You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What the Hell Is the Difference Between a b5 and a #11?

Episode Date: December 6, 2019

On the 2nd episode of our long-running "What the hell..." series, Adam and Peter explain the difference between a flat-5 and a sharp-11.Calling all pianists - the Piano Access Pass is now available from Open Studio! Save money with this bundle featuring every piano course ever from Open Studio, including teachers such as Peter Martin, Geoffrey Keezer, and Helio Alves. For more info, go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/piano-access-passThis episode of You'll Hear It is sponsored by Anytune. If you want to improve your jazz playing and transcription skills, Anytune is the #1 tool you need. Just load any track you want into the app, and Anytune allows you to change the speed, loop sections, change the pitch to a different key, and so much more. For more information, go to https://anytune.us/youllhearit/Want every Open Studio course for free? That's right - over 300 hours and 1200 lessons can be yours with free lifetime access! All you have to do is enter Open Studio's 2019 Holiday Giveaway. Go to https://learn.openstudiojazz.com/giveaway/, or watch this video of Peter for more info: https://youtu.be/KsdhVXE5ovILet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.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, Adam. Yeah. Have you come up with the theme song yet for our What the Hell series? Yeah. What the hell is the difference between a sharp 11 and a flat phone? Yeah. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear podcast.

Daily music advice coming at you. Come on at you today with a brand new theme song. I like it better than our first one. Well, the first three. I mean, did you actually play a flat five or a sharp 11? I did. Oh, you did. Oh, you did.

Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I ended on the 13th. 13th, but it's in there. I heard you. Sorry. You'll hear it. Cool.

So we are sponsored by AnyTune. AnyTune's the best. And you know what? If you work with AnyTune and download this app and use it correctly, which is not hard at all because the thing is Uber. It's intuitive. Super easy to use. You're going to know, be able to learn the difference between a flat 5 and a sharp 11 and a lot of other things because you're going to be able to learn from the classic recordings or the non-classic, really, whatever you want. It does not discriminate.

But whatever you want to load into any tune, and loading in is as easy as one click, you're going to be able to analyze, to learn, to hear, to develop from the music that you love on your phone, Android, Apple, or your Mac app, in a way that you never thought was possible. Oh, you might have thought it was possible. If you're like me, I'm a dreamer. So I always thought about this. When I was even little... You were going to design your own Intune. I was going to design it.

Damn, they got it. No, but I mean, I always thought that this would be the perfect tool. and you know I'm sure people before there was LPs were like oh if they ever had a spinning disc that would make music I wouldn't have to go to the concert all the time But that's the way these things go but this is really a game changer and and really the penultimate tool for transcribing It does a lot more but we're sort of you know uber focused on that because as we've been playing with it We realize what a perfect tool it is It's pretty awesome go to anytune.us slash you'll hear it to check it out for yourself So happy to have them on is our sponsor a perfect fit

we've got nothing but great feedback. It is an awesome tool. Yeah, and I just want to say, like, I was really excited about this. Full disclosure on this. We went to them, like, once I saw this tool and got to play with it, and I wasn't even really in the market for this kind of thing, because I just, I don't know. But once I did, I was like, I want to talk to these folks. And I mean, we were going to talk about it anyway. And so that they wanted to come on as a sponsor, the podcast, is really a cool thing. We're having a lot of fun with it. It's awesome. Yep. So today we're talking about what the hell is the different between the flat five and the sharp 11.

So we talked about yesterday. So what the hell beat out? What the heck? What the hell, man? Come on. I mean, what the heck, man? See, we'd never say what the heck in that situation. I was mad.

I didn't get my thing to it. Okay, you guys heard it, though. I wanted what the heck. So if there's any complaints, like any anti-Hell people, you know, I'm a lover, not a fighter. That's true. So, you know. So this episode was spurred by a tweet from great guitarist,

Kurt Rosenwinkel. Kurt Bialzabov. It was spurred by. Kurt. what the hell Rosa Michael. He tweeted out, just one cryptic tweet, Major 7 flat 5, question mark? And then a bunch of people tweeted below like,

yeah, what the hell is that? You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, da. And I feel very lucky because when I was very young, someone kind of explained this in a way that really made sense to me. It was Buster Williams, and you know it's legit. Whoa, wait, hold on. We just dropped the name on the ground here.

When I was a little boy, I asked my daddy what the difference between us. a flat five is Sharp, he said, go ask a pro. Buster taught us in his combo class of a new school

back way, way back in the day. Oh, that must have been awesome. It was incredible. Joe Henderson's Inner Urge. And so Inner Urge has these series of Major 7 flat fives, and,

you know, he kind of laid it down what the difference is between the flat five and the Sharp 11. And it's actually, as pianist, it's really easy to see

because it kind of kind of implies a very specific time, actually a very specific sound to that time around inner urge, and it's this shape. Right? So here I have an F, major 7, flat 5, and the shape I have is F, A, B, natural, E. Right? So this is what you would hear over inner urge as it moves down in whole steps, right? And so the idea is, if I say major 7 flat 5, not only is it implying this Lydian sound, but it kind of gives me an idea of the shape that there's no nine. in this situation. An 11, a sharp 11 implies there must be a 9, right? That's what I learned.

If there's 11 or 13, the 9 has to be in there. So this implies that in the voicing, there doesn't necessarily have to be a 9. But it also implies one other thing. So Buster told us that the scale we use over this is the D melodic minor. So one of the first comments on Kurt's tweet the other day was, yeah, like, what, are you not going to have the natural 5?

well, in fact, snarky puppy, no, we're not going to have the natural five. Snarky, uh, Kurt? That's right. We're going to have the flat five and the sharp five because of the scale, right? If F, G, A, B natural, C sharp D, E. And you know why, from a theoretical standpoint?

