You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Too many notes? Maybe.

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Speakpipe topic! Today Adam and Peter discuss how to build your voicings with as little or as many notes as you need to capture the sound you are going for. 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

Hey Peter. Yo. It's time for a speak pipe. Woohoo. Raise your hands in the air like you just don't care. Why am I talking like this? I don't know, but you love speak pipes. I do like speak pipes.

I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Jazz. Explain. I can see the wheels turning as you were trying to remember. I'm like, how do I make that sound interesting? I feel like it looks interesting.

I love our new visuals with this. Is it too cocky though? No, not at all. We're like jazz explained. Yeah. Get your no point. books out nerds. I mean, I do appreciate you wearing the cap and gown, though, to the podcast recording. It's a little much, especially for a guy with only a high school diploma. I know, man. Right. Wait, is that you two?

No, you graduated college. I have a GED, bro. Oh, my God. I know. We're not very educated. We both went to conservatory. We both left to go. You graduated, though, did? Oh, no, I didn't. I left to go play. But when we were coming up, even when you came up a little after me, but I think even when, exactly, you, that was a, it wasn't a badge of honor. Nothing wrong with graduating. No. But that was, at the time it was kind of like if you had gigs you just left yeah now there's not any gigs so well no that's not true there's just so many great players that are doing both yeah and staying and graduating or you know i mean even great players now have like doctorates it's crazy it is crazy it's really crazy when we were there wasn't a doctorate of jazz when we were in college the jellon

yeah yeah no when i was in college in the early 2000s that was like a brand new thing yeah and it was rare that it was also like a really good player right not that they weren't good players they were good players, but now like great players. They were academics more, or research or historians. But now it's like great players also have doctorates. I know. Because there's awesome opportunities to like teach and make money while you're going through those programs if you're really good.

Yeah. And it's like, I mean, yeah. And some great playing opportunities. Exactly. Out of those programs. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're going to get paid more than when you're actually going out to do

gigs. Yeah, which is kind of the inverse of when we were coming up with it. It's like you left to go work. Exactly. You know, because there was, you got a strike when the iron's hot. And take your gig and get what you can. It's like the opposite of the NBA. Like it used to be that really, you know, like Michael Jordan went like three or four years at UNC maybe.

Yeah. And then it was three years, I think. Three years, yeah. And but that was like, whoa, he's jumping out early because he's super talented. Was it three? I think he might have four years. I've got four years. Did Jordan have a degree?

Wow. I know Dr. Jay has a degree because he's, he has several degrees. He's a doctor. Yeah. But, um, we're talking about practice. AI came out of it. Yeah. Yeah.

It was too much talent oozing out. of him. Um, but, uh, yeah, so what are we talking about today? Well, we're taking a speak from from Danny. Granny. Danny. Danny. D-A-D-A-N-I. Let's hear your granny or my granny. Let's hear Danny's be. This is more voicings, man. We're nerding it up lately. I love it. Okay. Okay. Hey, Pyrne, Adam. I hope you're doing well. I'm Danny from the Netherlands and I have a quick question for you guys. How do you decide on how many notes you put in a voicing for a chord on the piano? I'd love to hear you guys inside on it.

All right. Thanks. Bye. First of all, big shout out to Danny. Big shout to the Netherlands. Hey, Holland in the house. I love the Netherlands.

Wait, what did you say? Holland in the house. Holland in the house. You got such a toothy grin with that. Why? Because they seem, they seem,

I know a lot of Dutch folks. They all are very fun. They're very fun. Very, that's a broad generalization. No, the ones I know. But they're kind,

they're honest. Yeah. They're tall. Did you know that's like the tallest. Yeah. Country. I don't know why. Maybe that's why they're so happy.

Because it's like below sea level. You'd think they'd be of less. Well, it's below sea though. Well, they have to get up just to see above the sea. Just be able to breathe. Yeah. Is that England? Yeah.

But I think that, you know, look, Holland, the Netherlands. I know they're not the same thing. But I've been there. Well, it's very confusing because it's the Netherlands, Holland, but they're called the Dutch. The Dutch. The Dutch. Yeah. That's different.

But they, I got to tell you, over the years, playing music in Netherlands. I mean, I've been blessed to go to a lot of places where people

love jazz music. And I can't say that they love it more in the Netherlands, but I haven't been somewhere that they loved it any less or any,

I mean, like, that's the maximum. There's killing players. And it's not a huge country. Killing players, great jazz programs. Yeah. A bunch of,

I mean, per capita, maybe the most number of really good players and just lovers of jazz. Of course, North Sea Jazz Festival going back for years. Totally.

But we digress from our dear users slash listeners. listeners, users. Sounds like they have a problem. Well, you know. I'm a user, man. So today we're going to be talking about users of voicings in the number of notes.

