument be like what what is she playing on that what is he playing you know but the thing is you should be able to sing along to the solo the entire solo like while you're doing something else you should know it that well and then you'll be able to much more efficiently learn the solo. And so it takes a little bit more time. But what it is is pick a solo that you're already passionate about that you know so well. It's already kind of in your ears.

You know, don't just hear something. Be like, wow, I want to learn that Brad Meldas solo that I just heard just now. No, take a few days, a few weeks, however long it is of really attentive listening so that you have it, that you've already learned it in terms of your ears. Now you just have to learn it on your instrument. And then that gets you out of having to memorize a transcription. Now, you can transcribe it or not, but that's the most efficient technique that I know have to learn it.

Also, once you have it, okay, so it's not as easy as just knowing it and sing along, then you learn it. Yeah, then you're like, wait, what's parts coming next? That'll help, but it won't solve everything. Then you can think about, you know, practicing where you're getting the certain sections. Don't learn it measure by measure or line staff, staff by staff. Learn it phrase by phrase, course by course. However, it's the actual solo is constructed as opposed to how you're trying to box it in.

Don't box me in, bro. And so, hey, I'm a solo. Don't box me in. But the idea is that once you have it learned, every day, I mean, this is a multi-day, if not multi-week process, you're spending time at the end of your transcription, your solo learning process playing along with the solo. Like if you've learned two courses so far, play it along. And we'll talk about like having headphones all where it's a little bit louder than you.

so you can really be kind of dominated by the style and the groove and stuff. So then you're getting further inside the solo. You're finding the parts that you know and the parts that you don't know. You're not having to worry about memorizing it measure by measure. You're just learning the phrases, you know. And then the next day, come back and go right to, you would talk about it since you asked about efficiency. I'm going to give you efficient.

Go right to the part that you couldn't do the day before. Don't go back and play all the part that you know. Because that's just going to be further solidifying that, but not taking you. it's just going to be inefficient. So jump right to that next phrase that you need to and have a goal of learning that and maybe the next one that day. Yeah, I love it. This is something that was drilled into me too

as far as like the first thing you should do when you learn a solo, not transcribe it, right? Not write it out, but be able to sing it. And once you can sing it, the rest of it's fairly easy, right? Because you don't even need to be like listening so closely anymore as you try to figure out what it is. You can sing it. It's right there in you.

You know, you already have it. So I think that's the main key. And I think the beauty of that, too, is that you'll find that, and you might think, well, I'm not trying to learn how to sing the soul. I'm trying to learn how to play it. Yeah, we get it. But that'll give you the confidence as you go in to learn it. If you can sing along to the whole solo, that you know it. You know what I mean?

That's actually the hard part. And that's, and this is going to seem counterintuitive because at first it's like, oh, it's a total breakdown to try to find the notes. But that's the ear training part. As your ears get better, as you get to know that style, that's. that'll come quicker. But you actually know the solo when you can sing along with it. So that should give you some good confidence

as you go in and start to translate it to your instrument. Super true. So in Dang01 asks, how do you take practice exercises like drop two in scales and incorporate them into playing actual standards? Well, the first way to do both of those things or really any exercise you're doing is to start with the melody.

start by improvising off of the melody and whatever you've been working on. If that's a drop two exercise, pick a tune you know really well. See if you can play the melody drop two, first and foremost. And then start improvising around that melody, still using the drop two,

the same exercise you were doing, the same concept, but using that melody as you're jumping off point, right? And then maybe start bringing in some of the concepts of the exercise you were doing, whether that was like, you know, broken thirds or something, whatever you were working on. Bring that into that concept of the melody, and then you're golden.

It's always going to sound really good. You're going to get a lot more ideas, too, about where you can take things melodically. Because any device like this, whether it's a scale or a drop-to thing, those are all melodic devices that we need to work through actually playing melodies with. So I would start with the melody. Yep, I like that. Okay, we got another good one from Lhé. I'm always screwing up his name, but I'm always having fun with it. So what can I do?

I lost it now. But it was basically about fingering. What's efficient ways to learn fingering to practice fingering. And I would just say that scales and arpeggios are the most important conduit for implementing really, really effective fingering as a pianist. And I'm assuming we're talking about piano. This applies to some other instruments as well. but you know the technical challenges that we're faced as pianists in any type of music fingering is such an outsized part of that especially when you start to think about fingering

as having the possibility of of really affecting how we phrase how we put groove and vibe and feeling and telling our story on the piano like how important that is we don't have ambrosher to work on we you know we don't have um you know well we do have some situations with our feet with the pedal. I was going to say like a drummer, but not that kind of thing. So like, but fingering on the piano is so important

because we have such a range and we've got two hands that we want to use as much as possible when we want to use it. So a lot of times people are thinking about, okay, fingering is is about for things that you work out. Everything else is a free-for-all. Yes, that's true. But we want that free-for-all when we're improvising

to, for us to be able to kind of automatically go to eventually the most efficient fingering to be able to play something super musical. Like people sometimes think about fingering is only important for stuff that's fast. So they're like, okay, I want to be able to play fast lines.

So I have to work out fingerings on fast lines. No, you need to work out fingers for everything that you play and then let that develop into it becoming automatic and not working out your playing based upon your fingers, but the other way around. But so that you can control the instrument

and make lines and chords and all these things that we want to do. do sound the way that you want them to sound. And I found that, you know, it's been a while, but not long enough ago when I started like really adjusting my mindset to be like, okay, fingering is about, you know, that element of piano technique that I can bring out the sound that I want as opposed to just fingering is about playing arpeggios and scales fast, that things started to really take off from me.

So it's just scales and arpeggios is where we can start to work those things out because those are kind of the basic building blocks of the things that we're going to eventually play and put together with our lines especially. And don't you feel like, too, there's like a part of this that's really connected to, all right, once we're on the right, quote unquote, right finger, what are we doing with it? You know, there's so, like I see so many players

who have no idea how to bring out a good sound on third, fourth, or fifth finger. I was actually, I have your Phillips exercises here, Peter, and there's like a, I will, I will eventually. There's a sheet in there from what I assume was your old piano teacher with all this like amazing technical advice about circles.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That's in there? Yeah. So like I actually did some guide to practice session with some of our open studio students just going up the, because I used to do this too, going up the fingers and making those circles clockwise, counterclockwise and really trying to shape the movement and then also thinking about bringing the sound out from the bottom of the keyboard, like coaxing it up, you know, those kind of thought exercises and visualizations.

those can make a huge difference in the sound that we get out of the piano. You watch great classical pianists who obviously have some of the best technique in the world and they're really, I mean, it's just a beautiful, fluid motion that they're getting.

It's not just about like making sure this finger, like if you get the right fingering going and then you just like throw your hand at the keyboard and there's no, there's no fluid movement with the finger, it doesn't matter. It's going to sound terrible no matter what.

Like you got to have the, the appropriate sound first, and then, you know, the fingering should just be sort of an ease of getting your hand in the right position for a musical purpose. Absolutely. So, you know, from that concept, we would say that, you know, really fingering is about getting you, you know, leading the horse to the well. You still have to execute with each finger as you get there. But what we find with really good and efficient fingering is that then you're in that

position to be able to do the things with your fingers, especially as you're going faster or whatever. But that's why the fingering is still so important on ballads and stuff where you're exposed and sound and touch and shaping the line is even more pressing in a way because you have such control over how things sound and everything's slowed down so everything's exposed, you know. So fingering vitally important at all tempos. Cool.