You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Real Book Strikes Back

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

Today, Peter and Adam revisit a controversial topic from a few weeks ago: the accuracy of the Real Book.Links from this episode:Get the free PDF from this episode with this linkCheck out all of the tunes mentioned in this episode with our Spotify playlistWatch the Ron Carter/Herbie Hancock video right herePrefer your podcasts in video form? Watch the YouTube version of this episode hereInterested 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

Hey, Peter. Hey, Adam. Hey, you know that feeling when you learn something and you work on it for like 25 years and then you present it in front of like a thousand people and you realize that you learned it wrong completely and you've been playing it in front of audiences the wrong way for your whole life? Do you know what that feels like? I don't, but I did see what it feels like. Great.

I'm Adam Anis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast. Music and jazz advice and lifestyle. Elaborations coming at you. That's right. Coming out to today, sponsored by Open Studio, go to open studio jazz.com for all your jazz lesson needs. Peter, I'm very excited about today's episode. We did an episode a few weeks back call. It was all about the accuracy of the real book, but mostly dealing with like great American songbook standards. Was it about the accuracy or was it about the inaccuracy? It was about the inaccuracy. We've got a lot of, and we've got a lot of, we got a lot of love for that episode. We got a lot of hate. We got a lot of real book defenders. Yeah. Real book detractors. A lot of just controversy around it, which was fun. and I thought we could kind of continue the discussion around it

because it actually is really fun to talk about and to just look at some of the discrepancies of how this book or these charts that we've been sort of around our whole lives can kind of influence the culture of the music and then the culture pushes back. Yes. Very hard as it should. That's right.

And then, I mean, it's always a reminder to me how much these charts, even though I feel like I abandoned the real book long ago and I was lucky because I had some really smart folks even like I remember including my dad I remember him looking at the real book and like he's he has such a good ear and stuff and he heard something I was listening to and he was looking and he's like that's not right and he didn't he was he's not like a jazz musician but he's just a really good musician he saw that on there was kind of like so I always had an aversion to it yeah but then our by connection I think a lot of musicians

connections going back to even the generation before ours as well is pretty deep with that And so it's an interesting thing. So we're going to look at six songs today. And these are not, these are not like obscure. I got stuff I got to do. When it's not going to take long. Okay, cool. Six songs that are not obscure songs.

I'm talking about Dona Lee, Olio, straight no chaser, giant steps, blue and green, and the girl from Ipanema. These are like as classic, you know, canon standards as you can possibly be. And we're just going to examine some things. And it's not even so much like the real book is wrong. And if you learned it that way, you're wrong. It's just more like, that's not the whole thing. picture of the song. Right. And like trying to go back as we talk about often here is trying to go back to, you know, the original source, but then there's several different sources that you can pull from

and how interesting that discrepan is discrepancy. Discrepancy. Yeah. Discrepancy can be between maybe how you learn. Sometimes you learn it from someone who is an elder in your community and they know it not like the original, right? Like that, that's happened to me before. All right. You're so nervous about that, I see. I'm a little nervous about the whole thing. We're going to have fun here going through it. So what tune are we starting with? We're going to start with Donnelly because this came back to bite me just last week. Was this the impetus for this episode this week?

It was. So I love Donnelly and I was teaching a lesson on Friday live on YouTube here called the greatest music theory lesson of all time. Are we going to link to that below? No, because I've since deleted it because I need to fix some things. I actually am going to re-upload it on Friday. I'm going to do kind of a take two. with the fixes that I need to make because I use a phrase

in my example to kind of prove the thesis of the scale theory that I was working out here. Use this scale over these chords. And, well, you can see for yourself what happens. I'm playing through it here. This is a good 25 minutes, 30 minutes into the video.

We'll put it up here. And you can watch me realize that when I learned this in like 1995, I learned it wrong. And I need to update The software update. This is, but this is a small error.

I think you're being, well, we'll talk about that. Let's, we'll just watch, but this is a, I think it's more monumental in your mind.

Important, but not as massive. Should we roll the tape? Roll the tape. Hear that? Just watch my face, so you can see me realize it. Uh-oh.

