You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What Does "Altered" Actually Mean?

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

Today, Adam and Peter clear up one of the most misunderstood scales in music - and check out this video of a previous YHI episode!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.Monday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Masterclass with Billy Childs (for members only)4:00 PM - You'll Hear It Live on YouTube6:00 PM - Bass Guided Practice Session with Bob DeBoo 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, Adam. Yeah. Have you ever seen our award-winning, million-viewed, altered-scale YouTube video we did together? Wait, million viewed? Well, I mean, mm-hmm. Are they listening to this podcast in 2028? Yes, I'm projecting. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Daily Music Advice coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. Hey, Peter, we are doing a little sneak peek of our Black Friday sale. We're doing something we've never done before that's choose what you're you pay on our memberships. Piano Access Pass. All access pass. That's all the courses we make. Either all the piano courses we make or all the courses we make and you can choose what you pay. And although it is a sneak peek, it's not a creepy sneaky peaky. It's a it's a it is not that kind of say. I just wanted to make sure. We're not down with that. But it is a membership

situation where you're welcomed into a holistic community that is welcoming. But not sneaky or peeky. Did you just use holistic and sneaky peekie in the same sentence? I don't know what it means. I don't even know what that means. That's crazy. Yeah, go to open studio jazz.com slash why I to find out more. That's right. So what are we talking about today? Today we're talking about what does altered actually mean?

And four things you need to understand about altered. So this is a bit of... Did we cover this in that million viewed YouTube video? Well, we did cover what the altered scale was. Okay. But there's a little confusion around the word altered, the nomenclature, as we like to say. Did we muddle the waters with our award-winning YouTube? I think...

We're going to link below to it. I think jazz education has muddled the waters about what altered actually means. So we thought that we would just kind of, we'd clear the waters. We'd clarify exactly what do we mean. But first, we're going to muddle the waters. We're going to muddy the waters. So I think, I think we'll dive right in here. So four things that you need to understand.

The first thing you need to understand about altered, when we talk about altered in jazz and jazz theory, they're in music theory, is that just because it's an altered dominant doesn't mean it's the altered dominant. Does that make sense? Right, exactly. Like an altered dominant is saying that a dominant chord, i.e., let's say a G7, has an altered extension.

Yeah. Any altered extension. So I say, what are your, you know, like, what are the altered dominance here? That could be G7 flat nine, natural 13. That could be G7 sharp 5. That could be G7 sharp 11.

That could also. be G7 altered. All of those are altered dominance, right? Because we're altering the extensions. However, there is one that's called just the altered dominant, which makes the naming of it a bit confusing, right? Because this G713, natural 13, sharp flat 9 is an altered dominant. But it's not the...

It's not the altered dominant. That's right. Yeah. Okay. So we are clearly in the muddying up the water, muddling the pesto face. of this adventure. But that's where that comes in. That's where a lot of the mud comes in, right?

It's just because it is an altered dominant, doesn't mean it's the altered scale, like the altered, you know. And how do we know this? How do we know that it's not because of the notes that are in the core, right? Right. And I mean, a quick one is just to play that,

say you were doing like a G-13 flat nine, right? Yeah. So let's play the altered scale over the... It actually doesn't sound bad. It's not terrible. Yeah. But I mean, the idea would be that you're clashing. Well, check it out.

I'll play this. Now you play. Okay, it doesn't sound terrible. All right. Well, so this could be two things you need to understand. Turns out you don't need to understand four things. Well, you'll hear it. Geez.

Well, but also we're just scale running here, which is not typically what we would be doing. Yeah, it's not typical. Yeah. If you were actually to play, if somewhere to play, here's where it gets crunchy. If somewhere to play like G7 altered and you were to be like, quick, so that sounds kind of good. it turns out we're so good we can make anything we make wrong things not that's the main thing you have to understand well never mind about this this is actually very enlighten i mean now numbers

two three and four don't actually matter you'll hear it tonight you know what this is what this is you know what we're so giving we're always teaching others it's time we taught ourselves something we're just gonna it's gonna be like a self-help session we're gonna come in and talk about stuff yeah and just learn and just be like wait that that actually sounds dope yeah yeah okay so those of you that have been writing in saying wow you guys are so funny you're so witty you're so verbose nobody's said that you're such a

grammarian's surely your show is scripted can we put that to rest oh my gosh absolutely absolutely yeah well but no you should know when people are talking about altered dominance and the altered scale right because I here's here's where it gets here's where it does get crunchy because in the melody

if there is an A natural I'm going to do it again every time you said this is where it gets crunchy it sounds good No, but if there's a melody here and you play, that is going to sound bad. If the singer's like, I mean, it would help if I sang on pitch, first of all. But if you do that, it's not going to sound great. So that's where that comes in. You do need to know that an alt, like a G7 altered is not the same thing as a G.

So basically, Adam's saying you can do anything you want with the altered except saying, while you're playing it. Anything else will sound great. I don't know if Andrew's going to put this one out, Peter. Okay, but no, but you know what? We can talk a little bit too about the idea. The altered scale. Well, I hear the most annoying sound of the world?

You just heard it. Okay, so the altered scale and then your most typical altered chord. Yeah. So flat 13 sharp 9. Exactly. Okay. And I'm just going up, like root, not even root,

I'm just going one, three, sharp five, flat 13, root. And yeah, you could do, even without the seventh or the seventh on here, the thing that's jumping out to me, yes, a little D flat triad and E flat triad. So that's why, like, this is nice. All these triads are nice, but when you go to the E triad, that's more evocative. Did I need to say that word again? You need to look that one up? I might.

