You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Tips for Playing What You Hear

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

It's another live edition of You'll Hear It where Peter and Adam take your questions - on this episode, they’ll be discussing tricks to help you play what you hear, as well as how to practice slow and build up speed.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.Tuesday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Piano Guided Practice Session with Adam Maness on YouTube4:00 PM - Open Studio Demo & Tour (for Members Only)8:00 PM - Live Listening Sesh with Peter and Adam (and some special guests!) on YouTubeFor 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.

Paul has a great question here. Do you have any advice on being able to play what you hear? I can hear a sort of melodic outline in my head, but not any specific notes. So Paul, that's a great start, is understanding that what you're hearing in your head, that needs to be what comes through. Even if it's not specific to the notes, you can go a long, long way and actually sound a lot better doing that, trying to get that out, than just not hearing anything and running your hands. over some BS that you don't actually care about.

Would you like to give an example of that? So I can do all sorts of things like BS-wise. I mean, it all sounds fine. That's pretty good. Some people are going to be like, whoa, I wouldn't mind playing that. Yeah, but I don't care about what I just played. There's no impact to me, but if I wanted to play like... Oh, he's feeling it.

He's feeling it. He's feeling it. Look at that. Stargazing. Possible stargazing on his way. All of that meant something to me as it was happening. because it was just what was happening in the moment. It was the music that I was hearing.

So even though it was a lot simpler, which you could argue, you should argue, is a lot better anyway, it was authentic. And that's what you want to go for. So you have to practice that. Right, that's right. We are what we practice.

I mean, it's such an obvious thing, but it's just so true, the authenticity that it's required to play this music effectively can never be underestimated. and you know when we're by our, whoa, whoa, kind of adjusting over here, feeling good though. So when we're practicing alone, which is normally how we're practicing

unless we're in a lucky GPS situation or whatever, there's such an opportunity to learn to talk to yourself musically, you know, because I was think of like performing music and really I would say, I think this extends into any kind of entire, artistic endeavor. I don't really know, but I'm thinking like dance or theater or whatever. It's such a unique combination of introspective talking to yourself and sharing directly with an audience, the energy of your art with them and getting back something.

It's a very lonely thing in a way because it's just like you have to get so much into what you're doing and getting in touch with this authenticity that you can't be, um, you can't be distracted by the audience or pandering to them if you're thinking about them too much. But on the other hand, you can't just, you need the audience and that energy. And what the energy that that brings should affect and inform your art on any particular night. So, you know, when you're practicing, it's really just one part of what you're doing. But I think it's so important to get in touch with that interview that you're going to share with the world, you know, and be authentic and be ready for that and make that a part of your practice routine. For sure. And some things that we like to do, some specific things you can do to practice this, Paul,

is we do this on the guided practice session all the time, actually, is you can practice taking a couple of choruses, right, over a tune that you know really, really well. We'll just do a blues and F here, because that's a tune that I know very, very well. That's right. So we can do a couple of choruses, and I'll just, I'll play a chorus just running my fingers, right? Can you give me a little baseline, Pete? Yes, I care. One, two, one, two. three, four. Okay, so I was literally trying to not play what I was hearing. Right. Trying to just run my fingers over stuff that I know will work,

but it's not really in my head at the moment. Yeah. And I'm going to try to like sing my way through this one. Let's do it again. One, two, one, two, one, two, three, four. Do do do do do do do da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Now I have a more limited vocal range, obviously, but none of what I just sang was any part of what I had just played.

So there's a gap there, right? And what I'm hearing in my head and when I'm playing. Now what you can do is you do three choruses. So you do your first where you're trying not to hear and you're just running your fingers. Now we'll combine the two. One, two, one, two, three, four. That in my opinion,

opinion was the best of the three choruses that I took, right? Because it was really just combining this, this, what I understand at the piano, but maybe can't sing totally and combining what's actually going on in my heart to my hands. Yeah, no, it's, it's definitely an emotional thing out to the fingers. I think that combination, that's like, you know, we talk about hearing what you play and telling your story and all that stuff, but like this is a very practical way to actually practice it. Yeah. That's good. I've got nothing to add. Excellent.

