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

Episode Date: June 26, 2019

Planing? Planing. Peter and Adam answer an email-submitted question about voicing chords using harmonic planing (taking a chord/chord shape and moving it within a mode).The ending theme song for today's episode is "Luna" by The RhythmEarth Electric Trio. To get your music featured on You'll Hear It, send an MP3 recording of your music to [e-mail] offer for our You'll Hear It listeners: For $129, you can get both Jazz Piano for Beginners and Elements of Jazz Piano ($320 value). Just add both courses to your cart, and apply promo code "BOGO" to get this deal. Visit https://www.openstudionetwork.com/courses/Be one of the first 20 people to leave us a rating or review at https://www.youllhearit.com/sticker and you can score a FREE You'll Hear It sticker.Today's episode is sponsored by Soundslice. Soundslice is a web-based music-learning software that is a hybrid audio player and notation viewer that syncs music notation with real audio. To find out more about them, visit www.soundslice.com/transcribe. And check out our Slice of Emotion In Motion (the You'll Hear It Jingle)!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. What's up? Have you been on an aeroplane? I have. Have you been planing? I'd rather not. Have you been complaining? All the time.

This sucks. I'm Adam Anas. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Coming at you. Today's episode is sponsored by SoundSlice. Please go to soundslice.com slash transcribe.

Check out one of the coolest music tools. It's a browser-based software that allows you to transcribe videos. You can sync that transcription up to the video so you see. The notation scrolling along with the music, it's incredible. It's a great way to learn. There's a community of people doing this, and you can see a lot of free transcriptions, all different kinds of instruments. We use it here at Open Studio on all of our courses every day.

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Check it out. Yeah. Okay, so we're talking about planes today because we got a user email. Oh, I thought we were going on a trip. Because it's summertime, summertime. Oh, yeah, man, we should do a summer, summer, time. You'll hear it, like, vacation week or something, where we, you know how sometimes shows, like Conan will go to New York or something like

that? We should go to, like, Kirkwood or Webster. I was thinking more like Cosamel or maybe St. Thomas. Pose of a mouth. Potato, potato. But, yeah, we could do it. You'll hear it on location from the beach. That would be fantastic.

Yeah, we could pull our speedos out for that episode. YouTube, where you're at? We promise we won't do that. We promise, promise we won't do that. Okay, so no, we're not talking about that kind of plane yet, though, right? We're talking about planing, which, you know, last time we talked about this, and I can't remember if we ever talked about it in an episode, but I really exposed a slight bit of ignorance I have in that I had no idea what the hell this was. was. I don't know what it is either. I mean, I know what the concept is once it was explained to me,

but I'd never heard the term planing. Our mutual friend, a friend of the podcast and friend of Open Studio Brian Fielding, was showing us planing, and we were both like, oh, yeah, planning, not really knowing that that's what it was called. Yeah, I know about complaining. I even know about mansplaining. Do you know about that? That's a new, that's a hot new concept. I know you know about that. But planing, yeah. And so this, since neither one of us knows much about this, we thought it'd be the perfect question to answer. Yeah, this is from Torrine.

Our member, long time member. He writes, Hey, Adam and Peter, thanks a lot for this. I've been working extensively on voicings and it's definitely a lot of help. However, one thing that I've been struggling to grasp that I was originally asking regarding voicings is more along the lines of harmonic planing.

In other words, taking a shape or a group of notes within a mode scale and moving around in different ways. I feel like when I am comping, I am only limited to thirds, fourths and so what voicings? What about using intervals like fifths, six, seconds, triads, or clusters? Are there intervals and shapes that I should avoid?

A lot of modern pianists and arrangers use voicing that are more based on shapes within a given motor scale, and then they move that shape around the scale in different ways. For instance, could I take a random group of notes using the diminished scale and move it around in minor thirds? What about Lydian shape, minor, locrian, whole tone, etc? I am interested in this particular technique of harmonic painting. because I would like to move a voicing or shape around in different ways rather than just having one stock voicing

for each given chord. I would like to sit down at the piano and come up with new voicings and develop my own unique sound. I would be very happy if you and Peter would do a you'll hear an episode on this. So we are. Yes.

And that's a great question. I'm more confused about what planning is now. Yeah, I think, yeah, I don't know if Toreen has it right or if Brian has it right. I mean, all I know is I think I know what sound they're looking to get. I think of people like Kenny Kirkland, McCoy Tyner, folks like that.

I like those guys. I do too. Herbie, Hancock. Yeah. But this idea of a shape that moves around. Now, the best way to, I think, get into this is taking a simple voicing and moving it diatonically.

He mentioned the so what voicing. This is like, you know, 101 planning right here. Right, right. Now, but he's talking about by saying harmonic planning, he means comping. Yeah, I think so. But I think we could also extend that out to melodic ideas that are based upon shapes of comping voicings, right?

