Transcript
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Joey D welcomes everyone, explains the class format, and opens with a blues performance to set the tone. He briefly reflects on the sound and feel of the Hammond organ.
Speaker A
Hopefully everybody's tuned in here.This is the long awaited anticipated Joey D Masterclass.I've been wanting to do this for a while and so happy and excited to be able to do this.There's a lot of folks here today and we're going to be covering all grounds.You have some guys that have been doing this that know a lot about it, already have little questions.
You have some people just getting started.So we're going to take care of everybody.So everybody be patient and we'll take care of you.But the first thing I want to do is play some blues for you.Everybody knows if you play a Hammond organ, we love to play some blues and we all love blues.And f. There's just something about that sound.It just sets right on the instrument and just works.And that's what we're going to do for you right now.Let's call this the 11am Masterclass blues.
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Alright.That's a good way to wake up in the morning.It's fun for me.That's always great to do.
He begins explaining the instrument itself, including its modified parts and how it was rebuilt from an older organ. This section introduces the custom setup he uses for gigs.
Speaker A
So we're going to start off talking about what we did with that blues right now.As you can see, I went through some different sounds, pardon me, and different things with the organ.You see me moving stuff, we call these stops, different things around.I'm going to explain all that to you now.Like I said before, I know there's a lot of you out there that know a lot of this, but there's some that don't.And it's fun to talk about.
So you know how much we love these instruments.First, let me tell you a little about this instrument that I'm playing.Okay.Well, in theory it's a B3, but I put this together.What happened was I found a BV, which is an organ that is before the B3.
It's one of the early ones and I love the sound of it.I really love the sound of it.So I said, you know, I want to turn this into a killer gig organ.I have a few organs that I use for gigging.So I made this one and I replaced everything.
And without getting too technical for the people that really don't want to know about that or I don't want to go too crazy about it, but I replaced everything.I replaced the capacitors on the tone wheel generator.I put new key combs, new upstop felts.Those of you that.There's a lot of you that know what I'm talking about right now, There's a Trek 2 solid state preamp.But it's modified, it's not like the normal one.That's why I have these extra knobs here.And there's a lot of things on here.So the organ was kind of a Frankenstein.Then it turned into this lovely sounding B3 that I love a lot, and I did all the work on my own.
So let's go over the organ now.
He walks through the organ’s drawbars, preset keys, and percussion controls on the upper manual. The explanation focuses on how these settings shape the classic Hammond sound.
Speaker A
Okay, so let's start with the left side.Now, on your stock standard B3 or C3, you're going to have these three tabs right here.There's one here, normal soft volume.See, the old stuff makes a little noise, right?And then you have your vibrato upper and lower.Here's the vibrato that you want.You know, vibrato and chorus.So you have three kinds of each.Then we come to these things that slide in and out.These are called draw bars.And there's two sets for each manual or keyboard.And these are your preset keys.A lot of people say, what are those?They stick down.
Okay, so what these do is you could wire them internally to sound with any drawbar configuration that you want, but we usually don't do that.We usually just use the ones that are live.So this preset here, which the factory likes to call A sharp, but musicians call it the B flat preset, is this, when you have this down, that controls this set of drawbars in the upper manual.So, okay, so I'll hold a note.First drawbar, second drawbar, third drawbar.
There's nine of them.You have nine of them.Now, what each drawbar represents is a footage of a pipe.See, Hammond organ was originally designed and intended for use in churches because pipe organs were so, and still are very expensive.So its original tenant use was for that, to replace or have an affordable alternative for organs in church.
So this first drawbar right Here represents a 16 foot pipe.This is a five and a third foot pipe, an eight foot pipe, a four foot pipe.You get the idea.Each one represents that.And they start lower.The bigger the pipe, the lower the tone.So it goes right on up.Okay, now on the second set of drawbars, we're still on the upper manual.In 1955, when the B3 was introduced, it introduced a new feature called percussion, which is something that was a revolutionary thing that we love so much now.So it adds another tone.
Excuse me.It adds an attack to the tone of the regular tone.So you have this tone here, right?In fact, we'll start with one draw bar.
Now when you put the percussion on, it adds another tone to that without it with it.
So it takes.And if you push the drawbar back in.I did that earlier when I did my little blues for you.That's just percussion by itself.And you have second harmonic, which is a fourth foot, a four foot pipe.In your third harmonic, which is a two and two thirds foot pipe, it represents these two drawbars, right?So you pull out these three, which is the very famous setting, and you put the percussion on the third harmonic.You also have a decay for that too.So if it's on fast, it goes very fast.I have reverb on, see.But if you put it on slow, it fades out slower.
He explains vibrato, chorus depth, and how the custom control changes the organ’s character from thick to thin. He demonstrates how different settings create familiar vintage tones.
Speaker A
Okay, so that's what happens there.Then we move to these two little lonely drawbars in the middle.There's a 16 foot one and an 8 foot one.And those are your feet, that's your bass pedals.So you get this sound.
Here's your eight foot.
Okay, now we're on to the lower manual.These two sets represent the sounds for the lower manual.Same setup though.So if you put the B flat preset down, you control these drawbars.
Need a little contact cleaner in there.And then if you use your B preset, that's what you're doing here.
So that allows you to have something set the way you want it over here, here, you know, for example, so that you could switch to it easy.So if you're playing one tone and you want to switch to another fast, you just go like this.That's the reason for the presets.And like I said earlier, here's your percussion.And you could do certain things and cool things with that too.Mixing draw bar combinations.And here's your power switches and.Okay, now there's a feature over here.A lot of you that are familiar.You'll say, well, that's a reverb control from an A100.
Yes, that's what this is.But that's not what its function is on this instrument.That's my vibrato chorus depth control.That's an add on custom feature.A lot of guys do it so that with the different vintages of organs, there were different volume levels or depth levels of your vibrato chorus.
Most people like to use their chorus at C3 and so on.A later organ, pretty much like 59 and newer, you have this type of sound with the chorus.It's a very full, thick sound.
Okay.But some people like the older sound, like the 50s sound.So if we Back this off a little.My special control.You see how it gets thinner and then you get more of like an older, you know, early 55 B3 or a B2 or anything like that kind of sound.
You get a little bit in between, and it goes all the way to vibrato.I like it about there.That's my sweet spot.But the vibrato, you know, you have vibrato and chorus.The chorus, what chorus is?
It's a mixture of vibrato signal with straight signal.So here's vibrato.It's kind of bent, you know.This is kind of like the old, you know, that kind of sound.I use it for effect sometimes, too.We'll get into that later too.And here's your chorus where it adds a straight signal sound in with a vibrato sound.That's the famous sound we all love.
And there's different depths for that.So that's C3.That's the strongest setting.You could go to C2.Kind of cuts it down a little bit.And then there's C1.
But with a vibrato, you could do some cool things, you know.
He describes the Trek preamp controls, Leslie switching, and how the rotating speaker creates motion and depth. He also shows how reverb and foot control affect the overall sound.
Speaker A
Now, I have some other custom features here.This comes when you get a Trek 2 preamp.You'll be able to use these, okay.Which is really nice for live performance because you have bass treble.
You have a volume control, like a master volume.So you can have your Leslie or whatever speaker system that you want to use.You can have that to full volume.And then you can control the level here.Right?
And there's a percussion volume here, too.And also there's a percussion decay.That means how fast and how short it is.But that's inside the organization.And right here is our Leslie switch.Okay.Now, most people, I think, at this point know what a Leslie is.It adds a tremolo sound to the instrument beyond the vibrato.So it's an actual speaker that sits with sound coming through the top.And it turns in a horn.
That's the high end, you know.So the sound comes through.And it comes through two cones.One side's dead, one side's open.So you get a Doppler effect.
The Doppler effect is like, you know, when you hear a train go by and it goes kind of bends the sound a little bit, throws it around the room.And then for the lower frequencies, there's a 15 inch woofer that faces down with a drum that turns.All right.And then there's different kinds of Leslie and different speeds.You have two speed Leslie's and then the original Leslie's were just fast, tremolo and off.
I'm a big fan of that sound.When I'm playing solo work, I like the Leslie stopped so that I can play, you know, if I want a flat sound, like, you know, or if I turn my chorus vibrato on.A lot of people use corral too, or they like to have three speeds, which I have a few Leslie's that are that way too.So I can go stop.I could go slow if I want, which is called corral, and I could go tremolo.
That's fast.I like to really have a choice.Today we're using the single speed Leslie, which really, if I have a choice, I like to have all three.But if they say, well, we have a two speed and a single speed speed, I'll always take the single speed.And there's a couple different reasons for that.Now we'll show you how it sounds.So here's the flat sound.
Now we're going to kick the Leslie in.
It's just a gorgeous sound.It starts throwing it all over the room.
And then when you turn it off, the upper rotor will stop pretty fast, but the lower rotor for the lower mid frequencies will keep going.And that's something it can never slow down too slow.You'll hear it now.
And when you're playing ballads, this is super effective, you know, and even if you're playing some solo lines, we'll turn it back on again.
Now we're going to turn it off and it's cool.If you're playing on the upper manual and it's still taking its time decelerating, you can hear it.
Still slowing down.That's such a beautiful sound.It's rich and, you know, it's a thing like whenever I get a Leslie, the first thing I want to do is take it out, stretch the belts, grease everything, get it so that when you go to spin it, it takes forever to slow down.I can never have it too long, so.And that's the deal.
He continues with Leslie switching technique, expression pedal use, and how to manage sound changes while playing. The section ends with a discussion of how the organ is miked and recorded.
Speaker A
So with the Leslie switch, right here, we have a half moon.This is the most common.This is what camera with the organ.If you bought a Leslie with your Hammond organ, the technician would come over, install what they call a half moon switch right here.Now, there's also foot switches, too.
Those are very cool.A lot of the new organs are using those.So those are mounted on the expression pedal right here.So you can kick it this way.Some guys have them that way or they have one on this side.
I prefer it on the left side.Because my foot tends to go like this when I'm playing, you know, so I don't have to turn the Leslie on all the time.When I'm ready, boom, I kick it over here.I don't have one on here.I'm just showing you where it could be.
I'm using a half moon on here.Now, the thing about using a half moon switch is you have to have a little bit more footwork together, especially if you're playing bass lines, because you know you can't stop if you're only playing left hand bass.You can't like, lift your hand off and stop your baseline to turn the Leslie switch on.So that's when your foot takes over, you know, so those are the things that it depends on the choice.It's nice to have both, too.
So today we only have a half moon, but that is really a good way to get you disciplined to start using your foot more.So you can.Because you need that too if you want to start doing adjustments and things.But you shouldn't be doing too many adjustments anyway, because what's more important and effective is what you're doing musically, right?But if you're playing a ballad, you want to be able to make some moves.You have to just take over with the foot, you know, if you're playing something slow.So if you're right.So now I'm playing foot, but let's say I'm playing left hand.
Now I want to make a move, so I got to take over with the foot, Foot.So that's important, you know.So if you can, I'll do it one more time for you.So, okay, now if you're playing something slow, so if you're.So if you're soloing, you know, you got your left hand going, but I need to make an adjustment somewhere else.So I have to take off, take over with my foot.
I'll change my drawbar settings.
See, now that I'm playing with my foot, I can do whatever I want with this hand.Okay, I want a little bit more.I want a little bit more reverb.Right?This hand's free now because my foot's taken over.
I got full organ now, but I wanted it a little less.
Change the drawbar setting a bit.Left hand is free.
To do whatever you want.Now if you're playing fast, obviously, depending on the tempo.If you're playing a tempo right here, we're back to the blues.This is the mother of all music here, right?And you want to make an Adjustment you're playing.
So you just take over with your foot.
Again, back with the foot.We're playing a tempo like this.Obviously we're not going to be too concerned, but with anything else, but making sure we're making that tempo work.So that's pretty much the control of the Leslie switch.I also have.You probably hear my reverb, right?The reverb is mounted just under the Leslie switch to the left.So there's dry.
Now we add a little reverb in for.
You could keep going with it.
And with certain sounds, the reverb is, you know, you have to adjust it to taste.You don't want to have too much reverb.But for certain things it's nice.Like if you want to use, you know, the first draw bar pulled out.Okay, this is a nice setting.
And the second harmonic percussion, slow decay.Right.What happens now?Turn your reverb up and you can get a really, really nice vibe.So effect.
A little bit more reverb.
Now what I'm also doing is using my expression pedal there on my right foot.That's where you get in the tremo.Like a slow tremo, like vibes.You move it slow like this, Any speed, you feel set.What feels good to you.
Sounds so much like a vibraphone.And that's the combination of what you're doing with your foot with the tremolo, with the expression pedal, the second harmonic percussion with slow decay and a little reverb with your one 16 foot drawbar pulled out.
Even one note.
There you go.That's the beauty of that.
He compares direct organ tone with Leslie tone and explains why blending them is so effective. He also connects the sound to classic recordings and shows how the organ can mimic other textures.
