You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Teaching Jazz to Beginners

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

Peter and Adam field a question on how to introduce jazz concepts to musicians who might not be familiar with it.* Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipe at https://link.youllhearit.com/speakpipe* Support the pod by spreading the word with the link openstudiojazz.link/yhi* Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hey, Adam. Do you have any experience welding or forging? I do like mushrooms. I have not forged for them. Welding. No, no, not even close. I'm Adam Manus.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Music advice and inspiration. Coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJazz.com for all your jazz lesson needs. Peter, we have another voice message. You know, we're taking voice messages or speak pipes, as we call them.

We're taking them. We're accepting them. We are joyfully welcoming them into our orb in which we will regurgitate information of questionable providence. Exactly. Yeah, you can go to you'll hear it.com to leave us your voice message or speak pipe. And we'll play your question on the show, likely, and try to answer it the best we can. today we have a question from New York. This is Shlomo.

Let's check out Shlomo's question. Hi, Peter and Adam. My name is Shlomo, a bass player from New York. And I'm enjoying your show tremendously. I'm certainly grateful you guys are back after a long summer. Anywho, I thought I'd ask if you guys could possibly talk about the concept of teaching jazz to people who have been exposed to music, but not necessarily to the sound of jazz. and for instance when you tell them to play a five chord a dominant chord and they won't understand why

why not just the G major leading into C why a dominant court and you're trying to convince them that the dominant court has more tension and sounds much more pretty you think you have convinced them but instead you find out that they'll just follow you with closed eyes and and play that dominant chord over and over again without any real connection to the chord. Now, how do you teach them to build a personal connection to a chord or to a certain sound, et cetera, et cetera? I'd love to hear you guys talk about that. It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much and keep up the good work. Bye. That is such an interesting question, Shlomo. How do you get people to appreciate a dominant chord or something like that.

I've never heard anything like that, Peter. Have you? I mean, yeah, not exactly like that, but I think I catch the gist of it, and I think, you know, it's kind of like theory versus sound, enjoyment versus understanding. So that's something that we've talked about before

and hopefully can illuminate a little bit. Yeah, I'll say, first of all, if someone is just blindly following you and they're playing the dominant chord every time, even if they don't, like, have a connection to it, what's the problem? I know. That's not a bad situation.

As long as they're doing it, that's cool. Right. You know? Yeah. And I mean, but I think it's just, if we take a little step back and just think about it like, you know, we want to, we never want to first understand something that can be technically explained or theoretically explained. Like, we want to understand it more conceptually, a little bit more esoterically, which seems weird because it feels. like, oh no, first you got to understand the exact underpinnings of, say, harmony or like what is the dominant chord, what is the function and all that. But you can understand the feeling of it,

the function on more of a conceptual level, on more of just a visceral level of like, wow, I love the way that sounds. I mean, it's kind of like if you're, if you're, you know, if you have to stop to get gas, you're on a road trip, right? When you pump the gas, the first thing to understand is that you're going to put this fluid into your. car which is going to keep you from it's going to keep you moving along like that's the most important thing like that in terms of a concept you put this fluid into your car and it'll keep running and then at a certain point more accurately if you don't put the fluid in you don't go anywhere right fear is a great motivator fear right but you don't need to understand at least at the beginning

like even which type you know what is the octane what's the proper kind you just got to get something in there and you got to understand that even doing there in the engine you know you don't have to know what it's doing. Yeah. It's chemically reacting and on fire, you know. Right. And if you actually understand, as long as you understand, don't put diesel, if it's gasoline or whatever, like you can get away with never understanding, like, what it actually does, never looking under the hood. And I think that theory in general is looking under the hood. Now, if you want to be a top level Formula One driver or just somebody that

really understands like the nuances of your vehicle on a road trip, like, wow, I'm starting to hear something. Let me pull over it. check out the engine and maybe get in touch with that, then you are going to want to learn the theory of the vehicle, you know. But it doesn't mean that in order to get from point A to point B in a car, you have to know any of that or ever even lift up the hood, you know? Yeah. And so certainly you don't want to start with the hood.

You want to start with how do you drive the car? How do you drive the car? Like, how do you play Domit's core before you know what to call it or know what it means or know the theory behind it and any of that. And I think that that's something that, you know, sometimes depending on how your mind works and how your ears work, you can catch some of these things at the same time. But I always like to think about it in terms of like what's the simplest way to enjoy and to learn music. And that's by hearing it and listening to it, not by explaining it, as they say.

