You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Usin' those EARS.

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

Run it BACK. This episode features a compilation of clips that all discuss using your ears and how it can be helpful when playing. Deep Listening - July 5th, 2019Hearing Changes - Jan 29th, 2019Hearing what you play - Mar 11, 2019Have 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

What's up? This is You'll Hear It with another episode of the Run It Back series. All right, so the clips today are all centered around the central theme, and that is Using Your Ears. As we know in jazz and all music, that your ears are pretty essential. So we've got a number of topics that talk about the different ways that we need to learn to practice using our ears and how exactly we can most effectively use them in a few. musical context. This first episode is about how to listen to music in a real way. I'm talking deep listening. And much in the same way that any artist can admire someone's art as a musician, it's kind of your practice responsibility to break down music as you hear it and find out exactly

what you like about that and what you might want to use from each track. Peter and Adam really take this topic to a really cool place, so I'm going to play that for you right here. What do you mean when you say, listen deeply? I have an idea of what that is, but how do you actually listen? What do you listen for? Do you try to hear changes, chords, solo lines? Which do you listen for first? Sorry, that was all the first question. Thanks, David. David. Yeah, thank you. David Kissinger, grandson to our secretary, former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. No, we don't know that for sure. It's possible. We don't know that he's not. We don't know that he's not. nine here.

We don't know that he's not. We don't know that he's not. This is a great question. We talk about listening a lot. Yes. And so we can definitely go into some ways to listen. Yeah. And I mean, deep listening, I think we've made that distinction before, or maybe he heard

it, David heard it from somebody else. But I think we do, you know, want to acknowledge and really emphasize the difference between deep listening and just listening. And the way that I can find, you know, to sort of explain that easiest maybe is that deep listening is the way that a musician, a practitioner of the craft of playing jazz music would listen to something as opposed to a fan. Now, I think that gets a little confusing

because we are fans also. Sure, maybe even first and foremost. And so there's nothing wrong with listening as a fan, but you've got to do some deep listening as, you know, it's kind of like if you're a plumber, you can, you know, open up underneath the sink. Anybody can open up and admire some beautiful work that's done with the piping or whatever,

but a plumber's going to look at it and be like, wow, he's going to know the engineering behind it and why this was done and like look at it in a way that you or I wouldn't. I don't know if you're a plumber. No, you're going to take it apart. Yeah, for sure. Take it apart.

And so I think that's the first thing is just sort of understanding what and why we would want to listen deeply. And then we can get into kind of how you do it and what it is. Yeah, I mean, a good way to go about this, David, is maybe to think about it like you are taking apart a machine and you're someone who works on this machine. And so the first thing,

you do is look at it from an overview, right? What's the overall sound? Because if you're deep listening and you want to get deep, chances are, or at least how it should be, is you should be listening to something that strikes you, that you love. And so the first thing that I listen to or that I'd pay attention to is like, wow, how do they get that overall sound? What is that overall sound? Yeah.

What's going on to create the sound here that I love? Yeah. I think that starts with everybody in the band having a similar uniform of overall. get it okay sorry yeah okay and good one no but but then from there like once you once you kind of identify okay well this sounds moody or you know slow or airy or or beautiful or happy whatever it is then you might think about like okay okay what instruments are making this sound yeah how do that how do they how do they achieve that overall mood or vibe right and just what's the instrumentation?

Right. You know, that could be like the first way of breaking it down. You know, okay, I hear piano, I hear bass, I hear drums, I hear a trumpet, I hear a saxophone. Right. I don't hear a trombone, thank goodness.

Yep, yeah. You know what I mean? So you start then breaking down the moving parts within what you're hearing. Now, you probably already know what the instrumentation is if you bought the CD

and you see who's on or whatever. So, but just be aware of that. Be aware of what instruments are making that sound. No, I think that's very important because the next kind of levels of many of the things where I think we're going to say kind of depend on you knowing who's playing and then like how the instruments and the different positions interact with each other and then also just how individually sort of your instrument

so like you know we're a piano so normally you're going to spend more time at a certain level kind of analyzing and listening and trying to do takeaways from the piano standpoint but I think in order to be able to do that you have to not only know all the other instruments that are playing, but know a little bit about why and how they're doing what they're doing so that when we interact or want to analyze how a great pianist on a recording is interacting with those other instruments, you know what's possible, you know, and you know why certain things work. You understand why certain conversations happen. I think most, you know, recordings that in the jazz world that we end up wanting to and also listening to deeply have generally

so much great interaction, you know. And then I would even say that, I know people are thinking, well, what about solo piano? Even in solo piano, there's interaction with oneself. Of course. You know, Art Tatum,

it's like a lot of different voices going on and things. And so that, as a listener, on that fan level, that top level that we started with, or bottom level, if we look at building up, the interaction is such an important thing.

I mean, it's beautiful, it's moody, it's deconstructed, it's complex, it's painful, it's all the emotions that we know music can do, it's so much more exciting when there's a group of one to 100, for sure. Putting that together and interacting it.