You're playing the next part, but you're thinking about it. I'm already thinking. Watch my face. You see like, oh, snap. Is anybody else hearing something? Hold on a second.

This is Adam Manus reacts to Adam Manus. reacting to one wrong note in his chart. I know what I'm thinking. I'm just thinking like, oh, no, oh, no. See, folks, this gentleman across the table for me is so brilliant that he's playing chess in 3D right now. There's one little error, but he's already jumping ahead to see what else it's going to affect in his diagnosis of this tune. Yeah, yeah.

I think that's an A-natural. So I had it as an A-flat. I learned it as an A-flat. And it's in the real book as A-flat, right? It's in the real book is A flat. Yeah. I think that's an A natural. Panic is setting in.

You're kind of like sulking down in your chair. You're going below. My entire harmonic minor theory. Oh. You know what? Isn't that great? You know what though? But this is important.

So we talk about, we talk about, well, here at the you'll hear it. What is this? A podcast or a YouTube channel or something. Whatever the heck we're doing here. We're always talking about you have to make mistakes. in order to learn. That's true. Right. And so once we actually do it, and you don't do it very often, but when you do, it feels big. But I mean, this is like, this is about getting those details right. It doesn't matter if it takes 25 years or if you get it from the first time. Yeah. This is about

caring enough about this music. And I love it. Well, I think it's incredible. That's what I kind of want this episode to be about. This is not the first time this has happened. And really it's been since I've started doing work with Open Studio where I've started to have to teach things like Donna Lee, which I've been playing for so long, and I haven't really, I mean, I come back to it to it to practice it, but I don't come back to it and check it on the record because I'm like, I already know it.

I've known it for years. I've played it in front of thousands of people. Surely it's, that note is not wrong. I don't even know. I don't even think about it like that. You know what I mean? Yeah. But then when you come and reexamine it

because you have to teach it, it's a whole other thing. Well, that's why teaching is like, it's like you go into student mode. Like, I always feel like I'm learning more than everybody else. But what I think is great about this too is that we acknowledge that when we learn things. Look, we always want to be progressing.

And I think when we look at... Can you flip that for me? What's that? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. When we think about, like, over 25 years or over one year or whatever it is, like, an amount of time that we would be able to judge our ears getting better, for instance. And like, because ear training is such a fundamental part of our development.

And we talk about, you know, listening and transcribing and learning things. in different keys and stuff like that. Like all that is about a number of things, but it's very core. It's about developing your ears. And so I think if you're doing this stuff correctly, even if you're doing it correctly only maybe 50% of the time, your ears will develop.

Even if you don't even really practice, you just listen a lot and just do minimal practice. It's not going to be as fast as it can be. But it's not going to be every day where it's like you look back in three months or six months or a year and you're like, wow, okay, I've made some progress. That's right.

It's just like going to the gym and lifting weights. There's no amount of weights you could lift in one day that at the end of the day, you'll be like, wow, I'm buffer. You know, you've got to give it a chance to seep in. And so I think that when you talk about 25 years ago learning this tune, think about how, you know, how much lesser your ears were than they are today. So, and that's the thing. We're like, oh, I learned it. You probably would listen to the recording too, but you learned it from the fake book or whatever. You weren't able to hear that connection at that time.

At a certain point you were. I think I actually, so I was trying to remember. where I learned Donnelly from. I don't think it was the real book because I actually didn't have a real book until I was 25 or something like that. Wow. But I mean,

I had like some fake books, but they were legal fake books and they definitely didn't have bebop tunes in them. Right. So I must have learned it from a recording, but I might have, I can't remember which one. I had,

there was a GRP big band situation. Right. But surely they got it right. No, surely they got it from the real book. I don't know. I don't know. But I don't know if it was that or the jaco,

but I haven't, I haven't done any research to figure out which one mess me up. Or, like I said, it could have been just an older musician, which at that time was like, that could have been an 18-year-old who showed me the tune. You know what I mean? An old dude. An old dude.

