You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - "Outside Notes" Just Feel Wrong - #74

Episode Date: December 6, 2018

Today on You'll Hear It, Peter and Adam answer a listener's question about dissonance. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Adam, you question. Yes. Out or in? Out. Wait. In. I'm Adam Maness. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Daily Jazz Advice.

Coming at you. Coming at you again from beautiful St. Louis, Missouri, open studio. Here we are in the pod cave. The, you know, it's usually musty, but I realize we put this pod cave together in the summertime. Yeah. And August in St. Louis is just incredibly hot and humid. I mean, this past summer especially was just brutal. Thanks a lot, Al Gore.

Yeah, thank you, Al Gore. And, but now I got to say, say since the weather's turned a little bit it's it's cleared up a little in here it's cozy no is this the pod cave now it's becoming like the pod cove the pod cove yeah well so we had uh we've been doing some other stuff in here besides just the podcast and and our audio engineer andrew said should we change the name now to the content cave and i thought no oh that's true no no it's the pod cave it's the pod cave it's it's possible cave and it's right we'll forever be so today we're going to take uh a question from one of our listeners, as we often do here in the Podcave at the You'll Hear a podcast.

This is from Facebook. Oh, Facebook. Okay. Big shout out to Facebook. This is from Facebook or from a user listener? Facebook doesn't need any shout out. Oh, that's right. They hear everything we're doing anyway.

That's right. If you're interested in setting up an account on Facebook, go to Facebook.com and tell them we sent you. Okay. So this is, it came via Facebook. Right. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Can I read this one? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, cool. Hey there guys, love the podcast. I'm struggling to deal with being comfortable playing outside a diatonic sound. I think I've learned too much pop and every time I hear those outside notes, even if they are theoretically correct, it just feels wrong.

Ha ha. Any advice? It's an interesting question. That's from Troy. Thank you, Troy. Yep. You know, really, the advice is number one. Listen.

Listen. Listen, we've talked about this before, I think, on the podcast that what Troy's talking about is dissonance and his comfort level with dissonance. Yeah. And that just takes being into, you know, dissidents. Yeah. And everybody has a different level of distance. I mean, you know, some people, a sharp nine chord is very dissonant. Yeah, totally.

Wasn't there a time when if you played the, the flatted fifth, the interval, the augmenting? in a fourth flat, the tritone that you could be killed, actually, in medieval times. You would be arrested, yeah. No, I mean, dissonance. That takes jazz police to a whole other level. Dissinence is relative, and it shifts, you know, generation to generation. I mean, now, like, you know, noise music has been so prevalent for decades that it's, like, what is dissidents even mean anymore as far as, like, music theory?

So it's a very personal thing, dissonance. Even, you know, you and I, in our improvising, both play outside the chain. changes often. But even player to player, it shifts for how much you're comfortable doing it or what it's part of your thing. You know what I mean? So it's hard to say. And I think it always should come down to the kind of listening, the on the fly listening as you're playing, as you're developing your solo, the situation. Like how is the bass player playing? How's the drummer? How is the audience, everything? That you're really actively listening. as you're playing to see how much you should play. And it should never be like, okay, I played a course. Now it's time to take it out. You know, it's not about that. It's about what is the flow of your solo

and how you're hearing it and for the moment, like how much you're gonna take it out. But one thing Troy says, just reading this again, every time I hear these outside notes, even if they are theoretically correct, it just feels wrong. Well, this is the thing. The theoretically, they're not correct actually,

which is okay if it sounds good to you. That's right. That's why we're playing. it because it's building tension it's not right yeah and then we i like to resolve it now some people don't even want to resolve it or whatever and that's cool too because that's what they're they're into but i would say to troy like maybe he's not resolving it maybe that's part of it if he's saying it feels wrong maybe that would be one entry point that's that's good point so like if you play something in and then you play it out um or even if you just go to play something out like where you know i think it's

important to always think melodically yeah sometimes people go and play out and they just start playing random notes. And it's like, yeah, that's out, but you still have to, I almost feel like there's more responsibility, depending on the situation, of course, but to really play accurate, interesting, cohesive, melodic things when you go out.

Because that becomes the unifying factor. You don't have the harmony to kind of rest your head on. That certainly helps anchor it when you go for sure to have some kind of melodic structure or something. But I'm wondering if Troy, if you're even into the sound of playing out.

