You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Best Of "You'll Hear It" - Tunes

Episode Date: August 23, 2018

For today's "best of" episode, we've made a mix of conversations about tunes from our archive. From episodes 6, 22, 29, 39. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, how's going, everyone? Adam Mattis here. Today on the You'll Hear at Podcast, we are still doing something a little different this week where we're doing best of episodes from our archive. Pete's out of town this week, so we couldn't record some new content, but we will be back next week with some all new episodes. But until then, we are very excited to air some of these conversations that happened in the beginning of the podcast, some really good, good stuff. Today's episode is all about tunes, all about specific tunes and what you can do with them. and there's some really good conversations that happen in this Best Up episode. So enjoy. So the first thing I think is important to absorbing tunes in a timely manner or learning tunes fast is,

and this one's a little bit of a cheat in a way because you have to have some preparation before you actually get here. But it's by really knowing the tune by ear, away from your instrument. And I mean, like, you've listened to it so much either from a recording or live performances or both. that you already can sing the song. Like you can sing the melody, you can hear the chord changes, you know the form, even if you haven't plotted out the form or ever seen the music or anything, it doesn't matter. I mean that you really know it. The same way, like if you were going to learn to recite a poem, a poem, is that the way we say it?

Poem. Poem. Poem, so erritude of you. Wow. You know, if you wanted to be able to recite any kind of prose, but you'd heard it many times and read it before you even opened up your mouth, you're going to be in a much better position to be able to learn it. So a lot of times we get excited about learning a tune and all of a sudden we pull out the chart and the music or we'll listen to the recording and try to learn it. But do yourself a favor.

Listen to it a lot. And you can actually do this pretty fast. I mean, if for a couple of days, you know, you get your headphones on and you're going out for a walk, just listen to the same song over and over again, maybe a couple of different versions. Sing along with it. Really absorb it. Then when you sit at your instrument, you're going to have a big head start. It just makes it so much easier to learn it. you already know it.

Exactly. You know what I mean? So even if you don't know it, know it in your head and you can sing it and you, you know how the melody goes and you know what the form is before you even sit down at your instrument, I mean, that just, you just saves yourself a ton of bandwidth in your brain for learning this tune. Absolutely. And, you know, you mentioned different recordings.

Another great way to learn tunes fast is to listen to all sorts of different reference recordings. Find the most famous version. Find your favorite version. Find an obscure version that maybe does some crazy stuff with the tune. Even try to find, especially the original recording of whatever tune you're trying to learn. Is that like the ones with the big cone coming off of it? In some cases, yes, in some cases it's a piano roll. The piano roll, the actual original recording.

No, I mean, because if you go all the way back to the source, chances are you're not going to get the wrong changes. I mean, that could even apply to, you know, doing a quick Google search for the original sheet music and seeing what the original copyrighted sheet music was, seeing what the original chord changes were, the original melodies are. You know, jazz musicians notoriously mess things up over the years and put their own thing on melodies, put their own changes on it that are easy to blow over.

And some of the charm of the music, wouldn't we say? I totally agree with that, but it doesn't hurt to see what those jazz musicians saw before. And actually, you can learn a lot about what those musicians were thinking as they changed the song. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, these you have to know. Totally. And there's really a bunch more that you have to.

But one thing I would just say to you, it is something that one of the few things that I, organizationally, that I really did well when I was young. And that was, I always kept a little log, a little book of tunes that I needed to learn. And sometimes it's just as simple as that. Just a little catalog, ones that I knew and ones that I needed to learn. And when I went to a gig or a jam session or even read something

or heard an interview when someone would drop a tune, I was like, ugh, I guess I got to know that one. And you can't learn them and you shouldn't learn them all in one day or one week or even one month because you want to learn these deeply. We talk about that all the time. Yep. But these are definitely ones you're going to want to get together before you're getting a website saying, hey, I'm a jazz musician, you know, or business cards printed up as a jazz player. You better know these seven. You have to.

I think the business card companies should quiz you about this before you let you put jazz musicians on your card. Okay. So I'm going to kick it off with one that if you're on the gig and somebody calls you. calls it and you didn't know it, you might be physically hurt by some of the other musicians or some of the people in the audience or just some random seven-year-old kid walking along. I would authorize that kind of damage to you no matter what. We joke about the jazz please, but I might deputize myself if someone didn't know this one. Okay, this is Take the A-Train.

So this is a universally loved and somewhat scorn tune at this point because it's so well-known. But it's such a classic Duke Ellington. Oh, man, it's so swinging. It's so swinging. It's such a standard. people love it. People know it even when they don't know that they know it. People love it even when they think they hate jazz. That's right. Yeah. And so you just got to know it. The second tune is Satin Dahl, another classic.

Another one that, I mean, go back to the original source of this and listen to some early recordings of it. It is so swinging and it's such a cool tune I love the harmonic concept of it and it's a really good tune to learn how to solo over. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we're going to kind of, I don't know, we were talking about going in chronological order. but maybe we'll jump around a little bit just as we're thinking about these. But next, I'm going to say, I've got rhythm by the Gershwins. And this one, I think, is so important because it covers, like, a hundred different tunes, right? Because of the form of it. Exactly, yeah. There's, of course, you know the classic Melly, which you should always know.

