You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What Do I Do With Ascending Chord Progressions?

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

Today, Peter and Adam take a question from a listener on what to play with chord progressions that ascend step-by-step.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.Links From This Episode:Building Blocks of Bass - A new beginner level course from Open Studio that covers the basic, essential concepts of becoming a jazz bassistPentatonics and Playing Out - Adam Maness's new course shows you some simple practice techniques you can integrate to modernize your sound on any instrumentFriday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Piano Guided Practice Session with Adam on YouTube8:00 PM - Shelter in Place solo piano concert with Peter on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkLet 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. Hey, have you ever been to Baltimore? Baltimore. Yeah, of course. Rhymes with Voldemort. But it's not evil. No, but they have great lake trout sandwiches. They do have great lake trout sandwiches.

And they're not trout and they're not from a lake. But they're great. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the Ely Hair podcast. Daily Music Advice and Inspiration coming at you. Man, I got to apologize. I feel like I'm just like a, a,

Walking awkward intro today. Everything we're recording, I just feel like I'm not, I'm not hitting it in my usual home run style. You know, you know how I'm so charming and perfect all the times? You're totally on your B game today. Exactly right. I feel like I'm bringing the, I'm bringing the average down for the squad. So I'm going to try to get it together.

You're bringing the light rainstorm. Like we say, bring in the thunder, you're bringing like the drizzle. Sorry, I'm just kidding. Now I got your confidence down, I think. You know what? It's about to come roaring back. The Adam Manus podcast train is about to leave the station. Man, sometimes...

Chee, chew! Sometimes I feel like I can answer jazz questions all day. And sometimes I feel like I don't know anything about anything. But I'm going to try my best here because we have an email from Ryan from Baltimore. And I mean, you know, folks from Baltimore can be a little rough. So we better get back to our A game before we... Well, you know what it is partly? We're in the pod suite here.

It could be back in the pod suite with the giant sneeze guard. and you know if we feel like we're slightly off our game and you look to the side who is who is standing there staring at us life size edifices of mr christian mcbride and mr sean jones yeah but looking down on us yeah but christian's looking to me like you need to get your stuff together right but when we're hitting our a game we're like yeah he's he's like congratulating so we're gonna get back there um so all right so we got a question first of all we are brought to you by open studio and we're excited open studio you have a brand new course that has just come out. It's just a few days old, and it's already getting acclaims, and it came out on the same day as our first day. Well, the first ever time we've released two courses in a day, I believe. That's the first time, yeah.

Right. So tell me about your course, and then let's tell them about the base course. Yes, we have a new course, pentatonic's and playing out. I've been developing it over the last couple months. It's just all about how to use pentatonic scales over tunes, and not just modal tunes or modern tunes, but even like bebop tunes. So you can check that out by going to openstudioj.j.com.

and our dear friend Mr. Bob DeBoo released his very first course for us called Building Blocks of Base. And that's like fire right now. So if you're a bass player and you want to get like, I think it's one of the most comprehensive beginner to intermediate base courses I've ever seen. It's really, he's so thoughtful, Bob. And so he put together really cool, guided practice session. It's so clear. And it's clear and concise but deep. It's like an inch wide and a mile deep, you know, in terms of what he goes through.

And I think that, you know, I talk about. with him a little bit about it and I really saw this. I don't know that he was even planning this, but what it's become is very much a corollary. And to Christian McBride's new course, your son is your signature and his fundamentals of jazz bass. It really kind of dovetails nicely with Christian's courses in that he uses a lot of the same concepts, but he really goes through and explains them kind of GPS style, but also just taking these foundational things and kind of explaining them a little bit more, whereas Christian, you know, explains them and shows the inspiration. And Bob keeps it narrow, but goes very deep and it's very clear with his explanations, which is

great. Yeah, so go to open studio jazz.com to check out all of your jazz course needs, but specifically pentatonic's playing out and building blocks of bass, which are brand new offerings. Yes. So we do have a question from Ryan from Baltimore. He says, love the show, love the open studio piano past. Thank you very much, Ryan. Please keep doing the wonderful things that you were doing to help aspiring musicians.

I'm blushing. Done. Yeah, I know. flattery will get you everywhere. I am wondering if you have any advice on how to approach segments of chord progressions that ascend by steps in interesting ways, rather than just

running the same or similar chord up the scale. In situations like this, I come up short when trying to find interesting voice leading, harmony and motion. Your perspective would be much appreciated. I know exactly what Ryan is talking about here. Like, he mentions like one, two,

three. Like, so... I think I could demonstrate what he's saying about just running the same or similar chords up to scale. Is that like... Essentially, yeah, that's basically what he's talking about. Or... Tra la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la yeah. Yeah, that's what it feels like.

So this is... Okay, so basically what we're talking about is just straight diatonic movement with both the root movement and whatever melodic improvisation you're doing as well. I mean totally diatonic in this case within the major scale. I remember doing...

Yes. And I remember... I played with a singer who played it. It might as well be spring, right? And she would do it in the key of... C. So I remember having a salt we did it fast.

So like you do get into that Yeah, like that's just it's ridiculous or whatever. So what can you do? I feel your pain here, Ryan. It's not like doing like a two, five one. Maybe take some of those pentatonic to play out

ideas from your newest course. Oh yeah, well for sure. That could be, yeah, A number one. Yeah, just play. George Garzon's triadic chromatic method. Yeah, you can get it. Exactly. You'll hear it.

