You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Practical Applications of Root, Shell, Pretty

Episode Date: April 1, 2019

On the final episode of You'll Hear It, Peter and Adam answer one last Speakpipe question about how to use Root, Shell, Pretty. To see the blog post that inspired this episode, go here: https://youllhearit.com/5-easy-jazz-piano-chords-that-sound-great/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, Adam. What's up, Pete? I'll miss you, big guy. I'll miss you, too, man. Okay. I'm Adam Annis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the very last episode of the You'll Hear at podcast.

Daily jazz advice that's been coming at you. Adam, we had a good run. It's been fun. And we apologize for the abrupt nature of the ending of this show. We're going to do today's show. We're still allowed to do today's show, right? Yeah, but we've kind of run the course of this one. I feel like we have.

I think it got boring a long time ago, honestly. It did. And we wanted, first of all, thank all. of our wonderful listeners and for all the support. We want to thank Open Studio. We want to thank the haters. We want to thank the haters. We want to thank the haters out there, the snarky puppy loving.

You'll hear it hate now. But yeah, we just kind of decided that when we listen back and we're looking at the list, like we literally, this was the last topic that we hadn't covered on our original master plan. That's right. So, I mean, who knows, we might come back together at some point and do, you know, we've had ideas of other podcasts, maybe, you know, talking about cars or fitness and different things that we have an interest in cooking, keto diets, you know, vegan, plant base, hashtag plant base. Hashtag plant base.

But, yeah, so we just want to thank everybody, and we're going to jump right into today's final question and final subject. Yeah, before we do, just a reminder that today's final episode is sponsored by the Oxford American. The Oxford American is a magazine dedicated to documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South. It's award-winning annual music issue comes with a CDC. sampler and digital download. It's a must-have for any serious music fan. Recent issues have featured Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk, John Cage at John Coltrane. Visit oxfordamerican.org slash y-H-I today. That's oxfordamerican. Forward slash y-H-I. Thank you, Oxford American.

Absolutely. Thank you, Oxford. And this is not the end of our relationship. We're going to keep on reading things. And, of course, I want you guys to please keep supporting the great Oxford American. And you will be the beneficiary of it as are we for sure. So today we have our very last speak pipe ever. Yep. This comes to us from Patrick. Hey, good day from Anacortis, Washington. So I just listened to today's episode titled Root Shell Pretty and was moved to ask if you would speak about some practice ideas to bridge between the approach you described for thinking through alterations in different contexts consciously and the unconscious thinking we're aiming for to hear and express the flow of these sounds through a tune at tempo.

In the episode, you talked a bit about the root shell pretty approach is perhaps a way to simplify the complexities of choosing alterations, but you left unspoken that even this root shell pretty plus context is a lot to consciously think about in a short amount of time before the harmony changes. So I'm wondering if you can give us some practice ideas to get those entire sounds and shapes into our hands and souls. Thanks for being a part of our daily friendship and encouragement via the podcast. The seven little bright stars in your reviews are like the Pleiades of Piedies of Poth. podcasts. Wikipedia describes a pleadies as an open star cluster containing middle-aged hot B-type stars, which is what I'm always aspiring to

become when I'm practicing jazz. Thanks again. Wow. I think he nailed us. Man. Middle-aged aspiring stars. That's definitely you and I at him. Well, you're not quite there but you're getting close, buddy. I don't think he's going to have any problems absorbing and understanding how to do this.

He seems like... And he wants to get it in his ears and his soul. That's deep, man. I like it. It is deep. Well, thanks so much for the question. And, you know, when we, we had quite a few queued up, but we kind of chose this as our final one because it's, I think it speaks to what we've always wanted to do from the beginning with the You'll Hear a podcast is, is give you guys something really, you know, to practice to learn from, but something that's fun and something that does spur, you know, your own ideas for practice. And since we won't be here with you for the journey, we'll still be here, like, you know, spiritually. but on the everyday basis I think this will be a good one to talk about

because well first of all let's just break things down when we came up with this concept of root shell pretty and you can look go to you'll hear it are we keeping we're going to keep that up at least for the rest of the week oh yeah for sure okay so you can

always go there and read about these things there's a blog post called five easy jazz piano chords that sound great and that's really we'll link to it below the foundation for the concept of us explaining root shell pretty and we purposely this is a very

beginner approach so we purposely didn't push it too far because we didn't want anyone to get overwhelmed this is just the beginning and it's not even total beginner I mean you really need to be able to find some notes on the piano that kind of thing but the concept was that you could play something that sounded

really good from the beginning even when you're at the beginner level as far as a concept for voicing but I think it's always a matter of you know how does it sound how do you make the alterations how do you take it to the next level in your practice, which is exactly what his question was, right?

