You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Passing Chords in Gospel

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

It's another live edition of You'll Hear It where Peter and Adam take your questions - on this edition, they'll discuss the use of passing chords in gospel, different voicings for electric piano, and how to approach lines in bossa nova vs. bebop.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.Wednesday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Edu Ribeiro + Eloy Casagrande Drum Conversations/Q&A on YouTube8:00 PM - Peter and Adam Duo Piano Concert & Conversations on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkLet 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.

All right, man, we're getting some good stuff today. Good questions. Okay, here we go. From Tortog, our friend, gospel piano uses a lot of passing chords. Can you talk about passing chords? Okay, so let's talk about passing chords specifically in gospel, I would say. Sure. And as much as people ask me about gospel, it's like, man, you've got gospel, gospel.

I've never studied gospel in the way that I would like to, actually. And so I'm not an expert on, I mean, I can play some of this stuff. especially as it's sort of infused more in the jazz and blues stuff that I play. So I look at it as more just, I'm not a gospel pianist, but I've taken some elements from it that I like. And the passing chord things that I hear are like, you know, so we're on a G, right? Let's say we're going to go to the four.

Here's the four. So that's blues, and it's also kind of gospel because of the way I'm voicing it, right? So a passing chord. And this one's kind of unique to gospel. in that like if you do it in jazz it's like ah gospel right so it's like so that's just the walk-up right and so that's definitely gospel so you're going to and this is all diatonic and then to the floor but then like one thing so then you're going instead of g over uh b you're going like i'm only adding one note

which is the e flat because so it's like a e a b altered b yeah b7 sharp 9 flat 13. So you've got you got all these different like this is obviously a passing chord position. You're going from B to C so like what are the things you can do G2 over B G you know sharp 9 flat 13 um where it's like you know D flat 7 over B to you know to C so like those kind of pop passing chords and then like you know all those those are those passing chords I guess like four one movements when you're still sitting on the chord. There's more like triads that we're moving around right you know you're going to go to the the six, so you're walking up chromatically, but you got a chance for a passing goal.

So you're going dominant from a half step below, or you go from a half step above. Those are all kind of gospel-type passing chords, you know. And that's one that's used a lot. So instead of going right from the four to the five, which is actually the one over the five, the flat and finished, yeah. And then instead of four over five, one over five, four, and then five over five, four, and then five, over five. Aretha Franklin.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, just go listen to Aretha Franklin actually. Yeah, there you go. Fuzzy Crum. What's up, Fuzzy Crum? With a K, like Professor Clump. Do you guys also play

electric piano or organ? What differences do you use in voicing on each instrument? Yeah, so Adam, you're much more of an multi-keyboard instrumentals than me, but of course, I mean, I'm kind of playing electric piano here with this sort of road sound.

I mean, I've been, I had a Rhodes from when I was a kid. I played a lot of roads. Oregon, I haven't done a lot. I've done a little bit. I'm like, not a great. It's a whole other instrument, man.

Yeah. The differences in voicings. I mean, really for the roads, like to me, the intonation of the thing, like, not this thing, but like an actual road is always out of tune.

Because it's like whenever they try to tune, you know, you can tune it with those little things, but they try to line it up equally. And so it always, And that's kind of the character of the sound. So it doesn't disqualify certain voices, but certain, like, really tight things just don't, you know.

Like, that sounds good on here, but I think on an actual roads that's not perfect, it might not work that good. So I was going to have taken out more notes. Yeah, well, and just the quality, the nature of the sound, you're going to have to take out more notes just because it's so, the timbre is so thick.

Yeah. Compared to a piano, everything can be really thick. I played at Rhodes for years and years. I mean, I took it on every gig because I just didn't want to play digital keyboards at all. I wanted a real hammer. And so if you're using a roads, there are now so many great videos on YouTube,

but make sure to set up your harmonics. If you set up your harmonic row correct, you can really tweak the sound to what you want. Like Chick had a very harmonic heavy road sound a lot, or you could go with something with a little more tone. It all depends on how you line it up compared to the pickup. And so that little maintenance tweaks like that can make your road. really shine. The one we have in there, man,

if we were to get one of those amplifiers that's burnt out on the speaker cabinet, you would love that road. I don't know if you've ever played it, but it is incredibly fun to play. Well, I'm just emphatic because it's such a beautiful instrument that's sitting in our studio just not being played. I feel so guilty because it's so amazing. So it just needs another amp on

or is the speaker blown? I think, no, the speaker's fine. I need some work on the power amp because it keeps losing power over the course of 30 minutes or so. And it just affects the tone, Man, is it so punchy and beautiful. It's one of those flat tops. So the action is just, it's way better than that.

