You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Our Favorite Chord

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

In this episode, Adam and Peter discuss the functionality of the elusive unicorn chord. What makes this chord so special? Tune in and find out!Unlock your FREE Open Studio trial to become a better player today.Diminished Triads to Melt FacesHave a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Diminishing returns. I'm at Amanus. I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll hear at podcast. Wait, where are you going there? I got stuck out there. I went to go to take my scorecard back and I got kind of stuck. Right, right.

Jazz advice. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJadio.com to start your free trial and check out of our jazz courses. Yes. I want to direct people's attention, especially to our Open Studio Pro program. Go to Open StudioJazz.com slash pro. And just a reminder, this is not for pros. These are for people that want to practice like a pro.

That's right. Want to become a pro. Practice with pros. Practice with pros. Practice with each other. It's really one of our most exciting pros. We don't talk about it enough. But it's on my mind because we were in New York City last week.

And we got to meet up with some of our beloved New York City area. Actually, all the way up into New England, some folks came down, open to your pro members for that beautiful coffee. And just to... It's an incredible community. It really is. It's up today. Peter, what are we talking about today? Today we're talking about what we kind of played.

Did we actually play? Yeah. Diminished. Diminished stuff. You know, could be chords, could be... Well, specifically one shape. Yes. Which I just learned this morning is called the unicorn.

We call it around Open Studio Pro. We call it the unicorn cord because of the shape of it. Yeah. But it's a very useful shape that you see all over the place. Exactly. And so I kind of know this thing, but I'm really interesting. to get your take. We're going to do this a little bit in real time.

Sure. But I'll just sort of start out. Should we cordial it up? All right. So this is sort of my foundation for it. Correct me if I'm wrong, sir. Can we start there? Here you've got a C sharper D flat, E, G, and C.

So this is like a C-sharp diminished triad. Yes. With the C on the top. With the major seventh. Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, so this one's based off of... Which is not really a major seventh, but go ahead.

Oh, it's not. Well, not technically. Okay, well, I want to learn. I'm here to learn. I'm not just here to teach. I'm here to learn. So we're going with the D-flat whole half diminish scale, right? That's right.

Which is not to muddle the waters, but to me it simplifies it to think. Yeah, the whole half. But that's the same as the C. So half whole. Just real quick, technically there's one diminished scale and it's the whole half. And then when you use that on a dominant chord, the easy way to find it is to think about it in half hole, but it's still just the whole. half. Okay. In other words, if we're, if we're talking about here, like a C7, right? That would be what we use for this. Like a C7. Right, exactly. So you would be using that. You would maybe think of it as

either the B flat or the D flat or the E, whole half, or the G diminuscale. Interesting. So I kind of generally think about this as like a half stuff above whole, whole diminishing. So D flat whole half to finish. Yeah. But some people start it from C, they call it the half hole. That's all good. Yeah. It just gets a little confusing.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So we've got C7, but we've got it. Building it like as terms of the shape, I think about it. And look, these things, and this is where you get into like theory versus reality versus, you know, perception, but like I think about it as that D flat triad, diminished. Diminished trium with the major seventh. Yeah. Or you're building.

up off of that diminished fifth, up a perfect fourth. Well, this is why we call this the unicorn shape. Yeah. Because you've got this little block of minor thirds down here. Yeah. And then you got a fourth. And it's like a horn. A little horn.

It's like a horn. It's like a horn. Why do you go a little body? I like it. Yeah. And then how do you think about it? Do you think about it as three plus one, like left hand, right hand, or two plus two or one plus three in terms of left hand versus right hand playing it?

Oh, I'm almost always playing this with just my right hand. unless it's part of a bigger voicing. Right. So, yeah, I think about this as just either my right hand or sometimes just, I don't really play this a lot with just my left hand. I mean, I do, actually. Yeah, I do this a lot with just a left hand.

Yeah, but this shape is really useful. So again, it's a diminished triad, C-sharp, E, G, and then a C on top, a perfect fourth above that. Now, tell me about why it's not the major seventh. Well, it is a major seventh from the octave of D-flat. Right. Because it's based off of this eight-note scale, Yeah.

Right? That's not really a seventh. The seventh is B flat. You know what I mean? Right. The diminished seven. The diminished seven. Right, right, right, right.

