You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The One Scale You Should Be Practicing Every Day - #21

Episode Date: January 28, 2019

On today's episode, Adam and Peter praise practicing the chromatic scale, and explain why you should make it a part of your regular routine. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam. What's up? Do you like scales? No. I'm not talking about the ones on the piano. I'm talking about the ones on a fish. Yes. Okay.

I'm Adam Maness. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Coming at you from beautiful open studio headquarters here in St. Louis, Missouri. Got her producer Andrew Kitchen. Got PM. Got A.m.

I don't know why I'm laying it out so detailed right now. You know what I'm saying? You've given them a lay of the land before we get started. Got coffee in my Star Wars mug. That's right. That's right. Good stuff, man. So what are we talking about today? Well, so today we're going to reference a blog post from openstudio network.com slash blog.

Again, I'm so detailed with everything. No, we thought we would kind of dig into the blog. We have so many great blog posts on here that we could pull from, especially for Nuts and Bolt's Music thing. Right. Well, that's not overstayed. We have several great blog posts. We have so many posts, and several of them are wonderful, right? Several are, eh.

This one was actually written by you. Okay, it's one of the good ones. Yeah, of course. About a year and a half ago, and this is called The One Scale You Should Be Practicing Every Day. Right. And I'm so on board with this. I remember when I first started, we first started talking about jazz.

We would just do this in my living room four years before we started this podcast. Yeah, everyone's like, man, the podcast is so natural and organic. I was like, you know, we forget the mics there. We're just talking. Every day, we would just get together and talk for 10 minutes. But no, you were a big proponent of the chromatic scale. Yes. And making that part of your regular practice.

Yeah. And I've since taken up that practice, and it's really, really great to keep in like regular rotation. Yeah. I mean, to me, it's like kind of the default and has been for a long time scale that I go to in terms of practice. If I only have time to practice one scale or even just starting out, you know. And I think, you know, I was just rereading the blog post and figuring out if I'd change any of my opinions on this. I kind of feel the same. But, you know, this is, I'm certainly.

We're coming at it from a piano standpoint. But I really think this is important for all instruments, you know, from an improv standpoint. I can't speak too much technically about, obviously it's important for anyone to be able to technically play the scale and to master it. Each instrument has, you know, sort of different reasons, I think, for that in different technical challenges that are surrounding the chromatic scale. Yeah. In terms of fingering and breathing and, you know, whatever. But in terms of improv, it's such an important part. and use so much with so many of the improvisers that we admire,

some of the great recordings in different places. So it's just like anything, if you're working on those building blocks, once you get a chance to use it. Look, the chromatic scale is very unmusical on its own, just running up and down it. So it's just a means to an end. But when you've got that kind of confidence,

I was going to say mastery, I don't know if we ever get to mastery, but confidence for sure in being able to execute different, you know, at different places on your instrument, it really comes in handy. Yeah, there's a few things. for the chromatic scale that are important, I think, for me. First, just briefly touching on the piano side of it for pianists out there, you know, I practice it mostly now with just the first

three fingers, thumb, first finger, and third finger. And the third finger really just being... Man, I got you this beautiful, maybe keep on right here. Well, you know what? It was, I thought that was more for you. Yeah, no, no, that's true. Okay, I'll try it. Okay, let's see. It's my first time playing. Yep, same fingering. So much better. Same fingering. Yeah.

No, so that fingering for pianists, that sort of those first three fingers, that's a big muscle movement for us, right? Those are all using big muscles, and it's a great way to start your practice routine, just like you would start a workout with more big muscles and then get more refined into the smaller muscles. Starting with those three fingers and really working that hand motion, you know, that without not that kind of motion. I did that, which is not what you should do at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But starting with those big muscles. muscles really helps me to get warm and to feel strong. And they've strengthened up by practicing that for sure.

Yeah. And we've got the fingerings. I'm just looking on the blog post so you can see that there. I think that that's the standard fingering. I don't know. That's kind of what I learned for this scale. I know there's different ways to approach it. But the idea being, you know, there's always these different things we're balancing

strength, dexterity, but ultimately, you know, speed for sure. ultimately what it's about is control, you know. And I think the chromatic scale, in addition to the things we can use for improvisation, for as you say, kind of warming up is the ultimate control because you're playing every single note. That's right. You're getting around, I mean, there's so many different ways to practice it. And what we kind of get into in the post is some creative ways to practice it because I do see a lot of people saying, oh, I know my chromatic scales.

I don't need to practice that. Yeah, I mean, but the thing is, is there's 12 chromatic scales. Right. You know what I mean? Absolutely. So first, back to the piano fingering stuff. If you want to check that out, we'll set up a link here to the blog post that you can see it yourself for the fingering that Peter does. But back to the 12 chromatic scales.

I mean, this is a concept that was taught to me earlier on that, you know, one of the most important things about it is if you think about it as 12 different different. Then you're going to, you know, kind of get those intervalic relationships together in your mind. Right. If you're starting on E flat, it's different than if you're starting on G, you know, the second from E flat. is different, the minor second, the minor six. You know, you want to have those all at the ready. That's super important, absolutely. And so the fun thing about it is once you kind of get the fingering from a technical

standpoint on your instrument and can get around it, then, you know, in going to the all 12 keys, there's not that much of a challenge to get through them. So that's why a lot of people skip it. But if you do take on that challenge and start to practice them in the different keys and think about it as you're talking about it, you'll really start to glean some, some good theoretical stuff that you can use in your improv. That's right. Because what it's really good at being used for in improv is almost as a link between things.

