You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Taught In 60 Seconds

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

Black Friday is upon us! Go to https://openstudiojazz.com/blackfriday for our biggest savings of the year. Think you can teach somebody a lesson in 60 seconds? Join Adam and Peter as they reminisce about their journey teaching in a short format.Check out all our shorts at our Open Studio channel Looking to drop a question? Want to listen to the audio pod? Look no furtherhttps://youllhearit.com/Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Hey, Peter, it's that time of the year where we like to reflect a little bit on what's been and what could be. Reflect on the journey? Reflect on the journey. Oh. Tell someone's never been in a wedding band before. You never did that in Joshua Redmond's quartet? I'm madame, boy. And you're...

That's Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Oh, you just... Music Explored. Oh, music explored. Exactly. Explored. Not to you by Open Studio. This is like the gold hour.

This is an interesting time of danger. For all your jazz lesson needs. This is like the golden hour of comedy, Peter, of comedic errors. That's right. We're having fun. We're having fun. Yeah, we are. And we're in a very self-reflective, perhaps self-refractive mode today.

We're examining. Why is that funny? First. He's a words. Everybody. Self-reflective. And just in Peter's mind It's like, reflective, refractive.

Well, you can reflect, you can reflect. Okay, we got to let people in on why we're laughing so much. Something funny just happened, for real. Yeah, so if you watched our, well, if you're going to, you're going to watch an episode in a couple weeks, maybe about a week where we talk about our least favorite holiday tunes. Ooh, a little bit of a little bit of foreboding, foreshadowing, perhaps. Yeah, you're going to like this episode.

It's really fun. We had a great time. You're not going to like any of the songs, but you're not like the episode. But at the end of it, Peter is, he's looking up this Instagram post from this band. It's a very funny turn the episode takes,

and we're looking at this band's Instagram post. A short. A short, right. Which is very apropos of today's episode. But Peter, for whatever reason, this short has 3.2 million views. Yeah. And it wasn't showing up as any comments.

It said no comments. I was so excited. There's no comments on this 3.5 million views short. And it even said, be the first to comment. It was an invitation to comment. comment first. I did. He commented first, and then literally he refreshed, and there were like 3,500 comments. Right. It just all filled in.

It all filled in. It was a little bit of a bug in the system. We're making them leave it because it's hilarious. Right. You've even commented on my, you replied to my comment. Thank you for that, by the way. In about a week, when you see this episode about our least favorite Christmas songs, go check out the short at the end of the episode that we are watching and see if you can go give Peter some crap about it. It's really fun. That was fun. That was fun. But that is very

apropos for today because we are talking about shorts. We're in a self-reflective shorts in December? It's too cold, man, for shorts. That's right. We're wearing sharts, as we say in St. Louis. Sharts. It's sharts weather. Yeah. But no, we, you know, what's, it's been, we've talked

about a little bit here on the pod, but we also have a day job here called Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJas.com. Our sponsor of the you'll hear a podcast. But a lot of the content we put over there, first of all, if you're not subscribed to the Open Studio YouTube channel, maybe you got confused.

Maybe you didn't realize what was happening that that was some sort of paid situation. It's not. It is free available to all. So please go subscribe to that. But one of the main sort of outlets, creative outlets,

that we've been doing for the past year and a half, two years now maybe, has been making shorts, what we colloquial calls shorts. Well, YouTube calls them shorts as well. Short form vertical videos that are 60 seconds are under. Right.

So whereas when we do our horizontal regular videos, we lay down and talk to the camera, these are very good for standing up because they're vertical, you know. So today we're going to be, what are we going to do? This is your idea, and so I'm just kind of on the journey here. I'm a long for the ride. Come on the journey. Come on the journey.

Okay, can you guys see Adam's face right now every time I go into that? I want to hear you finish the whole phrase. That's what I want to hear. I want to hear. Now the second half. Just a small town, both. Not the melody.

It's close, close. That's the background. That's BGs, baby. BGs. Okay, so what we're going to do is I've put together some of my favorites. We've made hundreds of shorts here. Yeah. And many of them, most of them have featured yourself.

Many of them have featured myself. But we've also had guests. We've done stuff together. We've had amazing artists that have come in and done things. But some of these are going to be a surprise to you. And some of them are my, objective opinion on him, so I'll be interested to hear your things. So the first one is what I would call our funnest short. Okay. Okay. Now, we're going to watch it, and you can let me know.

Or listen to it for our dear listeners. Okay, listen and watch. Okay. Can we pull that bad boy up? Here we go. This is what I think is our funest one. This is Adiou-Rabero and Trio Curente. Three Brazilian jazz legends. This was such a fun session with that, man. Playing alone together through five different Brazilian. Stiles, just crushing everyone of him. They came in and they did ten shorts in one hour. They just had incredible energy

and ideas. Audio killing, shout on Caleb Kirby, producer Caleb. Producer Caleb and Andy Stephen on the videography. Front of the cameras. Ha, I love that.

