You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Live From Instagram: Q&A (5/2/20) - Part 2

Episode Date: May 8, 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 two of this week's episode, and be sure to tune in this Saturday, May 9, for another livestream. On Monday, we'll air the thrilling conclusion of this 3-part episode.Today's episode is sponsored by Anytune. Anytune is the perfect tool for anyone looking to improve their practice sessions. Learn, transcribe, and practice solos by slowing down the tempo, adjusting the pitch, and (for Pro+ users), isolating specific instruments in the mix. For more info, follow this link.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.

I saw a good win. I saw a bunch of good winning. Thank you guys for all the questions. Thank you for being here. Happy Saturday. It's Saturday. Uh-oh, low battery. I've been doing so much live stuff.

My battery's low. Okay, this is a good one from NiceCorp official. Any tips for landing on the right note on the right beat? Instead of an eighth note too early or too late. Well, it's funny because I think about that. If you land on the right note on the right side of the beat, I think we're talking about syncopation, upbeat, downbeat.

A lot of times that can sound corny, right? Like the wrong notes, and especially landing on, often can be more interesting. Now, the concept of like, can you hear what you're playing at a relatively high percentage as you play?

If you can, then you can make those decisions. If you're not sure how it's going to sound until you play it, you're kind of stuck because it's like, uh-oh, you start to think, I landed on the wrong beat.

I land on the wrong note. Whereas we have an infinite kind of, uh, you know, number of choice. where we can land, how we can play things, to the point of we're progressing towards nothing is wrong. Now, by saying nothing is wrong doesn't mean that some people don't sound like poo-poo because they do. But, you know, so you can't just be like, well, I can play anything.

But I think that even thinking about it in terms of the right note or the wrong note, now, if you want to, the more important, I think is to figure out the difference between what it sounds like, what it feels like to land on the wrong note and the right note. And so I think you're talking about like scale tones or chord tones versus non-core tones. And then the wrong or right beat, the upbeat or the downbeat, depending on the kind of line and stuff. And to me, you can do that with some restrictive practicing where you just say, okay, I'm going to play a bunch of courses over a blues or rhythm changes or all the things you are, some tune that you're very comfortable with and say every line I'm going to end on an upbeat eighth note, but on a chord tone. And then the next time you say, I'm going to do it all on the upbeat, but a non-court tone. And you try each of those combinations,

and then you just start to drill into your head how they work, how they sound, and then you can make those on-the-fly decisions when you're going to use them. Yeah, that's the key, is to get comfortable. There really is no right or wrong notes on or off the beat. It's your control over that that is the magic of it. And you have to get comfortable and practice,

you know, landing on core tones off the beat or landing on, I mean, like if you land on the second, that's a, or the fourth, that could be a very beautiful note. to be a strong landing point or strong jumping off point. So you just have to learn how to accept those and how to control that and know, you know, hear everything. Here, you should theoretically be able to make any note over any chord work. Yes.

If you're doing it right. And that's the ultimate goal. Not I got to line up this like a robot. Oh, good. We get to do our robot voice. I have to line up the note on the robot voice. It's really. Yeah.

Oil. It's a language. It's a language thing. That's a good one though. Fat Janet, who's our boy Nick. What up, Nick? He says, is hand-ed dependence better practiced on a per-song basis to start mastering each hand or together slowly with drills. And Nick, the answer is yes.

No. Oh. I mean, yes. No, I would say yes to all of it. Hand-independence is something you need to be practicing at all times with everything. yes absolutely uh do we need to expand on that no we'll tell you when we see you in person nick yeah we'll we'll demonstrate it for you in uh at post pandemic um there was another one was that from nick two or somebody just oh no this is christian uh is the academic study of theory and jazz

i e jazz school worth it yes and no i mean it can be and it can't be it's like any i don't think it's really any different than any other academic study. It depends on who you're studying with, but it also depends on you as a student, I think. You know, a lot of times we'll say, you know, you'll hear musicians or others throw out, oh, don't go there. It's not worth it. Or go there. You're going to learn everything you need to know. Ultimately, no matter what you do, you have, you're going to spend most of your time teaching yourself. So we know, though, we can get, I don't know any great jazz musician that hasn't benefited from, you have, you know, from knowledge from their elders or from their,

their peers for that matter. I don't know anyone that's ever done this alone. You know, now, you know, jazz school is an organized place that you can do that or somewhat organized place, depending on where you go.

But you can also get it other ways. You can get it from recordings, from talking to people, whatever. But ultimately, whatever information you get, you got to go into the practice room and teach yourself.

