You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Practicing on 2-5-1 Progressions

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

Peter and Adam take You'll Hear It live to YouTube and answer some listener questions - on this edition, they field a question on the best way to practice over the ever-popular 2-5-1 progression.Monday's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - You'll Hear It LIVE on YouTube6:00 PM - Bass Guided Practice Session with Bob DeBoo on YouTubeTuesday's Open Studio Live Events:3:00 PM - Piano Guided Practice Session with Adam Maness on YouTube4:00 PM - Open Studio Demo & Tour - Register here!8:00 PM - Listening Sesh with Peter and Adam 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.

Gabriel asks, can you burn some locked hands over rhythm changes in egg? I mean, we could do a lot of things. Oh, yeah, we could, but, you know. I don't even know what that means. I feel like he's going to something. I feel like he's going to do. Hey, what's up picking stones here? What's going on, Alex?

Pick and Stone. Yamaing Hui says, how would you practice a 251 progression from the simple to the more complex? And in what intervals would be best? So you start with 251. Black bear, brown bear, or Battlestar Galacta, which is best. That's right. No, so how would you practice two five ones?

You know, in general, Yao Ming, right now at this point in, I think, our playing, we're really doing most of our practice over the context of a song that we're working on. So I very rarely anymore will just practice two fives just to practice two fives. Like, it's not, it's really not helpful, I think, for me, in the way that I want to play right now. That's not to say that you would never do that and that we've never done that. I've certainly worked on like voicings and actually in some of my open studio courses that are like guided practice session based. We go off of two five ones. I would say that if you're at that stage and you want to work on things in the context of like common core progressions like two five ones or even one four six, you know, one four, three, six, two fives and stuff like that or cold train changes.

Anything like that is to practice it in as many keys as possible. Yes. Practice it in different durations so that it's not just like don't look. I love your board look. I love your board look. But not just that like one bar each, but two beats each, one beat each. All of those come into context in tunes, practice the different tempos. Practice everything you play with your right hand with your left hand.

In this regard, you can really, I mean you have so much to practice in a window. If you think about all the variations that you can put on simple things like a two, five, one. And then practice, you know, identifying where you can use these in tunes you know. I think that's the key too, is to start to really piece together your voice as a musician. You need to be able to identify these little snippets that we're taking out to work on exercises into actual practical ways. That's great. I like, I mean, the concept of practicing in all keys, sometimes we give it a little bit of short shift, short shirft, whatever that is. We don't give it its due because it's not like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's like practice with a metronome.

but this is such an important concept beyond you have to be able to you want to be able to and you need to be able to play in all keys so it goes beyond that this goes to the core of like how do you get creative and increase your vocabulary and your comfort level over two five so by going through the different keys it's not just about learning in those keys it's about forcing you to play something differently forcing you into an uncomfortable position So if you're just practicing like, you know, two, five ones that are easy or that, you know, whatever, to E flat, to C, you know, to the ones where you are more familiar with, you're going to play the same thing. But if you start doing, if you take that exactly like, sorry, I already forgot it. But, you know, like you would take something.

And then you go up chromatically and start to play that like you're forcing yourself technically. You're forcing your ears into this new situation. and that's what you can really benefit from 251 practice because like you say it could be one four three six two I mean there's all different progressions of blues rhythm changes all different things but the thing is like how do you extend it to start to learn something new to get your hands into a new position as opposed to just playing the things that you know in that key already

so and then down below I've noticed that Yaming said simple to complex voicings is what he meant and we can't really talk about oh why didn't you say that oh you did this is this can be very quick because simple to complex voicings are very easy. So start with root, shell, and pretty, right? This is like what we preach to really get you going on good sounding voicings, right? Root shell, right, which is, we're going to say three and seven here. And then one pretty note. Start with one pretty note. Bam. And then do the same thing on the G7. So here I have D, F, C, E, right? As you do. Root shell, pretty. Then root, G. shell f and b right seven and three and then pretty yeah

e which is the 13 and then i don't know what about like i like it right c e b d right root shell pretty i've actually been i haven't even told you about this yet i have a new concept on extending this so that's root shell pretty yeah root no not in that order now that's right root Rood shell, pretty. Okay, root, root shell.

