You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Why Do I Sound Bad?

Episode Date: May 20, 2021

Today Peter and Adam answer one of the most asked questions by musicians around the world - why don't I like what I'm playing?Links from this episode:Get the free PDF for this episode with this linkPrefer your podcasts in video form? Watch the YouTube version of this episode hereInterested 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.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hey, Adam. How does this sound? Sound good? Well, it begs the question, why do I sound bad? I'm Adam Anis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast.

Music advice and inspiration. What's up with your hand when you say? Man, I like to get a little bit... Your arm is inspired. An inspiration. It's this new hoodie I have. Big shout out to... Haynes. Give it up for Haynes.

Targe. It's just a little flourish I like to give it. Inspiration. I'm trying to be inspiring. great, man. Well, you know, I'm actually pretty excited. We've done some really serious, amazing interviews the last two weeks. We did an interview with Ron Carter, which is incredible. We did an interview last week with Nicholas Payton, which was enlightening and amazing. And we're kind of getting back to our bread and butter here, bud.

Yes, indeed. We are back to, wait, what's our bread and butter? Now you got me nervous. You know, BSing through the intro. Oh, right, right. Yeah, yeah. Trying to explain some things, maybe. To be honest, we did put our fancy pants on a little bit for Mr. Carter and Mr. Payton a little bit, you know. Can I, can I tell you something? Yes. So funny that you said fancy pants. I've actually brought out some old jeans.

You know how you have like a, I don't know, do you have a fat box or a skinny box? I do have a fat box. Yeah. Yeah. So I found these genes. Might have to explain to people that. So if you're like Peter and I and your yo-yo diet your whole adult life and you lose weight and you gain weight, you have a fat box and you have a skinny box.

And you're often just swapping out your clothes, especially, you know, hoodies can stay out all the time. That's right. Yeah. But things like jeans, like these are some skinny jeans that are not actually, they're now a little big on me. I'll be honest, but they've got a hole in a very curious place. Well, we will. Not my fancy pants, is what I'm saying. Okay, gotcha.

That's what I'm saying. We had our fancy pants on the last couple weeks. Now we're back to the informality. Regular old. Congenial. Smelly basement jeans. Exactly. You'll hear a podcast, Adam and Peter.

So what's happening today? Well, today we're asking the ever timeless important question. Why do I sound bad? Well, we have an answer. I'm just looking here. You're working on the wrong thing. That's right. We like to answer our own questions.

You'll hear it. That's right. Good night. No, so this is something that I think about a lot. So we get emails, lots of emails. And we get a lot of requests for things. And we see numbers on things of the, of the material that we put out in the world. And it seems like a lot of people are always very interested in, like, what, you know, what scale should I use?

Or what's this lick? Yeah. What's this voicing or what's this chord or this progression or this substitution or this alteration? And all that stuff is super interesting. But then they know all this stuff. Some of them have been playing for a long time. Some people know a lot of material. And they still don't sound great.

And they're frustrated that they don't sound great. Yes. It's not that they sound bad, actually. That was a little bit of an exaggeration. But they just don't sound like, you know, the great players that they love sound. Yeah. And when you ask them like, well, what are you working on? And they're like, well, I'm working on this scale and all 12 keys.

Yeah. You know what I mean? They're never working on the one thing that would make them sound great, which is really to solidify their rhythmic vocabulary, to have confidence in their rhythmic phrases, to learn the language of the music in a way that is applicable and not theoretical, right? So not what scale goes over which, what chord. That's such an easy thing to understand. and teach, it just takes knowing it. Like you can look at that, you can Google any of that, and you're going to get some kind of an answer.

Well, be careful now. Be careful when you Google that. I know, I know. And we do like to provide that here at Open Studio because it's like it is an interesting thing to talk about. But that's not necessarily going to make you sound good. You could be playing all the right notes that it could sound terrible. Well, I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, but what today is going to be about is kind of demonstrating. This wouldn't even be something that you might practice, but more of a demonstration that you can sound good by you. using great rhythm, great rhythmic vocabulary, using any notes essentially. Yeah, no, it's great. And I think one lens to look at this as well is that, you know, learning the harmony, the advanced harmony, learning, you know, different melodic ways of getting around really kind of inspiration for your improvisation.

These things do get into the areas where you can information your way into kind of confusion and then not sounding great. So when we say, you know, why do I sound bad? You're working on the wrong thing. We want to be clear that there's a certain amount of information. It's a lot that you need to have. But you don't necessarily, you need to accumulate it and then kind of trust yourself that it will provide the foundation, the basis.