I actually don't know what you would call that intervolically. The diminished octave. Maybe the diminished octave. But when we do think about it in terms of C7, you could also think about it as that octave. And sometimes went out. So you see how we've got that, the four notes? And then if you add it in, almost block chorded by adding that C. So I've got C and D flat in the left hand.

And then a C truce. Major triad in the right hand. Another way to kind of hear it and think about it. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like playing around with the chromatic, just that C triad going up and down. Yeah.

So let's talk about where this C comes from. Yeah. Right? So you mentioned the whole half half, Diminish scale where you've got a whole step, a half step, a whole step, a half step, a whole step, a half step, and a whole step, and then you're back at D flat with a half step. So you've got D flat, E flat, E, E natural, G flat, G flat, and C.

and C. Yeah. Now, if we skip a note of those, you get this, right? You get this diminished seventh. Fully diminished. D-flat, E, G, and B-flat, fully diminished. The other leftover notes from the scale,

this is a D-flat-diminished seventh. The other leftover notes are in E-flat-diminished seven. Yeah. Now look at one of those notes is, it's a C. So when you're building diminished chords, like if you have a D-flat diminished or a C-sharp diminished, you know, you can do your D-flat diminished. You can add extensions from that E flat diminished.

So this C is one of those. You could also add A. You can actually do the whole diminished seventh. It's called the double diminished. It gets played all the time. It's a beautiful sounding. Kirby Hancock loves it, with all his heart and soul. Right?

It's a beautiful way to add very crunchy extensions on your diminished. And this unicorn shape is the microcosm of that, right? Yep. This shape also, Peter... It's kind of the minimum little, those four and sort of the minimum unicorns. in a way. That's right. That's right. And you can take this and you can move this up minor thirds, right, to all of these diminished with the unicorn. And they sound great. And they have a

myriad of uses as well. It's not used just for diminished. It's also used for dominant chords, but we can talk about a few of those for sure. Yeah. And I mean, it's like sometimes you'll hear people, whether I'd say taking it through the cycle, the diminished cycle. That's just like what you just said. Sometimes people are like, oh, I don't know how to do that. So coming up and down minor thirds, baby. And the reason it's the diminished cycle

is because it's moving through that fully diminished seventh. Right? So that's the first. And this is a good way to practice them too, I think, and get them in your hands.

But that diminished triad with that major third on top, Peter, you know, the first way you might think about using this would be like something like so this is Misty. Going to start on

an E flat diminished, right? So you got E flat, G, flat A. And then D is the melody. That's the exact same voice that we were just looking at. You can resolve. Like that, the tonic diminished, E flat diminished, it begs to resolve to E flat major seven.

Yeah. The G flat and the A want to go up to G and B flat. Yeah, and I mean, I think the way you can think about this, one of the ways to think about it, and to hear it especially, is D over E flat, D major seven. Remember we talked about before the C major tried in that first inversion?

That's exactly. Right. And you'll actually see this sometimes in charts written as like B over C. or D over E flat. Like Spring is here. Yeah. That's a B over C. Very common way to do a diminished

with that major, we'll call it a major 7. Put in the comments what that's technically called, music theorist theory nerds. I'm not really sure what that is. But it's such a beautiful voicing. Now, this isn't the only way you can use that because I think you chose that C sharp

with the C on top for a reason. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that we can think about like And this gets a little bit, maybe more away from theory, and it's just sort of practical usage once you get this shape and you can chromatically move it around, but also... Up in minor thirds is the way to go here. Yeah, but maybe combining it still with that diminished scale

when you're like... You know, like the same way you would do like any... It's really kind of a... like a jazz arpeggio in which you're bebopping out with scales combined with this unicorn chord. But I would say, think about, like, because there's so much tension in it, mainly because of that major seventh, right?

Like, what does this sound like with different root notes that it would give some similar tension, either exactly as it is or with just like a little bit of movement on the inside? So, yeah, C7 for sure, because you've got, when you start moving up, look at that, you've got flat nine, now you've got the sharp nine, now you've got the flat nine and the sharp 11, and then you're back to the flat nine.

But also, what if we put an A at the bottom? Now we've got all that... And it has the same use as those four. You're just moving that shape up in minor thirds, which as we know for diminished harmony is the key, right? Yeah. They all align in minor thirds. You can do it then for G flat.

Yeah, exactly. Now we're moving, we're going through the diminished cycle with the root. E flat as well. Yeah. And the way you can kind of hear these, like it should be easy to hear the resolution in some interesting places.

