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

Episode Date: July 17, 2019

It's another classic edition of jazz advice as Peter and Adam discuss the merits of learning classical music for jazz musicians.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, Peter. Hey, Adam. Bonjourno. Are you de'alli. Bonacela. Bonacera. I'm Adam Annis. It's my pizza pie. Okay.

That was up for the line. 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 today. You are in Italy. I'm in the United States.

We got a bit of a delay. on this audio, but we're going to try to make this work. I'm just going to be extra sensitive to the time I start talking after you stop talking. As will I be extra sensitive to the time when I commence to talk and you commence to talk. We are going to make this. I said yesterday, by the way. Yeah, exactly. We're going to make this work, man. It's going to work. Yeah. Well, the funny about it is like, you know, our comic, our comedic timing is so off. anyway, this might actually force us into, to be synced up.

It's true. Wouldn't it be crazy if it, like, we had better comedic timing when we were off by about a second and a half? Exactly, exactly. All right, today we have a speak pipe. So let's check it out. Let's do it. Hey, Peter and Adam.

This is John from California. I have a question about having foundations in classical music. I've noticed that a lot of the best jazz musicians have had classical training when they were younger before they started in jazz. And I'm wondering if for someone like myself who's beginning to learn piano when I'm older, would it be worth it for me to focus more on the classical side of piano and learning some classical repertoire

before really getting into learning jazz piano? Or just can I go straight into learning jazz? What would be the pros and cons maybe of focusing more on the classical side first versus just going straight into jazz? You guys can answer that. That'd be great. Love the podcast. Thanks, guys.

That's a good question. Yeah, it's a great question. And I think it's I think we actually might have a little something to bring the table on this, even from two continents. Yeah, I agree. And so thanks, John, for sending them. And by the way, if you want to send us your voice message,

your speakpipe, we've got a lot of great ones on deck here. And you can always go to you'll hear it.com. You can leave us a speakpipe. We love answering these. and we love getting great questions like this, John. So, Pete, why don't you start off, man? I know you've had plenty of classical training, especially when you were younger.

How do you feel like this fits into your jazz playing even now? Yeah, I mean, I think for me, it's been really beneficial, and I'm, you know, it's kind of only that I knew, but it's definitely not the only pathway. And I would say to John in California, you know, you said, should you focus on classical, or if I heard correctly, I should you focus on both.

I think you can actually do both. I don't think you need to, it's not like you need to focus on classical first, like it's some kind of preparation, and then you graduate into jazz. I think that you can jump right in, and I think you kind of describe yourself at the beginner level, right into jazz,

but I think some classical foundational work as you go can really be helpful as well and fun, you know. The piano is such a great instrument. It's interesting now being in Italy. Every time I'm here, you know, this is where the piano was born. Right. Italy. And there's such a great piano tradition here.

And if we think about it kind of, I guess, holistically, maybe a little bit of just ourselves, pianists first and not classical players or jazz players or pop players or whatever. Let's just think about us as pianists. Of course, we're jazz musicians and that's a whole other thing. But just as pianists and learning the instrument, classical repertoire, as is the jazz repertoire, the blues repertoire, the different things, ragtime, those are all like big worlds, you know, because this is a big instrument with a diverse and wonderful repertoire. This is not like, well, I mean, and I'm not trying to throw shade on the saxophone or anything, but it just pops in my head. Saxophone, it's a different thing because there's maybe not a huge, there's great repertoire in a classical world for some time, but it's not as it is for, you know, so it's more dominated by jazz. But for piano, there is a great repertoire.

It's a great things we can do for our technique. But you can definitely do it, in my opinion, at the same time as you do it jazz. I agree. I think you can do the two congruantly. I do think to your point that, you know, as you would learn about maybe how a blues musician approaches playing the piano or like a rock and roll

or folk or whatever ragtime, however the genre is that is somehow relative to jazz, which most are, classical and classical music and especially in the piano tradition and jazz have kind of overlapped several times during the history of jazz. So I do think that there are some certain pieces you can hit on repertoire-wise that might help you. I'm thinking, of course, like some French stuff, some WC and things like that. But even going back to, I know you always recommend for beginners to start off with this two- and three-part Bach inventions. And it's

because of classical music's tradition at the keyboard before even the piano, you know, there was 200 years of maybe more of keyboards instruments. And so there's just this long history of these technique that we can pull from. And certainly to your point about the saxophone being, you know, really jazz is the king on the saxophone as far as repertoire and for his techniques even, I think for piano, it's always really helpful to go back to some of these classical techniques. You know, we, we always preach about the Boktu part inventions for technique, about the McFeran scale and arpeggio manual, has some great fingering to get you some really good foundational technique. Those things can be, I think, a big game changer at a beginner level,

especially because your technique is still being molded. So why not visit some of these like really tried and true tested traditions? Exactly. And I think, you know, you're making a good kind of delineation there, I would say, between classical technique and classical repertoire. So, you know, the classical technique can be very useful as a foundation for the jazz technique, because there's a lot of overlap, I would say. A lot more than, you know, we talk about saxophone or trumpet or something where, like, say, on the trumpet or the saxophone, the classical technique and the jazz technique for producing a sound and stuff is fairly different. I mean, I'm no expert in those worlds.

