You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Solo Analysis - Brad Mehldau: "When It Rains" - #33

Episode Date: October 10, 2018

Today, Adam and Peter break down Brad Mehldau's incredible solo from his original tune, "When It Rains". See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. What's up? Did you bring your umbrella? Oh, no. What do you do when it rains? I'm Adam Anis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to this American.

I mean, you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Coming to you from Sheboygan, Wisconsin. You're hearing this lovely intro. I thought how you to grow a beard. Come on, like before the end of the episode. You're listening to this lovely intro music by the one of the only... On.org. Brad Meldow. NPR. This is from his... PBS. This is from his album, Largo. Come on, dude. It's my day.

Barack Obama. I mean, it's all things I think about when I hear this. Sorry. This is from Brad Meldow's record, Largo, 2002. This is from the opening track called When It Rains. And this is solo analysis Wednesday. Yeah, buddy. Also known as Lawsuit Wednesday for extended play. Yeah, hold on. I got to cut this for a minute. We got to take about 10 seconds before Atlantic Records or whoever was on this. None such. I think. Solo analysis Wednesday leads to Lawsuit Thursday.

Have you ever checked out Largo at all? Have you ever checked out the record? Yeah, I haven't checked out in a while, and I actually forgot about that whole intro there. You know, the beauty of how it's recorded, but I don't know it like you do. That's why this is your day. This is my day. So I love this solo. This is like, I think this is one of his, Brad Meldo is one of his more.

This was kind of like when he got a little more mature. He was doing some really flashy stuff there in the late 90s and all those great, like, epic intros to all the things, all that stuff, you know. And this was like a really, this whole record actually was a very like, yeah, you know, I'm going to make some like pretty music. And that's what it's going to be. This one's kind of for people who aren't just like, woo heads. Exactly.

You know? Like, this is for people that actually will pay for gigs and attend. And I remember hearing him around this period too, And really when this record came out, my feeling that, or hearing in this music and what he was starting to get to, confidence. Yeah. Confidence in himself. Not to say that what he was doing before that. And he's done different things since then, which has really gotten even more interesting and confident.

But it was like, let me just, like, just as a pianist, be confident. Yeah, I can do the bebop stuff. I can do the Keith Jared. And he was getting a lot of flack for just, like, copying a lot of Keith Jared Trito stuff or whatever. But he really started to find his own sound. and just sort of double down on the things that he really does great as a jazz pianist. Yeah, so the statement out of the gate here

with that sort of chamber, that small chamber ensemble that kicks off the record, that tells you all you need to know about what's going to happen next, you know. And then the choice here of personnel, he's got, you know, Larry Grenadier on bass, who is...

Hack, total hack, no. Conman. Absolute monster of the base. And then... And I mean, how great for this type of vibe. I mean, for any type of vice. Yeah, because he's played a lot of different things with Brad in different styles.

And he's a great player. But this is Matt Chamberlain on drums. This is like a straight up groove pop guy. Right. And he just crushes this track. He really does. And I think he really brought something, or at least, you know, emboldened meld out to play in a way that, you know,

there's a lot of Brian Blade can play great like this. There's so many great jazz drummers. But this kind of pushed him in another place, you know, that was not awkward at all. So it's an AAB form. very simple tune. Love that band. And then let's get into the first part of the solo here.

A little thematic development going on. Patient. Patient. A classic Brad Meldown. Yeah. A question followed by, a question, followed by a question. Great, great. And then the answer.

Yeah. So I'll stop right here real quick. But one of the things, I mean, he's already, this is kind of a short solo, actually, but he takes it out. He takes these themes out. You mentioned like a question followed by a question. Yeah. But at the end of every phrase, he always hones it back in with the,

Bap, da, da, da, you know, there's always like an answer, a period at the end, usually of an eight-bar phrase, which that, I mean, that's Brad Meldow, who you think is like maybe doing some kind of crazy stuff, but he's always grounding it. And I think that's kind of a great lesson to learn here. It's no matter how far out you get, you can bring it back home. Yeah, and he does it beautifully here. this is like a just sort of classic example of him setting up the architecture, as you said,

in a very traditional number of bars. And this is kind of almost a vamp, although you have that different, like where it goes up to the four-quarter. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, he's able to do it. You know, he's setting up the solo in a way that, yeah, it's answering, but he's also setting up what he's about to do next by coming home so, like, straight down the middle. And then, but he kind of, you know, like when he gets groovy, I love the way, like, when he's

bringing it where, you know, a lot of pianists would kind of be just overtly right in the groove. He still kind of plays around with that a little bit, knowing that he can come back and so that it won't be so jarring. This is one that he's definitely, I would say, laying back more than almost anything else I've ever heard him do. He's fluctuating the time, which I think is probably a response to Matt Chamberlain just being so like, yeah. And Granite are really, I mean, Grenadier's fairly busy, but he's right in the...