And by teach yourself, I don't mean you come up with ideas from the air, is take those things that you believe and that have been proven to work. work, find what works for you from, you know, disseminate all this information and then practice. And to me, practice is teaching yourself. You know, you're drilling it over and over again. You're working on your ear training.

You're working on the fingers. All the things that we talk about. I mean, it's just like open studio. Like we're a music school in a way. We're not a, I mean, we are a jazz school. But we can put all this information out. Ultimately, everyone has to take it and kind of teach themselves by practicing. So I think jazz school, look, the jazz programs are the most developed they've ever been.

And I think for when I came up, and even when you came up, Adam, it was a, you know, when we were at the age, you're normally going to, we went to music school. It was different. It's so much better now. And it's going to continue to get better. But it's like anything. I mean, is biology worth the degree you get? If you go to the right place and you make sure you get the information you need and don't take on too many loans and stuff, it can be wonderful. Same for jazz school.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. It's what you put into it that you'll get out of it. And I would just say, too, that I am seeing the other part of your question is that. the academic study of theory and jazz. I think that there's nothing wrong with the academic study of anything in the arts. But in order for the side that you want to become a performer, you want to always keep the academic side, the theoretical side in perspective in terms of how it can inform you as a player.

I've never believed in like, well, the more you understand about advanced harmony and, you know, fancy word harmony, as I like to call it, words that I don't understand. But the more that you understand of that, the less good of a player, you can be. I don't believe that at all. They don't necessarily go hand in hand. What's important is that you can hear all that advanced stuff, whether or not you understand it from a theoretical standpoint beyond your ears. That's kind of up to you if you want to do it. That can certainly enhance things. It's not as necessary. But you do need to be able to hear it, to be able to play it, to be able to live it, to feel it, so that you can pull your story out. And I think that academic

studies of jazz can go. Well, I mean, it's not just I think. You can see it. I mean, look at the great young players coming out of these programs now that are, um, you know, um, you're you know, very academic. We had Ulysses Owens on the other day doing a Q&A. You know, he went to Juilliard. He's teaching there now. He's also, he's gotten a lot of street jazz like on the road learning from the elders, but he also got the very academic thing at Juilliard and has benefited from it for sure.

That's true. Well said. That boy, Tom says, what do you guys think about playing over pedal points going in and out or just all out? So Tom, that, that, that idea of going in and out. and what to use over a pedal point is almost self-descriptive with a pedal point. Like, they are a tension machine. They're designed to help you build tension so that you can release it.

Like, if you are just going out constantly over the pedal point, and that's all you do, and this is the only place it ever goes, that is boring. That sucks. That's not fun for any... Hold on. I got bored. I was doing something out too. Yeah.

No, Peter's checking his email. That's not cool. these are designed to do is this. We're going out, and I'm going through these quickly, by the way, but kind of taking this out and then we go here. We resolve it somewhere interesting. So if you think about the pedal point as like your machine for tension, you have to think about where's this going, eventually where am I landing on? Like that was a B-flat pedal. I knew that I was going to go to E-flat major eventually. So I was, I wasn't thinking about this a lot, but the idea is that you're building this tension to that e-flats.

You pick things that you know are going to tense up before we resolve to E-flat major. And that could change whatever pedal point and whatever target you have. But that's like the typical use of a pedal. There's a few ways you can use it, but that's like the 99 percentile way of using a pedal point. Nice. Awesome. Okay. Question. How and where do you apply?

Lidian scale. So I think that the Lydian scale, typical places that we apply it. Only in Lydia. Only in Lydia. You know, especially as pianists or anybody, you can come to the piano and play this. Think about the scales in terms of like the harmonic sound or like a chord that you would play sound. And sometimes it's better to think about that first than opposed to just playing up

and down the scale because we're never going to apply it in that way. So it's like, what is the sound? So that sharp 11 major sound We can find examples And I'm trying to think to What's a tune that starts on like the sharp 11 I don't know if there is one There's got to be a monk tune right

What's that There's got to be a monk tune That starts on a sharp 11 somewhere Yeah Oh yeah okay so you take Oh yeah but that's he does a lot of like Lydian dominant Yeah

Which is its own sound But anywhere you found A sharp 11 in the melody Especially if it sits for a second Like you can use that to kind of sort of center your harmonic ear to what that Lydian scale is. And then you want to kind of go through the scale, you know, Thurro, broken thurros, broken fists and stuff, as opposed to just getting stuck.

