You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Should I Learn Piano?

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

Peter and Adam take a listener's question and extoll all the virtues of learning piano for anyone who doesn't play it as their primary instrument on today's episode.Links From This Episode:There's a new course from Open Studio - Your Sound Is Your Signature! Join jazz bass extraordinaire Christian McBride as he teaches you how to play ballads, odd time signatures, fast tempos, and more! Featuring our beloved Guided Practice Sessions to help refine the concepts of this course. For more info, just follow this link.For a comprehensive collection of piano lessons, save money by purchasing the Piano Access Pass - every piano course past, present, and future from Open Studio.Wednesday's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Edu Ribeiro + Ulysses Owens, Jr. | Drum Conversations + Q&A on YouTube8:00 PM - Peter Martin + Emmet Cohen | Duo Concert & Conversations 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.

Hey, Peter. Yo. Should I learn piano? You're so dang good, Adam. You look so good, you sound so good, you're playing so good. I would say no. Okay, done. I'm Adam Mace.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast. Music advice coming at you. Coming at you today. Sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJaz.com and check out our piano access bass. If you want to learn how to play the piano, there's probably not a better thing that you can get to help with that endeavor. It's wonderful.

And did you know that it includes unfettered. access to our guided practice session trademark app. So there's no fetters. There are no fetters. Not a single fetter. There's not a fetter or feather. It's available for Android or iOS, whether you're regular, normal or not normal. I'm not going to say which is which.

Normal. But yeah. And it's such a beautiful thing. And the great thing about the guided practice session program that you've developed Adam is there's people watching it live. There's a lot of people watching it. later and there's a lot of people listening later via the app, you know, without their computer with their, with their iOS or Android device, consuming it, however you're going to consume it.

That's right. Go to OpenStudiojazz.com and check out the piano access pass for all of that, including the unfettered app. I love that word. It's so royal and so I don't even know what it means. So, you know, when I was a kid and I was like, I was a flashy little kid. I'm not. You were fettered. I was a fettered.

I was a federed. I was federed. No, I used to sit down on pianos and. and just flash it out. You know what I'm saying? You ever get cocky as a kid? I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but I could play kind of fast.

It was so fun when we were young, young and dumb. I would do stupid things and it would just, you know, and then my mom would be like, we're thinking about getting them lessons, you know, in a very like. He sounds so fettered that we're going to unfetter him. So, no, that was just, our intro reminded me of that.

But we got an email from, this is from Eric, Jazz Brew, Brewington. Okay, Eric. Okay, it sounds like, We're only doing this. We're only answering this email because his name is Eric Brewington. But, okay, this is Eric and then in quotes, Jazz Brew, Brewington. And if you think that's the only reason we would be making an episode about this, you would be correct, actually.

I mean, Eric, you're not allowed to give yourself your own nickname. I'm just saying, buddy. Well, maybe he didn't give it. Maybe somebody else gave it to him. We don't know that. That's true. That's true. If someone else gave you that, apologies.

But I don't know. Eric Brewington, it seems like he'd be like, call me Jazz Brew. Yeah, it's actually kind of cool sign. It is actually got cool. So Eric writes, first and foremost, big fan of the podcast. Well, thank you, Eric. You didn't have to say that. I told you it sounded great.

I listened in the evenings to close my day, and you never fail to inform as well. Entertainment will stop. In this crazy season globally, it's greatly appreciated. Well, thank you, Eric. That's very sweet. I'm a bass player. One thing I hear a lot of is how learning basic piano

could be helpful for non-piano players. I would love to hear your thoughts on that and specifically how I as a bass player could approach learning and what I should focus on, chords, inversions. I have zero technique on the keys. Is there an open studio course I should check out? Again, thank you. Well, funny you should mention that.

Thanks for fettering your way on through our podcast with that question. Yeah, we actually do have a course, Eric, called Jazz Piano Jumpstart, that we designed really with this in mind. It's for any kind of novice jazz piano aspiring jazz pianist, but it's also, we really designed it with people who play other. instruments who really want to get into piano in mind so now refresh me though Adam he's saying he has zero technique on the keys would that would jazz piano jump start work if you have zero I mean you gotta have you gotta know like the names

and the notes yeah you have to know the names of the notes which I assume you do yeah yeah and that's on the keyboard on the keyboard yeah that's not that hard to say I played yeah gotta know all yeah you gotta know middle C but we go through all of it you know we start with the atoms of jazz intervals that's true we explain it and it from a very rudimentary level so Eric, if you have a piano access pass or an all access pass or you just want to try one course, I would start there at jazz piano a jumpstart. That would actually give you unfettered access to that, wouldn't it?

Yeah, it really would. Yeah. But, you know, if you're just a noob, as my kids are into video game videos on YouTube, and so they talk a lot about noobs. Right. Newby, right? I love how newby is too long of a word. It has to be abbreviated.

