Why Keith Jarrett Blows My Mind

this video is brought to you by nebula classes hi everybody welcome to amy nolte music today i'm talking about keith jarrett who is probably my biggest piano influence i would say i want to talk about what maybe is my favorite keith jarrett album it's close anyway standards in norway when keith jarrett had the idea to start the standards albums it was based off of the idea that that there are these songs these songs that are our repertoire in jazz that everybody knows that everybody's done a bazillion ways and that because he found jack de janet and gary peacock and they were just stellar musicians the three of them could go in to any recording studio or any stage and perform standards without having to arrange them sometimes people think that they're arranged they're not listen to keith jarrett talk to marian mcpartlin about it in his npr interview on piano jazz well back in the the that era which would have been the early 80s everybody was expected to do their own thing and they're on tonight of course so you know you get a record contract if you have material that is yours um and it was so passe to do standards that for me i realized there was this wide open space that no one was occupying that i thought we anybody with as much experience as gary and jackie jeannette could probably just use uh and and then we wouldn't have to say this is our music we're doing our thing and there wouldn't be that possessiveness that that comes from rehearsing and what i wanted was us to just show up and play and have the playing which which anyway is what jazz is supposed to be about like the actual involvement and the expression of in each individual player when we did our first recording um you might remember god bless the child is on there um i remember a review saying that they like the arrangements and i remember looking at gary and jack and saying do you remember us having any arrangements let's start with the opening track all of you as keith jarrett takes his solo he opens up with a motif that knocks my socks off let's listen to it [Music] did you recognize it it's a it's a quote i mean it came from a song i think it's my melancholy baby [Music] he doesn't stay on it or make you know that it's my melancholy baby he morphs it into something else immediately [Music] it becomes this beautiful motif that he sees through to the end [Music] he exhausts it and then moves on to something else [Music] in keith's interview with marianne mcpartland he talks about motifs and well i'll just let him tell you and the part of me that can't help itself is the melodic uh content part so i i i don't have to think let me add some melody to it it always seems to well if i find a motif finds me instead of me finding a motif when he starts his second chorus he does a thing that keith jarrett does it's that he lands on this beautiful idea some idea that like it almost anchors you as the beginning of a new chorus starts almost at the top of every chorus he has some really solid idea some very very strong motif [Music] and as he plays along you probably know this about keith jarrett we start to really hear him squeal [Music] in the interview with marian mcfarland he also addresses this squealing she's brave to ask him about it but she does and and he explains it the best way that he can and i i love it you are funny i've never figured out is all that little noise is that kind of ecstasy or what is that um it makes me laugh to hear it it's it's um it's there's not enough um there's not enough space for the input and output at the same time and all i'm all like that's the only explanation i can come up with there's stuff going through me and stuff coming out on the piano but it isn't everything there is so some of it is only going on in my head and and i'm following both trains at the same time and it but it's also ecstatic because if the perfect example is the first encore at the carnegie hall recording the first encore is called an encore but because it happened after the body of the concert and i went off stage and came back and bowed a couple times came back and i sat at the piano and i remember saying to myself um it's not yet time to lower my resistance and just drop some encores on to everyone it's time there's still something to do so it was to me the body of the concert was still going on so it's a it's a completely improvised piece but there was such longing in one part of it that i could never get the sound i heard in my head out of a piano and you hear me pause and you'll hear me make a sound and that is one place i can precisely describe why that sound existed it was when you reach for something and you go oh and you you're no kidding you know you're not going to necessarily get there in all respects i was doing everything i could on the keyboard but there was even more than i could possibly have presented on on piano and that's usually the reason that the sound i'm trying to here's the clip from carnegie hall the track is called the good america it has a title even though it was an encore he improvised it and then titled it later [Music] the idea that there's something out there that he he heard going on in his head but he just couldn't quite execute because he only has two hands and 88 keys so he has to make some sound i think i think it's really really amazing and i like that way of his explaining it sometimes it seems like he's singing along with what he's playing but sometimes it does seem like he's just reaching for a bigger sound than the piano can make how about you is a solo that i transcribed when i was in college maybe one of the first solos i ever transcribed again he starts off with an amazing motif it's actually the tonight show theme song [Music] since i transcribed this i have some footage of myself playing it that i'll show here and there as i talk about this tune [Music] as he starts the second chorus bang is with another very strong idea strong motif [Music] and as he really gets into it here i love i mean you can hear him squealing again and it's like you can you can feel the squeal and the lack of squeal within him somehow like he really wants something to come out but he's gonna hold back a little bit this is like this lack of of what he's trying to bring this this holding back all through it that i oh i just love it's like he's giving us a taste of something but still holding out on us [Music] there's so many great bebop lines and even in a tricky place in this tune where you don't expect it to but the chord goes to c minor he gets out of the bebop line preceding the c minor in a way that sets up c minor perfectly i love this part a lot of my bebop vocabulary my early bebop vocabulary came from this transcription it's really quite a study in the vocabulary of of triplets of enclosures of little arpeggios that outline chords lines the way to outline the chord changes listen close these are some of my favorite parts do [Music] at the end of this tune he trades eight with the drummer jack de genet and i think it's so cool that when keith jarrett goes to trade eighths you you can't