And so, like, I think a lot of the deep listening, when we really get to deconstructing it, is about seeing how a collective achieves the complexity of music and how that can be done. Absolutely. I mean, I was, as you were talking about this collective and what they're doing, you know, the first way to do this, you've identified the instruments,

you hear the sound, you hear the collective, is to isolate one. one of those instruments. It doesn't even have to be your instrument. Right. But isolate the bass and listen to just what the bass player is doing. And then you can hear that in relation to the drums, in relation to the piano, in relation to the saxophone, or isolate the piano. And just hear how that pianist is interacting with everyone else. And that's sort of the first step, I think, really diving deep on something. Right on, right on. Okay. So this next topic within the using your ears category is how to hear changes.

Okay, so I know that a lot of people have questions about this one. You know, a lot of musicians have developed abilities to hear changes and be able to play them back. This takes a lot of time and practice. A lot of people think that it comes natural. And yes, there is an innate ability to have good ears, but it's also something that you can practice. and I think Peter and Adam really break this down in a cool way.

How to on finding the changes to tunes. I have decent ears and I can pick out melodies and bass lines, but I can't get the changes. Thanks if you read this. Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. Okay, cool. And we did read it, so you're welcome.

Yeah. So this is a good question. So I think, you know, what they're asking is maybe, like, if you don't really know jazz theory and maybe a little bit more the beginner side in terms of actually playing jazz, you know, how do you go about getting the kind of more complex harmonies? You know, and I don't want to read too much into this, but perhaps the writer has been able to pick out things by ears, maybe different styles, maybe some pop tunes, some things that were a little bit simpler harmonically, but it's having trouble with the changes,

the chords with jazz. But I love the spirit of let's try to, you know, they're not asking like, what's a good book that's going to show me exactly what a C-7 sharp, 11 and all that kind of stuff that doesn't, I mean, it matters, but I love this kind of attitude about like picking out the melodies and the bass lines. And that's the, you know, in the question is already the answer. Yeah. I have decent ears and I can pick out melodies and baselines. That's where it starts. And that is easier to hear the both sides, the bottom side and the top side. That's right. The inside is harder, but the fact that you're willing to try to do that is great because that's where the progress is going to come. Yeah. And in fact, it helps, I think, to think

to think about it from an outside in perspective, to start from the big movements and go down to trying to hear little things. Because, you know, if you can hear the melody in the baseline, you can make some assumptions, right? Like, we know that a lot of jazz tunes end in a cadence of a 2-5-1 progression. So if you hear it, exactly.

So if you hear a 2 as the baseline, you might make the assumption that it's possibly a Dorian sound, a minor 7 sound, right? And then if a 5 follow that, there's a good chance that's a dominant sound. Right. And if it's the one of the key, there's a very good chance it's a major sound.

Yeah. So I can hear a two five and not have to break down exactly what's in it to know that it's probably, you know, minor seven, dominant seven, major seven. Right. Because that's usually the pattern, unless it's in a minor key,

which is easy to hear. And then from there, I think you could break it down to smaller movements. One place I like to start with my students on ear training is the four kinds of triads, being able to hear the different. in major, minor, and then augmented and diminished. Those four things can get you really far.

Yeah, absolutely. And if you think about them, you know, as you're learning those four triads, also trying to hear the intervals, even if you're not consciously thinking about exactly what they are, but the differences, because all those are made up of major thirds and minor thirds, different combinations. So major triad, of course, is a major third and a minor third. and you might think, well, it's the major third part

because it's a major triad, but when you move that up to like an E minor triad, it's the same as the major, but the minor interval, the minor thirds on the bottom, the major thirds on the top. That's right. And it starts to give you another way of hearing this kind of inside harmony.

That's right. You know, Riley, you might start with that. Maybe you have this handle on this, but it never hurts to do like a flash card situation where you have a friend play some chords and you try to guess major minor augmented diminished. Yeah. Because what you really want to do is not be listening,

you know, you want to be able to do it without listening for every interval, to just know the sound of augmented. Like, that's an augmented sound. Right, right. I don't have to know exactly the intervals. I'm just hearing those two major thirds on top of each other as one thing. Yeah. And I think that if you get a little bit of the intervalic, I guess it's called,

the intervals at the same time as you're getting the chords. I mean, look, when we talk about cores, normally we're, and being able to identify them and hear the harmony, hear the changes as the question asks, we're talking about a minimum of three notes normally. But the great thing, it's always made up of intervals. So if we get those two, that's going to help us as we're starting to identify melodic lines. You know, it's always the horizontal, the vertical versus the horizontal.

But also in terms of making combinations of, you know, for upper structure chords and the more complicated stuff can actually be simpler if you think about them as, so you've got your augmented triad as you reference. with the seventh, yeah. With the seventh. That's going to be kind of a complex chord, but if you think about augmented triad, two augmented triads,

and you can hear that, it doesn't matter that that's a C-7, sharp 11, flat 13, if you can just hear it as those, you know, that that's the beginning of it, really. You can learn the theory and stuff later. But to go back to Riley, something that you talked about

picking out the bass and the melody, you can also let that be the guide. Like if your bass note is F and your melody note is A, natural, probably a major chord. Right. Right. If your base note is D and your melody note is C sharp,

we know that that chord has a major 7. Whatever, it could be minor major, but that's easier. Those two things are easy to find once you know that I have a D and a C sharp. You know that no matter what it is, I just have to hear that third in the triad. and then maybe any alterations.