Speaker A
Now I'm going to tell you a little bit about the way we're recording what you're hearing today.So that's a 22H Leslie.And there's two microphones on a Leslie, one for the top, one for the bottom.
That's your bass and your treble.And we're also taking a direct signal by itself.Because when you mix those two together is when to me, and I think to a lot of us, that's the perfect sound for recording and even live.And we all wonder for many years how Rudy Van Gelder on those famous Blue Note records, how those organs, the sound of it.Because he was very much into using a direct signal.
Sometimes it's only direct.And we could even.Can we listen to just a direct for a second?So here's what the organ sounds like with no Leslie in the signal.This is just di.
Go back to my third harmonic.
It's a very clean, crisp sound.I mean, it's when you hear that, it's hard to believe that that's from an instrument that was originally designed really in 1934, when the first ham and tone wheel organs.That's what it sounds like.It sounds so clean, you know.
Now we're going to listen to just the Leslie signal without the direct signal.
Still beautiful.But when you mix them in now, we're going to bring the direct back in.
That's the official sound to me.
Okay, get carried away there.So mixing those two is a wonderful combination, you know.And there's some players out there that didn't use a Leslie.They only used direct signal on the gigs.In fact, you know, that Brian Auger rock and roll organ, he made that sign sound, you know, where he didn't use Leslie's, he used bigger amplifiers and things like that.And of course, a lot of the rock got Deep Purple and they used Marshall stacks along with the Leslie's.So that that created a whole other sound and different effects.I mean, even the reverb, right, we're still using a spring reverb in here.So some guys would use that as effect, you know, by hitting the organ, you know, get the crashing reverb sound.A lot of guys did that, John Lord, and, you know, that's part of the sound.
So we don't do that too much in jazz.But, you know, there's some recordings of Jimmy McGriff where he's squabbling and he gets into it and you'll hear it, you know, it's part of the charming thing of the instrument.So there's all kinds of things you can do, you know.So now being that this is really the first synthesizer, I mean, let's face it, it really is.You can do so many things sonically with this.
And, you know, I'm going to show you an example right now that I like to use.Now, this work I talked about, I use chorus most of the time.C3, if we go to V3, full vibrato, let's pull out the first four draw bars, let's turn our percussion off.Then we can start to get sort of like a Moog sound when we're playing.But we have to do certain things to do that.You have to turn your vibrato on and off while you're playing so.
You get that JoeZominal thing happening.
And this is great.And this is another reason why you want to switch to your foot right when you're doing these kind of things, so you can get to it and use your Left hand to control it, to turn it on and off.So if you're playing something, these kind of things.Like if you're playing, say, a vamp, like.
Now, See, and when I'm doing that, people always want to know what kind of special effects.What is that modification on the organ?I hear pitch bend?I hear.No, that's a stock feature of the organ.
It's just something that you figure out when you're playing these instruments for so long.You know, you start finding it because, you know, you want to keep things interesting for yourself, for the listener.You start thinking of all these other things you could do just with these nine draw bars, right?There's so many things you can do just with those.I mean, I showed you.We get a vibe sound with one draw bar, right?
Pull the second drawbar out, you have some other kind of sound, right?You pull the third drawbar out, you have another, and it just keeps going.And that's just that.But just go like this.
Take the drawbars and make a crazy mix.See what kind of sound you get.
I think this is how a lot of the gospel settings got, you know, established.Because just take the draw bars and do it.And using your.Leslie, you know, You know, You know, pull the first drawbar in the last.What's that?
He introduces the most common Hammond settings, including the Jimmy Smith solo sound and bass registrations. He explains how these combinations became standard vocabulary for organ players.
Speaker A
That brings us to drawbar settings.Now, we're going to first tell you about the most popular settings.These are the settings that I used.These settings were established by the solo setting that you hear.This sound that you hear a lot of.
Okay, that's the first three draw bars all the way out, like this vibrato chorus on C3 and the percussion on soft, fast third.This sound is such a simple thing to pull out three draw bars.This sound was established by Jimmy Smith in 1955.Before percussion.Now, percussion was introduced.
Introduced in 1955.That's the first model B3s came out before that was a B2.All the features were the same, except you didn't have these four switches right here.These are your percussion effects.So you had everything but that.This was just blank here on a B2.So before percussion, this was the famous sound.First three drawbars and the last drawbar.That's your one foot pipe registration.
So when you listen to those early records, you know, like, you hear this kind of sound with a very staccato playing.
That's that sound.But 1955, okay, the B3 came out.What's this stuff over here?My.My imagination is.He kept the drawbars, the Same way.And just went like this.What do these do?Wow, that's killing.Because what happens is when you turn the percussion on, this cancels your one foot drawbar.
It doesn't play anymore.See, there's no sound coming from it.So there you go, you can leave that on.And you automatically have two sounds to solo with.With percussion.
Turn your percussion off, you have this sound, which is nice for chords too, you know.So these are the main.So we're going to talk about that.So then on for bass, we pull the first drawbar, 16 foot, second drawbar out to about four, your five and a third foot and the eight foot drawbar, the third drawbar all the way out to eight.And you get this sound in the left hand.
And it works out that that sounds great for chords and comping too.
Very mellow sound.Then when you want to accent a little more, you have more drawbars pulled out here so you get a little bit thicker sound.But we do most of our soloing on the upper manual because of the percussion in that certain setting.Now if you start getting involved now.Okay, so those are the basic sounds.
Now there's the sound without percussion, with the first three by itself.Flat with no vibrato.
I tend to use that for, you know, it's like a mellower kind of sound.And that's the kind of thing that's very cool, you know, for being kind of funky.And you put your vibrato on a little reverb.Like if you play a slow blues.Let's take G. We're going to play in a key of G now.
Now even to really get it funky, we'll turn that chorus off.
Now we could do that thing with the expression pedal too, where we rock it and get this thing.
Funky sound.But if you're building up, okay, we're going to put the percussion on.Now there's a reason to turn the percussion on and the chorus on, See, so you get that kind of sound.So there's your main solo settings.Those are kind of the ones that we use.
You'll hear those most of the time.And you know, you could mess with those a little.If you want to push the middle one a little bit like Shirley Scott liked to.She didn't use the middle draw bar, the five, and she pushed it in so she got this kind of sound.The difference here is regular.
So basically very similar to what's going on with your bass sound, but with percussion, it's got a kind of nice sound, right?And then you can do different combinations, the first two and so on.This is stuff that you have to do to experiment.You know, that's the B preset.And I explained earlier, you only get percussion on the B preset with the second set of drawbars on the upper manual.
Now usually about 90% of time, my first set, which goes on the B flat preset on the upper manual, I usually have all the draw bars pulled.That's known as full organ.That's when you want to break windows and things like that.I'm just kidding.Not all the time, but sometimes that way you can go to that when you really want, you know, it's already set for you.You don't have to mess around and pull.The draw bar is out, it's ready.You just hit this button.
He demonstrates the squabbling sound and how percussion, chorus, and Leslie speed shape it. He emphasizes the importance of octaves, fifths, and rolling chords for this style.
Speaker A
So if you're playing with this sound.
Now we want to go full organ, Right back to soloing.
Right?So that's.There's your full organ, your solo setting ready to go at all times.Okay.And there's your bass setting.
Now what I like to do on the lower manual for my B flat preset, I like to pull out my four foot drawbar and my two foot drawbar for chords.So if I want to play chords in my left hand and melody in the right hand and bass on the foot.Right.So what that does is this is the sound we're using normally, right.We switch here.It brings everything up two octaves.So then I don't have bass down here, I have chords down here.Right.And it's easy to go to when I want to go to it.
So I'm playing four foot now, as you see.
Now I might have to use my right hand to turn the leslie on because my left hand's busy.But that's the beauty of having a hand available.That's that foot's for now we can go to the right hand.
You know, if you want to play a little lead down here, you can.It goes up real high.Listen to that speaker, slow down.
And then on a slower tune, crank your reverb up for that last chord and then it fades out really sweet for you.Alright, now we're going to go into a couple other settings now that are very famous sounds.There's a technique that we call squabbling.Now squabbling comes from.And we'll get into that later as far as technique.But we're just talking about the sound right now.Squabbling setting is the first draw bar and the last four draw bars like this.Now there's different Ways, you know, people like to use this.Sometimes I have the percussion on, sometimes they have it off.Like Jimmy Smith.
I think if he left the percussion on when he squabbles because he forgot it was on, I'm sure that's what it is.But then that turned into a sound.If you listen to Satin Dahl on Organ Grinder Swing, for example, their percussion is on with the squabble.And that's got a certain little cool sound to it.Turn it off, it sounds.
Because remember what I told you.When percussion is on, you lose your one foot drawbar.Of course, there's a way to rewire that.We're talking about a stock Hammond right now.That cancels it.So when you turn percussion on, really what you're hearing is this one, these three drawbars and the percussion third harmonic there.And what that sounds like.And when you want to squabble, you want.Part of that setting is the chorus on and the Leslie tremolo on fast now.And it sounds like this.
And that's what you're doing when you're squabbling, you're rolling the chord.
That's part of the style, you know.
This is a setting that was established also by Jimmy Smith.Now, if I pull this drawbar back out, turn the percussion off, it gives a little bit more high end, shimmer.
A little more.Reverb is nice, too, when squabbling.
And depending some organs, it's a little bright.You push these in a little bit and that'll darken it up for you.See, but that reverb's nice because, you know, there's different things you'll do when you're squabbling, you know, which we'll talk about more later, too.So there's your squabble setting.Okay?
He encourages players to explore drawbar combinations and not worry about sounding like someone else. The section closes by stressing that the organ is a huge sonic palette and then pauses for a break.
Speaker A
Now, there's a couple different combinations you can do.You know, these are things that it's fun to experiment with home.And the cool thing is, even if you don't have a B3, you have any organ that has the nine drawbars on it.You know, you can do these things.You can mess with them, try different sounds.But I'll tell you what, you only need four or five good sounds, you know.And if, you know, a lot of people will say, well, you know, I don't want to use that setting.That's the Jimmy Smith setting.I said, well, you're going to sound like you're yourself anyway.It's like every piano.Like, here's a piano, right?Oscar Peterson played a Bosendorfer.You think, if Another guy plays that piano, it's going to sound the same as Oscar Peterson.It's the same sounding piano.It's not going to sound the same.
You have to do your thing with it, right?And everybody realized that, I think pretty quick, because Jimmy McGriff, Jack McDuff, Don Patterson, pretty much everybody, everybody used that setting because it's the sound.It just sounds right.It works for soloing and doing those kind of things.Now, you could do other things with it.
For example, here's the sound again, right?
Maybe you want the percussion not, you know, so fast.You want the slow decay.Slow decay makes it go off a little slower.
You know, you put your chorus back on with that.It sounds nice when you're soloing.
Don Patterson liked to use the slow percussion because he played a little more staccato, right?So it sounded nice with that.
So I like it too.I use it sometimes.And sometimes you'd hear Jimmy Schmidt records and it was slow, and it wouldn't be because he had the tab like that.It would be because it was adjusted slower on the inside of the organ.And the guys, you know, back then, they just played the instruments, you know, they weren't worried so much about the technical part of the instrument.And which is kind of a groovy thing to think about, because that's what you're supposed to really think about is playing musically, making whatever instrument that you have in front of you work musically, you know.And you got to remember the last B3 that was made is in 1975.So even if you have one of them, you're talking about an instrument that's 42 years old.That's the newest possible one you could have.So unless you rebuild everything, there's going to be some issues.
They're quirky instruments.So, you know, you got to be ready for everything at all times.So that's part of being able to play, not being so involved with all these other little things.Sit down and play.And that's why minimal drawbar settings for a good sound, worry about your style and your personality on the instrument more than I want some.
Because, you know, you can do some crazy things with the drawbars.And it just doesn't sound like if I take.Let's just do a setting like this, right?Whatever this is, alright?Percussion's on.
I mean, you're not going to want to listen to me as much if I'm playing with that sound, right?
Compared to this sound.
So the idea is to play differently, not worry about having so much of a different draw bar sound.That's not to say for different styles and genres.You try different things.There's so many possibilities.I mean, I think Hammond Organ said 253 million combinations there are on the drum bars.I mean, so that's a lot of sounds.But you could doctor your solo sound a certain amount.That's what I'm saying.Like if you have the first three, you know, Charles Erlin, right.Or Jack McDuff was the first one.A lot of people don't realize it.To use the fourth drawbar, he pulled out the four foot drawbar.So now you have the first four out.You get a little kind of a funky sound with that.Here's the first three again.
First four.
It adds a certain kind of funky thing to that for some blues, you know.
Right.And then the other cool thing with that pull your one foot drawbar.And remember, that drawbar won't play with percussion on.So we turn percussion off and you get more of a gospel kind of sound, You know.So that's.
That takes of care.Care of different sounds.I mean, it's unlimited, you know.And that's like the vibrato, right?That effect.
We talked about that a little bit to make it sound.But even that, you know, sometimes you'll start off a solo flat sounding.Okay.So, All right, now you want to add the chorus in.
