You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Range of a Melody

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

More jazz advice from the Podcave as Peter and Adam answer a question about playing in different ranges with a group.Check out Ethan Iverson's blog Do the Math here: https://ethaniverson.comLet 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 Peter. What's up, ma'am? Is range important? It's important. It's also important not to use helium before in a podcast episode. Is that even legal? I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin.

And you're listening to The You'll Hear Podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Coming at you with a little Easter egg there for Open Studio Insiders. That's right. Are Easter eggs normally announced? They don't know who they are. Okay, got it. They never would listen to it.

All right. Well, what do we have today? Today we have a question from an email. This is a question from Catherine in Melbourne, Australia. Oh, I love Melbourne. Say Melbourne again. Melbourne? I love it.

Yeah, you know, I might be going to Australia soon, so I'm excited to get over there. Melbourne. Coffee, the food, the culture, the people. It's all there. I can't wait. Okay. This is a question from Catherine. Catherine asks, when playing a piece, say a standard in the original key that I know well,

but in a trio format, I often find the head now seems too high or low in range. I also don't feel as well acquainted with it anymore as I feel like I'm less anchored leaving out the bass notes. Also, left-hand rootless voicings can seem to get in the way of the right-hand melody or alternatively. If I play up an octave or in octaves, the whole thing starts to feel too high. Apart from changing the key, what are the various techniques you would use in a trio, including playing the root notes of chords, which some bassist and jazz educators seem to disapprove of? Yeah. We'll see bassists that are trying to play them themselves, right?

Thank you. Thank you, Catherine. Well, Catherine, thank you for the question. It's a great question, actually. Yeah. And it's probably something that I don't think pianists talk as much as they should about because it's really important.

Yeah. And so one thing in that third paragraph, apart from changing the key, I would say the first thing I do is put it in a key that's comfortable that I think sounds good. But she's asking apart from that. Well, we're going to have to dive into that. But I think that is the, you've got to be able to do that. Yeah. Catherine, the most important thing you can do is find a good key.

Singers do it. We should do it too. Exactly. And we should be able to do it. We have to develop that technique. I'm not saying that you have to be able to learn to do it today. But you, you know, if you want to be a serious jazz pianist, especially if you want to work with singers, if you want to be able to play tunes and ranges that are interesting and effective,

you know, of new tunes and whatever. I mean, look, a lot of these jazz standards, so-called jazz standards are songs. Yeah. It's not all of them. Yeah. And if they were written for a tenor voice, you might have to move. it up a little. Right. I mean, the good part about it, you're probably not going to have to, like, transpose any of Herbie Hancock's jazz standards or Thelonius monks, because they were pianists,

and they lay really well there. Exactly. But with standards, yeah, we've done that a lot. And then some tunes even become where people are thinking, oh, their original key is such and such because, like, Keith Jarrett played it there. And it turns out they're not, because he did a lot of moving around. I mean, there's such a precedent for this, for all pianists have done this. Yeah. Because, you know, some of these... Bill Evans, obviously. Bill Evans did it. The violin monk on like the solo monk and the standards. Because for some of the great American songbook standards, just the keys were written for singers.

And if there's not a singer in the band, you know, sometimes you're right, Catherine. Like the voicing just don't work out. If the melodies gets too low, you know, move it up a minor third or a fourth or something. And it'll lay just perfectly there in the piano. Then the other part that I want to address like right away is the rootless voicing. So, you know, they don't have to be rootless your voicing.

No, not at all. And I think that... Even with a trio. No, yeah, absolutely. And I think it's important for pianists, especially that want to play in a trio situation, which is pretty much any jazz pianos, I would think. Yeah. That you get very familiar with rooted voicings.

Well, first of all, there's two different kinds. There's at least, but there's two basic different types of rooted voicings, I would say, with the root on the bottom and the root somewhere in the voicing. You can always use a root somewhere in the voices. Routless voices does not mean, well, it does mean no root. But what we're going to be talking about,

I think here in terms of potential clash with bassists and jazz educators is when the root is on the bottom. But there's a very big difference between the tenor range and the bass range on the piano. And so I want everybody, all pianists are getting familiar

with both those ranges. Now, is there an exact place where it moves? But there's a general area and I couldn't really tell you you're by the crane. You're by the base. What would you say is between the, like that's exactly what I was going to go to that C. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, the C below middle C, that's definitely still for me in an exceptional range.

