You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Power Of The Mu Chord

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Adam and Peter let you in on a little secret they'd like to call The "Mu" Chord. Check out what that might be in this episode. Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Instagram

Hey, Peter. Yep. Today we're going to be talking about one of the most sophisticated, intelligent, complex, deeply spiritual, harmonic concepts available to us as modern musicians. Wow. What chord is this? I'm Adam.

A little reprise there. I like that. I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You Looker at Podcast. Music advice and cattle coming at. Is that a cattle call? It is a cow sound effect. This is, by the way, this is an open studio podcast in case you didn't.

know. So, yeah, but we are today, are going to be talking to, sponsored by the Missouri Farm Board. I wish we had that Missouri Farm Board money. Oh, come on now. Come on now. No, today we're going to be talking about a couple of different things, but I wanted to talk about the power of the moo cord. Well, this is very interesting, very topical, and something I don't really understand. So this is going to be what they call an explainer video or explainer podcast. So, first of all, do you know anything about the moose cord?

No, I don't know about the... I mean, I know it's... Is that a moose chord? It's a mu major. I know how to play it. Yeah. Is that still with the third, too? Still with the third.

I usually do it without the third. The third on the bottom. So, and we're spelling moo, not as a cow, but as M.U. And it actually, the term itself, uh,

the legend has it is it was coined by... Are you reading from Wikipedia right now? No, not at all. Steely Dan's, uh, Donald Fagan and Walter Becker. And it talks about a very specific kind of shape. And it's,

It's a beautiful shape that gets used in all kinds of music. And we've been doing some short videos, short content pieces about sort of, we've been doing moo adjacent things. So I thought we would go full moo adjacent to start here. But I just want to talk about what the moo major is first. So it's actually a really simple concept. It is, I wonder if we could actually, I'm going to do a little bit about. Oh, he's calling it. He's creating an audible.

On the fly. Oh, no. Oh, well, why are you doing that? I've got something. Yeah. You know, I've been very up on. my chat GPT. Oh, God, here we go.

I just asked chat GPT, what is a moochord? I spelled it MU. Oh, did it, no. It says, I'm sorry, but there is no such thing as a mu chord in music theory or practice. It's possible that you may have misspelled the term, or it could be a term used in a specific context or genre I'm not familiar with. If you provide me with more context or information, I may be able to, ooh, it's trying to get me to teach it.

That's very interesting. Yeah. Did I spell it right, though? I think so. Mucor. I'm just going to try to. tell it something. Let me know when you're ready with your thing.

A moo chord is a specific sound pioneered, what we say? Pioneered. I think that's fair. By Steely Dan. Caleb, I wonder. Wait, okay. Check this. Oh, go ahead.

No, go ahead. I apologize for my earlier response. You are correct that the term moose cord is associated with the music. Oh, my God. It's Jet, GPT. a jazz-influenced rock band. The moo chord is a musical chord that was created and popularized

by Donald Fagan and Walter Becker of Steely Dan. It is essentially a polychord or superimposition of two chords, a minor triad on top of a major triad. Is that right? Separated by an interval of a tritone. No, that is not right.

The resulting chord is dissonant and ambiguous with no clear tonal sense. No, a moot chord is very consonant, right? The exact construction of a moot court can vary, but a common example is the combination of a B-flat minor triad, B-flat-D-flat F, and a D-major triad.

No, that's not correct. It's all the thing. Stop the chat GPD. Oh no, he says exactly the plate like this. Excellent. That's like not a moochord. The moochord is used extensively in Sealy Dan's music, particularly

in their later albums and has since become associated with their unique sound. That is not what a moot is. Has Celie Dan ever played this? Can you put my screen up on here and then, oh, look, Caleb's already got it kind of starting to get masked there. So we got a little keyboard. You can mask it a little more, Caleb, if you have the time.

