You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Minor Harmony

Episode Date: April 9, 2019

On today's episode, Peter and Adam answer a Speakpipe on harmonizing tunes in minor keys. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Check out the bottom of the page at http://www.openstudionetwork.com/podcast.Today's episode is sponsored by the Oxford American. The Oxford American is a magazine dedicated to documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South. Its award-winning annual music issue comes with a CD sampler and digital download - a must-have for any serious music fan. Recent issues have featured Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk, John Cage, and John Cage. Visit https://www.oxfordamerican.org/yhi today for a special subscription discount!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. Yep. You know what a speak pipe is? No. Well, you're going to find out today, my friend. I'm Adam Maness. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to The Yule here at podcast.

Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Coming at you. Today's episode is sponsored by the Oxford American. Man, I'm loving the Oxford American having all these copies of the magazine around the office at home. I know. I just read this incredible article by a poet, a young poet, in search of basically Nina Simone, like following Nina Simone's story through this eyes of this young poet. And it's so well written.

And it just reminds me every time I pick up the magazine, like how powerful literature can be towards other forms of art. It's great. Right, right. Yeah, I read that as well. It's actually, I was just checking the title again, Nina is everywhere I go. Yeah. And folks can go to Oxfordamerican.org slash Y-H-I. And there's a lot of content, including this article.

You can go check that out. We encourage you to subscribe because there's nothing like having, you know, the, the magazine in your hand. But this gives you a good idea to see if it's a good fit for you into your reading and intellectual lifestyle. I really prefer the physical magazine. I do. Because you're flipping through, you're seeing the little things, you know, the ads, the poetry, everything. Right. But it's cool because they do have some nice, you know, kind of multimedia stuff that goes along with it that you can come and reference as many of these great magazines do online videos and audio.

stuff and the subscription it comes with at least one CD edition on their on their annual their much beloved annual music edition so you can check that out so again oxfordamerican or org slash y hi for the deals for the features uh so why are we talking about speak pipes okay because we have a speak pipe and i feel like well no you you you want to get on a high horse and go on a little rant there big guy well we have oh wait first of all let me just say i just i'm so just calling you big guy you're not as big as you were if you can i still call you big guy Yeah, I'm still kind of big. I mean, you're a tall gentleman, but you're not big guy.

Like we say big guy. I'm fairly big. Is that a funny thing when somebody says big guy, are you wondering, what do they mean? So when you're really a big guy, when you're kind of a portly gentleman, that's the last thing you want to hear. But what if you're tall also? Can't you be like, oh, maybe. They mean big guy. Oh, what about like big guy, big rich guy, big powerful guy?

That never happens to me. There's a slippery slope. But usually it's some skinny pretty boy who's like, hey, big guy. And you're like, uh, uh, anyway. I wanted to talk about, we have a speak pipe from Zoom from Vancouver and I wanted to. Oh, really? Yeah, I know. And it's a weekly thing.

And he's always got great questions, but I want to say to our beloved You'll Hear at listeners, go on you'll hear it.com. There's a place where you can contact us. You can leave us your voicemail. We need more of these than from just Zoom from Vancouver. As much as we love you, Zoom, and we do. And we've gotten some other ones too. We've rejected a few. We had some politically incorrect ones.

Let's not even go there. Yeah, they're all by you. No, no, no, no. Yeah, their response was going to be. No, but Zoom ask great questions. Don't let Zoom hog the spotlight. Exactly. Come out us with your own voicemails.

They're super fun, and we love answering them. And I'm just looking, I'm like, maybe it's not as easy as I think. Go to you'll hear.com, click on podcast in the upper right kind of corner. And then I just want to make sure. Maybe Zoom is the only one who knows how to. Contact. Oh, then there's another click you're going to need to do, which would be contact. Oh, you just said that, didn't you?

So maybe we'll rehash this. We might. It might take a click away or so. Two clicks. I mean, people figure that. Yeah. Anyway, here's Zoom's question. Hey, guys.

This is Zoom from Vancouver. Thanks for a great podcast, as always. I would be interested in hearing an episode focused on minor harmony and how you harmonize tunes in minor keys because it's definitely a bit different than major keys. And I've seen a couple different ways of approaching it. So I'd love to hear how you guys approach minor harmony. Okay, thanks so much.

and 12 stars. Great job, guys. 12 stars. Seven plus five, I'm thinking. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's that Jeff Goldblum math. Yeah. You know, I try not to play in minor keys, so I'm not the best person for them.

