You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Playing in All Keys

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

Peter and Adam kick off the week by answering a question about how to avoid playing the same lines over and over by practicing in all keys.Today's episode is sponsored by the Oxford American. The Oxford American is a magazine dedicated to documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South. Its award-winning annual music issue comes with a CD sampler and digital download - a must-have for any serious music fan. Recent issues have featured Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk, John Cage, and John Cage. Visit https://www.oxfordamerican.org/yhi today for a special subscription discount!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, Peter. Hey, man. How many keys do you have on your keychain currently? I don't have a keychain to tell you the truth. How do you get in your house? I'm minimalist. I'm Adam Manis. I'm Peter Martin.

You're listening to The You'll Hear It Podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Coming at you today's episode of the You'll Hear's podcast is sponsored by the Oxford American. Make sure to take a minute to visit Oxfordamerican.org slash YHI. You'll find a curated collection of music content, including an interview with Les McCann, a video feature about a lifelong collector of 78. R-E-R-R-P-Ms. And an in-depth story on John Coltrane,

Lonious Monk, many other jazz greats. Again, that's oxfordamerican.org slash YHI. And be sure to sign up for the Oxford American's e-newsletter so that you don't miss out on any important announcements, events, or other musical happenings in the Oxford American universe.

Have you signed up for the newsletter yet? I'm signing up as we speak. And you're doing that at Oxfordamerican.org slash YHI? I sure am. Because I already know this is going to be one of those newsletters. You know, you get excited about something.

and you sign up for the newsletter, and then a few months later, you're trying to find that unsubscribe button. Yeah, not this one. Too many times. I have the feeling this is not going to be that type because their content is just so compelling. Every time I sit down with the magazine,

or look at their wonderful website, which has some of the articles and synopsis and links to music and YouTube videos and stuff, it's so thoughtfully put together. And so I think in a day and age when we're kind of flooded with basically crap in our email inbox. It's going to be nice to kind of get something from some wonderful,

source that we love and appreciate. Yeah, the Oxford American, it's like anti-crap. Right. Stuff you actually want. Exactly. Well, I mentioned keys in our brilliantly improvised opening because we had a question from an email. This is from Christopher in New Orleans.

He says, hi, love the you'll hear at podcast. I came across it a couple weeks ago, and it's now becoming a part of my break routine when I need to give my ears a rest in the studio. Well, it's not actually restful on your ears. but I'm a music. I'm a music producer, hip hop and R&B prominent predominantly. While guitar is my primary instrument, piano slash keyboard has been becoming more and more part of my day to day over the couple years as I get more work as a producer. The only time I really practice piano, though, is if I need to record a part, then I'm just practicing that one part slowly until I'm comfortable playing it at tempo.

And this does absolutely nothing for my overall sound. I studied jazz in college and was mentored by a local jazz musician in New Orleans through high school, so I'm pretty good with theory and figuring out what I'm hearing in my head and applying that to the piano. My issue is when I'm playing, I'm always hesitating and searching for the notes while playing changes, which makes my timing pretty choppy and limits my creativity for the most part. It's like my hands consistently fall behind my ears and I get stuck playing the same boring shapes and voicing I'm comfortable with. I'm comfortable playing in E-Flux. and I frequently resort to transposing my keyboard,

so the key of the tune I'm working on plays an E flat on that keyboard. Oh, epic fail. That's the shameful, correct, solution to my problem, LOL. So my question is, what? No LOL. Straight shame. My question is, what would be your practice slash exercise suggestions for muscle memory in my hands,

so I'm not stuck and limited to one position? I hope I explain the issue well enough for you guys to understand it. Also, I'm in the seven ways to begin a tune episode, but I can't find that. We'll cover that later. But that's Chris from New Orleans. What's up, Chris, from the Crescent City? That's right.

And we'll stick to this question of the keys. And it is, in fact, shameful to be transposing on the keyboard. Well, I mean, what do you do when you get an old chronic and Bach in front of you? I know. I mean, it's shame. Well, I think it's shameful like the same way its amount of shame as if you're going to, if you want to translate a letter that you're writing into another language. you just go to Google Auto Translate.

Your quality is not going to be that good. No, shame in that game. Oh, there's not. Well, no, but then you try to pass it off as the real deal. Oh, I guess that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, a little bit of understanding might come through, but you're kind of using technology in a way

not to really develop your own skills, which is really what this is about. And I think, you know, this thing, I think he mentioned something about how do you get out of the same boring shapes and voicing. So on the piano, and I would imagine to a certain degree on the guitar, Yeah, to a great degree, you know, transposing, auto-transposing is not, you're not going to get out of the same shapes because you're going to be playing the same one.

