You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Soft Touch - Ballads - S3E32

Episode Date: February 12, 2019

Peter and Adam are at the Steinway this week, and to kick off Piano Week, they discuss the "soft touch" method when playing ballads.The ending theme song for today's episode is "Twinkle Toes" by Josh Rager. To get your music featured on You'll Hear It, send an MP3 recording of your music to [e-mail] us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey. Have you heard of the soft touch? Isn't that like a shammy that you use on your vehicle? No. Have you heard of the safe touch? That I have heard of. I'm Adam Manus.

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 live from Open Studio. We're here at the piano. Back at the piano, right? Back at the piano. We like to come back to the piano periodically.

We do have our crappy M-A-A-Dio keyboard. Shut out M-A-A-A-W-D-W-W. Keep on being crappy with your keyboards. No. No, we have that over in the Podcave. Talk about soft touch. That M audio is very Unsafe touch.

Yeah. M audio is already a little moldy from being in the pocket. That's right. We had to step away for health reasons. It's always good to come over to the Steinway.

Yeah. And people like the Steinway episodes, man. Yeah. Now, real big shout out to Steinway. Huge shout out. Nothing moldy about a Steinway. No, no. Well, sometimes they are,

but it's a separate. Never the Steinway's fault. Never the Steinway's fault. You know, so today, you've been doing a string of concerts that I've actually watched. which you're welcome. Yeah.

Oh, you mean you're welcome for the free tickets I got you. Yes, you are welcome. Yeah, actually, thank you for the free tickets. Now, I just saw you with Diane Reeves over the weekend. It was unbelievable, one of the best shows I've seen in a long, long time, and I'm not just saying that because you're sitting right here. I am. But it was incredible.

And one of the things that I noticed strongly in your playing that I was super jealous of that I wanted to talk about and see if we can get your thoughts on, is we played a beautiful version of Wayne Shorter's Infoenix. that Diane wrote lyrics to. The gorgeous lyrics. Yeah, they're really nice. Really nice. And she's just kills it. And your touch on the ballad was so just beautiful and round and perfect. And you were doing all these these different bell tone effects and all these different effects. And I just want to talk about with you specifically how you approach playing a ballad like that. Either under a singer or, you know, I mean, when you have the melody, there's some dynamic things that have to happen so you

can bring that out. But I'm just one of about like when you're accompanying someone and you know you you played sparsely sometimes you played what would be a lot but it fit perfectly other times and I'm just wondering what you're thinking it when you're doing that well I mean first all I love playing ballads so I've you know it's like anything if you have fun doing it and enjoy it and kind of a passion for it I think if you do this long enough it can become a you know kind of more advanced part of your playing because we just, you know, naturally you're going to put that energy in time into not only practicing the kind of elements you need to be able to pull it off, but also listening and just thinking about it and doing it, you know.

And so with that group, I have a big advantage in that I've played with Diane a lot and accompanied her a lot. So it's, I mean, really, I should be doing it better than I am considering how much I've done it, you know, because you definitely, there's like a, there's like a continuum to one's development. it if you have an opportunity to do it a lot. And I think what also has helped is I've done it in a lot of different situations, small clubs, big concert halls, different kinds of pianos, difficult pianos. That's a great piano they have at the Sheldon concert hall. And so that's a big advantage. And the room sounds great.

Yeah, and I think especially on the ballad, that piano sounded absolutely terrific. Yeah, you get a real chance to hear it acoustically in the room. And so I think whenever you have that, and there's like a lot of very natural kind of control reverb, I would say, in that room. Yeah, yeah. And it's a good sounding soft piano. Some piano sound better being played loudly. Some have a better tone when they play quietly. I think that one

leans towards the quiet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so. It was not necessarily like the evenness or the easiest to control instrument. So I definitely remember you got to put a little bit energy into that, but if you commit to that, that kind of actually helps me too from overplaying sometimes. Because just to be able to have the energy to, like

you almost have to really think about and make sure that you nail the voicing at the right time because you don't want to be shifting around too much, you know. So before we get super, super far into it, you set up the song with a bit of a Robato intro solo. And I'm wondering, like, when you're called upon to do that, what do you, what do you think of? What are you basing that around? Thinking about the tune, are you just on spur of the moment, you know? Yeah, I'm very spur of the moment with that in that situation. I mean, to the point where, like, I don't think about anything. And so what ends up happening until I start. Right. Like as I'm starting, I'm just kind of creating something. What ends up happening,