And a bass tone, Caleb. Crazy. That was a fun. So much fun, right? So much fun. And those guys were are so sweet and they're so much fun and they're all just monster musicians. Right. Oh, I know what that one is. I know that one really well. Sorry, I jumped the gun on that one. Sorry. Um, yeah, so I don't

is, is there anyone we've done that's more fun than that? No. Trio Crenthe was definitely the most fun. Although, you know, this last Friday, we did have the Emmett Cohen Trio. Yes. And we did 11 shorts with the Emmett Coen Trio. None of those have been released at this point, but they will be. They will be. Those are going to be fun. And those were a lot of fun. Joe Farnsworth on the drums, Rubin Rogers on the bass. You know what's fun about the show? You know what's fun about the show? shorts format in general and watching Trio Quarenti do this because you know when we're doing it I'm just in it. I'm making it but watching another group of artists come up with the ideas is that we always talk about like restrictive practice here at the podcast right and that's a philosophy

we believe in an open studio where you restrict yourself to either one thing or you take away options to kind of handcuff yourself and make you focus on something that you want to improve and the cool thing about making these short form videos like you might think like ah 60 seconds you can't say anything deep in 60 seconds. Well, you can't say anything. But it is a challenge where it's like, okay, I can't go through the whole shebang in 60 seconds of this idea, right? Like, I can't do a complete tutorial on modal interchange in 60 seconds. But I can show you maybe one interesting idea that you can pull from and that you can use in your practice like today. And so that's been the challenge. And to me, it's actually been really clarifying. It's been a very big,

help as far as like how to teach because it's like, okay, well, if you can just teach one thing right now, what would you teach and how would you teach it in 60 seconds so that it can be impactful? So if you can answer those questions, then you're in a good place. That's a great way to put it. And the next actually leads really well to the next one. I'm going to go a little bit out of order here. I'm calling it an audible. But this one, I think, I called this one sort of our biggest breakthrough.

It also has a fantastic loop. But breakthrough in terms of exactly what you were just talking about. this is a seamless key change warm-up, but a breakthrough in terms of like, how do you get one concept beautifully delivered to the listener in under 60 seconds, where it could almost feel like it's longer. It definitely feels like it's much longer than it is.

It's not five grooves within a minute, which seems longer, but this is just like one concept. And I thought, and I remember exactly where I was when I called you, when I first saw what you had made on this, I was like, this is going to be big for us. This is going to open up a new pathway, a new connection with the listeners. and I think that kind of was proven out to be.

So here is seamless key change warmup. Seamless key change warmup. We start with what I was going to get from C to F. And you're saying, Adam, yeah, well, I can just go from C to F? But can you do it in a seamless way where your audience doesn't even know that you're getting there? So first we're going to find a common chord tune. How about A minor?

It's shared with both the key of C and the key of F. And then from there, we can maybe add a secondary dominant, a C7, which brings home that key of F even more. And from there, what if we added a two chord to that secondary dominant. Now we can approach that two chord from its secondary dominant. Then we can approach that secondary dominant from its secondary dominant. Before we know it, we've seamlessly transitioned from the key of C to the key of F.

Do that to the key of F, to the key of F, to the key of G, the key of B flat, to the key of E flat. You do that and you'll have a real handle on this seamless key change one. It's not one of the ones that we made too where the loop is really good on it, where it just keeps looping again, again. This one actually people have some beef with, and we can, now that we're in a long-form podcast, I have one 60 seconds. So the first thing that people note is that I might not be wearing an undershirt. Because of the way the color is on the video, I'm wearing like, I'm wearing like a purple undershirt, but it is very close to my skin tone with the camera. Why are people worried about such things? So, yeah, if you're watching on YouTube here, you can see that some people will comment like, oh my God, I thought you weren't wearing a shirt for a second.

Because I have a black button down that's unbuttoned. And then a purple tition underneath that very much matches, at least in this camera. Oh, here. You see how it's like, people are like, oh, my God, he's really going for it there. You know, I like to be sexy as much as the next 46 year old man. That's the seamless outfit right there. I like to be sexy as much as the next 46-year-old man, but I would not go completely unbuttoned. I'll go three buttons down for sure.

You are kind of a button-down kind of guy. Yeah. And then the other comment that people were coming, it was like, bro, you know how many seams there are and what you just did. And that's fair. That's not exactly seamless. So, you know, we're going from C to F. Right. And then I'm just adding all these seams to the

which is a great. It's a bad use of language. And then the other comment that people get is like, I still feel like it's in C because you're on the four chord of that. And what I didn't have time to do is very kind of limitations of shorts. Like if I were to do it now, I might do the key of like G major with the major 7 because that would very much feel like

with that F sharp it was a new key. going to F major 7, that could just be the four chord, unless you were to establish it in some other way. Right. Right. Or the four of the F or whatever. Like, you can establish that new key of F in a way that I didn't have time to do in the short. If I would have to do this over again, I would have gone to G or I would have gone to like E major or A major, something close, but not as close as that. Well, you actually did try to redo this over quite a few times. So that worked out good, see?

I know. Well, yeah, that's, this is great stuff. And I think, you know what I think especially about this one, this was the first time where we really hit upon a concept and a sound. And like, that you could see, like, this one has so much more of just the hands on the keys than a lot of the ones even that we're doing now, like, very much. So we, oh, we film this on a phone. Caleb shot this one on his phone.

