You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Practicing In All Keys - #90

Episode Date: April 29, 2018

In this episode, Adam and Peter talk about the importance of practicing in all 12 keys. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Adam Maness, and I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Today we're going to answer a voice message question from one of our listeners. Oh, I love these. This is great. Yeah. So this is from Mark.

And check out the accent. We think we may know where he's from, but he didn't say where he's from. But I want to see if anybody else knows. Let's listen to the question. Hi, Peter and Adam. Love your podcast. Could you please give, I don't know, your top seven reasons for why practicing songs in all 12 keys is an important and worthwhile skill to hone if you are serious about getting better? How much time do you recommend dedicating to this for an intermediate level player or for any player?

I'm improving at the skill, but it is slow going and I think I just need to keep logging hours working at it. Your words of wisdom will go a long way. Thank you, and I hope I'll hear it. That's a great question, Mark. Yeah, you know, I think it is really important. I think practicing everything in all 12 keys is essential on every instrument. I mean, first of all, we have 12 keys, so why not use them, right? But even if you're not playing a bunch of tunes in B or E,

you don't want to get stuck if there's a part of a tune that, goes to B or E or G flat. You don't want to be the kind of player that has these weaknesses. And the ability to take things through all 12 keys, it actually strengthens what you play in, so, you know, quote unquote, you know, more common keys. Especially if you are interested in kind of playing outside and polytonality and that kind of thing, learning things in all 12 keys really helps with that because you have these options on the easy keys to kind of take it outside and come back. Or if you're in, you can play something in one of these harder keys and it's fun to take it outside in the easy keys. You sound

really slick. So I would try to be as comfortable as possible. We've talked about this before about really focusing your practice on the harder keys with the idea that F and B flat, they're going to come because you know, you play them more often, obviously. But yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that I love the concept of practicing on all keys for a number of different reasons. The first I would just say is the ear training element that it affords us. And it does it in a way that we can almost just fall back to this technique going over chord changes, going over a melody, going over solo, and taking it through different keys where it forces us into that zone where we have to really hear things. So we're not taking a tune and then transposing it in Sibelius or

some notation and then printing it out and then just reading it. If you do it like that, you're not going to get any ear training. You're just almost learning it in a whole other way. But if you really just kind of force yourself into this uncomfortable place, and some of the lessons we do on Open Studio, we get into this on a real granular level of actual ways that you can do it on different instruments. And there's some cool ways to do it. But the general concept is that you're making a connection between the elements that put a song together

that exists the same in every single key. So there's a root movement to Stella by Starlight that is not just based around it being in B-flat. So the first chord is E. And then the next chord is A. It's more about what the relationship and the sound of those intervals are. And when you go through the different keys,

it sounds different because the feel and the timbre of those keys are different, but the actual relationship of what's happening horizontally with the music stays the same. practicing in other keys makes it so that you learn the actual innards, the inside movement of what the tune is, as opposed to just learning a series of chord names and melodies static and particular to one key. So it's some of the most advanced and, I would say, quickest and most effective ear training that you can do. Yeah, I think it also reveals some holes in some technical aspects on almost every instrument.

Yeah. Of, I mean, on the piano, I love to practice in B because there's all the black keys and there's some tricky thumb stuff and there's some tricky chromatic. Like, especially practicing chromatic enclosures and things like that in B is really good for my hands, for my fingers to get strong on those black keys because that's when we tend to get weak or weakest. You know, when you hear intermediate players, they get weakest on these crossovers on the black keys, on arpeggios, on black keys, you know. Right.

Those are things that need to be addressed pretty often, and so you can play them with confidence. And then I love the idea, too. You were talking about, you know, knowing the inner workings of these things. And I was thinking about, you know, how much I love to reharmonize tunes. And that just isn't possible if you don't know, you know,

voicings and are not comfortable in all 12 keys because, you know, then you're just doing everything diatonically. that you can't re-harmineize in a way that's, for me, effective. Yeah, and that, so confidence, you speak about confidence, I think that, in that regard, but just overall, I mean, technique, ear training, and all these areas, the confidence that this gives you by learning something in all keys is just immeasurable and what that can bring then to when you go to improvise. So if you were to learn, you know, Stella by Starlight in all 12 keys

and at least be able to kind of get through it like that, even if you never played them in those other keys, when you go back to playing it in the regular key, you're going to have such confidence in doing that. It's going to seem so easy because you have this intuitive understanding of the form, of the harmonic structure of it that's now stripped away from just this one particular key.

You understand it in all keys. So the original key, you're going to have that confidence and you're going to have the familiarity with it being the one that you started on and learned it in any way. Totally. But you're going to stop thinking about it. about it just as a series of chords, and you're gonna start to be able to hear it

as a true progression that exists within an overall form. And it's really transformative, I would say. The thing is, some people practice this, and I've given this to students, you know, and I've heard from like a lot of my online students over the years, some people like really get it, most do, and they're like, wow, this just opens up a whole new world, you know, if they really follow the way that I prescribe it.