Whereas in jazz piano, there's a lot more overlap. If you look at a little bit of jazz piano, that's sort of the foundation of how the music has evolved as, you know, particular to this instrument, there's not a lot we have to actually change. I don't think in terms of how we play the instrument. So that stuff can be beneficial. But, I mean, that's like from a technical level. If you want to get into classical music, you know, repertoire,

I mean, that's an endless world that you can do that. that as well. That's not necessarily necessary, although like what you say, like with Deb C and Revelle, different things. There could be some wonderful things that you might want to apply to jazz playing. But I think just getting that basic technique and then if you're kind of end goal is to be a jazz pianist, just taking that the scales, the arpeggios, maybe some Bach in Fetina. Sonatinas, I think sonatina, I think they call them Sonatina albums or Sonatina collection. It's like Clementi. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I did the Clementine. son of Tina's yeah yeah yeah me too that stuff is great just for kind of working out because

basically what you're working on is your sound you're fingering your independence of the hands your independence of the fingers all the same things that you're going to use in jazz but you're kind of able to learn it in a little bit more of a controlled environment of written classical music where you know what notes you're going to have to play so you're kind of not having to worry about the improvisation and that whole world at the same time as you're building up your basic piano technique You know, also I'm thinking, Peter, on this, as you're working on your jazz stuff and maybe you're throwing in some classical stuff, which includes reading music, you can even incorporate, I would, and have, especially when I was younger, you know, folks like Scott Joplin and maybe some easier sort of Fats Waller transcriptions of swing piano stuff, like that kind of stuff can be not only great for your technique and you can apply some of the classical stuff, but you also are seeing on the page how jazz developed. And some of the, some of the. those voicing and chord progressions and things that we still use today and everything, melodic content, everything that we still could use today can be revealed very easily.

Absolutely. Scott Joplin is a foundation of really what became jazz. I mean, you talk about ragtime, but it's a foundation, but it's also the bridge between you know, classical march music and, and, and, And stride piano, basically. So you can see that, as you say, revealed in a page, you're feeling in your fingers. And that's a great way.

I mean, a lot of the Scott Joppa's stuff is pretty advanced in terms of, like you have to build up to that. That's a little bit harder. But sometimes they have like some simplified versions. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. Of some of that stuff, which you try out to. Yeah. Yeah.

But even like, I mean, if you're like, if John in, in California, if you are truly, really beginner, even some of this stuff like, you know, I mean, the Bach inventions. are tricky, like in terms of, they're relatively simple, but in terms of independence of the hands, you have to be pretty advanced with that. So that's not going to be something that you can tell you don't know at the beginning,

but if you talk about some of these graded piano method books and stuff that are, I mean, not really, they're classical, they're foundational for playing piano. You can work your way through that kind of as quickly as you have the time of practice, basically. Yeah, and if you're truly a beginner, John, too, look out for, there are some, there are loads and loads of, like, easy classical piano

books that you can find anywhere. Some of them are super cheesy and some of them are actually okay as far as like, you know, you get the real for Elise or, you know, the first, the first Bach prelude and C. You know what I mean? That kind of stuff. Like getting into that can be kind of an easy thing. So go take a look at that.

Go take a look on Amazon, but you can check it out on Scribd as well, which is a great website to check out some old outer print music. Yeah, thanks for the... Yeah, and I don't know if this is still... if this is still available, but what I learned on, I think I've seen, I mean,

I saw these books as in Oxford, as in like Oxford, England, I guess, some kind of graded the Oxford classical piano method. But it was very like, I mean, it's like for kids.

And, but it's for any, it's not just for kids. It's like for beginners. I think it did have some cute little drawings, little coloring might have been involved. Aw. Yeah.

You know, young PD needed some, some visual aids to go off. Don't we all. Don't we all? All right, well, thanks, John, for the speakpipe. And like I said, go to you'll hearat.com to check it out. Hey, go to openstudiojazz.com to check out our brand new platform.

I know, man, popping off over there. Is that legal? It is now. Is that, it's legal? It's happening. No, we've been getting some wonderful feedback yet. Definitely go to Open StudioJazz.com. Check out the new platform, the new courses.

Well, it's some of the old courses, but they're refreshed. They're being represented. They're being rolled out. quickly, quickly. Very quickly. And a lot of great work is being done on that. And so check it out. Yeah, we've already got a ton of great feedback from the new site.

So really, if you haven't checked it out yet, go over there and check it out some awesome piano courses, some awesome drum courses. We got it all, basically. We got it all. So, yeah, anything else, Pete, from Italy? Where are you at, by the way? I think that's it. I'm in Naples.

Actually, I'm in Caserta, which is like right outside of Naples. You're having the best pizza in the world right now, aren't you? I have not had any pizza yet. We just got in. But I was interested in the last couple days. We were in Madera, which I hadn't been in year, which is the island kind of floating off above Morocco there. It's a Portuguese island. We had a really good time of the jazz festival there.

And now we're doing three gigs in a row here up in Umbria. So it's like Southern Italy. Is it the summer jazz fest up there? Yeah, Umbia Jazz Fest. And then we're playing up in Venice. It's a rough tour. It's a rough tour. Rough, you know.

They're forcing food and wine every night into us. But we do what we can here. Awesome, man. Well, we'll come back tomorrow from your hotel room and the pod cave. Sounds good. All right. Until then. Well, you'll hear it.

Grazie mele.