This is a very, very good point. I mean, I do that. Yeah, this is, they go hand in hand. There are a similar thing. So if you make a shape, and this works so well on piano, these four note, five note shapes because of the way our hands work, but you can think of them as just broken voicing

that you're planing, you know, over diatonically. So is our key station working here, Andrew? Are we key stationed up? Key stationed up? It is not. Okay, so why don't we pause here? We're going to get it working. All right, we are all good to go.

We are good to go, my brother. That's impressive. No, that was not a prayer. Wait, hold on. Okay, here we go. All right, we're all good to go. Key station's hooked up. Key station is in there.

the house ready for planing okay so let's take those so what voicing yes you got this right so the first thing you could do with that shape is just move that shape i mean it's easy to do on d minor because it's all white keys so we're talking diatonic planning here that's what i'm thinking yeah yeah as opposed to chromatic i mean both work but the easiest one to see is the diatonic right yeah and he did mention too like over diminished uh moving in minor thirds which is definitely something that works well when you're taking certain voicing and moving them up in minor thursday. But why not move the diminished,

why not practice moving in the diminished scale? Yeah, is that too? Well, that's harder. It's harder. But think about the choices you would have if you can do that. I can't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That idea of taking a diatonic thing and moving it up. So what about like, what about just a left-hand three-note voicing F-7-E-flat-D, right? One of those classic. Right? And taking that up diatonic, the F-dominant scale.

That's something you hear all the time. Yeah, and I think what I mentioned earlier in terms of, and this is why I think it's so great for one-headed voices, to try to learn them at both hands, even in that same kind of register of the piano, is then, you know, somewhat immediately, or as early as you can, trying to think about the melodic possibilities, you know, the horizontal possibilities.

So you got those same voicing. you know, you can do it in both hands, but the idea being that there's a lot of different ways. Am I playing it? I don't know because I still don't know what it means. I feel. But, you know, the simplest is,

is, I don't know, that doesn't do anything, but it's fun anyway. So the simplest, and I did a lesson on this yesterday, actually for jazz piano method, where we're talking about patterns.

And I've always been anti-patterns, but it's like, how do you take something, but actually music, a lot of musical ideas are based upon setting up patterns and different expectations in terms of melody or harmony and then breaking them, you know, adding drama to them. But if you take a simple pattern, well, let's do it even over a diminished. So you've got the half hold diminish scale. If you're doing broken thirds, that's a very simple pattern.

And that's kind of the simplest way to do it. But what about, like, how do you do that in a way that doesn't sound boring and too much a pattern. I don't know how. Well, maybe you go. Put some chromaticism in there. Add a little chromaticism as you're coming out of it as opposed to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, you sound like a computer where it's like. And I notice I also added it a little, I went from in 16th or 8th or whatever those are to triplets to. So it's like you're playing with the rhythm. You're breaking up that rhythmic pattern as well. And, you know, anything that we do in terms of, wow, now I found the sound that I like has the danger of it becoming like now you systematized it so much, it's not

noise, it's not as it loses its musicality. So it's like, how do you take something? I understand what he's saying as far as you take something that you like and how do you expand your vocabulary with it. And it's fine to do that, but then you always have to think about something unexpected with it because life, I mean, art is unexpected. It's not supposed to be like, you know, computer programming. I'm a square box. I am a square box.

Well, that's interesting you say that because what I was just thinking of one of the things that planing or doing these things. So if we start off with a voicing here, like this F7 sort of sus voicing, F, B, flat, E flat, G. Right? If I'm comping. And you know, we can do the diatonic thing, which gives really some nice sounds.

You know what I mean? Some nice tension. This one, the next one's cool. B flat, E flat A. And I'm just moving all notes up. But, so like you said, to go some unexpected places, we can do things like the same concept we would have with an enclosure, right? where we surround a note,

you can do that with this voicing. So if I go up titonically, and then maybe I want to go back to the original, you know? You can do things like going up. We know that diminished minor thirds are an even interval. So we can do the first two

and then go up to A flat, then up to B, and up to D. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then back to F, all these things. Well, I can tell too, by the way. you're reacting like these things it's about experimenting and then you're listening because not every one of them is going to work right every one of them is good to kind of catalog what it sounds like exactly you're never going to find like one concept where you take it you know diatonically or chromatically or in minor thirds or whatever and they're all going to sound great for every situation you have to experiment you have to use your ears and and so this is all about like the planning is just a great opportunity to take it out and do to make sounds that aren't in the diatonic key like another thing you can do with any voicing like that it's sort of like experiment with keeping that top note the same.