E-triot over G would give you that 13 flat 9. Right, exactly. Which does kind of, although we prove that sounds good, actually. Good. I mean, it's relative in these little windows. But it doesn't match precisely. It doesn't match precisely. Yeah, yeah.

Fun fact about the altered, when I used to see this, because I didn't have great, well, I had great jazz training a little bit later, but when I first was getting into jazz, it was a lot of self-discovery and, like, looking at these charts and be like, what the hell is? Like, I didn't like have anybody explain exactly what it is, which kind of worked in my favorite because I learned a lot of stuff by ear. But I thought whenever it said altered, that just meant you could choose your alteration.

See, this is what I'm saying. This is why we're trying to clear it up here, right? So when you see G7 altered, there's a specific thing that they want from that. And it's this. It's exactly what you just said. It's the sharp 9 flat 13 or it's like either this E flat over G7 or both. Flat 9 and sharp 9. Totally. Yeah, you can easily. And sharp 11 or and or flat 13. Totally. Basically all the notes in the... All of the alterations. And what this is based off of is the altered scale.

Which we do have that very popular podcast video on. But the altered scale is simply the seventh mode of A-flat melodic minor. Ascending. Ascending, right. So starting on G, it's G, A-flat, B-flat, right? So already the root, the flat-9, the sharp-nine, the natural thing. third, D flat, which is the flat 5, E flat which is the flat 13, F which is the seven, and G, which is back in the root.

So what we have here is like half a half hold of a minus scale and half a whole tone scale, right? Oh, now you've come around on that concept. That's number three. That's number three. That's one of the things you need to know about the altar. Remember, like, it's funny, we both had these things where we kind of conceptualize something often from a very young age

in terms of when we first learn these things or discover them ourselves. And I remember when I meant, oh, wait, did you tell me that? Who told? That one of it, conceptualizing it as half diminished and half whole tone. No, you told me that. I told you, okay. I think about it as a flat.

Right, and that's one that I knew, but I never really thought about and heard it. And it's kind of opened up some nice things for me. You're welcome. Right. No, it is true. It can shift the way you frame it sometimes. Yeah, but don't do the classical thing and change it descending.

That doesn't work. No, unless you're Herbie. Herbie who? Herbie, shmem, shm. So that's number three. The last thing you obviously need to understand about the altered scale is that it sounds great going to pretty much any tonic chord, but it really works well going to a minor. six chord. Yeah.

Or a minor chord. So G7. 11, minor 9. G7 altered. You hear it most often going to like the C minor 6.9. Now, why is that? Well, it's because of this E flat here. There's so many notes that are borrowed from C minor, right?

That it works really, really well going to a minor. It works fine going to a major. I was going to say just to stay consistent with our, our incorrectness. Actually, that kind of resolves nicely. I said it up by saying it works with anything. It results very nice. But it's a lot more tense going to a major.

It provides more tension going to a major. It actually is less tense going to a minor than it is going to a major because it has all those things that are in that minor key. Like if you're going to a minor chord, play just straight up G7. It builds more tension with that E natural and that A natural and a D natural, you know. It's more different. It's differenter. Differner. Mo different, not more different.

Mo different. Well, and it's interesting how just one note can change things because I was about to say, oh, here's an example of an altered voicing, very clearly altered chord going to a major that works really well. But I realize you're familiar with the Amad Jamal arrangement on Old Devil Moon. Of course. That's what the intro starts, right? Of course, yeah. But this is not actually, there's no, now, somebody can correct.

me, dear listener, if you'd like, but I don't think that there's an E in there. I think it's just C, B, B, F, E, flat, A flat. A lot of doubling there, Amad. Is that legal? Yes, it is. There's no E natural. So it's not even, it's almost like... It's like an A flat over...

Yeah, A flat or F minor. Over C major. To C major. Yeah, he's almost at the smooth jazz festival in Santa Barbara right there. What? Santa Barbara. Shout out to Santa Barbara. I always think about it like...

Put us up. We should do... You'll hear. at smooth jazz fest. Yeah. We should get a booth at a smooth jazz fest. That would be fun. Because this is the kind of stuff I'll play,

just to put it out there. Oh, sounds good. Is that not smooth enough for you? I'll play it like this. Like waves lapping up. Oh. And don't worry, I won't do any, or maybe a little bit altered.

Oh. Oh, yeah. I'll do a little bridge. Smooth jazz is not just for the doctor's office. Watch it. I turn it into my mind. It's our major pool. Whoa.

That's all we can. That's our affectation. That ain't smooth. That's not smooth. Thanks very much, everybody, for tuning in. Hey, you know, Peter, we've been doing this podcast for almost three years. Did you know that? Oh, my God.

Oh, I know. It feels like... That's crazy. 2.75. We're probably almost at a 1... 2.75, and we're going for 3. Your voice is getting better. At a man is in the house.

Guys, keep trying to catch up to me here. Everybody... That a man is in the... Go to openstudiojazz.com slash y-h-I To get choosewrecking Pay.com Do not go to open stud.com.

Do not go to open stud.com. Yo, go to open studio. I can't believe it. And when you get there, you know what you got to do. What? Sign up for that all-access pass. Piano pass in the house. Go to Open Studio Jazz.

dot com slash y h i why because we told you to and until next time