You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - "Tenderly" Taste Advice

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

It's another live edition of You'll Hear It where Peter and Adam take your questions - today, they answer the best way to play "Tenderly," essential jazz solos, and sight-reading.Interested 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.Friday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Piano Guided Practice Session with Adam on YouTube8:00 PM - Shelter in Place solo piano concert from Peter on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

as a wolf. Just as the real ones do. They should have like some bad tines on it. Yeah, exactly. Tines that don't. Oh, sorry. Yeah, I was setting you up for that.

I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily music advice. Coming at you today. We are sponsored by Open Studio as always. We are live on YouTube. If you're listening to this on our audio podcast,

join us on Mondays at 4 p.m. Eastern on the Open Studio YouTube channel. And check it out. because we're answering questions and we're having a really good time we're playing some music yeah and yeah we're welcoming in the week we're trying we're saying week come on in i know some people think monday is the second day of the week i'm more of a the week starts on monday we talked about this last week a little bit yeah are we regurgitating the same material now the week 100% starts on monday yeah easily yeah i was and i figured out how to program my watch to even say that

too because they kept telling me like my mileage for this week was starting on sunday i'm like you know Don't box me in, Garmin. Come on. Big shout to Garmin. Sponsor. So what we like to... Not a sponsor. What we'd like to do here on YouTube is answer your questions.

We like to take your questions. We've had a variety of ways to take questions over the hundreds of episodes of the Go Hair podcast that we've had. And just to be clear, we've always been very nebulous about the best way to get them to us, which has caused endless confusion. So I think the live situation is the ultimate level. We don't really want you to answer to ask us questions. Of course we do. We just get confused.

We're like, you know, too many channels. So, but please come and join us on YouTube. We're confusing them again. I know, I know, it's half-assed. No, but you know what? I don't have my email in front of me, but we had some good emails recently, and that's always a nice way. If you want to send it in advance to Y-H-I at open-studiojadjavs.com, but the best thing

right now is just drop them in the comments. So we have some questions already. So one from Vladimir, what's up, Vladimir? Can I have taste advice? Yeah. Totally. We can talk about that. Tenderly, three, four, or four, four, four. So, Vladimir, when you're cooking a steak and you want it nice and tender, what you want it to do is not cook it three quarters of the way through or even full four quarters.

I'm just kidding. I was wondering how long you were going to keep. That was ten seconds longer than I was hoping. It was ten seconds longer than it was funny. That was pretty good. I'm laughing. So, yeah, I don't know. I would not play tenderly in three, I don't think. Do you play it in three? Now, the first time I ever have.

I only know it in four. I mean, you can do anything in three. You know what? Maybe it's originally in three. It could be. I don't think so, though. It'd be strange. I'm going to look it up when you're...

So, yeah, so the answer to your question for us is four. It kind of works. Yeah. But I think you've just converted Peter Martin. No, I mean, I love it in four. You know what, too? I like it in... Is it E flat the original key? I just sort of jumped into that.

I'm not sure if that's correct, though. I'm thinking D flat. Let's hear Rosemary Clooney On to Joe Come on You're Spring for the premium Come on

OnT Fun fact Onty to George Clooney Oh boy My favorite director I've done my best work under George Oh we're about to get kicked off of YouTube

Oh yeah Yeah we should No no we're probably cool In three Now watch we're gonna go check Every recording is going to be in three Like, we somehow missed that. Okay, great.

Who was that that asked that? Vladmere. Okay. Bill Evans, I think, does that three, four. See, I'm telling you, we're going to get just exposed for our ignorance. Is that a St. Louis thing, maybe? Actually, I'd never play this tune, so I don't know. I love playing it.

I've never thought about it in anything but three, four. Of course. It's amazing. It's the French way, Amy says. Ah, Sela vie. Lottendeholy. to Tendeli. Vladimir says yes.

