You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Playing Melodically on Minor 2-5's

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

It's another solo episode from Adam today as he explains a new method he discovered for playing on minor 2-5-1's.Links From Today's Episode:Check out the latest course from Open Studio - the Magic Voicing System. Learn from Adam Maness in this entirely Guided Practice Session-based course as he shows you an easy way to always play great sounding voicings that never clash.Today's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Live Guided Practice Session with Adam Maness on YouTube8:00 PM - Peter Martin's Shelter in Place #19: Solo Piano Concert 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.

I'm Adamannis, and you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Music advice coming at you. Today's episode is sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJadiojazz.com to check out all of our piano courses. But check out our new magic voicing system course that I just released a couple weeks ago. I think you'll dig it. It's become incredibly popular already. And thanks to everybody who's checked it out and who's sent me feedback.

I'm loving all the feedback and the videos of people playing these cool voicings and all the melodic things you can do with them. So go check that out. We'll put a link here in the description. Today, I want to continue on with the discussion I was having yesterday. We were talking about some pretty heady stuff about change and exploration and human nature. And I mentioned that I gave myself time to kind of explore something that I was stuck on. And I uncovered something that was new to me. And it might not be new to you, but I found this very, very helpful.

So I was trying to think of different ways to play melodically over a month. minor 251. Now, if you are a member of Open Studio and you've seen us teach over minor 251s, we start with sort of an, I think, is an easy way to think about it, which is with that sort of locrian sharp 2, right? If we have a minor 251 in C minor, that starts with D half diminished, right, D minor 7, flat 5 to a G7 alt to a C minor 6. That's how I think about a minor 251. Now, are D half diminished, we usually prescribe that D, lochrean sharp, too, right, based off of the F melodic minor scale, starting on D, D, E, natural, F, G, A, flat, B, flat, C. Right, just F melodic minor, starting on D.

And then we usually prescribe the G altered, right? G, A, A, flat, B, flat, B natural, D, flat, E, flat, F, G. Great sound, and then the C melodic minor. The reason why I like to start teaching this way, especially to like more advanced or intermediate at players is because it gets you thinking in that melodic minor harmony, right? We have F melodic minor, then we have A flat melodic minor, which is G altered, then C melodic minor. That's all well and good. But what I was working on yesterday was some locked hand voicings. I'm about to release a new locked hand drop two course. It's a locked hand drop two basics course. It's a lot of guided practice

sessions. Check that out coming soon. Spoiler alert. But I was working on trying to get locked hands. over this system of a minor two five one and for playing tunes it was not happening and I did some research like I looked up some Mark Levine stuff and some Frank Mantoof stuff and I was not thrilled with their suggestions for this either because it didn't sound like the players that I listened to how they would play this and the harmony they used and so I started just kind of messing around now I know some things that that I don't teach about this some different different ways to approach this for sure And one of the ways that I find, if I want to play melodically over, like in the key of C minor, with the 251 and C minor, the first thing I'll do is abandon that Locrian Sharp 2. And I'll go to what I consider, what I think about is an F Dorian, right?

Because C minor is the relative minor of E flat major, right? Right there, C minor to E flat. So, and I've heard other players, you know, Bud Powell and players who I love, I've transcribed them where they play something like over a D half diminished, right? That's an F minor triad. Actually, this whole thing, you can play as a 251 to E flat. But that lick to me solidifies the use of an F minor or thinking about F Dorian over that D half diminished.

So that is the same Locrian scale, just without that sharp too. So it's D, E flat. right f g b flat a flat c so same scale as that lochrane chartus is the locria this to me gets us in more of an inside baseball more of a c minor place it's a flat is in c minor you could also do the c harmonic minor here

which we'll get into later on the five chord but for me I think this f dorian this de lochrean sound this to me makes it so much easier to play melodically, to play within the key. And then also, if I need to voice, you know, drop two or locked hands in my French style, which maybe I'll get into on another day, it works so, to me, it's just, like, if I need to, if there's a melody that I'm playing that has an E flat over that D, I can do that now. I have a system behind it.

So it just makes so much sense. So that's my kind of first tip for playing more. melodically and inside the Keona minor 251 is avoid that lochrean sharp to practice make sure you practice just a regular lochrean and you have that in your hands you know i've i've heard that bop musicians used to you know there wasn't even like they didn't even consider the half diminish to think it was just f minor over d which explains why they would play more of that dorian sound or an f minor sound okay so the five chord right g7 alt or g7 you know flat nine sharp nine flat 13 which is how I want to think of it.

