You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What Brings About Stank Face?

Episode Date: September 3, 2019

Things get stanky in the Podcave today as Peter and Adam converse about their favorite side-effect of great jazz: stank face.Check out the latest offering from Open Studio: The Bird Pack! This is a curated collection of 7 lessons from Peter Martin's acclaimed Jazz Piano Method course. Each lesson covers the tunes and key concepts of Charlie Parker's wonderful music, as well as tips for enhancing your bebop playing. Go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/the-bird-pack for more info.Like those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey, Adam. If I sent you an email with the best picture of the best stank face I could muster, would you click through? Is it going to be that one from the picture of that kid that we have on our blog post? The little freckle fan, that's a weird, ugh, I will not click through. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast.

Daily Jazz Advice. Coming at you from St. Louis, Missouri. Oh, yeah. End of summer. End of August. What's up with the end of August weather here in St. Louis, Missouri? Usually it's like you want to jump into the river off a very high cliff. Right.

And that's not going to be a cool river either. That's going to be a warm Mississippi, a muddy, the big muddy Mississippi. I think some people don't understand how hot and humid it gets here in St. Louis. Like, it's legit. Not this week. No, no. Last couple weeks it's been like. That's the problem.

I think there's a lot of people in town because of Labor Day and different things, and they're going to be like, oh, my God, this is so beautiful in the summer here. Yeah, no. Yeah. It's not. Not usually. Well, you know about the valley like that, the Mississippi River Valley. It's such a big river and stuff.

There's a lot of humidity. Even though neither of us lives right by the river, we're a few miles away, if not 10 miles away. It still affects the climate and everything. This is great conversation for the jazz podcast. Well, no, but no. Okay, let's tie it in now. We're talking about the Mississippi River, New Orleans, Chicago, St. Louis. Hell yes.

Even up to like Minneapolis, the musicians traveling back and forth, ragtime. New Orleans. I mean, that's what made this music. Memphis. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it does. So true. Yeah. Okay, so we were talking about stang face today, though. Speaking of the Mississippi River. Yeah. We got an email. Have you ever swam in the Mississippi River? Well, I don't want to die or get hepatitis, so no, I haven't.

Okay, I have, and I'm not dead, and I do not. And that shot of Venezuela cleared it, right? That's right. C or B? Which one are we talking about? I don't know. No, no. But this was years ago. It's dangerous, though, isn't it? Well, I swam up north of San Luis, but not that far north. Like, I mean, within 20 miles or so. Like Alton or something up there?

Yeah, not all. That's, no, you don't want to go there. You got the Alton sludge coming down that hill. No, I mean, it was... I think it's the name of their marching band. Yeah, I'll have to find out if... I remember I went with kind of a group. There was somebody in our high school band,

Jasmine, University City High School. We, somebody had like some... It wasn't even their property. They knew this place you could go. It was almost like a sandbar. and you could kind of swim in the river. It was actually pretty fun. Wow.

I mean, it was just sort of a little edge of it there. Is that even legal? It was not legal. It was not legal. Well, it's a great story. Yet I digress. So we're talking about Stankface because we have this email from Eric.

Yeah. You're going to love this. This is like an email slash rating and review all in one. It's everything we need. Yeah, exactly. Hey, guys, my name is Eric, and I'm going to my fourth year

of jazz piano performance degree at Brandon University. in Manitoba, Canada. I recently stumbled upon your podcast program, and I've really enjoyed listening to both of your ideas and concepts, super fun and interesting to listen to, and surely makes my workday go back. How does somebody stumble?

I'm not making a joke here. I really want to know, like, how do you stumble on this podcast? I mean, obviously people have. Yeah. Because we haven't really done the greatest job of promoting, because we don't know how to. I mean, we know how to promote some things, but it's like, like, I wonder, does he mean he searched, like,

daily jazz podcast on Apple and we came up? Because we've tried that and we don't come up, actually. I think we search jazz in the Apple podcast app, we come up eventually. Yeah, but not as far to the front as we think we should. Well, ratings and reviews help that everybody. Ratings and reviews. Are we at that part of the show?

Yes, we are. Well, it's a slash here. But just to digress, no further, here we go. I recall listening to the deep listening episode a couple of weeks ago. I know that was over a month ago. This episode is not deep or about listening. One concept that I found interesting was how to really figure out why a tune, a section of a tune, a phrase, or a groove in a tune, make someone feel a particular way or to put on the good old stank face. For those who don't know stank faces, when you purse your lips and you crinkle your nose and you're like damn.

