You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Rootless Voicings vs. Rooted Voicings

Episode Date: July 30, 2019

Today, Peter and Adam answer a SpeakPipe on when to play rooted voicings and when to avoid them. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Just go to https://youllhearit.com/podcast-contact/Have you been to the new Open Studio website yet? It's the same great taste with a whole new look! It's got all of the great courses from the old site, plus some new ones like Jazz Piano Jump-Start that are exclusive to the new platform. Plus, we've got a more user-friendly interface, faster load speeds, and new course resources - like quizzes over the lesson material. Visit https://www.openstudiojazz.com/ to learn more!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 the difference between a rooted voicing and a rude voicing? One has the root in it and the other. It's kind of a jerk. I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily Chaz advice coming at you. I'm sorry about that. That was just, that was a terrible intro. Like you threw me the ball. Yeah. And I was in left field and I was like, I got it. I got it. I dropped it. That was not funny.

Clever or. I don't think you dropped it. I literally just. I don't even think you caught it. I don't. I don't think you touched it. I didn't even run towards it. That was so half-hard. But that shows the spontaneity of the Yule Hearin podcast. Can't fake that terrible.

We are totally off the cuff here. Imagine if it was scripted. That would be terrible. It would be even worse. Well, you know, we're obviously back in the pod cave. Good to see you again. You too. But look, this is the dog days of summer.

Let's be honest. It's July 30th. Tuesday. You know, we're back on our daily schedule here. And it's summertime, man. We got to, any kind of creativity has to be spontaneously created. So let's see if one of our listeners can't help us. We do have a listener, William, who sent us to speak pipe.

Let's check it out. Let's do it. Hey, Pierre and Adam. This is William from California. And I love the podcast. I listen to it all the time. You guys are definitely doing a really great job. So my question is, if you guys could sort of talk.

about rootless voicing versus voicings incorporating the root and when would be a good time to play a rootless voicing, when would be a good time to play a voicing with the root and maybe the difference with that between maybe solo piano and then a piano-based drums trio or maybe you're comping or soloing. So yeah, if you guys could talk about that, that would be awesome. Again, I love the podcasts and And yeah, thanks guys. All right, William. Thank you very much. Thank you for the love. You're going to really love this podcast after we, to pick up on your baseball analogy, knock this answer out the park. Boom, right?

Nice one. Okay. You're carrying the load here. I actually have a funny story about Roots. I was driving with my wife to my parents' house in the country. And we were down this little road and there was a... Yeah, it was kind of like that. And there was a door.

in a field that was like, you know, submerged a little bit in the field. It was a little dormant. It was a little dormant. It was in a hill. Oh, my gosh. It was on a hill. It was a little door. And I was like, you know, I've driven by that house every day from, you know, my whole life.

What is that door? What do you think that door goes to? She's like, oh, it goes to a root cellar. And I was like, oh, a root cellar. A root cellar. I was like, that's cool. I love roots. Like rooted vegetables?

Yeah. Wow. No, no, no. No, that's what I thought. Like, like, like, this is. where you like keep your turnips right no no no it's just because it's it's in the in the earth near where the roots are of the plants or whatever and it's it's a naturally cool you know kind of damp place where you could cellar things but i was like oh that's a that's where you

keep your roots your rooted vegetables right and heather's like you are truly dumb about things that are just piano yeah well you weren't looking for like a rooted you know sharp nine quarter or anything at least down in that cellar word no but i stand by my statement I do love roots, both the vegetables and the cords. That's right. I mean, look, this is, and for the chords, isn't it all about when, you know, when it's good to play? And so that was, you know, when you play, I would say when to play with roots, that would be Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday should be rootless.

Is that, is that a good way to look at it? Why would you delineate by the day of the week? Well, he's asking when, so I'm going by like, you know, trying to get a pattern going. When? No, you know what, man? I am a convert to the roots because I grew up. some piano teacher somewhere convinced me never to ever play the root. A modernist.

Yeah, or play below the T and Steinway, whatever the hell it was, the Ryan Carter. The K and K in K and K and Krenck and Krenck. Playing the Kronik and box sends me straight to wanting to smoke some crack. Let me be honest with you. Come on now. So that was probably like, you know, up until I was somewhere in my 20s. And then I started transcribing a lot of great pianists, more and realized that they're all playing rooted voices.

They're all playing roots. They've been in that cellar. Like all the time. They're all about the roots. They're in the root cellar like constantly. Yeah. And it doesn't actually matter if it's solo piano or not. Yeah.

