There are no RULES in music, only CONTEXT!

for me that felt a little strong compared to everything else around it and it's really about context right there are no rules for this stuff hey everybody this is my buddy christian lee what's up he's an amazing keyboardist and pianist and today we are here to teach you how to get good at music all right [Music] nice embellishment in the melody there yeah [Music] nice you could hear him think in that moment which i don't actually mind that you know it is nice actually yeah sometimes [Music] nice nice some nice harmony going on yeah beautiful man uh love your touch uh you got you got the chords the chords are there for sure you know about chords don't you try this guy knows working on it we're working on it i mean i think there's a ton of amazing harmony happening and it's clear that you've spent a lot of time thinking about the harmonic structure of this piece instead of some ways to bring some additional color your use of tension was really beautiful and was really you know not a lot of people know how to use some of those like for like upper extensions in ways that feel really idiomatic and i felt like you really did there were some of those that i was like wow this is this feels right this feels truthful and that's that's hard to get get to that point absolutely and i would say that one thing to explore is you know like a lot of the harmony you're checking out and a lot of the stuff that's already in there really comes from this idea of voice leading and of counter point right i mean harmony is the like simultaneous occurrence of many melodies and a lot of those inner voices a lot of those tensions have melodic origins right and a good exercise that the bass player ben street showed me which i think actually i've heard people say that fred hirsch teaches this as well like you can play the melody and you can play like a couple voices in your left hand but try not to skip so if for example i'm starting here i'm going from chord to chord and even that bass note i'm trying not to and if you can you know find some of these spaces in the middle it's hard to play and tug at the same time yeah every line is like a melody yeah itself including the bass voice which you normally are treating as this thing which is jumping up and down right and as a bass player i appreciate that your pinky is thinking about that and then yeah when you have the whole texture going on then you can remember some of those places some of those like little spaces you found in the harmony yeah you know and i'm not going by like any kind of harmonization technique i'm just thinking really about the voices in some of those places that i discovered through just exploring just one or two voices at a time and exploring the way that felt melodic where every line wants to go somewhere within the the key like there is a certain melody within the key that you just absolutely each one of your fingers is going that's that's cool man it gives you a lot more agency in how you play harmony too classic i don't feel like this is like every bass player's gauntlet to walk you got it you got to do it man you're not a bass player i'm totally kidding he's doing a good job though yeah yeah it's not easy to do i mean i can't do it chaco played it once so yeah every facebooker must do it again i understand nice all right killing sorry for talking over your base solo but [Laughter] you got to get used to it man it comes with the territory nice dude amazing uh love the fact that you're tackling this this is obviously a very technically demanding piece of music i think you know the big thing is to work on articulation because it sounds like you're just playing every note like very and you know you can really make this come alive a lot more i feel like if you're not thinking of every note as just like a note that you need to play right in this order like a midi actually that's something to bring up bass players treat this as an interesting not as a piece of music not as part of a live tradition right right which is interesting i think a lot of charlie parker's heads tend to be treated that way the heads themselves were and incredibly melodic and also incredibly rhythmic and super funky and just like seamlessly transitioned into their solo vocabulary you know all these heads are i think really amazing examples of like the relationship between melody and solo and you can really see that of course there's the charlie parker omni book where it's all these transcriptions of charlie parker solos it's a great study tool to see that oh this vocabulary looks the same and sounds the same it seems like it's a natural extension of the melody and and arguably also a way for charlie parker to explore vocabulary through the act of composing so one thing i think would be great in this case is just to think about accenting notes which are not every beat that would be very very helpful absolutely and like there's all these like rhythms hidden inside that melody right like right yeah it's not just like yeah yeah exactly it's not just like right and then yeah you can really play with like the accenting and again this is actually more of a down beady head than a lot of his heads actually it is yeah now that i'd play it i made that bold claim but maybe it's yeah maybe it is maybe it is designed to be an etude i guess but arguably like if you hear someone like lester young play who was a huge influence on charlie parker lester young was like really respected the downbeat in that james brown kind of you know like yeah yeah and there's something uh like very bass playery i guess about the downbeat it grounds you in a way yeah obviously the accent in jazz is on two and four and when you're clapping the accent's there but there is something about feeling the one and three yeah that's sort of like a chicken or the egg question for me because like i've had success really working on both and it's an interesting one because i feel like two and four are the most embodied in a lot of ways by musicians themselves but if you were dancing to it like one and three would be super super embodied at