It's a great way. If you're playing a fast phrase, go ahead, Peter, play a fast phrase. Well, yeah. Interesting sound we got going on here. It's better than the piano sound, trust me. reminds me of the gig I did at the Ramada in airport in Kenner, Louisiana in 1987.

Good, that's what I was going for. The WikiWiki room. That's what I was going for. Yeah, but I mean, yeah, so it's there's so many different parts, you know, that we can use. And we think about it like, let's see.

You know, triplets and stuff, but it's also starting phrases. It could be a bailout of a phrase. You know, like you do a phrase and you're bailing on some chromaticism until you find your place. Hell's yeah. Not too proud to say that I've done that before. Man, the chromatic scales bailed me out more times than a designated driver. It's actually a really important part of the bailout.

Yeah, yeah. It's like a big mountain of hay for you to bail out. And then there's, you know, like you said, the chromatic enclosure thing, being able to surround the note by the chromatic scale. you know, if you don't have it in your fingers in the first place, those are very hard. Right. And I mean, the thing is, I want everyone to think about this, too, is the chromatic scale is not just, it's also, you know, broken minor thirds, broken major thirds. And we talk about that in the blog post, you know, different creative ways to practice the chromatic scale.

So it's, you know, you can break it up and you can think about it theoretically, especially when you get into the minor. You know, all those, you know, diminished patterns and stuff. look, anything fits technically. Yeah, it's a chromatic scale. Yeah, it's a chromatic scale. But all that stuff can actually work in a similar way when you're improvising.

So, like, if you're, you know... I would consider that a chromatic... More of a chromatic pattern than an augmented pattern, you know, because it's like... Because I'm phrasing out that top note, you know. Definitely. So I think a lot more of what we do,

especially, you know, to your point of the connector and the link, is based around chromatic than we even realize. Yeah, yeah. Great. Well, so again, if you want to seize all of this information for yourself, you can go to the blog post. We're going to include that link in the description here, both in the podcast and in the video. Yeah. The sound that we're hearing might not be what we actually broadcast, because, you know, it's MIDI, we could change it. And just a recommendation from any listeners about some good piano virtual instruments we should use. Yes.

That maybe won't break the bank, but sound really good. Yeah. And a light on their feet for our podcast, that would be great. If anybody uses anything they like, let us know. Absolutely. Where would they put in such a recommendation? You could put it in YouTube? I won't see it. Just put it in like search for it? No, no, no, no, write it in the comments.

Type YouTube slash recommendation. No, I'm just kidding. No, put it in the comments in the YouTube video for here what virtual piano instruments you like and we'll try to find a better sound than what we have for our new MIDI set up. Thank you, Andrew, for hooking us up here with the MIDI. Yeah. And then, yeah, we'll figure out a way to

use it more and be a little more descriptive with our playing here as opposed to just describing that's the point of the MIDI keyboard and then also you can go to you'll hearate.com you can leave us a question you can leave us a voicemail or rating and review rating and review we haven't talked about that

in 48 hours before we get there though one more thing about the blog you know we're going to do one a week one a week where we go through our open studio blog and find something interesting nuts and bolts music stuff you threw it out there now now we got Is that too much?

No, no, that's cool. But I mean, you put it out there. You just said once a week, listeners hold him to that. Well, I want our listeners to maybe check out our blog and recommend us some good topics we can cover here on the podcast that we can maybe expand on, expound on, expose. You know what it would be fun would be. I love your blog post on the Barry Harris. The voicing warm up thing? Voicing warm up from via an homage to Barry Harris, right?

That's a good one. We could do that. We could bust that one out. We could bust that one out. Well, let us know which blog post you want to hear more about, and we'll do it here on the podcast. Do we have any new ratings or reviews? We did have one, or rather a couple.

The one kind of caught my eye because it had seven stars in the... Really? Yes. And this is... It's kind of a funny thing. It's a five-star review, officially. But then in the title of it is, jazz is not dead, exclamation point.

Seven stars, exclamation point. an awesome jazz music education resource with subject matter experts that's you and me sir really yeah we are experts i met peter in new orleans after seeing him play at snug harbor big shout out snug harbor frenchman street fabric marini a true piano professional and innovative contemporary educator entertaining enjoyable and very informative no matter what level musician you are seven stars from audio bananas in the u.s a audio bananas is a great handle that's great so thank you for that and uh please keep the reviews and, you know, it's just a great discovery platform we're finding out, as you found out at the Jen conference. Yeah, definitely.

And we're still. I don't even know what that means discovery platform. It sounds like a cool little buzzy word, right? Yeah, I just agreed straight up without even thinking about it. One thing we're doing also is our new theme song contest. Send us your closing credits theme song for the You'll Hear a podcast, and we might put it on the podcast. You can send that to Andrew at You'll Hear. Wait.

Andrew at OpenStudionnetwork.com. Andrew at OpenStudionnetwork.com. Send us your track and we may use it as our closing credits. Yeah. And what we're thinking about doing is doing it for the whole week, right? Yeah. I mean, if we get enough of them, I'm hoping we flood Andrew with emails. That's what I want.

That's why I used his personal email. That's right. Oh, that's your personal email. Nice. So, yeah, so that's our weekly listener theme song challenge. Very excited to hear what comes up with that. And then I guess until tomorrow, you'll hear it. Thank you.