It doesn't matter if there's a bass player or not. It doesn't matter really the context of their comping or comping for themselves or playing the melody. There is always the possibility of playing rooted voicings. And I would say on the flip, if you're playing solo piano, you could throw some rootless voicings in. No one ever said you couldn't do it. that. That's right. That's right. Yeah, I think that the idea that there's a time to play them and there's a time

not to based upon instrumentation, we don't subscribe to that at all. You know, it's just more a matter of situational within the performance, you know, so we're always number one listening to, to, and really that's the key. Like, not only to listen, but to know what the different sounds sound like, what the different voicing sound like so you can place them at the right place because it's very hard for us to come up with accurate rules as in when you have a bass player and the bass player is playing the route you shouldn't play a rooted voicing. That seems obvious, but it's not really true.

There's sometimes when you're going to want to do that to match up with what he or she is doing with the base. So, I mean, are we going to play less rooted voicings when we're playing trio, piano trio as we would solo piano? Yes, probably. Probably. But it's very hard to put a percentage basis

or even when to do that. I think it's a little bit more I wouldn't say random, but a little bit more unpredictable. when it's going to be. So that's really what makes us a tricky question and we get asked it a lot. I remember having a lot of questions about this. It's a confusing part of solo piano, I mean a jazz piano

and it's something that with the more experience that you have in these different situations I think the more confidence you have in kind of instinctually going to these different kinds of voicing and not thinking about them as two separate

buckets, right? I agree that they're not, I don't think about them as two separate buckets and all. And I would say that, William, if you get too hung up on the rootless thing, like some people do and teach, then you don't practice the rooted voicings as much. And that's the shame, because you can always take the root off. Yeah. Like, I mean, it sounds simple and it's not totally true, but it is kind of true. Like, you should be learning as many rooted voicings as non-routed voicing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even if it's to your point of knowing what those sound like, right? And then being able to put them in, for me,

there's a lot of times where a punchy rooted voicing is just what the doctor ordered, you know, in the middle of a big band or something. Right. Dr. Jazz ordered that. Dr. Jazz ordered a punchy rooted B-flat-7 voicing, and there's nothing, there's no substitute for that, you know. Well, there's an E-7. That could be a sharp nine. That could be a substitute for the B-flat-7. I see what you did there.

And I like it a lot. I like it a lot. But there is, yeah, like you said, like if you're playing with the rhythm section, there's no, like, hard and fast rule. Range could maybe dictate, like, where you are a little bit, can dictate that. How the piano sounds. How the piano sounds. I'm playing on Thursdays on this little Story in Clark spin it,

which I think is just an offshoot of Kranick and Bach. Right. But it's like I could... It's like a limited liability holding company of the Kranick and Bach. It's such a thin bass that I could play double octaves down there and it wouldn't get in Bob's way at all.

You know what I mean? Like it just wouldn't like... But if I was a Steinway D, I might like not go so low. Yeah. Well, and you mentioned before like the punchy thing, that's like that kind of voicing. You can almost play anything

that works and sounds good because you're punching in and out quickly. So it's such a different thing than sustaining. So that can make more of a difference whether it's rooted or not rooted to potentially clash, to have less potential to clash than whether or not it's rooted or not rooted,

you know? So it's whether or not you're playing with a rooted voicing is just one of many different things, I think, that define and stylize how we can potentially comp. And so it's great to think, to think about these things, but I think the main thing is to learn the way these voicing

sound, try out different things. And look, most of the time we're going to be trying this stuff out when we play solo piano, because that's when we're practicing. Most people can't be like, call up a bass player and a drummer, a saxophonist, and then whatever. Can you come over and practice with me? I'm not going to pay you anything, you know? Maybe if you're rich, I guess you could. But I mean,

we spend most of our time playing and practicing as pianists on our own. So, you know, to your point, I think that you were starting to get to earlier, it's like, it's easier to take away than to add. So we can always kind of learn, and you look at most kind of, you know, late beginner, maybe intermediate, what we would call jazz pianists. And they generally have a better handle on rootless voices. For sure.

For sure. Which I always thought was weird because really, if you talk about just some basic voices, root in seven in the left hand, it doesn't get any easier to kind of conceptualize and lay a foundation for what we're going to do, whether you're going to go two-handed voicing or improv or melody or whatever on the right hand. Yeah. If you can't lay down a basic accompaniment for your solo piano tune at a medium to medium up tempo, then you got some work to do on your rooted voicing.

That is all that is. And it's not hard. You can easily get there with inversions and everything and any kind of melody on top. But it's just work you've got to put in at some point because they come in handy in every single context.