But look at this. And maybe make it bigger, Caleb, so the folks can see there. So if you're listening to this show, we are putting a little keyboard up here on the YouTube. So you can go to our, you'll hear it YouTube channel. You might want to subscribe, but we'll display what we're playing on here. So the basic moot chord is definitely not what ChatGBT just said. So do not take that to heart. But what it is in its very basic level is this.

this. So it is, we'll say, a C, sus 2 over E, right? And so you can get here by doing a very simple exercise. Go to middle C, play the root, the second, the major third, and the perfect fifth from C. Right? And we're going to do a drop two here to start to get, to get the basics. Stevie Wonder. What is it? What was your nickname before? Noodles. Poodles.

That was Stevie Wonder. What's the name of that song? Leave in the comments if you know that Stevie Wonder something. Anyway, so we have C, D, E, and G. And then we're going to do this drop two. So we're going to take the E down. I call that a 1, 2, 3, 5 chord. Yeah, that's a 1, 2, 3.5 chord.

It's a C-add-9, I think, is technically what it is. C-D-9. Is it a C-2 chord, though? Can I see that sometimes? C2. No, this is C2. So it's C add 9 because there's a third in here. So a 2 would be a suspended second.

Yeah. And this is, I think, technically C add 9. But if we take the, if we drop 2, right, the second note from the top, the E, and we take it and we put it in the left hand. That is a moon chord. That is what we officially call a moom major. So we can now use this. Now the moot chord always, the mu major, it always has the third in the base.

And that's how we use it. So it's never an inversion. where you would take this through other things like that. It's not just a C add 9 that you do in different inversions like this. That's not what it is. It's specifically with the E in the base. Now, you can do inversions on the top three notes here in your right hand, so this you can do the next inversion up.

And that sounds really good. And you can even do this inversion up here if you want to. Yeah, you might as well, right? But these two, these two, check out. out these two inversions are what you see the most yeah right so in the right hand cdg or d gc and then always the third in the base now you've probably heard it on stuff like deacon blows it's a lot of boom boom yeah but so it gets used in that way steely dan uses it in a bunch of different ways but you can use it in a bunch of different ways it's most effective i think as an approach note now here's the cool

thing peter yes but wait there's more so we'll still be in the key of c here so The one way you can work on it is just taking it. Move for commercial. It's a move for commercial. We talked about this last, the last episode. Take all diatonic seventh chords here on drop two. Approach each one with the move from below. Right?

It's a beautiful approach chord from below. Now you can also check this out. You can approach it as you're descending as well. So we're still approaching from below, but we're sort of jumping, right? getting all these. Now check it out. You can also, here's what you might not know.

You can approach each one of these chords from the moo above, and it sounds killing. From the mu above. How about that? It's so beautiful. And you can use all the different inversions, too, if you like, to do this. They all sound pretty sick. But it gets you this really cool, you know, it's not,

it doesn't have a seventh in it. It's got this really sharp thing. And, you know, this is consistent, too, with some classical music theory rules, some classical harmony rules, where if the third is in the bass, you don't put the third in the chord above. So you want to have these three voices above, right? You want, like, maybe an A major triad over a C sharp. And someone like, like Bach or Beethoven might put this here, right? So C sharp and you want this A. You wouldn't put another C sharp in there.

You would put A, E, A. Yeah. Or maybe a seventh chord. right instead of doubling a note at all you just add that nine yeah in the baroque period that really got you thrown into a gothic prison for doing that it been like internal damnation oh my gosh you'd be in a german yeah uh prison all right can i show you something yeah that was nice please you're familiar with hold on hold on before you do you show anything i just want to reiterate what's going on really that's what you could that's a good that's a good that's a good that's a

good sound, come on. I know, it sounds good. Check this out. This is, if you want to hear what Adam just taught you, but in just 60 seconds. I'm wearing the same outfit. Wait, where's the... I can't, I can't hear me. Oh, gotta do that.

Now we have the secondary dominant for each one. Oh yeah, this is the one the short we talked about last episode. But the move makes its appearance here. Except the seventh. The seven kind of sucks. Now we put that secondary dominant with the third in the bass. The next one, I guess, right? If you want a little bit more of a modern time, we do the moot chord.

