You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Playing The Scary Chords

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

Don't be scared! Peter Martin and Adam Maness will help you conquer these spooky scary hard chords.Check out a free lesson from Adam's Jazz Scales for Beginners.Also, be sure to check out Cookie Cutter Chords on YouTube. Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey Adam. Yo. I'm going to say one word and I want you just to say whatever comes to your mind first. Okay. Free association. Okay. Free association. Okay.

Corde. Changes. Bingo. Was his name-o. Fisbo. I'm Adam Manus. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Two pianists.

Talk about music. We sure do. Look at our new digs here. If you're on YouTube, if you're not, why aren't you? But if you're on YouTube, you might be seeing some new angles here. I can tell you why they might not be on YouTube. Because they're... Well, we actually had a comment on their...

Some folks prefer. Yeah. Imagine this. Some folks prefer to hear us and not to see us. That's crazy talk. What? Yeah. Well, actually, you know, somebody made a comment.

It was very a student. I realized. I'm not a fan of Peter and Adam. No, it was actually a really interesting comment that resonated with me because I think I feel the same way a lot of times. They said that they like to listen to the podcast, especially when we're playing musical examples, talking music, which is what we're always doing, because they can really focus in on the sound,

focus in on the voice, focusing on the music in a way that, of course, the visuals on the, on the YouTube, gives you a whole other thing. Yeah. But it is true. There's an intimacy, there's an intimacy to my voice, right? He's caressing the mic at this point.

Yeah, no, but it's a very intimate thing and has the ability for us to be able to focus on some of these things in a unique way. Having said that, what some folks do, and I do this with podcasts that I enjoy, As I listen to it, then if I'm particularly engaged or intrigued, I will then go and consume the YouTube as well to be able to see what's happening. Yeah. And, you know, for our podcast, sometimes when you go to consume the YouTube, you can see the videos that we're playing or the graphics that we're putting on screen. None for today.

But sometimes. Oh, wait, we have an incredible graphic today, actually. We do. We have our new setup here. We have this enormous window, everybody, in the pod front itself. You know, we call it the pod front because it's a former storefront. And so we have this huge window, and we've been scared of the window thus far since we've moved into our new space here, opens to your headquarters. Are live on Monday.

Oh, by the way, we're live 4 p.m. doing Q&A. That's right. The Helpline every Monday. Jazz Helpline live. On YouTube. But yeah. J.H.L. Jazz Helpline live. I like that.

I like that. It rolls off the tongue. That's right. Trippingly. But big shout out to producer Caleb for hooking all this up today because look at this. Isn't this extraordinary? Look at the big beautiful window. It's autumn outside.

Would that be something you might be interested in? Definitely. You know, there's a lot of jazz history actually right. Well, we're hopefully making jazz history on this block, but right in this area of St. Louis, Scott Joplin houses around the corner. Absolutely. Where he lived in real maple leaf rag. Ever heard of it?

Anyway, so we're excited to have some connection with the city now. There you go. So we do have. today. Speaking of getting intimate, we're going to get intimate with a listener with a speakpipe. Jeff has left us a speakpipe. If you want to leave us a question, you can go to you'll hear it.com and you can leave us a voice message. And Jeff did. And this is about tackling new chord changes. All right. Hey guys, Jeff here. It's our player from Portland, Oregon. I have a question about playing over chord changes, specifically ones that are unfamiliar and kind of tricky.

How do you get through that? What do you do? If you're playing with people and you're playing on a tune that you don't really know, and there's an area where there's just some weird changes and you don't really have vocabulary to navigate those with, what do you do? My first instinct, I guess, would be to just try to play some good, strong rhythms and hit some chord tones and keep it pretty simple. But I was wondering if you guys had any other strategy.

or insights. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks, Jeff. So I wonder does he mean like you're put into a situation where you're having to read something or kind of hear something and you're not familiar with it? It sounded like the context was you're playing with other people. Right. So there's not time to become familiar with. Right. Like not how to practice new ones. But it's all really the same. Right. Because I actually think the most important, well, first of all, number one, listen.

Yeah. So what you said, Jeff, was your instinct was to play strong. Like as soon as you said play, I was thinking, your first inclination needs to be to not play. Yeah. Because until you can learn, and I want to encourage you and all of us to really be able to look at the opportunity of a live performance to be able to learn this. Like so you might not be able to get it by course two, but you maybe can get it by course seven or course four, wherever it is. But commit to like, don't get into the thinking of like, oh, I don't know this. How can I just get through this? And then I'll learn it later.

No, learn it on the job. Learn it on the gig. It's learning it on the tune. But in order to do that, you've got to be able to listen to start to be able to hear the core progression. And, you know, in an organic way. That's right. It's probably only one section. I think he even alluded to that.

Like if you have just a difficult little section of a tune where it's like an unfamiliar. But you've got to have a little bit of perspective of like once you hear it. So maybe play the part that you are able to get through. And then the tricky part, just lay out. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Sometimes that's the best choice.

