You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Secrets To Advanced Ear Training

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Ever wondered what the trick is to training your ears to hear just like the pros? In this episode, Adam and Peter dive into their tips for developing some great ear training habits and rituals.Unlock your FREE Open Studio trial to become a better player today.https://openstudiojazz.link/trialYou'll Hear It: LIVE in NYCFriday, April 12, 2024 @ 8pm EST – FREEat the Sheen Center in ManhattanSee the #1 jazz podcast, up close and in-person. Space is limited, so reserve your spot today.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

Hey, Peter. Peter. Check this out. Are you going to get there? Are you going to get there? Can you do both? Can you copy what I'm playing and say what I'm saying at the same time? Can now we add movement to the situation? I'm waving my arm. Can you do that? Can you do that? Hey, what if this episode is about training our elephants? I'm Adam Annis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to, I'm trying to do to you now. I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hearer podcast. Jazz.

Explained. Yes. Explained brought to you by you'll hear it.com. Go to you'll hear it.com to reserve your free ticket for open studio. Nope. For You'll hear it live. Live in New York City at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture. That's 16 Bleaker Street on April 12th, 2024.

Again, you'll hear it.com to get your free ticket. Yes. I'm excited. How you doing? I'm good, man. Sorry, was that creepier out at the beginning? I just thought it'd be fun. That was no rehearsal.

Okay, that was, I don't people think we sell off the stuff. Yeah, no, they know. They know it was no rehearsal. You ever see, uh, there's an S&L bit on weekend update with like Fred Armiston and Kristen Whig, I think, and it's called Garth and Cat. And it's the mirror game. It's an improv game.

Okay. It's like from like, you know, Second City. It's like an improv game where you would, uh, you would just try to mirror exactly what the person, one person is saying something. Yeah, one person is sort of improvising what they're saying, talking about, like, you know, having a live podcast in New York City. And then the other person is just trying to mirror what they're doing. And then you can try to kind of confuse it. You'd be a good improviser.

Okay, stop. Okay, stop. That's, this is where improv, uh, it's good for like 15 minutes. Well, I thought, you know, because I'm still trying to recover from my, uh, the abrasions to my ego from, that comment, that speakpipe about me interrupting, I'm just going to push it up. I'm not going to interrupt you. I'm just going to talk with you.

Exactly what I say at all times. So there's no interruptions. You can't interrupt if you're always talking. Correct. So we got another speak pipe today. What do you think this one's going to be about? Well, I know because I've listened. Have you heard this one?

No. You haven't. Okay. I heard it. I thought it would be something interesting for us to talk about. But it's about your training, right? Hmm. I have heard this one.

Okay, yeah, yeah. So let's take a gander. Okay. Thank you for this opportunity to use my voice to raise a concern. Now, what I'd really like to know is the secrets that you have about training your ears. Jazz is largely improvised 99.9% of the time. and all we hear about in classical is how great an improviser he was. So how do you actually train your ears, we already know.

But what about the secrets? You know, how to recognize the Lidian flat 7, you know, when you hear it over the flat 7 or the flat 7? or the tritone sub. You'll hear it. You know, how to translate that from your mind to your fingers, you know, with the heart. But that's the question, you know. I'm tired of hearing about how to do things. I want to know about the secrets after you've accomplished it.

So I asked accomplished persons. Thank you so much. Natai from Thailand signing. Oh, looks like they run out of time there. Yeah. Well, we'll try our best. I think it's from Nicholas. Okay.

Is what his name is showing up as. Thank you for the question. And yes, we're going to try our best. There's a lot to unpack there. Let's get to unpacking, Mr. Samsonite. Yeah. Well, so first of all, secrets is kind of a loaded term. I don't know if there's any real secret to what you're talking about.

It sounds like you... There's a record called secrets. There's a great record called secrets. I mean, listen to secrets again and again. But I think there are some things that maybe if you're just sort of like learning how to do, really anything, it doesn't even have to be ear training. But there are some things that make a difference as far as like how good you can become at it in, you know, however amount of time you're trying to work at it. And so I don't know if this is a secret at all. But the first thing that comes up is like, you know, if you're talking about how to recognize a Lydian dominant, which is I think what the scale he was describing.