Yeah. That layer at all times for you to be able to really simplify once you go to actually work on your improvisation. And maybe that's a way. for folks to be able to kind of, you know, balance out because they're like, wait, hold on a second, we're supposed to learn this. I'm supposed to learn this. I'm getting overwhelmed.

It's like, how do you acquire this advanced ear training, advanced rhythmic conceptions, you know, ability to be able to shift between different grooves, ability to be able to play with others and to be able to make those adjustments. These things are very nuanced. They're advanced. They require a high level of skill in a number of different areas that when you start to put them together, if you use the same kind of analysis. and kind of just punctuality to your attention to them.

If you combine all those and try to keep up the same way you would as you're learning them and as you're working on them, you know, this is not going to work. So it's not about like, let me forget all this stuff. It's like how do you internalize and how do you automate and how do you learn that stuff? Just like we talk about really learning the form on it soon. That's probably the biggest foundation you can have where you know it without having to think about it so that you can really work on and be concentrating in the moment on the right thing. But don't you think when it comes to improvisation, it's like,

it's a lot of, especially beginner and intermediate players, are a little bit out of balance. Yeah. With what they're working on. Like if you spent more time working on your rhythmic vocabulary than your harmonic or melodic vocabulary, you would sound better faster. That's right.

That's right. Because it's potentially an area that you can work yourself into action. It's sort of an advanced concept on it quicker. So like it's very, or at least, it's funny because a lot of people would say that that's not advanced, just repeating the same rhythm over and over again. but really being able to sit in the groove on like say one note, which doesn't take a lot of harmonic or melodic ingenuity to be able to do,

but to be able to really feel that groove and played in a way that makes sense, that can sound great. And so you've basically simplified and stripped away everything else. I'm just going to concentrate on this one thing, groove and feel. Still an advanced thing in terms of like to be able to really hit it at a high level. But in fact, just as for a listener perhaps more accessible, as a player more accessible as well. Absolutely.

Well, let's get into it, man. So we're going to do four tunes. We've done these transcriptions in various open studio videos on YouTube. If you're not on our YouTube channel, go subscribe because we do a lot of content there that's not here on the podcast. And if you're watching this on YouTube already, go ahead and subscribe and check out some of these other videos that we've made. So we're going to do Thelonious Munk, Straight No Chaser, Clifford, Brown solo on Sandu, Sonny Clark solo on Cheesecake from Dexter Gordon's Go, and Herbie Hancock solo on People music from Secrets. And like I said, these are all solos that we like that record, secrets. You know it's my favorite record of all time.

So these are all solos that we've worked on. What we're going to do, though, is we're going to listen to the solo first ahead of time and check it out like for real on Sounds Slice. But then we're going to take the pitches out of it. And you and I are going to replace the pitches with our own pitches. Okay. And you're going to see that. Hold on.

Let me warm up. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's going to be. I was going to be at the keyboard. I think if we do this right, it's going to be obvious that using these master's, rhythmic vocabulary with our own, probably not as sophisticated,

even melodic vocabulary as what they are using, it's still going to sound awesome. Like, it's still going to be, it's going to get us like to the 90 yard, the 90 yard line. That's not bad. I was going to say 90% that I switched to the last second.

10 yard line. Yeah. Which would be 90% of the way there. 90% of the way there. And then... Get us into the red zone. Oh, God. That would be 80%.

That would be 80%. That's true. Anyway, so let's go to the first one. So let's bring. up Thelonious Monk straight no chaser on Sound Slice and we'll play it and let's just listen to we'll just listen to the head. Okay. Okay honestly we could do this whole show on Monk times, right? Just on monk compositions. On that one course. On that one course, just on his rhythmic vocabulary of his compositions, not even counting his solos or other people's solos on his on his recordings.

They're just, this is the language of the music that we're trying to improvise here. So it's great to learn these internalize them. So yeah, let's bring up. By the way, we have a PDF here. It's in the description of the podcast. It's in the description of the video. Download it. You can follow along yourself. And you could check out this head, these solos, and the rhythmic vocabulary that's associated with them.

And you could try it yourself. Again, this isn't necessarily something that you would want to practice every day. But it is a really good example of, you know, man, I had a teacher in New York, Hal Galper, great pianist, who you sit. Take your snare drums solo. And by that, he meant have that rhythmic vocabulary going in your head. Put the notes in there. Whatever notes are going to work, but that rhythmic vocabulary is first.

And I'll just throw out there, this is the kind of thing. When we talk about pacing in our practices, especially for you advanced kind of type A go-getters out there that are really trying to make some serious progress as improvisers, think about this kind of practice, this kind of improvisational exercise and activity as like you're almost periodizing your practice. So you might be doing some intense transcription, say perhaps even. of this very track. Yeah. Or some other kind of, you know, very deep dive, very, very much, you know, delving into advanced ear training type of activities.

