You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Triad Triage: 4 Basic Voicings

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

Are you worried that your triads sound D.O.A.? Peter and Adam give you some voicings to help resuscitate them in this episode.4 Basic Triad Voicings:Closed voicings and inversionsOpen voicings and inversionsNeighbor notesSlash bassAdam has a whole video where he goes on a deep dive of these voicings - click here to check it out.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.Let 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.

Hey, Peter, what do you know about this? I'm expecting that, but yeah, bro. I'm Adam Mace. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily music advice and medical sustenance coming at you. It's a triage. It's an emergency.

What is a triage? A triage is when you, I don't know. I was going to really, I was going to modern jackass my way to this, but I don't. I actually know. Well, I was thinking of like triage is, yeah, it's an emergency, but then we're going to triage it, which basically means we're going to stick you in the corner and still something even, Even a bigger emergency we were going to deal with first. I know what it's a way.

It's like a de-escalization of a real emergency. Someone, I know there's plenty of people who know exactly what it triage is. In fact, we could just Google it. We have computers right in front of us, but we're too lazy. No, we're old school. No, but I know what it is. In general, it's a way to organize like an emergency situation where there's three things to do. I don't know what those three things are.

But is that what's your idea with this with the triad, the three things? No, you know what? I was thinking of clever things with the triad and the triage. It is clever. No, it's absolutely clever. Don't backpedal it now. Clever guy, man. I just have no idea what it means.

But we are triageing the triads today. Yeah, I think we're going to help folks with, look, this is actually important because Triad is basically, everybody thinks they know it, but everyone gets into trouble with it. And sometimes it's easier to go as you get more advanced, to go into more advanced concepts and talk about, oh, you can do this, you know, all these fancy voices. But what about straight triad? That can sound plain and like everybody else. What can you get out of these straight triads?

It can be a very powerful tool. I don't know if you do this even in your jazz playing, but sometimes if I'm feeling like we're all putting so many extensions and it's getting crazy. Sometimes I might do a whole solo that's based around triad voicings or something just because I want it to change. So you got to know how to deal with these triads. And then if you ever get into a pop gig situation,

they don't always want to hear that. No. In fact, they rarely want to hear that. They never want to hear that. do they hear that? They're like, do you hear the door as it slams behind you on your way out? They also don't want to hear all the time. No. Especially not like that. Yeah.

So we have some creative ways that you can use triads to get more out of them and really become more of a complete basic chord player than you already are. I like to think about this as, you know, like when we go to some, like you're saying, put in alterations. Sometimes it's putting a hat on a hat on a hat, right? It is definitely. And then just going straight triads sometimes is just going, oh, natural. a follically impaired gentleman, as myself would say. Radical acceptance. You're just accepting exactly what you have.

Yep. So beautiful, too. Yeah. Okay, so... I like how you looked up to the heavenly skies. See, I already got... I'm too jazzy. You're back in hell, buddy.

No, we're going to keep it simple. So there are four different things we can do with triads to really kind of open your mind and get you at like a solid base of being a good triad player as a pianist or even just as a musician. Like, the cool thing about triads, are simple. There's only three notes. So there's only so many options.

Yeah. And even if you play saxophone or the bass or the drums, it's good to know how to do these things and make them sound good so that you're not just plucking your hand down root position voicings the whole time. Yeah. The first thing that you want to learn are the closed voicings and inversions for all the triads. Close voicing and inversions for all the triads. You know what a closed word voicing is, of course.

It's a voicing that's within an octave. It's the closest possible distance between each note of the triads. So here in C are very simple. closed voicing is C-E-G, right? Very basic. But knowing the inversions is where, like, this comes next level, right? So E-G-C is the next inversion up. G-C-E, of course.

And so once we know these closed voicings and inversions, we can get away from going the same shape, jumping around. And what do you mean? Just can I stop you there and say, by knowing them, oh, Lord of Triadic Treason. Treasonous triadic triage. Yeah, yeah. What do you mean by know them?

I mean, like, actually not have to think about them, but be able to just play them at will whenever you think, I need a C, these three different Cs are available to you at all this. Or a B, or a B, or a B flat, or an A or an A flat. So you want to be able to hear them? You want to be able to hear them. You definitely want to be able to hear them. There's a difference between, there's a different character between that and, you know,

this is a very strong, you hear that all the time. That's just a different vibe. Yep. And this is more of a, I don't know, that's more of like a last. chord. Yeah. And I think if you, for non-pianists,

too, you can arpegiate these as you, you know, I mean, you can certainly sit down and you should sit down. Yeah. Well, and everything we're talking about, you can break up any way you want

if you're playing, you know, or, or just, or whatever you want to do rhythmically. That's, we don't talk about it today. We just really want to talk about how to structure these.

