You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Play Like a Great: How to Play Blues Like McCoy Tyner

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

Presenting a new mini-series from You'll Hear It: Play Like a Great, where Peter and Adam break down how you can get the sound of a jazz legend into your playing. Today, they'll look at McCoy Tyner's bluesy sound on "Newport Romp."Links From This Episode:For a comprehensive collection of piano lessons, save money by purchasing the Piano Access Pass - every piano course past, present, and future from Open Studio.Today's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)For 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, Peter. Hey, Adam. You ready for a little romp? Yes. A little romper stomper. Let's do it. A little blues romp here. Come on.

Come on. Check it out. I'm Adam Maness. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Advice and inspiration for music and for life coming at you. Well, if you like music, and I know you do, you might want to check out today, which is Open Studio.

Go to open studio, jaz.com. For all your jazz lesson needs that includes the piano access pass, check it out today. Yes. And with the piano access pass, you will get access. at least for a little bit longer, but you want to get in soon because we have something very exciting coming up soon.

We're not ready to announce it yet. Okay. But you do get in on the daily guided practice sessions with Sir Adam Manus. Well, I've not been knighted yet. You haven't. Well, by the attendees, I would say you're darn near knighted at this point

because you are lovingly guiding a group of, a very diverse group of pianists in terms of level, age, and geographic region, and gender. and everything. It's really exciting. Just the common bond is wanting to be able to practice with other folks during a pandemic period and you lead them so well. And it's been a beautiful thing. So folks can still get in on that. Yeah, come come practices with us. We're practicing

every day over there. We're working hard. There's a live version. There's an app where you can check out each day's guide of practice session on the same day. It's pretty awesome. It's a great community. Everybody's helping each other. We're getting better. It's working. So today, man, I don't know. I'm springing this on you. I want to launch a new series. Yeah, no, I can feel it. I can feel it. So one thing we've done a lot of is transcribe, right? And we've transcribed a lot of different piano players. And I've noticed that you and I have transcribed some of the same stuff,

but we've both transcribed a lot of piano players playing on a blues. And what I want to talk about is maybe some of the giants, right, some of the Mount Rushmore here of jazz piano. What are the different ways that they approach playing on a blues? I thought we can kick it up here with my man, McCoy Tyner. I've been spending a lot of time with McCoy lately. It's a nice place to spend and spend some time. Oh, it's really great.

So this album live at Newport has really hit me hard. First of all, because of the personnel on there. Clark Terry's just destroying this album, like cover to cover. But also McCoy is playing on here. And it's actually kind of an interesting band. It's Bob Cranshaw and bass and Mickey Roker on the drums, Charlie Mariano on the saxophone and Clark Turner and trumpet. So not a typical McCoy band from this era.

This is a 1963 early McCoy solo record on Impulse. But this Newport romp, it's B-flat blues, right? And at this period, McCoy is playing a ton in John Coltrane's band. And so you can obviously hear the influence on McCoy from Coltrane. And so my thought is, is like we could break down a little bit of the things that what makes McCoy playing a blues different than say Oscar Peterson or Witton Kelly or Thelonious Monk playing a blues or Herbie Hancock playing a blues?

Like what is the difference between these great players? So I thought we could start with McCoy today. I have a few things that I picked out from the transcription of this Newport Romp. Just from the first chorus, you get a really good sampling of how to make some sounds like McCoy on the blues. So let's listen again to this first couple of choruses here from Live at Newport is the album. And this is the first track, Newport Romp. Okay, that's really all we need. There's so much information.

He hit all his big points in that already. Yeah, but how much does it sounds like very stereotypical. typical McCoy sound. He has such a strong sense of style McCoy Tyler does. It's just great. So what do you notice first and foremost? What stands out to you for that McCoy sound? Well, I, you know, I actually think the amount of bebop that is in his style, you know, we don't necessarily, because he's not a bebop player, but he's very influenced by that. It's there, though. It's there, though. So he takes his rhythmic concert. Like what I'm hearing is very bebop kinds of lines, you know, approaches, enclosures, those kind of things. But

then the fourth voicing's in the left hand. He kind of juxtaposing those. That's right. Yeah. No, he doesn't do that, but he's like... As soon as he's got those force as opposed to the more like those. So, yeah, just bebop. That's the first thing I know.

He does do something like in this first chorus, like... Like, he does do like a... Yeah. That's there. That's there. That is a great point. So there is some... At least, I think you're right in that.

It's like he's not playing like, you know... Right. It's not straight. B-B-B-B or even post-bop, but there's influenced there. Yeah. That's definitely... And a lot of it. And a lot of it.

That's one thing. And then the fourth voicing's, that's another thing I'm glad you brought up, because that's there, too, right? And fourth voicing... A lot of diatonic movement with those fourth voices. Right. So that's when you take a voicing, say, like... Right here, we have a B-flat 7, so you take, like, from the bottom up here in the

left hand, A-flat, D, and G. You can move it around that B-flat-dominant scale, right? Just move those diatonic. Right? Yep. Sounds great. That's what he's doing there. and then along with that...