Right at a jam. Because I don't know about you, but remember those first two years, half the tunes I learned were like on a jam session in someone's basement, like, or at a rehearsal, like, what? You know what I mean? Like listening in while it's happening in real time and you're actually playing the stuff.

Right. So I thought that's what's so fun about this episode. I was like, I bet, because I know of some others that I've kind of uncovered here. over the last several decades that I've learned at first wrong and that it's fun to kind of go back on. And they're usually, that's why the big ones,

it's like it's good to go back, right? Because it's like they're the ones that we learned when we were young or just coming up or not knowing it's kind of teaching us the music. And it's like now that I have more experience, my ears are better developed, I know more about it.

Someone has told me like, oh, you know, that's wrong. If you go back and listen to the original, you'll hear this thing now that maybe you couldn't hear when you were 16, you know? Yep, absolutely. Super fun. Okay, so let's talk. talk about specifically how this affected kind of what the analysis was and why this is the way it is written and why it's the way that it is played.

And kind of how you heard it too, I think would be interesting as well. Yeah. So here's Donnelly. Here's the real book version. Has that A flat. And like I said, I don't think I learned it. But it's very possible that a lot of our watchers here and listeners learned it from this. Because it makes sense.

It's in the key of A flat. It makes sense there's an A flat. It makes sense that's a scale that you would use on a minor 251 going to... What is the chord there as it is as I'm just trying to see? Is it as G half-diminish? Yeah. So that's what they have in the real book. I'm tracking the bass player here is just all C-7.

Okay. So let's listen to Donnelly, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis from the Savoy and Dial Masters. Yep. How swinging is that by now? I love B-Bah. Sue me because I love B-Bob. So there it was right there. So first of all, in my defense, it's not exactly like...

It's they kind of they don't ghost it, but it's not, it's not easy to hear that. You're like, you're like, I heard it. No, no, no. I mean, I know what you're saying. Especially, and that's the thing with a sound size when you're, I think you had it down to like 70%. Yeah. That's a big, it doesn't seem like that much of a difference, but that's a big. You can really hear everything that's going on.

We didn't have that technology. We did not. Let's check out that again. So again, going from, but they're, what they're actually playing is. I love that. I love it. Isn't that great? It's so gorgeous. It's way better.

You know what I've always connected with it? I'm trying to think if this was the first time. You know, there's something that Herbie Hancock ever heard of him plays a lot, which is like, you know, that half diminished with the major ninth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Locrian Sharp 2 kind of thing. Yeah. Exactly. It is like that. It is like this.

And I think that's, this is the first time I ever heard that where I was like, maybe even before I was kind of totally aware of the places that Herbie Hancock did. it, but it is a cool little detail. That's so great. And then it's, too, it's a little bit more resolution to the F minor with the third. You know, it's like you're not hinting. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's a great move.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so really happy to know that now, but something I didn't hear for so long. Yeah. That's all good. So we have some other examples here, too, because there's some other notorious ones. that I hear a lot of people that I've known for a while. In fact, this next one,

Olio, I know you've talked a lot about, I got to go all the way back to the top here. Okay, OLEO. So here we have the real book version. Yeah, right? No Bueno. No Bueno.

And a lot of people play it just like this. But let's listen here to Miles Davis on Bags Groove with Sonny Rollins. Okay. Let's listen to their version. Ah. A couple different. So the second time here, check out the end, the second ending.

So right, so a couple of things to note here, if you bring that back up. So there on bar four, the real book, and you hear a lot of players play this, right, with this little chromatic thing. They're actually playing. They're really ghosting the F. On both times, right? It's both times, and it is the F. Yeah. And that's one thing.

Another thing, well, just another melodic thing there at the end of bar six. right this phrase here definitely an a every time yep and then on the second sonnie makes it super clear too yeah yeah yeah then on the second ending the real book has but you hear i do hear people at jam sessions play and it's always yeah uh every time there and then i have a couple of differences in the chord changes uh i never hear uh percy heath play any kind of two five to the e flat and i never hear an e flat minor, it's always an E-flat diminished. Okay, sorry, an E-natural diminished. Okay.