Because some of these scales sound so corny when you play them up and down and start to get them in your hands and you're like, I can never use this anywhere. And what you'll see is that you get more in advance and you move further than the music, you start to find all sorts of ways to use the scale. And also, don't sleep on using these scales over different chords, even though you would say okay that's just another mode if you diatonically use it somewhere else but it can sort of center view in the same way with like the root third fifth seventh sharp 11th or whatever in a way so I'm thinking like I'm sorry I don't have my keyboards hooked up right now because I'm still

come on figuring come on man um but like uh I don't know does that even make sense yeah I can conceptualize it yeah yeah yeah it yeah that makes sense okay cool uh let's see here do you recommend beginner start with jazz music, or do you recommend they practice some classical music and get some technique before learning jazz? I really think that, you know, when you're starting out, you should follow whatever you're passionate about and you're going to improve faster. Whatever music you love to play, if you follow that, you're going to improve. Now, as you get going, you know, once you're a couple years in, you're going to realize that there are different types of music that give you different types of advantages. You know, if you learn a little bit of

classical music, you're going to get some things with the technique that you don't get just by strictly playing jazz. And a lot of jazz musicians, especially pianists, have some kind of classical background just because of how rich the pedagogy of classical piano is. But that doesn't mean you have to do that. I mean, you could get into anything. You can get into pop music if you're learning piano or whatever instrument. Whatever you're passionate about, I think that's where you should start. Yes, I totally agree on that. And, um, Okay, we have Ryan's asking, I love your guys concept of creative scale practice.

Can you recommend any methods for creative arpeggio practice that are practical for playing? You know, the concept of the jazz arpeggio, T.M. Patent pending is something I think that's a good way, both to conceptualize, well, and really just for actual usage and for practicing. And it definitely lends itself to the creative scale practice, just the creative practice thing in general.

And so by jazz arpeggio, what we're talking about is one, three, five, seven, dominant seventh in this case, nine. Any combination of one three, five, seven, nine, it could be flat nine, sharp, I mean, any of the alterations, major seven, minor seven, it could be flat at fifth, minor third. But the idea of we go one, three, five, seven, three, five, seven, nine, that's the foundation. So it's like a broken arpeggio. And then if you take the creative scale ideas, a lot of those will work over that as well. And this is especially good if you're trying to like incorporate some of those upper extensions better.

Diminished stuff, it works really good over that. Any kind of altered sound, you can find a lot of great arpeggios in there. And then they're very closely related to usage because they're often combined with, you know, a scale fragment going the other way or whatever coming out of these arpeggios. as opposed to just a straight, major, minor, diminished, augmented arpeggios not that useful for straight usage in jazz music like they are in classical. Yeah, no, they're not used in the same way. They're more used in conjunction with scales and things like that. Didn't we, didn't they use, back in the 70s and 80s when I was coming up, if you pulled out

a straight arpeggio, a straight major arpeggio on a jazz gig, you might get your butt kicked in the alley after the game. But see, bullying and stuff, musical bullying is not allowed anymore, so we're not condoning that. I'm just saying that used to happen. That's a net positive that you don't get beat up

for playing an arpeggio, I think, just in well-being of the world. But yeah, you stupid arpeggio nerd, I'm gonna kick your butt, man. Not great. We got a question here from Phaza Aaron, who I can't really see your picture, but I know Faiza.

Really? And she's a marvelous singer based here in St. Louis. Just a beautiful vocalist. Hi, Adam and Peter. As a singer, I'm trying to enhance my vocals with piano. Do you have any practice advice for vocalists, basic accompanying for scat work? So, first of all, Phaza, it's been a while since I've seen you how you're doing, hope you're well during this time. And secondly, you might try just very basic, like, root shell pretty voicing that you can just feel out on the piano. And so I'll just explain what these are, just really quick. So you have in your left hand just the root of the chord. So if it's a C major seven,

C, and then the shell, right, the third and the seventh. So C, E, B. And then your right hand, you are going to add some pretty notes. And these are usually a combination of these, either the fifth, the ninth, the 11th, or the 13th, depending on the cord, and depending on how you want to hear it. So in your left hand, again, you have the root and the shell, the root and the third and the seventh. And then on your right hand, you can add any pretty notes you want, like the ninth and the 13th or the ninth and the fifth. Those simple voicings can take you through most great American songbook standards. And it's a great way if you go through a simple song, trying to think of one I know you do. Oh, one of those French songs that we played a concert of

once. Any of those songs, yeah, no, this is awesome. You can, you can just go through, because they're all seventh chords and just go through and figure out these very simple and it's a very structured voicing so it's like a formula that you can kind of lay over and it's a great like kind of introduction into getting like good sounding harmony into into your playing that way and it's great for for singing over i do it all the time too i practice my singing trying to get better at that and so i just play these very simple voicing underneath that awesome awesome all right we're going to take a couple more and then Instagram gives us a hard out at an hour. So we've just got a few more minutes.