So that you go back and forth, you know.Or you might start off without percussion.
Now you decide, I want to throw the percussion in, You know, so there's so many things you could do.I mean, really, I like to say, you know, the organ is having an orchestra at your fingertips.Because you could start off like that, where you're soloing and playing things like that.And you go from that right to the big band, you know.
You know, when you get the plunger things going.Ooh, ow, ooh.
That's kind of like that effect.So you can do that or you can make it real soft and you play.
And all these things going on, your Leslie slowing down by itself, taking a long time, that mellow sound, they are contributing factors to the effectiveness of the dynamics of playing this.This instrument.So, you know, that's.That pretty much covers.You'll never 100% cover the sounds because you got to experiment with yourself.
So we're going to take five right now and we'll be back momentarily.
He returns from the break and begins teaching left-hand bass technique over blues in F. The focus is on a simple repeating pattern that builds coordination and groove.
Speaker A
We dealt with organ sounds and effects and things like that.Of course, we'll go back and forth, you know, as we're going on, because different things Apply to different things.So, and we're going to get into the base technique now.Left hand and foot and different ways to approach it and how to get that started.And you know, to work out your independence and your coordination and things like that.
So before we deal with the foot, we're going to just deal with the left hand.That's where we're going to start.Okay, now this is going to bring us back to blues and F. It's the perfect way to learn anything.You know, it's the way.It's the perfect basis because you can branch out into so many areas from the blues in F, from the organ or any instrument.
And now we're going to talk about bass lines.Now when I learned I was self taught, I mean, my dad played, but he pretty much let me do my thing.He set the organ up and said, here's where you play the bass lines with your left hand.Here's.You know, I was way too, I was four, right.So I couldn't play the pedals.Know you yet?My feet just dangled, so.And I know there's a lot of players now that don't use their pedals, but they want to get into it.But we're going to start with the left hand.
And I have finally figured out, because of many people asking me, a way to come up with a pattern that you could start with just to get to work your coordination and groove up.So my left hand.Here we go.So take your left hand, put it here, pinky on F. Okay, now we're just going to use this setting like this.So what I do is take 12 bars blues and we're going to play a pattern now, okay, I'm going to play it slow.
As you can see, it all kind of lines up, right?That's the first pattern.Now the point is that I want to explain to you.We're never going to go past the D in this pattern.So it keeps your hand in a position where you don't have to move it around a lot.Okay, we're never going to go past D. Okay, now we're going to go to B flat.
Okay?So there's a 12 bar blues pattern that you keep doing and doing until you got a good groove in good time with a nice swing and feel and where you get the fingering.Now as far as fingerings go, it's not really important what fingering you use.You have to find a fingering that's comfortable for you.This is an individual thing.There's no right or wrong you have to do what's comfortable.Any way you can pull something off and get through what you're trying to do and it's comfortable and you can do it in an easy, relaxed way is correct.Okay?So I'm telling you to put your pinky here.But if you want to do it like this and maybe it feels better to do some crossing over, that's what you do.Okay, this is my approach.The most important thing is the notes, what you're playing and the groove.
Okay?So again, we're never going to go past this D. Okay?Now you just play that until the cows come home.You just keep doing that until it feels really comfortable and you have a good groove with it.The left hand is comfortable.And we should also mention we're playing the blues.In jazz terms.We call this a turnaround.
So, okay, we all know a 1, 4, 5 blues, that means F. B flat, F. Right?And then C, that's their five.There's your four.I'm just playing triads, right?So you know, but in jazz, what happened was instead of going to the 5 chord, we go to the 2 chord.
So you go to the G and then to C, right?And then you do.
And what that does, that gives you more room to improvise over, you know, some other changes.But there's nothing wrong with a 1, 4, 5 blues at all.But we're going to start with the blues with the 3, 6, 2, 5 turnaround in it.Alright, I'm going to play that pattern for you one more time and we're going to play a little bit slower.
He expands the left-hand exercise with turnarounds, seventh chords, and Charleston-style rhythms. The goal is to build independence and comfort before adding more complexity.
Speaker A
It.
Okay?So after you practice that for a while, like I said, and you get it where it's flawless and comfortable, we're not going to talk.That's when we're going to add in something to the right hand.And this is going to help your independence to be able to play that bass line in your right hand.But before you could play a whole lot of things with your right hand.You have to do something that's repetitious and slow so you can get to the point where it's to going comfortable to do it.Now this is what that.That's how this will look.Okay, so we showed you the bass line.Now we're going to take.We'll stay on the lower keyboard for now.We're going to take seventh chords in the right hand, okay.But we're going to invert them the other way.So you're going to play the seventh up on top instead of down on the Bottom.
We're going to play them up here, okay?
So.And we're going to play them like in a motion that we call the Charleston.And that's because of the dance back in the 30s and 40s, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom.That's where bumped boom comes from that we use on the blues so often.Okay?
So when you take these chords, because these chords are very simple, but they got a good sound to them.And this pattern is something that once you get it under your fingers, you'll feel very comfortable about your independence and coordination while walking a left hand bass and playing things in your right hand.So here's what we're going to do, okay?We're going to add the chords to the right hand.Okay, Ready?
Foreign.
Now if you want to play this down here instead, you can, can.There's another way to play it.Set it.We'll voice it lower.Now, I know this seems so easy, but when you go to do it, you'll see, whoa.
It's awkward at first, but once you get it under your fingertips, it feels great.And there's nothing like it, right?Okay.So you have to keep doing this over and over again, you know, and once, you know, you get those repetitions in, then you can start adding notes and doing other things.And we'll get to that.We're going to talk about that in a minute, but right now we're going to stay with that.Okay?So there's that.So there's different tempos.We're playing it slow now, but think about if you're playing it fast, right?And you got a good popping drummer and not fast, but a little faster than that.And the guitar player's locking that chord in with you.And you're saying, and you got a horn player in the front, Right?And even though you're going to play this over and over again, it won't matter.
It's going to be grooving so hard.
You know, One of my biggest mottos is simple but effective.It doesn't have to be crazy difficult to feel good.Think about all the music that you love.Some of the most wonderful music that hits you right in the heart is not a lot of crazy things going on on.It's just the way it feels, the way it makes you feel.
That's the most important part.You know, it's not always about playing fast.I mean, it's nice to have technique and be able to pull off anything you want to do on an instrument.It really is.But if I had to make a Choice.
Somebody said you could play very fast and very technical without a lot of feeling though, but you'll be able to play anything.Or you could play the blues really soulfully and make people feel great.Which one do you want?Well, it's simple for me.I want to play the blues and make people feel good.
Fortunately, you know, I've been able to do both things because when you play fast you need that element of the speed in there of the soulfulness.I'm saying you need all that together.You know, John Coltrane played a lot of fast things, but his spirit, he meant it.It's not just doing it to do it.Okay, I know I'm jumping off track a little bit, but there's a reason for that.
It all makes sense in the end.So let's run that one more time.Okay, so we're going to play our sevens down here now.
And any fingering that you want to use for, for this is.Okay, see, I even just changed it up now.
Okay, so there's your little chord patterns.Okay, now that's the one.That's the Charleston.Right?Now I'm going to give you another one to play.
That'll help you get your coordination together.We're still going to stay with these same little two note seventh chord chords with the same bass line going on that pattern in, in the left hand.So this time we're going to go like.
Now that's obviously just to get your coordination together.You don't want to play that behind a soloist.They might really get angry with you if you play that for too much.I mean that's.Then you start mixing them up.
Take both of those things so you got right then you can do.
Right?So and what we're playing those.The first one is on the 1 1.The second one is the anticipated 3.So that's the and of 2.
1, 2, 1 and 2.And so it's 1, 2 and so 1 and 1, 2 and 3.So that's what's happening with there.We call that the anticipated three because it's just before three.So you got those two things to work out, right?
Then you get to the point where you could play any.Once you get those and you're comfortable and it's free flowing, you could take those and you could start doing other rhythmic things.You're going to want to explore because when you're comping behind somebody, you're supposed to be aware of what they're doing rhythmically and also harmonically, which we're going to get into Later.Right now we're dealing with left hand, but like I said, I'm going to jump around, but it'll all make sense.So it's important to know what they're doing because you don't want to step in anybody's way.Right now we're talking about getting you ready, comfortable to go play, sit in, jam, whatever it is, any level you're at.If you're a giga musician that's wanting to get into learning how to play left hand bass, play the organ.If you're somebody who gets together and jams with your friends.
If you want to play at home to Jamie, abrasal, play alongs, whatever you want to do.This is the first steps to get your coordination happening.If you want to play organ and it doesn't matter again, if it's a Hammond or you have a single keyboard, a synthesizer with an organ sound split, left hand bass, whatever it is, this is how to get things rolling.
He introduces right-hand coordination, ghost notes, and walking fifth patterns. These exercises are meant to make the left hand automatic so the right hand can improvise freely.
Speaker A
Okay, now I'm going to give you a little something to play in your right hand.Either you can play it on an upper manual or with the upper manual sound.For example, if you have a single key keyboard that you're splitting and you want to use the bass here and the solo sound here.Right.
Another thing to remember, too, this is a little thing that has to do with the sounds and effects that we talked about earlier.It's nice when you're walking a bass line to have your vibrato chorus on the lower manual because it thickens the sound.As I'll show you, if I hold a note now I'm going to turn the vibrato on.You'll see how it.It jumps up in sound and fullness that's quite noticeable right off.
Fattens it up.And you want your bass fat, right?Yeah.And you hear that little pop in there that you think is something wrong with the organ.If you don't.
I'm pretty sure everybody here is familiar with.It's supposed to be that low key click in there.That's part of the attack now.So to review, we have this.
Then we have.Oh, no, we have.
We're not going to go through the torture of playing that.That's for you to practice.Okay, now I want to give you a little pattern to play in the right hand to go with that.Now we're talking about.We're going to get into like some soloing and melody work.Okay?So we're going to play the bass line.We're going to play this in the right hand.But we're going to play it in different keys.Okay?
Now you see, I'm skipping over this like this.
Now you can go like this at first, but that little skip gives you that little funkiness.Alright, so we're going to go from F and then we get to B flat.
Okay?And then we'll do a little comp in there too.So here's how it sounds to together, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3.
We changed it to make sense with the change.
So do that over and over again.It gets your coordination together again.That's what we're talking about, getting that coordination solid.That's when you know, because if I'm playing and.
You get to the point where you can do whatever you want, whatever you want, and that bass line stays solid and grooving and hooked up with the other band members, or even if you're playing by yourself, you want to make sure you have good time.Your tempo, you want your tempo to stay, you know, steady as possible.But don't play.You know, I don't recommend playing with a metronome because you're not supposed to be that, you know, humans.Your time is supposed to be really good together playing with other musicians.
But you know, a metronome is like, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck.You don't want.You want to have a little looseness.You want to be in between, in the middle of the note, a little bit on each side.It might change, change, and then that makes it looser and more comfortable.
But the idea is to be able to play whatever you want, whenever you want.Okay?So that starts from doing this and doing it over and over until you're comfortable about it.Okay.Once you're doing that for a while, you might want what we call ghost notes.You want to throw some ghost notes in there.That's something we do with our thumb.It gives you that.You know, when a bass player is walking and he says.
That that I'm doing, that's a ghost note.So he's like, how am I going to do that?Well, that's with your thumb.You could do that with your thumb.It's a nice way.
Sometimes you use your third finger for it too.But here's a Start using it with your th.
See, I'm just kind of comfortably skipping in there with it.
Got a little fancier there.Right?But that's the idea.And then, okay, there's that one.And then we talked about the Charleston, right Now we're going to do a 1, 4, 5, blue blues that we talked about before.
So we're going to play the I chord, four chord and the V chord.We're going to stay in F because it's great for organ.And we're going to play this bass line.
You know, we all know about Jimmy o'.Griff.This was a song he did called Kiko.But Count Basie Band was the first band to have this kind of bass line.
There's your five, your four.Now we're going to do that Charleston.Now we're going to do something a little different now.Now we were playing two note chords before.We're going to add.
We're going to play thirteenths.Now which is the sixth, that's the D if you're an F. So an F 13th like this.You know, some people put a G in there too, right?And then there's the organ, left hand, the organ F13 where you put the note on the top.
It's a fat funky sound.For now we're just going to play E flat, A and D, right?Now when you go to B flat, it's A flat D and G. And when we get to the V chord, C, it's going to be B flat, E, A, and that'll be your three chords.We're going to go back to that Charleston beat that we talked about before.But we're going to play this in the left hand.
It's another pattern for you.
And if you're playing a two manual instrument, it's nice if you play the right hand up top with this kind of thing.
Now we're going to play that lick we showed you before with this bass line skip.
Now we'll go to the five.
Now we're going to go back to.
So you mix all three of these in.Be ready to go sit in.
There's a little bit ghost notes in there.
