You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Solo Analysis: Herbie Hancock - "Solitude" - #68

Episode Date: November 28, 2018

Today, Peter and Adam analyze Herbie Hancock's solo on Duke Ellington's "Solitude." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Annis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the soothing sounds of the You'll Hear It podcast. Drifting to you daily. So this music indicates that we're on a Wednesday version of our solo analysis. I thought you were going to say this music indicates that we're in heaven. Because I feel like I am. Yeah, it's so good, isn't it?

Who we listen to? Listen to the supple pianistic sounds of Herbie Hancock. Supple is a terrible word. It is. I don't even know what it means. Yeah, this is Herbie Hancock from his Grammy Award-winning album, River, The Journey Letters. Nice. This is Solitude, and we're focusing on Herbie Solo.

We are zeroing in on Solitude of his solo on Solitude. Yeah, indeed. So why did you choose this solo, man? Well, actually, what I was hoping to do was just even started from where we did at the beginning, because I think the whole thing is, you know, the way he plays a melody. I really wanted to look at that. I think it's such a great this recording

this particular track is such a great example of you know Herbie's just pianistic skills in this great trio setting over just a standard now there's a bunch of things we could get into too we probably won't you know in terms of like harmony and re-harmon and stuff but just in terms of

his piano playing like his control of the left hand and the right hand how he breaks up the voicings and stuff let's do it let's start from the beginning Okay, this is Herbie Hancock and Solitude. Okay, so we're not going to get far before I can find some things I love. Okay, so, you know, in terms of controlling the instrument, I think we can really learn and appreciate a lot from, he's playing the bass. First of all, the bass line's so cool and, like, has nothing to do with anything.

But it's just like probably something he just sat down. He's like, oh, man, let's try this. And he's playing, of course, with the bass and with the drums. But do-do-d-ding-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-and. And then when he plays the first chord in the right hand, It's almost like he's playing a different instrument. Like it's a it's a bosendorfer and a fazzioli. I mean, of course it's all Fazioly.

It's pretty great, right? Yeah, but I mean like the way that he controls the sound, it sounds like two different instruments. So between the hands, between, you know, treating one like a kind of melodic baseline, which is what it is. And then the way he just, you know, it's such a reminder that we can control these different zones

of the instrument with our different hands with the sound that we wanted to have, not just like playing everything in vertical time. Yeah. Yeah, let's check it out from the beginning again. Check out the texture of his right hand. I mean, it's almost matching the brush on the belt. And then it sounds like he's playing both those chords exactly the same.

I think he's playing the same notes coming off of the baseline, but he kind of rolls the first one a little more than the second one. There's a lot of kind of nuance in there. And this gets into just more control and having different options available. It's not like a right or wrong. But Herbie, especially at this tempo kind of ballad stuff, like he will break. He really uses broken,

chords in a very interesting way and just voicing. I think there's so much inside of just, you know, the, the multitude of ways that he can play a chord. Yeah. That a lot of times we geek out on his incredible voicings and harmonic explorations. That's all great, too. But just the way that he plays it as a pianist is such a big part of the effectiveness of what he's doing.

It's a great lesson to learn because the more options you have in the way that you can play something, the less you actually have to know how to play. Yeah. You know what I mean? You could play more simply and just vary the way you play it. I think that's a great point. Yeah. Let's keep going.

We're only 13 seconds in. We just got to the melody. So, you know, he's already doing some very aggressive reharmonization and kind of transitions. But the simplicity with which he plays the melody. And then, like, you know, he's very, like, out of time with those kind of intertenor and alto voices and stuff. But, you know, it's kind of matching what the drummer is doing. but a lot of patience. Man.

