You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Peter and Adam's Lightbulb Moments

Episode Date: August 21, 2020

On today's episode, Peter and Adam go over some moments in their musical history where an idea or concept finally clicked.Friday's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)8:00 PM - Peter Martin's Shelter in Place solo piano concert on YouTubeSaturday's Open Studio Live Events:8:00 PM - Romero Lubambo & Badi Assad: Live From the Living Room on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkInterested 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.

Hey, Adam. Yeah. Is there a lot of lights on here? There's a lot of lights on you. There's a lot of, like, schoolhouse fluorescent lights right on you, and there's nothing on me. Is there a slight flickering of these fluorescent lights? You look like you're about to murder someone. Ooh, that might be your light bulb moment.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the earlier podcast. Advice, inspiration for life and music coming at you. Why are you always laughing me? That's our new catch for you. You're like Trump on a Q card, man. It's great. I'm trying, man.

That's great. This is a global pandemic we're experiencing. I know, I know. There's a lot of slack. There's a lot of slack. Today's episode is sponsored by Open Studio. Go to open studio. Go to open studio jazz.com.

Hey, check out our new course, block cord basics. Ever heard of it, Peter? Yes, I have. And I want to just talk about something real quick with Open Studio where I was talking about the great courses. BlockCord basics is certainly a new gem for us. Yeah. But, you know, the community.

aspect has been the thing that I've been most excited about. We've gotten to know members. They're friends. They're part of the Open Studio family from around the world. For real. And, you know, what's happening with the daily guided practice sessions, both on the app. You know, we have an app. I don't know if you knew about that.

I do know this. We have an app. But you can also experience it live via Zoom. If you're in the inner circle, you've got to get in the inner circle. But that's not that hard to do. It's not. And we're going to be doing more with that inner circle coming up. We're going to be expanding all of our live stuff.

We really, I think, you know, this. pandemic, as terrible as it's been, it's been some amazing moments that we've witnessed at Open Studio, just getting to know our members and interacting with them. And we've really felt that communal spirit. So thanks, y'all. Yeah, thank you guys. For being in our community. And thank you to our listeners here. And today, we are going to talk about a really cool idea from one of our listeners, Scott. And this is something we talk about a lot around here. This is lightbulb moments. These are aha moments. Are they aha moments or aha moments? And like, uh-huh.

Okay. No, it's when you, it's when something unlocks for you. Yeah. We say that a lot too. This happens a lot, I think, with improvisers. It's like, we learn all these information, and then we do all this stuff on the piano. And sometimes we're doing stuff. We have no idea what it is.

And then sometimes things will click. And everything comes together in a way that it's like, ah, that's what that is. This is what people are talking about. I understand this. That's, that's this thing. And so Scott asks, have you ever considered doing an other? episode on aha or light bulb moments that you have had during your musical development. It is sometimes hard to remember these moments because I think we take the information for granted

once we have assimilated it. I agree with that. I remember, for example, when I realized that the second chord of Atrain and Girl from Eponema, as well as the first chord of, if I were a bell, are the same functionally, right? Yes, the two dominant sharp 11. Yes. I love these connect the dots moments. And while I'm certain that we subject. experience these phenomena differently. It would be fascinating to hear Peter and Adam recount a few of these instances. This is great.

And let's go back to his original question. Have you ever considered doing an episode on AHA or Lightball moments that you've had during your musical development? We can answer this quickly. Yes. Yes. Okay. You'll hear it. You'll hear it. We have. Okay. End of the episode. Thank you very much. That was an aha moment. Yeah.

Yeah. So this is fun. So we were talking about this and I kind of came up with one. Maybe I'll tell one first and you can tell. I think Scott, you hit on it in, you know, the ones that are maybe more, that are earlier in our development are kind of the ones we remember. At least that's for me and they're the bigger ones. And then as you learn more, it gets more nuanced, you know, but you can still experience them if you're open to it.

I mean, some people kind of get this attitude of like, I know everything that I'm going to know. Not even a cocky, like I know everything. I don't think there's really ever a great musician or jazz musician that ever really adopts that attitude because it's just so counterproductive. but we can kind of unknowingly or unwittingly close ourselves off to the possibility of aha moments because we feel like there's no more big ones like like you know the two core at the beginning of a tomb that maybe you experienced earlier.