Right. Was that an iPhone 7 or 6S? I can't remember. But actually, Caleb, I think this was one of the first ones where we shot the video. on Caleb's phone, but we did record the audio. Yeah, that was a great audio and synced it up. Because the early ones, which I know you have probably some queued up on it that early, it was just phone video, phone audio, which by the way, if you're a content creator,

if you're a musician and you want to start making shorts to try to like promote anything, just use your phone. You could just get started. Like you don't have to buy the perfect equipment to start or the, you know, cameras that we have here. You can just use, I mean, this was two years, not even two years ago. Right. It's like a year and eight, nine months ago, we started this program with our phone here at Open Studio,

so it can be done. Yeah, and as he said, and this is millions of views from a phone. So there you go. Okay, so that leads nicely to what ended up being, the next one we're going to see, which is our most popular short of all time. What did it go? And this is the infamous, so-called heart-melter cords.

Ever heard of it? Yeah, I know this one too. Okay. How do you play it? Oh, there you go. Sometimes we're asked to play on one chord for quite a long time. Like this F chord. And this can get kind of boring.

Well, we can do a couple of things to spice it up and add some tension, like adding plagal cadences, a beat. Okay, can I note? How many seconds in are we? Probably 10 and 15 seconds. Have you played anything but a triad? No. Okay.

Over the F. Calling all you jazz musicians out there. Bebidoo do, do, do, da. Welcome to my short. Peter Martin. this doesn't have to be in the core changes. This is just your decision, and it's a good decision. Question for you.

How did you come up with that line? This is your decision, and it's a good decision. I don't remember. Okay, thank you. A little behind the scenes there. A little tension and release, just a breath. It doesn't have to be obvious. The breath, though, I did steal from a TikTok influencer

who's actually now in a little bit of hot water named Scout Dixon West, this person. perfume influencer that somehow just started coming on my TikTok feed when I was at this time. And she used something like breath at once and I was like, oh, that's such a good way to describe like just a moment, you know. Yeah. And again, this is great. Like you see in your hands very clearly. I mean, you're really going against a lot of like the so-called best practices to get millions

of views here. What people say, like moving fast. Yeah, it sounds really good. Like what's, the piano sounds really good. you know, like the piano. If you see the little, they'll see the little letter just to the left of F there, Peter. Yep. That's a lot of why our videos work really well.

Shout out Steinway. That B that's on the Steinway. Oh, just think we had a D. It would have gotten 6 million views. All right. Caleb, send a message to Jill. We're going to have to save up some company funding for a Steinway D.

But I think also like... After we just said, you could start with your iPhone. We're like, well, Steinway D. No, but this is iPhone as well, I believe. Caleb, was this on iPhone? This is iPhone. We did, oh, that's a good part of the story. We did reshoot this because the first time I tried it,

I just didn't feel like it landed as far as like, musically. Like, I didn't feel like my energy was right. Yeah. Yeah, Caleb was like, well, it's not great, but maybe we just go with it. And Caleb was like, well, there's something in the audio. And we were like, well, let's just reshoot it.

Yeah. And I think that that's the, like, what we started to understand is, if it sounds great to us, it may break through. You know what I mean? And certainly it will sound great to somebody out there. We never know exactly how many. If it looks great, if the content is great,

like it's worth getting those details. Especially, I think even more so, because a lot of people think this stuff is throw away because it's 60 seconds long, but I would say even more so. It's like you have to have an impact. No, this one has over, it's been around for over a year. It still has a, over a year and a half.

It still has a, we still get comments on it, still gets like regularly big views. So yeah. They have a shelf life. Can you keep playing this one? Yeah, it changes. This is just your decision. And it's a good decision.

It's got a little tension and release. Just a breath. It doesn't have to be obvious. What have you tried the four minor, B flat minor over us? Oh, that's gorgeous. Again, just a little breath. Finally, we can try a perfect cadence like a C7. Check out how beautiful this is.

So a lot of people don't love the C7 who are a common thing, especially people who I think don't have a history, with music that has richer harmony. I love the C7 over the F. I love a five chord over the root in the pedal. But I think you mentioned too. I mean, it's a little bit of tension,

like it's a little particular kind of tension and release in it. For sure, but there's nothing crazy about it. It's all voice leading. And then the only other big, like, negative comments we get on it is like a lot of people who are like, if someone asked you to play one chord for quite a while,

just play that chord. And it's like in certain, yeah, in certain style, like if we're in the studio and you're like, just hang on the F, I'm just going to hang on the F. But if we're playing open free music in certain traditions here in America, you're expected to contribute tension and release to the situation. Absolutely.

That is part of the job. I mean, basically, if you see 24 bars of F or F triangle or just F major, like you almost anything, like you better come up with something. For real. At some point. If you're playing just one boring triad, I mean, if you're like a meticulous, this is composed, supposed to be like this is the way I want it. and that's the vibe of the gig or the session or whatever.

Okay, cool. But then you're not going to write F with some slashes. You're going to write exactly what to play. Be specific about it. But like I said, in all the forms of music I play, part of our job is to provide harmonic tension and release. Of course, with taste. You know what I mean?

Not just to be a jerk about it. I think that's why this was so popular, because there's so many people that are looking for ideas, cool ideas that are simple and nuanced for when you are just playing. I think that you really hit on a lot of people's pain point. It's like how, you know, people know they can go to different things like, ah, no. And so then they give up.

They're like, there's nothing. And then sometimes when you see a simple solution like this and some options, and you hear it, you're like, wow, that can really work, you know. Another thing on this, and a lot of people, I didn't realize assume, if you listen to where you're talking, people assume that you're doing voiceover, but you were talking as you were playing. We always talk and play at the same time. It's a skill that both you and I have worked on and Bob who has worked on.