You know, the other thing I note on this is just like, this is like a, a symposium on confident, ballad time playing. Yeah. You know, it's just like, there's nothing rigid about the way they're playing, but they are playing in perfect time,

but it's all implied time. Exactly. You know, it's like that heartbeat kind of time. And, you know, they never have to resolve something together, but it's always there. They're just so beyond,

the time. Yeah. And the notes. Yeah. You know what I mean? That it's just, they're just making, this is floating, you know, waves in the air. It's amazing. But it almost, like, you almost forget that that solid ballad time is there, but, but that you are feeling it at all time. So it's such a satisfying way. I mean, this is like very advanced, you know, whatever, graduate, postgraduate level ballad play. Master level, yeah, for sure. This is a little two, two verses,

And he catches the pinky up top on that. He plays at so many different volume levels at the same time, like different parts of his hands. And you know, that was kind of a time where it felt like it was going to go into some more rigid and he just like pulled it back, you know. Yeah. A lot of two-note voicing in the left hand. You know, he plays that the melody up way up in the soprano and leaves it for like a long time, but it's still kind of floating there. Yeah. And then you know it's coming back and, you know, he sets it up in such a...

a interesting and logical way that he can come back to it whenever he wants and it's still in the air. Everything he's doing, it doesn't matter what volume it's at or what timbre it is or part of the piano. Everything is just kind of sparkling on this. And it just creates this amazing effect. And he does this in a lot of ballad playing you'll hear, especially, you know, probably the 70s on. He started playing like this. It's so wonderful. Even in the early stuff, I mean, I'm thinking about like that intro on My Funny Maloney,

Valentine. Like this was, I mean, it's not to the level of, of intensity, not, not intensity, but the, like, the gradient level that he's at now. Yeah. But it's definitely hinting at that. It's just part of his personality, I think, he's like, yeah. There's no, like, you never feel like insert voicing 1B. No. Everything just feels like you're just, like I said before, man, he's just beyond the notes. He's just, it's almost like. And, you know, he plays in a way, he plays the piano in a way and like this is why I love it when there's sort of artistic public justice or you could call it in that he's gotten all this notoriety beyond just like jazz nerds like us yeah you know yeah um because piano is an instrument that's difficult to do that like you notice

you know the voice in america's greatest whatever these shows they're always singers there's never pianists it's not like let's get these because it's very hard to to connect you know in a way You don't have the lyrics. You don't have, you know, breath and all these things. But actually, you do. It's like when somebody like Herbie plays, like you can hear the lyric almost. You can hear the lyrics in this for sure. And you can hear the breath.

Like he plays in such a human way. It's such a human element to his piano playing. He's taking this kind of percussive machine and just like sculpting it in a way. Am I overstating it? No, you're right. You're stating it perfectly. A lot of tenderness there, you know. Space.

space I mean you can leave space when you know you're going to come with something good so amazing yeah so but this is all you know I think it's a great thing that we can all take from

look none of us are herbie that's fine but but what what can we learn from this and like apply to our playing the piano you know if it has so much yeah we can't sing lyrics and we can't like breathe and come in like a trumpet

or a saxophone but I mean with just like when he comes in with those chords blah. You know, certain things can just be so interesting, dramatic. We don't have to overdo them. So true. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, on a single line instrument,

you have to, like, delineate the harmony like that. You really have to work hard. Not on the piano. So just think of something, you know, three-note voicing or something that's interesting. And just try to play it beautiful. That's totally. You know what I mean?

And just let it sit there. Totally a great point. And I think it, as pianists, we get in these bad habits of plunking fingers down. You know, it's mechanical. Yeah. You know, it can be. Yeah.

Obviously, there's nothing mechanical about this, and that's, I think, the goal to take it out of that, this is a machine feeling, you know what I mean? So what he just, back in up about 10 seconds, please. He just... Were you even listening to Meba? I noticed so well. Like, when he jumps down, he's got a couple different registers going

with melodies at the same time. He'll come in and out of that little tenor voice that he hit there for a second. He plays it very different, and then it sets up, you know, how he can play up at the time. treblik. It's not just comping in the left hand and soloing in the right hand. Of course. It's not not just that. And you don't have to

play everything together. I mean, think about how much stuff he's playing broken up. Like, you know, the left hand. Like, when a place where, did it be da, da, ba' da, b'am. Like, everyone would just play it all the... He's like, bong, clang! You know, like... Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of humanity in there. Delayed resolution. I mean, just now he's getting into thicker

left-hand voice and he's played at the same time. I mean, look, this is like some of the best recorded her, but at least recently. Well, he's had a lot of good recorded in terms of the being able to hear the instrument. The beautiful Faziole there. So, I mean, there's, it's got a lot of things going to.

I mean, all the trio is recorded, I think, incredibly on this record. I'm not even who engineered it. I should know. Oh, I love the ending, Texas. You'll hear it.