Yep. All right, Janet asked, what's up, Janet? Can you talk about slow practice with a metronome and how best to approach speeding up? How to go through the transition from painstakingly slow to really swinging. Thanks, guys. Well, it's interesting, Janet, you say painstakingly slow to really swinging. I think the key to really getting the most out of metronome practice and restricting your to practicing slow, say with the...

I mean, look, with the metronome, we can practice at any tempo. That's the beauty of it. But if you're talking about this, which can be very effective, starting slow, and painstakingly pushing it up. That's how you do it. You don't skip any areas. But we want to think about... Don't wait until you start going fast to think about swinging. A lot of people make this mistake.

So they might be able to, you know, well, we're on the F blues, you know, and be like, well, I can swing. But what about, let's do it. One, two. I don't know about this. All right. painstakingly slow.

Man, that's hard to hang on. It's hard to hang on. It's hard to stretch after that mug. Yeah, like to not alter from that. But that's where the women from the girls are separated out. Because, you know, what we're really talking about is the same things. Okay, so we got, well, I mean, that's hard. That's hard to make that sound good.

And so But what it does is like if you can work on your swing Before you get to that fast temple You're going to be in such a better position And then we're just working it up very very slowly Like one click I mean I'm old school You know we're old school here with the Metro We're on the actual metronome

So we're just going up whatever it is two or four BPMs at a time And just learning to swing at those different temples I think too I remember playing with Betty Carter And she was very like adamant about the ballads She would do these ballads what was it like

the man I love it was like one my goodness the man I love oh my gosh so like everything that you play has to be so

you know perfectly placed and then you're thinking about like I would always think about if there wasn't like if you're playing solo if you have a great drummer which we did they're filling in that space

but I think about those brushes so if you're like like that's filling in between each B but if we go to half nose can you keep the pulse going on those slow half notes. I'm sitting here doing 16 notes.

So those kind of exercises can really help you, not only obviously to play slow, and you might not have a lot of occasion to do that, but that will help your internal clock. That'll help your pulse. That'll help your time, really. So being able to play fast, practice slow. That's great.

And actually someone was asking about rhythmic training. That's one of the best rhythmic training exercise that you can do too, is set your metronome as slow as you can possibly take it and practice. vocalizing some of the subdivisions in there. I think that's some of the best rhythmic training you can do. Yeah, and then mix it up with the metronome.

Even if you're practicing at, you know, say like about here, you could do, you know, you don't really want to do the metronome on all four, but maybe you're doing them all two and four, right? A one, two, three, four. So you got that going, you know, and that metronome's going there. And that metronome's going there. But then what about the metronome just on four? Yeah.

So I got a human metronome. Look at that. Let's try my best. Try my best. We got time for one more question. Thank you all. We're ending the party? Oh, man, it's almost 4 o'clock.

We're almost here for an hour. So we'll do one more. Maybe we'll do two more. We'll do two more questions. Thank you guys for joining us, man, on a big Monday. We're bringing Monday back. Where did they go? It didn't go anywhere.

We're bringing Monday back. Yeah, thanks for all the amazing questions. It's been great, man. That's what I'm saying, man. YouTube questions are better. That's right. They're just better. Big shout out.

What if some of these are the same people as Instagram? Maybe the same people on Instagram just they get dumb down by the whole the whole platform. I think that's possible. John asks, I understand using modes and I understand the different sounds for each mode scale, but I don't understand

when someone refers to a song that is written modally. Does that mean there's no key center? I never knew this, actually, so this will be good. Essentially, when someone says, let's play a modal tune, what they mean is a tune,

but it doesn't have what we call functional harmony, a lot of 5-1 movements, a lot of traditional Western Harmony cadences, but it's really centered around just a few different tonal centers. And those can be not random, but seemingly random.

Unlike, say, like, if you were to play My Romance, and everything is based off of the tonal center of B-flat. You have all these, you know, sub-dominence and... Exactly, like, everything has a direction, right? Every chord is either a direction to another chord or is the landing point, the resolution, right? And even if it's like a deceptive cadence, it's still got a certain logic to it.