I'm just, I mean, isn't just, I mean, my concept on minor harmony is do the same thing you do with major harmony, but make it sad, pretty much, right? Just like start crying when you play it. Yeah, it should be slower. Actually, I really have never thought about this. So this is going to be fun. and due to our lack of preparation here

that you'll hear a podcast, I didn't think about it before. So this will be very off the cuff. Are we going on songs headphones? Yeah, I mean, I've lost my headphones signal, Andrew. I don't know if there's anything you can do about that, but it's not necessary for the rest of it.

It isn't. No, we got it. So, yeah, I mean, for me, I think the answer to how to approach minor harmony is it really depends. It depends on the tune and the context. Yeah, but number one. Listen.

For sure. For sure. Okay. So now, I wonder if we could break this down into a couple different situations that folks are like, to see this, that we're likely to see this as jazz musicians, minor harmony where it's like a predominantly minor tune or a whole section that's in minor key. Yeah, so think about like

in a sentimental mood, round midnight, softly is in a morning sunrise. Right. That's one kind of minor harmony. It's like that minor six harmony, right? If you have the natural six. So if it's a C minor, you have the A natural. Yeah. And oftentimes the B natural is a part of that. And, Right. That sound. Don't be square, be natural. Okay, sorry. I don't know why that popped in my hands.

I'm glad you did, though. That's one time. And then there's modal versions of my, I mean, there's impressions and, you know, that kind of thing. Even footprints would be, you know, more of a, maybe a Dorian sound. I mean, it's Wayne, so who knows what sound was. Yeah. Well, and actually, I think that that, this hits on something interesting that I do use,

is that kind of play with that minor six, as you're saying, minor six, nine, maybe even sometimes with the implication of the major seventh in that harmony in your voicings. Versus the more Dorian C minor seven, minor seven where it's a natural six, but the emphasis is on the seventh and the ninth and maybe the 11th,

and you can kind of shift between those two different sounds. And that can really be done, even say like in softly as in a morning sunrise, Because I find like when you're going into the more C minor 7, C minor 9 situations, as opposed to the minor 6, 9 or minor 6, a lot of our kind of traditional fourth voicings and fourth, you know, melodic shapes and movements become super useful. So you can use those, even in those situations. They don't have to only be when you see that particular chord C minor 7.

Yeah, that's really the, that's really the two main different ways to approach it. And to do this, you're going to have to do some kind of analytical. So we take a tune like alone together, right? There are clues in the melody and in the changes. There's a two five in that, whenever there's like a two five with a half diminished and then a flat, flat nine, you know, flat 13. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That to me clues in that this is that minor sixth harmony with the natural six and probably the natural seven.

That's a good indication. Yeah. And if there's, I mean, sometimes when you see the change, you hear the, you hear the, you know, that change, you hear that Dorian sound, it can be very, very obvious. And sometimes not. So, like, in a sentimental mood, right? Yeah. That's pretty obviously that minor six sound, because the first thing it does after it's on the minor chord is go to that major seven sound. You know what I mean? That little walkdown thing. And then it goes to the dom, to the Dorian. And it actually goes to the sixth at kind of the culmination of that harmonic movement on that, I guess it's a fourth bar.

Yeah. You know, which is sort of the resolution of that first root movement. So that, that to me is the minor sixth harmony. Now, the scale you can use for that is the, on that, like if it's D minor six, is D melodic minor. Right. Right, right, right. So I think, too, though, that that brings up, say, in the in a sentimental mood situation, the, yeah, definitely kind of a minor six, nine songs. I think the melody starts on the ninth when the, on that first bar, right?

But you can use the seventh always in terms of what your voicing, with your improvisation, as a little bit of tension to resolve down to the six. Like that I'll use a lot. John Coltrane does that, you know, for sure. I mean, probably everybody at some point, but I just popped to my head the way he plays over in a sentimental mood. So that's kind of one approach that's somewhat unique to minor harmony. I'm thinking as opposed to major harmony on a typical type of standard like that

that's sitting on a major. That wouldn't necessarily be something seventh to six doesn't really give you any tension or release. But this seventh to the six over the minor does give you tension and release. And that's such a, it's such a basic kind of format or, or, or, or, or, or, of how we can use, you know, I'm thinking soloing, certainly, um, voicings. But it's, it's, it's so much like, overlooked the usefulness of attention and release. It's so basic. It's like, you know, melody, rhythm and harmony are the elements, but then how you tell your story, tension and release is like right up there. There's like, plot, devised.

or theme development and, you know, peaks and valleys and all these different things. But, I mean, just tension and release is like that basic building block. So if you can kind of master that, at least how it sounds and how you can use it so that it becomes one of those things that pops into your head. Like, oh, this needs a little tension and then can make it so much more satisfying, you know. Yeah, yeah. I mean, your classic thing is kind of in a lot of situations is a half step up and then resolving down or going up, you know, taking it out and taking it back. That's an easy way to do tension and release. and that works with minor as well.