But how do you approach that, Peter? Because I have my ways now after dealing with that tune. Well, I think if we... Like, I like to think of, like, where do we start with? Like, what's the most basic place we could start? And let's just take one segment. So we say, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. So that's like four bar or two bars.

One. Dude, putting a funk vibe on everything. It's funk and Monday. What? So, okay, we got C major. And look, it's always good to think about, like, we talk about learning all keys and all of them being equal, but they don't all sound the same, depending on the instrument, too. So, like, you got to recognize that C, if you go, like, it's going to sound even more vanilla than. And why is that?

I don't know. It's just one of those things. It's like, why is blue different than red, you know? So we've got to take that in consideration. But we'll look at the most basic place. So C major to G-sus, to C-major to G-sus or even G-7. I'm going to do Suss. So within that, like how many other places can we go,

whether we actually substitute or not, but we might use them, as we're still staying on those chords. Jeez, look out. And that was just, those were not necessarily the most connected. But those are just ideas of like different places that correlate with the melody. So we might still just do that with the bass or the bass player might do that. What did I do? I think I went to A flat major.

And then to E minor 11. F sharp 13 flat 9. What did I do? Maybe B minor 9 to E minor or E flat. You know, you can go all these different places. There's substitutions, but they're less substitutions like not that kind of substitution. more static harmonic areas that we can sit for a second that match where the melody is that we can play get out of that diatonic rut that we're in so yeah so some of it might sound

like it's playing out but it's actually based upon specific harmonic areas so c major a flat major over g and then e minor 7 which it gets it to like almost like a lydian g kind of thing and then F sharp 13 flat 9 is over the G or the C So what would you do? Okay, that's, yeah. What would you do, though?

Sorry, did I jump too many steps? No, no, no, no, no, it's so good. But what if we simplified it? What if you were doing just, what if you had an arrangement where it was just, it's going to sound so lame? Right?

Yeah. Just stepwise, I've got to keep E flat here. What do you do? So you heard it here, folks. Even Pierre Martin doesn't know what to do. Okay, so So I think if you, yeah, so if you find So what are you doing there?

What is that on that C minor? Okay, so when you get to C minor, okay, so B flat, so things that you can do just over the B flat, you know, diminished, sharp five, like these always kind of fit over that. And then shapes that are within that

but are more like F2 kind of situation. But then the C minor, that's your first place. Because normally we would look at like the dominant chord, but there is no domino the way. That's why I said on that, but do do do, do, baby, because you've got so many possibilities over a dominant situation. But that's okay. So we're going minor, minor, minor, major. We're just doing that.

But we can extrapolate the kind of the connected dominant with that C minor, which would be F7. Yeah. So it's like, so I'm thinking about substitutions over F7. Or even just like a half hole diminished over. Half-hole diminishes great. Like an F, half-hole diminish. So it's almost like you're hearing... Yeah, yeah.

So you think about instead of... So 1, 2, 5, 3, 6, 2, 5. And so that's just turning into all dominance. But you could also do like... Like, D over C, G over F, E over D, A flat over G. Nice. Man, that's such great advice.

And just if I could add one thing to this, Ryan, if none of that is working for you, don't forget your good old friend, the chromatic bailout. That's right. The golden parachute. And the way that works as a golden parachute, I think, is always, you need to practice. It's not like just an automatic parachute. You've got to learn how to pull the shoot out. For sure.

And that means like the timing of when you start. First of all, you've got to play with some really interesting rhythm because you can't really fall on any kind of harmony. being based within that melody. And to be able to craft a good melody with the chromatic scale is difficult. Because, I mean, think about great melodies. Like, they're singable. And, like, Adam, sing me a chromatic line that sounds good. La da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da.

I don't know. You know, it's hard. You know, where's trying to get pretty. That's not quite. I got it. Pui-de-bah-Boodah. Well, don't see, it starts chromatic, but then you're leaving the chromatic.

But if you think about it, well, we'll go back to it. So it's the timing of it. You know, you've got to think about when you're landing on it, when you're stressing, when you're accending certain notes, when you're sitting on certain notes with the chromatic scale. Cool. Ryan, hope that helps. Thanks for the question.

It's a good question. Mail us some lake trout. Come on, ma'am. We can't get there right now. Come on. Let's do it. And if you have a question, can always email us at

YHI at OpenStioJazz.com. I bailed you out there. You were getting nervous. You were looking for your cheat sheet. You're like, where's my cheat sheet? Wait, is that correct? I got it on my cheat sheet. What about if they want to leave us a voicemail? If they want to leave us a voicemail, they can just call country code

plus one. Area code 314-282-6-4-37. That's 3-14-282-6-4-37. That also doubles as Adam's cell phone number. So he may just pick it up too, but you'll probably get a voicemail. Have you heard what our voicemail sounds like?

I think we talked about it. Yeah, we played it. It's really interesting. But also, if you're calling for my Uber service, just leave the message of where you want to be picked up. And where you want to go. And where you want to go. And I can get you if you're in the St. Louis metropolitan area.

Great. Till tomorrow. You'll hear it. Lovely.