You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Three Zone Concept

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

Today, Adam talks about the Three Zone Concept he learned from Geoffrey Keezer. 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

Attention. If anybody knows the last known whereabouts of American jazz pianist Peter Martin, please send that information to Andrew at Open Studio Network.com. Let us know which concert venue you saw him in, which blazer he was wearing during the performance, and how he sounded. Missy Pete. I'm Madam Madison. You're listening to the You'll Hear at Podcast. Still going solo as Peter is out, tour in the world as he's apt to do. But digging the solo lessons, love having the lessons at the piano, and it's an opportunity to get to just play some music and explain some things. We get asked a lot. So on Facebook, a couple weeks ago, I got asked about this concept that we talked a lot about here at Open Studio. Jeffrey Keiser has lessons on it. Peter has lessons

on it. It's the three-zone concept at the piano. And apologies to non- pianists, although I think even non- pianists, you're going to learn something that you could apply to your own piano playing, which every musician should have a little bit of. And this three zone concept can be really, really useful when approaching playing solo piano tunes. I mean, I even use it with, with, you know, a rhythm section because I'm not scared to play in roots with my rhythm section. And the idea is really simple. It's that we have an outer zone with our left hand, which is usually the base part. We have an outer zone with our right hand, which is usually the melody part. You can think of it as the soprano part. our inner zones are a combination of our inner hands, you know, starting with the thumb for both hands.

They can play, be a part of the inner zone. And that's really covering the tenor range and the alto range, if you're thinking about this in like that kind of SAT, TB format. And what this does is allows us to voice chords under melody with roots to have bass movement, to have inner voice movement, and to have melodic content on top. And it really creates this great sound. So, you know, over a tune, like, I fall in love too easily here. So I'm doing, you know, I have a bass part going that's kind of independent of everything else.

I have a melody that's definitely independent of everything else. And between my left and right hand inner voicing, I'm showing here on YouTube, like my thumb and my index finger, and even sometimes my middle finger, I'm voicing the chord when I want, and then I'm doing some counter melodies when I want that give it a nice, a nice, a nice, uh, reflection on what it just occurred either in the baseline or the melody. So a way that you can start implementing this is start with those outer voicings, right? Or outer voices, excuse me. So that's just the baseline and the melody. And then from there, the most, I think, easiest way to get into it is to start filling it in with chords. And we want to make sure to include the shell. And usually you can fit in one color note in there.

You know, usually the fifth, the 13th, the 11th, the ninth, something like that. So in this case, and either my right hand or my left hand can take the sole responsibility for those chords, or I can do a combination of both. You know, usually with your left hand, because you have the base note covered, you can either do the seventh or the third

as like an extra thing. So you might do, and then try to fill in the rest, you know, with your, with your right hand. For this I actually might reach up to the 10th. Thinking about now the voicing. So then I have the, excuse me, the seventh in my right hand, third in my left, and then one color, one color note, maybe the ninth. The G. I'm not usually thinking about it this much. I just kind of play it at this point, but it's kind of two notes in my left and three in my right, or two or three in my right. right. So then once you get a handle on some getting some voicing in there in that middle zone,

you can start comping with it, like get some independence of rhythm. Try rolling them. And from here, we're already starting to do and to hear some counter melodies within this harmony. So we can really start playing with that and it's great to practice just counter melodies using one of your hands. All those counter melodies happening with my right hand. I'll try it. with my left. All those with the left hand while the outer half of the left hand is trying to lay down the base line.

Wasn't as successful as my right. You might have got to work on that. But that's really the basics of it. And then you can really do whatever you want. You can start rolling more. You can start putting in more chords, dropping more low baselines. It's really endless what this three zone concept

can get you as a solo pianist. And it's really, really fun. concept to shed. So I encourage you to just take tunes you know really, really well, so you don't have to think about the melody or the changes and practice that three zone concept in the way that I laid out where it's like you start with just the outer melody baseline, get those comfortable, and then start adding in chords, then start adding in counter melodies, and then do all three. Okay, so next time we'll be back with Peter, and if we find him, again, if you see them, send it to Andrew atopensudioNetwork.com. Send us your speakpipes. Go to you'll hear it.com.

send us a message send us a voicemail and yeah leave us a rating and review and I think that's all I got for now but until next time you'll hear it