You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Unicorn Chords

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Adam and Peter talk about the elusive Unicorn Chord.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. Hey, what's up? Do you believe in unicorns? I believe in unicorns. Unacorda. I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast.

Two guys are sitting around talking music. Unicorda. Unicorna. One chord. Unicorna. Unicorna. Unicorns. Unicord.

Yeah. Oh, man. So, Peter, I want to talk about accord today. And actually, it's inspired by, I just cut that music off a little bit. That's good. I like it. That'd be something it might be. No, you get right down.

We don't have that time. We don't have time. I just. Just don't. I'm not a fan of... Don't worry about it. We don't have time for this. We got to keep going here with what we're doing.

Very frantic. I got a... I like it. It's a camp with our new setup. There's a unicorns standing right behind. I know. We've got to get this more ergonomical. Like, I can't reach all the way.

I haven't... Like, I got to get off the mic and I got to come over here just to... I'm not a fan of... Reaching this far to press my button. Okay, if you guys are on the audio pod, you can't see this. Can they see it if they're on the... Yeah, you can kind of see it.

What's hilarious about the... So we have these buttons. It's almost like an old school Lindrum. I'll play and tell you what it is later. Right. That's the original press the button. It's almost like, what was that game when you were a kid, you know, with the little. Simon.

Simon. Simon. Yeah. Simon. That was it. I was. I was. I was.

Killing it. You were killing it. Killing it, Simon. Isn't that kind of like saying I was killing it slapjack? Maybe. I don't even know what slapjack is. Okay. So he has these different buttons, these, these large buttons where he can trigger.

certain audio things, which I'm sure you've heard many times, right? The funny part about... Listen, we're talking about practice. Not a game. Not a game. And to say that we have an eclectic assortment going all the way from the show Entourage to Alan Iverson, to the office. Fred. I'm not a fan of...

But the funny one about that, I love... Start it again before and then just play it until he talks. Like, it's got the most obscene feedback to it. Every time it comes on, and for some reason, we didn't trim that off. It's just like, nah. It's kind of how you know it's coming. It's like a bleat. It's like we know it's about to happen because it'll be like,

I'm sure our audio listeners in their car are just enjoying this. I'm not a fan of jazz. Feedback. We'll get a better one. We'll get a better one. I think we can send that through a filter. We can definitely send that through a filter. But speaking of filters, let's talk about unicorns.

Unicorns. Okay, so I want to talk about a concept we've been working with. We just worked with last week in Open Studio Pro, Peter. And, you know, last episode we talked all about theory and like how much theory should you know. And I hear you play this kind of chord all the time. And you kind of brought up a version of it. You played it a little bit differently, but it's definitely related to it. It's a shape.

And it's something that I've been getting into. It's a shape that you see related to a key in a couple of different ways. So let's say we're in the key of F. Love F. Oh, F is the best, right? Maybe the best. Maybe the best piano key for, like, mid-tempo straight-ahead stuff.

Right? Maybe the best letter, too. Maybe the best letter. Yeah, yeah. It's really frigging great. But so there's this shape on a diminished chord. It is diminished chord. But it's,

you might call it an F-diminished ad E. F, A-flat, B-natural, and E. Now, if you don't know this shape, this is everywhere in popular music in the 20th century. Now, it's related to the key in that on all of the inversions that you might use this on, There are really three inversions, but two that you would use most normally. So there's the root position, A-flat, and B natural.

You would almost never use D diminished for this. You could. You don't know if I put it in the root. I'm talking about, so this is the harmony, F, A, A, F, A, B. Literally, this shape specifically. Oh, no inversion of that. But I'm talking about now with the base, it could be either F, A-flat. Now there are, this is why it's such a unicorn.

First of all, the shape of the chord. I know that's not part of it. It could be up to the D though, couldn't it? That's what I'm saying, yeah. The D could be a part of it. Where's that going? Where's D in the key of F? Where's D diminished going?

If you want to transpose somewhere, yeah. And you could do, you could resolve it to D minor seven. You know, and you do see that in some like older big band charts? I apologize. I'm trying to turn your unicorn into an hand eater or an artichoke. No, but this chord is so handy for exactly what you were just talking about. But also, the shape of it kind of looks like a, It looks more like a narwhal.

If you look at the body of it, there's like a little minor third body and then a little horn. A little errant. Yeah, right? A little unicarda, a little narwhalian coming out. It's got a horn on the top of it. It looks like a Driffin, perhaps. A Driffin? I don't know if you're familiar with a Diff.

Google it. I'm not a fan of mythology. Hum. So, okay, so this shape, though, we call it the unicorn shape because it's frigging magical. and nobody talks about it. The only person who... It doesn't exist. Well, no, it's not real.

It's not real life. No, Barry Harris actually mentions that this chord is like... He's like, why... He's like, how come nobody talks about this chord anymore? Because it was everywhere for a while. It's like an accordion. It was everywhere for a while. And now no one plays it.