Going up to that B-flat. Okay. Just a couple of little fun things. By the way, we have a PDF here today where you can see the differences if you want to download the whole thing. I did. Look, I downloaded it already. Oh, that looks great, bro.

Yeah, that looks awesome. Sorry. It's recyclable. That's, thank you. Yeah. But they can't, yeah, they can download it for themselves in the description. We won't put it in the chat unless Ian is, Ian, are you there? you put it in the chat please if you're there

but if not it'll be in the description so that's oleo which I thought was a really fun example and just this is like instant fix like again it's not the end of the world but it is good to know Peter the more he sees it when he sees it for himself he gets very dark now I think I played some of those wrong I'm not gonna lie I have too I mean we all have man

so the next up this is a video I did a couple weeks ago on learning straight no chaser this is what you get in the real book now to be fair Miles Davis played it in at some point. But the thing about that, that's because like that's not a great place to start on a trumpet. Exactly. But if you're playing this on piano,

we transcribed here, Monk playing the whole thing from his album. And this is just, and again, it's not like it's wrong to play it in F, but check it out in B-flat and all the little things Monk puts in here. It just makes it so much groovier and hip-hipper. Check it out.

Isn't that awesome? Yeah. I love these voicings. like C flat A flat voicing. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that great? Didn't we have a dispute about that?

Whether it was, I think you've got it right on it. Max was hearing a B flat in there somewhere. I don't hear it. I think it's implied. I think it might be, yeah. Because it's in that melody. It is in the melody. It is in the melody.

Yeah. But just good to know, right? Again, it's like it's not wrong if you do it in F at all. It's not wrong. But it's kind of cool to know that this is how Monk performed it often. Yeah. And even with these, like for me,

going back and listening to this, it's kind of cool to know that he's playing this voicing. I know. On the tonic of a blues. You know what I mean? Like this flat nine voicing. When it's just piano for the first chorus. Yeah.

It's not even like, that's weak actually. But you, that's what I would go to because I'm like, I got to establish the B flat. I know. Not in a million years would I ever think to start a blues like is that voicing.

I know. But it's almost like, it almost implies like an E7. Like because it's third. You know what I mean? It's there somewhere. that guy the compositions of Loney's Monk deserve many passes over throughout our whole lives

because they're so they're deeper and deeper the older I get the more I appreciate how deep they go absolutely you know what I mean what you got next so next up this again this isn't like it's this is like the least wrong this isn't wrong at all and this isn't something I actually thought of until our very own Jeffrey Keiser open studio artist

talked about this so in the real book here we have the changes. Changes are correct. I mean, it is B-D-7. But you hear on the recording, listen to the bass movement on the recording. And again, this is kind of enlightening. Isn't that great? So this downward movement, this downward whole tone scale movement. And Jeffrey Keeser talked about using that in your improvisation as a way to not think about these giant steps so much by thinking about this, you know, this really... A little unifying device almost, right? Exactly. It's like a symmetrical motion down. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So just for folks on the podcast, this is the real book just with the root and the melody. And then here is what actually the bass player who would be, is this PC on here? Yeah. Yeah. Is playing. Yeah.

On that two feel before it goes into the walk. Yeah, he's playing on each of these dominant chords that introduced the new key. He's playing the fifth, creating this whole tone scale that goes down. So it's almost like a poly chord or, or slash chord situation. But per our conversation in last week's episode where we talked about the importance of the melody and the bass relationship.

Yes. We were talking about our iconic bass lines. Knowing this, even if you don't do this, right? Even if you don't, even if you're a pianist and you're playing in a quartet or whatever, and that's not your job. But just knowing that that's how the original went, it kind of shape how you might voice things

or think about it in a way that can make it easier. I know Jeffrey Kieser talked about thinking about instead of D7 over A, thinking about A minor 7, like as a two chord. Yep. As a way to kind of, you know, isn't that great? Yeah. A way to kind of mix it up.