Yeah, they're laying it down pretty thick, so... And then you got the chamber, like, some of the... of it was a flute or clarinet or something playing those long triplets over. Yeah, it's some woodwind ensemble. Yeah, like anti-grove and like, and Brad is kind of playing with both, like sitting right in the middle of all that. Yeah. But creating a super thematic type of, I mean, just thematic, thematic, even when he's going out and whatever, just like theme, theme, melody, melody, theme. It really creates this tension between.

And I think most of the time, actually, he's doing triplets with his left hand. Mm-hmm, bum, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Over that eighth note. Yeah. All right, back to the bridge here. Just a quote from here, but you know, you don't think about maybe Radmel though as someone who plays the blues a lot, but he actually does. It's just his version of it. You know what I mean?

That last chorus was the, or that last section was the perfect example of the da-da-d-d-dab-dab-dab-bo-boom. And I think with everything that's happened around where he is in the solo and how he's developing it, it's like he hits just the right amount of it. Like you could really kind of, he could have just sort of gone in there deeper, which would have been a little bit jarring, you know, in terms of. of the continuum of holly solo. Interaction. Things are opening up with the ensemble with the rhythm section. That's where he ends it.

A couple of things that stick out for me with some of the architecture of that and some of the note choices is, I mean, he really leans on the tonic and the fifth. Throughout the whole thing. And I think that speaks a little bit of his, you know, the composer in him who understands that.

all the stuff is going on. As the harmony gets thick with other players, you know, because you've done orchestration, that if you lean too long on something that's way out, it's not going to land. Right. You know, so you can hear him kind of like pulling the harmony back with just those, you know, melodically.

The other thing that stands out is this was a heavily produced L.A. recording from what I was in L.A. or New Jersey? Either way, it was like a big affair, from what I remember reading the liner notes years ago. And there's still some cacks in there. Like there's some, you can hear him make mistakes. which to me, as someone who has experience in the studio, that means that they chose this take on vibe.

On the vibe. You know what I mean? So, like, he might have had cleaner ones. Yeah. And he let some of that cleanliness go because this was the one that had the vibe in the band. Yeah, I was actually thinking that as playing, too, because I was also thinking,

I would be shocked if he was not recording that live with the chamber group. I mean, obviously, the rhythm section. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of times these things are later and later, but that's not the way they're playing. And a big shout out to the engineer and the production because this is John Brian. Yeah, right, exactly.

So, I mean, this is very hard to place this instrumentation. And then the way that he is soloing. So like what I'm here, and we're hearing it with headphones, which is a great reminder if you really need these recordings. It's like listen with headphones if you want to get the real deal. But the separation, it's pretty wide piano from left, you know, obviously from left to right. But it's not like a huge piano sound. In fact, the bass and the way I'm hearing. at the bass and the drums are placed a little bit even further out front.

The chamber stuff is way in the back. It's a pop production. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then the piano, I think it was very smart to not make it have this massive sound, but to more like spread it out wider and a little bit thinner. Yeah, yeah. And then let his thematic development kind of carry it, whereas if you'd have this big kind of reverby, powerful sound, which you could have easily done, it would have been accurate.

Yeah. There's just too much overlapping other things going on. That's a really good observation. I didn't think about that. You would have had to pull the drums way back, is what you would have had to do. And that would have lost the whole groove. You would have lost the whole sound of that track there.

That's good. And this gives it that feeling. And, you know, who knows what he was thinking and there's different ways you can place the music to make it sound different ways, which is cool. But very much his soloing was inside of the rhythm section, and it gives it that feeling. I think it works really well.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, a little bit different for us to hit something like this, but it's fun. It's a fun solo to think about because it's so specific to this era and to his playing. but it's good. Yeah.

One of my favorite solos of his, for sure. Good stuff. Yeah, man. You want to do one of these? What do you got next? Today? Why don't we do it tomorrow? Well, next week.

Let's go next week. You got one coming up? Well, we were talking about like a John Coltrane or something. Let's do it. Yeah. We'll do it. Until then. You'll hear it.