You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The MVP of ATTYA

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

It's time to dive deep into All The Things You Are. A classic Jazz standard that everyone needs to familiarize themselves with at some point. Adam and Peter serve up all their tips on getting this classic tune under your hands in this very special episode. ↓ Links from the pod ↓Unlock your FREE Open Studio trial to become a better player today.https://openstudiojazz.link/trialAdam's Chord Arrangement for ATTYASATB much??Is the Real Book that bad?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

You. This case of spring that trembles on. Thank you. You are the angel glow that lights the dearest things I know. My key, please. My key. Is what you are. Pick it up.

Someday, my love brings you. Are we sure that's how we want to start this show? Yes. Okay. My name is Adam. And I'm Peter Martin. We are getting slapped happy today here at the UL here at Podcasts. Yes, explain.

Just explained. Apologies to everybody for that. Dude, that was better than you think. Well, thank you very much. You know, I'm inspired by... That was impromptu. It was impromptu. There's a recording called...

Of a live concert called Very Warm for May. That came out the same year that that song, all the things you are, was written. And it was... Was that? 1940. We actually did an episode about this on the real book episode. And I believe the... singer's name is that was my impression of the singer i think his name was like tony

watson or something like that anyway you know a singer in 1940 yeah just put it all in the way in the back of your throne w w w2 is already we're in sconed in that battle for a year but it's going on actually before we i know we're going to get to a little all the things you are you know what the most interesting part about that about listening to that concert so jerome kern is playing piano on that show oh yeah and it's it's it was written in the very same year that the the the the piece was recorded and And on that bridge, you know, we're on our E major, right? Yeah.

And so what do we usually do? We go back to like a C. So what Jerry Kern does to get back to the F minor, A flat augmented triad. But listen to this voice leading here from this. It's gorgeous. Yeah. I've been trying to find a place to steal that because it's so beautiful. Yeah.

Yeah. Don't sleep on augmented triads, man. I sleep on augmented triads. then I feel bad that I sleep on them. Right. Especially just, that was all you played, right? That's it. And that's all the orchestration is augmented triad.

Look at the voice leading for this. You know, here's a C augmented trite. C, E and A flat. So when you're going to F minor, the A flat stays the same. The E goes up to F and the C goes down to F. Yeah. And the E goes down to E flat, right? Yeah.

Or the E goes, no, the E goes up to F. It's more triagic. Oh, right, right. But even for this, if you want to go to the seven, go down or up. You could. Or you could have the seventh lower. Yeah, well, that's cool.

And that's what we're talking about. All the things you are today, MVP style. So I was just the way this beautiful vocal unfolded. Are you remember of SAG now? You remember SAG? After I was just playing around with these three-note voicing. So not only were you restricting yourself on the intro, vocals only.

I just started singing because they sound so good. Yeah. You can really hear everything. I think that's good. I came up with this worksheet. Maybe we'll go ahead and just jump right in and show that producer tail. There we go. Boom.

I was working on this for a lesson I did last week, or maybe the week before, over at the jazz piano method. No. What notation software did you use here? That is Sebelius don't. So Sebel don't. He loves it. It didn't even work.

That is Messian's mess. A messian. So this was, yeah, I go old school with a little bit of handwritten. It's funny. My vertical lines, Sue me, none of them are vertical. talk to my attorney's Dudley We got to talk about Dudley, by the way. DeBosier, has he reached out yet?

He owes me money. Yeah. Somehow our attorney owes me money. That's a refund. We pay that big retainer. Gambler debts. Okay. So the idea with this, though, is, and we having some fun with this over at Open

Studio Pro when I presented this, but is like MVP, minimum viable product. You might think most valuable player. That sounds like... Corporate speak, Peter. It's a little bit. But it can be the most viable. valuable player of your practice routine. If you play this,

play this correct. But the idea is like, what's the minimum we can do? And I thought about this in reaction to the, the excellent episode that you introduced for us here, the SATB, Bill Evans episode from a couple of weeks ago. So it's like the ideas we're restricting ourselves

to four voices as we did. What tune do we go over? Oh, that was Stella by Starlight. Right. So all the things you're on, I'm thinking, okay, a lot of kind of melodic, I mean, harmonic movement pretty quick, every measure.

Like, how do we need? navigate this for sort of the imaginary vocal. It was vocal melody, but also like, what are the three voices we're going to put beneath? So I didn't put the melody in because we're hearing that part. But to have some really good solid four-part writing with a few little interesting things, but never going beyond just the three voices plus the melody, right? So a lot of these, as you would imagine, are going to fall to a room and shell situation. So like we starting there. Yeah, but they're not all root and show. No, they're not. And what's interesting about this is we get into some doubling, which you might think, oh, well, let's avoid that. And you can, but the most

common way to avoid that would be to go to this. And I hear this a lot where people are playing this, or maybe with the ninth would help a little bit. Yeah. But that's not, this is what the fifth instead of seven, this doesn't sound good to me. Is that sound good to you? No. Is this not good to you? No, doubling is good, can be good voice leading. You know, the most basic thing you can do, Peter, is right the 5-1 yeah and the voice leading sounds great here I have G B and F going to C C and E right doesn't sound good to go

it sounds better to let the voices go where they make now you don't have a fifth and you have a double root it's fine and notice what you're saying where's it going like that's what defines us so when we sit static on this we're like oh it's not going to sound good but where's it go but not only this one is creating You have your B flat and you have the arrow going up to the G. Right, because there were kind of skipping from one voice to another one.