And someone was asking about a metronome app. And I was going to skip over that just because like whatever app I have, I don't even know the name of, I think it's called metronome. I'm so bad about these kind of, I'm like anything that just clicks. But I like using the old school box metronome, which is what I usually do. But then somebody's saying that any tune has a metronome, I think, and sponsor the podcast. Yeah, any tune is a fabulous app. It's well beyond just a metronome.

but highly recommend that and it's a lot of fun. And then someone else said, oh, Nice court said, just Google Metronome, Google's got one. So Google's taking over everything. Maybe you've got a metronome built in. I've used that Google Metronome app. It doesn't work great. Are you serious?

Yeah. So Google's figured out an algorithm to like spy on us and figure out what we're about to buy, but it can't figure out how to go click, click, click. Yeah, it asked for my phone number when I went to try to start it at 120. lame that's right right all right should we pick out one more each yep okay if adam has any fault he's agreeable to a fault yeah that's true

okay i'm going back because i always feel bad like it's like we're short-term memory like whoever answers the latest questions gets answered first it's like we should call it lifel last in first out that's right fifo when you're getting on the buses like at at the airport you know where you got like at for an airport you got to go to fifo you it's either fifo or lifo that's right google it oh here's a okay i'm gonna pick this one as my last question from tomas how are you guys fine how are you i'm doing okay i need a haircut i'm just seeing from this this post oh oh you're just clowning on me now see but no no no no i might i might go full on peter martin here no i mean is that always that would that be kind of stealing your thunder it's funny how like yeah

no this has been a weird thing that's thrown me off i know people have been like oh my god, I can't get my hair. I'm like, wow, that's something that has not changed for me at all. The hair, that the hair maintenance routine is like, I'm very flexible with that. Well, I think that looks like, I think we got them all, man. That's all the questions. Yeah, that's it. That's all I can see.

I think we've answered all of them. Well, let's just tell people, please tune into the podcast when you get a chance if you're not already. We're going to keep doing this live. But if you want to listen to this or excerpts from this, this will be edited down into a nice little, episode or episodes this week. And we've got a couple of cool best ofs. I think the last episode was the best of it.

Folks kind of like those sometimes the most, you know, and it's fun to mix those in. It's fun for us to hear stuff that we did a while ago because it's a daily podcast coming to Monday through Friday.

We probably should go seven days pretty soon. It's like every day is the same now anyway. But what we want to give you guys is a little bit of structure. So when you don't hear new episodes on the weekend, you know, Monday morning comes at 3 a.m. Central Standard time when the next episode drops. Can I do a little plug, Peter,

real quick? Please. So if we have any piano access pass or Open Studio all access pass members, check me out this week every day Monday through Friday at 1 p.m. Eastern time, I'll be doing live guided practice sessions on Zoom.

Just go to the daily guided practice session on your dashboard and check those out. We're going to be working on some cool stuff all week. So come through to my open studio members here. Yep, that's Monday through Friday, 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, New York City time, right? That's right.

Yep. And yeah, this is some cool stuff. We got a lot of live stuff for everyone, but the member stuff. So I audited one of your guided practice sessions this last week. And it's really fun. You know, and it's very much like it's not as handholding as folks think. So especially if you want to engage. It's like going to a really good yoga or meditation class.

Like you think you're going to go in and like they're going to. going to take care of you. They're going to guide you. And that's what Adam does. He really guides you. And, you know, there might be some things for sure. There's some things that you can't keep up on some things just like a yoga class. That's fine. It's there. It's being in that environment where you're, and you're also able to learn new practice skills. This is something we don't talk about and not what we do on the podcast, of course, but musicians in general don't talk to each other enough about at different levels and whatever alike how you practice. And there's nothing like being guided by someone who really has a knack for practicing

and not only can do it by you know by demonstrating as you do but actually guiding you with some soothing words as you go and giving instruction as you go. Awesome. All right. Well, thanks y'all for the questions. Yeah, join us here next week. And we'll be back here next week.

Check out the podcast all week, of course. And sorry, we're talking on top of each other. It's all good. latency. I'm laid on the latency again. Until tomorrow, you'll hear it.