Right? Yeah. C7, sharp 11, you would use that Lydian dominant. Right? The only way to recognize it. I mean, the secret is to do it again and again. Like, there's no other way to do it. Yeah.

You can't think about it. And then it comes out of your heart, as you were saying. You have to, it has to be so ingrained in you that every time you hear the Lidian dominant, you're like, oh, that's a Lidian dominant. And the only way to do that is to actively serve. these things out, right? Is to actively practice them. And then when you're hearing,

when you're listening to music, is identifying what is happening in the music. And you're gonna, the only way to, active listening. Active listening. The only problem with this is you're gonna be wrong a lot. Yeah. But that is not a bad thing.

That's how you get better at things is by being wrong. You have to like, the only way out is through. So you can't just like, overthink it. There's no, there's no magic pill you can take where all of a sudden you can hear everything.

You have to hear things wrong. Realize when you're wrong. Yeah. And then, Try to fix it. Try to understand what's happening. And so a couple of things, depending on what you're trying to hear, spend time with what you're trying to hear.

If you're trying to hear the Lydian dominant sound on like a tritone sub, you know, who does that? Who's using that? Where are they using it? Contextualizing. Monk uses it a lot. You know what I mean? Like listen to a lot of monk and then recognize when that Sharp 11 sound is happening,

you know? That's just one example. Like people ask me, I've been making a lot of stuff about modal interchange. and they're like, well, where is this, where are you hearing this? And it's like, well, it's everywhere. You could get aggressive with it. No, well, where are you hearing? Where are you hearing it?

But, you know, of course, like, you listen to Stevie Wonder or you listen to Michael Jackson's music. You're going to hear it. You're going to hear it a lot. Yeah. Right? You're going to listen to French composers. You're going to hear it.

So, like, listen to them, see when you can recognize that sound and when you can't. And it's just like, the only other thing I'd say is that's maybe the secret is like, for me, I've been working on my ear since I was five years old. I was spent a lot of my childhood just being obsessed with being able to hear things off of the radio and figure them out on the piano. And it was a lot of me getting it wrong. Like organic ear train.

But I would do it every day. And not because someone told me to do it every day just because I was super curious about it. So if you can get curious about it, then you got it. Yeah. And I think that there's a difference between secrets and... An album and thrust?

Yeah, exactly. No, I was saying secrets and something that's maybe a little bit hidden, right? Because nothing I think that we're going to say is going to be revolutionary in terms of... Like, we're always looking for that other thing that is not obvious, right? Right.

But sometimes people are not doing the fundamental things. Like being curious about... Okay, so we're talking about ear training. I would put it to something that might be... be a little bit easier to understand. Think about playing in this room, not the piano, but something that pitch is a big deal. The violin, perhaps. I spent a lot of time as

a young lad playing and learning, violin, practicing, and pitch is so integral to being able to get better at it. So it's like, how do you learn to play in tune? I would say that same thing in terms of looking or being curious about some secret or a hack to get there would be there the same as like, how do you become

a better improvise? How do you be able to hear a Lydian Dom and how are you able to do these different things? And you brought this up in terms of making some mistakes and stuff. Like to be able to learn to play in tune, you have to learn what out of tune sounds like. A lot. And what it feels like. A lot. A lot. And it has to start to hurt you.

Yeah. And like really like you have to be shame for it, at least personally shamed, if not publicly shamed, if you want to make some progress with it. All of our, all of the people that we know that are professional string players, including your father, are obsessed with pitch. Yeah. When they're playing, you know, in the orchestra. That's what they primarily are. Because there's a constant comparison with, because you're not just trying to hit to a metronomic,

I mean to a pitch like A440 exactly this for any particular note. You're trying to fit in with what's happening around you. So the music sounds in pitch. And that is an important part of ear training. Become obsessed with ear training. If you want to get good at your training, if you want to get good at rhythm, like if you're like, a lot of people ask me, well, how do you do the rhythm in jazz or whatever? Become obsessed with rhythm.