And so, like, what if you want to go rude shell, instead of pretty, you want to go purdy. Oh, that's purdy. That's pretty. Like you're down south. You're going purdy. Peter, that's so pretty. Oh, Peter.

Oh, my Tennessee. So that's the way I talked. Fun fact about Peter, talking about myself in the third person, age zero through five, I talk like that, because I was born in central Florida, which is a scary place for accents.

But there is a point, Yao Ming, and I don't know, I mean, I know this is how you think about voicing somehow, but I think about it like this too sometimes, where you just have the sort of the color palette of the chord change, right? And it eventually just becomes of the melody and the tune and everything, where you can just kind of cluster some things. Like, I know I can make some good voicings kind of by laying my hands where almost intuitively,

there's definitely some principles working here that start with root shell pretty but you get to a point where I don't have to follow those rules and break some things to where you know you go herbie Hancock level of just like oh you want a D minor how about this you know and it sounds amazing you know that kind of thing that's root shell extremely purdy that's just all purdy that's just all purdy which is great um Alan asked Peter wondering how when you describe your style of playing compared to chickery and Keith Jarrett how are you different similar play examples. I would describe myself as superior to those gentlemen. You're not going to really be able to do this with any kind of balance to it. But I can do this a little bit for you. Okay. Like I'm not going to put you up against Chick Kri and Keith Chiari. But you know, you're of the generation that's younger than them, at least by one, maybe two for Chick.

Right. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I think he's 80 almost. Isn't Herbert he's a little older than Chick, isn't he? Yeah. Anyway, but you're so much. younger that it's so different because you you know chick didn't grow up with a chick right you know to look up to and you certainly are influenced by both of those players i can hear it big time so i would say

that you know style-wise you're just of a completely different generation it would be like comparing you know keith jarritt to bud powell or something like it's just totally different you have you have everything that happened with chick and keith and everything that happened before and then everything happened in between their careers and when you started playing which is basically like the 70s not that their career stopped, but all the things that happened as they were going in the 80s and the 90s, you were developing, I think it's hard to describe the difference of what you absorb from them. Plus, you know, you're a whole different human being. You lived in New Orleans and definitely have the flavor of that city in there.

You're from St. Louis. You have the flavor of this city in your playing as well. I think there's, it's really hard to do. I mean, it's hard to even compare like Chick and Keith in that regard. even though they're of the same generation. Yeah, and then Vladimir thanks, he just pointed out they're actually almost exactly the same age. Herbie's 1940. So he's 80 this year and Chick is 41, so just a little bit younger.

But there, I mean, chick is no spring chicken. Chick, Korea is in such good shape right now. I mean, he's always going to outlive all of us. I know. He's, you know, he's just, and he's so inspired now with his academy and the studio and all the stuff he's doing. And, I mean, he was traveling. He's been touring, like, heavy. I think than he ever has.

And I mean, Herbie too. I mean, like those guys are so appreciative and of the opportunity, I think, to be playing still at such a high level to have their minds and their bodies, their health at such a high level as far as I know. And I mean, you know, I've seen them both recently. And they're both just glowing with, you know, health and wellness in a way that's very, you know, fundamental. But I would just say that, you know, Chick and Herbie are so associated with each other. I think because of their influence over our generations of pianists and the generation, maybe that's a little bit before. I mean, if you talk about like, I don't even know, like, if, I mean, would you say

like a Cedar Walton certainly, I mean, well, he's an influencer as much himself, but like Larry Willis and like all these great people. I mean, everybody, everybody basically at each of the ages, you know, has been influenced. but for me, I was probably more influenced by Herbie just because of what I was listening to. I got into Chick a little later. I just always listened to more Herbie, Winton Kelly, Thelonious Monk, and not because I didn't like Chick's stuff.