It's so beautiful. So take it out. So from the F, right, with F in the bass, Spring is here. Right, that's where you can... It resolves itself. onto itself. Right?

So it resolves like... Much as when a unicorn goes to bed at night, it lays upon itself. I love it. Let's get lost. Yeah. You can use it there. So many places where you can use this shape.

So the F diminished with the E on top resolves to an F major. The other place that it gets used often is, is like instead of a six chord in like a 3625. A little transitional. Unicorn. Same shape. Like the shape is important. You can do it in drop shapes to open voicings, but the E on top, that little transition.

Think about like my romance. Same kind of thing, right? Yep. Have you met Miss Jones? Eight bars. Such an important shape. I think what is it? All the things you are.

Right? So. Last A section. A flat diminished with that. That's a unicorn chord. That shape was everywhere. Unicorn. Now the last one, you're going to really love.

Ice cream cone changes. Ice cream cone? Ice cream changes. No cone. Used all the time there. So this is like an F7 over A or whatever, B flat of some kind, seven or whatever. And then the B diminished, right? It's the same shape.

You hear this voiced in arranging and with pianists all the time. that kind of thing, right? O.P. Love that shape. Hank Jones love that shape. So that's what I want to talk about, that little unicorn shape. And again, like you would hardly hear it on the D, which would be the next inversion. You could do different inversions in F,

like you'd do it from the A flat. Right? But this idea here, and this is, we were talking about it too, because you were playing it on a dominant chord or like it was a dominant chord. Bad boy. Bad boy. G7, right? you had a C, you would have a C sharp.

Right? It's a similar thing. Yeah. It's very simple. Yeah, that was going to be the only thing I noted, I think, from the last episode was, and that was over B flat, maybe. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's really instead of, it's just moving up. Yeah. Spreading out. So you got to still diminished. It's still like a double diminished thing. You're borrowing over. instead of that straight diminished triad there. Yeah, so the perfect fourth is in the middle

instead of on the top. And you could actually do this anywhere. Did you know you could do this? You can put the perfect fourth here. Move any of these notes of the F, diminished seven, up a whole step. That's great. And I think all of them,

you know, you can move through the diminished cycle up or down, minor thirds. But the one with the perfect fourth in the middle is especially suited for that because it's kind of... It's way back. at the unicorn one with the perfect fourth on top it works great if you're in the key of F it works like on all of these it works great in the first two yeah when you get up to here and especially

here it's a little too like you wouldn't you know you wouldn't be like uh actually you might if you want to go next level it's a little it's a little clashing crunchy crunch it's not bad that's i think the unicorn's spear is actually piercing the sky at that too sharp it's too sharp and he's flying too close to the sun. Well, we know what happens when we do that? We roast. So anyway, so try it out. So if you're, and this is very key specific.

Like I said, this shape. And you can literally just do this shape. And you could do it in drop two. We were doing this exercise. Yeah. You know, like literally. Right? You can go down.

Yeah, down these little chords. I think too, you know, for all different, for shapes in general, this is why it's so great for everybody, not just pianist, to learn these on the piano. Maybe guitar, too, you can kind of even bass, but like to understand the shape,

we can understand that in any instrument, but I think the piano, you have the advantage, like if you're a saxophone player and you want to practice a shape on the piano, yes, you're going to be thinking about it primarily as a horn player as like a melodic device. That's kind of like a foundation,

but you also need to be playing with people to play chords. So like the more you understand, and then vice versa. At piano, we normally are like, well, we can do both, but we get stuck sometimes into just thinking about it. So like if you take this, like as one or the other, it could be a left-hand voice.

Absolutely. It's a great left-hand voice. Or it could be, you know, like what you were doing, kind of a melodic, but you're chording your way through, you know. Yeah. So that kind of thing. But it can also just be something that you're improvising over in this sort of obvious situation or not.

So like... Yeah, it doesn't have to say F unicorn chord for you to put this. And you don't have to match it with the left hand. You certainly can. And that's probably where I use some of the diminished ones a little more. So it might be like a little unicorn in the right hand. Yeah, yeah. And so I'm just taking those, you know.

And then because then when you verticalize or no, when you horizontalize it, you start to sort of see some things that are certainly within the core, but you're hearing them in a different way. You're seeing them. You're feeling them in a different way. So like that one, now I start thinking, oh, you try it. You know.

And then, oh, you try it. Can't you play a minor third? And then you can combine it with Unicornia two, Unicornia too. Unicorna, too. You know, and that can lead you down some out stuff that actually starts with that, but go some other place.

Unbelievable. Yeah, cool. Just like a unicorn. Thanks, everybody. Hey, thanks for listening to the podcast. You got it. Well, I was just going to say, tune it for our next episode for Unicorn.

number two and three the sequel's not quite as good oh yeah okay really truly not not quite as good yeah you'll hear it yeah that was what he said you'll hear it