Noobs, yeah. With noobooboos. But if you are a piano noob, and you, I don't know, people. if you wanted to work on one thing, I honestly think a root shell pretty idea. Yeah. Is like a really great intro to jazz piano if you don't know anything about piano

because that's one of the advantages that you have at the piano is that you can see everything happening. So Eric, if you wanted to say make, you know, you're a bass player, so you probably know what a C major seven is, right? So the root shell pretty means that you form these chords from the bottom up root C, shell, right?

The third and the seventh, E and B. And then two pretty notes, like the ninth, the fifth, or the 13th. So I just made a beautiful little voicing right here, right? Out of just this thing. So you can go through your favorite tunes and just do root shell pretty. From the bottom of root shell, and then two pretty notes, the ninth, the 13th, the 11th, the fifth. Whatever sounds good to you.

And you can make beautiful, these are all just root shell pretty. Well, you're getting fancy now. Hold on. All of those are root shell pretty. That's very structured, very easy to understand. That's where I would start. If you understand at all intervals or any kind of scale theory, even as a bass player, no offense to bass players, but you can get really far offensive.

Yeah. All of these, root shell pretty, every single one. Yeah, and what I was thinking, you know, and you can very much think of, obviously, Adam is going extremely pretty with some great stuff there. But if you think about root shell and then pretty, you know, don't feel like you have to tack it all together. And then as a bass player, specifically, you're going to be in a unique position to be able to hear the harmony and these core, these basic chord structures and inversions as you get into that from the bottom up because that's, you know, typically where you live as a bass player. So that's actually an advantage, I think, a lot of times because it gives you an entry point. You're going to know more and be able to hear more than you think.

Like when you're saying you have zero technique, it's not about the technique. The technique will come. That's like anything. Yeah. Like if you don't know how to ice skate and you're like, I have zero technique ice skating, it's like, yeah, because you've never done it and you don't know how to do it. You don't have to intellectualize your way to doing it. You need to put some skates on, go to a safe place by that side, look like an idiot. Then you start to feed.

You'll start to develop the technique. Well, and the cool thing about root shell pretty, speaking of technique is if you do root and shell in your left hand and then you save the pretty for your right, Now when you want to just do root and shell Yeah That's all your left hand So you can now sort of mess around With scales with your right hand Or whatever you want to do with your right hand

And you have a solid foundation of root and shell In your left hand You can do whatever you want with your right hand Do whatever you want Root hand gestures Yeah just do that Super simple Yep

That's great Well you know what's interesting too I like to think about You know learning a new instrument a lot of times we yeah we're biased as far as piano players but we really you know talk about it for everybody else because it's such it's such a helpful thing for your bass playing for your trumpet playing for your vocals for whatever is kind of your main instrument but some people kind of fall in love with the instrument anyway just like doing anything so um i think you can think about

it not as like oh i have to develop this technique you you might want to just think about it as like how do i get around these basic chord structures and then some people inversions and maybe, you know, some of the cores in your left hand, maybe combined with scales or whatever, you know, there's many different things we talk about in the courses and beyond. But it's really from the standpoint specifically of enhancing your bass playing as opposed to like, I want to learn piano, so I need to learn proper technique and all this kind of stuff. You can kind of wait on that, if ever for that, for sure, unless you want to become a piano player also.

I mean, I think about like, I learned some bass because I wanted to learn how to play with bass players. And I never learned, like, proper technique. I had a little bit of whatever you would take from playing violin because I was doing that to the bass, but that's pretty different. I mean, it's similar, but not really.

So, like, I just learned, I was very unfettered in my approach to base technique, but I wanted to be able to learn how to get around some basic things, play up, that was kind of my goal, play like a B flat blues and.

Also, you want to work, right? You want to work a little more. Yeah, so I learned enough. I learned a B5 blues. I can get gigs.

True story. I was just hanging out of my friend's apartment. I was just playing some pace, and I got a gig in a rock band. And it was one of the most fun times you could ever have. That's what I'm saying bass players work more Eric. So just keep that in mind brewing. That's right, right.

Jazz brew. That's right. Thanks, Jazz brew for the question. And we would like to remind everybody for as long as this podcast still exists, which is, that's an episode for another day. You can reach us via email, which comes to us via the World Wide Web and the internets. And that would be at YHI at Open StudioJazz.com. Now, if you send us an email at Bounder,

this back to you, you are hearing this in the future and the email has been shut off. But for now, you can email us, ask a question, make a comment. We love hearing from you. You can also do a speakpipe at you'll hear it.com. You can send us mail, right? What's our address here? We don't even know what our address is. Don't send us mail.

Yeah, send us emails better. Until next time. You'll hear it.