In fact. That's tenor, right? That's tenor. I mean, from the piano standpoint. I'm fine going down to the G, the F even. It depends on the basis. And it depends on the piano too. It depends on the voicing.

It depends on a lot of things. But, you know, do you ever read Ethan Iverson's blog, do the math? Yeah. So he had this great post about basically jazz education, and he had one section about how there's this myth about taking the root away, right? And he does this, he's like pianists in jazz history who use rooted voicings, and it's like every delonious monk,

you know, Horace Silver. A real snarky list of every great jazz band. Right. And then people who don't use the root, and it was Bill Evans and students in jazz school. And that was so great. I mean, Bill Evans, you know, didn't use a lot. I mean, to be fair, a lot of people in that Miles Davis, like he goes on to explain, like the Miles Davis bands.

Yeah, Red Garland, Win Kevin, even. They didn't use a lot of roots because that was their thing. Ron Carter famously, right? Doesn't like roots. Right. Don't play below the K in the Kranican box. Literally every other pianist uses a ton of rooted voicing in the rhythm section. You have to know how to do it.

It creates a sonority that is so strong. and great. I mean, I've been super getting into this since actually becoming friends with you and listening to how you do it. You do it so perfectly, and I think range has a big part of that. Yeah. So I think that in order to get into hearing this is when you're practicing alone, of course, as a pianist, is playing that tenor, like start to identify the tenor range and the bass range. And like I say, it's not an exact science, but you could take that C as kind of, or B-flat maybe, as a nice little kind of. So, Kathleen, let's say you're doing a standard. Fine, that voicing is great. It sounds good. But it also sounds good. And even. I think a little better. Yeah. And the bass player can be there and you could be there.

And now you have this fuller sound with that root on the bottom. Yeah. Yep. Fine. That's fine. Absolutely. And I mean, and really, if you think about that where, and that was with a C on the bottom, the same one we're talking about is that kind of cut off.

You're still a fourth, a perfect fourth above the top string, open string on a bass. So, like, I mean, I used to do this until I just sort of got a sort of intuitive feel for it. I would listen. or even look at the bass player when I was trying to like find... Of course we're going by ears but also like we know that they're below

that particularly... Like always think about it in relation to your instrument until you can do it intuitively. Yeah. So start to think about that because the base range is always lower than we think because we're used to seeing it written on the page.

And remember the bass is a transposing instrument an octave down or an octave up. So like once you realize that... And look, you can... If you were to go down and play that same voicing in the right hand, but then put the left hand an octave lower or even like root 7 or something yeah and maybe even give the seventh on the bottom too with the left hand yeah okay that's the crannock and box makes everything sound muddy but you want to be able to get that sound versus what is this is the same audio thing yeah yeah yeah we're like but i mean the thing about it is is hearing because you can even get away with some of that lower stuff on a better piano with especially root 7 root 5 or whatever absolutely but you've got to know the sound this guy has a wolf of a bass yeah yeah yeah but once you're you're you're know your sound and what that is is and then you can start to even mess around with like once

the bass player you see him going up on the g, him or her going up on the g string. Then you're like, oh, this is my time to kind of jump down and not walk a baseline under him, but to jump down. Exactly. For those kind of things. If they're up here like they sometimes are prone to do basis. And how does this pertain to your question? Well, if you're down here with stuff, all of a sudden, this sort of range in here for melodies is in play, right? Absolutely. From that G below middle C, now we can voice melodies that low. Yep, absolutely. Which with, if you're doing rooted or rootless voicing, that's not good.

No, exactly. But we can get rooted voicings and have some kind of feeling of solid ground. Yeah. And then so getting back to our question, too, we can think about now you're talking tenor range. Basically the reason you can't get the root of voicing is because we're in that tenor range for the melody, which I think is a great place to be, especially if the bass player knows to kind of not conflict there. It can be, yeah. But what we have to do as pianists in a trio standpoint is be comfortable not playing a lot of voicing.

Now, it depends on what tune it is. If you have a melody that's like, say like, ba-d-du-bap, but-do-d-d-do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-bank. And so you wait all the way because that's kind of in the tenor range in the original key. So you're not doing any comping until you get a break in the melody. And then you're comping in the same range. Like, I don't know if I can do this at the Kranic and Bach. Let me try it. You got it.

You got it. You're kind of comping right on top of yourself. You've got to wait. And then you got to, I didn't do it very effectively, but you got to comp in a way that's supplemented underneath the melody. Like that's a way to, obviously that melody starts to go up higher after that. So then you're cool. But you got to be comfortable not playing, comping all the time.