Okay.Change the baseline up a little bit, you know, because we have to talk about the patterns.That's what I'm trying to show you.Because this is so you can work everything up, you know.So using the blues, using these three things and then there's all kinds of combination.Once you get into that, you'll start mixing all these patterns together.So you have this one, you have this one, right?And now there's another one.This is an important one.When you walk in your fifth in your octave.
So if we're in F, our fifth is C. And then there's the octave up top the other F. So that's when we're going.
You add your half step.That brings you back to F. On the bottom, which is a G flat in that part.It's a B when you get up to here.And a D flat when you get to your five chord.So we're going to do this.
This is just another pattern to practice.
And these are all nice because they're all in a comfortable spot, you know.And once you do this for a while and you start doing this and it gets comfortable, you have all that.You'll get to the point where you don't even think about your left hand.It's just.It's got its own thing.
It does everything on its own.
He explains how to use the pedals as accents and how to combine them with left-hand bass. The section focuses on thuds, heel-to-toe motion, and keeping the groove steady.
Speaker A
It kind of takes over.And you can concentrate on what you're doing with your right hand.It just kind of does its thing.Now we're getting to the point now where we're going to add the pedals in.But we're still talking about left hand now, when you start walking, other chords and other changes.Now we're talking about the blues now.Now we're going to talk about a standard.A good one to use is Bye Bye Blackbird.Because it's got similar chord.Doesn't hold a whole lot of chord changes.And when you're dealing with getting this together, you don't want to have something that's too complicated.You want something that's a little bit more comfortable to play.So that, you know, you feel better about it.And, you know, I don't have to jump all around.You'll get there.These are the things that are going to get you there with practice time and patience.
Okay, so, you know, Bye Bye Blackbird.
Okay, so this is a good tune.And what we want to do on that is walk these fifths that I was just talking about.So the melody is.
See, it's the same pattern.
You just keep.I know it sounds by itself.It sounds a little monotonous.Right now you have those other things that we talked about to add in there.So here's your turnaround, right?
And that brings you into the bridge.So you go down chromatically.
There's that turnaround again, right?Now, as long as that's grooving and you play that, you'll be able to play that anywhere with somebody.You add the melody in while that's going on with the right hand.That helps get the coordination going.So this is a nice, simple melody.
Nice to play that pattern with.
And sometimes you don't have to put the fifth in there if you don't want.Just go like this.The fifth is in there.But some chords, you might just go.
And you add your little ghost notes and skips in with your.With your thumb, right?
And when you want to do your figure, the gangs that we call them, right?You could do those.Just run the chord.
Just to start.Then you'll get to the point where you can do all kinds of little cute, you know, but we'll get there.So now that we have those patterns, we're going to show you the technique now when you want to add the foot into the playing.Okay?Now, this is a technique that was originally invented by Wild Bill Davis.
There may have been somebody else, but this is who we know about.Wild Bill started the whole thing with taking an organ and a guitar player, or an organ and a horn player and a drummer.Always a drummer, even just drummers, sometimes just organization and drums, because really you have a whole band with that, right?So what he did was he played bass, his left hand, the way we're showing you.And he used the pedals as an accent, we like to call it.It's like a point on a note.If you're playing a bass, an upright or an electric, a guy is pulling the strings.People play with their fingers, right?So you pull a string, it gives you a percussive point to the note.It's an attack.
Now, when you're walking with a left hand on the organ, it feels great because we have instant attack, but it's not quite the same as pun.You know, like when a bass player is playing funk and it's like.
Or if you have somebody like Ray Brown hear me going, bing.If I just go, that sounds more like organ, left hand.But if I go, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping.That sounds like a guy pulling a string.That's where the foot comes in.
And what we do with the foot is interesting because we're going to add the foot in, but we're going to only play one pedal.That's the first way to start.And we call that the thud or the thump.Jack McDuff had a great way of putting it.He would go, here's the first, the second, and the thud.
So, but that's what.It's kind of like a thud, thud or a thump.It's that note.Or like when a drummer is playing, you know, he feathers the bass drum.He's not playing it hard.It's just something to add this little big groove to the sound.It makes a big round sound.So what happens is you're usually positioned comfortably in the middle of the bench.Your right foot should always be on your expression pedal.Let's make that clear right now.
And on your expression pedal, you don't want to mess around and keep time with it.There's some styles where you want to do that, but for most part, if we're playing straight ahead, walking bass line and things like that, you want to keep that pedal steady because if you rock it or keep time with it, your bass is going to start sounding like this.
And we do not want that.Okay, now, so we're going to go back to the first pattern.This one.
Okay.We're going to take a spot.Let's see.We're going to say we're going to play the A pedal.Okay.
And what you're literally going to do with it.Now I have to draw bar.Different organs sound different.On this particular organ.I have the drawbar pulled all the way out.
16 foot drawbar, the first one.I'm literally just going to keep time with this on all four beats like this.And if you take a look at these pedals, you know, I've been playing these particular pedals since I was 4 years old.I love these.They're all worn in.
They got grooves all in them.They know my feet.So anyway, so we're going to pick a.Okay, now are we on my feet?Cool.
I'm going to walk that pattern that you already know.And I'm going to show you how you tap or thud with your left foot.
You see what a big round groove that adds to the sound.
It's like somebody just playing a bass drum or something along with your left hand.Because that's what it is.It's one note.But you have to have it short.You have to play it short.If you play it too long, that's how it's going to sound.
We don't want that.And if it's too much for you, push the pedal a little bit.The drawbars.See, now it's a little softer.That's actually sweet.
Same pattern.With the left hand, you can move your foot around in that general area too.You don't even have to stay on one night.One note.See, I'm moving it around.You're getting the same effect.It's this register that gives you that.And you know, if you watch, there's some great stuff now on YouTube.I don't know if anybody's getting paid for it, but I hope they are.But there's a lot of great videos.Jimmy Smith and things, you know, and people watch it and they say, wow, Jimmy wasn't doing anything with his feet.He was playing One note, two notes.We'll get to that in a minute.It's about the sound and the groove.It's not about playing every pedal.Right now you can do that, and I'm going to get to that in a second.But right now I want to get you to the point, if you want to know about what I'm doing, this is what I do.
So I want to get you to the point where you can just do this and be comfortable with it.And then that other groove, right here it is without it, okay?It's grooving.It's nice.There's nothing wrong with that.But this just adds a whole other dimension in when the foot comes in, right?You got to hear that.It just starts rocking the walls in the house and everything.
You're at home.Turn that down.
He develops the pedal technique further, showing how the foot can match or complement the left hand. He closes by demonstrating how these ideas support a complete bass approach and then takes another break.
Speaker A
Now, the reason I say, okay, let's pick an A pedal, because what you can do once you get comfortable with that tapping is you can hold the pedal down and match what you're doing with your left hand.So since we're in A.So when we play an A with our left hand, we could accent a little bit.So we're playing like this right now.We want to lay on it.
Now we're coming back to a lay on it again.
Cool stuff, right?You better believe it.So like I said, as long as you're in this general area, you can move your foot because, you know, sometimes it feels comfortable to swing your foot around a little bit.You know, like, Okay, I'm being silly now, but, yeah, this general area is very comfortable.Then what you want to start doing, after you've been doing that for a while, you want to start matching the notes with your left hand.
Okay?So that means you're going to thud each note in unison, that same short thing that we're doing in unison with your left hand.And every once in a while, as an accent, hold the pedal like we were doing a second ago.So now we're going to play that same thing, but we're going to play everything in our foot that we're playing on our left hand with that same tapping technique.Because we like to tap.It's got a.A very special sound.Here we go.
See, now?Now we're laying on them a little bit, a little bit thicker.Back to short.
Okay.I did a little fancy stuff there, but see, I'm playing every pedal that's got a special sound to it, too.Now, when you're doing that, you know, as we know, if you don't hit the right note that's okay.But if you want to do one of those accents where you double.You really don't want to hit a wrong note.
So be pretty aware of where your foot is if you want to do that.But if you're just doing it to keep, you know, for the thud.Of course, like I said, you can stay in one spot, spot.But all these things, after you do them for a while, they just become second nature.And that comes into the thing that we were talking about earlier.
If you want to take your, you know, you need your left hand to do something else and your foot takes over, right?So then you take that pattern and you practice it with your, with your foot.The same notes, but we're going to, instead of tapping, we're going to go heel to toe, okay?So we're going to go.
This is all coming from the foot now.
So this is different than tapping.This is actually playing heel to toe.
You know, I made a couple little boo boos there, but that happens because the pedals, you know, you have to have a nice thin shoe when you're doing this too.So that's.So if you're playing, you have everything going now.We're tapping all the notes now, right?But man, I got to make an adjustment with my left hand.
Okay, foot took over.I want to change the draw bars.Okay, we're back to tapping.We're back to one note.But now I want to do a little accent.
And that's what happens there.Now you could do some really cool things too with different styles, right?With the pedals, if you get into some funky kind of things.Ah, that's when it, you know, you can do some very effective things.So we're going to take, say a little bit funky blues and G, right?
This is all left hand right now.
So here's a nice simple technique to play.Excuse me.Foot with your left.Left hand Foot with your left hand.Left hand funk.
You mix these notes up wherever you, you know.Or you could do something as simple as, you know, But when you add that foot in, we're talking about the foot now it's like.
Again, you keep keeping time with your foot, right?1, 2, 3, 4.Even if it's just those short jabs and it's not the same note that you, you're playing with your left hand.
And then you start playing the rhythm.If you're going, you play all that rhythm with your foot, You'll get there.Some of you probably already are there, but that's the kind of things you could do.It just has a good.Just even if you're playing one note, you know, Then you add your right hand.
We'll put our vibrato on the lower because it thickens everything up.
Little reverb blues and G foot by itself.
So you might start a line sometimes with your.With your left hand and finish it with your foot.You know, like that kind of thing.So there's all kinds of ways you can approach that.And, you know, the cool thing about it is if you take those patterns, you work out your left hand with your right hand, and you do all those things that, you know, we're talking about, you'll get to the point where it's so comfortable, you know, and you could add to it.You keep adding and adding and adding, adding, you know.So those.Those three patterns I showed you and your fifths, walking fifths will get you to the point where you can play crazy things with your left hand.I'm going to play you a little something now that shows after a lot of repetitions and doing those things, you'll get to the point where you could do some of these things that I'm going to do for you right now, and I'm going to play a tune for you.
This is called Better Than Yesterday.This is.This is a song I wrote.This also goes through three different time signatures, but a.
But I want you to particularly pay attention to the foot and the left hand.This is about the bass lands.Of course, I'm doing things.I'm playing with my right hand, and it's going to make you want to watch that too.But, you know, the idea is to show you that after doing these things that I was talking about and you're doing for a while, you'll be able to approach things this way, and it'll be comfortable and you'll have good independence.
Starts out in three.
It.
Sa.
Foot takes over when you got to do other things.
Saving walking in seven, Four.
So there's a little example of the things you do.You practice them, and you'll be able to get into some of that territory.One more thing I want to talk about was ballad playing with the foot.So that's when you could play chords with your left hand because it's slow enough to really relax and play a melody with your right hand.Okay, so if we take, for example, something like body and soul.Okay, we're going to play chords here, melody here.
All the bass is coming from the foot.Now.
That leaves your.Frees up your left hand to do whatever you need.It to do.
Okay, so a good way to start that is, again, play a ballad blues.You know, a 1, 4, 5 ballad blues.Or if you want the 3, 6, 2, 5, whatever you want in there.But here's how we would do that.So you play the 13th chords with your left hand that we talked about.
And basically you play, you know, the root notes in the fifth or whatever you're comfortable with.But the idea is to be able to free that left hand up to do other things.So the foot is important for the sound and the fullness of the bass walking or funky kind of thing things.And it also frees your left hand up to control other things that are happening on the instrument, because that's part of playing the organ.So you take all those things and work on them, and that's when you could come up to really mastering that baseline, you know, and those people that figure, well, I don't really want to move pedals or if they're gigging.And I know it could be difficult if you're doing certain kind of things.You're running around on subways and trains and you have a little keyboard or you have a small car and you don't have a set of pedals.
All these principles still apply to the left hand.And that's when those ghost notes with your thumb and skips become more important, too.Because if you're walking now without a pattern, just walking A blues and F with the left hand.
See, I'm doing all kinds of things with that thumb.
Now.If I'm playing fast, too.If I play faster, you know, that thumb is always.
You don't hear it as much when you're hearing it by yourself and you're hearing it more what I'm doing.But if I'm playing along with it.
Now, that's just left hand with those little skips in there.If you're not playing pedals, you add the pedals in again one more time.
That's how it sounds.Or if you just want to come.
Now, of course, we're going to go back and forth and touch on these areas again.But pretty much that's your.The idea of bass, left hand, bass paddle technique, mixing it in, what to do to work on your independence, your coordination, you know, ghost notes, things like that.We covered all that.And that'll get you really going.
And that if you take these things and really work on them, you know, it takes time.But if you do it, you're straight.We're going to take five.We'll be back shortly.
