You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Quartal Questions

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

Adam and Peter take a speakpipe question on quartal harmony and it's uses in music. 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, Peter. Yo. What do you know about chordal harmony? Like, you take the harmony, you shove it into a quart of like a milk container. I don't know anything about that because I only deal in metric now. I'm very advanced, 21st century. How European. I'm Adam Manus.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Jazz. Explained. Explained by two jazz pianists. That's Peter Martin. I'm Adam. I've already said that part, but I thought I'd reiterate Peter.

We never, we don't spend a lot of time talking about our cred, you know, our credentials for this. Right. Due to the very shallow nature of them, we decide not to tread in those shallow waters too often. Yeah. We're two working jazz pianists. That's saying something. I could read the three paragraph CV that I have, but why would I when we could just talk about it instead? Well, no, and you know what it's important as artists?

It's, you know, the CV, you know, the bio, the, you know, all that stuff from the past, it doesn't matter, you know. I mean, I could talk about the George Clooney movies that I've appeared in the Grammy award winning albums. None of that stuff matters in terms of my credibility. It's like, what have you done for me lately, sir? Yeah, I could talk about, well, so anyway, Peter, today we do have a speak pipe from Jalan, and it's a good one, man.

It's all about choral harmony. Shall we have a listen? Yes. Let's have a go here. Thank you, for you. My name is Jalon. I am a high school band director in Atlanta, Georgia,

and an intermediate jazz pianist. And my question was about chordal harmony, the harmony built-in-forths. Really just everything about it. Like, what are the thought processes and using this type of harmony instead of the traditional

tertiary harmony and, you know, just wind, to use this type of harmony or when are some good instances and how to use this type of harmony over what types of chords, really just anything you could share about chordal harmony would be great. All right. Thank you. And love the podcast, by the way. Keep it up. Thank you, Jeline. That's a great question. And, you know, I'll start by saying, Peter, I don't know about you, but my first response to this is, number one, listen. So like going back and listening to the John

Coltrane Quartet, especially with McCoy Tyner, those records. McCoy Tyner's records, Time for Tyner, the Real McCoy, of course. Reaching forth. Reaching forth, you know, but all of them, live in Newport. Like, you're going to hear sort of the best place to use them. And honestly, Jalon, your first stop on this should be two things. Modal tunes, so one or two chords where you're sitting on a chord for a while, and the blues, which is actually kind of a modal tune, if you think about it.

a modal form. But those two are sort of the, those two are the go-toes for chordal harmony. When you say, Peter? That's right. Absolutely. You know, I always think about, when I'm asked about, you know, we should just call them fourth, fourth chords, fourth voicings. Oh, we should, but I always. Just for people that don't know, these are what, what Jeline is talking about, it's when you build the chord in fourths from the bottom of. So here I have F, B, F, B, F, E, flat, A, and D flat. And you might play that over. like, you know, a B-flat minor seven or something like that.

But it doesn't have to be all-fors. A lot of this harmony has a third, especially on top. The so what chords, you know, come to mind. That's chordal harmony for sure. But there's a lot of fourths going on. Yeah. But I think you've got, you know, two main places, especially as pianists, that we can think about interacting with these, this kind of harmony.

And that's voicings. and then, you know, lines or melodies. And a lot of times pianists and really all, you know, jazz musicians, almost all jazz musicians are pianists of some degree. I mean, good players that I've been around. They can sit down. And I think part of the reason it's important is because the piano, it's easier to be able to wrap your head around this type of harmony at the piano.

You can see it, you can feel it, you can actually play those fourth voicings. you know, vertically, instead of just horizontally, like on a horn or if you're a vocalist or whatever. So, um, that's, you know, how you want to separate playing melodically versus playing a voice thing, like which comes first. It doesn't really matter, but I always kind of make some connection with that. So in other words, if you have a really good fourth voice and like the ones that you were playing, those, those all have a lot of melodic possibilities within those shapes. Totally. You know what I mean? But they don't have to be limited and they shouldn't be limited to just running up and down them.