Yep. Okay, so if we have our basic closed triad and we have all our inversions, all of a sudden a chord progression, like one, five, six, four becomes a little more interesting because we can try to keep it as close to each other as possible. Now I'm putting a bass note too in my left hand.

Let me just note too. You're saying closed. Some people think close. Closed. Closed with a D. Right? So instead of going up to G-B-E for the G for the five chord, I'm going to go B-D-G. Sounds like you're doing a little voice leading within your triage situation.

That's exactly what we're going for is better voice lead. The A minor is root position A, C, and then the F, we just move one note. Right? So this, boring, silly, becomes this. Beautiful. And you can do that with any of these inversions.

Whatever's close. Like, it's fun to practice, can I keep it close? Yeah. This is how you really get to know these inversions so they become second nature. What about this? Would this qualify?

Just so they know. That is not close. That is terrible. That's not great voice leading, though. It's not great. It's no voice leading. So, and, like, the goal of this,

is not like, we're not saying everything has to be like minimal movement between chords. Minimal movement between chords. No, you just want to have the option. If you don't know how to do that yet, that's something you're going to want to know how to do. All right, our second way to play triads

that you might want to know about is the opposite of closed voicing that's open voicing. So that's when the notes of the triad are farther apart than at least an octave. So our C-E-G becomes C-G with E. above it, right? This is beautiful open sound. The piano's ringing a lot. Now, we can't play this

with one hand. So if we do our four-note voicing here with, we still have the base note, the root in the left hand. We're right on I have C, G, G, E. My bottom two notes are just C's, in octaves in the left hand, and my top two notes on the right hand are G and E. If we continue on with our chord progression, automatically, if we are staying within these open voicings and trying to not move around too much, we're going to have great voice leading. I like it. So I got the root in my left hand at the very bottom, and then I have these open voicing. And we can do it again from any

inversion. All of these are so much better than you know what I mean? All are more musical. And then we can start mixing closed and open voicing. Wicked jica, wikin'cica remix. Like here's a closed C, you know, open A, or sorry, open

G, closed A minor, open F. You know, mixing these. together, it's not a sin. It's not against the... We'll still be looking up to the heavens. Yeah, so I get the Methodist or Lutherans, they're all cool with it. Right, right. Methodist, Methadhas, whatever, it's all good. So if you... Let me ask you this, I don't know if I'm

jumping ahead, but... And trying to get to the front of the triage line, but within the same concept where you're putting, you know, you're opening it up and maybe having the bass note or even doubling dopeio with the bass note. Yeah, definitely. But what about, like, could we do some

open voicing? Would this be considered when you're not having the root down of the base? Ah, so you are jumping ahead. That's number four. Oh, sorry. We'll get there. Those are slash, the slash bass. Oh, I thought slash bass.

You were talking about like, Oh, yeah, no, similar, but it's, but it's really, even if it's within the triad. If it's within the triad. We'll get there, we'll get there. It's a little foreshadowing. If we don't tell people where we're going, they're going, they're going to tune out, you know?

Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. We have hours of discussions before we record each episode. As you can see. It's curious that you brought that up. No, we'll get there. But before we get there, I want to get to number three, which is the use of neighboring notes.

So if you have our C triad here, any note diatonically, any of the white keys in the C major scale, are fair game as long as they're a neighbor to one of the notes in the triad. So if I take this, you know, the most common thing is like the suss, right? Where the E becomes an F. Or the E goes down to a D. You hear this sound a lot, right?

But it works with any of these. The G can come to an A, the G can come to an F, which doesn't sound that great, but it's possible. The C can go down to a B or the C can go up to a D. This is such a cool way to not just switch up the texture of the chord and get out of just the straight triad, but of movement, adding movement to your triad. So instead of just, you know, you can do little things like

that kind of having these little melodies that are happening inside the triad because you're using the neighbor notes. Again, even on our G, we're in the key of C, So again, any of the white keys are in play, as long as they're a neighbor to one of the notes in the triad. And you could do two, surround them. You know, our jazz musicians will know that this is like an enclosure. You get a melodic all up in the middle there.

Or you could just stay on one. I mean, that changes the quality of the chord in some cases, but this is like your first step into getting outside of triads, but it's still very closely related because you're just moving one of the notes, one note over in any direction. And it's still a triad. And it's still a triad. It's still a triad.

But these are going to be your interesting places that you go back and forth, so you want to get to not only to hear them, but to hear how they relate to that basic try. It's just a great way to add movement. It can really come up with some really pretty things, you know. Anyway, that's our neighbor notes concept. And that works with open voicings as well. You can do the same kind of...

