You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Locked Hand Voicings THEY Won't Tell You About

Episode Date: July 15, 2020

Just who are "they?" Well... we're not sure. But what we do know is that these are some pretty slick voicings.Links From Today's Episode:For a comprehensive collection of piano lessons, save money by purchasing the Piano Access Pass - every piano course past, present, and future from Open Studio.Today's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)7:00 PM - Mastering Brazilian Jazz Drumming Workshop + Q&A from Edu Ribeiro - YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkInterested 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 Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey, Adam. Hey, I know you haven't traveled in a bit, but how's your French? Uh, I don't know the French, very bien, but see. How's your French locked-hand voicing? Ooh, now that's a little different. I think it's pretty good. I'm Adam Manus.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Music advice coming at you. Coming at to today, sponsored by Open Studio. Oh, wait, no, you have an Open Studio shirt on. I do not. Go to Open StudioJez.com to check out. Oh.

of a jazz course. That's back. And that's a thing again. That is definitely a thing. Including the piano access pass where you can get access to every piano course we've ever made and will ever make

as long as you're a piano access pass. Member, go to open studio jazz.com slash piano access pass. Also, we're sponsored by human beings. Oh, the best. Big shout out to humans. Oh, they're the best. And the worst.

Yeah, both simultaneously wonderful and killing the planet. They're the most beautiful, ugliest. Ugly beauty. In the words of the lone Well, speaking of humans, we're going to talk about today some lockhand voicings that they won't tell you about. The humans. Are you curious at all what I mean by that? Yeah, I'm very, I want to know why no one's ever told me about this. You were like, what are we talking about today? And I was like, we're talking

about voicing that they won't tell you about. And you were like, what do you mean? You didn't, none of that cap and you were just like, oh yeah, cool. You know, the locktans always scares me, that term for two reasons. Okay. Can I tell you? You're good. One, don't know what it means. That's the biggest things. Because you know what? We're scared of what we don't know. Yeah, I don't really know either. That's just what I call it.

And then it sounds like locked hands. Like you're locked up. Like you're about to be cuffed? Exactly. Like you're like, which is maybe what it is. Well, what this won't do is cuff your voicing possibilities. Oh, hello.

Boodoo, boo. No script. No. So why I wanted to call this lockdown voicings that they won't tell you about is there's a lot of voicing about locked hands, specifically one kind, right? Barry Harris' six diminished, right? Where we go between the major and the diminished. And that is a super cool, beautiful way to play some locked-hand voices.

You know about that, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But there's another way that you hear a lot of people. Of course. He said, yeah. Barry Harris. He's going to Google Barry Harris.

That's sad. No. No, but there's another way that I have heard and transcribed a lot of other pianists use. A lot of pianists use kind of a mixture between that and then another way to do it. I was just working on this solo, this Oscar Peterson solo, I've talked about it before around here, I think, on Bagsgroove from his Night Train record. At our Monday transcribing club, we had at Open StudioJazz.com. We transcribe the solo. There's a big locked-hand section of this solo, and he does this thing that I wanted to highlight.

And it's what I call the French style. Oh, la la, the French style. And it doesn't involve using the Barry Harris method where you go between a major six score, like C major six. and then a diminished and a C major six and a diminished. It's a little bit simpler than that, actually. It's a little bit more basic and it's a little bit more ambiguous because of the simplicity of it. And it goes like this.

Instead of going between a major chord and a diminished chord, we use our octaves, right? Locked hands is an octaves device. Now, is that always, is that like kind of a rule with lock hands? You're within an octave. Your outside is an octave. Yeah, the outside notes are an octave. I think that's how I generally distinguish that between drop two, which is like a tenth.

Right. The outside notes are a tenth on drop two. With the locked hands or the shearing style voicing is sometimes called, it's a octaves device. Yeah. Right? It's meant to have these outside notes be octaves, and we can play melodically then. We can play melodies, you know, and we can do things like that. So the Barry Harris style, again, is we have our C major six chord, right?

C from the top down, C, A, G, and E in the right hand. C in the left hand. And then you go, you do that, and then you do D diminished. And then you do E with, you know, the C major six with an E and then F diminished. Yeah. And then you just go up. Kind of perfect voice leading as it were. Perfect voice leading as it were.