He shifts to the importance of listening, imitation, and absorbing musical language from many sources. He explains how vocabulary, taste, and ear training shape a musician’s voice.
Speaker A
Everybody Doing good, I hope.A lot of information going on.We're just touching the tip.We've got a lot to do and continue here.We're going to talk about harmony now and.
And, you know, inversions of chords and voice leading, things like that, which will lead us into what we'll get into tomorrow, you know, soloing, improvising over more chords and things like that.So, you know, harmony is extremely important, obviously, because that's how you have a relationship with the instrument.And that also comping when somebody else is playing.You know, having your ears wide open and really understanding things.And after you play for a while and you.And you listen a lot, you know, listening is so important.I mean, first of all, it means a couple things.Listening to everything you could get your hands on to learn.And then once you learn that and you're learning all these things on your own, then you have to get to the point when you're playing with other players to listen and be able to hear everything that's going on simultaneously.
And that's how you get incredible situations going on with a group of musicians after you play for a while and you get to know each other and rhythmically, you know, there's certain things that a drummer will play.
There's vocabularies, you know, there's.We all had to learn how to speak.And to learn how to speak, you mimics things that you hear as a baby, the way your parents talk, whatever language it is, you know, you're learning different.A baby is wide open, so they can learn two or three languages at one time, and they can hear them all and understand what's going on.So it's a similar thing.So when you're learning how to play an instrument, you listen to the things that you really love, right?And you try to emulate them.Them.And that's the only way you can learn something is by trying to play what you heard.Some people like to transcribe.
You know, I always transcribed in my head or my ear.I could hear things and play them what I thought I heard.And when you play what you thought you heard, you're not going to play every exact note, which is good, because then that's how you start to develop your own sound, you know?But no matter what you do, you're going to develop your own sound.There's so much music out there, and nowadays we really, you know, we have no excuse.There's so much to listen to.There's a huge catalog, right?There's videos, there's so much you think about guys like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane or, you know, Jimmy Smith, who we're all crazy about, that plays this instrument they didn't have.They had to, like, listen to what was on at the time for them and comment what they did.And there's more and more things that get added in in each generation.
And when you love music.I've been playing for 42.42 years, 43 years.And, you know, I keep hearing new things all the time, and I stay listening.And just to say, you never stop listening.
This is how you evolve, too.You know, you change bands, you play with different people.You hear they all have different ideas and they have all music.Listening to music sometimes that you haven't heard, and you'll hear something.Whoa, what's that?
All kinds of music.It doesn't matter styles.We're talking about jazz, and we like to give things labels.But really, it's all music.It all makes sense.You can do any of these things, things that we're showing you here today, you could apply really to any style of music.And that's the beauty of music and listening and everything you do can be an influence on your playing.And all of these things are about harmony.Even as we're talking right.We're talking right now, that has a tone to it.
That's how I said, that has a tone to it.You know, John Coltrane, you know, Alabama, if you're familiar with that, the melody comes from Martin Luther King's speech, all the notes.And when you find that out and you hear like, wow.And a lot of things are like that.You could play the phone number from your cell phone, and it's a melody, you know, so there's so many things that are out there, and it's so important to listen to them as much as you can.
And it just grows a huge vocabulary that you can tap anytime you want to.Once you get it all in there, it's in that hard drive in your mind.You can borrow any of those things and use them anytime you want.And you might hire a musician in the band that's playing and he might be playing something.Whoa, I heard that played.
You don't know exactly where, but maybe it was something that Wes Montgomery played played.And when Wes played it, Wynton Kelly was on the piano, and Wynton Kelly played this chord behind him, you know, and the drummer played this rhythmic thing behind that.So all these musicians that know all these things, they have the knowledge of so much, hear these things, and they know what to play together because they can hear all these things at the same time.It's a wonderful thing.It's, you know, I love to talk about it.
And when you're talking about harmony, there's no right or wrong either.It's what's pleasant to the ear.It's something that you think and something somebody else might play might not be pleasant to your ear, but it's pleasant to their ear.So that's not correct.It's just not something that you're hearing yet.
And there's a lot of things that you hear that you don't like when you first hear them.And then the next thing you know, you hear them and you love them.So all those things are involved.
He returns to the blues in C to discuss pentatonics, whole tone scales, stacked fourths, and diminished ideas. The section emphasizes how these tools help with voice leading and improvisation.
Speaker A
So we're going to go back to the blues again to talk about harmony because like I said, this is the place.Perfect place to discuss musical possibilities from.Because they're endless in the blues.Okay, so we're going to, let's, for fun, let's switch the blues and C now.Okay, let's see.So we talked about the bass line patterns, we talked about, about licks and you know, the sounds and little things you could play.So when you're playing a blues, you know, of course I'm sure most of you know a blues scale is.Now we're in C. Okay.Well, within those, you know, these notes we got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 notes.Right.There's so many things you could do with that because that's straight down you go up with it.
But you can mix it up.You can, You know, and you.That makes it just by the way you set it up.And mixing the notes up are different harmonic possibilities.And then it depends on what kind of chord is with it.So if you're playing, you know, 13th chord with that.Right, Right.
I could play a whole solo just with that.You know what I mean?So.
Play some slow blues, go down an octave, go up with it.
And then mix the notes up, You know.And that's a big thing with organ too, right?You add those little two note things, play all that stuff and keep the top note in or keep the bottom note in.Now if you mix that up, if you say.
Mixing that up makes it sound a little bit more abstract, you know.And if you put a sharp nine chord in there with it, which means you take the ninth note, sharp it up once.
So that's your blues scale or your pentatonic.If you take the first, adding that flat five in there, if we're in the key of C Which is a G flat, makes it the blues scale.Straight pentatonic scale is.
And this became a very important harmonic tool in the 60s, you know, when Coltrane came on the scene.McCoy Tyner loved using the pentatonix.And it became something that works so well with stacked four chords.And when we say stacked four, it means you start with the root note of whatever the chord is and build a fourth above that and then a fourth above that.So if we were going to play a stack 4 from C, it would be C, F and B flat.
We're stacking fours.We could stack one more and put an E flat on top.You could reach it, right?So you take that.That pentatonic scale, right?
And build fourths from that, right?So just play right up the scales with it, Right?Then what happens with that is you have a pattern that you could run from.
I'm playing it fast, right?I'll slow it down a little bit for you.So this is a stack four over a pentatonic scale.So the pentatonic scale is this.And then we're going to build fourths from each note of that, Okay?
So that's something that you're playing that you could add in anywhere.And you mix the pattern up.
And then that's your.See, when you get into harmony and soloing with it, there's a few things that if you know them and mix them all up, you could do a lot of things with it.So there's our pentatonic.And then you add the flat fifth and you have your blues.
Now we're going to talk about a whole tone scale.Whole tone scale means if we're in C, we're starting on the note C. Play all the whole tones up whole steps, right?So that would be.
That's your C whole tone tone, or that's you're building a whole tone from C. Doesn't matter what key you're in.There's only three of them with the notes, because there's C. If you build it from D, you play them all at that point.So there's this, okay?Now when you do that, now you run that Felonious Monk, A lot of his things were based out of that.You'll hear him play runs all the time.
They're just straight whole tones, right?So you have.
Now, within that whole tone, there's all kinds of things you could do with it.So that's the straight whole tone, right?And then you could play the thirds, which are like augmented chords, and you run those up.You start here you play the third and then the third from the third of that note.So if you have a C, your third is E and the third of E is G sharp, right?Or A flat.Then we'll go to D, same thing.You move it up in whole steps.Then you can run this pattern.
And then you can run it the other way.
And then you could practice.You know, the idea is you want to get it up to speed, You know what I mean?So now you have another thing that you could work with.So you have blues scale, you have the pentatonic, then you have your whole tone and then your whole tones.
And don't forget about those fourths.
Now those fourths, we were talking about building them on each note of the pentatonic scale.Now you can build fourths on each starting note of the whole tone scale.So we said the whole tone scale was this.It's all whole tones.Just means each note go up or down in whole tones, whole steps.
Now play fourth, stack fourths off each one of those.It would you take your first note and go up to fourths each time.So you have.But we're going to start, we're going to go as a whole tone scale.
And if you run those in the third, in the thirds, I mean like as a third, three note thing in the fourths, that's what they sound like.
And then you can do that in different ways.You can go, see.
So now you have five different things that you can, you know, harmonically use to use also to lead you voice leading, which means to lead into the next chord change or, or into the melody or you know, if you playing over changes, you have to be able to lead into each thing and it allows the chords to flow in such a way.Also the other musicians that are listening, they say, okay, he's playing that.So I think he's going to go to this chord.Sometimes you're not, but in most cases they can hear it.So it's very logical to use these type of things.
So if you.And now we're going to talk about diminished.This is a big one.Okay, so the diminished is, you know, basically minor thirds, right?So if we start from C, you go up to E flat's A minor third.
From E flat, the next minor third would be this, right?F sharp, then A and C. So then you just.
And then you could play, you know, You could also run the scale, a diminished scale.
And then there's.Of course.
The idea is to learn all these things in 12 keys, move them up a half step and then, You know, that's just an example to keep it going.
He continues with diminished language, chromatic movement, and tritone ideas in minor blues. The focus is on using harmony to lead smoothly through chord changes.
Speaker A
And once you practice all these, you get them memorized, and they're at your fingertips at total instant recall at any time.You mix those things all up.That's what improvising is.It's mixing all these things up.
And also, you have your chromatics, right?
So that when you're running through different things, you know, you have D minor, you know, or.And then you go from D minor to G seventh and you go from E minor to a seventh.That's just, for example, you have to have these different ideas to play within those chord changes.And all of those things can be made within these different scales and patterns.And also, just with chords alone, somebody might play something, you know, you're playing in C minor.
A straight C minor chord is this, right?That's a triad.But, you know, we'll play a C minor seventh like this.
And a guy might play.So you might.Then you jump.You add the nine in.He played that.So you have to be aware of that at all times.So that when you hear it, oh, he played a nine.I mean, you might not catch it all the time, but when he does it again, you got to be ready, you know?So if we take a C minor Blues.Now we're going to take a C minor Blues.
And we're going to use all these scales and patterns and things that I just showed you.So we'll start off playing, you know, with a pentatonic.
And here's some chords you could play for a C minor Blues.
F minor 9.And sometimes what's hip is you throw a B flat in there with it, too.That's the cool thing.You could do all kinds of stuff, stuff with a chord.If you have a straight C minor 9, for example, right?
You could add the F in there with it.You could play it with like this.When you put the top note in, you know, call that an 11th.
And then you could use those.You can run the chords, too.But the idea is to know all these different harmonies.And you run all the chords and all 12 keys.C minor 9, C sharp minor 9, or D flat minor 9.
And you just go up chromatically.
And these things are also good to do when you're practicing your bass lines and you want to walk the fifths and those different rhythms.You know, The other thing you could do to practice walking, to work on your harmony with your bass lines is just run the whole chord and just go up like we're doing right now.C minor blues and actually play.Run that chord in your left hand like that.We'll go up in half steps, play this rhythmic pattern.
You know, these things can be monotonous, but after you do them for a while, you figure out different ways to approach harmony with your bass line and your right hand with incorporating all those other things that I was talking about with the, the.With those, you know, your pentatonic, I mean you've heard people play it a million times, of course, the bluesy things which.But you could add to that.
So many things you could do with that, right?And then if you take, you know, the whole tones, You diminished.
And then from that scale you have the chords that move up with it.
So if somebody's playing that line, for example, you know, they're soloing, you know, in the minor blues, You know, something like that, you can make the run up with them.That's the idea to do that.And you know, when you start exploring more outside harmonic things, you know, I'm a self taught musician, right.So I had to learn a lot of these things by listening, like I'm saying.And even if you learn how to read and all that, and I'm not saying that's not good, it's good to know that I learned.I really started getting better at that probably the last couple of years because everything was ear for me, but it still is.And I had to learn what a lot of these things were called by, you know, my elders and my musicians that would pull my coat because they would talk about, you know, pentatonics and whole tones and diminish even though I was playing all those because I heard them, I knew them, I was in my vocabulary.
I didn't know what a lot of that stuff was called for years.And guys like George Coleman and Miles Davis would say, you know, that's a whole tone.I remember the first time Miles said something about a whole tone.And I said, you know, what exactly is a whole tone?And he was looking for something to throw at me.Then he said, you don't know you're playing all that stuff.I said, well, Miles, I taught myself, you know, I'm pretty much self taught, you know, about all these kind of things.So then it was explained to me, oh, is that what.
And then, oh, Thelonious Monk, you know, that was.
He would add all that into his playing.And each player has a certain basis of things that they come out of, right?And then there's players that have all of these things in there and we're lucky Enough now to have all these things.Like I was saying before, we can really get a lot out of what's available for us to check out.And, you know, so that's, you know, the basis of all this.