Now just take it through all 12 keys, and you're good to go. Oh, we just make it sound so easy to everybody, don't we? Diatonic 7th core. Stop it, Peter, stop it. TikTok, stop it. No, that's on the, go check out the Open Studio Instagram for a lot of this fun stuff. Yeah, we're doing more of that short content, these little warmups and stuff. That was good.

Well, thank you for that, that move. So it's interesting because it's being too. talked about, I don't know, you know, like when you become aware of the nomenclature of something, but you've heard the sound a long time, but then all of a sudden it's like, oh, that's what that's called. I think because it's such a funny sounding name, it's

really in the internet era. I never heard of it before YouTube was around. Yeah. And then the story... I thought the first time you talked about, you invented it, but I missed that. No, no, no, no. It sounds like something I might make up, because it's fun to say, but yeah, apparently it's a stealing down thing. I don't even know how accurate that is. They might not even know what the hell we're talking about, you know, but

it's just, that's the lore of it. I heard them talking about sugar cord so there's that you know um well good stuff all right i got something for you um this is kind of random and i can't remember why i thought oh rando get on your mic i'm getting i'm sorry i'm getting rando on my mic there um this is sort of about gigging because you know we get a lot of questions kind of offline and here and there and um you know something i was thinking about is like how do you like we're always talking about you know the moot cord and how to pray and this is all important stuff, but the actualization of putting these skills together oftentimes leads to a gig, right? And, you know, a lot of people, especially younger folks, people just

wanting to get into the biz, kind of struggle with like, how do I say yes to this gig? Do I, should I do this gig? I get a lot of questions over the years, probably one of the most common ones is just like, how do I get away from doing gigs I don't want to do wedding gigs? What do we used to call them, like, casuals and different people call them. Taking it all the way back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like, How do you make a decision to take a gig or not? And this is something we struggle with, both you and I. We've even come together at different times to try to remember the, the Just Say No Club.

The Just Say No Club. Yeah, we said no to that. Pre-pandemic. Yeah, then the pandemic said no to everything for a while. But it is an important thing of like, because, you know, the whole concept of when you're saying no to something, what are you saying yes to? But then what are we always talking about sets and reps? So as much as in terms of like practicing, learning to play, you've got to put that into

practice. And there's nothing like trial by fire. on a gig, but is it the right gig? But I'm always amazed, and it's a recurring thing, and it's like an intergenerational thing of how much people struggle with. And I think back to it, I was like, I did too, and I continue to in some ways, but definitely when you get to that point of saying, like, can I say no to this gig? What are people going to think of me? If I say, no, do they think I'm above this? Am I just doing the gig for the money? You know, we're supposed to love music, so I can't charge this amount. I can't even be thinking about money because

It's all about the art. But like, how do you think about, like, how do you, like, if somebody calls you for a gig, how do you make a decision whether or not you're going to take the gig or not? Yeah, so interesting. So money is a factor, but not in the way that you might think. So it's all a, it's all, I was telling you, I was listening to this Yale podcast on game theory. And so it is all a bit of a strategic decision about how you want to spend your time and where your efforts and time and resources are going.

And so I weigh, you know, I don't actually mind playing for nothing. if it's the right circumstances. I don't like to do that, but I will if I want to be a part of something and it's for a good cause or something, of course I'll do it, especially if it's my own thing. If it's something that I see potential to grow

to be something that is very fulfilling for me musically or financially or whatever, I am not one of these people that is like, you're professional, and so you should be paid what you're worth. Like, yeah, when you're starting something, somewhere from the ground up, whether that's a business or you're starting a concert series, I feel like you can, you know, invest in yourself and try to build it up and try to get people

there. It's almost like, you know, you get people there once for free and then you, and then you start you get them hooked. Now you got to get them hooked and then you start. But it's a similar concept. Let them in for free. Charge him to get out. Yeah. And that's not saying like I'm going to play for some established series and be like, no, I'll do it for free. Never. I would never do that. But if it's my own thing and I'm starting, like, you know, I'm starting this orchestra. I'm starting my own string orchestra where we're going to be doing all of these amazing songs.