And then you're almost like, it's almost like when you're working out a certain part of your body too hard and you're like, you need to take a little bit of a break and work out another part or maybe even just a rest period. So this is not necessarily total rest, but it's moving to another kind of approach to improvisation, they can really balance things nicely. So when you're feeling overwhelmed and you're feeling like, oh man, I just can't hear this and stuff. Take the harmony, take the scales out of it. Right. Just work on this. Play your snare drum solo. That's right. You know what I mean? Yep. So Peter, can we put up here, the rhythmic up on so that we can see? Okay, cool. Is that it?

Yeah. So check this out. Well, the first one, I'm not even going to play anything. Okay. I want you to play me this B-flat blues. We're just going to do one chorus. Okay. I'm going to give you a tempo. And if you don't mind just accompanying me, and I'm going to play the melody, right? Okay. No pitches. Yep. And I'm not going to play anything, actually.

One, two, one, two, three, and... Batah, butu, putto, putto, doca, puttoo, budu, got, puttouca, chas, butu-gut-gut-go-shi-wha. Boutu-do-jah, put-bo-do-jah,

put-do-do-jah, but-do-sha-do-sha-da-da-da-da-a-da-a-de, So that alone, right there, I'm feeling it. Yeah. Oh, you're feeling it all right, buddy. But you know what I mean? That sounds killing. Like that's better than me trying to scat some solo of like, you know, whatever lick of the day that I'm working on.

Now let's do another one and I'm going to put some pitches to it, but I'm not going to do very much. Okay. I'm just going to like stay within two or three notes probably. Okay. One, two, three. You know what I mean? Yep. Let's do another one.

I'm going to do, I'm just going to play a blue one. going to play a blues, but I'm going to try to stick to this rhythm using my own notes. One more. One, two, one, two, three. And you know what I mean? Oh, man. You could do a whole solo of just playing the rhythm to that head, putting in different notes. You know what I'm saying? I could do 100 chorus of that. And this is kind of a nice, creative way of doing what we call restrictive practicing. For sure. It's a very specific type of specific type of restrictive. practice. Well, and what you're also doing is you're sort of, again, you're doing that thing we like to do around here. You're walking in the shoes of these giants, right? And you're just getting to feel what it feels like to play like them, to where are they putting the beat. You know, this leads right into learning the solo by ear from the record, which is where you ultimately want to go. But if that's maybe a little too much for you at first, try just learning the rhythm, just being able to play your snare drum solo using these melodies. And this is the type of skill, like if you

check out when Charlie Rouse comes in, I believe, I'm sure it's Charlie Rouse on that recording. I think so, yeah, yeah. So when he comes in on the second chorus, how locked in to the rhythmic flavor and flair of Philonious Monk the way he plays that melody. I mean, it's kind of shocking, actually. Yeah. Like how he, you know, on a different instrument is.

So like this kind of great vibe, though. They had a great vibe. I mean, he was, Charlie Rouse was such a great listener and like would take the way Monk was phrasing it and just locked right in with that in a super exciting way. Are you want to try one? I do. Okay, let's go, let's go to the next sound slice page of,

of... Oh, I'll get to try one on this? Well, we're going to kind of alternate. We're going to take turns. We've got a lot to do today. I think you can have the good ones, but that's okay. No, I mean, you can do... Hey, you can do whatever you want, man.

We're all good. Let's go to the next one. So we're going to go... You get Sandu. Sandu's the best. Oh, I love Sandu. All right, so we just have the first chorus of Clifford Brown's solo.

So let's just listen to what that actually sounds like. Let's listen to what that actually sounds like. Here we go. There's so much there. So let's... It's a little trickier one. Well, we can... I think we should slow this way, way down.

No, no, let's do it. Let's do it. No, let's do it. Okay. I mean, because you have to kind of... You're reading this. Like, you're just hearing... I mean, you probably know the solo really well, I'm assuming.

Wow. Kind of put me on the spot there, big guy. No, no, I like to say. You want to try it? So however you want to do it, do you want to do it just solo solo piano? You want me to accompany you? Let's see. Should we pull up?

So there is the... There's a lot going on. The lot going on here? That's good. That's all good here. Ding ding. Is that the one? That's the one.

Okay. I like you. You've got some accents in here. Well, I tried to like put, the accents are really kind of the shape of the line where the line is at its peak at the height of it. Just because that's where usually a lot of especially these players of this generation were like accenting. Right. You know what I'm saying? So this will be like I'll start on the solo break.