So we go... So like F minor 11. Yeah, yeah. But if we go A, we maybe are going to, you know, be up to B flat major. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or if we go G flat, was that G flat 13 flat 9? And maybe the B major, 6'9. I'm just throwing one in the same like we did the beginning of Misty.

There's the tension there, so there's a possibility for some interesting releases. What's one more interesting one? Yeah, beautiful. That kind of a thing. Another common use you might see for this D-flat. diminished with the C on top is like in the key of B flat. I just did one there accidentally on the F. But key of B flat, if you're doing like a 3625,

so the flat three diminished, this D minor seven, to the D flat diminished. Going to C minor, this is a very common thing, especially in older music. That's more like kind of passing tension, right, passing through. And then there's other ways you can use. So again, this diminished shape with that. see on top, the unicorn shape is what we call it.

You know, we're borrowing from the other diminished chord in our diminished scale. And there's other ways you can do this. Is that proprietary? Did we make that up? Unicorn shape? Yeah. That's proprietary.

Thank you. Yeah. It's just what we start calling in Open Studio. Because when you write it out, it looks like a little unicorn. But you can do this. So if we look at, let's look at this shape. I love this shape here. So here we've got an F diminished, fully diminished, with the E added.

And I'm going to do this on a block chord here, Peter. So we have F, A, F, A, F, A, B, D, and E, right? So it's very similar to what you have. We're just going to add that D in as well. If we take this and we move everything and make it an open voicing, we have this shape, right? F, B, E, A, flat, and D. Now, on my magic voicing system course that I have,

this is what we call the diminished set. Because these are great not only for like F diminished, A flat diminished, B diminished, and D diminished. These also work for like G, G, 13, flat, nine. It also works for obviously D flat. Like an alter thing. Sharp 9. Yeah.

It can work also for E and B flat, but it's a little bit crunchier for those. I think it's good. But it's a beautiful voicing that you can use to take five-note voicing that's spread out. Yeah. Like that's what, these are all this kind of

open unicorn we might call it. This. That's all that voicing. That. And you've got the F diminished, and then you've got that E, which is the unicorn note, the horn, right in the middle. Beautiful shape. Yeah, and I love the way you're demonstrating those that I want folks to always remember. It's like, how are you going to resolve it?

Where are you going to play before? What is the progression? Because it's so easy. It's not easy, but we don't want to get stuck too long. I mean, look, as we're learning these shapes, we have to get them in our hands. But we want to immediately being able to apply them at least. being resolving some word, these kinds, of course, as opposed to thinking this kind of static

thing and just moving them around chromatically or within the diminished cycle. Can we demonstrate a little bit just like an A section of rhythm changes? Let's do two A-section in a row. I'm going to do all of the dominant voicings. I'm going to use a diminished. So for like the G7, I'm going to use the B diminished or D-diminished.

For the F-7s, I'm going to use the E-flat diminished, the whatever you want to call it. The first time through, I'm only going to use the four notes of the diminished seven. The second time through, I'm going to do these unicorn voice things that use the notes of the other, like that use the extensions. Listen to the difference of the first time in the second. I'll give you a little baseline, my friend.

Ready? One, two, three, and... Nothing wrong. Sounds good. But wouldn't you rather? Now here's with some more crunch to it. Hear the crunch? That, just that extra note that's outside of the diminished seventh chord.

That's from the other diminished. Yeah. Sounds so good. Other diminished or other dimension. A little bit of both. And then if you want to kind of play around with it, like on the F, like kind of next level on your own. So, well, I'm going to take it down to, like, building off of the dominant seven.

So, like, for the F7, starting at E-flat, Unicorn, Unicorn cord. Yeah. And then you're going to, can we cordy it back up again? Are we, are we in a post-cordy society? We're in a post-cordy. So there it is, right, F-7. So one little shift. Still four-nows.

I know before we added that in, I believe. but what if we shift it up here? This is sort of next level. We're going to have to come up with name with this. I love this one. So here we've got the fourth, perfect fourth is on top. Now the perfect force in the middle, two minor thirds. That's a straight up Peter Martin voicing right there.

Is that it? Is that it? We've got to give it a better name than that. But the exciting thing with this is like, how does it sound different? Then if you go Sharp 9, little variations on that inner movement. Cool, man. I love this shape. I love it. One of my favorite shapes. We teach at Open Studio Pro.

Yeah, come check it out. Until next time. You'll hear it. Okay.