You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Tips for Memorizing Melody and Changes

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

It's another live edition of You'll Hear It where Peter and Adam take your questions - on this episode, they'll give some advice on memorizing melodies and changes for standards, as well as take a dive into the controversy of music notation.Interested 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.Monday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)For the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Oh, we have a good one up here. Could you guys share some tips? This is from Yao Ming. What's up, Yao? Could you guys share some tips for memorizing the melody and changes of standards? Totally. So memorizing the melody and changes of standards is about, I think it's about listening more than anything. You have to listen to the point where when you don't play it correctly, you notice.

Right? So you listen and you know the version that you love. And hopefully you're in an accurate-ish version from a reputable source. And you know it so well. And you know how the baseline moves and you know how the chord should sound. And you know how the melody, the rhythm of the melody is that if you go to play it and you play it wrong, you know it's wrong. And then you can work it out. That is the best way.

You know, we were talking about sight reading and why you would do it. But it's the same thing with like learning a tune. Go to the audio first. It is harder. It's going to suck. embrace the suck of it being a little bit harder. Right. Because you're going to get better.

You're going to be a better musician. And you don't need to read to do that. Absolutely. And I think you kind of hit the nail on the head when you said, I didn't hear you say anything about memorizing. I know the question was memorizing. But I think that's the key is like, let's not think. Let's think about it as learning.

Right. Learning as opposed to memorizing. Because, I mean, yeah, I guess you are memorizing. But the more you learn it away from the page, if you need to reference the page, no problem. even if you're playing it from the page, you want to get your head out of that page as quickly as possible and be able to really hear what's going on and listen and be able to memorize it, I guess, or learn it. I don't know. What would be the difference between memorizing and learning?

No difference, I think. I just feel like when you say learning, it makes it more intuitive, it makes it more kind of an organic flow with it. But here's the thing, though, if you learn it from the audio, how do you not memorize it? You have to memorize it. That's right. it. Like if you learn it, if you learn it by reading it. Yeah. The memorization's built in. The memorization is built in and that's why, and it locks in longer and stronger. It's way different than reading, which we're used to just using text and, and, and music notation is a form of text, you know, and you're used to using that and letting it go, right? But audio, when we learn it, we have to learn it. We have to memorize it in order to go back, right? You have to be able to play it in your mind's ear over and over again. So I think it's really, really crucial. Yep. So, and then another thing, if you're on piano or, I mean, whether you're pianist or not, you could go to piano a thing for really learning a standard tune. Because I think the question was specifically about standard is like to take two essential elements because that's, I mean, you can take one. Certainly.

Like so if we did on Green Dolphin Street, just the melody, you certainly could learn it from that. But I think you can jump into two things as you're learning it would be the root, the root movement, as it were. and the melody, and you want to learn it in the flow of the form and the groove, as opposed to just being totally devoid and then trying to hook that up. So even if you can play and you know all this, you want to do, because remember we're learning, so when you learn something, it's all about what you, it's as much about what you can't actually hear as what you can hear. So when you leave the space and just say, just the melody and the root, whole notes,

You're forcing your ears to hear all that inner harmony to learn it without play it. You know, it's kind of like if somebody teaches you something and they tell you everything, okay, I'm going to tell you how to do this math. I'm going to tell you how to read this paragraph as opposed to saying, okay, you read it. You know, or read it like leaving something. Like you have to experience it. You have to have some sort of mystery. There has to be some kind of built in grit for yourself, you know, which is being able to fill things in.

because that's the technique of being able to hear something and then improvise over it that we're going to need. And if you don't exercise that muscle as you're learning it, you're not really learning the tune. You can't play too much for yourself. First of all, you don't really know it anyway, so you're probably going to be messing it up. But you've got to leave,

you've got to take your time and build up any of those things. And the easiest way I've ever found is just start with the melody and the root. That kind of restrictive practice can take you next level for really learning this music. Can we get a little controversial for a second? Please. Okay, so, you know, we're talking a lot of,

about notation. We're talking a lot about learning by ear. And there was this controversial video from Adam Neely that came out a couple weeks ago. And it was about music. Adam who? Adam Neely, ever heard of them? Famous podcaster. No, just kidding. No, but it was about music theory and white supremacy. And I shared that video around because of that, but mostly though, because we don't have a good way of relaying all of the information of the music we love, right? black American music specifically with Western notation. It doesn't paint

even the most abstract of picture of the whole scenario, right? It doesn't tell the whole story. It certainly doesn't tell the whole story in any kind of rich detail. Yeah. That only happens through the audio learning,

through auditory learning, right? So I would say that. You're learning a music that just cannot be communicated fully by the page. Right. And it shouldn't. Like,