So sometimes I might not know exactly the technical term of something even to this day, but, you know, I'll ask somebody if I don't, you know.So what is that?Yeah, okay.Because what's most important when we're playing this music is creativity and listening.It's good to know what you're talking about technically, but they're very basic things that you build from, you know.
So when you get into tritones, you know, like this, That's when you play.
So we're going to.You go from the C to the G flat.And if you're in G flat, you go to the C. So it's going to your flat fifth, right.Of each thing and running a triad on it.
And these work because they lead you.It leads you into the next chord.You know, if you're playing a blues and C, like we are right now, we've been going for major to minor.And you want to get to the.To the F, You say it brought us to F. It led us to F. Or you could use the diminish to lead you to F. Right.Or you can use the whole tone.
You know, there's all kinds.It's limitless.And the idea is to have these things under your fingertips to be able to do it and recall it.Have total instant recall with it at any time, regardless of, you know, your idea of what you want to do.Even knowing these things, you know, and when you're listening to music and knowing when somebody's playing and recognizing it when you hear it.Oh, that's.You know, I could hear that.The guy's got it diminished.Then it gets easier to start to pick these things apart and dissect them.And, you know, that's the idea.
He demonstrates how to combine scales, chords, and voice leading in a more advanced minor-blues setting. He then performs a full example to show how the ideas sound in practice.
Speaker A
So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to play you a blues.We're going to play A minor blues in C. And we're going to use all these things that I showed you inside those.Now, don't worry about the bass lines and things like that because you still have to work out all those other patterns that we talked about earlier before.You could do a lot of that.But right now we're talking about harmony and voice leading and how to use these different ideas and chords, too.
Because there's a chord that goes with each one of those.You know, so if you're playing the blues, we're going to make up a little melody using all of these ideas in there.
Stack, fourth diminished, Your blue scale, Whole tones.
Diminish.
And, you know, just with the diminished alone, you could run that.Okay, So a good place to start with the diminish is to start it from the note of C. Got that?
Run it up two octaves.
And I'm sure my fingering's all over the place.
And then the chords that go with it, right?So if it's in C, we're actually playing it starting in D flat.
Now you move down to B.
The idea is to take all these things and learn them in 12 keys.You know, that's really the whole idea of that, is to be able to do that.And it takes a lot of work.You have to do the time, you know, an hour or so a day to sit down and work on all these things, you know.And if you want to play the organ and you want to play it in this fashion, you know, you have to work it out.
Bass line.That's why blues is a great place to start.Because once you get that going, you know, everything else will come together.And when you mix all these scales and things in, you know, you start making your own scales and combinations of notes.And that's the whole idea of that is.
Is to be able to do that, you know, and chords.And that's why it's nice to take a chord like we did before C minor.And just run it right up slow, you know, right up the keyboard and half steps, You know.And you could play a ballot with that, using that harmony while practicing your foot technique and your left hand playing chords, right?You can do all that together.
So you can just run.Play the chord with your left hand, right?We're just moving up in chromatic patterns.So now you're practicing three things at once.You're practicing harmony.
Your foot chords in your left hand.And a leading with your right hand.And what I would suggest is to just play.Run the chord slowly with your right hand.So that just means spell it out note by now.
So starting in C minor, Just keep going.Then you get to the point where you could play them a little bit.You could play them, go up two octaves in double time.
A little cleaner than that.Few things that I did there.But that's the idea.So there's your C minor.And then, you know, all the different ways you can play C minor.
And the other thing you have to remember with the organ most of the time you're playing bass lines with your left hand.If you're playing a medium tempo or whatever, you only have one hand to play the chords with.So that's where inversions are important.So that's certain things.You don't always need a lot of notes in the chord.Sometimes you want them, but a lot of times you don't.So C minor, right, another way.And you could add the 11 to the top, right?But if we have to go from C minor to F minor, right, we don't want to have to jump like that.So another way to play is like this, right?And now we're going to move just this hand.You just move these two fingers down to here.That's why inversions are important.So you don't have to have a lot of movement going on.
It keeps things in a smooth, a very slow, easy way to move.
So if you have to move in a fast way, you have some songs that have a lot of chords in them that go from, you know, two.You have two chords and say you're in four, four, and you got two chords in each measure and the tempo's a little fast, you know, you don't want to be going.
You want to be able to try to get everything in a pretty close proximity.So if we play like Sunny, for example, right?And we're going to play it in C minor, Right?We know that.So.
So if we want to play it as a walking thing.Thing, right?Here's the kind of inversions you want.So you want to stay in close proximity.So we can do everything by staying right here.I don't even have to move my hand.Watch this.
And that's a good way to start with that, because it keeps the groove smooth and you don't have to think about it a lot, you know, or going from, you know, F, C minor, you know, when you're doing four fourths, where you're going from two fives, like C minor to F7, you have to move one note.You move your thumb down once, you know, and that makes it easy because you don't want to go.
Or.I mean, and it sounds pleasant, you know, those are those kind of inversions.And that works with any chord, really.And there's different ways to voice things to make them sound a certain way.Because we like to play ballads a lot with the organ too, with a chord melody.So if you take something like Lara, you want to make sure that top note has the melody in it.Sometimes you switch it to the bottom too.But most likely on the top.So we're playing on the lower manual and you have your, your Leslie on tremolo and you play.So here's the melody note.
See, everything's close, but it sounds just move right there.
Very little movement.
Simple but effective, You know, for that little passage there, you know, that's, that's the whole thing right there.You know, keeping it simple, not moving around a lot.And that's how you want to do it.That's a beautiful harmony.A lot of things moving around in that song.
So I think I'm going to play that for you right now.The whole thing.We're going to get into some different sounds with the instrument too.I'm going to go into some full organ and some effects and you know, we're going to play the whole thing for you.So this will show you a lot of harmony with a little intro too.
He returns to squabbling, explaining the voicings, octaves, and rhythmic feel behind the style. He shows how the sound changes with percussion and how to keep the groove light and swinging.
Speaker A
Sa.
It.
Ram.
Sam.
Sa.
It, Sam.
Pentatonic with A D flat 6 in the left hand.We're going to move that down one step.
Beautiful song.Laura just wanted to play that for you because there's so many harmonic things going on and if you look at that and the way it moves and you add all these little things in, you'll be able to do that.Okay, we're going to talk a little bit about squabbling here and the voicings that are used with the chords for them.Now, there's a couple different ways to do that.Okay.
This is also a technique thing, the way you squabble.Because first of all, we talked about the setting for it.If you want percussion, if you don't, we're going to do it without percussion.For now, percussion's off.First draw bar, last four draw bars.
You want to use your chorus on C3 and you want your tremolo on fast.Always when you squabble, that's just kind of the thing.That's the sound, you know.So what I want and a little bit, if your organ has reverb, a little reverb, it's alright without it too.But if you have it, most of you guys have it nowadays.
What's important to know about squabbling is the bottom note and the top note.It's the octave, okay?So if we take something like Mac the knife and we put it in the key of E flat flat, the notes are right, okay?Those are the first few notes.So just start with octaves.
Put your tremolo on.Okay?
Already you got a pretty decent sound right there.And it sounds like you're squabbling.If we just add the fifth in there now and roll the chord, you're going to get the effect right.
Okay?That's a way to do it.There's different ways.You could also play the octave.Put your knuckles like this and play whatever is in between there and get the same effect.
He pretty much get that same thing because it's about the sound of the organ and that leslie going fast that gives you that effect.Now, I play all the notes with my fingers in it.If you do that, 99% of the time, the chords that are used when squabbling are six chords.But the first thing to remember are the octaves.
Okay?So if we're playing an E flat 7, 6 chord, the stock E flat 6 chord, but with the octave in it, you have.Then you turn that tremolo on.You get that.Little kids sometimes will say it sounds like Donald Duck talk, you know, squabble.
So now I'm going to show you playing this pretty much with all six chords.
Then, you know, the idea is to keep that octave in there and the fifth.So if you have a doubt about a voicing, add the fifth in and you'll be safe with that, too.
That's all right.Root and fifth right there.So you can get away with just doing that.But basically, like I said, what's in the middle?You just have to figure out what sounds good.
Because the middle is not as important as those octaves in that fifth.You're just kind of playing, You know, so.And when you solo with it, you got the same thing going on.
Another thing is when you're playing squabble, a lot of times you want to play a two feel in your baseline.That just means a one, a two, a one.Instead of walking like this.That's cool, too.But it gives you more of a feel like that.Because we all know squabbling comes from the way Earl Garner played the piano.And Jimmy Smith loved Earl Garner, and he wanted to play that way on the organization.And he came up with this marvelous setting that sounds great in that style.So, you know, when you're playing something, you know.So we'll take Mac the knife and solo over it now in a two feel.
Now, when you're playing a two feel, another thing is you almost play those.The pedals, you know, you kind of still tap them in four, even though your left hand's playing in two.Like, you know, this is kind of a little bit of a Jimmy McGriff techn technique.So.
The big part of the squabbling is how you roll the chord.You can roll it in, like.
See how I'm rolling it?You can play them all at once, too, but you want to roll it up.So if you go all the way up, So you're rolling the chord right, Look out.
You know, people love this.You know, it's fun.
Okay.It'll be a while before you could do that, but.
Then you roll it all the way down.
Oh, boy.So that's a whole other thing right there.When you play what you play at the top and then drag it down to the lower manual, you may keep.
But that's the beauty of grabbing an octave, man.It might look difficult, but these things really aren't.Once you see, like, what I'm showing you how it's done, it becomes less difficult to approach it.And the whole idea of all these things is the feeling, you know?So you want to start a little slower, you know, and play anything you want.
You can play a blues, a squabble blues, but still play two feel on your left hand, but four in your foot, You could do those kind of glisses down.And the thing about this is, like I said, it's feel.It's about feel and tone as a combination.Because you do the same thing on the piano.It's beautiful.
You know, Earl Garner would play in his left hand.You know, he'd play four in his left hand.You know, On a piano, though, right?The closest we get to a piano setting here is something like this, okay?So he would play four in his left hand, right?
And the bass player would play these little short notes.
That's really the birth of squabble.But on the organ, what you do is you set your organ the way I showed you.And what happens is that bass player was playing those short things.Boom, boom, boom.That's when the foot comes in again with a 2 feel.
That's also emulating what Earl Garner was doing with that.With the chords in the left hand and then the bass in two, you get that same kind of little vibe happening, you know, That's another thing about the organ act setting.You know, when I play something and I go.It's kind of like, you know, a little hit that maybe the band would play behind you, if you can imagine that.Like the Basie band playing.
It's that kind of thing.So we use that a lot.And it's really effective when you're squabbling.And it doesn't matter what you do it with.You just kind of hit the.
That's the thing about the organ, you know, it's a percussive instrument, too, because the attack is immediate.So it could be very percussive, just as an example.So that's what happens when you're squabbling.That accent is important.
Now we're going to put the percussion on.
Got a nice sound with that.Has that little percussive bite.
And it's also a kind of a cool thing to squabble with that vibraphone sound.That was something that Jimmy McGriff did that was really funky.And he played on the street where you live with it.And he used this sound and it's a whole other cool sound.And he would do a thing that's kind of like I was saying.He started that kind of that four in the foot thing.So if you play on the street where you live, with this sound as a squabble, this is the sound we were talking about that we use for the vibraphone sound.But it sounds funky when you play it as a squabble.You know it.
So that's what's happening with the squabble and with that sound.And you could come up with different combinations.But I found that, you know, the first sound and this sound is a good way to do it.Sometimes full organ is good for that, too.So a little recap.
We started off with sounds and effects.Get ourselves familiar with the draw bars and the different effects that are here on the organ available to us.How to use our.Leslie, you know, the switching.We'll talk more about that tomorrow, too.You know where to bring it in and out on certain things.And we can answer any questions that you like.And little Q and A if you want.You could use the chat feature on your computer.And then I'll play a little more for you and we'll close out for today.
He answers questions, revisits sound settings, and plays a few more examples. The day ends with a blues performance and a sign-off before the next session.
Speaker A
And we have a lot to cover tomorrow, too.We're going to get into more about soloing, building solos, and talk about playing different organs and a lot more.There's a lot more to cover, so I'm looking forward to that.But if you have anything right now you'd like to ask me, or if you just want me to play, play us.
Okay, I'll noodle around a little bit.Something comes in.
See, this is what's nice about.About having everything on the instrument that you could dial in the way you want, make the chorus the way you want, the percussion the way you want, you know, a little reverb.Got the bass all the way.I like that.How about a Little.
Somebody wanted to hear this tune, so I'm playing it for him.
See, this is the thing using the rhythm and the time.
Now we're going to work some pentatonic, some chromatic things in here for you.
There's that whole tone.
Moving down chromatically pentatonic stack 4, As you diminish augmented.
So you could use all those ideas in there, you know, pentatonix, chromatics, you know.And a cool thing you can, because the softer touch on the organ, you could play chromatic scales with two fingers.
So when you're playing the pentatonix and you mix your.Your chromatics in.
And a nice thing to do is you take flat nine chords.I mean, sharp nine chords, right?And you move those up.
