You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Sight reading tunes, The Real Book, and applying newly learned ideas into a tune

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Peter and Adam respond to listeners questions about sight reading tunes, Real Book, and applying newly learned ideas into a tune. These are real world scenarios that happens to everyone, and they've got some great advice.  Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested 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 Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. We're going to do something we haven't done in a while. We're going to change it up. We're going to start a new feature. What? Are we getting rid of our previous Wednesday feature that we forgot about? What Wednesday feature was that? Yeah.

Well, this is what I'm talking about. I'm Adam Manus. I'm Peter Martin. And you listen to the You'll Hear podcast. Music, advice, inspiration, and glorious new features coming at you. Coming at you today is sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJazz.com. For all of your jazz lesson needs yet.

So we are notoriously terrible, Peter, at starting new feature. and then just abandoning them. But this isn't a new feature. Some of them, to be fair, some of them were worthy of abandonment. Like a bad child that you leave. Oh, no. You can't do that.

The dope dualness of dual of doped. Duality. Duality. I don't know. We might need to revisit that. Do we give it a chance? We did it once. Does it deserve a second chance?

Well, we got, you know what it was? We got confused as to what it was. So how can we expect our dear listeners to understand it if we don't understand? Yeah, we really. It was so clear in the moment, though, Remember that Wednesday?

You and I were sitting here in the podcast. And we said, you said, to be clear, it was your idea. Okay. So if you want to abandon it, we can. But we're going to fix that for you right now. Please. Come on, Harry. We're going to abandon this.

Today we're going to do something not new because this isn't really a new feature. We're just going to listen to some speak pipes. We've got three speak pipes. How about we call this Speakpipe Wednesdays? I love it. New feature, speak pipe Wednesday. We've been taking more speak pipes, which are voice messages, really. Just go to you'll hear it.com.

and leave us a message. And we've got three really good ones lined up. And so I thought, man, we could just... 8, 6, 7, 5, 3.09. That is not the number to call. Do not call that number. But I think we could just play these. I'll play it and tell you what it is later.

No, Miles, we're going to play it and we're going to talk about each one. We've got three of them lined up. And I thought we could just knock these out. I think you missed the spirit of what Miles was saying in that quote. I missed the spirit a lot of things in the course of my lifetime, my friend. But it doesn't detract from Rob's... question. Peter and Adam, my two favorite podcasters, how are we doing? This is Rob calling him from Warwickshire, England. I just had a question about the real book, Dunedown. Essentially, I've been

learning everything by ear on your advice, whenever I want to learn a standard. But then when I've been going to jam sessions recently, they're all sitting there with cheap music out with the real book. And when I come to solo, it's my turn to sort of, you know, take lead or whatever. I'm finding it's so difficult to sit there and look at, you know, 40-od chord symbols and solo over the top of that, you know, not really knowing the tune. And I was wondering if you guys had any advice for maybe simplifying when you're looking at sheet music, you know, when you're sight reading something, and how you'd approach that, you know, not just comping,

but actually taking a solo over a song that you've never heard before. Thanks, guys, love the show. Yeah, thank you, Rob. Great question. I don't know, Peter, what do you think? Well, I think, yeah, thanks for the question. And so maybe we should give a little bit more nuanced explanation in terms of we're not totally binary, like learn everything by year and don't learn how to read music. I thought that's exactly what we were.

No, we have been known to be a little bit anti-real book, but not because just, well, because there's a lot of inaccuracies. That's probably the biggest thing. So we've talked about a couple of things. Also, it's just great to listen to music and learn it by that. Yeah, yeah. So, but there is a way to be able to read music. and still be able to do that when you need to. It's just not using that as the primary source.

So if you listen to a tune and you're trying to learn it, especially if it's something that you think you might do at a jam session, try to learn it by ear. If you need to supplement that with music, that's fine. But if you're using the real book, because there are some known inaccuracies. And look, I know there's a lot of versions out there now. For all I know, I never look at it.

So maybe they fixed them all. Maybe it's this brilliant reference material, which is great, you know, good on them. but either way you want to kind of verify for yourself, not only, not so you can be one of these, you know, turds that's like, eh, this is what the original changes. Not like, like we like to do, but because you want to be able to develop your ear

and sometimes being able to identify like, oh, okay, I know the two now, at least I think I know it. Now I'm going to look at the chart, or maybe you had to look at the chart, the real book while you were learning because you got stumped. But then you can start to kind of be a little bit discerning in terms of your viewing of that chart

and not just take it as, the holy Bible like, okay, I'm going to believe whatever this says blindly. You might, you know, see something like, I don't think that's what it is. And then you have to go back and listen and check. Oh, okay, that was right. Hey, bingo, you just, you know, developed your ear some. You just, that's how you get better. So the idea is not that you have to totally avoid it, but you can use this, you know, learning by ear,