Yeah, what do you think about this question, Peter? It's an interesting one. I don't have a lot of considerations for the amount of notes in the moment. Well, another thing, as we alluded to, we are both gentlemen with less than stellar academic pedigree in that we're talking GED in public high school. So math might not be our major. Anyway, counting is it doesn't come easy to it. No, but the first thing I thought of when he said it was like, I don't necessarily think about number of notes in the voicing, but I do think about, I guess, thickness or more of a general, not the precision of like, is it, am I going to do a six no voicing or seven? It's a texture.

And that comes from what's number one. Listen. It comes from listening. Voicings. No. Listening, yeah. So like, you know, I will only think of, I don't think about the number ever, but I will think about, Danny, like, you know, if we're doing, if we're doing, if we're. playing anything and I want something that feels very open and like there's a lot of possibilities.

I might do something like something open. That's four notes, right? That's five notes. You know, or four notes, right? Or if I want something very bare bones, maybe three notes, I'm not. Oh, you count the bay, the root note. Yeah, I'm counting the root note. Yeah, yeah.

You know, even down low, you know, three, four notes will kind of get you all of the, essentials, right? However, there are times where I'll think about where it might be totally necessary to do something like this. Two notes. You know? Two notes. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, there's like a bass and drummer or maybe a guitarist. You don't want to take a lot of space there. You're comping with your left hand. Even if you're just playing for someone else, two notes will do the trick. Well, and I mean, you know, as we've seen in the off dimension on this podcast, a lot of those are actually two notes. They sound like three because he plays three sometimes, but it's not always upon closer expectations.

It's just like the third and seventh, right? Third and seventh, yeah, Shell. And so, you know, I think that was he thinking, oh, I'm going to do a two note. Now I'm going to go to three to change. No. Yeah. But there is a little bit of, like when you go in and out of that, you get a little bit of inner melodic movement.

That could have been a little bit of the hearing side of it. But, yeah, I mean, I think, too, what's interesting about this, it's not only the number of notes or the thickness or the text. texture, but it's like what it's kind of like progressions in general, or voicings, like, what are you playing before, what are you playing after, where are you going? Because if you do a bunch of really thick, you know, seven, six, seven, eight note kind of voicings and then you go up to just two, like an octave or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. No, let's do a little B flat blues, Peter. Can you play your baseline for me? I'm going to comp really thick, Danny. So I think your idea of contrast here, what happens before and after. Yeah. This is where you can get a lot of headway. So let's just do like a B flat blues with a two five.

Here we go. So I'm going to play a lot of thick voicing here to start. That was a moment already there, right? Just one note, right? But after all those big six-note voicings, you know, sometimes one note is all you need or two. It's like, what do you want to highlight, you know? Yeah, or maybe it's three notes, you know?

That's three notes right there. That's all you need. Or you can go super thick. And that's kind of all there is to it for that. Like, just thinking about like, sometimes Danny thinking about like, okay, I'm going to go thick, I'm going to go thin. I'm going to go high, I'm going to go low. I'm going to go loud.

I'm going to go soft. And playing with that, especially if you're, like, jamming with friends or you might be on a background gig somehow, but you're in a spot where you can kind of like practice this with real people in a real room in real time. You could really learn a lot and get a lot of wisdom about how to thicken or thin out your courts. Absolutely. And then, you know, I think it's fun to kind of analyze maybe a little bit more on a static level. Really interesting voices that you hear. And I always kind of gravitate towards Thelonious Monk and some of his solo piano work where, because there's a lot of mystery in there. At least I found because as I was like a lot of my ear training was from transcribing monk or trying to.

And I don't have, I mean, I have pretty good ears now, but it has not always been that that has not always been the case. And thanks to just a number of just artists that I didn't realize I was developing my ears. I mean, I guess I knew it. But it was more about like, man, how does he do that? You know? And so like the beginning of, be my dear. Man, a lot of that stuff sounds so massive.

Yeah. But it's only like four or five notes actually. And so that's what you learn about in terms of like expansiveness that we have available to us. That's five notes. Is that main, that, that, that, what would you call that? E7th. And then the fourth, the suspended fourth. That's so hip.

And there's a lot, you know, it's a lot of beauty, but a lot of, like, kind of inert tension in that, you know? Yeah. Because you've got the third and the fourth. That shouldn't work, right? Monk loves a minor nine. And a lot of people play this. Yeah, oh, yeah, he's all in that.

But, like, a lot of people play this with, like, with, like, X, like, four more notes. And that, you can do that. But if you try to play it, like... Yeah. Beautiful. And those are just little three-note things. That's just three notes.