least from the ground up right there's no two and four without one and three yeah so it's an interesting you know it's like an interesting debate and i i tend to find that a lot of times when people think two and four too heavily like their beat starts to feel a little lopsided it also feels uh more tense because two and four because they're accented and because that's the action beats like verses you can like feel that and like let it simmer a little bit more of course there's this aspect of it where people don't want to feel it on one of three yeah because because that's not what you do i mean yeah it's square for example to clap on like one and three when you're listening whatever yeah i get that but that's because this upper body isn't the embodiment of one and three it's all down here yeah could you imagine dancing on two and four that feels very strange i mean yeah at least without having a strong grounding on one three it feels very yeah because this is a reaction two two and three and this is accent this is the action but you have to you have to ground yourself and i feel like so many people forget to ground themselves yeah thankfully bass players we're we're there we're there to help you guys out we're there to help you guys out on one three but yeah two other things i think i would just mention one is that like a lot of the accenting in the head like this similar like with bach actually is we get that from like the placement of high or low notes for example or the ends and beginnings of phrases and so those are always points to check out but you can also look within a phrase for any like topological sort of cues you know the little thing and then you're like grab that yeah that's going to make that melody come alive and you don't want to play this sounding like an exercise you want to play this like a living again living breathing melody if you slow down charlie parker like half speed it's so amazing because he sounds funky as hell i would encourage you to do that and slow it down and just like listen to how funky those guys are how in the pocket they are and just how expressive they are with all of this stuff with rhythm within the line with their tone with the articulation etc killing yeah great job [Music] it's man [Music] that was awesome yeah i love your tone like very very sparse minimalist kind of groove you got going actually this is something i don't hear a lot of soloists do but i really love that you did it which is that you played really clear ideas and you played an idea you let it sit you heard the next idea which often was really really just like well tied into the previous idea so as a result your solo didn't just feel like noodling it felt purposeful i think my big maybe critique of this is figuring out ways of playing to your harmonized version of yourself like you layered in those sex harmonies and sometimes your solo tone was kind of getting lost in the mix there a little bit you clearly had a sense of like call and response in the beginning of your solo when the saxes come in it's an actual part that you're playing against just don't forget about that you know call and response aspect of the music because again that is taking up the same space as your solo and so therefore if you're playing and then you're playing on top of these other sax parts it's sort of all colliding in these ways where it could be more of a conversation yeah and it's your own sound that you're playing against you're fighting against literally yourself and there's some kind of philosophical thing there like man's fight against himself i guess i don't know oh yeah uh but awesome that was an awesome submission thank you super yeah super in the pocket too oh right off the bat it's all about the ends as barry harris would say all about the ants i have heard people play this but i don't know really anything about it [Music] yeah hang drum is i feel like an instrument kind of like the harp where it's difficult to make it sound bad yeah it's true it just sounds good but i think there's also wisdom in that because it's an instrument with these inherent limitations right here's an instrument with 88 keys and you know all these chromatic notes and like sometimes people get carried away or don't know like what avenue or what system within this giant system to focus on and here's a pre-built one then you can just make music it really focuses you on things like rhythm and texture and timbre and it's absolutely it's a different way of approaching music in general rather than just how do i get the harmony going right if i was to critique this it might be that just getting more in the pocket with the drums and i've never really heard this kind of thing before where it's hang drum and drum grooves yeah yeah this is kind of unique i think and i don't know if you've ever noticed this but acoustic guitar players and cajon players never seem to really lock to me huh there's something about the timbres which is interesting clash there's something in the high end which is difficult i've never noticed that yeah i would agree just like you know finding a way to sort of like be in that pocket more with the groove if you can especially since it's all 16th notes if everything's sort of like flammy because you're you're really having to lock with every single one of those hi-hats and if they're not locked then it's not locked so you're setting a difficult challenge for yourself here but it's a worthy one yeah super cool beautiful beautiful playing i love the harmonics at the end yeah very cool [Music] [Music] there's that snare [Music] very like wayne shorter yeah oh that's a good one [Music] yeah uh that was awesome super super colorful harmony yeah the really wonky dilla groove there's some really interesting bass notes it's interesting when you have this kind of harmony that's sort of like half functional but there's also some color chords in there it's very yeah very wayne shorter yeah yeah yeah actually yeah there's one chord that we heard that was like oh that seems like something from like 80s wayne shorter or like you know foam right there yeah even some of the records