But this one's kind of unique. Yeah, it is. And one little nuance to consider for this, especially for the minor sixth harmony, is it's actual minor six harmony. Yeah. I'm thinking about, you know, any kind of tonic chord,

you don't really want to play a minor major seven all the time. The minor six sounds better as a tonic chord. I'm thinking about autumn leaves, right? Think about the end of that first A section. It ends on that G, if we're in the key of B, flat ends on that G over a G minor. And so if you have like a G minor major seven in there clashing with that melody,

it doesn't sound as good as that with that natural six, the E. Right. You know, so really, really master those minor six voicing. It's the same way you would with major six nine voicing. But maybe it's even more important with minor harmony because- What sounds better?

Right. It sounds better, but also the nuances can be more noticeable in terms of clashing with the melody, especially if we're talking about like a standard that's slow and like you're going to be sitting there. I mean when things are moving fast you can get away with a lot of you know different things but with there's so much more it seems like potential to clash if you aren't nailing these voicings when the melody's being played when you get to solo you know it's a different thing because you still have a melody to kind of match with but it's if it's your soul if it's somebody else's it's a moving target kind of and you're listening for

that but being able to differentiate that minor six major seven and dominant seven over the minor seems to be one of the most problematic areas for for folks. Yeah, another nuance to this is like a 251 in a major, or in a, excuse me, in a minor tonic key. So like, again, we'll go back to that last phrase of the last, of the A section of autumn leaves, right? Minor 25 to G minor, let's say. So generally, the two is always going to be half diminished. Yeah.

Generally. Not always. And then the five will usually be either an altered sound or some kind of flat nine. Sharp 9, flat 13. Those are going to be your choices. Yeah. But a lot of folks just default to the altered scale there. Right.

Because it sounds great. Going to that minor tonic, that minor sixth thing. Yeah. And I mean, all this stuff is like, you know, it sounds great as you say, but only when you apply the other elements that have nothing to do with minor harmony as well. Like they don't sound so good that you can just slop your way through or just play up and down. It's got to be in time and all these different things. And so when you're listening to things that work really well,

and this certainly applies to exceptions to the rule in a number of situations for harmony, because I mean, now we're in an area where you're always going to see a lot of exceptions to the real harmony. I mean, you know, like rhythm and melody, there are too, but harmony is like this is rife with exceptions. But you want to be listening to how, you know, the harmonic theory and harmonic conception of the player,

especially when we get into improvising or, you know, choosing voicings or whatever, how they interplay when they do, make an exception with those other elements of rhythm or melody. Like are they jumping on a really strong rhythm and whatever? And then almost using it as like a bipolar kind of a thing where they're working against each other. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned melody because as we're dealing with any scale theory, no matter what we're talking about, being able to form strong melodies,

it actually takes some experience. You just can't be like, oh, I know that if I play this and this over this pattern, I can do it over anything. Actually, those intervals sound different over different chords. So you have to practice these things. Some other theory options you have on a two five, a minor two five. So the two chord you can either play. You know what to play?

No. What do you play? Oh, a minor, half diminished. We said that already. Oh, that's the one we said. Yeah, the half diminished. And so you could play either like, I think of it as the Dorian scale from a minor third above. So if we're a half to manage, like a C, Dorian.

And that gives you that major ninth, unaltered ninth. Right. The Locrean. The Locrean. Or you could do the Lockean Sharp 2, which is like a C melodic minor scale over that A half diminished. Right. And then we meant to, and descending. Oh, is it?

I don't know. And then for the, again, for that dominant chord, going to a minor chord, this is tricky. Because you don't want to do just like, I mean, you don't have to do anything, like we said. But having like that natural 13 in there is weird because that's the major third to the... Except that. Now, I do see some exceptions there when melodically you're going to resolve. all down to the minor third because the 13 on that five can go down to the minor third. It could be a harsher way depending on how you set up your melody, right?