Move them up in thirds.And that's a good way.
So, you know, Those are all minor thirds.You know, it just goes right up.
Sorry.
So, So many things you could do with that.It's like an endless, endless vocabulary with those kind of things.Oh, yeah.Okay.So when you.
When you're playing with percussion, you know, you want to make sure you dial in the way you want.Now, see, most.If you have a stock ham and you don't have a percussion volume, but in most cases they sound pretty good.But there's a way to mod those things.It's very easy.
But I basically like it about here, you know, so it doesn't get too clangy on the top.
A lot of people don't like solid state preamps.And I have several gig organs.Some of them have the rebuilt AO28s in them, which is the original tube preamp.This has the SSP3 Trek 2 solid state preamp.But if I didn't tell you, I don't think you would know.
And if you're wondering why your percussion doesn't sound like that, if you have a Trek preamp, it's because this one's been modified.But Michael Smokowitz that he'd be happy to modify.Anybody else's if they request this?
Oh, yeah, that's right.So somebody asked about other effects.I've been doing some things with some other effects, too.I don't have them hooked up now, but that's a very interesting thing with the organ that Trek 2 has been a great company because they make all these accessories for Hammond organs.And you can have effects loops now, which is cool for each manual.
And so, you know, my new record, I'm doing some things with a Wah Wah pedal.I'm doing a lot of that live I got a synth bass for the left hand where it gives you like a moog sound.You could drop it down in octaves.So many cool things you could do with that, you know.Okay, yeah.
So if you play with one foot draw bar, you know, it's nice to play certain songs with that.It's really nice for chords.
Sometimes it's too bright, you push it in a little bit.
Uh huh.Oh, absolutely.So you can definitely, you know, there's nothing wrong with playing all the bass in the foot.Now I don't have the feature on this organ which is called sustain.When you play a note and it drags, it slides off.
But I could heel to toe all day long.A lot of people mistake the fact that you're tapping that you can't play the baseline with your foot.No problem.You have to get into some heel to toe.And people that play with a sustain pedal, it's much easier because then you can tap and the note doesn't go away, it stays for you.Like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.These just.That's why if you have the stock pedals, you have to go heel to toe.And I would imagine that's why the left hand technique was designed to keep things smooth and more grooving.You know, it's more groovy that way because you get the two together and then it's fatter and groovier.
So I guess we got about five minutes left to today.I'm gonna play it out and we'll take off.Take after we left off tomorrow.Looking forward to it.It's a lot of fun.I hope everybody's having as much fun as I have because this is really cool.Alright, what should we play out with?Let's play out with something.Let's play out with something grooving.Let's play a little something grooving in three.
A little more blues for you.This is called Blues in three.
Here comes some cool stuff here.
Play the half step above there.
It.
Sa.
Whole tone.
Stack fours.
Sam.
It.
Sam.
All right, had a great time.We'll see you tomorrow.Same time, same place.Right here.Take care of yourself.
Get shedding.
He greets the audience for the second day and introduces the plan for more advanced material. He opens with a performance of 'Without a Song' to set the musical mood.
Speaker A
All right, here we are.Good morning, good afternoon, good evening.There's a lot of people here from all over the world.So I want to make sure we cover everybody.All right, so here we are.
I know there may be some chat issues, so we're resolving that now.If you're having one, we're taking a look into that.We had a great time yesterday.I hope everybody did we went over a lot of things.We're going to go over some more today.
And.Excuse me, there's a few questions from yesterday that we're going to deal with today.First thing we're going to do, though, is I'm going to play something for you like I always do.It gets things happening.We're going to play a beautiful song called Without a Song.
It's.
Sam.
It.
Sam.
It's.
Sa.
Sa.
All right.I guess the blood.Moving, moving and flowing.
He explains that technique should serve feeling and groove, not just speed. He revisits major and minor seventh exercises, whole-tone work, and chromatic practice in all keys.
Speaker A
Well, today we're going to cover some things that are a little bit more intricate.We're going to start off with technique, and then we're going to get into, you know, soloing and comping behind other musicians and other things later on, playing with bands and working with other instruments.
The other organs that are out on the market now, too, that emulate the sound of the vintage organs.But we're going to start out with technique.So I get a lot of questions about that.And, you know, I was talking about this a little bit yesterday.You know, technique is important, and a lot of people are interested in speed.
And, you know, this is a normal thing because it's impressive when somebody could play very fast and very clean.But what's most important is that what you play comes from here.Because if it's not coming from there and it doesn't make people feel great, you know, you want to break hearts when you're playing.You know, it should be pretty, even if it's at a fast tempo.But the most beautiful things to play, you know, of course, are when it's really swinging and really grooving.
But at the same time, there's nothing wrong with playing fast as long as, again, it comes from here.And what I like is somebody who could groove hard regardless of what instrument we're playing.And, you know, the organ is known for grooving.That was its first thing is how, you know, because of the sound of the bass and that pumping going on while you're playing.And it became a very integral part of the style, you know, is that the groove?You know, and that's why you had people like Groove Holmes, his name, right?Richard Groove Holmes.So always I can't emphasize enough, and I'm sure I'll say it a thousand more times while we're talking, emphasize that groove and that feel.There's nothing better than things being as groovy as possible.If it's grooving, make it even more groovy.
That's my motto.So technique, okay?Well, even if you don't play fast.You have to have a certain amount of muscle control.And if you want to build speed and things like that, you can do that by certain exercises.And that means also playing over.There's a lot of things that involve technique.That's why it's kind of like.We'll start right now by talking about some things that you can could play.I gave you some exercises and some scales yesterday that if you run those.
And we'll go over those again, too.That's how you build your technique, and it helps you play relaxed.And I like to do things in all keys.That also gives you a whole other relaxed element.Once you get it under your fingertips, it makes things a lot easier.
You know, when you start playing other tunes with a lot of chords, you get a chart in front of you and you know everything in every key, you know, it's not easy to do that, you know, and there's a lot of musicians that still have trouble.There are certain keys for everybody that are kind of funny keys, you know, but the more you play them.And that's the thing about jazz, too, is that you know these tunes.When you start playing standards, there's so many chords in them, it automatically should make you a better change player, because there are all these changes going by.If you want to solo over them, you have to figure them out.
And even if you just start by running the chord, you know, which we'll talk about in a minute.But the first thing is.So these are very basic things, but if you're a player who already is playing and you have a good groove and you're swinging, but you want to build some speed up.What do I do to do that?Well, you know, you start out just by, you know, playing.Let's take a major seventh chord, C major seventh, right?And we'll go up in all 12 keys.
So you start out slow, you know, and play the bass note and lift in your left hand while you're doing it.So.
Like that, for example.So then if you do it slow at whatever time, then you do it a little faster, you know, Right?Get to the point where you could go, Then go the other way.You know, you go this way, then you go that way.
So you go.Then you want to do them both, Right?So that's part of that.So that's your C major seventh.You get that going in all 12 keys.I know these are very basic things, but like I said, if you're somebody who could groove really good, but you want to build up some Dexterity so you can play a little bit faster tempos.These are the things you got to do.You go from that, go to your next chord.C minor seventh, right?Same thing.
These are just straight minor chords, you know.But what's nice is you mix them up and then you mix them up.
And you keep going.You just keep going.You get it really fast.At some point, You know, I just add a little extra thing in there.But that's the idea, right?And then what I was talking about yesterday, your whole tone scale, right, Alright.And then you just keep moving up and all whole tone means is the whole step to the next note, you know.So if you see it's C, D, the next whole tone is F sharp, et cetera.And just move it and then move it to here.Then you'll notice they're all the same.Anyway, it's some point because you only have a few of them.Same thing with your diminished.
And the thing is, as far as fingerings go, you want to make fingerings whatever's most comfortable for you.I said that yesterday too.A lot of people want to know about fingering.If you're watching me play, you'll see I got a lot of twisting and turning going on.And that's why doing these repetitions because, you know, you got to be able to move around too.
You want to jump around in a clean fashion.So by doing these repetitions, it will help you build that cleanliness of your playing and your lines and your dexterity, right?And once you start doing that, you know, and the beautiful thing about the organ too is, you know, the way the keys feel, you could play faster on it, but you have to have control over the action because if you.The keys, see, they're very bouncy.And I have, you know, each organ is different, but I have mine set up where you barely have to touch the key and you have the full tone, see?And there's still a lot more key to play there.And it's still playing the note.You know, some organs, you have to really press down and you have no tone until the very bottom of the note.That's something you can adjust internally in the organization.
So if you take these things we were just talking about, C major 7th going up in chromatics and then go the other way.You could still go like this if you want.
And then you want to add your foot in with them and go up chromatically.
Whoops.
And then go the other way.
And if you want to work on your thud with the foot, Right?And Then same goes for the chromatic scale.So on a chromatic scale, you have.
He demonstrates chromatic runs, sliding finger techniques, and organ-specific tricks that exploit the Hammond’s action. He applies these ideas to standards like 'Stella by Starlight' and emphasizes clean execution.
Speaker A
You go note to note, So whatever is comfortable, that's a good one to work out in good time without a metronome.
So going down, going this way, I could do a chromatic very fast, and I could use just two fingers.This is something Art Tatum did, too, on the piano.
But going up, I need some other.When I go this way, I need more fingers.
Okay.And that got a little sloppy up there.See, you still have to keep.You're always working, So that's something you can do slowly.I mean, this is how I do it.Like I said, you could come up with any way you want.If you could figure out a way to do it with these two fingers, that's fine, too.Now, the other thing about the organ is, like I said, you can because of the action.There's other techniques involved, too, which we're going to get to in a minute, where.And somebody asked about this yet, you know, sliding, doing this.
I mean, you could literally play a C scale pretty clean with one finger, Right?And there's another way.You could see, slide and almost make a chromatic.Or like.
Now, that sounds funny, but when you add it in between lines, it's kind of like when a saxophone player is playing, you know, take Coltrane, for example, and he would go, you know, so it's.You could finger it and it'll sound like.
But if you slide, you could slide a few things in there.
See, these are little trick things that Jimmy Smith came up with, and they're very effective.And it's part of the technique of the organ.A lot of people call it cheating.No, there's no such thing.You could pull something off that you have in your mind that sounds the way you want it to.
There's no cheating.There's no right or wrong.Because if you listen to the early recordings, you know, of Jimmy Smith, and he used this before percussion, or even when there was percussion.You play very staccato, right?
Very staccato.And as time went on and then he had the percussion, and of course he started sliding more instead of playing.You know, he played more.
You know, that's the same thing if you want to play something like that.But he had a way where he'd run the chord, which is like I'm showing you, he's going up in half steps.So if you take a G minor, for example, just as example, run the chord, right?And then go back down to here, do the same thing.But do the two fingers going down, kind of sliding.
That's something that you can only do, really, on an organ.And there's something about the bounce of the Hammond organs of these, you know, the vintage Hammond organs, the way it snaps back at you, that you could do these kind of things.You try to do this on a piano, it's not going to happen because piano keys don't come up like that.But the way this snaps back.So that's when you could take all kinds of ideas, you know.But it takes time to figure it out.So it doesn't sound sloppy.You want it to sound.Even though you're sliding things, it still should have a clean sound, you know, I don't do too much sliding, but I do use it sometimes.And, you know, it's also effective, you know, if just to get through a chord that you're having problems with, you know, Say a lot of people have trouble in B minor.
So say you got to run a B minor chord, B minor, you know, and this is something, you know, so you make sure you hit all the B minors as you're going down, but keeping the fingers going this way.
Any chord, you know, A flat.A flat major seventh, which, you know, F minor nine, You know, it's funny.It sounds good, though.It's a very smooth way of playing and all these things.Unless you're playing them with a feeling and a groove again, I told you I was going to say it's a lot.
They don't matter anyway.But those are some of the very specialty techniques of playing the instrument.But it's good to have each note practicing.Like I'm saying, you know, take any chord, even if you want to take a second.See, if you want to take 13th chords, right?
Or you put the true jazz 13th chord, it has the second in it, too.So you have your seventh from the bottom, you know, your second, your third and your sixth.And you run those off, You know, doing both ways up, down.
And what happens is you have so many possibilities by practicing all your chords and running them.And of course, the other one I like to talk about is, okay, we're going to stay in C, because you have to do it in all 12 keys.Is the typical.
Yeah, this is really something for like a D flat 7th run.You could really get away with doing some things with.Especially in the organ, you have a couple fingers, because sometimes you slide down to another note.
So you can do it like.
And that's.You know, You can start from here.If you have these fingers like this See your three fingers in the middle on the three black keys in the middle, your.Your G flat, A flat, B flat, and your thumb on the F. This is a.Also for A.
You could play a real nice D major scale with this.
And Art Tatum would do things like this with this, Right?So if you're going up from the top, you can.Okay, we got D major seventh to run, You know.
Okay.And there.That.There's certain keys you could get, get, get.Do certain things.
And then back to what I was saying about this one.