Yeah, exactly. And there's some ways you can do that. If you understand the concept, I think the first way to get into it is to actually take a tune. Like, you could take a tune like all the things you are, Stella by Starlight, tunes that have longer notes, you know? Yeah.

And put the melody on top and then do some root shell pretty under that melody. Right. And actually, again, on you'll hear it.com, on the blog, I have a few chord arrangements with the root shell pretty concept. There's one autumn leaves, which is right next to the five easy jazz piano chords. Where you can see, I have the melody to autumn leaves, and then I have basically all root shell pretty

underneath in varying ways. And that's a great way to practice this, because your ears are going to tell you what's wrong and what's right. But also there's certain counter melodies you can make with the different extensions and alterations and things like that. And you can see those in some of those written out arrangements. But just take a tune you know really well. Yeah.

And take the melody and work on. it slowly with root shell pretty ballads are great you know like for this kind of thing you know and the nice thing is like once you kind of understand the concert the way we laid it out in the blog post and the video is you know static chords and then a little bit at the end there's kind of an exercise when you're going into to as an example of sort of what a progression would be but it's still not to the level of where you're putting it over tunes it's it's sort of static with or moving up chromatically or moving up in in circle of

fourths or fifths or whatever so this concept of taking a tune you know is great. And then you can also, if it's a little overwhelming, doing it with the melody, you can just take it on a tune that you know without the melody and sing the melody. Yeah. And play root shell pretty for every single voicing and kind of do a little bit of restrictive practicing where it's, you know, three plus two root root and then shell in the left hand and then pretty. And then maybe you're starting to even do maybe three notes in the right hand because, you know, when you get the voice leading together, that's when you have to get away from just the static concept of three notes in the left hand to in the right. But it all starts

there, I think. Exactly. Yeah. And voice leaning is going to be a huge part of this as you develop. The root shell pretty is just that's just the simple foundation of it. But once you kind of understand that each voice in those chords has a way that they can go and that it should be good voice like it should be its own little melody. Yeah. Now you're

some next level stuff. So you could practice that too. You could practice really just the root shell pretty over a set of chord changes, a simple set of chord changes, a blues even. And trying to get the voice leading for each voice, you know, at the right spot, practice it out of time at first, just figuring it out and then try putting that in time. Yeah, and I always think, you know,

in terms of voicemleading, that can get a little overwhelming when you have five-note chords. I like to think about two different ways to approach it, and then these can be practiced individually and eventually, I think, combined, and then even maybe getting to that sort of intuitive level.

That's the goal, like with voice leading. You want it just to sort of happen. Yep. You hear it as it's happening, But then even as you go back and listen, you're like, wow, that was cool the way I connected those or whatever. And then the other side of like, wow, that was bad voice leading and see how it disconnected the flow of the harmony. Very important is we always remember. We're not going to be here to tell you this every day.

So please remember, making mistakes in playing jazz and learning jazz is just as important as playing the right thing. Because then we learn what it shouldn't sound like. We learned that hot stove, what it feels like, you know. But so the two ways I'm thinking are just a baseline. So we're just going for the roots of a tune that we know, which you would think, well, There's no choices there. But if you're connecting, even with like a two feel and maybe on like what you were saying,

Autumn leaves or all the things you are, some of the ones we have examples, where you're connecting that baseline. Are we on here? Oh, hello. We're always on, buddy, except for after today. Yeah, right. Well, so like all the things you are,

one, two, three, four. These are just whole notes, right? Going through the harmony. But we started thinking about like going in two feel, right? Let me help you up. Oh, come on. We're in the bass range now. That's right.

