You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What Does "You'll Hear It" Actually Mean? - #23

Episode Date: February 22, 2018

In this very special episode, Peter and Adam talk about the inspiration behind the title of this podcast. Also, Peter almost gets crushed by a sound baffle. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Peter Martin and I'm Adam Manus. Welcome to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Hey everyone, today we're going to talk about what you'll hear it actually means. You mean like the meaning of this podcast in the greater sense of podcasts and culture in general? I just meant what the phrase means actually, but we can get deep too. Sorry, no, no, no, no, I'm good, I'm good, huh? Yeah, I mean, I feel like we're enough of an institution now that it's both a phrase and a name. Well, we're getting pretty proud.

of ourselves. That's right. But actually, you know, we came up with this title or applying it to this podcast kind of by accident, sort of like everything we're doing on this podcast. Yeah. But it's actually a very, I think a very unique and deep phrase that's thrown around, I guess, is it only jazz musicians? I'm trying to think of I've heard it beyond jazz music.

I assume that other musicians must use this phrase all the time. You know, things like bluegrass music or country music. Yeah. places places where and styles of music where people do pickup gigs, you know, like folk music and Irish music. You know, the phrase you'll hear it is often used on the bandstand in context of, hey, let's try this tune. And the piano player says, oh, I don't know that tune. And then the person who called the tune says, you'll hear it. And what they mean is, we're going to play it.

And you should be able to hear what's going to happen and anticipate a little bit. follow the bass player, figure it out, and hopefully by the end, you've got the song. Right, right. And I'm just thinking, too, I guess a lot of times, unless it's sort of an adversarial bandstand situation, it's often preceded by, don't worry, you'll hear it. Exactly, yeah. So it's not necessarily a negative thing in terms of, oh, you'll hear it, and then that's a challenge.

Yeah. It's more of a, we're going to lay it out in a simple enough way that you'll hear it, or you're such a great player that you'll hear it, or some combination maybe. Yeah, and sometimes it's not even about a whole tune. Sometimes it's like, hey, I do this thing on the bridge. Don't worry, you'll hear it. You know what I mean?

Like I have this substitution I like to use, or, hey, we do this, we usually put this tag on the end. Don't worry, you'll hear it. You know, it's a very common way to express that maybe something's going to happen that you don't know about. Yeah. But we're going to make it clear. kind of a call or signal to talking about or communicating something within the music

amongst the musicians and then hopefully even to the audience in really just a musical way it's almost like you know sometimes we'll say oh we're going to go to the d half diminish but before the g we're going to go and then just like oh you know what don't worry about it you'll hear it yeah it's almost like we we can I'm going to show it to you but I'm going to show it to you in the music where it's a lot easier to describe with the sound of the music as opposed to with words that's right And, you know, jazz traditionally is passed down, you know, from musician to musician, it hasn't really been passed down with written music as much.

It certainly has, you know, in certain situations, but in general, it's passed down on the bandstand, on the jam session, in the practice rooms, you know, at house parties. And so this, you'll hear it at a... In the brothels. In the brothels. That's what the books say. Sure, we've all... But this idea of, you know, you know,

know, an oral tradition of you'll hear it, I think is part of this music and part of probably many different types of folk music, American or otherwise. Absolutely. And I mean, I think it's, you know, we know the origins, we don't know the exact origins of jazz, but we know the elements that went into producing this creative music. And the blues and the blues tradition, which is a little bit more understood in a way because there's a little bit more history there. And, you know, geography of where it can be traced to and the different elements that went

into the blues form, but that having such a big foundation of what jazz is and what it became and what this music is, I think that the, is it oral or oral tradition. Because it's both kind of like you're saying it, but you're also, you're hearing and you're experiencing it. Like that tradition within the blues being so strong and they're being much less written documentation of the music. Totally. Whereas with jazz, you've kind of, like, that's one element, but it's a big element.

And then you have the classical element. with the instruments and with the written music kind of coming together, but the You'll Hear It was always kind of a little bit of like, okay, we're going to go with sort of the blues foundation and be like, you'll hear it. We're not going to worry about exactly how it's documented. We're going to have a precision with our language and how it's expressed to the audience, but it's not going to be based upon what it looks like.

It's going to be based on what it sounds like. You know what I was just thinking about with this too, with the You'll Hear It attitude and with this thing of being passed down, is that this can happen in a music like jazz because there's room for it. It's a conversation. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like classical music where if I miss this entrance, the whole thing folds under it. Yeah.

You know, there's room for me to step back. Yep. And try to hear what's happening. And then try to, you know, express myself in that. Yep. I don't think that happens in, you know, it certainly couldn't happen in modern pop music or anything that way. It was like, you go to a recording session, be like, oh, you'll hear it. You'll hear it.

You'll hear it. Sometimes they have a problem because they can't read the music and they can't hear it. Sorry, I got a little dark there. Oh, that was a little dark. Jazz police But I think Yeah I think maybe Yeah way to think about it too

Is like you know if you have a great basketball coach And he's drawing up this great play And showing it to you know They have the little board with the with the marker on it But at a certain point in the practice You know it's preferable to say okay let's go see how it actually looks So like basketball is like okay You're going to see the flow of how the play goes

How the players are moving how the defense is reacting As opposed to just talking about it Or seeing a diagram of it And with the music Yeah, we can document it in certain ways on the written page, but you'll hear it is basically the manifestation of how we want to execute on our performance. Yeah, it's so great.

It's so apropos about basketball and about your example of the blues or whatever, because famously, many expressions in jazz can't be notated or written down. So sometimes you'll just have to hear it. Right, right. Oh, okay. You know what? This is all part of the podcast.

We have to describe what happened there. Because that was more of a you'll see. see it. Yeah, Peter just almost knocked down one of our little baffles, sound baffles here. Now, to call it it little, it's about double my size. I'm about five, six, so this is a big thing here. Anyway, you almost all just heard

that, but thank goodness that he didn't It was a good say. But I would say too, you know, for that, I'm just thinking about, you know, in terms of the arts with paintings and visual arts, you know, that's almost like, I wonder if they say you'll see it, you know, like you can describe a color or a shape or have it, but I

Ultimately, you'll see it. Totally. What if they have a You'll See at podcast? Let's start one. Okay. That's it for today's episode of the You'll Hear It Podcast. For more information or to hear more of these podcasts, go to openstudio network.com slash podcast.