It's often accompanied with a damn. Or a woo. At St. Louis style right there. jazz woo. Yeah. This really clicked in my mind when I was listening to I Wish and Do I Do by Stevie Wonder.

Are we still reading his question? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought, gee, what makes that feel so good? And then I began to reflect back to the straight-ahead jazz round. What makes the greats? It's like Herbie, Chick, Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, just to name a few,

all have such diverse swing feels and approaches to groove. I also relayed this question back to other great musicians and bands such as the Eagles, Michael Jackson, B.Gs, or even Aerosmith. What makes these bands have their signature feel.

Do influences of these musicians come to play? Would you consider the swing straight spectrum to be a factor as well? What kind of historical factors can contribute to this idea? Thanks. Looking forward to hear your opinions. Eric, that's a great, if not a little long-winded question. Questions? There's like eight questions in there.

I think because he buttered us up in the beginning. It's going to be allowed. And actually, it's a really interesting topic to think about. Just reading his question, I think historical context actually might come into this quite a bit because a little bit of when we like something that's good

is actually listen to this awesome audiobook the other day about this thing called the creative curve. Have you heard about this? So there's this idea of like there has to be just enough familiar in a piece of art and there has to be just enough novelty, something that we're not familiar with. But like it has

to feel comfortable like 75, 80%. And then 20% has to be like, whoa, what is that? And that is the stank face. The stretching. The stretching. So I think even things like Michael Jackson or the Eagles or something is like compared to where they were in their time at their peak, right? They had enough familiarity, enough feels like home, and then enough novelty to make you think like, whoa. And that's even, I think, contextual within a piece of music. Yeah.

You know, it's the same kind of thing of like I was, we were both playing different Michael Jackson tunes earlier today in the studio. And there's something in that groove of the one I was doing. rock with you. Oh, man. That just like, it feels like some kind of disco thing, but then there's some changes that you're just like, it's like literally the greatest disco ever. For sure. I think. For sure. But I mean, I get stang-faced just from the intro, the drum fill. Right. Tiki-tac-tac-tac-o. Bang. I mean, I'm like, ooh, I'm already there, so. There's something familiar about it, but it's a novel thing, right? Compared to everything else around it, but that's the key is compared to where it sits, amongst other pieces of art. So I think that there's

man, there's so many different ways to look at this, but it sounds like we're kind of going to focus in on sort of the groove-based ones. Sure. You know, I mean, there's definitely like staying face just from like a harmony being played in a certain way. But again, so this is the same concept of, of like, I'm doing something that you're expecting

and it feels comfortable, and then I throw this curveball in the harmony, and that's the stenchance case. That's the novelty. That's the 15% novelty or whatever. Absolutely. And I think, that might be the sort of bridge between all these different kind of, you know, call them

stank face. I always think of that little kid, so I don't want to actually call it that, but you know, but, you know, these special moments, like I think there has to be a, it's really about the drama, like the setting up of the composer or of the, of the player, what we're talking about now. I mean, it's really no different than like a great Beethoven string quartet. We were listening to some of those the other day. And it's like, you know, the composer has this thing set up. And if the players execute that, it's like, you know you're going to get to that moment, but it really is a dramatic thing.

You can't just, well, I just said that example where they did start out with it, but you have to set up a pattern and then hit it in another way. It's not just about, like, Stankface, I think is not just like, ooh, you're in the pocket and you're just sitting there. Like, that's a cool thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's another kind of thing. But this is like when you do that and then you go next level. You know, it's almost like, what's the YouTube? It's like, Chris Potter solo, where he was killing it until he went next level. you're not going to believe when he got to this place.

Right, right, right. That's the Stang Face plays, right? I agree. And I think that's the setup, then bam, bam, bam, and then there's the... That's it, man. It's the familiar and then the novel. Yeah. And it's the ratio of those that you mix.

And then if your audience, like knowing your audience, because if you're at an avant-garde music festival, yeah. That ratio of novel to, you know, is not going to be the same for you as it is for them, right? So it's totally different. But, like, dazzle me by pulling your instrument apart and setting it on fire.

That's the only thing that's going to dazzle. me and give me stank face at this point. Someone lights their instrument and they're like, ooh. Yeah, yeah. Typical that Adam and Peter's impression of an avant-garde festival. But you can, you know what, this is actually totally applicable to practicing

and performing as well. Like, we should be thinking about this. I mean, I'm often in my solo thinking about like, not consciously but I think at this point it's subconsciously like, okay, I've been doing this long enough. It's time to like really put something at new out there. Right? And that's usually when

great moments happen. And I think what you're referring to, I love this concept of, you know, challenging the listener, giving them something and then bringing them on the journey. But I think when you go next level with this, like, not next level, it's not Chris Potter next level. Yeah, yeah.