You know, we're really celebrating the songs. We have this, our first show is coming up in April. I'm doing all the arranging. We're raising money because the orchestra is expensive, obviously, to start. And, like, I'm going to be the last person to get paid on this. And that's because it's my project.

Yeah. I'm responsible for getting this across the fifth time. The captain of the ship is the last one to go down. That's right. Well, that's true, though. Yeah. But like, I'm so, I'm doing this and I'm doing all this work for free for now because I know I believe in it.

You're playing the long game. I'm playing the long game. I know that eventually it's going to pay off most importantly, musically, spiritually, it's going to fulfill me in that regard. But then also I know that it's going to be lucrative eventually once I start getting butts in the seats. However, if it's, you know, I anymore since Open Studio has sort of taken over a lot of my time in the day and a lot of my energy, you know, a lot of like me, my creative energy, which has been incredibly fulfilling.

And it's what I really love doing during the day is coming up with these different ways to talk about all this stuff and then hanging out with our community. Like, I now have the luxury, thanks to Open Studio, of saying no to pretty much anything I don't want to do. And in fact, I have to say no to things

that I do want to do. And that gets really hard because it can be a challenge. I will say, I still have Peter, what I call an FU price. Yeah. Which I can't believe we just said that. FU price.

I like it. It's an FU price, which is like, what is that price? That's the price where I don't really want to do. No, I mean, what is the exact price? I'm not, I don't want to reveal too many secrets here. But it's a lot. And it's a, I do not want to do this gig. And I will say, oh, yeah, I'm happy to do it.

Seven figures? Here's, it's a lot. It's seven figures, but it's more, it's more than they should pay. But it's like, here, I really don't want to do it. But I'll be honest, like, you know, I'm busy. I don't have time. This isn't really my thing. but I'll do it for this amount of money

because that's the amount of money that for me it's like, okay, well, I should probably. Do you normally tell people that then all that accompanying it? I'm busy, I'm doing, or is that just represented by the number? I'll give them a high price because it's something I don't want to do. But I will do it for this amount.

I forget who recommended me the FU price. Someone a long time ago, it might have been you. Yeah, it might have been you. It was just like, listen, if you don't want to do something, just basic economics, like put it in a price range where it is worth it for you to do, even if it's a drag, and then let them know that this is the price that's going to cost.

And if they do it, then you're committed, then, you know, you can do it. Then what about when those same people see you playing somewhere else that night instead, and they know that it's a different price? I'm not trying to, like, hide the fact that there's things, you know, I mean, do you actually put F you in the email as you give them the price? No, no, I think seriously. And FU, Adam Maness. FU sounds so aggressive.

But it's not meant to be, it's not meant to be that aggressive. But, uh, no, you. You know what? I'm not shy about the fact, too, that I will tell people straight up like, hey, I'm not doing anything except for my own thing right now because I need to focus my energy on making my own music. So, like, I'm not taking this arranging gig right now. And it's not because I don't want to do it. And it's not because you're not great, but it's because I want to focus on, even if I don't

have a project, I'll be like, I'm kind of focusing on my own thing. So I'm not really working with anybody else right now. There's nothing wrong with that. And if someone would say that to me, I'd be like, oh, totally cool. Yeah. Right. No, I think that's great. And I think that where maybe the confusion for folks that are not at the point that you're at and other folks, be it in terms of age, experience, opportunities, or whatever, is like, what do you do as you're building up? And I want to be clear about that for folks. Like, you can't start here. No. What you just described.

It takes, takes them a while to get that. Because it's like there's so many gigs, and I think back, like some of my fondest memories are gigs that I do. Well, like sometimes the biggest gigs you do, you don't get paid anything for certain reasons, which is fine. But some of the, like, lowest paying gigs of all time with some of my fondest memories because I was in that, like, that growth period where I got so much more out of playing the gigs, either playing with certain people or playing in a certain.

certain venue or just the demands of the gig having to learn certain music or whatever. It was not about the money I was going to get. But I also didn't have that much to offer yet because I wasn't that experience. I wasn't very good. I was still like learning. So you have to kind of know where you are because you're getting so much from experience up to a point. That's right.

