You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Tackling Tunes without Two-Fives - #29

Episode Date: October 4, 2018

Today, Adam and Peter discuss strategies for handling tunes without traditional key. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

No tonal centers whatsoever. Souls tonal centers. I'm Adam Menace. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Why were we singing atonally into these microphones? That wasn't me.

There's no evidence of that being me. Well, actually, yeah, what are we talking about today? I bet it's going to tie in somehow. Actually, we got a question from a friend. That's right. All of our listeners are friends. Let's be clear on that. But Rob Indicott is someone we both personally know pretty well.

Love Rob. Rob is a great trumpet player around here in St. Louis. And I didn't even know he was a you'll hear of listener. Yeah, Rob is a great trumpet player, Juilliard graduate, University of Illinois graduate, and a great attorney here in St. Louis. Quite an accomplished gentleman. Yeah, he is a... But do you have a podcast, Rob.

What? Get on a podcast, man. Actually, it would be cool to hear Rob do a podcast on like the law and the blues. That's right, right. Two things that he's very interested. Well, and another thing, I mean, he really is accomplished. She was one of the founding forces of the National Blues Museum here in St. Louis, which is an amazing, it's very cool.

Amazing museum and venue. And Rob was really instrumental in that coming to fruition. Yeah, it's a really cool spot. If you're ever in St. Louis, check out the... Yep, right downtown. So Rob asked, hey, guys, I was interested in a show about how to approach a ballad that has a dense chord structure, but that is not in obvious tonal centers, i.e. there's not. not a lot of 251 patterns going on,

which makes it harder for me to play a structurally coherent solo. I'm working on Girl Talk now, and my soloing sounds like I'm just running changes. How do you think about that and play a solo that flows for the listener? Love the show, Rob. Yeah, that's a great question. So I guess we're talking about, okay, tunes that I'm trying to think of what other tunes. I don't actually, oh, I know girl talk.

I don't know it, but I know it. Yeah, yeah. So we're talking about not a lot of two, five, ones, maybe not a lot of obvious connections harmonically between the chords. Thinking like a Wayne Shorter ballad. Right. And then they're moving relatively quickly to different areas. Dolphin dance, you know. Right.

Even though there's two fives, but they don't go anywhere. Right, right, right, right. So I think that in almost all these tunes, there's actually some connections that we can start to kind of understand or try to find. They're not as obvious. or as maybe easy to navigate as 2-5s, which can make it fun and interesting. So we need to alter our playing a little bit and certainly our approach.

But I would say that when you're going from one chord to another that doesn't have a lot of obvious connections, the challenge to not, as he was saying, sounding segmented, is to not just think about those chords individually. The same way we talk about with voicings for pianists, not to look at them in a vacuum, as in this is a good voicing for this chord, but to think about where we're coming from where we're going,

we want to do the same way, even when it's not a 251 and it's an obvious progression. It's still a progression. And I think the biggest area to get into that is to look at how the melody connects over those chords because there has to be a melody, unless it's like flamenco sketch, and there is no melody. But then it's the same concept.

You have to create a melody now that makes a connection between these seemingly disconnected chords. But it's there. So if you take like, well, Dolphin Dance, as you mentioned, if you look at the way the melody is structured there, you're going to have to have and you're going to want to have melodies that go over the bar lines even as the chords are changing. So that's going to be your first big thing.

When you have those two different chords, do not just play one, end your phrase, and then start a new phrase for the next chord. That's the most obvious and quickest way to it being segmented. So now you may not feel confident enough to play over several. different chords along phrase, but you can always wait until sort of the end of the one chord and then start almost like a pickup to the next chord. You're still playing the first chord. Yeah. You know, so maybe Eflap major. Then I think it goes to, what is it, Bflap minor 7? Yeah, which is very different. So you might think about, and really, look, that's, this is perfect

because it kind of is the way the melody is. You know, you're waiting and then you're going over the bar line, kind of a pickup phrase, but one phrase that, floats on top of both of those. And so you can practice that by taking, especially the more difficult ones for you, the two or three chords, their form of progression, and come up with melodies that work.

And they don't have to be all common tones, you know, that's part of the journey. And they don't have to, in fact, you don't want to change your kind of harmonic insight into your melodic improvisation exactly as the harmony changes,

because that's going to still make it sound segmented. So you can float it a couple beats or a couple of notes past that core. That's a great way to get into it. Yeah, I think the first thing that comes to mind for me, Rob, on this, is to actually find the notes that work for any two chords that are next to each other. Find the common tones between, what are they? At least know what they are, right? So that you know what will go over the bar for both.

You know what I mean? And that way you can structure a phrase, whether that's like, be do-de-ba, B-I-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B. But you know that ba is always going to work. So you've got the common tones that you want to use, And then you're using some passing stuff in between. And that changes over the changes. But that common tone, you're anchoring together. The other thing I think about with this is, as far as like, you know, Rob, you mentioned

the sort of flow of the flow of the soul. Again, we're kind of talking about architecture here. But for this, I feel like themes are very important. Yes. Because you can get into this trick of just running scales over some changes because it works because it's not because the scales are different, right? And so you feel like you're doing something, but you're really not doing anything. But rhythmic, melodic,

them can be a very useful asset in trying to navigate changes that don't have a lot of 5-1 cadences or anything like that. You know, start out short, two, three, four-note themes, try to work them over, you could start just working them over different changes,

then try to work them over the bar of changes, as you were saying. That's kind of where I would start at that. Well, and that's a great example of taking what the tune gives you. You know, we're always talking about that, making it easier on us. And so when the tune, the harmonic structure of the form is not giving you a lot of easy, you know, entry points to having a melody that's cohesive over those chords, then you go to the melodic way, you go to the rhythmic way, you use some other element of music to be really strong so that you don't get caught up in having to fit something in that's difficult. So, you know, when we play a really strong melody with a really strong rhythm, you can almost play that over anything.

You can almost be off of both chords. You could because you're kind of distracting the listener, you know. And in fact, when you do want to go that outside of what the harmony is, that's my recommendation, especially like early on in the solar or something. If you don't want to have a lot of tension created by that melody, is just do something super strong melodically. You know, the same way that you can just do something super strong harmonically at a time when it's like superstation. and just do a rhythmic thing and you don't even have to be going anywhere melodically. So it's like really taking what the tune gives you

and that's so important in these kind of situations. Yeah, there's usually a lot of clues about what you can do within the actual composition. You just got to Scooby-Doo-Doo-it. Follow the clues, man. They're right there for you. You're an attorney, Rob. You got this, man.

Good. So, yeah, thanks, Rob. Hope to see you again soon, man. And, you know, if you have a question for us here at the You'll Hearup podcast, you can go to you'll hear it.com. Who are you talking to now? You said you. Oh, the listener.

Listener. This is the collective you. Got it. Yeah. The grand you. The royal you. A2? No. A2 Brutei. Ustetus. Yeah. Who's it? If you have a question, you can go to Ullherr.com, you can leave us a question, you can leave us a voicemail, you can get a t-shirt, you can. Leave us a rating review on iTunes.

We love that one. We've been told that we were talking about those too much, so we're trying to back up, but they're still important to us. That's it. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, you can't, you can do that. Don't be able to. Shamed, man. We've built a whole career here off of a regular. I know, but we heard from some regular listeners. We got it. We already rated it in review. But we do have new people coming in. So please, folks, don't get so selfish. This is not just for you. This is not beam directly to one. Well, this one feels like it's to Rob only, but it's for everybody. Yeah, if Rob doesn't give us seven starts for this, I don't know. There you go. All right, so until next time, you'll hear it.