But just really high level with this and you can really execute on this, you can do it so well that even when the listener does become accustomed to it, i.e., a recording. You know, so if we think about kind of like stank-faced things, we shouldn't be stank-faced in a way because we know it's coming, right? But yet we still are because it's so

well executed that even though we know what's going to happen. And I think a lot of times musicians say, like we think that, oh, we've seen it all, we hear it all, this is, yeah, we know. But that's the exciting thing to me. I'm still dazzled by stuff that I heard 30 years ago, 40 years ago, even as a, yeah, it's magic. And it's like, like that intro. I mean, how many times can I hear that intro on that? If that came on right now, we both have a serious case. And it's not just, yeah, It gets you, you know, tapping your foot into the groove. There is that part of it. Hold on.

But there's also, like, just the symmetry of it. Hold on. Andrew, at this point in the edit, go ahead and put the intro to Michael Jackson's rock with you. We'll pretend like we hear it, and then we'll do our best. Okay, right. Come on, and then we've got to pound it out after that. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that was great. And also, that's going to make us demonetize this video.

I'm going to be a little. Eric, thank you so much for the question and the kind words. great to know that people are checking us out up in Manitoba. That's great. Yeah, big shout out to... I don't know that school. I don't know if it's in... I mean, I've been to Winnipeg.

That's the only place I've been in Manitoba. But they've got a lot of great musicians up there. That's such a great Canadian name for university. Brandon University. If someone said, what's the name of the university in Manitoba that Eric goes to me? I would say, Brandon? I don't know. I don't even know it.

Man, I heard a podcast this morning where they were talking about the guy who was being interviewed was Canadian, and the guy interview was like, man, you guys were always so nice Canadians, you know? Are there any, like, mean Canadians? He's like, and the guy said, well, he basically, the guy started describing some other Canadians. Like, he's like, I was in Mexico on vacation, and this group was kind of, but then he couldn't even really be mean to them.

And the guy was like, look, even when you're talking about Canadians, you don't like, you're still nice to them, you know? Yeah, yeah. Big shout out to Canada. Love Canada, for sure. BC, Ontario, and everything in between. Quebec. Yeah.

We're in Quebec. All right, well, good. So let's talk a little bit at Open Studio today. Our sponsor, our sponsor, our other sponsors are coming back, and we got some new ones coming to. We do. Open Studio, yeah? We don't want to put it out there yet, but actually, you know what?

Let's give a little love to our former sponsors. Yeah, we got the Oxford American, Oxford American. Still love, still love reading the Oscars American. Yeah. Who else we got? We got Sound Slice. Go to SoundSlice.com. If you want a role like me and Adam do for most of the day,

go to SoundSlice.com. Check out what Open Studio and everybody else has there. You'll love that. And then tomorrow we're going to have a bit of an announcement to make about a certain conference in 2020. So tune in tomorrow. We'll make that announcement about something really interesting. Maybe live you'll hear an opportunity. We'll see.

I like it. And then for today, we have a brand new pack. Do you know about our pack? Because as we're recording this, today is Charlie Parker's birthday. So we're recording it today, Charlie Parker's birthday. This is Thursday, August 29. Oh, don't tell them when we record it. Come on, man.

Well, they can just look up Charlie Parker's birthday. Oh, that's true. No, but this is relevant. And we'll put a link here, Andrew, in the description for... The Birdpack. The Birdpack. These are seven lessons that we curated so lovingly. We did.

From your course, your ongoing course of Jazz Piano Method. This is the only ways you can see these lessons without actually spending the big bucks for the Jazz Piano Method. And it's $25. Get in there. Check it out. It's $25? Is that for real? I think it might be too cheap.

No, it's not too cheap. I just don't know. No. But there's like, there's tons of lessons on things like the concepts behind bebop and Yeah. Closures and all the tunes. It's awesome. Yeah, and this is really, you know, in honor of Charlie Parker, we got a couple of his tunes on there.

But it's also like, I wanted to, you know, that's some of the biggest questions we get. And then I get people like, oh, how do you do your bebop thing or whatever? So this is curated from lessons going all the way back to like 2012. We really dug into the archive and 25 bucks and you get lifetime access to them. So take your time. Love it. Until tomorrow. You'll hear it.