in the 80s like phantom navigator you know those records they're amazing you know for me again we're getting the subjective territory here but when you have a color chord especially that like minor major seven chord you know that was happening there for me that felt a little strong compared to everything else around it and it's really about context right there are no rules for this stuff right it's about context and for me it sort of involves developing a real deep relationship with the sounds of all of these chords is that really the chord then that should happen sure and maybe it is maybe it is but when we're doing these how to get good at music things a lot of it is just our own subjective reactions to it and so you have to take everything with a grain of salt but also understand that these reactions are coming from experience too absolutely and so yeah i keep coming back to that one and thinking is that the right one i don't know maybe if in the narrative of your core structure if you think of it as a story you know if there had been things that sort of supported that or led up to that in a certain way we could totally get away with stuff like that you know you can get with all kinds of wild colors if you know how to frame them if this was the climax of the story that's a very good chord for that yeah if it's just part of the general fabric of the story the background of the story alongside the other chords it's a little harder to hear that logic this dilla groove is cool but there's this particular flam between the kick drum and the snare that is sometimes happening on the back beat where the kick drum is like really right up against the snare and i noticed in your description you said 30 second note accents maybe it's a 30 second note next to the snare i don't know which is cool but i'm not sure if this feels the way that you want it to and i think a lot of people approach gila grooves from this perspective of like oh it's gonna it's got to be wonky but no it also has to feel good too right i think one of the dilla's great contributions to the music is that he gave the drum machine an electronic instrument he gave it breath and he gave it life yeah he's the mad scientist you know how you do that is so interesting too it's being very conscious of these sounds in a way that the computer isn't right conscious of totally and again like you know you can arrive at these places from lots of different perspectives like if your way into this kind of feel is to like be like okay 30 second notes right divisions cool listen to it try to dance to it try and go like this to your own 30-second note yeah flam grooves or whatever and see if it just feels better maybe if it's not a 32nd note maybe it's something else be very conscious of your own reactions to two things um is kind of the point yeah yeah and in the end if it's like you started out as it being a 30 second now and you found that it felt good somewhere in this nebulous area but you got to there by thinking of a 30-second note thing first great that's cool you know but like as you know in the end as long as it feels alive and it has you know life force ah yes the midi chlorines if it has a gut microbiome yeah yeah we're testing the ph levels of these crews are they balanced uh yeah okay [Music] funky looking right here do you like the hat funky jacob yes i'm staying out of that one [Music] oh all right [Music] oh yeah that was amazing yeah and incredible vocabulary you really are in the pocket uh i love the ewe sounds that i mean you you clearly you're playing eewee like an e which is nice and taking advantage of how expressive the instrument can be you know which is one of the hard parts about playing synth so like i mean as a keyboard playing synth solos it's just like you can shred all day but like you were actually like playing around with some of the expressive you know modulatory capacity of that instrument yeah where it is somewhere between a synthesizer and a woodwind instrument and it really is its own thing that combines aspects of both of them yeah again this is getting the subjective territory because it's clearly like you have a like incredible grasp on what you're doing it's great to play the vocabulary in a way that sounds really good and where everything fits together and has a purpose and then i would say like go deeper and figure out what you can contribute to this you know incredible tradition of music that's so old you know uh and storied you you know the tradition you know these this vocabulary of this kind of like smooth jazz situation and uh my friend zach zanger is great at this kind of thing but there's also this desire to contribute like what else can you build from this vocabulary so you're not just saying the same thing over and over i certainly say the same thing over and over i have so many cliches there's so many cliches and i think cliches are cliches for a good reason they're a part of the vocabulary but at the same time how do you go deeper how do you go beyond that that's a hard thing to answer yeah it's even hard to talk about you know it's like it's like you know i'd like to think that i can tell when someone's really searching um and really trying to find meaning in the things that they're playing instead of just playing them but who am i to say yeah that's true you know but this was great [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right [Music] it's a cool live [Music] this is not such a merry christmas [Music] to keep their little heads from falling [Music] 2022 here yeah yeah somehow like yeah i feel like if olivier messi and listen to this he's like oh i'm popular now i was like oh dang where are my royalties sweet oh oh my god there's so much stuff that was happening that was that was really really well done the tigran hamasian gent breakdown with the i'm a sucker for looped vocal yeah i mean absolutely yeah it's just it makes everything the uncanny valley kind of thing that's so good i love it of course like the jacob colliers stacked acapella vocals gotta have those a lot of stuff going on with this one i don't know the original but i'm