And most of our videos, you can see us doing that. But these early ones where they're on just the keys, I think people think, but it's the same thing. Whether you can see us or not, we're never voiceover. And it's not to flex. It's just because it makes for a better video. Like, it just makes for more interesting. When we're asked to play one chord for a long time,

these playagle and perfect cadences can be the perfect way to add a little tension and release to it. Sometimes we're asked to play. So that's the first time you've seen on camera as well, is that the ad. I didn't realize that. In the very end. Perhaps promoting the millions of views? Oh, sorry. That was a little humor.

Because it didn't quite get through to you. No, it landed hard. It landed hard but awkward. Right on my gut. Right on my gut. Thank you. Don't worry. We're going to be getting to my gut here, right?

Just a second, really nicely. Okay, so that's our most popular video of all time. Do you want to see our least popular of all this? Oh, I'd love to. This features you as well. Excellent. But oddly features me as well. Our least popular short of all time?

Our least popular. At least viewed. Our least viewed short. You ready for it? What's up, folks? Adam with Open Studio here. Now, see, I just finally, I said, we never do voiceover. This is one time when we did a little bit of voiceover, which is weird.

So can I just mention this is over a year ago. We just had Stashgate 2024. But look at this is. Stashgate. Yeah. Oh, I've got a category for that. best mustache already. I didn't realize this was one of them. Live in one take this week, so let's take a little tour of our studio and see what's up.

Here's our front room. I like this video. And Rachel, the rest of our team, keep the trains running on time. Peter Martin has written some unbelievable music for this project. Well, and no one's interested in all this short. And he's brought an unbelievable band with him. We got Ruben Rogers on the bass and Gregory Hutchinson. The drums doesn't get better than that.

And Sarah Hanahan. The views can get better than this. Of course, we've got loads of coffee and snacks. cornerstone of any good recording session and our brand new control room set up that we're so stoked to get fired up check the link in our bio for more information peace okay so what's your thought on this one just just different from anything we normally do yeah it was an experiment of like trying to do like a little day in the life of yeah i liked it i thought it was good this is not what we do right and you know maybe the voiceover i might i just might not be hot enough like i think you got to be like

a hot influencers to pull off that kind of boring content. Okay. Well, speaking of hot influencers, you may be right, but I would say a couple things. Caleb appearance in the short, that doesn't normally happen. I'm just throwing it out there. What you're talking about? He's in like all the time. Is he?

Oh, playing drums. That's what it is. You're not playing piano and you're not playing. You guys are appearing. Oh, sorry, that's true. Oh, only the most popular ones, not the least popular ones. That's right. No, but I think that that is.

Yeah, we're not teaching anybody anything. It's just a little bit of behind the little BTS. Yes. They kind of see you on the sidewalk. And like, no, that's not your place, sir. Monkey, get on the piano. Exactly. And they see you like puttering around the studio.

They're like, get on the drums, you know, or behind the camera or something. I don't know. All right, Adam. Now I'm going to lift you up because we're going from our least popular. We're going to go to our most religious. Oh, I love this. Sure. I don't know if you know that.

We do some religious mildly. I didn't. I wasn't aware. Almost like more CCM than religious. I don't know what you would call it. But this is one of our most popular of our gospel series. of shorts. Oh, cool.

Which we've had a little bit of traction. So check this one out. Stop by church. We want to infuse our playing with a little bit of gospel for you. You see my demeanor has become more serious, more reverential. How are we going to get from the one up to the four? Always a good question. This is a nice little way to get there, right?

B7, Sharp, 9, flat 13, and then up to the four. And then maybe we go. This is an F-13 sharp 11. And then we can go 3625, but instead of just three minor, how about if we go three dominant? And that was a little thing I stole from you or that we, I mean, I don't know who stuff, but that's the whole like, well, you could do that,

but wouldn't you rather do this? Which always is fun. It's a good question for these shorts. It's like, here's an option. But maybe this is a better option. Right. Yeah. Great way of it was it.

A few ideas for you. Yeah, and I think that a lot of these, that's what this really is, like, a few ideas or even one idea. This might have even gotten into a couple too many, but it's the same thing like keyless keychings. Seamless key change, warmup?

Seamless keychain. Seamless Seamest. Keyless Seamstress. Keyless Seamstress. Keyless Seamestris. Seamless keychange warmup. Right. Warlock.

Warlock. Heelis seamstress Warlock. It's like you play something that sounds good and then you show people what that's how to do that. Yeah, and you can build on that too. You add like levels to that for sure. Yeah, and like what is the pathway to get there? And I think that, you know, when we're at our best, it's fun.

Like, I mean, we've done some stuff where we're like, what, damn, we felt like we did it. How come people didn't respond? There's definitely different levels of it, but that's kind of along the lines where I think we sort of hit it. Cool. Did we look at it? We looked at our first short already, right? Not yet.

Oh, we didn't. Okay. I thought we did that in the intro. We had talked about doing that. We didn't. Okay, here we go. Okay, this was the very first... You might not remember this one.

This is the very first show. Oh, I remember that. It's my old house. I don't even live in that house anymore. This has more... You canceled the house? That piano was in like this beautiful spot in the dining room in front of a window with plants on it,

and now it's in this dank corner in the basement. The same piano? Is it green still? It is still green. I like how you added some accoutrements that are green as well. You were really going with a green theme. Well, my wife, Heather McCorkel. She got obsessed with plants in the pandemic,

and so they just kept any free surface that was available. Okay. So not related to the green. Yeah, don't necessarily. Check it out. Here's the C major pentatonic scale going down. Skip a note going down.