Yeah. bang on your desk. Like, you know, just the easiest way to learn anything is not to go Google it, but it's to like hear something that moves you and say, what is going on there? And then go try to figure it out. Get curious to deconstruct it and then to reconstruct it yourself. Like that's the thing with ear training. Like if you hear, and that's why I said, this is organic ear training.

I did the same thing. Learning stuff off the radio. Learning felonious monk, learning anything. And we can, like, don't get caught up in the debate about like, well, what sort of stuff? Should it be Bach instead of Methodist, Himnal? Pick any of them. Yeah. Because whichever one is exciting you on that day, that's the secret.

I mean, if you want to go basic, go to your, like, go to your dial. I'm going to say right in the middle of the dial is usually where the contemporary country stations. And no, I'm not trying to, no, I'm not starting anything with our bros down in Nashville. Love you guys. Contemporary Christian or gospel. It's a fine line. Contemporary country. Oh, contemporary.

Country. Yeah. Contemporary country music. As opposed to country and Western. Well, even, or country and Western. But what we're talking about is very simple songs. Yeah, right? You should be able to, within a couple of weeks of, if you know music at all, right?

Like you understand how scales work and how keys work. Yeah. You should be able to train your ear to be able to figure out what the tonic is on these songs and then what the chord changes is off that. You don't have to have perfect pitch. You can just say the tonic is one. Yeah. And then figure out, you know, in Roman numerals, what is the four chord?

What's the six chord? What's the three chord? Is there a flat three? Is there a flat seven? like, what's going on harmonically? There are easy songs to hear. But, like, that's, I would say pop music, but pop music now is almost like sound design.

So it's really hard. It's, like, so simple that it's like usually no core changes necessary. But any of this stuff, I think there's a spectrum in terms of like, because some people are like, oh, I can already do that. Well, it's like, well, no, find a more complicated. Then go do the Beatles. Or if it took you two weeks before, do it, do it again. See if you can do it in two minutes.

Or start to get more complicated. Then do Stevie Wonder songs, right? It's a little bit, a little bit less. It's still pretty complicated. Do the Beatles. Do, you know, do Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle arrangements. See if you can figure out the changes to those, right? Yeah.

It's going to be pretty much down the middle, but it's going to have a little bit more rich textures. Yeah. And you can go all the way up to then, like, see if you can figure out what's going on, like, Messian. Yeah. You know what I mean? Don't be messing with Messian. Or like interstellar space. Yeah.

Yeah. And I would say, you know, along the lines of other secrets, again, they're not, they're not really secrets they've been talked about. But they're a little bit hidden in plain sight in that people don't give them enough weight and gravitas in terms of like what they can do to really push your ears in a very interesting and can be quick way. Because like what I'm saying. Like sometimes secret is you're looking for a secret or you're looking for a hack or you're looking for a back door into and all those are fine.

It's not like, no, you got to put in the sets and rep. Yes, you are going to have to put in the sets and rep. That's why we talk about listening to stuff when we're five years old. We're not talking about stuff we heard two days ago and we've mastered now. But that also doesn't mean that it has to take you 40 years to learn. how to identify a lillian dominant court. Like there's all different. There's so much stuff that I can hear,

but that's like 3% of music. There's 97% still out there. So when we talk about it, it's a lifetime journey. It's not a lifetime journey to get 100% ear training, not even for some, you know, savant of perfect pitch and studying and everything.

Even them, it's just a small percentage. And that's great. That's fun. But I would say in terms of like, you know, the hidden secret or whatever, thing what it is

you're trying to learn. Like we don't do that enough. Like you want to do do... Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. A little pitchy here. Let me grab that one.