I don't want to think of it as alt, because altered implies that there is, you know, that flat 5 or sharp 11. And I want to take that out, right? Because the altered scale, if we use it here, it sounds great, by the way. It's very modern sounding. It's just very airy sounding,

not even that modern anymore. But here it is, G, A, flat, B flat, B natural, D flat, E flat, F, and G. Now, what do we notice about this? Five going to C minor in this altered scale, doesn't have a C.

It doesn't have the root of the key that we're in. To me, this is a major flaw, especially when we want to do more complicated harmony with it. And we want to voice melodies that are in tunes that are in this key. It gets very hard. So this is the rub that I was trying to explore. And then I kind of self-discovered something that I'm sure is a thing. And so don't write me saying like,

of course, how could you not know that? I didn't, you know, go to Berkeley or anything. I went to the new school, but you know what I mean? Like I haven't turned over every jazz theory stone. And a lot of this, I think, is a good lesson in that if we follow our ears, if we listen to the masters and we try to imitate their sounds, we can actually kind of come up with some really cool, unique systems that give us our own sound and kind of get us out of the Berkeley school of everything.

You know what I'm saying? No offense to Berkeley. It's great. But you know what I mean. Like you get a little bit more perspective and actually things sink in. So, okay. So what did I discover? So again, C minor, right? Relative minor to the key of E flat. What I wanted to do is take out this D flat

so that I can play with C and D. What I really wanted, I had known about this, that you can use that C harmonic minor starting on G. A, A, flat, B, C, D, E, flat, F, right? That's actually a really great sound. but I wanted a little bit more than I wanted the sharp nine as well. So I just added the sharp nine and what what I came up with was an octatonic scale. I've realized now that this is a thing on in a chord going to a C minor. So we have G, A, A, flat, B flat, B natural, C, D, E flat, F, right? Now notice, what is this scale? This is the E flat major, six, diminished scale, right? The Barry Harris thing, right? E flat, F, G, A, flat, B-natural, that little passing tone between the fifth and the six, C, D, and E-flat. This is that scale, just starting on G.

When I uncover this, I flipped out a little bit in the fact that I have, and this, I know this is so basic for most of you, but, you know, this is how things get uncovered, is we just explore, we use our ears. But now I have an eight-note scale that, to me, every note, feels like C minor and G altered or G it's a G dominant chord there's no doubt about it but instead of this airy

which sounds great and it's a whole other sound but if I want to let's say again play some block chords like using that altered sound is not going to get me some melodies but using this scale

I have so many right? How great is that? Just that alone, right? So here I have a B-diminished chord and a block chord, right, in a five-note block chord. B-D-F-A-flat, B. Now, in altered scale, I would go up to D-flat. I would keep the middle notes the same and move the outside notes from B up to D-flat. But that doesn't help me play melodically in the key of C. But this scale does. And then I get to the D-diminished, right, D, F, A, flat, B, and D natural. Again, this isn't even an option with the altered scale. And then I can move that up to A flat.

That's so beautiful. Anyway, you know, maybe this is something that you have known for a long time and I was just ignorant to. But to me, that time that I set aside, right, going back to the previous episode where I talk about making a priority of exploration. and of following that spark, right, following something where we're like, holy smokes, what is this? I got to know more about it, right? That had taken me down this whole rabbit hole.

I now, you know, as a 20-year pro, I'm like feeling like a kid with all these things to explore and things to practice. It's opened up this whole new thing. I have a whole new way of teaching that I feel super confident in. And that's all because I took that time to explore. And I hope you enjoy actually the results of that exploration. If you didn't know this, that's pretty cool, huh? I think that's a great sound.

So I'm going to be doing some work getting on the ins and outs of it and still doing some research. If anybody knows any more about the scale and how other people have used it, I'm sure Barry Harris has talked about it at some point. I just haven't had time to go through all of the YouTube videos yet. But anyway, super stoked about this, not only the nuts and bolts idea here about that scale and about the voicings, but about just the idea of allowing ourselves to follow our instincts. about what we're excited about and to realize that exploration and pushing ourselves outside of what we already know is a huge important part of the process of growth. And it shouldn't be overlooked. In fact, it should be put on the top of the priority. That's it. That's my rant today. Hope you enjoyed this. Again, go to open studio jazz.com to check out the new magic voicing systems

course. We'll have a link here in the description. And until next time.