Yeah. Do you want to give me a little bit before it or should I go right into it? Do do do do right. Let's go right on it. Okay. One, two, three, and a... This is actually solo. That's all right.

It's all good. See what I'm saying? I can do better. You want to try it again? Isn't that great, though? It's so much fun to try it to do because you get to kind of live in his world for a little. Yeah, I want to get a little more accurate though. Three and...

Oh, that's so fun. You know, so fun. Like you get to really feel the flow. Okay, let's go on. You know, one thing I noticed on there in the one, two, three, four. 11th bar, well really the ninth bar of the blues. The way that phrase playing with the pickup, like that, you know, because a lot of times,

like if you're going to do, dooo do doka diga, which is cool, but this is like, but do per duke duke deca diga gang. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it's like an on, like at a little different place that sounded great, but it felt a little uncomfortable to me, but this kind of forced me into it and now maybe it'll become a little bit

part of my vocabulary. So I'm saying. I mean, if you, obviously, if you add the melody in, like, if you learn the solo by ear and you learn the notes he's playing, it's like even at a next level. Yeah.

But breaking it down to just the rhythm is very eye-opening, especially if you're a player that is frustrated by the amount of just running your fingers over your instrument and like playing the same old stuff, doing exercise like this can be big time.

Nice. And actually, I'm thinking, because I kind of know, I mean, I've just heard this so much. I feel like I know the solo. That actually makes it a little harder because you start playing the solo. I'm hearing it. But that makes it.

So this is actually a great thing to practice. People always like, I learn the solo. What do I do? I'm just playing it. This is something that you can do. A nice little challenge to take that rhythmic structure, that rhythmic format, that rhythmic form and turn it into something else. Don't sound bad.

Work on your rhythmic vocabulary. That's right. Peter, I'm going to give you, this Peter's choice here. Do you want to take cheesecake and I'll take people music? Or do you want to take? I mean, you know you're not even. ask me that. You know you want people music. You love that record. If you have any false, it's that you love that. I want to give you the option. I'll take the cheesecake.

Okay. All right. So up next is Sunny Clark solo, just the first chorus of Sonny Clark solo from Cheesecake from Dexter Gordon's classic album go. Hold on. That's okay. Put it back up there. It's all right. They can see behind that. All right. It's good to go. Classic album go. Yeah. And this is first of all, solo is just unbelievable. Anyway, but check out the rhythmic. So if you look at it if you if you download the PDF and you look at the she music it looks like a lot of eighth notes but it's really it's not check it out That's what we have let's listen to it one more time just from the record because it kind of goes by fast and again we can slow this way down So much vocabulary in this I mean it's just you could sing like da-a-da-da-da-da-da it's like talking he's talking for sure

Fantastic so and these are great changes to over cheesecake a bit of a minor blue vibe. You want to give it a go? Yeah, how does that is that it there? That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was it. Okay, yep, yep, yep. All right, this will be a, um, it's gonna be a little channel to get my music this is a tough one. This is gonna be a tough one because you also have changes to deal with. So you, you know, not to tell you your business, but you might. I hope you enjoy people music. I know, I know, look at people. I got you. I got you. Got two chords going there, three chords. We're gonna go pretty slowly here. And not to be too slow. And so I'll give you that whole C minor bar. Okay.

one, two, three, and That was poor That was piss poor I apologize That was like Back in music school That was not good Okay, let's do it again

Because you know what was bad about that It didn't sound I didn't play a good solo And I was not accurate to the rhythms And a certain point I kind of panicked It was like you know what Let me go back Let me just go back to one note

Because that's the whole point of it That's the whole point And still didn't sound good Let's try One two three Wait wait hold I gotta pull this up Okay, there we go.

Two, three, and. Wait, start again. I wouldn't feel it. I wouldn't feel it. Now I'm feeling it. Let's go. Two, three. That's awesome.

See what I'm saying? Man, that sounded great. Man, if I could keep improving like that, it would sound good by the eighth or ninth time. Which is really the way to practice this, though. But this is so... That's what's up on this. It's so good.

All right, I'm going to take on people music. This is going to be the hardest one, I think. I gave myself the hardest one. Just so you know. Just for your benefit. If only you knew it better. If only you loved it more. What?