So, again, not wrong, just something to think about. Not wrong, incorrect. Exactly. Not wrong, shameful. Depends on how you frame it, Pete. All right. So, hey, if this is the kind of stuff you dig, these deep dives going into these tunes and how we kind of know them and maybe can improve how we know them,

hit the like button. That's right. It's your first time here. Hit the subscribe. What? Hold up. like this I'm gonna hit the like button. Hit the like button,

you know what I'm saying? Come on, man. And if this is the kind of thing you don't like, hit the dislike button. No. Is that true? No.

We'll see. No, man. And if you're on the podcast, don't hit anything because there's nothing to hit. Actually, if you're on the podcast, leave us a rating or review. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Next up, we got another iconic tune here, the great blue and green. This is, I feel like this one is really well known. This is the, because it's the first chord of the tune. Yeah. And I think everybody understands

that the real book really got it wrong, but I still hear some bass players go to this note. Oh, no, no, Buena, really? I've never heard it. You don't ever hear it in the recording. Wow. Wait, I didn't know this. This is new to you?

Yeah. No. Wait, starting again? Well, this is the intro. Oh, right, right. Oh, that's well. I mean, it's the form, but yeah. Check it out.

G minor 13. Yeah, of course. Yeah. I didn't know the real book. Oh, you didn't know that it was B-flat in the real book. I thought maybe you didn't know it was G minor 13. I was like, man that's that's that yeah you know what I think in subsequent real books like in the legal

real books that are there now it is g minor okay but in the ones that we grew up with yeah this is what I'm saying like you know what it was I wasn't this tune wasn't on my radar when I had a real book actually this is a grown person's grown person's tune yeah this one this is this is an old old person you gotta live some life to really be able now does the real book have the when the changes go double when they double you know it doubles up course not okay so that's yeah It's of no use. And triple up. Yeah.

But I'm wondering, is there a version that Bill Evans did with the trio that he might have played B-flap major? That's possible. You know how like they would put at the bottom what recording they get? I mean, this is on the-C-O-B. No, it says K-O-B. Okay. We'll get to the reference recordings on the next one. The next one that we deal with has the very funny instance of the reference recordings.

Now, this one is just very well known for, I think a lot of people already know this, that in the old real books, and this is why it's so helpful to kind of think about it, like a software update. Like, I'm just going to go back to the tunes I think I know. Yeah. I'm going to check the changes. If I learned these tunes before I was like 25,

there's a good chance that I might have learned them wrong or just wasn't hearing things the way that I was hearing. Or, you know, back then we didn't have Spotify, so I might have just had a recording that was whack. Right. Of someone playing it, right? Or I might have learned it from someone. Well, that's the great thing about it.

And I'm glad we're segueing into reference recordings because unlike, you know, that's something that the software update never changes or if it changes, it shouldn't. You know what I'm saying? Like you've got the reference recording, especially a tune like this where there really is a, I know sometimes we talk about, you know,

what is the reference and recording and there's some dispute, or not dispute, just different approaches to that. But it's not like it's like, you know, this recording is like a fanny pack where that was hip in the 80s. No.

And then it was not hit for 20 years. And now I'm seeing hip. You know what I'm saying? It's not like that. kind of song. You pulled this espresso out of your fanny pack. I saw it. Well, it's because it's hip again. Apologies to our UK listeners. Oh, now. Okay.

So, I mean, how could that how could you not play it? Oh, yuck. Do people play that? I've heard people play it. I especially love it when they're playing it and it's like a deep funk groove.

That's the best. Even that's better on that. All right. But that's such a, I mean, come on, man. it's 4-5-1 right yeah yeah it's not 6-5-1 I know I know that's smooth jazz again and we're not big shout out we're not we're not bashing the real book again the real book has been a great tool for I'm bashing it now that I see that I'm totally bashing it it serves its purpose but it's it's good just go back effing up these beautiful tunes that's let's get to go check on some stuff on our last tune next week we're going to do

episode on tunes the real book got correct oh we could actually that'd be It's going to be invisible episode. No, I guess there are some. Of course. Of course. So let's check it out here. Our last tune. The girl from Ipanema.