but then also work on your side reading, work on learning some tunes from the chart, or at least your sight reading. So when you go to a jam sessions, I assume Rob's talking about he goes in a tune he doesn't know. And he's like, uh-oh, all my two. tunes I learned by ear, I could just do even if they're looking at the charts. What do I do now? You still got to be able to read music. I mean, that's an important thing. Unless you're so great and you're so great and you've got your own band and you're never going to jam sessions and you're a genius and you don't have to read music. Yeah, I totally agree. And I would say, Rob,

you know, a skill that you might think about developing and you could practice this on your own, but I've certainly used this in jam sessions. Everybody breaks out a real book or it's a tune that I don't really know. And it's also not a tune that I like even heard a lot, you know. I went to a jam session at Bob's Jam session and someone called What was it? And I really was like Oh my gosh, I've never even really heard this tune And it wasn't easy

Like it was like kind of tricky I forget what it was obviously I don't know it But I had to like someone had a real book out And I had to like sneak a peek And but here's the thing Rob If you can kind of sneak a peek at a real book Or if you have one in front of you See if you could take a little bit of a snapshot

And see if you can get your head out of the out of the changes As quickly as possible Even if that's just like, okay, well, I know that it starts with a 1625. Or I know the ending cadence is just a 251 for four bars. Right. Like get in that section when it comes around, get out of the music. The faster that you get your head out of just reading changes, the more it becomes like you're playing to the moment and you're not just reading

and trying to figure out what to do with the next chord as it's coming. The other thing you might try is do what, like, you know, the best site readers in the world are Broadway games. They're so good at it, man. They can read the reduced score and everything. They can do, these musicians can sit into like hours of rehearsals and just reading new, new, I mean, pieces they probably played somewhat before. Yeah. But just new music every time.

And they're just sight reading. And one of the keys to that is to stay a little bit ahead of where everybody is, Rob. So you might be reading a bar or two in front of what's happening as you're playing. And that just helps you honestly memorize it even faster. So you could also go one more way to do this is to say like, you know what? I don't know this tune. And I don't want to know. it. No, I don't know it and I'm not going to use the real book. I'm going to hear my way through it.

Kind of going on strike a little bit there. It's the scary. It's a little bit of a labor action. Well, it's scary. I mean, you could still play. Yeah. But you're going to, you might play some wrong notes. You might play some wrong chords. Well, if you play wrong, you're just like, ah, I don't like this song anyway. So that's right. I actually, I was just researching Russ Freeman, who was an awesome pianist. He played with everybody from Charlie Parker, mostly known for Chet Baker. All of that Chet Baker thing stuff. He had a really good accompanist. He knows a lot of tunes.

And he had a quote about Chad Baker. Chad Baker didn't know any changes. He didn't know the core changes. He was like, he knew the melodies. And he would just like, what is this? What he did this start in E-flat? And then he would just, or what's the first note of the melody. Oh, that makes sense.

He's a trumpet player. No, but he could just improvise some pretty killing solos around that. You know what I'm saying? So you could just do the Chet Baker method and just try to hear your way through it. And it would be a great way to work on your ears, actually. Well, actually, yeah, totally. agree because actually trumpet players, I joke because I love them. They, a lot of non-pianists or bass players or guitars that like we feel like we really do and we usually really do know the changes and feel like we have to hold that together.

But sometimes like other players that can kind of come in and out like they've developed areas better because they don't have that. They're not relying on. Like I got to know every single chord. I can actually just hear something over this. Can hear what what sounds like would sound good over this. And a lot of times you play better music. I know. Honestly.

A little bit of that mentality for pianists would be good. And like what you said, get your head out of the. the pages get your head up in the clouds like the trumpet players are yeah man they're worried about no changes you don't care about the changes uh so thank you rob great question okay we've got another question here also from the uk this is ali hmm hi adam and peter it's ali here i'm in the ukk and i'm a frequent g gpser with adam's amazing teaching um so this is my question having learned a new concept um mostly right hand maybe a lick or a scale pattern or something in my right hand that's going to help my improv.

And I usually try and take it around the 12 keys to get it a bit more under my hand. But then my teachers tell me the next stage is to apply it to a tune. And this is where I get really stuck. And it just seems crazy. I just really struggled to get my new idea, my newly learned idea, into a tune. And I just wanted if you had any tips or ideas or approach I can use to try this out. out. So yeah, hope you can get to my reply and looking forward to hearing it. Thanks so much. Thank you, Allie. Yeah. So Ali is a DGPSer. See, Ali, almost every day. She's great.