So maybe I'll start with one that was very early for me. Yeah, yeah. And seems very obvious, but was a huge aha moment, which was when I learned the difference between a C major seven and a C7. I love this story. Yes, because the average. aforementioned or the forementioned, depending on how you look at it, it didn't make a difference. I was playing anything that I saw with a seven in it, I played it like this. I was like, that's a C-7.

Absolutely, I know that. And if I saw C-major 7, I was like, oh, they're just giving me a little reminder. Make sure you keep that third's major. So that was still. And so like, even if it was like, I was playing. Yeah. I mean, it just didn't make a difference. Everything was dominant, you know.

It's amazing. And that kind of works. I used to end every tune on a dominant chord, my first few years playing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it kind of works. But then there is, like, I do remember kind of hearing this other sound. And I was like, wow, I guess that's just not for me, whatever that is.

Sounds like sunshine. I'm not into it. So, you know, having somewhat of a blues foundation help because there was a lot of dominant seven. But that, when I kind of hit that. And I remember, I actually played it. I was like, oh, cool, that's what that is. But I still, I remember being like, wow, I wonder how that. That's written. Oh, I guess you just have to sort of play that.

I'd still, when I'd see C major seven. And then somebody was like, yeah, dummy, that's a C major seven. That's a C dumb. I was like, yeah, but it doesn't. So it was more of just like a... You're dumb. Yeah, you're dumb. You're stupid.

That was a huge aha moment when I... But it wasn't so much the understanding of the theory. That did come later. But when I could just play it different, I was like, wow, I'm adding in a new element. So it's very basic and foundation, but huge lightball moment. I remember, I also, man, it's so funny. I'm just thinking about these. I'm thinking about very early moments.

Like I remember, I learned from the Bastion piano books when I was 10 years old, you know what I'm talking about? Which, by the way, my youngest son is learning from them now, and it's the same stuff. They're great. Like, I'm, I'll hear him play a song, and I'm like, I played that when I was. And isn't each one a different color or something?

Yeah, red and purple and whatever. So actually, quick aside, a lightball moment for me with the Bastion. I didn't actually learn about I remember seeing him, but I was scared of them because I thought, for some reason, you know, you see a, I thought it was the bastard piano. The Bastard piano version, that's a hardcore one. Well, no matter which one you learn from, whether it's that or the, what is it, piano safari is the other big one. There's always like the bluesy thing, right?

The bluesy start. And it's this kind of core, right? Just like C, E, G, B, flat, right? And I remember sitting at my keyboard with my Bastion book, and this wasn't in the tune. Like, I forget what the tune was, but I remember working this out. like stuff like that like I'm not sounding like this exactly but

basically I sounded like that in the crib I worked out the blues scale as I was like playing this dominant chord and I was like well that's that sound that I hear like the Beatles play right right

that's that was my British invasion that was my 10 year old reference to like the blue this was the Beatles as close as I was going to get and then like

So that was like a light bulb boom. That's that sound that those guys on the radio play. You know, that's what the sound of like real music is or whatever. And then it wasn't until, you know, years later that I was like, oh, this is like a known phenomenon, right? This is like a has a scale behind it, even though, just to be clear, all are our blues fans out there. Uh-oh.

We're not going to do the blues scale. We're never going to talk about the blues again. We've learned that. We've learned that. We've learned that. If you're not standing in the blues museum or on the blues museum or on Chicago on the Southside, don't even open your mouth up about the blues.

But I remember being 10 and figuring out that sort of sound on my own and being like, oh, snap, that's like a sound sound, you know? Right. All right, I got another one. This is just randomly I thought of this one. You know that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Billy Jean. So when I was like kind of getting into jazz and just, I'd been playing the piano, but I was sort of doing some, I guess I was either seventh or eighth grade, maybe eighth grade, that record, Billy Gene, well, thriller, Michael Jackson was huge that year on the radio. And like, I remember we had a little band, Chris Thomas and Jeremy Davenport and Dave Berg.