Really, it's very smooth. So, man, I love that thing. Cool. So we got time for just a couple more because this is a one-hour show. Did you know that? I did know. Yeah, we got some announcements at the end. What?

Yeah, come on, man. What? We got an agenda today. Thank you guys for being here. This is what is this, our fourth YouTube live. We were kind of under the radar for the first couple. But we're all out there. We're letting it all hang out now.

So this is from Lucas. Lucas says, how do you approach Bostonova lines in a different way than your B-BOP swing? Have any advice on that? I feel like I've evolved big time as a jazz musician. Thanks to you guys. Thanks. Man, thank you, Lucas.

You know, with these things, Bossa Nova, like if you think about, like the pulse of the groove, once you get that groove, the lines should flow from that. And so I don't think you have to think about them as different than B-BBBB Swinger. Of course, I wouldn't be necessarily, like, you know, because melodically that doesn't fit, but that's... What, what?

I mean, was that a surprise for? Is that a surprise? So I said, I said you wouldn't do that. I guess, I guess more precise it should have been. Damn. But look, you could kind of do it. So it's not, it doesn't have that, but it does have its own kind of lilt and so. Why am I picking the cornyest line to demonstrate it?

Why? Um, okay. So, I mean, it's just a matter of, I think there's like, there's a certain amount of, there's a foundation of a straighter thing, but to give it the syncopation and the lill, you have to find. My solo is the bass song, so I don't wait, what's happening? So I'm trying to kind of play more jazzy stuff that actually fits, you know, from a conceptual gospel. So that, you know, the more that you have established, I think with the, and look, even if it's like, like a little bit of fast, temporal, like the more you get established in the left hand and the rhythm section,

however it's being done, the more freedom you have to not have to be like, triplets are really important, eighth note and, you know, half a corner note. So I think, you know, in terms of how do you approach the lines differently, from a melodic standpoint, not at all. It's all about, you know, the rhythmic lilt that's built into how you lay those melodies within the groove, you know, I think from a line and melody standpoint. And I don't know that sounds weird. is like, how do you separate those things?

You don't. But you're still telling a story. You're putting together phrases. You're developing things. And like, well, it was a tune I played, you know, photographia, Antonio Car Show me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could also do it like Joe Henderson did.

Oh, you don't like Joe? Oh, no. I said, hey. Go hitting out of them. So the more confident you get, with the different grooves, the more I think that you can really treat them the same,

like what you're hearing over it. Not that you're all, you'll, you know, it's not about that. I mean, sometimes it is. Man, we played that more than we've ever played that. So cool, thank you for that question. Thank you guys for all the questions. I'm sorry we didn't get to everything,

but we're going to take a look through these and we may put some of these on the audio podcast because did you know Adam Manus? With one end. that we are we are not only a award winning YouTube channel Word word word

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week now for a few weeks yes we started seven days a week and then we went to five days a week for the longest time yeah and then in the pandemic, we eventually whittle it down to three and now we're back to five, baby. Right. And it's interesting because we're always like, like we get very little praise or anger either way. It's Joe. Joe's really the only person who cares. Uncle Joe in Texas, give us some constructive feedback at times. But anyway, we're having fun with

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We're going to drop this in the chat here. Boom. And then we're going to put that up there. So it says, holy smokes. So basically you can leave us a voicemail. And so just so you know your voice may be used on a future episode here. on the on the audio podcast but calling with your questions with your with your whatever and um yeah and then you can follow us on social media and hit us up there i'm uh i am peter martin that's how

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next week. We're here, I mean, we're committed every Monday. 4 p.m. Easter and we're going to take your questions and try to give the most concise answers that we can. Sorry for all the questions we didn't get.

I'm just going through here and seeing if we missed anything pressing Oh, Christian's asking about the new program, Peter. I lost us. I lost us. Hold up, hold up, hold up. Now we're back, sorry.

I was trying to start the movie. Christian's asking about the new program, Peter. I don't know if you want to talk about the new program that we hinted at last week. Well, we're going to give out a little more information exclusively here each week. This is a very exciting thing, but it's going to be called Open Studio Pro. But we'll let you guys know first when that's up and running. You know what? Should we tell them this much?

It's going to start with just pianists. Yeah. but it's going to eventually expand to other instruments. For sure. I guess until next week, you'll hear it.