Still sounds great. Adding movement, adding some different colors to the chords. It's a cool way to kind of mess with your triads. All right. Our fourth way, Peter already is. spoiled this one, but it's slash chords. And we start with just using notes from the triad itself. So you can turn this C into like a C over G.

Just by changing that bass note, right? That's why these four note voicings come in handy so well, where you have the base in the left hand on the triad in the right or the bass always as the anchor and then splitting that open voicing up, because then you could just switch that bass note down to one. And this really helps us craft interesting bass lines so that we can mess with the root movement

you know what I mean? And then you've got it because you were playing around with the neighbor tones Right And all the neighbor tones are still in play Yeah and so before that Even before we were moving the bass

Like that's getting some melody in the middle This is really a third junction point For sure You know for having counter melodies Going with different directions It's fun Because I was even thinking Like you said the

I think the one you did the C Over G And then to the G But it could be like that's right and then you go down of the room because I always think like when I first learned I was learning jazz but I also learned

some like classical theory when I was like I don't know ninth grade or something I remember figured bass you ever learned figure base confusing AF 6-4 confusing AF yeah yeah I mean yeah it's just funny because I was like they're not they're thinking and I realized when I started hearing how

that harmony moved yeah like not just static like it started to make sense I'm like why would you be hearing what diatonically the scale degrees you're going off of the root note and not the base note and not the root note because in jazz we're always thinking about the root whether it's there or not.

I'm playing this, I'm hearing it off. And so if I say sharp nine, I'm not like sharp nine from the lowest note I happen to be playing in the voice thing. Right, right, right, right. But figured bass is. That's very confusing. It is, yeah.

But with that way of playing and hearing, it's like it's explaining something that's constantly moving horizontally in terms of yes. Exactly. You're explaining a snapshot, vertically, but it's about all those melodic movements, which is what we're starting to do. So I'm glad you brought up counterpoint and some of this classical stuff, because one of the

caveats, I think, with this slash chords thing, is if the third is the root, like, if we're playing the C, I actually don't like to, if E is the root, I don't like to include E anywhere else in the chord. That's a, I agree. That's a double that's almost guaranteed to be weak. It's going to weaken the entire integrity of the chord. So if I have the third in the base for anything, I'm usually going to either double than the root or the fifth. So here I have E on the base, and then I have G, C, E.

It's a much stronger chord. You could also, instead of playing that, like here is E and then E, G, C, totally weakening the chord. You could use the nine. I was already hearing that. That's the dope. That's the rich sauce right there. Bruce Hornsby? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Exactly. That's great. So we're going to send a link here to, I have a YouTube video about all this, too, if you want to check it out on our YouTube page. And there's a PDF that goes along with it. So if you want to learn more about this. Yeah, it's all about pop triads and dealing with that. We're going to be doing some more of this simple stuff, too, because it's something I'm super interested in. We have talked a lot about it.

And I know we have a lot of players on here that play all kinds of music. We should probably do, like, our top seven uses of straight triad, and six of those will be. Keith Jarrett most likely. He's so good at it. I'm talking about someone who understands classical harmony and how to use basic stuff. And we could even pull some of his classical like his Mozart recordings

where he's like, where he's actually playing triads because the music necessities. Because it's written there. Well, this was fun, man. Yeah. I feel like the bleeding is stop now. I feel fully triaged.

I got like a band-aid. I feel like now I'm ready to enter the actual emergency room. I've been triaged. I've waited my place in line. I've learned my four basic voicings for triads and I'm ready to go. We'll see how it goes on the next kick.

We'll see how simple you can be. So we're brought to you by open StudioJazz.com And we just want to give a shout out to all of our listeners. We don't do that enough. Do you know that? We do that enough.

No, we don't. Well, we shout out to them after they praise us. That's easy to do. How about, you know what? Okay. It feels great. How about instead of,

normally we're reading all our great reviews, we're going to skip that today. We're going to go to a bad one. I was going to go to a good one. Well, you can do that next, but I'm going to go negative. So we had a comment from Byron Lovelace.

First of all, that's a great name. What is it again? Byron Lovelace. That's got to be a... I'm so envious of that name. It sounds like a groove guitarist for Milwaukee, you know. These videos are enjoyable,

but please do not start playing the piano when somebody's trying to speak. Often Adam starts playing and going into the zone when Peter is trying to make a point. It's just rude and frustrated. Stop doing that. Actually, you know, it's the other way around. Often Peter starts playing and going to the zone

when Adam is... Well, whatever. Same difference. So anyway, love you whether it's positive or negative and um you know on that note you'll hear it what um bam what um um biren lovelace he don't like me to play behind adam but now adams play behind me what barren lovelace came up in milwaukee uh move south to chicago what I got Alex. You got Alex.

I like when Alex goes.