like, I'm not, I'm definitely not 100% accurate. I mean, 100% like nailing it. That was pretty good the other night. I'm more like four out of five or six out of seven come out really good. And so I, I think what you gain in being in the moment in the spontaneity and kind of what the energy of the gig and the room can give you, you do lose every five gigs or so. I mean, not that it's like horrible, but I've definitely done some sort of pedestrian. intros on there. Whereas if you have one thing planned out, it's not going to have that spontaneity, but you can have the consistency. So you're just putting your hands on the keys and then whatever comes in to your head first. Yeah. Do you just play and kind of, I heard you develop a little

motif throughout and I'm, you know, I'm sure that's part of it. Yeah. And I think that's where the kind of luck or the more that you can connect yourself with the moment. Because I'm definitely trying to develop something. It's not necessarily a build. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. Yeah. But whatever I start with that becomes the theme. So like, if you get lucky and play something nice to start with, then it makes it so much easier because I'm really like tuned into like, it's like you're starting a story. It's not those things when they give you like a word or a theme.

Now tell a story about it or tell a joke about it. Yeah. If you get lucky and get some good words to start with, then it's something you're comfortable with. That's cool. Yeah. All right. So getting more into it now,

you know, the main thing for me that I notice as a pianist is the dynamics and your ability to play softly and evenly. And I'm wondering if you could talk about the 10, technique behind that. That takes a tremendous amount of technique. You know, technique is not all about fast and clean or whatever. I noticed you were using the soft pedal. Yeah. And don't be afraid of the soft pedal. Yeah. And so what are you, what are you thinking of?

I mean, you're not thinking of anything technically when you get there, hopefully, but when you practice this or when you first started trying to play this soft, this quietly, what are you thinking about? Well, I think what you just mentioned actually, that's kind of the biggest entry point to the mindset you need to be able to successfully play quietly, and that is that it's a technique. And so, like, you, we're always thinking about either fingering or speed, dexterity, all these things as part of technique. Rarely do we focus in on just the, like, what, how do we technically have to hold our hands? What do we have to do in order to be able to pull this off? And so what happens is, as pianists, we don't really, like, if you're a trumpet player and you

have to, like a classical trumpet player, especially, or jazz trumpet player, but, classical and you like learning these pieces or the orchestral excerpts or whatever there where you have to play quietly. Like it's such a different kind of technique and it's so challenging in a way. Yeah, they have speed with the fingers and all that stuff too that I think there's sometimes more in tune with that than we are as piano. So you have to first of all get interested in wanting to do it but then say okay, I'm going to dedicate some of my technical practice to learning to play soft and to working on it into developing it. I wonder if you could just play a little bit of maybe that infinize if you want. Yeah. Imagining that the melody

is being played. Right. Right. You're comping behind Diane in a style that you might on the gig. So this is kind of the stuff I do on the intro or whatever. And I mean, for sure, one thing, no matter what I do,

and harmonically, you can go a lot of places, but I usually do, and now I'm all the way down on the soft pedals fully engaged. And I'm, you know, whatever I am thinking about and concentrating on the little bit with the pedals is all about the right pedal. So that, you know, I can maximize the resonance, but I still have the kind of control. Because this can start to move around harmonically kind of quickly.

You don't want to bleed it over. Right, right, right. So I'm actually just mashing that left pedal down, which is probably not the best thing. So I think in terms of volume and touch, it's set the tone for a tune like this. as much as either kind of rubato or certain harmonies or certain melodies I think just the texture and the sound the quietness of it, the kind of length

of the notes, that's all just as important it's like pulling off something. Like really on this intro, and I know you were asking about something else. It's all right. No, no, no. But it's like on the end, but it got me thinking again about the intro.

It's like you can get away with a really great intro and play nothing interesting melodically. Yeah. Because when you're playing a tune like this that has such a strong melody coming up. Yeah. You know. Yeah, you're putting just something in the air.

right yeah like setting the room up for whatever's gonna yeah i mean it's like you go to a great restaurant and you know you have to get some good food at a certain point but like they can be putting the glass there and the menu and they're walking by and all these little a moose bush up in there yeah exactly i actually had a moose booths we can talk about that maybe on tomorrow last night yeah very rare that i partaken it was given to me so yeah but so i think that we do want to think about the mood as much and that's usually not as much of a melodic thing but if you're playing it's just piano without the rhythm section for the intro. It's a texture, it's a color.