assuming there's not as many notes in the original like i'd have said like it's you know there's a lot of stuff going on and that can sometimes be you know difficult to control or to make it sort of fit together as a narrative but i feel like he actually did it really well like as a narrative is a good way of saying it i i feel like there is a story being told which is the kind of really the main metric whenever i'm confronted with like a lot of things is the story being told and i i felt that you can really hear your influences here like this feels like okay we're doing this thing we're now doing this thing we're now doing this thing which is i mean these are all berkeley students and like how else are you supposed to learn except by just doing the things that you are enjoying yeah and doing them very very well so definitely don't want to knock that at all nope um but it is going to be very interesting to hear what all of these people are doing 10 years from now because hopefully they've taken these these influences these very clear influences and then exploded them out into something absolutely yeah different yeah an old teacher might call it called it like the flailing talented musician syndrome where it's just like you have all these things you can do and all these things you're exposed to and you're the people around you are always telling you to check stuff out and you're working on like a million things at the same time and you want it all to come out and that is like a very like young music student specifically music student thing i think one of the things that adam and i were talking about earlier is like you want to maybe hide your seams a little bit or you want to at least like get to the point where all this music that you love and have a special relationship with comes out of the crucible you know as something that is uniquely yours and not necessarily just the frankenstein of a bunch of different things which i know is an aesthetic and can be a really cool one you want to burn everything down you want to melt everything down and then reform it rather than just hack it hack it together not that that's what you're doing yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but there is a very particular order that i feel like everybody eventually goes through where you take all of your influences and you let them simmer for a while yeah you kind of have to let them simmer for a while and when you're music school is not a good place to let things simmer it's kind of the opposite yeah it's it's not it's designed for a different purpose and it's it's a kind of an important pedagogical question like how how do you get people to simmer over four years and there's no real way yeah it's a really good question and we were talking about this earlier too a lot of times like maybe in a bygone era or maybe still today like you would form a band when you were young and you would find yourselves through that channel right yeah um or you would form a band because you had something you wanted to say you know but with music students sometimes it's the opposite like you go off to music school expecting to be molded into your mature self but what music school i find often does and i see this with a lot of my students at berkeley is that music school often confuses people yeah you know like they might have had something really amazing and really awesome you know before they went to school and then they get so confused at school that they're like wait what am i even doing like because like all these things become game currency when you're at music school right you know like yeah you know like certain types of techniques or certain types of harmony or certain you know whatever it is whatever's in vogue at school yeah and it makes it feel like you should be doing that because exactly not necessarily peer pressure but you want to play with the other musicians and the other musicians are doing this thing there is a bit of a berkeley bubble that i remembered from when i was back at berkeley where everybody's checking out the same stuff everybody's doing the same thing and it's it's very good but it does have the like tendency to coalesce around the berkeley sound when you go out there and you're done it's like okay now what oh god what what what am i doing and it's just something to be aware of when you're at school to like not not be afraid to let it simmer let things simmer afterwards because again ten years from now this is going to be it's going to be killer i mean it is i mean it is good but it's going to be something crazy different which is cool yeah absolutely music school is designed to teach you like really ferocious technique and like tons of knowledge about music goal theory and things like that not necessarily the most important things spoiler alert yeah well thanks guys so much for uh for submitting i want to say this though this is very inspiring like checking this out i'm like ah i see what you did yeah i see what you did ah that's good because everyone's playing with like passion everybody's believing in what they're doing that's that's another thing it's like it's not just academics like this people are very excited to play this which is i think important here yeah uh and you can you can feel that too being a professional musician is hard like i think it's just also regardless of all this stuff we're talking about as long as you're having fun you're doing something right hey hey all right so christian lee go uh check him out where where can we check you out so yeah i play with sun gazer with adam shawn's project i play with plays a really great guitar named mike bono who just is about to release a new record but i do put stuff out intermittently on the interwebs uh which i'll probably you know promote through instagram or something because that's the only form of social media i'm on so thanks for having me uh until next time [Music]

Channel: Adam Neely

Views: 438,315

Keywords: adam, neely, jazz, fusion, bass, guitar, lesson, theory, music

Id: VQpObFIGz0s

Length: 27min 22sec (1642 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 04 2022