Oral or oral tradition. It's an oral tradition. And the more you try to force that square peg into the round hole, the further away from the original intent you're going to get. Now, would you say that some of our Eurocentric university and conservatory systems are trying to force that a little bit sometimes? Well, so I run into it all the time. We have a lot of students here at Open Studio that are just, they just grew up in a classical system, right? And so they want to relate, how do I feel like Charlie Parker? and they want to do it

and they want us to provide them with it in Western notation standards. And I think I've hit a wall with trying to make that happen without saying like this just isn't possible with the system we have now. And I think that's a lot of the frustration that's happening is we have all this emphasis

on certain types of music and the types of music that resonate the most with most modern people of like 20th century and onward have nothing to do with how we theorize the music, how we notate it, in my opinion. It just is not a good fit.

It's just impractical and inefficient way to do it. So more and more I am really leaning on you have to learn it quote unquote, and I'm going to get dogmatic here. I can't believe I want to say this, the right way, and learn it by ear and learn it from the record. You know what I mean?

You have to. You just have to. Yeah, and I think, too, you could, you know, one thing so that people don't get this is not binary. So I totally agree with what you're saying at. I mean, you know I'm a big proponent of that too. But you talk about Charlie Parker,

you talk about Miles Davis, all the folks that we bring up all the time. Like most of those musicians, if not all of them, you know, went through some of these same issues in a way in that they were, they generally, a lot of them kind of came up in a classical tradition or a band tradition or learning things in kind of a Western Euro.

way, reading music and stuff. So it's very possible to be steeped in that system. I know I was for sure, just because I played a lot of classical music at a young age. Like that's what I was really passionate about. And I mean, still am in a lot of ways. I'm just not doing it. So, but a lot of times folks start to think like, oh, if I'm thinking like a classical musician, I can't think like a jazz musician.

And you can, as long as you don't try to take the rules from that. It's kind of like if you play basketball, but you like hockey and you want to learn to play hockey, you can do it. But you got to put some skates on. You're not going to have a bit. You're going to have a puck. Yeah, a few things are going to be similar. But, you know, but it's a different thing. It doesn't mean you can't do it, but you can't bring that same mentality over.

Like, you can't bring the same clothes that you're playing basketball because you're going to be chilly and you're going to get hurt. Or the rules of the game are completely different. You know, just how you frame it matters. But perhaps the athleticism that you might possess could be translated. And there's nothing wrong with traditional Western notation for notating, you know, music that can be really expressed very clearly with that kind of notation. And hey, look, maybe this is also just my limitation as a notator. No, I don't think so. No, no, because you've done a great job of, like, in your arrangement, I mean, I've played your stuff and many great musicians have.

And you have a great way of explaining through the notation what music you want to have come out, which is what it's all about. But I think it's the idea of like so there's nothing like you say nothing wrong with the Western notation except probably calling it Western notation. That's probably very wrong. I guess now that I'm thinking about it. But that fits that music and beyond. I mean it's never like a line. For sure. Yeah. And it fits that. It fits 80% of jazz. You know, like it fits like going to like a certain point you can get there. And if you look at like I was just looking at there's some great examples of Thelononius Monk, you know, notating his music. Herbie Hancock. I used to have like. I got to see if I, have you ever seen the Herbie Hancock? What is that, The Hurricane? Yeah. Yeah, he wrote out all the chords exactly. Like, it can definitely be done. Wayne shorter, no Tates, all this stuff.

Like, you can use this system and then make some changes as you need to. And I think jazz musicians have done probably more than any musicians to be able to push the envelope in terms of, like, for studio playing and these different things, chord chain. You know, like the changes were made to do it. But it's still, because of that improvisational element, I think it still comes down to hearing the music. just so important, you know, so important to approach like that. So I'm with you as far as the dogma, but I want folks to know that you can, you don't have to throw out the other stuff. No, for sure. You know, you can be a hockey player. Why would you want to do that? I don't know. And you can play basketball and you can have fun with it, you know. That's funny. You used hockey and

basketball. Yeah. You know what? I got to say, man, I'm changing my thing up with the NHL. Well, first of course, I change it up because we're the world champion still. And the pandemic might be even extending that a little bit. But, but, no, I'm changing up because the NHL is woke AF. Oh, yeah, man. They're like way woker than the NFL. Oh, so here we have some people chiming in on this. So piano says Ellis M.