I just didn't have his albums at first. So then I kind of got into them a little bit later. So in some ways, I'm like more influenced by hearing Chick Korea live over these past 25, 30 years, you know, which has been a pleasure. You hear the sound coming out of the piano is incredible. He's one of those players. Yeah.

And when you hear somebody like that live, I mean, any great pianist, it's kind of like the recordings can only take you so far, you realize, you know. What they can do out of a physical instrument in front of you is incredible. Yeah. I mean, you're like that for a lot of us. No. Go on. No, it's true.

Bruce asks a question. Adam, I'm a guitarist trying to learn jazz. I know that you play guitar as well, and I was wondering how you're thinking differs playing songs on guitar versus piano. So I do play a little guitar, but the guitar for that that I play is, used for, really for writing songs and for playing not as much in a jazz context, but more in that folk pop context that I love to play in. And so as it's my second dairy instrument, I don't actually think about like creating new chords. I just know some shapes. You know, it's one of those things.

It's very intuitive for me. I actually like it as an instrument for writing music because I don't know it as well as piano and I can get out of my head a little bit and just rely on my instincts and my ears to do it. Our buddy Alex here, who is a guitarist, though, chimes in with some great stuff, which is true of all the sort of well-known shapes, Bruce, on the guitar. You know, you start with the shell on the D and the G-strings, especially for some, some, you know, thicker jazz voice things, which is what we're talking about on the piano, root on E&A.

That's pretty much what you're always going to do, except for when you go, you know, a little bit higher up the five-poor, you could do root on the D-string and, you know, a little bit smaller chords. Our buddy, Romero Lubombo, has an amazing course called. called Basanova Jumpstart. Yeah. That has a very rudimentary and incredibly simply explained version of pretty much every kind of basic guitar voicing.

I think he brilliantly lays it out in a very easy to understand way. So if there's any kind of beginner guitarist looking for better solid jazz voicings, go check those out. Even though it's in a Basanova context, you know, they borrow heavily from each other on the harmony and he is a master at voicings. Yeah. Well, I think that's actually a nice play. to pick some things up is in that Bosanova context because you can, I mean, look, you're not going to sound

full disclosure. You're not going to sound like Hamara Lubombo after you go through that course, but you're going to be able to latch on to a little bit of that, that beautiful feel that he has and tap into that Brazilian Bosanova style with some basic chords over some basic tunes in a way that is similar to, say, learning like a blues or something in that, like sometimes you can overachieve and get into a sound that maybe you don't quite deserve to be in because of how long you've studied if you learn in the right way and you really pay attention. So you're not going to be able to do all the details and everything, but you might be able to get to that kind of essence of that, you know, of that great feel. So. And Eduardo asks, how much of your soloing is

prepared stuff, patterns, licks, and how much is new stuff that you come up with in the moment? So I think to be clear, Eduardo, when we're doing it right, technically everything is something that we come up with in the moment, just as I'm coming up with this sentence in the moment, even though the words I'm saying have an established history, right? It doesn't mean that I'm inventing words as I come up with this sentence, but I am creating this idea. And I think that's more akin to what you mean by patterns and licks,

is we all have a vocabulary as musicians that we rely on to make music. And so I don't want to speak for you, but for me, it's trying to expand, like the work is trying to expand my vocabulary whilst trying to, whilst. Whilst, whilst, that's so, wow, I'm trying to. So fancy. Trying to expand. My liege. No, like, I think I, derail me, man. I was going on something good here.