Exactly, yeah. But I mean, I'm always sort of, I mean, 19 out of 20 times playing this with that group with Diane. I'm ending up on this D7 sharp 9. And I think on Saturday, I don't remember exactly what I played, but I think I was pretty, because of what we played before, it might have been the same key or similar.

Like I went sort of at some different places harmonically. Yeah, you did. So at a certain point, I am thinking I got to get here. And not only that, this tune is a tricky one. Yeah, to hear that first note. Yeah, this is one of the only, I'll give away a little secret about Diane Reese. This is one of the only ones that I have to, I don't have to, but I give her, I'll play something like this.

It's good. She never needs, and at this point she probably doesn't need it, but there was one time when I didn't and she was just like, you know, it's hard to hear. It's hard to hear. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, one thing with that too is I'll give it so that you don't have to be like, you know, I'll do like, I'll voice it out in that core. You've got to be sly with it a little bit.

Yeah. And then I might do something like that. Cool. So, yeah, I think that the, you know, when you're playing Roboto, and then even when the rhythm section comes in, we want to think about in terms of, like, to really get that full sound. I mean, to me, it's not that hard to play quietly, but to play quietly, like, with a full sound. And it's hard. You know, and evenly where it's not like, you know.

But then, you know, also I'll do a lot of, like, you know, where you can kind of control things. It sort of gives it an interesting. melodic, you know. It seems like you use a lot of, a lot of that kind of broken voicing's up, up, upper register, back to the mid register, back to the upper, like little bell tone effects, little copy things like that. Yeah. That's very cool.

So speaking of the bell tone effect, so you do do, you do do, you do do like some little octave things I noticed. Yeah. And then some, like I said, some broken chords, some just kind of chords up high. Yeah, a lot of times with the stuff up there, I almost think about it and sometimes we'll even interact with the drum. drums like with sort of symbol things that they do with the brushes where they're not like Bing yeah but like they either turn the brush around or it's sometimes they'll just hit it

with the brush little scrapes and stuff yeah it'll be like you know I think about it the placement of it similar to that and we don't necessarily have to do it together but sometimes he or she will do it and then maybe at the next measure I'll do it at a different place I know something that sort of seems complimentary to it putting little sparkles in yeah yeah yeah almost like a triangle or whatever you know and then so a big part of how we did things that affects the way that I play is we have a guitarist. So I actually play a lot less. I try to really take advantage of that.

I mean, the way Homero Lubombo plays on that tune, he has a fair amount of movement the way that he comes. It's kind of arpeggiating chords from both the top and the bottom. Yep. Yeah. And that's a great thing. And if you have a guitarist that does that nicely, like for the piano, like we can take advantage of we don't have to play as much.

And so we can control even better in terms of volume, touch, nuance, all those, you know, textures. Yeah. And sometimes I'll use that by just coming. in a little bit later and really slowly, you know. And then also like on the ballad, when you have a good rhythm section, and when we start to play ballads like this,

I really think about the rhythm section as bass and drums only. Like we're moving away from the rhythm section on this, so we don't have to be like one and three all the time, you know. And if you're confident in your time, you can just kind of be like, you know, it's like, you can play like this. See, that's what I'm talking about. Rolling little chords and then filling them in

and breaking things up. Yeah, and if you feel like rhythmically, I'm not like right at the beat, feel where the beat is in when the drums and bass you don't have to be like locked in like i mean you can be locked in without making it sound like another thing i noticed you do that i do as well and you were just playing the melody there but it's a similar concept where you're not playing the melody but you're kind of voice leading on the top of the chord you know with the voicing's from one to the other yeah not just playing chord chord but like a little melody on top to help lead it to

the next thing yeah yeah yeah absolutely and i think sometimes that's sort of a less is more thing in that there'll be times where it's like wow i'm adding in some something that we don't necessarily need, but if it's at the right placement, like, I'll play less at different times, especially knowing that there's a guitar. Yeah. And then kind of add something in as the moment, you know, just to kind of interject. It's just that art of conversation kind of thing. Yeah.

But like really with this song, the way the Diane sings is so beautifully, like you got to get out the way. Yeah, yeah. You don't want to do any. I mean, she leaves plenty of like nice breasts and musical things. But it's like just let the, I mean, what a beautiful melody. What a beautiful lyric. So we talk about let the tune.