UK's coming strong today on the speak pipe. Okay, always come strong, buddy. We got some great listeners over there in the UK. So thank you, Allie for the question. And actually, Ali, email me about this. And I got back to you with what I'll say now again, just for everybody to be here, which is, first of all, You're not alone in this. Yeah. This is very common with everybody, even up to the highest level. Yeah. Of how do I, like, how do I get what I'm working on when I get to the bandstand?

Yeah. Right? It's because what happens, and I think this is Ali's point. Like, Allie's even taking it through 12 keys, which is amazing. Yeah. And then you go to play it, and it feels unnatural. It feels like you're starting to force something in there. You know, you're jamming a square peg in a round hole, right?

It doesn't feel right. And that's totally natural. And so, like, my answer, Allie, is maybe don't. Jamming a square into a peg into a round hole is totally natural? No, it's only natural for it to feel like that. Okay. Yeah, for it to feel weird. It's confused.

I was like, I've been using the phrase wrong all these years. It's totally natural for that, for the feeling of trying to put in some new bit of language. So, you know, my thing is, it's like you can't force these things in it because they're always going to sound forced. So if it starts to come out in your playing, it starts to come out in your playing. Yeah. Like by playing, I mean like when you're performing for your teacher or in a gig or wherever that. that is. And if not, it's just not ready. It's just not there. You just don't have it fully where you need to be. Like you're not hearing it when you speak it. You might try singing it, Allie, like trying to take a song solo and seeing if you can sing the concept. That's great. Because that can activate another type of hearing and interaction. Like I think the foundation of this is like learning the musical skills that we need and the development that we need as we're learning. to be an improviser is not linear and the different aspects of our development that are necessary

they they may seem like they're moving in a linear pattern but they're not moving together all the time like fader is going up like and we can't control them in those ways we can control some of the inputs to that and it sounds like alley's doing that like practicing them in different keys you know go through them slowly listen to them and so like these are the inputs but in terms of like how that is output and that is the output is how it comes out in your playing we don't have a huge amount of control of that, the timing of that. But if you trust the process and move on to the next thing, but still come back and review it and let that line or that phrase, whatever it is percolate, it will eventually come out. So it requires patience, but it also requires

faith in the process and knowing that these very deep-seated kind of, you know, ear training based exercises, which is really what this is. Yeah. In essence, don't happen overnight. But the great thing about that is they can stay with you for a long time. So it's like something that you learn on a very deep and intuitive level is going to take longer to get to like like true vocabulary development when you learn a language is a very slow and arduous process. Absolutely. I've been trying to use the word arduous my whole life. I'm 51. Look, I just used it. Finally came. Finally it came through because I didn't give up on it. You got to keep going with it. But when you try to fill that stuff in early, you know, so there's nothing wrong with trying. Well, and also I'll say this, you know,

even if you are working on a concept or a bit of language and you take it through all 12 keys and it never, ever comes through in your playing. That wasn't a waste of time. That still helped you to become a better musician. It prepped you for something that maybe you have a better handle on now. Whatever you did in that time, it's not for naught just because it doesn't come through when you're improvising. That's right.

Great stuff. Allie, awesome question. One more here. Our third question, man, these are two great questions. We're setting the bar high. I hope this is a bummer. So this is from Kern. Come on, Kern.

Bring the fire. Hi. I just want to say I enjoy listening to your podcast. I have a question. I know there's been a few episodes where you've mentioned how to mark form. I'm wondering for us relatively new jazz musicians, if you can go into detail, what does that exactly mean? That'd be great. Thank you.

Thanks, Kern. So when I say marking the form, we're usually, we talk a lot about it with our favorite drummers. For me, man, like playing with really great straight-ahead drummers or listening to. someone who we're going to listen to on Friday's show, spoiler alert, Kenny Washington, someone who is amazing at, when I say marking the form, I mean, as a listener and then as a player with that drummer or any musician, honestly,

there's never any doubt where the form is. We're not trying to fool our audience. We are actually making it super clear. Here we are. We're coming to the top of the form. There are things that pianists can do to sort of indicate that. There are things that just naturally, honestly, just naturally happen.

Kern, it's not like what we're like, and now we're coming to the form. Right. Warning, warning. Warning. Around the next turn. But, and then once you have established, like, how to build tension and release tension around whatever form you're playing, then you can start messing with your audience's expectations.

Yeah. So that's how I think about it, about marking the form. Like, Peter, I wonder if we could just play really quick. Just a couple, let's play two courses of rhythm changes and a like nice medium tempo. Okay. And I want you to play a baseline. and we'll just do a baseline. You play the baseline.

I'm going to comp. Okay. I'll play some chords. And, Kern, I want you to listen to, we're just going to have a conversation. I'm not even going to put anything on you, Peter. I'm not going to talk about it, but just notice what happens at the beginnings and endings of each section.