You can play bebop all day, and it still sounds like McCoy. There's a couple other things, though, that I noticed on this course. So he leans heavily, and the McCoy sound in general might lean on this. And I think this is something

that was definitely from the influence of Coltrane. That sound. So this is like an F minor sound. Yeah. It's almost like he's thinking F minor over B flat. Absolutely.

He does something like... Yeah. It's almost like an F minor, F minor pentatonic, too. Almost like an F minor pentatonic, right. Exactly, yeah. He kind of floats between that and straight up like, like straight up B flat triad plus one, you know. Well, I think that's that influence.

So, like, when you're on the F minor pentatonic, like that's the Suss 4, the dominant 7 of the F, but the, but he won't necessarily, but he'll go. Yeah, yeah. Like he'll catch it another octave going between. that fourth and that third. Yeah, exactly. So check it out. So if you're on that F minor sound, right? And then you hit that just going between... It's so modular.

F minor and B flat. And then adding one or two other notes around, you know, the hemisphere of those. That's the sound, right? It's like F minor pentatonic, B flat, major pentatonic. And that'll get you a long way. And then a lot of just kind of just, you know, nested triads that are in there. E flat, you know, first amendment. I like that nested triad. I don't write that down. A new thing around here, nested triads. And there's such great, you know, melodic, you know, devices that he uses.

So another thing I'm hearing already in this, and I love sort of tracking this in McCoy's playing in a number of different areas. Are we cool? Yeah. Okay, good. So we've got his rhythmic approach, and he does this on ballads. definitely does it on blues and everything but that's this idea of like coming in with a syncopated idea on the up

so it's like one two one two deep votes yeah yeah yeah and then like when does he stay on the up and then shift over to the downbeat you know it's a recurring theme and then he finds a way to play that again but let me count it off so we can really feel where it is one

two one two three four something like that and so when he gets there that's like that resolution because he's on the other side of the beat the other half of the beat And that's something McCoy loved to play around with, you know, on impressions, like when it's very modal sitting on the same chord. Big fourth block chords he would do that with, you know. Yeah, yeah. You know, and he had such an innate sense of syncopation and, you know, like the rhythmic architecture that you could set up in a solo by using that.

One more thing that I think will really nail home the McCoy sound on playing the blues. I'm loving this, by the way. We're going to do Oscar Peterson next. Okay. how Oscar Peterson. But to finish up just on how you can maybe make it sound a little more McCoy, you might notice that this was not a 251 cadence at the end of this blues. This was a 5-4-1, right?

Also very indicative of that Coltrane band during that time, right? All of those Coltrane plays the blues leaned on that basic version. And you'll notice what McCoy does here on that 5 chord, it's that. It's literally an F-7. Yeah. Yeah. On that first chorus. That tells you all you need to know about what needs to happen.

You don't have to think about like these like... Right, exactly. Like McCoytano just went, you know what I mean? That's hip. Exactly. Yeah, well, he just, and the rhythm is so hip of what he's doing.

I think another thing that he does great in this first chorus is, you know, the half-step approach, which is a fairly common and somewhat basic of a substitution based upon, you know, on a blues going from the one to the four-core. you could think of it as a tritone substitution. But it's like, you know, but he does it in line and nests it within his melodic line

in such a great way. Nested half step approach. The old classic nested half step. Now could you use nested triads in the old nested half step? But the way he goes up and just slides into that kind of, it almost makes it sound like he's playing more out than it is.

Yeah. Because he's making it a hipper thing because he doesn't do these kind of substitutions like right on the measure or like for two beats or whatever. They're always flowing kind of with what his, they're melodically driven as opposed to structure. Yeah, they're not I am a robot McCoy Tyner. Deploy, nested half-step approach.

No, not at all. So it's such a, he's so melodically and rhythmically driven. I mean, of course, harmonically too, but to me it's always like the harmony flows from what he's doing, telling his story with the melody, you know. Love it, man. Love it. Okay. Well, there's our how to play the blues like, McCoy Tyner. Now that's a very, it's a very, uh, blues for dummies kind of approach here.

But I think actually the, the act of taking an overview and seeing like, what is it that makes this player or this player? I think it's an important thing to do. And to talk about it with you is just, is really awesome. And let's do, let's do O.P. I would love to do monk with you. You know so much about monk's music and how to play some monk isms. And I think it would be cool to kind of break down how monk approaches a blues. It would be cool to do Witton Kelly, you know, maybe on Friday Freelo, is one we talk about a lot. What? I don't know.

Maybe even some Bill Evans. Oh, Bill Evans. An underrated blues player and very interesting approach. And then his cousin, Bill Levens. Bill Levens out of Topeka, Kansas. Rarely heard part of the Witness Protection Program, as it were. So thanks for listening to everybody. That's right.

Until tomorrow. You'll hear it.