Because if you're not feeling it, don't force it just because other people are doing it. If you don't want to do it, maybe you're an inside player. And that's totally cool. Yeah. You know, you don't always have to do that. Their whole career is made where they never go outside the diatonic changes. Yeah, and depending on how you look at it, you could say that somebody like Oscar Peterson, you know, one of our favorites here at the You'll Hear a podcast, does not play outside a lot.

Although he does, and we hear it, it's just not something that's like a big part of his style. Obviously, he could do it because you heard him do it. But maybe, you know, one thing about Oscar Peterson, along with a number of great jazz artists, you always get the feeling that they are playing a very high percentage of the notes that are coming out are things that they're hearing. You know, that is very indicative of their thought process in terms of like the flow of the music.

So if he's not playing a lot of outside stuff, it's probably because he wasn't hearing a lot out. It's not because he couldn't do it or he was against it. It was just sort of the way he played. And if you're not hearing it, you're not going to be confident when you do it. So that could be a problem, too, Troy, that you're not completely confident when you take it outside because you don't have it in your ears. You're not hearing it.

It's not something you want to do. If it's just something you're doing just to do, maybe pull back on that until you're really comfortable hearing it first so that you can have that confidence. Because nothing sounds weaker than going outside the diatonic zone when you've been there, but not being confident. with it. You know what I mean? Contrived out playing is not fun. A professional can play an entire solo outside the changes and it'll be fine. Right. You know what I mean? Because they know how

to confidently pull off these phrases and make it sound good. Yeah. But like if you are not, if you're not confident with it, you've lost it. Well, I'm almost thinking of like a great football, American football, NFL receiver that catches the touchdown pass and then run does a little dance, goes over to the audience, does this thing. And then

And there's certain other receivers that don't need to be doing that because when they try it, it's a little bit too forced, which is okay. You're getting six points either way. But it's not for everybody. You know, you've got to be confident and it cannot be contrived. I mean, even though, like, the really confident dancers in the NFL, I found out they do practice all that stuff. But like a great improviser, they pull it off in a way that it feels spontaneous. But you see one badly done, it's like, whoa. It's no good.

It's no good. You still get the points, but you shouldn't. Yeah, so I would say if you want this to be a part of your sound, if it's a sound that you like and that you want to be part of you and you're feeling it, you know, maybe, like you said, rehearse it a little more. Make sure to practice playing outside to get some techniques to do. I mean, we both have talked about many things you can do,

whether that's, you know, up or down a half step or going minor thirds away in zones like that or whatever. Whatever it is the sound that you are drawn to, make sure that it's in your fingers in a way that it doesn't, you're not having to think about it. Yeah, and you can definitely, you know, since you're coming from the place of like not really feeling it or hearing it, but you want to have some of it, just do a little bit. You don't have to like, like you can just do a small percentage, you know, of your solo going out. Just here or there.

And when you do go out, you know, use, remember, you're losing the harmonic underpinnings of what's happening in your solo at that moment, which is okay because that's going to be part of the dramatic thing as you shift back. Absolutely. But just remember, since you're losing that, you need to rely more on the melodic and or rhythmic component. So, you know, maybe you're riffing rhythmically, you're taking out, but you're hitting a really strong rhythm and riffing on it and using that as kind of your cohesion in your solo. Or maybe you're just taking something that's super melodic like a triad. Yeah. Or even both is even better. Then it won't feel us out.

Like, yeah, the harmony's out, but the melody and the rhythm are so in. I think the triad is a great suggestion. And Troy, you should try that. Troy, you should try the triad. Come on, Troy. Triple Tia. Come on, man. Because it does give it like immediate structure. Yeah.

You know, to whatever line you're doing. And string together a couple of out triads and all of a sudden you sound like you know what you're doing. And do it confidently. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Cool. Well, this is good. So if you guys, anybody else has some ideas on this, we'd love to hear it.

Let's talk about it. Where would we direct them? We would direct them to YouTube.com because we're trying to help out the good folks at Google, build up their little website over there. I was going to say YouTube. Is this a new website? It's relatively new. So it's HTP. Yeah. Yeah, colon. Yeah, no, hit us up on

YouTube on the Open Studio. Just search Open Studio. You'll hear it. And you can see today's episode you can see it, but you can also just go on there and comment. If you've already listened, no requirement to watch. But we'd love to hear your ideas on this. That's right. And then we can talk about them over there. And until then, You'll hear it.