One, two, one, two, three. So, Kern, we didn't talk about what we were going to do. We just kind of started off on a medium sample. We both did exactly what we were supposed to do. We both did exactly what we were. I didn't know what we were doing. We were listening, but you might have noticed there was, but like every eight bars or so at the end of one eight bar phrase

and at the beginning of the next, and you can go back and listen to this, but I'm pretty sure almost everyone, without really thinking about it, we started stretching, adding some tension, and then releasing that tension sort of over the eight bars or being very direct of like we would like kind of go off on some,

you know, some rhythmic tangents and then bam, we put it straight back down in the middle, right at the beginning of, of a section. Now it's not like we were both like time to put it at the beginning of a section, but we wanted to let each other know as we were sort of going down these side paths. All right, here's where we are. Here's where we're going, letting each other know like, and we're back to here and we're here. Now, once you start to establish that,

now you can start messing with it and not being so obvious with it. But for me, the best batteries of drum and bass players and best rhythm sections with pianists and guitarists are very, very good at marking not just like the literally like the sections of forms, but the big events that are happening within the solo, the big events that are happening within the performance. Now we're on a different, you know, we just went from the tenor solo to the trumpet solo. Usually a rhythm section will change the vibe. Yeah, between those two things.

And that's what I mean, what I mean marking the form. Yep, I totally agree. The only thing I would add is that, you know, you'll hear the term used, I think, in two general. always there's you know marking the form for the other players that you're playing with and that's what where you kind of started out talking about the drummer a lot of times they're you know kind of most attuned to that role I mean it's everybody's responsibility I never like these situations where it's like we're the drummer supposed to keep it together

we're too nerdy pianists and we just did it exactly yeah but even if yeah even if you're in a situation where there is a drummer it should never default to now having said that I think it's a skill and a mark of great drummers that they have not really so much, yeah, an ability to mark form, but just an ability to innately and intuitively understand and appreciate and delineate the form for the other musicians, which a part of that is marking it. But there's, you know, just the kind of shared thing. But then there's the marking of the form for the listener, which is probably more important because everything that we're doing is for the listener and for like the combined creation of the artists that are playing it,

whether it's two pianists playing on keyboards in a podcast or an orchestra or a trio, whatever it is. And so, you know, it's like with classical music, the foundation, you know, the form, the foundation of the form, and really the actual form is laid out, but the musicians still need to market to, you know, explain it to the listener. But they don't have, like the heavy lifting's kind of been done if it's a great composition. Absolutely. Lean on the composition.

Lean on the composition. But you do have to bring that out and mark it a little bit by like, I mean, the simplest thing is like don't run the movements right into each other. You know, don't finish the first movement and then to go directly into the second movement. Right. Have a little break there. Have a little break. But not too long because now you've missed marked. But you can use the natural, like you said, you can use the natural flow of the form of the composition.

Yeah. To actually do all the heavy lifting for you. Right. Like so we've been doing in the DGPS, Pete, this exercise that I'm calling 6-2. So let's do another thing of. of rhythm changes. I'll play a solo this time. You play some bass, if you don't mind.

Just one more course. Just keep playing the fan. I'll just keep, yeah. Sorry, I got a thoroughbred here playing the base. But I want to, I would just want to show you. So this will be, I'm gonna, we're gonna do one, just one course through. I'm gonna do six bars of very simple, very space,

very melodic playing. Space is the place. The last two bars of the form of these rhythm changes, there's natural tension built in. And just like what we were creating when we were just comping. There's tension between the last two bars and then spilling over into the one of the next section.

In those last two bars, I'm going to play more busy. I'm going to play outside or whatever. I'm just going to add more tension to the line. So the first six bars, super simple, diatonic, melodic. And then the last two bars is what we use in the form to create tension. That's right. One, two, one, two, three. So there, just a little bit of rhythmic tension each time.

Long notes for the first six bars. and then a busier, more tense two bars in between. Like, it sounds formulaic, because when you practice it that way, it is. But it's a great way to sort of demonstrate, like, we can use that natural bit of the form to create the tension and relieve it. So that's part of the marking the form. Awesome stuff. Thank you guys for the questions.

And would that be something you might be interested in. Yes. Yes. You know what else would be something I'd be interested in? What? More speak pipes. Yeah. That's right.

We're actually, thank you guys. We're getting a little. We're not behind. We've got some stacked up, but we could always use more. And, you know, full disclosure, we don't get to all of them, but that's okay. So please keep them coming. And just know when you go to you'll hearat.com and you leave us to speak pipe, don't be nervous because you can redo them before you submit them. So it's all good.

Great stuff, man. Well, until next time. You'll hear it.