You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Why, How, and When of Dynamics

Episode Date: September 25, 2019

Today on the podcast, Peter and Adam answer a listener's question about how to integrate dynamics to keep your improvisation interesting.Like those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet 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, Pete. What's up, Adam? How do I use Dynamics? Don't talk so lot. The podcast is falling down. All right. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll hear a podcast. Demonstrations and dynamics and daily jazz advice coming at you.

Man, this is cheesy. What are we doing here? I mean, because we said we're going to do an episode, the why, how, and win of dynamics. We spontaneously felt the need to demonstrate that in a demonstrative manner in literally the cheesiest and most basic way. But, you know, it's a free podcast. You get what you pay for, right? Highly cheesy yet highly effective. That's right. That's right.

Okay, so we have a question here, and I think this is from a Facebook group. This is from Marina, and she says, not just a Facebook group, our Facebook group. Our Facebook group, the Jazz Piano Studio. Could you kindly explain how to apply dynamics, parentheses, accents, when improvising? Thanks, Marina. Well, that's a great question, Marina. And it's, you know what, something that's not talked about. as much as things like scales or pentatonics or voicings,

but dynamics is one of the most important parts of communicating your music in an effective way. Yeah. I mean, it can make or break a performance. Yeah, and I like the Marina mentioned through the accents in there, because that's sort of an overlooked part. A lot of times people apply that to the area of phrasing.

It's certainly a part of that, but the reality of accents, they are part of dynamics. I think that's something that's understood more by like classical musicians and composers because it falls more under that umbrella for there. Whereas jazz players think about phrasing as separate from dynamics

and really to be honest, let's just say, I think jazz musicians in general, and I'm throwing myself in the community and pool of us, we don't pay enough attention to dynamics in our compositions. I think that it's an effective jazz

improviser is using dynamics as one of the most important elements of the music. And I think that you hear that on all the classic recordings and stuff and different instruments in different ways and kind of a group mentality about dynamics. But for instance, I get a lot of like let's play this tune or people writing really great music with no dynamics in them. Yeah. And I mean, that can work if you've got a group that's like plays together so much and they're so in tune to how the compositions are going to flow that they almost have like a group dynamic group dynamic to dynamics, you know. But that is rare. And I think that we, I don't know, have you seen that in your experience? Of course. Of course. Everything is underdynamics. I think with the intention that, oh, we'll work it out when we play it, you know, or else it'll just kind of naturally happen.

And that's okay if you have the time and everybody's bought into doing that. But I think there should be a little bit of more intentionality. Yeah. And I learned that, I think probably you too, because we've done so much, you know, rather extensive writing and composing and arranging four orchestra. where they're not going to work anything. If you don't put anything, first of all, if you put no dynamics, they're going to play your thing not very well because they're like, okay, this bozo doesn't know what he's talking about.

It'll be the most bland, medium-paced, yeah, totally. No, I was just going to say, my composing life has informed, I think my playing life more than anything on dynamics. And I actually think about it. I think about it from tune to tune. I think about it from a set's perspective, and I think about it within the tune of how it's one of the many arcs that I want to think about as I craft,

you know, as we improvise with the tune is dynamics. Like, do I want to come in hot? Do I want to come in not? Do I want to, can I, I'm trying to think of another rhyme. Can I put a cat in a box? No, but so this idea of- Dr. Seuss is not my, okay, go ahead. This idea of using dynamics,

but then also, you know, I'm, dynamics is part of the sound that we wanna make, right? So I know that if I play very heavily on the piano, That's not going to be a good sound for me. That's just not how... Bare paws on the piano? It doesn't... I mean, it works great for...

Thelonius Monk has this nice, like, dynamic, you know... Punchy touch or whatever. I don't have that touch. My touch is a little bit more flowy. And so, like, my strength is to pull back on that dynamic level. I know if I'm pushing too much, it's not going to be good. And then also, I choose my musicians based on how... How flowy they are.

How flowy. Like a flowy shirt. No, you know, I like to play with musicians who are sensitive dynamics. So our group sound, I think it's really, really important to think about where you are dynamically in the balance of the group. That's another, so there's like three prongs to this, right? There's like the overall dynamic of the tune, the overall dynamic to the set, the overall dynamic of your sound, and then how your sound is fitting into the dynamics of the group. Like, if we're trying to form a dynamic arc through a tune and the drummer is way louder than every. everybody else at a point. Like, it's going to fall apart. It's going to suck. Yeah.