you can't tell at the beginning that he's about to trade eight you think that he's gonna take another chorus it's like it's like his mood doesn't change he just he just continues he takes his eight bars [Music] waits for jack de janet to take his eight bars [Music] just simple killer motif every time he comes back in for his eight he's not trying to keep up with the drummer he's not trying to be rhythmically flashy he's just playing the ideas that are inside of himself he's doing his thing he's letting jack do his thing and and then all of a sudden it's time to end the tune and it just ends there is no tag there is no outro it just ends and it's kind of abrupt and i think it's kind of telling about keith jarrett's confidence he's a very confident man from what i can tell and i don't think he i think he thought he already brought everything that he needed to to the song [Music] love is a mini splendor thing it's another tune that i've transcribed and i absolutely love his solo on it he he starts by i mean he plays the head in and then when he starts his solo it's kind of like he's playing the head in again but a second time and he's embellishing the melody it's like one of the coolest melodies embellished that i've ever heard he has a way of always bringing you back to the melody but really stepping outside of it and then coming right back to it that it's like a it's a master class on how to embellish a melody sounds like a solo but that was the melody goes away again but about to come back to the melody and keeps going more melody his ideas throughout his solo are so soaring and beautiful again just a pro showing us bebop vocabulary but lyricism in a way nobody else can do it [Music] lyricism it's like sometimes his solos are so strong i feel like i could write lyrics to them if i wanted to [Music] i could totally write lyrics to that line you could too we all could i have a quote that is in this notebook of mine where i where i did the transcription in the back of the notebook i wrote down a quote from keith jarrett i assume that it's from downbeat magazine in 1970 i'm not exactly sure but i love this quote i think that people have forgotten the importance of lyricism it is here that music began and hear where it will end music is melody certain musicians have no sense of melody in themselves and i think this is a major defect for one can learn everything except lyricism it's probably why he's my favorite let's talk about another tune i hear a rhapsody the beginning is a rubato piano solo he sets it up all by himself it's very very intricate very very technical very very beautiful and sometimes if you think if you listen to something like this or maybe like art tatum or oscar peterson being extra flashy you know having extra extra crazy sense of harmony and you think that it's so far beyond you i just want you to know that there's so much there's so much good can come from listening and listening and listening to a section of a song like this just listening to keith jarrett open up this song all by himself playing everything that comes through him will do more for your playing than you know just absorbing it these reasons and many more reasons are why i love keith jarrett and why he blows my freaking mind you'll notice i talked a lot again today about motifs and also a couple videos ago i talked all about motifs and about how soloing isn't what you think it is it's actually easier keith jarrett illustrates my point again because of the strong ideas that he has and executes and sees through it sometimes exhausts always knows how to lead himself into the next thing and it's exactly what my new nebula class talks about hi everybody welcome to my nebula class i'm amy nolte i'm a jazz piano player and singer but i want you to know right up front you don't have to be a piano player or a singer to get everything you need out of this class it's for all instruments nebula brought me out to new york recently and i shot my very own nebula class it was professionally produced i didn't have a thing to do with the cameras or lighting and that's why it looks so dang good and what i do in that class is to give you the tools that you need in order to create your own motifs that come straight from the heart there's 13 different ways that i have very practical ways so that you can just start doing it immediately and playing things that that just flow naturally out of you i try to help you find the things that are in you that are just waiting to be unlocked and brought out through your instrument it doesn't have to be a keyboard necessarily nebula classes is the latest thing from my streaming service nebula that i've built with 160 other youtube creators nebula is a place where we can share our videos without the fear of an algorithm or anything being liked or disliked or comments underneath it it's all educational content sometimes i drop bonus videos over there companion videos extended pieces to what i make here on youtube and if i ever think that a video wouldn't work on youtube because of that dang algorithm i put it on nebula just like my brian wilson documentary about surf's up which happens to be my favorite beach boys tune and new classes are dropping every single week like sarah feldman's class which is already up about how to produce a pop song you can get nebula classes right now if you sign up using the code on your screen nebula classes dot com slash amy nolte it's ten dollars a month or a hundred dollars for the year and right now with my code there's two dollars off of that price so eight dollars per month or eighty dollars per year if you're already signed up for nebula it's just five dollars extra to add on nebula classes you'll get all of nebula plus nebula classes every time you open the app the app which can be viewed on your ios or android device or on fire stick roku android tv apple tv any of the devices that you use to watch tv on your tv check out my friend devin stone he's legal eagle he has a brand new nebula class all about copyright for fun and for profit there's a great section about fair use that i have learned a lot from thanks for listening to me fangirl about keith jarrett my favorite piano player go ahead and listen to everything you can by keith jarrett don't just stop with this video go listen to the standards in norway album listen to live at the deer head inn listen to that carnegie hall concert listen to everything you can get your hands on it'll make you a better player thanks for watching everybody i'll see you next time on amy nolte music

Channel: Aimee Nolte Music

Views: 66,854

Keywords: piano, Keith Jarrett, Kieth, Music, Amy, Nolty, Jarret, Jarrett, Jazz

Id: 44u65eusazM

Length: 19min 7sec (1147 seconds)

Published: Tue May 24 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/LusoClassic]

I wish there were more videos like this. Or maybe there are and I don't know about them. Great value for those who love Jazz like me but simply aren't versed in music theory (I don't consider it necessary to appreciate music but it's cool to have a greater perception of what's going on).