Yeah, it could totally be hip, but you have to be aware of all these things. Exactly. That's the thing. And when we talk about aware with this, it's really about number one listen because you have to be able to hear these things in advance and know when you're going to kind of, you know, kind of go against the grain how harsh it's going to sound maybe and then do that at a musically appropriate time. If it's kind of a time when you want to be right down the middle with your pitch,

then, and I'm talking baseball pitch now because we're in baseball scene. But then you want to kind of know the applicable harmonic concept that you're going to be at, especially on these dominant chords because this is a big transition time. There's already built in some tension to the situation anyway. You know, one of the most basic sounds over the dominant chord to a one chord that you can get on this minor two, five ones, is... That's pretty basic. A little too basic. No, is the harmonic minor scale of the tonic.

So if we're doing a 2.5 and G minor, you can play that G harmonic scale over that D7 flat 9. You know what I mean? It doesn't have the sharp 9, so it's a little less harsh sounding. It's a little more like it has that skip there, that minor third skip. But I love thinking about other scales anyway over different roots of the core, because that always put you in another place melodically for your improv. And I feel whenever I do this, whenever I play that root, that tonic harmonic minor scale over the five that it's going to,

I always feel like I'm so in the key. I'm already playing a G. You get a little pep in your step, don't you? I know, I like that sound a lot. Yeah, yeah. Good. All right, well, thank you Zoom again and for the question. And look, let's put a little challenge out to our, you'll hear it, listen.

I love a challenge. Because, you know, we have more power than we think. We experienced this last week. I don't know if you saw the response to our little April Fool's joke. I mean, you know, I felt like we really sold that. I thought we did too, but you know, it was funny in my home, which I always, you know, really, really go to my wife because she's an avid, you'll hear it watch her. She doesn't listen to it. She watches it on YouTube. She wants the whole multimedia experience. But I was go to her for kind of feedback on things. And she was like on April Fool's, I was like, what do you think of the little prank we played? And for those of you that didn't hear it, we basically said last Monday, I guess it was April 1st, that this was our last episode ever. And we just like sold it and it was just like, we were just like, we. had a good run, but today's going to be the final episode. And that was it.

And she's like, that was so stupid. No one's going to tune in tomorrow. I was like, no, people are going to know. And she's like, I don't think people really care that once. They're going to be like, oh, okay, it's done. And then, so I was very excited that our listenership, our stats, we're back in there the next day, if not higher. We got to have our wives come on for a bit of a knock us down a peg episode.

Yeah, well, we talked about that. And I think we've even floated that. So if you guys want to see that, I guess I can't say, Mrs. Adam Maness and Mrs. Peter Martin. I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that. Oh, no. If the better halves, as we could say. Definitely. To come on and do a little bit of a, you know, that might happen at some point if you guys give us some nudging.

You know what, why don't you give us some speak pipes about that or any other question. Please, you know, give us some speak pipe. Go to you'll hit. We're going to put a challenge out or else we might end this. Challenge it. Next April. Okay. Stop threatening.

Really? We're not going to the threat. Okay. No. but give us a speak pipe. You know, don't think, oh, my computer's too old. This system works for any, well, it won't work for yours. Adam's got an old computer.

But as long as your computer's just fine. As long as your computer's after 1988, you'll be cool. But no, just go there. It's very easy. You press the button. And look, don't think when you record it that you're not going to have a chance. You have a chance to review it, I think, right? I'm pretty sure you do.

Yeah, you do. You have a chance to review it. So maybe that's why people haven't done it because they feel a little. I mean, Zoom. Follow Zoom's Lee. Yeah, he's great. We might have to bring Zoom on it. to do a tutorial for folks.

Press the button, be confident. But yeah, you have a chance to review it, and then you can redo it if you want, and then you submit it. So it's no pressure, whatever. But just know that if you submit it, if it's a good question, you'll probably do it. Yeah, let's put a challenge out.

Let's try to get a whole week of speak pipes. Let's do that. That'll be nice. Let's do a speak pipe week next week. Okay, we'll say that five times. Speak pipe week next week. That's hard to say. It is hard to say.

Cool. And as always, as always, go to oxfordamerican. org slash y-H-I to get these amazing deals for subscription to the Extra American, Amazing Magazine. And until next time, you'll hear it.