But others are like, man, I just couldn't get it. And I can tell like they stop short. Like, you have to be patient. with doing this and this does not come quickly or easily. It's simple, the concept of it. And if you apply it, but it definitely takes like some patience and it takes a while, like until your ears can really catch up with it. And then there's the technical challenges depending on the instrument that exist as well.

Yeah. And you know, for some practical applications of this, Mark, I would say, I mean, you could try something like Stella by Starlight, but maybe even just take the blues for two weeks. Play the blues in D-flat, G-flat, B, and E. only those keys and don't practice in any other keys. I mean, you're not going to forget F. It's just not going to happen. But you will start to have this deeper understanding of those keys.

You have a deeper understanding of the blues scale. You'll have a deeper understanding of the two fives in those keys. You'll have a better understanding of left-hand voicings, if you're a pianist, of right-hand voicings or two-handed voicings. All the easy stuff that you know in C and F and B-flat and E-flat, put those in D-flat, G-flat, B, and E. and you're really going to open up as a musician. Yeah, and, you know, I understand why most people abandon,

if they do have the fortitude to even start this kind of practice, why they abandon it. And, you know, depending on your instrument, we talk about piano and those particular keys you brought up, it sounds simple enough. You're like, take a couple weeks, just practice those four keys, but they all feel bad when you start playing them because it just doesn't feel good in your hands,

not because they're not good keys. They're actually great keys. They're beautiful keys. You know, even within your hands and the sound of them, but it just doesn't feel comfortable. because you haven't been doing it. So most people, and it's not going to sound good because you're not going to know how you're going to be, you know,

screwing it up and playing notes that don't sound good and not knowing where you're going and probably messing up the tempo too because you're getting lost or misguided. So it really takes some fortitude to push through that and get to at least a comfortable level where you, a functional level at least. But most people, you know, stop well before they get there

because they want it to feel good and sound good, which is great, of course we want that. But the pro, the pro secret is that once you have, like D flat in your hands on the piano, D flat is a super fun key to play. Yeah. I mean, it feels great as well as G flat. Once you have that there, it's for me, it's just like I'd play in that as comfortably as I would in B flat.

Yeah, I mean, it's not that different than playing in five and seven. What we talk about tricky meters. Those are, you know, once they become comfortable, they're very fun to play over. And they can be just as comfortable as four, but it takes a little bit more time. I mean, think about all the time when you're learning music in general that you're learning, to play in four and in three. So it's not even so much that those are easier. There's different ways to look at that, and depending on how your brain works, they could be

easier. But you have such a head start, you're so much more familiar with those, and you just have more practice in doing those. So it's the same thing. You've got to kind of put that time in, and I like this idea of systematically going through. Just make sure you push through that uncomfortable period. That's right.

So thanks, Mark, for the question. You know, we love getting these user questions, these listener questions. Please keep them common. We'll try to answer as many as we can. You know, Peter and I have traveled extensively all around the world and love to try to spot accents. So, Mark, we're guessing. I'm going to say Western Canada. I'm going to say Central Canada because that's different than Western, and I don't really know the difference.

We heard a little bit of a Canadian thing. Yeah, I think so. So let us know, you know, where you're from. Right. So we have a bet going here. And then also, I think there was another part. Yeah, the other part was kind of how much time to spend on practicing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think that's, you know, I would say the usual as much as possible. But I like to think about these things more as like almost a percentage of your overall practice. Because, you know, how much should you practice? If you are independently wealthy and sit around practicing all day, 10 hours a day, then you could certainly put a couple of hours into this and get a lot out of it. Sure. But if you're looking at, you know, say an hour of time to practice, per day, I would think 10 minutes or so would be great. So whatever that is, one sixth of your time.

But even more important than that, I mean, it's just one element to your practice. But I think sometimes, like, if you get excited about this and you're really feeling it, let it take over your practice. Like, that's why I'm always careful when I say, like, you know, for a pianist, depending on the level you're at, you know, you need to practice scales, you need to do some technical exercises, learning some tunes, learning some souls. These are all parts of it. But I don't like to put exact percentages and make it too strict because, you know, sometimes we, it's that whole thing of flow state. Like when, if you're progressing with this and you're starting to make some breakthroughs, don't stop because Peter and Adam told you spent 12% of the time and the clock is

ticking. Go with that. You know, you have to be adaptable to what your flow state is in your practice. Yeah, you can, you can get a big chunk of this going, you know, once you, if you spend a a week or two focused on just this. There's nothing wrong with that. You will, you will definitely make some progress, you know. So, I mean, you did a. kind of mention about it being difficult at times, whatever. It's also when it's flowing good, go with it. When it's not, you need to back off a little bit. But make sure you give yourself a chance to get to that point

where it has the possibility to start to become comfortable. That's right. And if not, you'll hear it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hear It podcast. If you liked what you heard, please leave a rating or review. Yeah, I liked what I heard. I'm going to leave five stars, but you guys can do whatever you want. Today's episode was brought to you by Open Studio.

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