So these are all things that you can, but the good news is all all things that once you're aware of, like awareness is key, right? Yeah. Then you can start immediately implementing them and they're going to make your music sound so much better. Yeah. And I think, you know, you've really framed well, you know, the situations where we're going to actually apply them. Thank you. I tried to frame that up. So, no, no, that's good. So let's now talk about kind of when improvising, which is what her question is. But I do think, think it's a lot of people think about dynamics too much. I'm glad that we've broaden the discussion of this because they think about it too much just in your

improvisation. It has to be part of the whole ensemble, the whole composition. It's not like, oh, it's my solo. Let me think about dynamics. That's just one element and everything that's happened before and is happening should inform that. That's right. But we are going to see for sure specific things that we can practice in order to be able to get our kind of dynamic abilities up. That has to be part of your practice routine. Because even if you have the self-awareness as you speak about if you don't have the ability to place off. I totally agree, man. And to be able to still articulate.

I mean, it's just like speaking. A great speaker has a lot of different levels. Not necessarily us. We're kind of the bare paws of podcasts here. We kind of plotted it out. Welcome to our podcast. But I mean, you know, the more, it's not to say that you're going to use all those and you go crazy with them every time, but you have to have them just as you would have

a voicing or a scale or a harmonic conception. You have to have those in your, Arsenal, if you ever have hopes being able to apply them at the right time. Hashtag bear pulse. Hashtag bear paul. You know, and another thing, I'm glad you mentioned practice, because this is something that was a game changer for me when I realized that I could really put this into my scale practice, my regular scale practice, and it's going to make a huge difference, not just in my technique,

but about just like, you know, we were saying, keeping that awareness of dynamics, right? So I never, when I practice scales or arpeggios or anything, I never practice them mezzo-forte the entire time. I hate Metzoforte. I mean, it might be where I start just to get a comfort level going, but you always have to practice dynamically. And then I remember when you showed me, like the crescendo and diminuendo scale practice,

like going from one dynamic to the other in your scale practice, this can really be a game changer. Yeah, and I think, you know, especially for pianists, well, I mean, of course, I understand it more for pianists, but really, I would think for almost every instrument, but for pianists, like, that's been really important to me as like a warm-up idea, and also as a getting to know a new instrument

a way to do that. So, like, I'm always playing these gigs. You know, we're always playing gigs where it's like, we don't know the piano, we haven't seen it in any year or whatever, and you don't have a lot of time to kind of connect with it. I love doing scales in this way with really focusing on some difficult dynamics to see what the instrument can do and what it can do.

You get that gauge of where the instrument is at. Yeah, I mean, if you're playing on your own instrument. But I think, you know, for horn players and stuff, you go into different environments, the horn sounds different. But they're going to know their instrument better. Vocalists, they know their instrument really well. but, you know, depending on the weather, depending on if you've been sick or whatever.

You've got a cold, yeah. Yeah. So I think that that is super important in your practice, and that'll start to be able to develop those skills that you need to control. This concept that Marina brought up of accents being dynamics. Let's talk about that just a little bit. Another important thing.

Yeah, because this, I think if you think about it, as we said, in terms of phrasing and dynamics together and how those interact with each other, you can really get some good things. So how to apply that. I would say like, you know, when you transcribe a solo and hopefully you've transcribed something on your instrument or, you know, we always talk about transcribing can be any, it doesn't have to be just your instrument. I always want to remind people. I learned probably more from Miles Davis solos that I, that I transcribed as McCoy Tyner or as much. But go to go back to a solo that you've transcribed. And I bet you didn't learn, sorry, I'm not just pointing at you. I'm pointing at everybody here. It seems very accusatory. Very accusatory. But I'm accusing him. I'm accusing him. everybody. No, I bet that we didn't learn the dynamics as well as we did the rhythms. Of course. And the notes. Of course. You know what I mean? So that's your first kind of low-hanging fruit. Go back and learn the dynamics. The dynamics. The accents. The accents. And then how, yeah, so you have dynamics, you have the accents and how they affect the phrasing. So you can do that phrase by phrase. And you should do that phrase by phrase. Don't go chorus by course or measure by measure because that's probably not how the solo is broken down. And it's not just the accents, but notice the dynamic shape of the phrase. And it's not just the accents, but notice the dynamic shape of the phrase.

I remember I think it was when I was in school Joe Chambers told me that pianists tend to just throw their hands down so the starts starts of their phrase It's like da da da da right yeah, yeah da da da da and that's not how music works right so be aware again awareness is key be aware of the shape the dynamic shape of the phrase that you're playing don't start every phrase as a pianist anyway as you know out of the gate don't start every phrase as a trumpet player meek and then you know in right you got to got to be able to control this and do what you want to do in an artistic way. That's good. Thank you, Marina, for the question. Yeah, thank you for that. And we gave him a lot.

We gave him too much to prep. We're over-delivering at this point. You know, many episodes we under-delivered. Today, we over-delivered. That wall is under-delivering. I mean, I'm just really... Yesterday, you said it was going to be fixed tomorrow, and here we are tomorrow. It's still not fixed.

What's up, Andrew? Come on, man. Come on, man. All right, well, till tomorrow. You'll hear it.