And then it gets to the point where like certain kind of experience is like, and I'm good. I've already had those experiences. No, especially when you're younger, the experience of doing a gig can be worth quite a bit to you. Because also, it's like you said before, it's the long game. You're investing in yourself in this experience that's going to make you better. And even still, Peter, if Herbie Hancock called you and said, I want to do a five city tour with just two pianos, me and you, it pays 150 bucks a night. You're doing it.

Dude, if Herbie Hancock calls and says, I'm doing five cities and I'd like you to be my valet for those, I'd be like, yes. No, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, of course. For the experience, we all do things like this. There's nothing wrong with that. Now, there's also nothing wrong with asking what you think you should worth. setting up your life, you know, to make sure that you hit those numbers. Like, if you can't afford your rent, then you obviously are going to need to do more paying gigs or figure out

something else to do. But you also got to play the long game in terms of like you're going to have to do $100 gigs, $50 gigs. Everybody does. To get that experience. And you got to pay your rent. So you might have to get another job. Because I get a lot of this like, I always hearing like, well, I only want to, you know, play stuff that's going to be great and all this. But not from folks like you. I'm talking about from folks that are like just getting into the jazz performance game. And I'm like, you know, I'm like, is this a long, it's a long journey. Yeah. And you can't start there. Yes, you have to know your worth. And these are like really, really great young players. Yeah. But it's also like you haven't done nothing yet. You got to work your way up. And I think that,

you know, usually younger folks do understand that. But sometimes they get tripped up on this like, well I don't know if my art's going to be presented in in the right way at this thing and I'm like don't worry about that you'll get to that later yeah you know I mean I've seen you know Herbie Hancock being presented not in the perfect way and he still somehow does a great performance I mean there's a lot of ups and downs and a lot of things outside of our control and I think that you have to sort of be on that continuum of just being glad to play like worrying about what the instrument is and all this kind of stuff like don't get ahead of yourself is what I'm trying to say yeah I agree it kind of bugs me too when I'll see musicians who are not, who are still learning, who are still young and still trying to figure out how to play music. Yeah. And they're playing at smaller venues. And then they're complaining on social media about, you know, this is a $100 gig. We should be worth more than this or whatever.

It's like, you're not bringing anything to this. Right. Like you, you know, and I'm not saying you shouldn't, you know, your time's not valuable or worth anything. Yeah. But also you have to, you know, if it's a smaller venue, the owner's probably losing money on you. if you're not bringing people in. And so you have to account for that a little bit.

And if you focus on like, what can we do to actually make music that people want to come out and see? What can I do to get those people to know that we're doing this? Then you can build the crowd and then you have leverage, which is so incredible.

Once you start realizing how to build capital with your art and how to leverage that to actually make money, the sky's the limit because you can repeat that formula again and again and keep growing that. But yeah,

you've got to learn how to do that. that. Yeah, and we're finally living in a time where we actually have some tools available to us, you know, things that we complain about for a lot of different reasons, but in terms of like social media, YouTube, these things where we can potentially directly access and access and build an audience without the other gatekeepers there. Yeah. That, you know, there's a little bit less to complain about. I do hear a lot of like grumblings just like, why do we have to promote ourselves and why do we have to do that and I get that it's like in an ideal world you don't have to do that yeah exactly you don't have to that that's the thing but the scene does is starting to really reward those

that do that but I would just say that like you can innovate in how you access an audience or build up an audience however you want you don't have to do it on the tools that they're saying create your own tools or make a flyer it actually doesn't have to be complicated it doesn't yeah you know what you have to do you have to spend time in the shed that gets people in the scene that's where most most of the people that are complaining about I can't play but then there are some that do complain about it they can play and I'm always like well how do we set up a system in which you know great music can still reach great audiences that want to hear that because that's almost like like you know it's like an import export business it's like what are you going to bring in if it's already

being made here but if you're bringing in something special from another country that can only be made there and then you can find people that want that that's a beautiful thing you're matching that up but are we is it a system where people People aren't getting the music that they would like, because I feel like there's, you can get whatever you want. And you can really, you know, go down rabbit holes. Oh, no, you can. But I'm saying there, but there are great players, I feel like, that do get kind of passed over. Give me names.