I assume you mean Marcellus told me once he wished he'd worked on Chopin Ait, more when he was young, it all transfers. For sure, the technical side of European classical music is pretty legit, awesome. Yeah. And like one of the great ways to learn any instrument, no doubt. I'm more talking about translating sounds between each other. You know what I mean? each other music.

And yeah, kind of the way that you learn the repertoire in a way, it's like, as a classical music. Now, this wasn't always like this. You talk about, you know,

Italian Renaissance music. And I'm no expert on this, but I remember learning a little bit about it at different periods of Germany to different places like classical music. There was a time when there was, there was some periods where that music was learned in a way that was very similar

to the way jazz musicians typically learn things by ear, although the big difference was there's no recordings then, you know, but it was often learned by ear and there was a lot, but that was also tied into there being a lot more improvisation in classical music

as it were. That's such a, is that an offensive term classical music? Now that I'm hearing myself say it, it's so classical. It's so classy. It's so, you know. I always,

then I'll go to like orchestral, but what if it's not an orchestra? Caucasian. Is that, that's pretty much what they're saying. Austin says, How long does transcribing take for you guys? Like 32 bars of a Bill Evans solo, for example.

So 32 bars of a Bill Evans solo would probably take me quite a bit to do. But you might try reframing this, Austin, to think about it, like, instead of how quickly can I get through this? How many weeks instead of how many days is it going to take? Instead of, yeah, instead of thinking like, because I assume Austin couched in your question here is like, it takes me a long time and how can I make it more? efficient or faster. I think you should push back from that and think, how can I make this take longer? Like, see if you can really lean into the fact that this is going to take a while and embrace it and think, okay, can I spend more time on this four bars?

Can I actually take another day and just go back through it and get more detail out of it? How long can I take to learn this solo? How deep can I go? Exactly. How low can you go? If you worry, especially with things like learning solos by ear, if you worry too much about efficiency, you're going to lose quality.

So think about, you know where I like to apply this? This is a mindfulness technique. When I vacuum my stairs. When I vacuum my stairs, which doesn't happen often, I'll be honest. We have, you know, the carpet that like runs down the stairs. It cascades down. It was, we came with the house.

So it's very old at this point. And, you know, dirt gets in that little nooks and crannies of the carpet when it's on the stairs. And I was vacuuming the other day. and I did the whole stairs in like five or ten minutes. It was too fast. And I went and I walked back down the stairs

and they still look like crap. And I was like, damn it. And so I said, okay, I'm going to do this again. But I'm going to see if I can take a long. I'm going to see if how long can I take to do this. Can I really take like an hour and vacuum these stairs? Like the longer, the better, you know. But doing that, I'm going to get into detail in here

and embrace my time and really enjoy the moment that I'm vacuuming my stairs, right? Because I had all day. It was a Sunday. Right. And that was really... Embrace me, my sweet embraceable vacuum cleaner. That's right.

But that kind of attitude can be very helpful, not just in transcribing work, but practicing in general. How long can I spend on this idea? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's great. And I think, you know,

how long does it take to do 32 bars? I mean, that could be anything from... I mean, there's probably some solos right now, like some Miles Davis solos that the big thing that would change is for me is if I know the solo like it was something I've heard a lot but I've never transcribed

so like there's certain solos of Miles Davis and a lot of people that are relatively simple as in not a huge amount of notes that I could probably transcribe it almost instantly like play along with it just because I've heard it so much and then there's other things that I've never heard that are some kind of Brad Meldow solo piano

for 32 bars you know I mean just getting that yeah just getting the neck, the neck crank that you get into. Although his stuff is fairly logical in terms of like, that wouldn't be that hard, but it's not going to be that fast. Well, that's another great example of something that if you tried to notate, right, with a notation system as you're learning it, it would slow you down so much to try to figure out where his rhythm would go as opposed to just feeling it. Right.

Which is he's improvising and just feeling that rhythm. I think it's a big deal. Yep, yep, yep. So that one varies.