Is this the Steinway B? No. There's a Baldwin acrosonic. It needs to be tuned. That's a C-69 voicing. Move every one of those notes up and down the C-major pentatonic scale. This is our magic voicing system here.

I was just about to say, too. In case you didn't know, this is magical. It is magical. It's actually a pretty decent short. Just explaining the very basic concept of that magic voicing, which we've done several times here on the podcast. And it's actually just talked to someone open studio member who really loves this course the most.

It's like their favorite concept. Magic voicing. It's kind of a, now that I look back on it, it's a pretty heady concept to take a pentatonic scale and make these voicing out of it. But to me at the time, it seemed really logical. Another reason why that piano sounds so out of tune is I was like, this was during like i i remember was this 2021 maybe but still like in somewhat of a lockdown mode or

a pandemic mode with a lot of remote things and gigs quite weren't coming back so i kind of taught myself how to prepare my piano to get like a prepared piano sound and it just it really needed some love after spending a week just like putting screws in it and all that stuff i mean i learned how to do it in the safe way but it was still a lot of stress on that little acrosonic so yeah It sounds a lot better now, actually. Well, and what's interesting about this, this kind of screws up the narrative of like, look how far we've come,

because this is actually really good content here. It's not bad. You know, I mean, just from a, in terms of concept, it's like one concept, walking through, you could really get something out of this. Not bad, not great, but not good. I like how you're thinking about it. You're like,

That is slick. He said, okay, there you go. All right, you want to hear about some more? How about... This is fun, man. A little walk down memory lane. I know.

Okay, this one is cool. If I... See if I can find it. Boom, boom. Okay. So we played the one that we were surprised that... Oh, fuck. We didn't play it.

I was to say with Christian McBride. Okay. Okay, this one's fun. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this, but we are not just a piano shorts making machine. We make a lot of bass shorts. We make a lot of bass shorts. And drum shorts.

And you may recognize this gentleman you're about to see here. One of the keys to putting together a good baseline is making sure they're linear. You don't want to put together. Most common comment on this, look what's written up there. A walking baseline.

What's wrong with that? What you're seeing there? Oh, it's the way the baseline is spelled. The way that it's spelled incorrectly. Bass is B-A-S-S-spelled similar to the fish. This is baseline. Yeah. Yours truly put that, by the way.

Hey. That's a professional musician. On baseline where you kind of like, about that spelling of that. I love that some people when we do, when we make mistakes, they're like in the comments. Like, guys, it's obvious.

This is just for us to talk about it. And it's like, yeah, exactly. Yeah, totally. Now, we are masterminds. It's not that we're just dumb piano players that don't know how to read or write. Of course. Too smart for our own good.

What was funny about this? The first person was like, you spelled bass wrong. I remember I went and looked out. I was like, what? Because this is one of the few, probably the only time I've ever put captions on a shore for us.

But I remember being like, no, I know I got that right. And I went and looked at it. I was like, no, that is right. I was like, it's not. But I was thinking, it's like, because I'm saying baseline. I'm not talking about the base. I'm talking about a baseline. You know, like the baseline of an experiment that I was like, oh.

No, it is the baseline. It's two words, first of all. But I was about to be like, no, you're wrong. You're an idiot. I'm actually the idiot. The internet is humbling. Yeah. And then another thing I love about this.

this, you might not have noticed this, but what he's playing here... ...to get a walking baseline where you kind of like... Like, this is the bat. He's demonstrating bad. I know. Sounds great. He's like, don't do that. If you want to break it up a little bit, make sure there's a pattern inside of what you're doing, so it makes some sense. It's a good bass sound we had, too. Break it up a little bit.

Again, nothing that like... Magical. We got the notation there. Even when I'm making the jump, I keep it linear from me. That's so good. It just sounds so great, you know, it looks great, it's relaxed, the time, the groove. And Chris, and he's got the voice and the delivery and the whole thing. And basically the concept of it is just play a good baseline and make it sound great. And, you know, even if you're jumping around, it actually sounds great if you're me, too.

So you could do that as well. If you're going to jump around, just make it sound good like I do. Jump around now. Jump around, what? Okay. All right. So next up we got, um, Okay, so I got a couple that I'm calling trying too hard, okay? A couple? Well, we could have put a whole playlist together. This is like playing too hard and then the next one's going to, I mean, trying too hard.

The next one's going to be what I would say is really trying too hard. Okay? I don't even remember what this is, but I'm pretty sure I got it right on here. So here we go. Four, five, one. In the key of F. I want to make this five chord a little more interesting, though. Let's see.

what we got. What about a dominant chord? Oh, I like this one. Yeah. Doesn't seem like a standard ad-trial stash is in effect. It's a 20-24 stash. What about a walk down to G-minor from Maymine? Oh, who's that? Who is that? Who is that? Great.

I'm trying too hard, though. Look at me. What about a B-flat overseas? Okay, this is a classic, like, overacting. You know what I mean? Like, this is, this is like acting 101, you learn it. What was the school in L.A. that everybody goes to for acting? Misner School? Yeah.

Like you immediately do. Myznor School, Yeltsin. It might be in New York, I don't know. Yeah. But you know what I'm saying? Like, the whole point of this is, like, I'm slipping in. Me and Bob kind of look alike. It should be like a subtle thing.