I mean, really, she could do that with just bass and drums. I could occasionally be like, and they would be fine, you know. So, man, one more thing technically before we shove off here. So you do this a lot in your ballad soloing when we get to the solo and you don't have to go deep into this. But there's a lot of out of time things happening. Like you can kind of keep the pulse with your left hand a little bit, but your melodic lines are of their own time. They're not, you know, that, that, that, that, that, you know, you're not. with the groove exactly. You're creating

this own free-sounding thing. How about that a little bit? Yeah, I mean, that's something that I definitely developed slowly over the years. It wasn't like, I mean, I used to play everything more traditional and I sometimes still do that. Like this, I try to do what's appropriate for like the tune and the mood. And so the way

I'll play the intro kind of sets things up and then the way Diane sings the melody, the way we're playing, it's floaty. You know, and then, but there is definitely a pulse there. Yeah. And so, you know, the bass is Reginald Veil in this instance is so great. at like not overplaying, but he's really that pulse. And so that gives freedom, you know, with the drums and with me.

And so when it gets to the solo, it just doesn't feel like it should go into like this sort of strict, you know. No, it's so effective, man. Yeah. And like you said, it keeps it really, really, really floaty. I wonder if you could just demonstrate just a little bit maybe in the solo over infinized couple bars. Oh, and I'll just say two, like, so it's like, let's see, three, four, since we don't have the bass in drums. So what I'm trying to do, I wasn't totally successful. I'll play a little bit of what the bass.

This is more than I'd be playing left hand. Like in time with a little. Yeah. But one way to get into this kind of playing is don't feel like you have to just force yourself totally there. But if you think about as opposed to where you start the phrase, where you're coming out of the phrase, being out of time, that can help. So if you start like three, four. Yeah. That's super hip.

So you start in time. Yeah. And then slide out. And then by the end of the phrase, you've just kind of let it devolve into something else. Exactly. And I think, too, you can think about that. with the melody, the rhythm, and the harmony kind of linking up there. So it's G minor.

You know, where you wait to resolve the harmony until afterwards. Because it's not always, like, playing in and out of time, the way we hear things, sometimes the harmony is a bigger part of it than we think. Man, that's great. Well, thanks, man. Thanks for talking about it. That's super cool. I'm going to steal all of that.

And I encourage you, too, at home. Shout out to YouTube, watching on a piano episode. Man, we've been, the YouTube channel's kind of blowing up. at least in the comments section. Oh, man. Well, we had a controversial episode. We're not even prepared to talk about that yet. No, no, we'll come back to that.

We're coming for you. If you're listening to this podcast on your phone and you want to see what's going on, we do have an overhead camera on YouTube so you can check out what Peter's playing. It's pretty great. And, oh, you know what we have today? You know we have the premiere of a new feature today.

Oh, that's right. We have our first ending song sent in by a listener. We are taking your tunes and we want to play them at the end of each episode. If you have a song that you want to hear on the You'll Hear It Podcast Towards the end, you can send it to our producer, Andrew. That's Andrew at openstudio network.com. Yep.

And today is from, do we know this gentleman? We do know this gentleman. This is Josh Rager. Josh has done some transcribing for us. Oh, he is. He's a friend of the Open Studio. Friend of Open Studios. Yeah, this is a tune by him called Twinkle Toes.

And is this related to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star? The classic? Yeah. Yeah, it is. For the you, Suzhou. people out there. It's always an A violin. Wow. Look at that Suzuki nerd over there. So I'll just say one quick tip. Actually, this, I wasn't even thinking about doing this.

Are you going to do a Suzuki lesson? Well, just think about, you know, because I came up doing Suzuki violin. I actually didn't do Suzuki piano. But if you take like some very simple, certainly technical things, but just simple piano pieces, if you want to work on your soft playing, get that left and also your left pedal, your soft pedal technique. And great for the right hand pedal technique too. Oh, to work on your song playing with a simple, yeah, yeah, yeah. And what you like, like listening, you don't want to have anything jumping out, especially for the left hand control, you know, for different things that you do. Our Steinway here in studio, not the greatest soft piano. Yeah, not the greatest thing. Yeah, yeah. Josh,

thank you so much. Again, send your tunes to Andrew atopensudionetwork.com. Yep. And let's check out Twitter shows. Yep. You'll hear it. You'll hear it.