No, I don't know this. Here we go. Okay, now see, he's not ready. He's not ready. He ain't ready for y'all. Now, I would just say as he's pulling that up on that one, playing it slower, not to make excuses for myself again, but actually to recommend practicing at that temple, that's where it's at. That's, you know, if you can get around these changes and you kind of can read these rhythms or start to learn them, it will actually be a little easier at like this tempo. But practice at that slower tempo where you're exposed, where you have to really get these rhythms to lay within the groove.

in a way that you're hearing the spacing of those eighth notes, of those eighth note triplets, of those 16th notes. It's painful, and you're going to play it a little faster, be like, oh, I can sound good. But if you can't sound good with it playing slower, you need to be practicing at that tempo. Agreed. Yeah.

Agreed. All right, cue me up here, Pete. Let's do it, man. You ready? Yeah. I love this. This is going to be hard to not just play the solo. All right, I'm ready.

I'm ready. He's ready. All right, here we've got to hold up. You like that one? You like that one? Is that it there? Can you give me a compliment? Oh, yeah.

I'm going to give you two beats and we're in. Let me get my chart going here. I'm going to keep it simple here at first, man. I've learned from your mistakes. Wait, what is that? What do you clap? What are you? Okay.

I thought you were doing like a one, two. A one. Jazz, go. One, three. A one. Okay. One. Oh, wait.

Come on. Sorry, man. I'm just getting me. I just want to give you a chance. So is that a pick up there? Yeah, I'm just going to give you two. And then so... Okay.

Okay. Duggo-d-d-do-d-d-g-gat. Ready? Yeah. One, two, three. Okay, go toca, guldo, that's a good got, da'a, daqa d'a d'a d'aqa d'aqa d'aqa d'aqa d'aqa d'aqa d'aqa do. Okay, one more time and I'm going to add some notes here, right? Ready? One, two, three.

All right, I need more time for accuracy. I got the spirit. I got spirit. Here we go. So we go a little faster you think? Yeah, one, two, three. Oh, you know what I mean? That was decent solo for my second time through.

Because Herbie's rhythm. Here's the other thing. Have you noticed something about doing four of these from four of these players? Yeah. even though we're playing such kind of weak melodic stuff for sure because we're just trying to get the rhythm it sounds like those players like that sounds like a herbie

even though I'm not playing anything herbie would play melodically because I'm just kind of reading this rhythm it sounds like a herbie solo because of his phrasing because of his rhythm that's what you get from this absolutely and even when it's like but da-c-c-c-c-gaggaggaggaggag tank gang-d-d-d-dank-d-man that's totally that's the vibe that's the vibe getting that vote vocabulary, like being able to be free with that and then adding your own.

Yeah. Ah, now I'm just doing all my herbie stuff. It's turned into just a herbie test. And maybe even a way to practice this too is like you could get going, especially at a little company. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. Beat on the drum.

Play your snare drum solo. Yeah, man. Peter, I think we got it, man. I think that was a decent demonstration of how some rhythmic vocabulary you like seem relieved. Yeah. Like, woo! Reading, reading and stuff. But you know what?

This is a nice little site reading exercise too because folks are always asking about how do you work on site but a lot of times we're sending them to the classical stuff, the sonatines and stuff, a different kind of reading. But if you think about the types of things that we would likely come into contact with reading, studio work, you know, big band stuff, funk charts or whatever,

these different grooves, lead sheets, cores. A lot of it is about being able to read complex rhythms quickly and accurately and being able to visualize them and then take them. So this is some excellent sight reading stuff I would recommend. And I kind of sprung this on you because if we were to do this really right, we would just learn this by ear, right? We would like learn the rhythms, just be able to sing the rhythms. And so I encourage you, if you want to get better at music, learn a chorus of a Clifford Brown solo

by just learning the snare drum solo rhythm. Like, you know, a doga da da da da da da da da da da da da da da maybe the general shape. You don't even have to know the notes. But like you hear, actually you hear like old. musicians do this all the time will they be like bottle bow shabakadu wakadu god ga ga ga ga yeah like all that stuff

that's part of it man that's part of the feeling that's right sorry I noodle a little bit behind you because I was trying to demonstrate what you're doing this is great man I'm I'm really inspired to practice some of this stuff and incorporating it's my routine and again I just recommend folks when you're looking don't feel like okay now I've got another thing I have to practice every day no this is when you want a little bit of a change of pace a little bit you know look at

something a solo or a player or just, you know, these fragments, maybe something, maybe you don't know any of these or maybe you know half of them. Maybe you can look at them through a little bit of a different prism and then apply that to your practice in a really simple, isolated way. Love it. Peter, this was super fun. Thank you, everybody. Of course, we're sponsored by OpenSudio. Go to Open Studio. Go to Open Studio jazz.com. That's right. For all of your jazz lesson needs, are we going to play it out or are we going to go out? Let's go. Let's play the thing. We're going to play along with it. Let's do it. Here we go. You'll hear it. You'll hear it.