And that's about it really just sounded good with the melody, which you don't see. We have a lot of doubling in there, but I've thrown in a couple as we went six, as opposed to like fifths or ninth or something. So like on that D flat, we got six, major seven, because of the third there, that's like a really strong kind of reason. Because even though we've got some fat doubling in there, And then to the same voicing, root six. Moving down.

These are also good sort of MVP voicing, I think, to lead to starting to do some inner voice movement. Yeah, this is some hinging going on here. And which should we move on? Yeah. Now we've got our first kind of alteration. You know, when we have those upper, upper extension alteration,

we've got a couple places we can go. And again, because the melody is D, you don't need a in the chord. This is a perfect opportunity. You have C flat here. but you could know, so I spelled that correct. That's correct.

You're welcome. You could do some voice leading like you were talking about moving here. You could start on a C natural. Yep. And then go to the E flat. Yeah, absolutely. So it's like B flat nine.

And these are good to sing as they're moving. Yeah, and so these should be things that are spurring these ideas after you get them. And you can write your own. The idea is like restrict yourself. 3 plus 1, 3 plus 1, right? These are great, man. And then start to move.

Can I go through a little bit here and just see what we got? And again, you have some movement here already. Yeah, that's kind of like to suggest what you could do. You could add chromaticism between this F sharp and this E. We're on the G7, the G major 7 here. And then the same here. As you go from the F sharp to the E, you could also move the A down to that G.

And I think that's a fun thing to think about. Like, where's the melody? Oh, it's on the fifth. Oh. It's on the third. You can also go out, right? Even though it's above the melody. Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

100%. And this is actually a great point is you could design these two. You have everything just below the melody, but you could also design a version of this where you're surrounding the melody in a lot of places. You can design a version, Jeffrey Keeser does a version of this where you're trying to go above the melody. in your right hand.

So maybe you have a root movement in your left hand and the things that are above it, which is, it's a real trip on your mind if you're not used to that. But when you hear Jeffrey Keiser perform, it's such an awesome gear

that he can go to. And it's a really useful thing. Absolutely. And if you want to learn that kind of stuff, the tendency is to jump right in and kind of try to follow along and stuff. But if you get this MVP version first, this will set up your ears.

This might seem like a huge jump from this to that, but this really gives you that foundation. When we talk also about learning form and people always ask me, like, how do you practice the form of the tune? I know the tune, right? But go to the MVP, break it down to its most basic elements, and then play through it with the melody, memorize it, come up with a different version before you start adding,

even things I think that you can. Right. Go to the bridge. This is your... Oh, no. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. That movement from me. age of seven to six dominant. You know, like those are all passing.

Bebe do, do, do, do. Good things to start to be able to hear, especially as the melody sitting. So there I've got, oh no, it's just sitting on the third, but it could also diverge there. And again, you know, these are so good as just like a fun,

I love that you wrote them out too. I talk about this all the time that when you're learning a new concept harmonically, because it is a bit of a Sudoku puzzle, It is a bit of a crossword puzzle. It's an intellectual exercise where you're kind of filling in the gaps of what you need. For me, it's very helpful to write out an arrangement. I have an older video on Open Studios YouTube channel of my court arrangement of all the things you are.

Yes. I wrote as an exercise for me wanting to get some concepts. And I found that to be so helpful. I do it all the time now. If I'm working on a new thing, if I'm working on getting solid, you know, three-note voice leading. I will write out an arrangement and I'll learn it from wrote so that I can fully absorb it.

It can be a little bit easier than just trying to improvise everything all the time. Absolutely. So we'll link to that so you can not only see what you wrote but it's kind of what the process was for folks. I mean it's like even if you can sort of write a speech or a story that you feel like you can just do

kind of impromptu like English words or whatever like you. To write it out, it changes your kind of of connection with it and the conception I think in the same way. Let's talk a little bit about hinging some of these. You know what? When you have something as simple as this written out, another good thing is you can easily see when you want to change some things. Yeah.

So let's talk about suspending or hinging some of these notes. So because the melody is writing around here on the thirds, like you can practice some things as far as like adding, you know, moving some of these notes around. One of the things that we don't think about moving around is the actual root movement itself. But like, you know, a suspension of the root is not, the first suspension of the root for me is not a stepwise or either way. It's the fifth. Yeah, I was just about to say. So picking some of these, instead of playing the root, play the fifth, all of a sudden, some really interesting things happen.

Is that flat, raise fifth? You know what I mean? Like, just taking every other one and using the fifth instead of the root, or suspending it. Like... The timing of it starts to really... Yeah. The rhythm of that suspension starts to really make a difference. You can, of course, suspend every third up.

It's a great exercise to do. That's so much fun, right? Let's suspend. We can suspend the root and the third. Yeah. And look what happens. It becomes a series of five ones, right? These are how two five ones evolved are these suspensions of individual voices.

Right. So much fun. Yeah, man. So, but the idea is like that you've got all these possibilities here. Let's start with this. And if you start to get lost or feel like you're not developing, come back to this MVP. That's like your lowest common denominator in terms of the harmonic information. Absolutely.

And it just does such a good job of starting to be a little bit of starting to be able to be. instill the form, right? It's the fundamentals. We put the fun in fundamentals.