So I don't know how do we answer this either, right? Yeah, I mean, oh, Vladimir's from Serbia. Oh, man, I love Serbia. My wife is a quarter Serbian. I got to tell you, I had such a, maybe I was, you know, we should do show and tell sometime here at the You'll Hear a podcast when we're doing the video Mondays because, man, I have some beautiful pictures from being in Serbia. I've been there a couple times, but I was there last like December or November,

some beautiful pictures along the river there I took when I was going for a run. I've never been, but you know, because my wife's Serbian heritage, my kids are Serbian, and so I have Serbian heritage, and so we want to take them at some point. And there's a little Serbian and Bosnian connection

here in St. Louis. For sure, yeah, yeah. A lot of folks don't know about that. Oh man, the Serbian festival here in St. Louis is such good food. Just FYI for our St. Louis folks watching. Case you're interesting. Oh, Amy, you're saying, yeah, French is Monday.

That was she wouldn't even talk about Tendrilly. Sorry. We'll believe anything. Five, four. Two. There you go. All right. Well, we nailed that question.

Are you playing an E flat? Shouldn't it be E? I'm just kidding. No, that I was saying D flat. What do you play it in? Oh, you say you don't play it. I've only seen it. I mean, no, I've played it before, but only called, you know, at a gig, never on my own.

And it's always an E flat. It is, okay, yeah. But I think that there's a recording that I maybe even learned it from was D flat. Oh, sweet. Like a singer. Maybe, too. I've been working on, you know that tune, what will I do, Irving Berlin? D flat.

That's a good D flat tune. What'll I do? This is from Ian. Question. Just like you find these lists of essential jazz tunes to learn, are there any essential solos every jazz musician should internalize?

Which Ian is this? We amazingly have a couple of Ian's on here. Ian Sailor. Ian Sailor. Essential solos. Wait, repeat the question. I'm trying to look at it because I'm such a visual. So it's up by Vladimir's question.

It says, just like you find these lists of essential jazz tune star, right? We see like, you know, 10 essential standards that every, you know, person needs to learn before they move to Brooklyn. Right, right, right. What are those? Are there essential solos every jazz musician should internalize? I don't know if there's, like, a list. I know, you know, we should do that. We've talked about it. Like the, we've talked about like solos to get you started, right? Solos really get you in there. For us, we always go, especially for pianists, Winton Kelly

Freddie Freeloader It's such a Singable solo It's so easy to learn I would say that And we talked about this a little bit last week Like if you can go to

Even just the start of some solos like Bill Evans Autumn leaves from Portford and jazz You know Stuff like that Bud Powell On hallucinations

Or something like that You can get a couple choruses in as beginner I would say that The ones that every jazz musician, not should internalize, but that you hear jazz musicians talk about the most. Our Freddie Freeloader, I would say John Coltrane on Giant Steps.

Louis Armstrong, West End Blues. West End Blues, for sure. Now, and some of these, I would say it would almost be easier to come up with. Well, you could have like a top 10 just like West End Blues is like everyone. I mean, no way to be able to play it. That's a bonus, of course. But if you're a trumpet player, I mean, and you're like, oh, I'm a jazz trumpet player.

And you don't know that solo. I would be a little bit like, not that you have to play in that style. whatever. But to me, that's kind of like I'm a classical musician, classical pianist, and I don't know the Bach conventions. Right. And not only do I not know him, I haven't even heard him or can't like kind of, you know, fake my way through it or something. Yeah. It's not a hard solo to hear. No. Like that is one that you could easily pick up. It's fun. It's super fun. And you learn a lot. Yeah. I would also say you could argue that, um, what was I just thinking of? Oh, like a Miles solo, you know, everybody kind of knows so what. Yeah. Right? Like the first.

at least that first chorus, everybody can sing it. It's so singable. So modal. It's so modal, which we have another question about it. That's a really good one. Let's make a little mental note to, because I was thinking about a fun YouTube video could be like the top 10 greatest piano souls of all time,

and you're not going to believe what number 11 is, you know, something like that. But really, I think the answer to Ian's question, are there essential solos every jazz musician should internalize? I mean, there are essential albums that every jazz musician kind of, references, but I think it's different, man.

I think it's whatever you're into, you know. Every jazz musician I know. Now that sounds like we're contradicting ourselves. No, no, as far as... We just got super dogmatic. We're like, these are the ones. And you're like, no, I was saying those are the most common ones. But I think once you get past like, you know, like Charlie Parker, now's the time, right?