Like that's a lot of times I think when people think, oh, I'm going to play, use chordal harmony, a pianist would be like, okay, I'm going to do fourth voicings only, which you've already pointed out. It doesn't have to be only forced. You could have a third. In fact, a lot of the really interesting ones that McCoy Tyner played that I learned from transcribing were not, they sounded like all force, but there'd be

like one third on them. Or like, you know, or they might, exactly. Or they might be all forced, but they're not all perfect force. That's the other thing. Yeah, yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe chordal harmony is just any kind of force, right? Yeah, and like you said, it doesn't have to be all fourths.

It's kind of just based on that. And I think, Jelon, you could also start an easy way to see this because there's just not that many options is in your left hand. So to really explore with this, you can take in like an F7 chord if you're playing like an F blues. You got to drop the bomb there, Peter. You got to drop that fifth down there if you want to get the McCoy before you get into it. But then you can go into this.

And look, a important thing about that fifth down there. Fifth is just a fourth. upside down. It's like a smile's just a frown upside down, my friend. Turn it around, man. You could do a fourth. You drop that F and C down there. And then you can go straight into, and like you said, it doesn't have to be a perfect fourth, E flat A and D, right? That's an augmented fourth there. And then you just move that, you can move that diatonically. That's the key. Sort of level one, move it diatonically up that F7. So up the Fxillidian. And you're going to get some shapes that are more tense, you know, as you get into the tritone

there, but you can go all the way up. And then of course, like, I'm actually too, Peter, I don't know if you heard, but I'm also incorporating that into my line. So, right? Like all of those little bit bigger of jumps rather than just like or, you know, enclosures. Not that you wouldn't play that, but, you know, when you get those fourths going, you can get some big shapes, triads, things like that. And I'm just moving my. left hand around in fourths diatonically. That's kind of a great jumping off point. And you can do that too in C minor.

Why not go out? Why not take it out while you're there? Yeah, that's great. And I mean, you know, ultimately I think these kinds of sounds, although you will find certainly good examples of them, especially on certain so-called modal tunes that sit on certain chords for a while. Impressions. You know, so what? All blues? These kinds of things. but typically how you go into this kind of sound

and then come out of it to some bebop just some third base stuff some arpeggiation that's where the real fun comes and that's where it becomes kind of just another yes it's a harmonic device a harmonic area but it's also like a vocabulary driven thing as opposed to just and that's why I started out talking about

with voicing's versus melodic thing and what that relationship and that's such an important thing for everybody whether you're a pianist or not is to understand like voicing's for us pianists. That's our way of, it's one of our ways, kind of our primary way often of accompanying other players, but it's also the foundation for all of us to build upon, you know,

the melodic kind of shapes and patterns for our imagination to realize as we improvise. Absolutely. And, you know, this doesn't also have to be limited to just one chord or a modal thing, too. It's a little bit trickier, but even on something like autumn leaves, you can certainly do, you know, cadences that have two five ones. If you think about the two five in the autumn leaves,

instead of the two chord, C minor, seven, right? Usually C minor seven, F7, B flat seven. You could take that cadence, especially with the time given, which is like a full bar of each. And instead of C7, and you don't have to work this out with anybody, you can just do this on the fly. You could think the whole time, I mean, you could think C minor and that Dorian, but you could also think just F sus, right, F7s.

getting you that same sound we were just playing over the blues. And that would be great actually for those full two bars. You can get something. But you could also do an F7s, and instead of hitting on that F7, you could do something like a tritone sub then and do like a B7s, right?

Yep. To your B flat 7. And again, lots of fourths, lots of fifths in my lines here, which is just as much about the. sound is anything so and you can then you know like you said then you can go in in and out of some bebop stuff put some enclosures in there some pure melody as kezer likes to talk about adding that to the mix you know going straight to some kind of melodic thing that's just really melodic um yeah is a great way to practice that but no it's great that's great and i mean

ultimately i think any of these kind of you know larger areas of harmony or or melody or rhythm that's important for us to learn as we practice them, you know, as we're learning them and starting incorporating into our playing, but like as we're practicing them is really get a feel for the sound of it. Like to me, it's a very expansive open and open kind of, I mean, partly, yeah, because it's a wider, it's based upon a little bit wider interval than most of, we're typically hearing an arpeggia, which would be based upon thirds, stacked up the thirds, and so fourth is slightly wider, but I think also there's just something,

you know, there's something special about different. patterns and relationships in music. And a lot of them sort of defy easy description, but they can be codified and put together in a way that becomes like a thing. Because like fourth harmony, chordal harmony when we're like going in and out of like what, you know, melodic playing can be super important for playing out, right? Yeah, I mean, it's crucial.