That's right. So a little bit of just old-school repetition is what you're going to need so that you can get, you know, as Chris said, his hands are behind his ears. And didn't he kind of say that? Yeah. So there needs to be some kind of methodology to how you're going to go through a practice. And I think that's what he's asking. But it's like you also have to be realistic in how much. much you can add. You can't just say, okay, I want to learn all 12 keys. I'm only comfortable

with a few small, you know, set of boring, what I would consider boring voicings, but I also want to be able to play them in all keys and I want to be able to hear them as I play by the end of the week. Yeah. It doesn't matter what computer algorithm, you can program a computer maybe to do that. But you can't get it so that you have that internalized and your hands, you have the muscle memory, the ears, the connection, the taste, the understanding to be able to execute all of those. But, you know, within three months or so, I would say, with some nice 20 to 30 minutes of practice on voicings, I think you can develop an interesting palette pretty much in all keys, you know, of basic,

but basic but good voices, wouldn't she say? That's realistic. I would totally agree. And I think the key to this is to be discerning, to find the voicings that you know in the key of E-flat that you like, you know, not shapes that you're bored with, but take them around to all keys. And you could start slow. Take them to keys close to E-flat. Yeah.

Or keys that you get called. the play on a lot. You know, if you're doing, you know, hip-hop and R&B sessions, that could be sharp keys. That could be more flat keys. But whatever it is, you know, start out taking it in chunks. Like you said, it's not going to happen overnight, but take one little idea and try to run it around the keys in a time that allows you to actually absorb it. Yeah. You know, and be discerning.

You don't have to take everything that you do in E-flat around all 12 keys. Now is the time to start whittling out what you don't want to take around in all 12 keys. Get it out of your playing, you know? What not to play. What not to play. In the words of the great Christian McBride, but Christian McBride about talking about baselines, I can tell you a few things not to do.

Yeah. And that's going to get you the promised land even quicker. And one of those is transposing the keyboards. They're always playing in a B flat. No, but here's the thing. I think one problem here, one solution solves the other problem as well because the whole, my hands aren't catching up with my brain thing.

That's because you can only play in the key of E flat. Right. You start getting proficient in even just six other keys. Yeah. Right? Your hands will be way quicker on even E flat. You know what I mean? You start understanding the relationships of the intervals better. Your fingers become better aligned with the keyboard because you have to play an E. You have to play an A or whatever. I think one hand shakes the other for these two problems. Absolutely. And I think that let's just be clear too. And I would just say there's actually no shame in this idea of transposing the voices. If you can only play them, if you're kind of doing that for professional reasons, like you're producing something and you need to be in another key and you just can't play. it yet. So it's like you got to separate that out and I think that we probably the common times

that you and I encounter this is in maybe composing or arranging when you're on a deadline and you just go to somebody else's score copy and paste and put it in your own. No, I'm joking. I'm just checking to see if you're listening right now. Whoa! No, but I mean that would be the equivalent of like I don't have time to write it so I'm going to go grab them. So now you get into some legal

jeopardy that. Why that arrangement sounds so close to a Nelson Riddle arrangement? That's weird. Right, right. No, but I think what it would be, you know, there's certain things. Well, for instance, like you're going to do a gig in like half an hour. And the singer's like, oh, I want to do, you know, fly me to the moon in A. And you don't really know fly me to the moon. Maybe you kind of know it in F, but you don't feel confident being able to do it in A.

I would say if, you know, you're at a certain point, maybe kind of go for it. But you might need to bust out the, you know, and I pride myself on never using these, but I have seen them. And I play with the real book where you can change on the app, you know, the key so it shows it to you as opposed to to transposing it. If you've got to do it for the gear, you've got to do it, but then at least make a note of that that you're going to practice. First of all,

that you're going to really learn the tune because if you don't really know the tune, it's very hard to kind of hear it and transpose it at the same time. The real book thing, I think that's a level down from the keyboard thing. I think it's part of the same family. Right. But I do think... Even more shameful or less shameful? A little bit. Because you're still reading it. A wall of

shame here? Yeah, exactly. We should actually make a wall of shame. But the keyboard thing, I'm on the fence about this, because I hear you're saying it's a professional situation you want it to sound good but also it's like i feel like if you're really going to get this chris you're going to have to fail every once and a while in a kid you're not comfortable in and sometimes the only time to do that is in some kind of performance or or just a situation where it matters you know yeah but i mean i also think that we you know in a professional situation you have to kind of put the best product forward you

have to put yourself in a position you don't want to be lazy that's true but you don't want to be so You have to think about like what is the end result. You want to get through the tune, support the singer, play a good soul, whatever. But you're right. I mean, you're not going to grow. I mean, you can push yourself if you're disciplined when you're practiced, but that takes a lot. And I mean, I really struggle with that in terms of as soon as I finished doing a performance, especially when it goes, I feel like it went really well or an arrangement or a composition

or anything with Open Studio, whatever. Like that, right when you're done is actually the time to evaluate and say, okay, what can I do better next time? Like, what do I need to work on to put myself in a position? And when it goes well, or like if you've got the real book, you know, you're playing the chord and having it transposing, it works and sounds good and sells a bunch of copies or whatever, you're sort of like, oh, I'm cool. I'll just do that next time.