It's a cool sound, but it's a little bit restrictive, I think. There's another style that you hear played by people like Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans plays this as well, Hank Jones. And it's a little bit freer. they use the six diminished stuff too for sure that's what I'm saying it's like a mixed bag but it kind of to me it leans more on composers like Ravel WC

Poulank Frank and that's to if we have our C major six chord here we simply we have the best way to figure this out is to just play this in inversions right so we just go up the C major six right go all the way up from C to C and back down exactly

now if we want to add a scale to this Instead of doing a diminished chord, we simply move these outside notes up, right? We move the C up to D, and we keep the chord the same. It's not diatonic, but that major six part kind of stays the same. And then the next note up would be E, and so we change inversions. That's the first inversion of the original chord. Exactly. And then we move those outside notes.

So from E, C, A, G, E, we move it to F is, right. And then we're at the next inversion. Ah. So then the next one is just a new. inversion, right, from G to A, and then we move it up again. No, so, yeah, like a C triad in the middle there, and then we're back at C. So what this gives us is a much more... Very French. It's very French. It's like you're at the Muse d d'Alce. And you can use this with different modes, right? So if we want a D minor, right, we're going to borrow from that F major, how French is that?

If it's a G7, you know, flat nine. And this is actually what I saw Oscar do in backspace. group, it's a G blues. He really leaned on what I would consider to be like a D minor six sound, moving those outside notes. What this does is gives us this great inside. It varies from the strictly going between the diminished and not. Isn't that great? It brings this tension. It sounds very Ravelle, very W-C-ish. So let's break down real quick, a 251, because there's one secret one. Before you do, though, why don't you hit a like and subscribe? You know what I'm saying? It's free. Yeah. It helps us. It helps you. Oh, it helps everything. It helps the world. It the algorithms. It resets the Google algorithms in our favor. Our being humans. Humans. Yes. So there's one more bonus that I want

to put on this. Okay. And that's what do you do when you have like an altered diminished chord, right? Or sorry, an altered dominant, like a G7 flat nine, right? You can do the same thing. You can, let's say, we have our G7 flat 9. We can start on that, let's say we start on that F diminished. Right? Which is a common way to think about G7 flat 9. We can just move this outside note up the diminished scale. Then the next inversion.

And do the same thing. And the next inversion and do the same thing. Move that outside note. Oh. Yeah. And the next inversion. We're back to D and then the same thing. Nope, from D, move that outside note up a whole step.

Ah. That's all we're doing is we're going to those like F diminished chords and moving the outside note up a whole step. Yep. Good stuff. So then you get this thing. Vive la France. Vive la France. So for a 251, we can lean on like the F, right?

The F major 6. That's our D minor, right? Where we're borrowing from the relative major. And then we can come down that G with that. diminished sound, right? And then land on a C. Nice. And then maybe you want to throw in the Barry Harris thing,

just for... Yeah, because these work together, right? They work together. You hear players use these all the time. Yeah. So that's the secret locked hands that they're not going to tell you about. The French will tell you.

The French will tell you all about it. They're proud people. They're more than happy to tell you about it. But no one else is going to talk about. No, I really think that this style doesn't get talked a lot about, but it's there. Everybody's playing like that.

Right. I've heard you do this. I've thrown it a little bit. And I mean, it's still like, you know, the way that you showed it, it's not super intuitive. I mean, there's a logic behind it that I get. But in terms of just my hands going to it, I'm sure I do some of these. You do. Like, and now that I'm thinking, I've never thought about it's just the outside moving.

Yeah, yeah. I think also combining it with a little chromaticism to, you know, as we do, turning around a little bit, baby. Totally. Yeah. The cool way to practice these is to start with just. exactly kind of what you were referring to is you can start with arpeggios right and then just think about that outside note moving to fill in the gaps like still strike gets tricky going down because you've got to anticipate what the chord is going to be yeah you know so there it is

good stuff well like and subscribe as we said and we want to thank our our sponsor open studio Obesito Jazz as we always do. And until tomorrow,