Is that the right, Corey? No, not at all. Okay, but the voice reading was nice. So, yeah, we're thinking about, like, that's, you know, sort of voice leading at its most basic level in a way. We can also do that with the melody or inner voices, but I love the way it sounds in the foundation and kind of starting to learn it from the bottom up, you know. And then the next way would probably be just with the root and shell. And this is very easy because as long as you're sticking to the third and the seventh, there's only two notes, right? So you only have two, you only have two choices.

The third's on the bottom or the third's on the top. That's right. So, and this kind of voice leading teaches you pretty much because if you're going third on the bottom, F minor 7, then to B flat, you have to now put the third on top because otherwise you just, and that's not as good. It's not to say you can never do that, but if you're going to go through the exercise of connecting it, I play the same wrong court. That was nice. No, it's perfect. You have your own version. Yeah.

That's the PM version. That's how we don't get sued for playing on published materials. That's right. So, yeah, and then you put those together. Ah, I played it right that time. Throw it off. So that's one way to kind of approach. Then when you start adding the pretty notes,

you kind of have left less choices because you're a little bit locked in by where you're playing the shell. I mean, and I'm doing it with the right hand this time. Yeah, yeah. We could switch it down. But it also gives you more flexibility with the pretty notes because you can move

them around a little bit more because you've got that foundation of good voice leading with the root and the shell, you know. That's great. Yeah. Another exercise I could think of that would help with this is Jeffrey Keiser's exercise that he does this chord voicing warm up. So in your left hand, play the C below middle C above that. And in your right hand, play E flat above middle C. Okay, so we'll start

with this 10th, right? So actually, you know, play the F with your right hand. Sorry, C in your left and F in your right. Go up. Yeah. So we'll start there. So Keiser has this exercise where he goes up, the outer voicing on the right hand goes up in half steps, and the lower voicing on the left hand does a different pattern, let's say, around the circle of fourths. So you could practice your root shell pretty kind of on this almost random path where it forces you, exactly. So you do that just the outer notes, but now fill it in with voicings. You know, and try to stick with root shell pretty if you can, but see if you can make something work for each one of those chords. It forces you to think about everything immediately and really trains you to be quick with it,

you know? Yeah. So again, yeah, the lead voicing in the right hand is, the lead voice in the right hand is going up, half steps. The lead voice in the left hand is going around the circle of force. And you can do this with each, you know, different kind of patterns, whole tone, diminish scale, whatever you want to do in each hand. It's just a kind of randomization so that you have to quickly find a voicing that sounds good. Right. Yeah, man. And the cool thing about this is it really trains you to have...

Is that root shell pretty? No, it's root shell. It's Ruthshel. It's something. No, it trains you to no matter what the melody note is, and no matter what the bass note is, for you to be able to find the chord that works in that, you know, understand the voicing that sound good.

Well, that's great, too, because that's typically the way, you know, either soloing or playing the melody, and then we're filling in in terms of the three zones. It's like the root movement is set. I mean, there's choices in there, but the, I mean, it's unlimited what you can play, but the harmonic roadmap is set, and the melody is going to be set either by if you're solo or if you're playing the melody. And then the innards are really the places we have choices to really,

to give it that voice leading. It's awesome. Well, thank you, Patrick. That's a great question. We're happy to follow up on that. Reminder that for a limited time, you'll hear it listeners can subscribe to the Oxford American for only $25. visit oxfordamerican.org forward slash y h i to subscribe today uh and i did just get a message

from the higher ups here that we're obviously finished today with uh you'll hear it but for the rest of the week folks can still go to that yeah for sure linked so the offer will be good through friday not just through today uh we need to thank our producer andrew thank you thank you for all the hard work we should we should shout out to uh Alexis briana oh yeah eli everybody who's helped work on the podcast Dan Martin. Dan Martin. Everybody's put the blood, sweat and tears in.

You know, and this might not be, you know, the end, the end, we might come back at some point. Yeah. I mean, we're going to come back in some form. I mean, you know, we're unstoppable for us. And we're going to take, I think, what we learned and turn it into something, you know, I don't know if it's a podcast. I don't know if it's a YouTube channel. I don't know.

We'll take some time off, but we want to most of all thank our listeners, you know, for being with us on the journey. I think for at least through the end of the week, all the previous episodes will still be up. so you can check those out. Yeah. And then you'll hear it. You'll hear it. Love you, buddy.

Yeah, man. Big guy. All right, peace. Final putting down of the headphones.