You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Some Things Great Jazz Musicians Don't Want You to Know - #62

Episode Date: April 2, 2018

Today, Adam and Peter discuss some secrets that most good jazz musicians keep close to the vest. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus and I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Today we're going to give you some things great jazz musicians don't want you to know. So we're talking insider secrets here. A little bit of behind the scenes info. All right. Well, we might run into some trouble from the jazz police, but I'm down. All right. Let's jump right in before they get here.

All right. Number one, it's not actually that hard. Said the great jazz musician. What are you talking about? Well, this is something I think that we want everyone to think it's really hard because we think we're going to get paid more, we're going to get more respect, we're going to get more ladies interested in us, you know.

But look, the reality is, well, yeah, once you're good, it's not that hard, you know. So it's hard to get to that point of being good, but that's more of a continuum of working, working. But a lot of the really good jazz players have been doing this since they were young, at least playing their instrument, and by the time they're, you know, teenagers often,

they can play pretty good. So, I mean, it's a little bit like, and I'm not comparing myself, I'm comparing like Christian McBride. Oh, let's hear. No, no, no, no. To, like, I mean, like LeBron James. I mean, it's not that hard for him to play that good.

For me to play like him, it would be impossible. Right. But I mean, the whole thing is like, he's not, yes, he's putting a lot of effort, but that's easy for him because he's good. Because he's right. You know, so it actually isn't that hard. Yeah, I always talk about, when people talk about, oh, this is hard, I always say it's not hard. It's just unfamiliar. You know, that's the term that I was taught.

It's like, if you familiarize. yourself with anything, it becomes easy. That's the whole, that's why you practice, right? So you don't have to think so much. I mean, before, you know, when you started playing your instrument, just making a note was hard, and now it's not. Right, right. And we're talking about some things great jazz musicians don't want you to know. So, I mean, I think that's fair. And I think in terms of familiarity also leads to a certain comfort level. So there's like, it feels comfortable, it feels familiar, and it's just not that hard. All right. So number two is that all of the answers you're looking for are in the great recordings.

Now, what do we mean by this, exactly? Well, I think what it is is that there's no secret scrolls anywhere. Actually, the secret scrolls are the recordings that are not only readily available. Cool, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, they're like freely available now. You go to YouTube, you can basically learn everything that you need to know. Now, does that mean that you shouldn't think about going to Berkeley College of Music or Indiana or Michigan State or all these great jazz programs and give them some of your hard-earned parents' money to learn?

Of course you should. I mean, you can have a great conservatory experience. But everything that you need to know to play is actually in these recordings. Yeah, I mean, literally everything, that if you want something, you can go get them. And like you said, now you can get it pretty much for free. Yeah. You know what I mean? To go grab information that you love.

It's not that hard. This is a good thing. It comes back to our usual first point, which is to listen. Right. Oh, do we skip that today? No, we did. Let's go back in time. Listen.

Number one, listen. No. But this is, you know, if you're a good listener, if you develop your ears, then, you know, there's no secrets. They're all there. Right. I mean, and it's like religions, you know, every religion has its Bible. And I would say if you look at jazz as a religion, the recordings in some way are the sort of reference materials like a Bible. So you, yes, if you go to church, you can learn a lot of things, but the church shouldn't really be teaching you anything else that's in that Bible for that particular church.

Or we maybe shouldn't be straying to the religious things. But that's okay. It's just a reference. I'm not endorsing or promoting them or anything, you know. Okay. next we've got the fact that you can be from anywhere in the world you can be any gender

you can be any color you can be any ethnicity you can be any religion for instance and play this music with great success and with great verb and with great fire so and I would just say that most jazz musicians are really welcoming and opening with this but there has been a little bit of a history

of non inclusion that I think is totally wrong and unhealthy. Luckily, there's been a lot of self-examination in the jazz world, but there has been some, like, a little bit of promoting of this notion of you have to be a poor black blues musician to play this music. And I don't think that even the musicians have ever promoted this. Maybe it's been more the media or journalists, maybe a little bit associated, but it's definitely not true. Well, you know, there's no doubt that the jazz

stems from, I mean, it is black American music. It stems from that culture. But how generous has that culture, the jazz culture, and throughout its history of allowing, like you said, anybody, if you can play, you're there. I don't think you could say that about, for years, you couldn't say that about, like, classical music or any other kind of music. But jazz has always been a diverse place. I mean, it's a black American music that has benefited from the contributions of people from everywhere that look like anyone. Right, right. And I think a lot of, and I mean, I guess we kind of screwed this one up a little because we're talking about great jazz musicians, I've never seen them be exclusionary or putting forth that thing that I can think of.

So this is more mediocre jazz musicians. Don't want you to know this because they want to protect their thing and make it like, well, you're a female so you can only be a singer or all this kind of nonsense and garbage. But it's important just to put it out there. And I mean, part of the fun thing for me in terms of traveling and you've done this as well, gotten a chance to go around the world and meet great young players and older players from places where they don't even speak English.