And we don't have to. Single line stuff. Herbie Hancock did it great in the 60s. Still does it sometimes. And it's like, you know, that's a way to play. If you're not going to move, if you're not going to change the key. Yeah. To play down that tenor range, you can't comp at the same time.

Now here's the top level of this, California. Catherine, the highest level I think of this is, why does your comping have to be below the melody? Hello. You know, why does your voicing have to be all below it? Why does your melody have to be in the right hand? What? Exactly right.

You know, our buddy and fellow open studio artist, Jeffrey Keiser, has a really cool exercise that I'm going to blow your mind with right now, where he does all the things you are, and let's say we're only comping, we're playing the melody with our right hand, and we're comping for ourselves with the right hand. Okay. So let's start off below the melody.

Yep. All right, now I can do it above the melody. That's right. Now check it out. I can do below, above, and I can also do surrounding the melody. And you can mix all these up. Now you add the left hand in, filling in parts of the chord

that maybe you can't get all with your right hand, but that kind of practice of putting your comping or your voicing's surrounding the melody or above it, that's crucial. That's great. Ed, you can even go next level, which is you take your sock off, and then we go with our foot for the melody, hands for the comping.

No, but so the comping doesn't, you don't have to think about it as like, and also when you're, I don't know how you comp for other people, don't have to think about it when you're comping for a singer, say, as everything below them. No, absolutely not. You can be around it. Yeah, yeah. You can be above it, you know. But you're right. That is next level stuff. So you really want to know, obviously the tune, the key, the timbre of your instrument. Yep. And what it's going to, that, like, when you get into the area of knowing what your comping sounds like before you play. I remember when I used to play chords and I like comping chords. Like I always had a problem with two-handed voicing. It was comping behind people. I play something.

I was like, I don't like the way that sounds. And then, okay, I kind of like that. But it was just, it was a lack of, it wasn't even a lack of confidence.

It was just a lack of knowing what something was going to sound like before you played it. Yeah. And that's something that practicing really starts to help because you've tried these things. It's not about planning them out, but you're trying your options so that right as you're playing, you're still spontaneous in the moment. You kind of know what it's going to sound like. I think it's huge, yeah.

One of the thing I thought about, you know, in terms of things to do besides getting out of the key, is playing with octaves. Sometimes if we think things are a little bit too high, especially, I just go to octave with the melody, especially like with ballads or something. If I don't want to change the key, or a lot of times this will happen if you're playing with a vocalist and you have to change the key. And it gets to an area that's not great for piano and maybe you have to play the melody there or whatever. There's some kind of thing. Like if it's sounding too shrill or just too trebally, play everything in octaves. now depending on the tempo, that might not be possible or whatever,

but that gives you a little bit more sonority and brings you down, you know, kind of into that range that can work a little bit better. I think that's great. And like all the things you are, I do that a lot.

That's part of the reason, because, I mean, depending, if you can play it lower, if you want to play it higher, it's nice with the octaves. It's just a great technique to have. You know, and check out some Amad Jamal. Amad Jamal was famously playing things

in octaves that weren't typical. You know, not necessarily in different keys, but would go way up high and play a melody and down low. And then you can block. two-handed block court. Is that legal to say that? It is. Yeah, two-handed block courts, too. You can do it. That's a way to get away

with a standard if you can do it in almost any key, basically. But, Catherine, level one on this is to find the key that works for the tune you're doing. Right. And understand that there's a precedent. Well, that's level two. Level one is learning the tune. That's true. Right. But there's a precedent in jazz of instrumentalist

changing the key that suits their instrument. Nothing wrong with it. And just know that you're going to be developing your ears as you do that. Totally. Cool. All right. Well, and you mentioned that Ethan Iverson. blog, Do the Math, which a big shout out to Ethan and a friend of the podcast. Friend of the podcast? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, we could say that.

Just so you know, make sure when you Google it, Google Do the Math or Ethan Iverson or Jazz. Don't do like I do. Get confused because I ended up on Do the Meth, which is a different blog. And that kind of took me on a journey that I didn't want to go on to tell you. You know, I'm from Jefferson County, Missouri, so I know the founders of Do The Math. Exactly, yeah. The server farm is right next to the Meth Farm, where that, where that, where that, you know,

blog is Crystal City. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, until next time, you'll hear it.