We had a nice little combo, we called it. And like, we didn't know anything. Like, nobody could help me with the C-7C because they didn't know. I mean, we were all like just, we were just glad to be cutting class and playing some music. But Chris had an electric bass. And I was, like, I wanted to play that bass line. I kind of knew it on the piano a little bit. Like, I was like trying to do it.

But I figured it out. Like he sort of showed me that he's like, I think it's this. I was like, I don't know. But like, I just kept playing with his bass one day. And I learned that baseline on electric bass. And I was so proud of myself. I played violin. So I knew a little bit about, you know, how the thing worked.

But that was like my first time, like, picking something that off of a record that wasn't on piano. Yeah. On an instrument and just being able to like learn it. And that just, you know, was a lightball moment. Like, wow, you can learn anything. Yeah. And I thought, I mean, learned later. That was the most complicated baseline.

But it's a good one. That's a great one. Yeah. another one for me came much embarrassingly late and this is the double diminished and I remember like all of mine are things that are so common knowledge like if YouTube was around in my late teens

early 20s I would know like all this theory right because like later I'm like people call it the double diminished and it's like a known again a known thing and I was like playing it for years and then like the diminished scale right

I knew those notes. And then one day I just started putting the notes that weren't, like I used to just voice all my dimensionous chords like this. Yeah. And then one day I was like, oh, that sounds like, that's amazing. And then one day I was like this. And I was like, that is the most beautiful sound. So esoteric, so mysterious.

It's gorgeous. That's the double diminished. Yeah, that's good. So I had a similar one with C-13 sharp 11 for some reason. And I kind of heard it like, Like that G minor major seven like over like to me that opened up like like the base level was You know like the C7 and then it was like who nine wait wait wait what sharp 11 wait oh no am I don't even go there Yeah yeah I went there yeah I went there yeah that really kind of was the first thing I was like wow that sounds modern

I remember listening to there was a summer that I got into like in the same time listening to the real McCoy and now he sings, now he sobs and not knowing at all how they were doing that. And then one of my friends was like, oh, it's like Panatonics. And I was like, what's that?

Is that a grunge band out of Seattle? Yeah, exactly. Showed me that sound and I was like, and then that's all I would play for like a year. I'm sure I annoyed everybody I played with because we could be playing like, you know,

and I just be like, that's good stuff well then we've always got the one and I think I don't know if we both experienced this at different times but it was definitely an aha moment that I'm still amazed people don't know and that's the blue scale

stick with the one blue scale usually so you don't have to leave that aha still on a still on the one that's a classic aha yeah that's an aha and also just that the blues you can play the major or the minor.

I mean, I'm no blues expert, so don't, I'm just saying. Yeah, don't write us again. No, you know what? As you were playing that, I was thinking another one was when I learned the term and the concept of rootless piano voicing. I was like, wait, you could play a chord and it doesn't have the note that's the name of the chord. Is it even a real chord?

Like, I could play this chord. and that's a C-7 that's a C chord there's no C in this chord how is that a C chord if there's no C in it and then like you know my band director whoever was like yeah the bass player will play the C you just play that

oh you're like what are you sure that's dumb came up with this stuff oh that's great all right well I think that was some good aha moments man I love it man things that make you go aha

where's the dog pound at who Does nobody remember Arsenio? Remember Arsenio? Of course I remember Arsenio. Well, and I always think, you know, to one of my favorite movies coming to America, which, you know, Arsenio had a short-lived.

They are remaking it. I'm worried. I'm worried. How do you remake a classic without messing it up? Why are they dumb and dumber? All these stuff. Dumb and dumber? Yeah.

But it's Eddie, and they got a lot of the original cast, so I don't know if that's good or bad. I think it's good, so we hope. But good stuff. Well, we are brought you by OpenStio. Please go to Open StudioJazz.com. Check out OpenStiojazz.com slash live. We have an ever updating, a weekly updating calendar there of our live events, many of which,

if not most, are free. And we'd love to see you at some of our performances, our informances, our Q&As, daily guided practice sessions, available on YouTube as well. So just check it out because it's a fun place to get involved if you haven't jumped into the open studio world. Until next time, you'll hear it.