There's tension and resolution built into the harmony. Whereas in a modal tune like say, so what, as Peter was just playing, in a tune like that, there is no built-in tension and release to the actual chord itself, right? There's no, there's no...

Right. Or even this, right? There's no, like, tension that you can lean on in the chord changes. And so when someone says us play a modal tune, they mean a tune like that. that doesn't have that kind of functional harmony. And what's great about that is it's actually very freeing.

You can then add any kind of tension you want, and that's what players often do to a tune like, so what. You know, instead of having a minor two, five, one, why am I doing it so? Instead of having that function... Malige. Ha ha ha ha ha. Instead of having that built in,

you have to create that yourself. And that's what people do. So you might, instead of having a minor 251, you can do stuff like create tension by doing chromatism or really any way you like. It's really your call. Yeah. And I think I'm actually not sure about this.

You have to correct me if I'm wrong, please, Adam. But I think if you think about being. kind of oh sorry I got the wrong thing hey how you doing if you think about it like d minor so what like that's your home base like that's where everything is happening that kind of makes it modal even if it's just was just that section of course we know it just goes up to there and then comes back so there's a certain amount of functionality in a way I guess but the idea of like if it's not modal you can still have a D dorant but it's at a certain point you know it's there and then it's going there but this is like

the one. Yeah. And it's not even like, you know, I guess it could be. That'd be another mode, right? It's whatever you want it to be in that sense. A lot of times we're looking at like the, you know, the Phrygian. That's the one, actually, as opposed to, it's not leading anywhere. Yeah.

There's nowhere it's leading. You have to accept what's happening. Yeah. Do you know the two Nightdreamer? Oh, yeah, Wayne Shorter? Yeah, I don't know that tune, actually. Someone's asking about how to play the vamp. G major, F minor, 7, E,

E-flat and D7 alt all crammed into two bars. Well, that'll be great if we go out on a question and on a tune that we don't know. That'd be awesome. No, but maybe, I remember playing Night Dreamer. I can't remember how it goes, do, is that do-da? I don't know it. No, that's, this is for Albert. Oh, yeah.

No, I don't know. I know one thing. Hmm. I don't know if this is going to work, but we will see. Oh. Oh, we got Hermeto's question. We can answer it. Okay.

He meant the whole tone. So let's see. Oh, whole tone. So, could you please. give any examples tips where you are using the whole tone scale. Okay, so that's a great question. How do you use the whole tone scale? Where do you use it?

Why would you ever use it? Oh, you're asking me. Well, no, we can ask anybody. But this could go back to a modal thing for sure. So especially on a vamp or on a, on like a pedal, like if you're doing something like you could use it, they're great for building whole tone scales are great for building tension like that. You could also use it as.

They're a little menacing, right? It's got a little bit of a menacing sound. You could use it as a dominant. It's a very airy sounding. Yep. You know? Oh, la la, my liege. Very dreamlike in that regard?

Yep. I don't know. I only use it as a texture like that. I would never play it in changes, right? No, no, no. But you could think about, you know, they're just playing it, but then there's like broken fence,

broken thirds. But also one way I like to look at any kind of scale is a possibility to explore triads. So if you go... Oh, yeah, there you go. I'm just playing triad. These are, what is it, second inversion triads coming down.

But I'm still using the pattern, the foundation for the pattern as, you know... Famous... You can do the Meldow-esque. Yeah, you better look at your shoes if you're even going to think about doing that. Love that one. Yeah, cool.

Well, should we do our little... Let's see here. If I play this correctly, this is always nerve-wracking because, you know, we think it's playing, but we don't really know, do we? No, we don't know if it's playing. Well, we could, wait, wait, wait, wait. Are we going out? Yeah, I think we're going out. Is this how we're going out?

I think it's playing. Is how we're going out? I mean, that's what we've been reduced to. We're getting better, but we still aren't quite there. Look at that. There it is. There it is. And it's coming up.

You know how we do it. So tomorrow, you'll hear it.