And that's a great point. So you've got D and C sharp, you know, and you know if you added one of these different chords every week to be able to hear it in like different keys and identify it in a month or so you'd have all of them, but you could even do it in a few days if you want to push things along. But those kind of things, and I remember being like not able to hear the difference, but I would just try them and then I would hear if it clash and then try something else.

And this is why it's great no matter what instruments you play. If at least you can get a little bit of piano or guitar. or guitar so that you can actually play this harmony and demonstrate it kind of to yourself and train your own ears. Totally. But if you think about that major, so that's just a major seven,

major with a minor seven, and then you start to hear the difference and you play that, and then diminish. Augmented. Yeah, so that's your four basic triads added with that major seventh. Look, at first it's going to be like,

you're not going to know what they are, but anyone, even if you think you don't have good ears, can tell if something sounds different. That's right. You know, it's not like, I mean, if somebody's colorblind, I guess you can't tell what the different colors, but you can see that they're different. You just can't identify them. And so I think that a lot of times when people say, I don't have good ears, it's like,

you just haven't focused in on those foundational things. Yeah, some people are born with better ears than others, but it's a lot of work on it, too. I know, like my father is like, has incredible ears and I can, you know, you could play something and they can just sort of play back on several different ears. instruments. But I also saw him work on that a lot. So he started with a nice talent on that, but then he extended it and made it functional on different instruments and then practiced it and became familiar with it in different styles. And then all of a sudden you've got good ears. I love that idea of playing the differences with the one, the melody known on top and the bass note. Same thing

and doing those four different triads underneath to hear the difference and be able to recognize that. Another way to work on this, I did this a lot, especially when I was younger, is to listen to music and try to guess what the chord quality is, even if you don't know the key, or maybe find the key on the piano at the start, and then you have a reference point. You know who's good to do this with is the Beatles, right? Because it's, especially for a beginner,

the harmony doesn't get super complex, but they definitely use a lot of all four kinds, right? They use a lot of major, minor, diminished, and augmented, and they even use a lot of minor sixth and things like that for you to hear. It's just challenging enough. to really be useful, I agree. A little bit beyond your basic pop tune, but not quite on the level of like a Phineas newborn album or something.

Right, right. Yeah, I mean, but it's good because if you're going to get your ear training from Drake, you're probably going to get two chords only, which is fine, nothing against Drake, but you're not going to get, yeah, if it's a minor, the chances of a minor six. And look, it's important. The minor six, minor, you know, Dorian, I mean, minor seven,

when you get into the more advanced things, especially the sort of clusters, to be able to identify those basic little changes, you know, differences. Absolutely. And then you can build on it. And look, and don't try to learn, you know, be able to hear all the changes within a week.

It's not going to happen. Yeah, yeah. You can't rush it. But be systematic about it and make sure you're hitting. Like, I realized I did the same thing, and a lot of people have done this, because the diminish is so hard to understand and to hear.

I always kind of push that back when I was younger to really learning because I was scared of it. Yeah. And so to this day I've had, I mean, I'm finally getting to the point where I'm sort of confident over and diminished. But it's important, you know, and it goes along with our whole concept of practicing of doing the hard stuff first. Now, don't push the hard stuff to the end because you actually need more time with the hard stuff.

That's right. That's right. And as a reminder, patience with this is key. Yeah. This is a lifetime pursuit. If you're going to be a musician for the rest of your life, you can work on this for the rest of your life. Not to put it off, but you don't have to get it all in the first week. No. Just keep working at it for the rest of your life. That's right. Okay.

So, this last topic is about playing what you hear. Now, this is not like playing something back, you know, that you just heard on the radio. This is when you're soloing, when you're improvising, how to play what's actually going on presently in your mind. It sounds kind of like an easy task. It's like, how could you play something that's not in your mind? But it's harder than you think. How to play something that you're truly feeling. How to, you know, really make something come together in that present moment that's organic.

And I think that Peter and Adam do a great job getting into this topic, so here it comes. 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 not, it was authentic. And that's what you want to go for. So you have to practice that. Right. That's right. We, we are what we practice. I mean, it's such a 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, 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 in 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, Can you give me a little baseline, Pete? Yes, I can. 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. 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, was the best of the three choruses that I took, right?

Because it was really just combining 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 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. Yep.

That's good. I've got nothing to add. Excellent. Yep. Incredible. Okay, so this is You'll Hear It, the Run It Back series. Thanks again for checking us out. And remember, I keep links to each one of these clips to the full episode in the description.

So that's one of the cool things about this series is if you liked what you heard, you can go back to the episode and get the whole thing. You can delve a little deeper into the full episode. the topic that we talked about today. Now remember, if you like this podcast, you got to like and you got to subscribe. That keeps us going, keeps things moving, greased the wheels. And remember, you can also check out openstitiojazz.com so you can find a better relationship between you and your Instagram.

Until next time, happy practicing.