You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Tips To Jumpstart Back Into Playing Shape

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

Adam talks about getting a jumpstart back into playing shape after some time off.Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

My name is Adam Manus, and you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Jazz Explained. Today, I'm very excited to talk about what we're talking about. Peter is out of town, so this is another solo podcast from me. And I've been out of town for the last couple weeks. I was in a very remote cabin in very northern Minnesota. Shout out to all my northern Minnesota folks up there. It's a beautiful part of America, and I was so grateful to be there.

But there was no piano in the cabin I stayed at in the middle of the woods, which was fine. I was kind of hoping for a little bit of a break, but I'm back and I have a bunch of gigs coming up. I've got recording sessions to do and I have to get into good playing shape pretty fast here. So this is a exercise that I use all the time to get myself mentally prepared especially. And I know a lot of other musicians use the same kind of technique because it's so effective at getting you sharp. And so even if you've never done this before, that's pretty exciting now to get to try this for the first time. That technique is called scale running. And essentially what it is is you take a tune with a prescribed set of chord changes and you

run a continuous scale over those changes, changing the scale when the chord changes to the appropriate scale without missing a beat. Right. So we're going to use have you met Ms. Jones today. So if we start here on our F major, like we want to transfer to that F, sharp diminished, if that's what you're going to do, uh, without stopping, right? So from the F major to our F sharp, whole half diminished to our G, Dorian on the G minor seven. So this isn't, this, this let this episode isn't about like what scale you should use on these chords. That's not what we're talking about. You can choose whatever scale you want. I don't care. It's really up to you. That's your job as the artist. The, the technique is more like you have to be. You have to,

to pick a scale, right? You have to pick some kind of color palette of note. By scale, I don't, it doesn't even have to be prescribed. It could be just a cluster of notes that you want to use, but you have to hit it without missing a beat and you have to keep the tempo solid as you do it. And that is the brain training. That's where it aligns with playing with other people, right? Because when you're playing with a bass player and a drummer and they're playing the changes, there's no time to stop and think about the changes. In fact, we have to use focus with our scales and changes so that when we're on the gig, there's freedom. And we're not thinking about scales. We're not thinking about changes. That's really what this is designed to do.

So let's start for the beginning. We can build this up from a very simple practice to more and more complexity. We take our having metmus Jones. You know, we have our one chord. And then we're just, we're basically doing a two five here after that, but we can get to it with our F sharp diminish. You could do a three six into the two. A, a minor seven. We use the Dorian C seven. We use the mixalidian. We'll do a little three six here. So we'll use a phrygian on the A, like a, you know, just an F major scale starting on a. For the D7, maybe we use an alter. Maybe, I don't know. And we could change our minds at any point, by the way.

And then we'll do a little side step thing. Maybe we won't. Again, we'll just kind of feel it out. Like the thing is, there is improvisation in this. We're deciding what color palette we want to use. We just want to be able to get there without missing a beat. That's part of it, by the way, because when you're playing these tunes, you have many options when you choose a cadence and thank you for choosing Southwest.

No, but you do have many options with every chord. Maybe you make the two a dominant chord. Maybe you make the five an altered chord. You know what I mean? That's up to you. And you can do that on the fly. So this is a great way to practice changing what kind of chord you want to use on the fly if you're there. If you're more at a beginner level or an intermediate level, you might just keep it very, very simple.

So the very first version of this is we keep a scale going without going above. a major second. So you can either use a major second or a minor second. You can't use the third. And you have to try to link this up. You can change directions at any time. You could literally stay here. You can't go anything larger than a major second. The bridge here. I'm just doing like very diatonic things very slowly. That's totally cool. Little patterns with where you, minor third there. That's a no-no. All of that is fair game. All of that helps to lock in in a very intense and focused way. What are some good options here?

Now, you can do that and then start changing the value of the chords. So maybe a 3-6 instead of that. Maybe an altered. Maybe we sidestep. Maybe a diminished. It sounds very rudimentary and basic. But that first version of it is so, so good at getting you comfortable anywhere on the keyboard, on any chord on any scale, just being able to sort of predetermine

what's the chord here and what's the scale I can use? It makes you fast at it. Now we can start to do things like add thirds, right? So now we can skip a third, which means we can do broken seventh chords, right? We can do things like that. Nothing larger than a third. We're going to get to fourths and fifths here in a minute, but keeping it very simple. So let's try that. We can now use thirds. I'm going to pick up picking the scale I want to use right as I get to it. So all of that is great. Now I want to add another element to that and that's chromaticism. So I'm going to try to get myself into problems by using the chromatic scale and see if I can come out of it on the scale tones, right? So if we again start an F major, I'm just going to start at a certain point just getting into a chromatic scale

and see if I can get out of it. It's like a safe place to try some stuff like this. So that chromaticism can be so great because it is a, it is a bit of a parachute when you're playing too, to hit into the chromatic scale, which you should know so well under your fingers, and then see if you can dig your way out. Let's try things like fourths and pentatonic scales and even fifths and bigger reaches. I was working on this actually with this sort of like big Aaron, Aaron Parksish stretch here, McCoy-Tinerish, modern stretch and some pentatonic scales, maybe some triads, chromaticism, some tritone subs. We can do this by now starting to incorporate sliding up and down chromatically, like, to take it out.

So if we're on F, maybe you practice like sliding down a half step. Right. To practice playing outside, it's a great way to do this. Like if you're on the G. Dorian, you know, start with G. Dorian. And then maybe F sharp Dorian. See if you can keep it going. You feel like you're hanging on for dear life. but that idea of using your brain in real time, right,

with real consequences of a steady pulse that you cannot miss. The point of the exercise is to not miss the pulse and practicing things like playing, you know, a scale that you want to play. And by scale that sounds so, it sounds so theoretical, but I really mean just like whatever sounds that you want to play over a given time and a piece, right? It could be you just choose three notes to play over a whole A section.

and that's your scale running. That's cool. Like whatever it is it. I mean, or you could do, you know, straight from the Mark Levine book, a ionian and whatever. Like, it doesn't matter. However you want to frame it, the goal is, is to train your brain to give you freedom so that when you're on the gig, you're not thinking about this stuff at all. You're just hearing it. You're just playing it. And your hands know where to go. They've been there before. They've been there with real consequences of time involves. I think it's so, so much fun to work on too. And added bonus, you will get lost in this. I guarantee you will get lost in this.

And you'll be doing it for 30 minutes, an hour, two hours, and you're just like playing scales. You know, with your right hand or your left hand, you could do either. And it's pretty good technique practice. Like it's pretty good strength training for this too. So a little added bonus there. That's it for me. I will be back on Wednesday.

Until then, happy practicing.