But what am I doing? I'm acting like a buffoon already. Look. Play. Look. What's all that? What about the B-side over? That's really good.

Oh, what? Playing too much? Like, I'm calling attention to myself. This is trying to. hard. About a beat in a minor. What we're seeing. I like that you wait, Bob,

Bob. I'm a nerds. On my nerds, where are you at? What about a tricone sub? Throw my cord with my hats. Bob's not so much better. That's real tough piece and you're good to go. Bob, you cool, man?

Sounds good. Okay, have you ruined the punch? Now we're on an endless. That's okay. It's okay. It's okay. That's fun, though. It's not too much.

It's fun, but it's a little bit like. You got to ham it up a little bit. Well, we can't have fun around here? Well, what was funny, the comments on this too were... I'm sorry, I thought this was America. Right, right. But it was funny about this. This was actually a really good video.

It actually didn't need that. You know what I mean? Like, this was one, people commented and they were like, oh, I didn't even notice that Peter came on the base. I had to watch it a couple times where I saw it in the comments. And now it's distracting from what Adam's saying. I'm trying to get these cords. You know what I mean?

So, yeah. Okay, so that's trying too hard. And this next one... Trying too little. This one's really trying too hard. But I think we kind of pull this one off. This is our most, you know, egregious attempt at acting. We're away from the piano.

We've got guest stars. We've got background noise. This was pretty popular, but we're really trying hard. We ready for it? Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Does better with sound. My bad. My bad. Here we go. This is called It's Always Sunny in OpenStra. Peter, I'm just saying there's no correct fingering of a whole tone. There absolutely is a correct way. No, there's the right way, which is my way.

But yours, Juilliard School of Music. Juilliard School of Music. Check it out. Boom. No, no, no. Check this out. Two hands. Smooth.

Fun fact about this, I never knew until we were doing this that you could do that. That finger that you did. I definitely didn't know the one we're about to see either. I mean, when are you ever going to play a whole tone scale like that anyway? I know. A sloppy mess. Sounds way here. There, there, come here.

Settle the argument for us. What is the correct way? The finger is C, whole tone scale. We were trying. That's a good one. It is good. We were trying hard, though. Well, my favorite one about that is, I remember,

because we never really play whole tone scales. Both yours and mine were fingering that I kind of came up with, right? Like the one that I gave you was that one, two, one, two, three, four. Right? So Peter didn't learn that at Juilliard. Just spoiler alert. I didn't learn any of this stuff at Julia. I gave you that fingering or whatever.

And then there's a guy, and I won't even say his name, but he loves every, because we switch off on shorts. We switch off on videos. He loves everything you do and every short that I make. All he comments on is more Peter Martin. Really? Yeah, he hates everything I do. But this is the internet, right?

There's just crazy mad people. Mama said there was going to be haters. Anyway, on this one, he was like, of course, Peter is right here, as usual. I just feel like now I get a little time to vindicate like actually sir those are my finger and how is Larry's not the best though Larry's is 100% the best we were just Larry showed us that we were like do anything like

fun to do on the and he showed us that thing and we were like had to come up with an idea around like well how do we how do we work a whole tone scale in three different ways and there was a lot of controversy in the comments people like oh they they set that up they overdub how many times That was live.

That was live. That was live. One take. Yeah. Yeah. All right, cool. That was a fun one. That was a fun one.

Okay, we've got, so those were the trying two hards. Oh, I've got... It might have been, that might have been actually like two or three takes, but it was only for the acting. It was not for... Right. He was nail on the piano part. Right. Okay.

This is a real recent one, and this is just kind of, I thought would be fun because it's the most amount of yelling. We, we both have yelled at different points, or said some different things. Oh, what you're talking about. But this is the most overt. So we have to nail this from the beginning. We ready, Caleb? Okay, here we go.

One, two. When you're writing a song in a minor key, it's natural to use the natural minor. The Aeolian, if you rule. There are other sounds for other options. Wait, did you hear, Bob's implanted another little sub-grove there. Did you hear that? Yeah, man.

That's, I like that. Bob can't even makes these shorts. Yeah. Check it out. Love and Caleb. There are other sounds for other options. Like, check out Ardorian sound. Just one no difference.

But oh, what a difference. All those different chords. How about a Frasian? Again, not too much has changed, except Tom York says hi. You work on this nerdy stuff every day at Open Studio. Click the link below for our biggest savings of the year. Peter, this is relevant, actually,

because this episode is coming out that we're currently recording on Thanksgiving. Oh, perfect. And we've got Black Friday tomorrow. This is not planned as an advertisement. It's not planned, Michaela, pull the screen back up. If there is something. They do want to join.

They should know, though, if you do want to join Open Studio for like the least amount of money possible, today, tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday. Right. During the next 48 hours, you'll be good. Within the next 48 hours from hearing this after Thanksgiving, you'll be good. Or wait till next year.

But no, this is the time. Yeah, absolutely. Sure. Govstudioj.js.com. It's not a ad No, but I know we got a lot of people who are price conscious and that's Yeah, hello, me.

Awesome. Okay, well, speaking of that, I've got a category for most crass promotional short. We don't normally do, like... That wasn't a crass promotional short? Well, that was, but this was not our most. This one is actually our most. Well, you can let me know, but I think this is our most

promotional we've ever done. Are you looking to get your bebop playing together? Maybe stretch out your bass lines a little. little bit. And just four short weeks. Maybe work on your inner voice. I'll take you from zero to hero. You'll be able to do this. It's something you do every day.