No, I think, I think the work of great artists is trying to enrich the content that we have, like expand the content we have while, we're trying to get better at expressing that content clearly. Those two things are crucial, and so that's what we're always working on here. Whilst creating once upon the time, we shalt, we shan't not create something that... That's embarrassing. No, it's good stuff. That's good stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's always... It's such an interesting thing to both musicians, but especially to just listeners

of jazz, you know, like fans of the music, it's such a fun thing to be like, wow, how much of that is worked out and how much of that is just, are you coming up with it in the moment? And I always think about it, like, it's very hard to pin that down because on the level that you're talking about,

yeah, everything is coming, you're coming up with it in the moment, right? But then again, there's nothing that you can play. Like, most of these phrases and things that we play, we're not like little precious snowflakes of which there's no other one in the world like that. Everything's been played before. But it's just like how,

but the nuances of how you play something are what make it striking and important and like how you inject your personality and style. And, you know, it's kind of like, you know, you ever see somebody like you're driving and maybe they're walking and you recognize who they are? Like they might have a big winter coat on and everything, but the way that they move, you know,

or you haven't seen somebody for a while and they lost a lot of weight, you would think you couldn't recognize them, but they still walk the way that they walk. You know, they're who they are by how they move. And I think that like how we play is very much that. I mean, the notes that we put together, of course, are important and we're, but all that's been played before. But it's like the style of how we're going to put something together. As long as you can stay true to yourself and like, at least that's, that's the goal,

you know, and you're not regurgitating something that you think somebody thinks you should play or that somebody like you can play something that somebody else played because any note that comes out somebody's already played it if it's honest it works yeah yeah and so put your style be confident in what your style just like you know just to be an original speaker or thinker you don't have to come up with your own language you can speak english or Portuguese or japanese or swahili or anything i mean i said if you know the language i said you don't have to come up with your own words but you don't actually have to come up with your own ideas you can just simply put a shade on an idea and that makes it new and that makes it interesting to folks and

and that's a valid way to express anything. Yeah. To put your own spin on an idea, you know, it's, there's nothing wrong with that at all. You've actually been throwing shade on a lot of my ideas lately, man. What's up with that? What you're talking about? No, you just said put a, put a shade on. I was making a joke.

I gotcha. Which are always fun when you have to explain a joke. That's the sign of a great joke. That's great idea. Pick and Stone, Alex says, what about playing over quick chromatic two-fives like at the beginning of stablemates? Challenging to be melodic, but Miles, train, Hubbard, Blue Mitchell, decks knew how yeah that's right um you know and what's the tune sorry like stable mates oh stable mates yeah i mean and the all where it's yeah like something like that which you know

if you listen to or you transcribe what those great players are doing it's not they're not complicating things at all no in fact i think like for that i always think about like how do you simplify it like not so that you're avoiding playing the changes but so that like we were talking about earlier on serenity so that you can create something super melodic so to me that's like remember the tune okay yeah so you I would be thinking about that as like a, you know, maybe a suss to a flat sus to D flat. So already you've got half as many chords. Exactly right.

So when you're improvising, so that you can really start thinking about a simpler framework to improvise over. And you're still within the, you know, the harmonic realm you're supposed to be. Simplifying like that can make everything. You know, it's like we did our intro. Like if you had to actually navigate, you're going to get into some. Like, just start from the beginning there again. Two, three, and.

Oh, yeah. That's where we don't want to get into, right? So we want to, this is another way we're simplifying things. It's so logical. It just makes me want to be logical. No, what we do there is, so if I'm on this, you know, this 3625 or whatever, I might change it up between the three and the six.

I probably won't. Right. You know. And really the 251, I'm kind of borrowing from different melodic ideas. I'm not really anymore. I'm not thinking about like D minor 7, G7 and C7. It's really just all kind of key of C of C.

And maybe I'll add some tension at some point. Something like that. But really simplifying, as you mentioned there, especially when you get into like, you know, like that, you know, once I go to G flat there, I'm not thinking like two, five. I'm just changing keys and relying on my instincts and doing this over and over again.

Now, you do have to practice things like 251s. And what are the difference? But you got to know what it is first so that you can leave it and so that you can float on top of it, right? What you want to do is get to a point where you know it so well that it becomes instinctual

and then you can try some other shit. Come on now. Some other shizzit. Some other shiz-it. We're going to get barred by YouTube for our foul language here.