And actually we open studio, we have a course called pentatonic and playing out. That's how connected they are. Only we had a course that taught this stuff. No, it's exactly what I was saying before about using things like the tritone sub, sussing out your five chords using this kind of chordal left hand harmony and then. But I mean, you can't just say, okay, I'm going to put fourth and fifth into my chords and my melodies and then I got it. You've got to listen to Chick-Korea.

You've got to listen to McCoy-Tiner. You've got to listen to Herbie Hancock. You've got to listen to Kenny Kirkland and get these sounds in your ears. Yeah, absolutely. I love that you listed all them, and then there's 40 more. I mean, there's not 40 more on their level, but I mean, there's, but that's how, because a lot of times it's like, well, I don't want to play it just like that. Well, don't worry.

You won't. You know, that's a good thing. You couldn't if you tried, yeah. But yeah, but you're listening to see how, what does it feel like when they go into this chordal harmony? How do they get into it? How do they get out of it? How quickly are they going in and out of it? Or are they just staying?

What types of chords? What types of tunes? Like, there's so much fruitful analysis that you can do. but mainly like find those you know get in touch with what it feels like because as soon as you were playing that stuff i'm just like i never think oh cordial harmony uh partly because i didn't have that term when i started out but i do think oh that sound like it's just to me it's like i can there's certain there's certain imagery and almost like cinematography that i would associate it's a very cinematic kind of sound you know all these things are where you could think about like

a wide open horizon i think about certain architecture that i've seen it it doesn't matter whatever you're associated with, it becomes like an artistic thing and a tool in your toolbox that you can pull out, you know? Absolutely. And we will be right back. All right, man. Now, we're ready for part two of our analysis of Cordillard. I think we got it.

No, Jolon, great question. Okay. Yeah. That's a good one. And we haven't talked about that in a while. But check out if, Jelan, I don't know if you're an open studio member or not, but if you are, check out pentatonics and playing out because it goes on a pretty deep dive with that. But also, listen to Chick-Korea Now he sings.

how he sobs. Listen to McCoy Tyner, reaching forth. Listen to McCoy, The Real McCoy, listen to McCoy, Tyner, anything. Listen to the John Colton's Lament. Lonnie's Lament. Amazing. Crescent. Yeah, Love Supreme. Listen to... Chick-Corea Matrix. Listen to anything from Black Coats from the Underground, Witton Marsalis, and Kenny Kirkland and how he approaches that sound. Listen to Brad Meldo. There's a lot of this kind of stuff on there. Listen to Robert Glass. Don't listen to one, two, and three, though. There's none of it on there. No, no harmony. No, listen to Robert Glasper's

Trio record. I'm forgetting the name of it now. But anyway. Black Radio, Volume 1, Volume 2, volume 3, volume 4. Not so much those, but the Trio 1, the acoustic Trio 1, he's doing this kind of stuff on there occasionally. So you can hear it in even the most modern of players. Yep. Good stuff. Awesome stuff, man.

Well, this was fun, Peter. This was fun. Remote. We're still remote style. I know. You know, we got a lot of great feedback recently on our Fred Armisen episode. I don't know if you know that. I'm not a fan of jazz.

We know, Fred. Yeah. I love the way he says. He says it exactly the way someone that looks like him should say the word jazz. It's perfect. The pause is just pregnant enough. It's both, you know, it's both mocking and giving homage to the word at the same time in such a beautiful way. Yeah, but he would say homage.

Exactly. Well, I'm in. Until next time. You'll hear it.