But you've got to be disciplined to say, okay, next time I still want to sound as good, but I want to actually be in that other key with some new voices. Yeah, I think that's good. But honestly, too, as a button on all of this, you know, I can't say enough how important it is to practice in all 12 keys, to have them comfortable. You have to do it. It has to happen one way or another at some point, and the only way to do it is to actually practice in keys like E and G flat and A and D flat. Like, there's plenty of examples of tunes that are in these keys.

You can just take tunes you know and go through these keys. You can take licks that you play or language that you use. Voicings is super super super important. Yeah, and I think with voicings, you know, there's two kind of top-level ways to go about this hitting all. Like, say, if you have, you know, some nice. voicing's in E flat. I would actually recommend first going through the circle of like going through the flat keys, a circle of fifth, circle of force, as opposed to going chromatic, at least with the first set, because with the piano, it's a little bit easier to comprehend how the shapes, the shapes are

going to change less as you go through the flat keys as opposed to jumping between flat and sharp keys, so to speak. From a theoretical standpoint, there's some things that I think that are a little easier to understand from a chromatic standpoint. So the next one you do, you may want to switch to that and then you also get a little bit of like both sides as opposed to just being dogmatic about practicing. Does that make sense? It does. I think there's actually ways of, you know,

any way you can practice all 12 keys differently I think is good. So circle of fourth, is it cycle of fourth? Is it cycle of fourth? It's both. I always I learned circle of force because I learned it on a circle and it goes around. Cycle of fifth? I thought one was one

and no, man. Well chromatically you could also do sometimes I'll practice something on the whole tone scale. So like up to like C, D, E, A, flat, B, flat, B, and then go up a half step B, D, D, flat, E, F, G. If you forget that last part, you're only going to be like, wow, this is cool. I went through all the keys, only six of them.

The point is that like, just, yeah, exactly. Oh, cool, I'm good. But the point is different ways to kind of fool your brain so you don't get into these patterns so much that you... A little chaos theory. A little chaos so that you're really lock into these. We talked about this with memory work episode we did. But so that when you're cycling through these,

if you do it in a different way, you know, every couple of times, you're going to remember them faster. Big shout out to a gentleman that I learned about chaos theory about 15, 20 years ago, who actually has a jazz connection as well, the great mathematician Jeff Goldblum in the original Jurassic Park.

Yeah. When my older kids were first watching that when it came out, I remember he broke down chaos. He put a cup of water on your hands. Which way is it going to go? When he was in that helicopter, I think stoned or whatever talking about. Anyway, but we diverge. Okay, so Chris in New Orleans, hopefully that gets you on the right path.

And then, you know, discipline practice for this. Take it slow as you go through either the circle of fifth, circle of force, you know, whole tone, chromatic. But, you know, have some goals for yourself. I mean, you know, I think if we think about adding one key per week would be very conservative in terms of like, you know, at least a place to start. Totally. And look, in 11 weeks, you already know where you flat, in 11 weeks, less than three months, you've got them all, at least with a subset of changes.

But the other side of your question, too, is you also have to develop some other voicing. So I think you can go through this systematically as far as learning them in different keys and getting the shapes together, but also introducing some new voices. A lot of great resources. We've got a bunch on the blog. I was going to say, Chris, you know where you can go is you'll hear it.com to our blog. There's a piano section where we have tons of great blog post about all kinds of different voicing. you can get some ideas there.

Yep, yep. And a bunch of other great folks online in person. So that was a great question. That was good. Thank you. And I was wondering about his teacher from New Orleans. He said it was an arranging teacher, piano teacher. I wonder if that was Buddy Bowden.

I guess that'd be going back a little far probably. Chris is very, very old. Especially for hip-hop producer. Exactly. All right. Well, nailed another one. Yeah. Don't forget to go to Oxfordamerican.org slash YHI.

You can get a year subscription. for 25 bucks which is an incredible deal thank you to oxford american for being our charter sponsor yep yep good stuff well till tomorrow you'll hear it