Two hours. Two minutes a day. Yeah. Community. Ideas, inspiration. That's what makes us the number one jazz community online. Crass promotional. I told you. It's not that crass, man.

You know, some of these cats are out here, like, being like, you just need 30 seconds a day for two weeks and you're going to play like Oscar Peterson. And that's bullshit. Wait a little bit. That's not bad. You're just letting people know about it. That was more so than yours. I don't. But to my credit, when I was in there,

somebody said, Peter, can you make a Black Friday ad? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so as like, I just came up with that, and then later on, they were like, oh, it's going to be a regular short. I was like, really? No, one thing you'll never hear us say is something like, you know,

the problem is with traditional learning of the piano, you don't or not. Like, none of that matters. Like, develop your musical life. that's our philosophy here, Open Studio. It's not a miracle pill. It's just, you know, it's a community of people who are trying to do the same thing you're doing

and maybe have some ways that you might try some things that could be helpful, and maybe give you a little bit of some stick toitiveness, a little bit of accountability, a little bit of inspiration. Right. You know what I mean? Right.

Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. This next one, we just got a couple more, Adam, is actually our number one base short. The Chris McBride one, we played before is kind of with only the bass on screen is actually our number one. But this is

the one kind of featuring around a base concept. It's one of our biggest videos short videos, period. See if you remember this. Take a gander. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay, just got to turn the volume on. No, YouTube works, don't you, bud? That's the volume that I

not always share. Okay, here we go. How do you come for a bass solo? Tell me. Well, the first rule of accompanying anybody is to listen. Use your ears. So if Bob is going to solo low on this instrument. I might go a little higher with my chords. So you're saying when he goes low, you go high? So what I love about this one, for those of you who can't see it, so this was the first time

that Max Gamee is our in-house transcriber, he put the notation of the baseline and the notation of the bass line and the piano chords, and he put the notation of the baseline between me and Bob. I don't know how he does it. I think he's a wizard somehow. It's like magic. It's a magical spell. No, it's some kind of like rotoscope thing or something. I don't know. But it's a little bit. DaVinci. Yeah. But it looks amazing. But much as there is a emotional, philosophical, and intellectual barrier between pianists and bass players, there is a notational barrier between you guys as well.

Exactly. And look, if you're listening on the pod, we love it, but this would be a fun one to go over and watch on YouTube. This is also one that legend, the maestro himself, Ron Carter, liked, which anytime that happens, we like that. We like when he likes. Usually the first way we're taught to comfort bass solo, and it's good. I'm also listening.

So I can comment. And like, what if he goes high here, like in some position? Well, then we can support Bob and actually go under him. Another fun thing is I love the way you're talking. Like, we can actually, like, it's very much along lines of us as pianists. What do we do during a bass solo? We talk a lot, we think a lot, we're meandering, we're teaching. We're doing everything, but actually listening to the bass solo.

Yeah, yeah. No, this is, this comes out of conversations that I have with Bob where we talk about, like, you know, things that I can do to, accompany him while he's, because he's such a warm and welcoming compor himself when he's playing a baseline behind you, he's really engaged, he's really listening, and so I like to give bass players somewhat of an interaction too, as opposed to just like dropping out. Yep. You know what I mean? I like this picture, too, where I've happened to pause it.

Jeez. What do we call that one? Lizard face. Lizard. Lizzard face. Wow, you held it for quite a bit. don't be afraid to comment. Just got a comment. They need interaction too.

And if all out fails, do nothing. That's good one. That was a good one. That was a really popular or lots of comments, lots of fun on that one. All right.

Let's see. We've got... Oh, okay, this one's kind of fun because it is... I think it's the last, like, or the last video that did pretty well

that was entirely on the iPhone. Remember I shot a bunch where I was just like, I mean, we like no mics or anything. I literally set the, well, here, you can see what it looks like here. I set up the iPhone on the little, that little crook on the piano, you know, where you kind of set it up because I was like, well, this will be perfect. Call that the Jihari Stampley. Yeah, because I was still trying to figure out like, wait, is this a vertical thing? Is this a horizontal thing or whatever? But this one, somehow like the audio coming off the phone, it's just, we got lucky on this. Is that, who's that in the background there? Is that me? That's, you're working at your computer.

This was a very casual time for us. You want to work on your swing. Do a little restricted practicing. Just half notes in the left end. Single lines in the right end. You got that feel, though. Oh, Caleb just said he's not sure about it. If you got some of it, it's just half notes.

Conjunct's really strong, though. Like you were playing a bass. You got a lot of chance in the right hand. I mean, here's the thing, man. We talk about all these little, like, the notation, on the head and this is really great the way that Maxis transcribed it and presented it. But content is king. Like if what you're saying is BS, it's not going to matter. Right. You know, if you have a good idea, that's going to really exceed any technical or any kind of flash that you

put on there. And if you're doing it in a way that's interesting, like just like when you play, like the content of what you play is important, but also how you play it is important, like how you present this stuff. And this goes for like across social media posts. Like if you can present the stuff, which you do here, with a lot of joy and, like, a lot of, like, come on in. Like, that's what I think we're good at being Midwestern boys is like, hey, come on into the party. Like, welcome in. This is like a warm, inviting place. We're not here to, like, talk down to you or anything like that. We're all just trying to get better and work on this together. No, we're here to play at you and talk to you at the same time.