Okay. Now this is a really interesting work. They messed that up? Well, so this is really funny, actually. So it has two reference recordings listed down below. Okay. It has Antonio Carlos Jobim. The name of the album is the composer of Decephanado.

And it has the Getz Gilberto album, right? Yeah, which I mean, now that's a reference recording. That's the one everybody wants to hear. So how the real book shows it is what we, have here where it's it's let's skip down let's start with the the Getz Gilberto recording so we'll skip down to the bottom here

listen to that okay so first of all it's in D flat which is a beautiful key for this actually look what kind of nice nice she's of grace

she's a manina anything else you notice right away D7 There is no D7 No instead of the A flat 7 He played No he plays A flat 7 Wait check it out

Oh yeah The first time we played D7 No wait to start it again Sir Please That sounds like that's a pedal point That's a pedal point When the bass comes in, it's always A-flat.

Okay. We know what he's doing, it's A-flat 13. That's what it is. It's that guitar voice. Both work, but you can hear the bass clearly is going to state A-flat every time. Which is interesting, right? Because I always learned it with that tritone, some of that flat too, but it's on this Gets Gilberto, it's always the five, which is interesting.

Yep. So the real book has, the changes are exactly like from this 1962 album from Antonio Carlos Rubim. Antonio Carlos Jovim in F, okay, that's cool. But check out the melody. It takes a minute to give. So that's the melody of, so just so we're clear, on the real book, it says down below, Gets Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Rubim, the composer of Desmond.

Those are the two references. And it kind of, the real book version doesn't do either. It doesn't do either, right? It's like, well, do it from the key of Antonio Carlos Jobim with the changes with that flat too. Interesting. But we're going to do the melody kind of like the Getske-Lberto. But everybody that I know that has played this song in some kind of brunch capacity. Where else would you play it?

Uses sort of the real book version here, which I think is interesting. I actually love this in D-flat, man. It's just an aggressive, gorgeous key for this, you know. It makes the bridge a lot more interesting and fun to play, too. Cool. Yeah, man. Well, there we go. We are learning.

We are growing. And what else are we doing? Do you have one more or is that it? That's it, man. That's it. Thanks, everybody. That was so awesome. Man, thank you for illuminating us.

Which one is your favorite? Which one of these is my favorite? The Donnelly, because it really shows. Well, that's just on your mind right now. It's really one of the fun things about doing things sometimes live on YouTube is you get to watch yourself in real time. Just everything breaks. down your whole history of life break down. Well, I think

it's just such a great thing to jump back on that just for a second. So is it? And then all the C7, it's to the A flat, right? It's to the Aflown C7. So that was, it would have been bad if it was still. It's not, like, it's not terrible. It's not terrible either way, but it is more interesting, I think, with that A natural.

And it's definitely, you know, it's good to know. Well, there you go. We're always learning. Interesting is a debate on who wrote it because Miles claims he wrote it and and Byrd claimed he wrote it. My house was known for claiming he wrote a lot of tubes. Like blue and green as well. I'm pretty sure that was Bill Evans.

Maybe he learned from the best. I don't know. I don't know. Cool. Thanks, everybody. Yeah. So thank you for being here for the podcast. We are here twice a week. Twice a week.

Oh, geez. Doing our thing. If you enjoy what you heard, please. What are we doing? What are they doing? Oh, leave us a rating review. So we fell off this a little bit. And you know what happened?

We stopped shilling for this. and because of that, people have stopped leaving us ratings and reviews. But I know for a fact, because I run into people on the street. Yeah. Right out here. Yeah. Fans of the you'll hear a podcast. No, you don't.

Yes, I do. Come on. I can tell a podcast. They hang around the St. Louis Public Radio, the NPR station. That actually, same type of people. That seems right, actually. That seems on brand for that. Same type of people.

And they're like, loosen the podcast. I said, do you, did you leave us a rating or, and perchance a review? And you know what they say? What? I don't know how to. I don't know how to. I don't know how to. Exactly.

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Until next time. Happy practicing. You'll hear it. You'll hear it.