Like the... Once you get past the essential ones. The essential one. Which is what he's asking about. Oh. Then I'm done. So the answer is yes. No, yeah.

But what the problem is we went behind. He was just asking, is there. their essential lists. And I would say yes. Then we got into actually saying what we thought they were. That's the more difficult part. Yeah, maybe there is, I don't know.

I think it's like, but I feel like maybe there shouldn't be. Just go with what you want, really. Okay. So no to West Ham Blues? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. But when you were at the new school, for instance,

because I didn't go to jazz school, but I did go to a very dogmatic classical school. And there was definitely essential lists of repertoire not only for your instrument, but that you needed to know just like classical. appreciation and maybe too much and maybe certainly too Eurocentric I'm sure but wasn't there like like kind of a list of got to know solos or tunes yeah depending on on what like track you were on or the class schedule you had yeah sure there was like was it dependent on what Robert Glasper

you could hear him practicing in the next room yeah pretty much no I mean just like anywhere else it was like it had its own culture of what you know different clicks of what people were into or whatever but mostly it's like it's like anything else you relied on your private instructor you know I remember when I, my first, who I first studied with up there was Bruce Barth, who I love Bruce so much. Oh yeah, Bruce. And, you know, he had me, um, he recommended a lot of monk transcription for me, you know what I mean, like that kind of thing. I forget which one it was now. Anyway, but yeah. Like solo monk or something. I know you used to talk about that. No, I think it was like, um, Scoop dee de ha, scuba hay ha. Oh, man, I'm going to get called out here. I mean, I was 20 years

gold, but... Cool. Well, I think we thoroughly confused that one, which is all good. Here's, I got to, can we jump to another question? Yeah. Okay. Hold up, I had a good one here. Oh, this is from Devin.

Adam, you look great. Oh, thank you, Devin. I love that question. More a statement than a question, but that's a good one. It's a really great question. Yep. Oh, all right. Do you have another one, or you want me to pick the next question here?

Oh, here. Devin actually has a question. beyond the statement. I started learning piano as an adult and because, where am I, okay, I started learning piano as an adult and because of that, I'm missing the years spent on a sight reading foundation. Are there any good books for reading or should I just start learning classical rep? So, you know, it's hard to start learning classical repertoire if you're, if you can read okay, that's a different skill from sight reading, I think. To me, site reading, and this might be a little controversial

so not only the jazz police but the studio musician police might come the classical musician police my mother or father police may come down to the studio if they know how to get it Rosenville just knock on the door they may come down what are you talking about? Yeah but I

would say that site reading is not a skill that is important unless you in a professional or personal situation want or need to site read. Now by that I mean you certainly want to be able to read music

although to be a great jazz musician you do not have to read music at all that's true you know it's it's certainly useful and interesting and and you could certainly get yourself into situations where you'd professionally be at a disadvantage if you can't but I know some very good musicians quite a few in New Orleans I would for some

reason but that can play incredibly they can play by ear they can play everything that and more than most people they can read music so it's just a separate skill but site reading is a separate then from just being able to to read music too. Like that's the ability.

And then especially we talk about as pianists, it's difficult because you've got two hands. You've got a lot of things that can, two clefts, two staves, as it were. But, you know, my experience with this is that I've had a couple of times in my life where my sight reading was at a very high level. Not the highest ever.

It's a muscle you can exercise. It's a muscle. And I can tell you right now, it is not at a high level. Mine neither. But I think, you know, we're not necessarily using it. I know I'm not really using it.

I could get it back. It would take some work. Yeah, yeah. But it's just, if you're not doing, so the times when I could do it good is I was doing a bunch of like accompanying singers, classical stuff. Like when I was in Juilliard, it was required that you do that as part of your ensemble thing. So I just did it a lot. I was practicing it. I had some good kind of training and some techniques to do it.

But it's, I haven't found it to be the most useful thing. Although in the jazz world, I have gotten myself into situations where all of a sudden I had to read a little something. Yep. And although I'm not a great sight reader, I've done it enough that I'm confident that I'm like, okay, I can do. do it. I can't sit down and do it like on a classical level like an orchestral player. But if you're not playing in an orchestra and doing it all the time or practicing it all the time, you're not going to have it. Now, you could practice it and I always say like you got to go to, if you want to practice sight reading, you've got to go to stuff that you've never seen before.