Yeah. And you know, Shlamo, if this is someone who's close to you that you are trying to mentor or teach and you just want them to sort of get it, I would say, you know, you might encourage them to compose or write their own music. or arrange something because usually when people do that, they become a little bit more curious about, you know, how the sausage is made, right? Like they really want to know then, well, why does the dominant chord always precede, you know, the one chord? That's, you know, at least for me,

that's when I become the most curious about the nuts and bolts of music theory and how things work and tension and release and all that stuff. Because if you have a sound in your head and you just can't get it. sometimes the best way to do that is to really understand how these things are made by the music you like. That includes listening, but if you maybe encourage them, you know, maybe try writing an intro for this next performance or maybe try I would like to, you know, play one of your songs. Maybe try writing a song and see what happens when that, when they are behind the wheel of the car. Right. But I see, I think that's the exact right mindset or just really viewpoint on this. It's like you, you hear something,

you feel it, you experience it, you play it, you write it, whatever, and then you say, wow, why does this do this? Let's go explain this. Let's go figure out why. Let's go look under the hood now as opposed to like reading about it, having somebody tell you about it. A dominant chord does this because it's bluesy. A blue scale is this.

So you're never going to, like the first impression you're always going to have with that musical concept is going to be from a theoretical standpoint, wherein that can work, but it's just not the most efficient way to get to that kind of connection that you need to as a composer, as an improviser, as an arranger, as somebody that can interact with others on a very musical level, not on a theoretical level. So you can always fill those things in. It's just, it's like anything. It's kind of like, what's the order you want to learn it? Like, how are you going to put the recipe together? How are you going to organize things? And sometimes doing these things in the right way, even as they feel a little bit counterintuitive, can work best.

And you know, Shlomo, I think Peter's previous point, too, is one just worth reiterating that really listening, you know, and maybe you do a listening session together with this person. And you can say, like, see how, like, if they show some interest, right? And like, oh, why did that feel so good there? You can see, like, because they use this tense chord that eventually resolved to something a little more consonant or something like that. And you can explain. I mean, that's what for me, you know, listening to music with other musicians has been enlightening for like, what, what was. that. I love that. And a more experienced musician can explain like, oh, yeah, that's like a backdoor two, five one, or that's a tri-tone sub or whatever. And you'd be like, oh, that's what that means.

I thought it was just some nerdy thing that, you know what I mean? Like, it can be a real fun experience to do. But then I also say, man, like some people just don't care about that and are never going to be interested in it and really don't care. You know what I mean? And that's cool too. As long as they're, like I said, as long as they're doing it, don't do it. Exactly. And so, you know, there may be certain types of situations or types of playing or composition or certain gigs or things that are required that really demand that elevated sense of, of, you know, theoretical knowledge and nuanced learning there. But oftentimes it's not.

And it doesn't mean that you still don't want to learn about the theory in those situations. It can be an enhancement. But ultimately, like, when we're thinking about how does the performance sound, how does it feel to play with other people and stuff? that's not really based around, you know, how much they understand of the theoretical underpinnings of what's going on. It's partly sometimes in some situations, but that's not as big of an element as we think. A lot of times we let our egos get in the way, especially as jazz musicians, because we generally have, you know, a pretty high level of theoretical knowledge. You sort of have to to be able to get into like, I don't know, you know, advanced jazz improvisation or composition. maybe in some ways more so than to be able to get to an advanced level as a classical player on certain instruments.

So we kind of, I think, mistakenly and misguidantly take that to mean that we're above other people in some ways. And then, you know, in terms of our knowledge, and then really getting to this, well, you have to know this. Well, maybe you have to know it, but you don't have to always know it in a haughty way for sure. and you don't have to always know that from the beginning in terms of, I can't play a flat 13 sharp 9, sharp 11 chord until I understand the theoretical underpinnings of that harmony. I'm not allowed to play it until I can explain that. Why?

No, if you can play it and make it sound good, you can play it. You may or may not go back and study the theory on it or not, but the main thing is that you can hear it, that you can play it, and that you can apply it. Totally. Great question. question shlomo again if you would like to leave us a speakpipe go to you'll hear it dot com and leave us your musical question we're happy to tackle pretty much anything you got yeah we'll go beyond

musical questions right we've been known to give life advice it's it's certainly unlicensed and uncensored but you know yeah yeah we can and steel cut oatmeal recipes we're down for whatever you got that's right peter super fun man uh thanks everybody for listening again go to open Studiojazz.com for all your jazz listen needs. Until next time. That's right. You'll hear it.