No, but that spirit, I think, is, like, just how you present it is a big thing. And this is presented in a way that's just like, you're playing some badass shit here, but it's like, you're doing it in a way that seems manageable. And, like, You're doing it. It's like, hey, this is what we work on to make the sound good. You know, like, you want to make yourself sound better, practice this. Play this now. Yeah, for sure.

And I mean, look, we've got a lot of comments on a lot of these videos about from folks that have, you know, like pause this, slowed it down and like practice this stuff. And it's really changed their approach to music. That's on you to do that. But I think the information is here. And it's very gratifying when people take the time to not just say, I love how that sounds. Or give me the PDF. Yeah, maybe.

But that's great. but it's also like, you know, these are just ideas that we didn't come up with. We're just trying to organize them in a way under 60 seconds because we have to, but also in a way that sounds really good so that folks can be like, wow, okay, there is a pathway. And to try to do it, the thing that I miss about just the iPhone sitting there on there is like it's authentic. Yeah. You know, like there's no like, oh, do they overdub that or whatever. You know, it's like you're talking, you're playing.

I mean, look, we screwed up some things mainly that you can't see my hands, which might be of interest, you know. but you know it's all part of the journey as we say right okay awkward pause it's all good so i think i've just got one more which would be no we got that one oh okay this is oh you're gonna like this one adam this is what i'm calling the number one mustache short or should i call it number one mustache short it's ridiculous like what as you noted even some early ones you had a mustache, but at a certain point... I grow mustache every summer, and for whatever reason...

We grow mustaches all the time here. We do. For whatever reason, this summer, I got so much crap for it. I was like, I do this every August. And I think this was the one. This was a really big video. Why don't you pull this one up, Caleb? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this was the one that got all the comments about it for some reason. It was the timing of it. I think you were getting just a lot of awareness. And all of a sudden, you know, this one popped up and people were like, whoa, what's up with that dude?

This is the one, right? I think so. Yeah. major to the sixth chord e minor we're going to play one of our favorite games we're going to stack you chords.com we're going to stack some playgles this is the number one mustache short yeah it's a good looking mustache though look at that I might okay I might do it this year I said I wasn't going to do it but and then a fourth back to G now we're going to start stacking two fourths has nice entry Caleb strong strong two fourths back to G three fourths three fourth take it

through all 12 keys and you're good to go that's a great show it. This is really, this is one of my favorites from like the last, from this year. It's got to, if you can't see it, it's got this little graphic on it that is the circle of fifths, but we go around in like an opposite way in fourths, right? Which is a little confusing for some people, but it made sense to me to go like in the opposite direction of fifths, you go fourths. And it shows, it shows the movement of it. And for whatever reason, that little circle with the arrows pointing when you're doing that, because we did it in fifths, the opposite way in another short. And that was very popular as well.

people just like it clicked something in there and I always kind of take for granted sometimes like oh yeah I understand the circles like that and why they work because there are these stacks of intervals or whatever but some people can't can't get it until they see it

like they see it in that graph and they're like oh that makes total sense you know but I think that makes sense to me because I remember when I first somebody I think it was my dad probably but when I first saw like the circle of fist just like, I mean, it wasn't like a cool video with the thing going, but you just see it.

And I had a little bit of a concept of that musically in terms of like I knew a few keys, maybe scales or whatever, some chords. So I understood what that sounded like. But to see the, it's kind of like the world of music or like when you say take it through all 12 keys, like it's an aspirational thing for a lot of people, for everybody. You know, even after you have actually taken something

through all 12 keys. You can hear that, you can see that you know that that world is out there. It's like seeing a travel video before you go to Japan. You might feel like you've almost been there, but until you get there, you're like, wow. But that's what that circle of fifth, circle of force, it's like a visual representation of a concept that I think for a lot of people just, they have either just a little bit of a concept of it or maybe quite a bit or maybe a full concept of it. But wherever they are on that gradient of understanding, it's like, oh, because everything looks equal on that. Yeah. You know what I mean? But for none of us is

all those keys actually equal or moving around amongst them. And so I think it's, on that short, it's really a part of the story. You've got the story of the music. You've got the story of like when the triads change to the seventh and you see the chords written. You're like, oh, it's a minor. Okay, wow, that feels different. And then you've got like these kind of almost like a map notation, GPS kind of thing telling you where you're going. And then that's always home.

And you see that as home. Yeah, yeah. We're definitely going to be using charts like that more often because they do help. to like solidify some of that stuff. Well, this is fun, Peter. Is there any more that you want to? That was, no. Well, there's like 150 more, but I didn't categorize the other ones.

That's just a nice little walk down memory lane. And thanks everybody for supporting the shorts. They're really fun to make. And like I said, the challenge of like getting something useful for people into a 60 second video. I think it's really fun. And I hope we can continue to do them. Who knows? The algorithm might all hail the algorithm.

It's very finicky. So we'll see what happens. but it's really a real fun journey to try to teach music in 60 seconds. Really cool. Absolutely. And that might be changing to 90 seconds. We hear rumors of that, which would really change. Are we going to stick with 60 seconds?

If it goes to 90 seconds, I'm going to change to 45 seconds. I'm going to go the other way. That's right. All right, cool. Well, until next time. You'll hear it.