Yeah. Because you're going to be able to learn it. or at least familiarize yourself with it and start to be able to jump in maybe on the next course or the next time around with a little more confidence if you've not played. Like as soon as you start messing it up, your confidence is going to go down.

Your ability to be able to hear it and navigate it is going to go down. That's right. And it becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? That's right. So don't be afraid to lay out and then just come in the next time around with what you think you can handle. And then keep listening.

Keep listening to what's happening around you and then come in with like a little bit more. But listening is key. listening first always. But I do think, Jeff, your instinct to go strong in on rhythm when you do play, when you do come back in, to have strong rhythm and chord tones, I think those two things are, that would be your foot in the door for this for sure. Like, you know, Barry Harris is someone that you can go to on how to approach this. And actually Peter Martin.

So whatever the chord is, you have one three, five, seven, three, five, seven nine, right? You have those, usually you have those things, right? or you could have just a regular triad arpeggio if it's a g minor chord and it's like a series of chords that are weird this the root arpeggio can get you halfway there then barry harris might suggest the arpeggio from the fifth you know whatever that is we'll get you we'll get you even some more pretty tones but those kinds of things are super simple things you can do and then i always think you know, when I'm going through some weird chord progressions, I'm also trying to hear, I'm trying to hear melodies straight away, but to do that, I think I'm trying to hear like

the common tones between what's happening, right? To hear, because usually if it's a weird, you know, there's something that the composer has to latch onto. It's usually not just like all like random stuff thrown at you, right? It's usually has something melodic happening that you can latch on to. I'm trying to hear that. And then that brings me to my final point, which is, what's the melody do? Yeah. You know, if you know the melody of the tune, you have something to play. Exactly.

Yeah. Exactly. And then you can start to be able to hear how that tricky part of the progression interacts with or lays under the melody. Yeah. And the melody, yeah, melody and rhythm are usually going to be kind of easier to hear and navigate possibly before some tricky progressions. But yeah, all that stuff is important.

And if you kind of think about maybe the unifying factor with all those is you're looking for patterns. You're listening for patterns. That's what we say. Like it's a lot easier to be able to identify a pattern by listening to it than by trying to hear it while you're playing it. Because if you don't play it correctly, which you probably aren't if it's tricky the first time,

that's going to be kind of canceling out or clashing with what the actual progression is. So if you can lay back and try to identify quickly as quickly as possible, and this is why ear training is so important. It's super important. But you want to identify kind of what some of the, those harmonic patterns are and then try to

sort of build up as simply as possibly, which typically is going to be from like a shell and maybe root and shell,

maybe root shell pretty as you navigate through those chords, those tricky chords, as opposed to try and try to play full-blown voicing. So what Peter's talking about

there is just, you know, the shell, the third and the seventh, right? Guide tones, some people call this so that you can,

you can kind of hear that harmonization. outline. Yep. I could also use this melodically too. Yep. Yeah. Throw some solid rhythm in there.

You know, then you've got something outside the melody. But that what I was just playing was Countdown is a perfect example of, if you know the melody, then you have something interesting to play. Absolutely. Over those weird changes. Yeah.

And one more thing I'll throw in there is, you know, with any kind of a quandary that we find ourselves in, which you will find yourself, which you, a quandary. You should hope to find yourself in because that is what's going to lead to musical growth if it requires your training. technical challenges, vocabulary development, repertoire, whatever.

Yeah. Like whenever you're thrown into a situation where you can't do something, like smile and be happy because you're about to have. A smile is just a frown turned upside down. That's all it is, buddy. Yeah. A friend is just an enemy, a frenemy that you haven't met yet. No, but you want to be able to,

you want to lean into that as a learning opportunity, but you also want to be thinking about what is the promise land. what does it look like like being able to really do this well? So if you think about that navigating the changes, what does that actually mean? Does it mean that you're conscious of every single chord as it goes by?

Probably not. It just means that you can play, like paint it done, as you like to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, what is success look like for this? It means you kind of ripping through either playing the chords, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Don't do that, by the way. Don't do that. That's all the chords to giant steps, played kind of without time, right? Yeah, yeah. But that's just the succession of them. But like being able to know those core changes, what it actually looks like is not thinking about it.

That's right. So you have to put that as part of your plan and part of your aspiration, part of your mountaintop that you want to get to. So that's why hearing it, building up for these simple things, pattern recognition, and being able to, you know,

kind of learn to navigate as quickly as possible, challenge yourself, jump in as you're starting to hear it. Are really part of what the game is, don't lean into the theory. radical side. I just want to plan a flag in that thinking about it and come back to it for just a second. But my last thing on this, Jeff, and this is just, this is crucial advice for any, any playing. I mean, just play the right notes. Just play the right notes. How hard is that? That's right. Anyway, no, I wanted to plan a flag into your, you don't want to think about it because we had a comment the other day.