I like that. You know? And moving it around. Any kind of, you know, for lack of a better word, pattern, but something that the ear can ground on, you have, gives you a lot of freedom to do some crazy stuff, you know. And this is getting away from this a little bit, but I love, like, what you're doing here is the quickest,

most effective way to turn comping, you know, to separate the voices immediately. Yeah. And all you're doing is you're only leaving one note the same at the top, but that immediately gives it some autonomy in a way that then you can start to move, you know, two voices on the middle in or whatever. Yeah. But it immediately gets the listener's ear into that place as far as, as opposed to like everything moving in block fashion. It gives you kind of a buffer on the ears to try some things.

And I have no, like, I'm not really planning anything out. You start to, like, develop an ear for what shapes sound good. And this can work too, you know, with your left hand comping and your right hand soloing or something. You know, like leaning on a phrase or a note. Yeah. Like always hitting that B flat and then changing that. Yep. It gets you that nice like,

like, yeah, kind of sound. Yep. It's good. So I'm just looking at some other parts of the question because he brought up so many different, you know, like he says, what about using other intervals? Like fifth, six seconds, trials or clusters in terms of when he's feeling more limited to third's fourth and so what voices. Absolutely.

We're trying all those. And like this is some really good techniques to getting into trying that. But we're just remembering the simplicity of it, even as we get more complex with our experimentation, the simplicity is about keying, really keying in on how it sounds, how it sounds in terms of our progression, what's going to work, what's not going to work, and kind of cataloging those sounds in relation to how they feel in your hands so that you start to build up that vocabulary. Because I do get the feeling from the whole question that there's a certain kind of, you know, a yearning for Torrine to expand his comping.

Yeah, we're talking about planning, but the vocabulary that you have in order to be able to do this and start to set off on all these different patterns. Yeah, you know, for clusters, start experimenting. The most common cluster of Torrine that you're going to find is like a second on the bottom and then either the third, fourth, fifth, or sixth on top. Yeah. I use these all the time in my right hand.

Yep. And they can be broken. Man, that sounds like Dave Gruson with that sound, with that key station sign. It can be back to 1986. right there, man. Yeah. Good stuff.

Okay, and then the other part was, oh, come on now. Watch it. I mean, it's just a particular harmonic plane because I like to move a voicing or shape around in different ways rather than just having one style. Yeah, I mean, you're already onto it

conceptually. It's just a matter of experimenting and taking it through. I'll try to hit a jazz piano method lesson about this as well. This is a good point, though, for Torreene, because, like, you have it conceptually,

but you're not, don't just leave it there. Don't just say, like, I think I understand, and then you get on the jam session, get on the gig and, like, you're just messing around. Like, take some time in your practice routine to really focus on this and experiment. It's only going to make you better at this, and you're going to find things that fit you

and find sounds that way. You're not going to find that on the gig pretty much. Like, you can, but, you know, really take the time to kind of go through it in your daily practice routine. Get in your hands. Absolutely, good stuff.

Thank you, Turing for the question. We're having a lot of fun here. We would like to let folks know about our sponsor one more time because that's how we roll up in here. Soundslice.com. Go and check them out. And go to their community section. Go check out the open studio a little part of there.

There might be some examples of planning in there. I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't. You can start to see how they're notated while you watch the video while you listen to the sound because that's the way they do is at soundslice.com. What else we got? Go to You'll Hear It.com Oh, I like that place.

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Bogo? I've been on my Bogo stick all weekend, my friend. We still have our Bogo offer. We're going to extend it for our You'll Hear It, folks. All week, right? All week. So this is, when you buy the jazz piano method, or sorry, the jazz piano method, Jazz piano for beginners, which is our most popular course here.

It is. A great course by Peter Martin, setting beginning jazz pianists up. Great for instrumentalists of, like, non-pianists, great for learning piano for the first time. When you buy that at $129, you get elements of jazz piano, which is the course that leads directly from it. There's a lineage here. See what I'm creating?

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Buy one, get one free. I like it. So how would they do that? They would go and put both of them in their cart, I'm assuming. Yeah, go to openstudio network.com. Yes. You can go to dot com slash piano, so you can see all our piano courses. Put jazz piano for beginners and elements of jazz piano in your cart and then put in the offer code at the offer code field. Which is on the checkout, top of the checkout page. It's a little hidden. I don't know why, but you got to search for it.

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Taking us out today, we have a listener to. I love this. You didn't know about this. I usually forget about these. And you often forget. I don't think you once ever remembered to do one. Well, today, mark your calendar, sir. We're planning on into this tune.

This is called Luna. And I haven't got to do it. chance to listen to this yet, but it's been vetted by one of the amount of Open Studio staff. So we're excited about this. It's by Rhythm Earth Electric Trio, and it's set in by, oh, Nick Saunders, front of the podcast, friend of Open Studio. So this is exciting.

Looking forward to hearing this. So Nick's going to take us out with Luna, and until tomorrow, you'll hear it.