But they speak jazz. And that really proves that the connection, and even going back to our point of that you can get everything from the recordings, you know, and now they've been some of the folks that have built up the scenes in these different countries, and now they've got their own jazz, thriving jazz, and they're making recordings that we're checking out. Yeah, you know, I'm just realizing this list might actually be more like

things that get misunderstood in jazz than things great jazz. Or we can just sort of spin it off to another episode. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Well, so number four is use the blue scale. liberally. This is Peters things that he doesn't want you to know. Look how liberal I'm being with giving

this out to the world. This is a secret sauce, though. This is the secret sauce. And I think, you know, again, like maybe we don't want people to know because we don't want to seem like it's just a gimmick, you know. But, I mean, I think the better you are and the more confident you are as a player, the more you're willing to use something that's potentially kind of a gimmick, which is what the blue scale is. And it's funny because I guess we don't want people don't know it either because it's a lot of a lot of folks it's the first scale that you

learn in kind of stage band middle school or something for improvising oh it's a blues well let's learn the blue scale because it's unique somewhat unique to jazz as opposed to like a dominant scale or mix a lydia or whatever used in different kinds of music can't you just hear it on like a terrible you know middle school tenor saxophone tone being used incorrectly yeah yeah no earlier this morning I heard it when I was actually yeah yeah I mean so I mean we so maybe there's a little shame involved with some of this, you know? So, like, part of, we don't want you to know that we're still using the same crappy scale that we learned when we were in seventh grade.

But, I mean, you know, look, it goes back to number one, listen and how it sounds and everything. And so it's, I don't know, maybe it's sort of like a great brain surgeon that, you know, it's so mystified in terms of what they're able to do. But if you were to actually go in there, they're like, no, I'm just using this little pair of pliers. I mean, I sanitize it first. Same old tool you use around your house, and I just do brain surgery. surgery with it. Yeah, I think what's, this is what's so great about the blue scale is that it is

one of the first things that people learn, and it seems easy, but it's mystifying how masters have used it. Think about how the difference between Lewis Armstrong used that scale and John Coltrane and how they use that scale and how different it is and how we use it, how you use it, you know, is different from them. Oh, thanks. I like how you put Lewis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Peter Martin. Thank you. That's right. That's called a big leap. And, no, but it's, it's very malleable scale. It can be used in very different ways, but it always has that feeling. Like, it's used to get that same feeling every time by, you know, those great artists and you, I mean, you're one of them. Very, you said malleable. Malleable. I love that. It's like, it's from the,

it's, it's, it's the origins are marvelous, malleable. I don't know. What does that mean? Malleable. It means it's, it's, it can, you can, it's, it's like a piece of clay. I mean, the middle school tenor player who doesn't know how to use it can use it or Louis Armstrong can use it and it sounds unbelievable. So Louis Armstrong is malleable, the middle school tenor player, not so much. The scale is maliative. Oh, scale. Got it, got it. Got it. No, but it. These are, this is going to be another list. Words great jazz musicians don't want you to understand. Malleable. I love it. That's great. Okay. So the last one we have here for some great, no, some things great jazz musicians don't want you to know is that you can fluctuate temperate.

Bo. Uh-oh. I didn't know that. Jazz, please. They're coming in for us. Let's get this done quickly here. I've been a great jazz musician this whole time. Look, we preach, practice with the matronome, play with great players.

I think we did a whole episode about, like, how to not screw up the time, right? Yeah, but we actually talked about this in that episode. Okay, good. Ooh, don't want to contradict myself seven times in one episode, only six. But look, this is the reality. When you're good, you can break the rules, basically. Yeah. You know, J.S. Bach understood the rules of harmonic movement and counterpoint and all this stuff.

And then he wrote a bunch of brilliant music where he often broke those rules. William Shakespeare was apparently a pretty good writer or whoever was the actual writer behind his works. And broke a lot of grammar rules, but somehow they work. So that's the thing with the tempo. You know, well, an example I always think about is that what's the live Miles 2-base hit? Yep. Is that on milestones or something? Philly Joe Jones, the favorite.

Yeah, yeah. There's a little bit of tempo fluctuation on that recording if you were to analyze it. They're leaning forward a little bit. Yeah, there's a little bit of rushing going on. But you know what, Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers can do that because they are great and they make it work. And so in terms of if you were to say you're not a great player if the temple changes, it's just not true. There's too many fluctuations among great players. Now, does that mean you should say, okay, I want to be a great player?

I want to be like Philly Joe Jones. So every time I play two-based hit, I'm going to rush like him. No, you're not going to like focus in on that. Just like, you know, an amazing three-point shooter. Somebody, you know, Steph Curry, whatever, has an incredible form. But there's some little things in his form that actually you're not supposed to do. So you shouldn't imitate. He can do it because he makes it work for his form.

Yeah, I'll never forget. I was seeing Nicholas Payton here at Jazz the Bistro. This was like years ago before they were modeled. And I was standing next to the principal cellist of the St. Louis Symphony. and he doesn't know a lot about jazz and Nicholas Payton was like really purposely flexing the time in a way that only he can really

do in his way of doing it and I just remember the cellist like turning to me and saying can he do that like is that even legal how is he doing that why is he doing that and I'm like well the why is easy because it feels friggin amazing when he does it

but yes he can do anything he wants he's Nicholas Payton like he's in complete control of that situation. Well, it's ironic coming from a cellist of the St. Louis Symphony, which, you know, at Powell Hall there, that's just like a bastion of fluctuations of temple as far as I can tell, so he should have known. Sorry, I got a little dark there.

No, this is coming for, yeah, for someone who's like a half-second behind a baton beat. Right, right. But, I mean, it's the same thing with great symphonies and great conductors. They can do those fluctuations of temples because they have such a deep understanding of the music. So stylistically, it's different in jazz. when we talk about, you know, tempo fluctuations. And generally there's less than there is in, like,

certainly like romantic period, classical music. But it's still there and it still works. So I hope you guys had a little bit of fun with our secret things that great jazz musicians don't want you to know. Now you know them, but keep it a little close to the vast because you'll hear it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hear It podcast. You can go to you'll hear it.com to get more information, submit a question, or just say hello.

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