I have no idea. Because it sounds good. It does sound great. It does sound good. But it's a different thing. So if this was an F-7 or F-major 7 sharp 11, there would absolutely be a natural. It implies that.

There's that the C is in, there, but the 11, the B-flat is just B natural. But the, again, major 7, flat-5, could be called flat-5 sharp-5, or flat-5. You know what I mean? Like, it's got this. Does it make sense? It does, yeah. And that's interesting.

I've never, I've heard it like that, but I've never actually kind of theoretically thought about it like that at all. And hey, listen, this is just how I learned from one person, so maybe it's totally wrong, but it makes sense to me. It makes sense because it's based upon the reality. of how it sounds, and even like building up from the 9th to 11th to the 13th in terms of the upper structure, that's just triads, stacked on top of each other, which is one of the most primary sounds. So the way I kind of learned this, at some point, and I can't remember when, I don't think it was with Buster Williams, excuse them, blah,

but in general was you could tell whether or not to spell it as a, wait, what are we talking about, sharp five or sharp? Flat five, major seven. flat five or sharp a level right um as if you were to play the fifth or the the the perfect four you know the natural fourth which one fits in better with that alteration so in the case of like when you did the f major sharp seven and you play the fifth and you don't have to play it in the chord but if you play it as part of the scale it okay you're making it sound bad but it's like no so here's the okay so this would actually now i'm just realizing that would kind of violate the way

learned it. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Now we got some drama going. I like this. But it doesn't, this is with any of this thing, it doesn't really matter. It's all about how it sounds. And that's right. But I'm talking about it in terms of like, why you would spell it one way or the other. Why you would spell flat five instead of... Well, like an F major, sharp 11. I was taught you would spell it as a sharp 11 if the fifth still works within it if you want that kind of sound. Right, exactly right. Yeah, yeah. I was on the, I was doing the flip anyway. Yeah. And then if the fourth would sound right. And then sometimes they both and then it's like just doesn't matter. And I've always believed in that. Because the function of what you write,

really should be as much as possible how it sound, like it should imply that. It should be as close to how you want it to sound if you're composing and how you're representing if you're transcribing. That's right. So again, just to simplify what we were just saying. Because I think we actually...

Not that we've muddied the waters with several different opinions. We actually came to the same conclusion on this. So if we have F major 7 flat 5, this is based off of the D melodic minor, which has the B natural and the C sharp. Right. But if we were doing F major 7 sharp, 11 is really based off of the Lydian scale.

Of the tonic. Yeah. Of the tonic which is B natural but a C natural fit. And we don't mean that you have to play that as part of the voicing. But if you're improvising and when I'm talking about like non-core tones of course but if you're kind of staying within the general realm

of what you're setting up harmonically, which one sort of sounds like it fits better. And again another clue and this was, I didn't even think about this until kind of Buster, who's a bass player, showed me that if it's Like Major 7, flat 5, that implies that at least in the way they want the chord voice, there's no 9, or does it have to be in the voice? Like, if I see Major 7 Sharp 11, I assume the 9 is fair game.

Right. But this, and he specifically mentioned this shape, this F, A, B, E for F. And you hear this shape all the time during that era, an inner urge era. Oh, man. It's a great shape. Yep. And that's different. If I saw F-Mager 7 sharp 11, maybe I...

I play this. It's a smoother sound, the Sharple 11. This is more of that clashy, clunky, you know. Yep. That's good, man. What the hell is that? That's what the hell it is. Hello.

Awesome. Well, we are brought to you by any tune, but we're also brought to you by Open Studio. Go to Open Studiojazz.com to check out all of our courses. You know, Peter, we have this new thing called the piano access pass. I don't know if you heard about it yet. I heard about it. I almost wish you wouldn't mention it because it's flying off the shelf.

It's flying off the shelves. Luckily, we have a rejuvenation. of our supplies. And no, it's actually been the most popular membership already in the last two weeks ever that we've ever offered. Who knew piano players won a bunch of piano stuff. Right, right.

And, well, you know, we were always including more things thinking that was good, but maybe it was sort of overwhelming some folks. So we've redesigned, well, we've designed this piano access pass. We call it PAP for PAP. Did you know that? I've never heard any of us call it PAP. Well, okay, it's anyway.

Piano access, that's the abbreviation. Piano Access Pass, but the idea is that this is a pass that gives you access to all of our piano courses for the whole year. And we have a ton of them already, and then we're going to be releasing a lot more in the coming year. Yeah, and it's like a self-updating situation because as we release new piano courses, as long as you're still a member, you get instant access. You actually get early access to that. That's true. So it's like a product that gets better over time. And you've probably noticed recently, because you've been involved with that, a lot of new piano mini.

courses, jazz piano technique is a whole series with different volumes, jazz piano basics, the transcription, like we're constantly developing things here in addition to our larger form courses with such artists as Jeffrey Kieser. Got a solo piano mini course coming out from Kieser. That's right. And I believe this gives you access

to our rhythm section course, Brazilian rhythm section. Rhythm section fundamentals. Yeah. We have part two of that coming out in January probably. So it's a lot of stuff, but if you're a piano player, that's why it's called piano access pass. It's sort of the perfect storm of availability for every You know, without having to worry about a saxophone course getting away.

We don't need that. It's funny because it's like E-flat, we don't need to let you. You know what I mean? I mean, Steve Wilson, yeah. But saxophone, yeah, killing, actually. We'll talk more about it tomorrow because we'll hear.