Give me names. Well, no, I don't want it. No, no, I mean, you know, there's great players that are not as savvy as an Adam as a YouTube star. No, no, I know about that. But there are, there are great players who I don't think. They're just not as interested in that. And that's actually fine. Like, you have to.

And I think that there. there should always be, and there is, you know, gratefully, an infrastructure in terms of like, you know, presenters and clubs and concert halls and these kinds of things. Traditionally, there's been, unfortunately, a lot of, you know, taking advantage of the powers that be with that system. So hopefully we're getting, we are getting more away from, because there is competition from social media,

and all this online stuff for musicians to go directly there. But I think that great players, I mean, Ron Carter, who we just interviewed a couple weeks ago again, and we're able to make a course with and kind of see how, he operates is very savvy for an 85 year old gentleman to be able to like leverage social media in the way that he does not everyone's going to be able to do that um especially as you get older or have that kind of interest to do that to maintain that connection and i think these incredible players should still have access to these kinds of things um through other ways more traditional

way i mean this is i don't know what the hell i'm talking about it's pretty simple actually no no no it's pretty simple if you want to like FYI for getting gigs if you want to get paid work on becoming the best possible musician you can be, work on coming up with a great idea. Yeah. Because it's not just about you being able to blow over giant steps. Right. You've got to be able to play or do a podcast over heavy construction.

What the hell's going on here? No, you have to have an interesting. Yeah, exactly. You have to have a build. I'm going to link it. You have to build an interesting idea. And they just record a video of you doing that. Yeah.

And that's as good of, like, if you build your reputation from the art you're making, people are going to come and see you. All they have to know is where you're going to be. And you're going to be getting better as you do that because that sets and reps, that's performing. That's putting yourself out there. And it's not that different from like, I want to book a tour so that I can really learn how to interact with audiences. Well, that's great. Do that.

But that's not going to come as quick as like put a video out of your solo, you playing a solo over something that you're working on. But really try to put something beautiful into the world and see how people respond to that. You can do that today. You can do that today. And there's a great thing about gigs too is it's like direct. feedback, right? Like, if nobody's coming to your gig, then you're not connecting with somewhere in the chain from the music to the people that are hearing it or from the communication about

the gig is happening. Yeah. So there's some breakage in that. That looks like a ginging musician right there does look like a ginging musician. No, there's some breakage in that link. Either you're not making music that's connecting with people or you're not connecting with people like letting them know where your music is. But don't get that twisted because some people, as in don't you listeners, like, if you have 20 people at your gig, don't be like, oh, I'm not, and the venue hold, the club holds 100 people. Don't be like, oh, I'm not connecting with something. No. Can, and if those 20 people there enjoying it, like keep reinvesting into that. They'll tell their friends. They'll tell their friends. You know what I mean? You have to be patient with that.

Like, be appreciative of whatever audience you have. Don't always be looking at the next backyard, the next concert hall. No, I'm not, I'm not suggesting you change anything. But you should know that that's like there's there's like there's correlation between what has happened up to that point and what the result is. And so I'm not saying you should change what you play. You should just know that the kind of music you're playing is not just connecting with

20 people and that's fine. Or that combination of what you're playing and how you're getting it out there is only connecting with 20 people. There's just where you are. That might be exactly what you want to do. If that's the music that you love and that you're passionate about, but you got to accept it. That's the results.

If you don't change anything, nothing's going to change. which is fine if that's what you want. Yeah, I think a big part of this too, Peter, is you've got to be, as we both know, you've got to be malleable in your life and be okay with fat times and lean times. That's right. That's part of being a musician, man.

That's part of it. That's right. Play the long game, and then you'll have some stuff from your hibernation period saved up for the... That's right. For the... Oh, no, you need to save up for the hibernation period.

Well, whatever. You'll hear it. Is that part of this episode?