You can't keep picking up the same book of Sonatina's because you know those already. Yep. And that's not sight reading. But I would think first, who is it as Devon, that one of the reasons that you would want to be able to cite read. Because to be able to And like, you have a great course on this lead sheet breakdown, Leadsheet basics, where you talk about how to take a lead sheet. And that's, would you consider that sight reading? Well, you can cite read a lead sheet, but most of the information that your quote unquote,

site reading is provided by you. Right. So you just have the melody and the chord changes, and you can make whatever you want to make out of it. You know, it could be or it could be whatever you want to do. Now, if you're sight reading a full piano score, as pianists, it's the most difficult sight reading. Yeah.

We have up to like six or seven notes at a time, two different clefts we're simultaneously reading. Oftentimes as pianists, we have another stave with whatever's going on that we're supporting, because we're usually accompanying in those situations, especially that you and I would have to cite read. So we have to see what the violin is doing as well. And so there's just a lot of information to process. And like I said, and you were just talking about, it's just one of those things that you have to do. You have to get used to reading ahead of where you're playing. I think that is the one thing.

Every time I have to go back, and I do a fair amount of sight reading because I'm lucky enough to get to play with some great classical musicians in like both that tango band, Cortango that I play in. And in the 442s or with those guys, we've done some of the Claude Bowling stuff

on some concerts. And that was, you know, I had to work on it. Yeah, not my favorite, but I had to work on it and site read. You know, you can't memorize the whole thing. Right, right. So you are reading a lot of it.

And you just have to exercise that muscle of looking ahead, deciding how accurate you're going to be about what's about to happen because you're never going to be 100% accurate when you're sight reading.

Right. You have to let that go. In fact, speaking of the new school, I took a great site reading course and, oh man, I'm going to space on the guy's name, but he was a great Broadway pianist,

like a really good accompanist and played shows and was an awesome site reader. I mean, really, one of these people you could put pretty much anything in front of him and he could just like make it sound, great. And he was like, I'm honestly playing about 85% of the notes on this page. You know,

that's how I'm able to, I can see everything. You know, you get in these habits of you're looking ahead and you're seeing everything as one, but I'm making some decisions to like put some priority on the things that are important. Obviously the base and the top, like the top and the bottom, right? Yeah. Yeah. Of whatever's going on to the most important. But you get big thick chords. Do the individual notes in their matter in a sight reading situation? Right. Not as well. much, you know, and that's the kind of thing that you just have to get used to and accept. If you try to go for perfection, like if you try to get every note perfect and disregard the rhythm, it's going to suck.

Yeah, and I'm just thinking like the Broadway guys can be really good guys and gals, like rehearsal pianists and just keyboards playing. And they are so good at doing this, that kind of skill of being able to take, to pick the parts that you can play if you're not able to read everything and to kind of be discerning as you go. And I remember I got a chance to work with the wonderful Simon Rattle, such a fantastic conductor on a kind of a jazz project. You know, he's a huge jazz fan and like a real jazz nerd and love. He hasn't done, I don't think he's done a lot of stuff, but he's very well-versed in jazz and symphonic jazz as it were. But I remember we were kind of going over some of the

material beforehand and he had to score. And, you know, it was a rhythm section. This was with Diane Reeves and full rhythm section and the orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic. and he's looking at the score and we're like in his office kind of dressing room and he's like okay well because we were trying to figure out we had to cut it down

for TV or something a little shorter and he sort of sat at the piano he's like if we do that part and he started playing the arrangement he started reading the score he's citing the score exactly transposing the horns but he's also like he knows how to like skip

like he's playing it and then he'll catch a little part that's important and I knew these actually it was my arrangement I was like and he's skipping other stuff that's not actually that important you can't play the whole thing but he's playing enough of it

he's able to kind of read the chords and I was like man that that is very very high level and that's kind of another thing conductors are smart cookies exactly I think it takes some some major cognitive power to conduct an orchestra

some of the conductors are smart cookies yeah some of them are very good looking all right cool