Do, do, do. Let me go chromatic. You know, there's so many different things. I know these scales and, you know, but there's still places to come inside of those. So sometimes we think... Because we can play something that our ears are attuned to.

it. They're not. If you can sing it, you can sing it and play it at the same time, take it through some different keys. You could study just that for one day. Then go find monk where, you know, but don't just stop there. Oh, that's Lydia and Dominant. Why? Dibu-weedoo, or is it? Debo, we do. Like, those are the little difference. It's not about like just the chromaticism of it. It's so many different connections that you can make. You have to challenge yourself. You have to sing it badly. You have to sing it wrong. You have to match it with what you're playing. You have to come back the next day and get a little bit closer. That's the secret. Another secret that you could try. This is a hack, maybe, is to learn some repertoire. Deeply learn some repertoire. So maybe you pick five songs. Juet de repertoire. And this could be, if you are into like modern jazz, you can choose whatever five songs you think are part of the repertoire. Imagine you're going to a session with your favorite musician, what tunes are they calling, right?

learn five of those songs, but learn them deeply. Take them through all 12 keys. And I know this is like a trope, but the reason why you do that is when you, you know, part of your repertoire, you're learning some Monk tunes or whatever, you start taking it through all 12 keys, right? You start realizing like, okay, well, monk is using this like Sharp 11 thing on that flat 7 chord, right, on that back door.

It's not really using it on the four chord as much, and that's interesting, right? Yeah. But it forces you to. sort of like numerically hear where these things are. And then you, I think even subconsciously, you start to associate what these master composers have given you, which is their harmonic language. And you don't even know why it has to work,

but if you can start hearing it, so pick five tunes, learn them, memorize them in the original key, and then take it through all 12 keys. And I know that seems like, oh, that's so easy for you to say,

no, it's because I've done it. And like, every great player you know, Lex, bach. No, no, every great player you've ever heard has done that kind of work. Yeah.

At least a little bit. They spent periods of their life where they had to do that because that's where we've all had to do. And it's not a secret. It just makes your ear better. It makes your musicianship better. You start to understand the intervals. You understand the language of the music you're playing when you learn the repertoire. You learn the melodic language.

You learn the harmonic language. You learn the intros, the outro, all the little details, right? And so, yeah, it sounds dogmatic. I'm getting dogmatic because I don't know. But this is one of the parts of musical training, especially to become a great improviser. that requires and is rewarded by dogmatism, actually in terms of how you go about things. It's just like your practice routine.

Yeah, there's no shortcuts to that. No, no. But there can be, you kind of hinted on this, like you can have spurts of progress when you go an inch wide and a mile deep, which is like just even that first phrase. If you took that, that's an inch wide and took that through all 12 keys.

And not even worried about the rhythm. I mean, do the rhythm. If you can do that, that's great. But you're really just like, and then you're stopping and concentrating on that sharp 11 on each one of those. Like, you can have a nice little spurt. And I think this idea of playing from the heart, like that will become the easy part because that's something that everybody has.

Yeah, playing from the heart means that your mind is not as activated. Yeah. And so when you internalize this stuff, when you're just playing what you're hearing, then you're playing from the heart. But it's hard to play from what you're just hearing when you're thinking about what you're playing. Is this the Lydian dominant or is it? And the confidence that you get from developing your ears, even if that's incremental, even if you look back years later, like, oh, I thought I had my ears together that I didn't know anything.

But because you're making progress and you're hitting those spurts, that confidence will help you along the way to play from your heart. That's not like a destination. That's a daily activity. It's a daily practice. Yeah, this is so true. It's so true. It is a daily practice. Yeah.

You know what else is a daily practice? Here we go. Actually, not a daily practice. This is a one time only event. Well, maybe the first of many is you'll hear it live coming up soon. Why don't I keep forgetting the day? Is it April 12th, Friday, 2024? If you're hearing this in the future, sorry, you missed it.

But we're going to be at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture down in the I guess that's the East Village kind of area there of New York on Laker Street. It's going to be fun, man. I can't wait to meet folks. We've met some folks around town and around traveling. You'll hear it fans. So I'm excited for you guys to meet each other. Tickets are free.

Go to you'll hear it. April 12. 24 at 8 p.m. Until next time, you'll hear it.