I always say, like, how do you know 10 I Got Rhythm Changes tunes, but you don't actually know I Got Rhythm, where the form is actually a little different. There's that tag. There's the tag on it. So I see a lot of players kind of messing that up. So that's definitely one to know. Our next tune is the first ballad that makes our famous list of 17 standards. Every jazz player should know.

I like it how they have to make our list. We're very judgmental, aren't we? Oh, yeah, yeah. Exclusive club. It's all about us and what we're going to put on other people. This is the classic ballad body and soul. It's going to be called at almost every jam session you go to. It should be one of the first ballads you learn, if not the very first.

Yeah. Next, since we're talking ballads that you've got to know, and this one's called a lot in several different styles. And that's my funny Valentine. Oh yeah. Especially for this time of year, kind of Valentine's Day. We're in February now. That's, you know, if you want to do a gig in the middle weeks of February,

you better know that tune. Absolutely. And now we're going to go to Jam Session Favorite Stella by Starlight. This is great because it's, there's like all these secondary dominance that really, you know, for a beginning player, can be very tricky. You know, a lot of half-diminish chords that go nowhere. It's really, really, I mean, it's kind of a deep tune, actually, when you, when you break it. down. But yeah, definitely get some Stella by Starlight going first. Okay, cool. Well, since we're still

in the ballot kind of situation, I would say I'm going to throw another Gershwin in there, and that's Embraceable You. Beautiful tune. Yeah. Now, to be honest, is this in the top 17 standards that you have to know if you only learn 17? Probably not. It's in Peter's top. I mean, I love the tune so so much, so I'm personalizing a little bit. But it's certainly in the top 117 that you should know. You know, easily in the top like 57 for sure. Right, right. Can I throw in a bonus? Yeah.

I know we said five classical pieces. Okay, I want to throw in because we could go back even a little bit before that, which is Bach, as in J.S. Bach. And, you know, the Bach inventions, the well-temper clavier, preludes and fugues. Like, specifically, the keyboard music, I think, would really enhance a jazz piano. So we started out there kind of talking about the Chopinitude. So this brings it back a little bit more directly. to pianists, but if you study these pieces, I mean, you know, when we start with that first invention, in terms of learning counterpoint, learning phrasing, being able to have independence

of the hands, all these very basic but important elements of piano technique that we can directly apply to jazz, go back to the source, go back to the source, Mr. Bach. Yeah, and you don't have to... Fraubbock, I guess it would be, right? Oh, Hare? No, what is it? Hair, I guess. Air Bach, yeah, Proubach.

Yeah. That was his wife. That's a guy over on 3rd Street down here. But you don't have to be a pianist either to appreciate the counterpoint of Bach. I mean, think about a bass player in relation to a melody. You know, if you know you're playing under a melody, learning Bach Counterpoint helps you to place these lines. Think about if you're a saxophone player playing with a trumpet,

you know, how to navigate that. You can do a lot more interesting things than just parallel thirds. You know what I mean? there's a lot of music in that. Can you say his name again? I love the way you say that. Who, Bach? Oh, Bach.

I'm sorry. Because I wouldn't say that right. My first choice is Duke Ellington's East St. Louis, Tooteloo. Now, some of you were saying, like, how could anything Duke Ellington has ever done be corny? But, you know, I mean, when you go back to this early jazz era, to the swing era, it doesn't, some of it doesn't have that, you know, doesn't have a relevant feel. But this song, for whatever reason, the arrangement, it feels so modern to me.

I mean, it really shows the brilliance of Duke and how he made so much timeless music. I mean, but this in particular is something that I think has stood the test of time and, you know, could be relevant today. I mean, I think Steely Dan recorded this in like 1976 or something. Well, you know what? I'm going to be a little controversial here. I know I said I never heard Louis Armstrong play anything corny.

Some of Duke Allington's music to me, especially that really early stuff, sounds a little corny. A little dated. You're a dance band in a specific era. Yeah. I mean, it's very high quality, but I mean, I agree that, you know, that East St. Louis, Toulou is, it's just like it's so relevant and modern and timeless. Timeless, exactly.

Okay, so next, I'm going to go with Jelly Roll Morton's King Porter Stomp. Now, this, I think a lot of people, if they're not being politically correct, would say they think everything Jelly Role Martin played was maybe very skillful, but very corny. And a lot of people just don't sort of understand. And, well, you know, I shouldn't even say that because I don't want to sound pretentious. I mean, you like what you like. Some things are corny, you know, no big deal. But to me, you know, what that represents, what that track represents, the way that he played it, the way he arranged.

It's really like a composition and arrangement with a little bit of improv in it. But that bridge between New Orleans stride, St. Louis ragtime, and what became modern jazz, is just brilliant. I mean, it's what he plays is great. But the feel and the swing, like, even though there wasn't really like a straight-for-s swing. yet, but he pushed it ahead of like the rag time and stuff. And I just, I love that group. All right, cool. That was our best of on tunes.

Hope you dug it. I'm certainly digging these best of episodes. Andrew, are you digging them? Andrew's digging him. You couldn't hear that, but he said something really weird. But we'll be back next week with all new episodes. We'll be back tomorrow, though, with another best of. This one is going to be a motivational episode of best of conversations from the You'll

hear a podcast. You can always go to you'll hear it.com to ask us a question, give us a topic that you want to hear us cover. You can just stop it and say hi. And don't forget to go to iTunes or Google Podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher or FM Radio. No, that's not a thing. But go to any one of those outlets and leave us a rating and review. Seven stars and above, please. And until next time, you'll hear it.