And don't worry so much about getting in the bass player's way unless it's a bass player that specifically asks you, say it says like, you know, stay out of my way. Unless, you know,

he or she isn't to bodybuilding. and can potentially kick kick your ass. Yeah, that's always something to look out for. They can get kind of strong. They can get kind of big and, yeah, yeah, big and burly. But most pianos, especially most pianos that we're playing smaller pianos at clubs, even, you know, seven footers, the timbre of them is not going to interfere with the bass players thing, you know. And, I mean, look, the range of where you're, I mean, we have, you know, generally two,

to even sometimes three octas, maybe two and a half octave range, that we can play these basic rooted voicing in the left hand. Yeah, yeah. So depending on which octave you play them in, can be, will vastly differentiate how it sounds whether or not it works with other instruments. And that's, again, to kind of learning what these things sound and feel like, we want to get that into our repertoire of left-handed comping technique

so that we know when we can use it and when we can't. I mean, you're always going to have more space when you're playing solo piano. There's no getting around that. I was just thinking of a really great time to practice, play. playing these rooted voicings with a bass player is during the bass solo.

Because that is a real time where you can hear what's going on. The bass player can maybe take it a little higher. But I mean, I play rooted voicings and base solos all the time because I feel like it provides a nice accompaniment to the bass player. He can hear the changes better. He or she can hear the changes better. And I'm able to kind of play more completely

as an accompanist rather than playing super high rootless voiceless all the time, which I'll do. But you know what I mean? But if you haven't practiced that, give that a shot the next time you're comping for a bass solo, because you'll first of all, I think the bass player is going to dig it. Yeah.

And second of all, it's like a great way to hear how the piano can clash or not clash with the bass player. Yeah. And I think, too, you know, if you get into some higher rooted voicing, higher up in the range, I'm thinking specifically between, you know, the C below Middle C, up until about Middle C, up in that octave. Yeah. Those kind of rooted voicings are very different than an octave below. For sure. First of all, you're in a range that you're almost never going to do.

directly clash or overlap with the bass player. They're very seldom up that high. Yeah, because you're up, you know, above, you're up, they're up high on the G string at that point, pretty much. Yeah, you're up higher than their high C if you're, yeah, yeah, yeah. And this, the voicing sound very differently, and you can get closer to get, you can have more notes, you can have three note, four note,

even five note voicings with that root on the bottom. They're more similar to what we would think of as rootless voicing. They sound closer to that. And they can be a nice kind of, bridge between the little bit higher rootless voicing and the lower kind of root in 7, root 3,7 or octaves.

Flipside. Common for a bass player too. You could go below the bass player's range and give the base player like a low B flat and then a high chord, you know what I mean? Give them a nice chunk in the middle to have their own space. And that's another thing. I think we've said this before,

but it could always use reiterating is learn that range of the base. I mean, look, we're talking about, there's other instruments we can clash with two with our root of voicings, but bass is going to normally be the biggest potential clashee. But learn the range. Like learn what, you know, that E, A, D, and G string

and what they sound like, where they correspond on the piano. And start to listen to bass players when you're playing with them, when you're going to gigs and all recordings, and see if you can kind of identify which strings are on, then you can, you know, in which position there in a hand position. So you can start to kind of hear and then, you know, where they are on the range of the piano, and then you can start to make some of those decisions based upon that.

And sometimes you can play with them. It doesn't mean, but as long as you know where they are and you can hear that, then you can maybe play something with them. Yeah, that's not against the law. It's not against the law. It's good advice. So practicing this, how would you practice this? How would you practice your rooted voicings? Well, I think that this is a good area,

because normally pianists need to expand a certain part. And like we said, it's usually the rooted voicings as opposed to the rootless. But whichever part it is, I think this is a really good area to simplify in icily. So you go through and play some tunes that you know really well. You know, maybe all the things you are, take the A-TRA, anything that you know well and say,

okay, I'm only going to play rooted voicing for the whole thing. Like you still have a lot of choices within that, but every single voicing you play as you play the melody, as you improvise, is going to be rooted. First of all, you're going to find it that's harder to do than you think because you're going to be wanting to jump up and make adjustments. And so you're kind of

focusing on that. And then you can also go through, I think, and do specific kinds of rooted voicing, root in seven, Route 3,7, maybe some of these higher-up voicing like I was suggesting. Really, anything that's rooted, but just that's regimented to keep you focused on, you know, in some people may be like,

well, it's so easy for me, I can do that. Do it for five to ten courses and really listen as you're going. Because that, you're as much, the practice is much about hearing it, repeatedly hearing it so that you can get into the zone where you know what this stuff is going to sound like. once you go to it. So you're going to know in advance

whether or not you're going to be clashing or not. I love it, man. Cool. Thank you, William, for the question. That's a great, great question. I mean, we're getting a lot of California love, man. Have you noticed that? I know, man.

We've got a lot of fans. West Coast representing. Yeah, if you want to send us a speak pipe, go to you'll hearit.com. Check out our blog there. And do it fast because, well, we're going to tell them in a minute. Yeah, yeah.

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