We get comments sometimes on the things we do. Please comment below on the YouTube. Yeah, comment below on the YouTube. Well, I made this YouTube video called cookie cutter cords about these different voicing, right? And someone was like, and the whole idea was like, oh, you could... Wait, I thought it was called sugar cookie cords. Oh, my gosh. No, no, no. It's called avocado articulations. Avocado toast articulations.

But this guy commented like, because the whole point of the video is like, oh, yeah, you can use these so you don't have to think as much. He's like, oh, yeah, let's not think. Let's nobody think. World's getting better. Let's not. Yeah, no, let's do.

Do you think when you play? Are you thinking when you're, because if you're thinking when you're playing, you're dead in the water. I don't want to be thinking. Right. I want to be thinking. Right. that I can, you know, it's not

not cookie cutter in the sense of like, oh, this I'll just throw this generic stuff that means nothing to me, not plastic. I mean, like, I need things that I don't have to spend a lot of mental energy doing because, so I can be free to make the art I want to make. You know, these are all colors and tools that we use. We don't want to be like trying to spell out

a chord voice thing as we're trying to play it. Right. You know, it's just got to be there. I think people get confused with don't think about something with don't pay attention to, don't concentrate. We're preaching for concentration, for listening, for monitoring, being in the moment, knowing what from our creativity the moment needs as best that we can provide that. But that's very different than thinking about overthinking, theorizing as you're playing. That's what we're saying.

We don't want to be doing. We want to be free in the moment to create, to tell our story. That's right. That's a high level of concentration. Yeah. But I'm glad you brought that up because that's something that I think people, and I think a lot of times folks think that we're like, oh, well, that's a lot of times. folks think that we're like, oh, that's easy for you guys because you know all this stuff. First of all, we don't know all this stuff. I know for me, like, the amount that I'm still

learning is very exciting because it, the better that I feel like I'm getting, the more that I see to be able to learn. So it's like, oh, great. I love that because there's just more challenges to go. Yeah. I feel secure with kind of where I'm at, but I also see like, oh, I'm excited because I still want to develop. It's not like I've cracked the code for this. But having said that, there's still times when I'm playing where the thinking process does get a little screwed up. So this is not like

you just flip a switch at some point and it's like, oh, you're a master you don't have to think. Yeah, sometimes I'm like, I do have to go into the theory or whatever, but that's a reminder of me is like, okay, I got to really nail and learn that progression.

I need to really learn that. I got to shed on this or whatever because that's always the aspiration. Right. Is the total freedom. So that you don't have to do that on the gig. Exactly. Because then you're gone.

Yeah. And I'll bring up, you know, big inspiration to me. me that I love bringing applications into making music in terms of performance, but training or what we would call it, you know, athletics. Typically, we were talking about training, especially endurance athletics, very much corollary with practicing for performing. So, L.A. Kipchogi, who's, uh, yeah, just broke the world record again.

Greatest ever, maybe? Oh, yeah, he's the great. Yeah, you know, when you have the world records, it's a little easier. Like, we don't have to do the seven. I know. You can do the seven best, but it's kind of like, isn't the person who ran the marathon, on the fastest, pretty much number one. And he broke his own record.

But the thing was, his train, like, he's known for precision training. He's also an incredible competitor. So he never really gives up and lets a lot of cameras in on the training process. They see some of it. A lot of people now know. And he does talk about it. But my point is that as perfect as his training was to an outsider would see it as, he broke that record by 30 seconds, which is a lot.

But he actually made, and even it kind of admitted to some errors during the race, It's the equivalent of to like overthinking or underthinking. He ran the first half too fast. He did what's called a positive split, which has actually never been a world record broken with a positive split. The first half is faster than the second half, which is very hard to do successfully. And so he was kind of a lot of people like if he had,

as incredible as the race was, had he done a negative split and held back just a little bit. He still broke the record. But it's just to say that even when you're at the most elite level, the world class level, there's not going to be the perfection there. telling your story and executing, which is okay. Yeah.

You know, you have that margin for error, and that's where the fun and the humanity. Absolutely. Of the performance comes in. Absolutely. And, hey, if you want to go on a deeper dive of any of this kind of stuff, if you want to train these sounds into your body so that you don't have to think about it as you're doing it, we've got a course for that. This should be our new slogan.

It's called Open Studio Pro. Well, no, it's actually called Jazz Scales for Beginners, where we actually deal with exactly this stuff. Like, you got a change. What do I play on the change? And it's not just playing scales. It's like how to use like chord tones and things like that. Actually, you know what? I think jazz scale for beginners is a great, any folks that have been thinking or tinkering

with the idea of entering the open studio world jumping in the pool. It's a good starting off one. Come on in. And it's a great place. And I think it's a great introduction to your teaching styles, kind of the open studio way. And that if folks want to really make that commitment, especially like at the turn of the new year, I'm thinking, to Open Studio Pro. Like if you like jazz scales for beginners

Yeah yeah Yeah And you're really You got some time To really commit to everyday practice You're gonna like it Then Open Studio Pro would be your next point of departure

We will link to the free lesson To jazz scales at the beginners So that you can sample it if you want Sounds good Until next time You'll hear it