Yeah. And I think the connections, like, we talk about the progression and, you know, pulling. the rug or pushing you know what however you're going to do it that's the three notes you know three voicing's kind of moving along yeah and that's another one of i think he plays yeah that's the second that he loves and then these no those are all four-note voicings i mean i remember struggling trying to hear this because i kept hear more notes you know it's like and i start taking stuff

away but the thing about this is it's moving chromatically yeah and then the melody continues to wait no then the melody goes up a whole step but the voicing does it it spreads out it goes to a different voicing but it's not you know it's like so it's like really cool voicelessly but still four notes moving along yeah yeah yeah so it's like yeah the size of the voicing but how it how it's placed what's coming before and after can even give the illusion of something else and just i mean the whole point you still got to put it together in an interesting way and like monks got this brilliant composition with these you know so much cool stuff but so beautiful I mean, people love those songs because they're, you know, like those are all, you know,

it's like four notes, five notes, four no voices, really small. A lot of those, you know. And so I think that there's just a lot of possibilities there. We can be a little bit smaller, but still have that big sound. That's so good. One more thing I want to add to this, too, something to think about, Danny, as you're constructing and just really experimenting. And I encourage you to experiment, you know, definitely learn voicings like Peter's talking about

from records. It's really enlightening to try to learn it yourself. Don't use sheet music or look up a transcription. Try to listen and find them. We're working on this Hank Jones recording, Peter, of all these beautiful like drop two style voicing on his recording of Danny Boy. Do you this record with him and Charlie Hayden?

It's like all hymns. It's absolutely gorgeous. We ought to listen to us sometime. You'd love it. Are you on an upcoming first take Friday? Oh my gosh. It's so good. But trying to hear the voicing of yourself is enlightening.

But one thing that you can do to kind of experiment is also to consider like not just the thickness and thinness of how many notes are in the chord. But how are they spread out? Like you mentioned that melody kind of moving up while the chord kind of stayed the same. Yeah. And so like one of the things we talk about

over an Open Studio Pro with voicing is like, aren't good voicing sort of a combination? Like here's a classic, this voicing, right? Right? A flat, C, D, and G. And maybe it's a B flat. 13, right?

Like this voicing here has a major third, a major second, and a perfect fourth. Nice. A two, three, four. right there. Like, there's this combination of internals. So it's not a stack of thirds, right? It's not this, which is fine.

Yeah. But that's a stack of thirds. It's not fourths. It's a stack of crap. No, I'm just kidding. Fourths is fine, too, but also its own thing. But there's something about having a third, having a second, having a fourth in there. That you can really start thinking about that as like, can I find a F minor seven voicing that has those?

Oh, look at that. This F minor seven voicing that Peter Martin loves so much has a second. This is F minor 11. So it's like A flat, F in the root, A flat B flat, E flat, and C. I love beautiful sonic voicing. But look at that. Look what this is. A second, a fourth, and a third.

Yeah. Right. Can I find an F sharp major chord that has all of these? Let's see if we can't find an F sharp. Oh, what about? Bam. That's not bad. Ooh, that's even better.

So here's a, this is a, this is a, F sharp major 13. Here is F, A, flat, B, flat, sorry. We call it G flat, major 13. F, A, A, flat, G flat, and E flat. That's a third, a second, and a fourth. Not that your voicings have to have that, but experimenting with, like, all seconds, all thirds, all fourths,

and then, like, a combination of seconds and fifths, seconds and thirds, seconds and fourths, and how they sound. You know, just make sure that you're on, like, scale or core that you know really well and experiment with these colors you're going to find a lot of cool stuff and you can do this with two-handed voicings too in fact you can do like sevenths

sixth fourth fifths with two-handed voicings really like experimenting with the spread. Yeah that's great great great great great great great I love it man I'm excited about voicings and sizes again sizing of voicing truly no I really are you really well you know what it is like it's these things

that like I'm interested in but I don't think about for a long time and then someone asks you question about it and then you're like it gives you a whole other kind of prism to look at stuff that you love and think about. So just a question to you then. Would that be something you might be interested? Yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to say. It's very much something it would be.

Hey, Peter, did you know that today's podcast is sponsored by Open Studio? I've heard something about that. And that maybe our listeners could go to Open StudioJ.js.com and check out a deeper dive on so many courses we have on voicings. If you want to go deep, we have courses on voicings by myself, by Peter, by Jeffrey Kieser, Elio Alves. Fred Hirsch? Is that something that might be interesting?

ever heard of him. You know what Fred Hurst really likes to tell his students too? What? I mean, just play the right note. He does. He's been known to get a little dogmatic. Yeah. And just the way that I like it too.

So thanks, everybody. Peter, have a great trip man. Until next time. You'll hear it.