Then you go to the next.
Go both.Always go both directions.
So when you get into E, it gets little trickier, right?
Got me thinking about it, too.
That's a good one to work on, because it's tricky when you're mixing the notes in and you get.The F is real.You could almost.This is one of the thumb techniques that you could really get in.Start on F. So you just have to hit the B flat with this finger.
Is this the index finger?Yeah, your index finger.You hit a B flat as you're going down with that, your A flat.I mean, your E flat and your B flat.So see, slide down and then get to the B flat again with this finger.
Do it slow first.
You know, I'm getting a little flat five in there, too.But if you move it at a certain tempo, these are just examples of how you could slide, you know.So now let's take a tune we'll say like Stella by Starlight, okay?Because this is a song that everybody has to learn.A lot of people hate it because they had to play it so much.But regardless, it's a great tune.So let's take this now.So, you know, the melody is.
Okay, So I did a few substitutions on that.But if you take just the stock chords on that, you know, the first one is E flat, minor flat 5.You can voice it here or like this, but the point is to, you know, work on the inversions of that, but walk your bass line in fifths like this, And then run the chords.You know, running the chords doesn't always mean fast.Just means play them so like this, You know, and then you could.That those are just plain playing the chords of any standard like this.This is a good one, though, because it's got some tricky moves in it.Then you get, you know, you could get where you can just keep playing the chord after, you know, a few more inversions.So if, you know it's e minor flat 5, you could play it like that.
You could Also play it like this, which is a C13 with E and a bass, but it's also that.
Then put your flat five in there, so.
Or if you just walk.This is so you can play chords.Work on playing the changes and walk the bass line at the same time.Because now it gets a little trickier.You can even walk octaves like this at first, just to keep your tempo and time good.
And working on these lines to get your tech fluid, your technique fluid and, you know, limber.
He continues with arpeggios, fast lines, and practical ways to build dexterity. The section transitions toward soloing concepts and how to recover creatively when ideas run out.
Speaker A
Or even one note, you know, is cool to do.If that's easier for you, you.
And try to tap your foot even for now you can just do the tapping technique on one pedal.
And then you just do that, you know, and like I said, that's playing over the chain.Then you'll get to the point where you can be like.
It gets to the point where you can play like that, where you're playing eighth notes in a very relaxed swinging way.And then once you get a little bit more confident, you can push the beat, you know, drag the beat, do more things with the time, you know, like.
And use your expression pedal too to accent a little.
I'm not going to play a lot of things.I'm going to keep it very simple but effective.
Run some chords, A little double time.
Yeah, so that's the idea.Keep it grooving.Now another good exercise and a lick that we all love to hear.I think one of the earliest people to play it was Charlie Parker.This one, you know.
And.
This is where you take a minor chord, put the fifth in the bottom and the top.So if it's C minor, it's this.And you just line your fingers up, play it all the way down, right?And then you just move down chromatically from the root while bouncing.
So it's straight C minor.
Alright.We all heard Jimmy's Smith played this a million times.It was one of his favorites.And Coltrane liked it a lot too.And moving it around chromatically.
So you learn it in all 12 keys.
And you just keep doing that, you know, but slow at first, of course.
Now if you want to add to practice along with that with your left hand, you can end it on the four chord.So then you'd add one more note.So you'd say.
Because you're going to go to the four chord, which.The F, the fourth of the root that you're in.So go up, right?
And just keep going.And then you could play.
And then add that other note in, Okay, that's for the minor Chords.You could also play it on the major chord, C major, That was minor, you know.And if you're in G minor or A flat minor or whatever.Because you're used to hearing this line, right?The whole line was.
So Jimmy Smith always played that a lot when he would get.Always a lot.That's good English.He would play that when he would get the G minor almost all the time if he was double timing.But he didn't play it in any other key, you know, he was comfortable playing it there.
That's why it's hip to, like, learn that in all keys.That's a tough one to play.Like, if you.So if you're playing it in F, move it up to F sharp.
Not as hard.It's not as easy.
So it's good to learn these in all 12 keys.I mean, I can't emphasize that enough.So that's what's happening with that.And that's a technique that involves really.These are really organ techniques.You know, there's some specific things with these slides and things that we're talking about that are geared towards organ.You try to do them on another instrument with weighted keys, they're not going to work.You're going to be fumbling all over the place.A lot of it has to do with the smoothness of keys and also the fast attack of the Hammond organ.Because pipe organs and things like that don't have that snappy attack.
You know, you play them and there's a slight delay going because the wind has to get through.And these instruments play immediately.So that's how you can get away with little tricks, you know, I don't like to call them tricks.They're just.Each instrument has its own technique that applies to that instrument.
You know what I mean?Like, they call them false fingerings and things.On saxophones.I play trumpet, too.So if I want to play a trill, if I play a certain note, I can hit a valve and get.
Instead of going.Instead of doing it like that, you know, play one valve and do it.So that's something that's for that instrument.So that's why on this instrument, because of the fast attack, the very soft, smooth action.You can play things like with one finger and a thumb.
And it sounds like something, you know, like, you know.And then you move, like I told you.You take any chord.Let's just take an F major seventh.And then run down to two thumbs and play an F. Try to hit that F major 7th.Every time you get by it.
It's a nice run, right?
And then if you add in, you know, the F major seventh with a nine in.
And run that down, You know what I mean?And do it in all keys, you know.Next one would be, You know, so you could do all kinds of things.Things with that.So these little exercises will again, build up your dexterity even if you're not playing fast.It's just.It's good to keep your fingers loose.It's easier to swing if you have some good technique because you can think about your ideas in relaxed way instead of being stiff.Keeps your fingers loose.And that's what's happening with that.
Let me see here.I might have a question here.Yes.Okay.Okay.So this is, how do we build arpeggios and runs?Can you demonstrate some simple and more complex ones slowly?Okay, well, I mean, I kind of been doing that, but I can do some more for you.
You know, these are technique things.So a line, you know, a really good one to learn.We're going to go back to the key of F now is this one.So if you're.You got a dominant seventh.
So.
And then you just keep going down with it.
Slow.
And again, if you're running down like that, you could add some little things into it.
It's important to know.
So if you play this one, When you run it fast, it sounds.
This is a nice one coming up, too.
Sorry, I'm checking out a question right now.Okay.Yeah, this is a good one.So if you're playing sometimes, actually, we're going to.We're still talking technique, you know, technique and soloing and other kind of all one thing.
So after we take a break, we're going to get into more talking about soloing and comping.We're kind of leading to that now anyway, because that's where we are.I can only give you so many exercises.You have to work on those.But we're going to talk a little bit more about when you're soloing.And this is important, too.
He explains how to use pentatonics to recover from awkward notes and keep improvisation flowing. He also demonstrates how to stay in the pocket while experimenting with harmony.
Speaker A
And this is something Bobby Hutcherson said to me one time that was like, man, how perfect.Sometimes if you feel like you're running out of ideas or you want to get more creative, and that's one of the things of having all these things at your fingertips in your memory.So you can go to them anytime, that's one thing.But there's also other little things you could think about to embed that happen telepathically when you're playing because you know them.
For example, Bobby Hutchinson told me, if he was playing, and he wound up on a note that he really didn't want to.He would end it and come off with a pentatonic.Now, remember, the pentatonics we talked about yesterday are basically the blues scale without the flat fifth in it.You practice.Play these in all keys, right?
But the part is, if you're playing a lion.So say you go.
You didn't want to go there.Come off it with a pentatonic.So.
And then once you get to a note that sounds right, move to that note, you know.And that's another thing Miles Davis would say.He'd say if you play a wrong note, the next note can make it right.And that's part of just having all your harmony and your ideas in your mind, you know, so that you can just recall things but you shouldn't run out of.You know, the thing is, if you're playing let's go back to the blues, right, and we're soloing, we're going to stay, you know, we're not going to play a whole lot of runs.We're going to just play real grooving and.
Check it out.
So you made it work.
Okay, now a little double time.And I'm going to wind up on a note that I didn't really want to.
Again.
So what you're doing is, is coming off of that note that you didn't think you wanted to play with a pentatonic.So what happens is you're not running out of these.And you might come off of that pentatonic and hit another note, come off of that with a pentatonic, you know, as you say, You know, and then you get more aware of your bass line harmonically, too, too.So it can follow what you're doing with your right hand.So that's, you know, that's part of that, too.
And then it gives you endless ideas, you know, you could also come off of it with a whole tone, you know, And you got to remember, right, we have these 12 notes.They all live very close, close next to each other.They hang out all the time.They really dig each other.So nobody is really unrelated.
So there's no right or wrong there.I could play you some things that you might.You have to get to the point where when you're listening and you're playing that there are no wrong notes.It takes a long time to understand that with harmony.
And if it sounds wrong, lay on it longer until it sounds right.You know what I'm saying?It's like, again, we're Playing the blues, You know, you, ah, you know what I'm saying?
You know, and then you could do one of these little.
So and so on and so forth.Do we have.Do we have another question?Okay, yeah, there's a few more I want to remind you too, when we take a break here.We're going to take a break in about 10 minutes.
Get your questions in.I know some of you want to be more private with your questions.That's fine too.But however you want to do it when you're most comfortable.So with all these things in mind and all these patterns and things, we're going to play something now to show you how those work.Okay?And I'll try to.When I'm playing, I'll try to shout out some of them so you know what I'm talking about.So a good tune to play is there will never be another you, because it's going all over the place.And you can use all these ideas in there.
Do our little intro.We all like organ players, like our nice fifth intro.Most jazz trios too, you know.
Oh, I gotta mention too, because I'm looking at it, a lot of people, my left hand, people will say to me, wow, you rest your left hand on the, you know, here, let me see.Yeah, you're left, you know, a lot of times you're walking like this.
That's such.You know, if you go to classical teacher, I mean, I've heard stories where they would put a pointy pencil under your wrist.So you didn't do that.You're supposed to play like this.And sometimes I do, but I see videos, you know, or if I'm grooving.It's just kind of like this, you know.
You know, I get a wear mark on the organs right here.That's when I really start.But people brought it to my attention.I never knew.Now, this hand obviously is always up, right?
I guess because I don't have any wood here to go like this.But.But if you're doing that and it's comfortable for you, I've been doing that for 43 years.I don't have any issues.Everything's fine.
So it's cool.You know what I mean?Don't think, oh, I can't do that.That's not right.I got to pick my hands up.
If that's what works for you, it's fine, you know, So I just wanted to mention that.Okay, we're going to play now.
Look at.Now I'm picking my hand up.I'm sure it'll go down again.
Play a little chord here, Little base thing.
Okay?Straight e flat major 7th.Right there.Right.
Just grooving, you know, you don't have to play a lot, spell the chords out.
Just make sure that bass line is grooving and steady.
No matter what you do here, even if you mess the time a little bit.
This is like when you have complete, complete independence.You could do these things.This should always be grooving like this.Even if you're out of time up here because you want to be.
Diminished.
Here's a little slide for you.
Sometimes we're to do the thing where we'll come off of pentatonic when we land on a note that we didn't really think we wanted to play.
Wow, that really got lucky.
The idea is when you do those slides, you to hit some notes along the way and then come out of it with a real articulate line, too.But these are more things that use for fast.You know, you're not really going to do this when you're playing swinging.This is where you're staying in the pocket, see?And I could talk to you.Walk this baseline.It's not going to go anywhere.I could talk all day to you, and this is just going to do this.And that's what's important.You got to be able to get to that point.It shouldn't even matter.Have a conversation.You might even want to do something cool with the bass, you know, while you're talking.You still should be able to do something like this, you know, it shouldn't even matter.
There's a nice.
Diminished.
See, I just walked that right down with the C majors.
So that's an example of that.And see, that's the other thing that's important to know is that all these notes, you know, are related, like I was saying earlier.And so anything you do, you can make it work.You have to have confidence and a certain feeling that confidence is important.If that groove's going, you could expect experiment as much as you want with the right hand.
You really can.And that's what's important.And that's a very big technique lesson.Because that baseline has to be steady.And I told you yesterday, I give you your blues patterns where you do this.
And you never go past here, even if that's grooving hard.
And you do that over and over again, right?I'm playing one pedal.
Play this bass line over and over again.I guarantee you go get this groove into this level and you go sit in with a band and Say we're going to play some blues in F. I want to play some blues in F. And you keep it simple and effective.
I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but believe me, it sounds even if you stay in the blues.
I haven't gone out of the boat blues or pentatonic scale.
Roll the two.Not.
Gotta be able to do this before you do anything else.Now, if you want to start adding your other things in.
Back to.
Double those chords up.
Back to that pentatonic.Wherever you end up on the note, come off a pentatonic, It works.You just keep going and going and going.That's the idea and that's what's happening.So we're going to take a five minute break and if you have any questions, get them on in there now.
He shows how to build a solo gradually, using register changes, chromatic motion, and dynamic control. The example demonstrates how to create tension and then resolve it effectively.
Speaker A
Hopefully I'm answering for you, but if there's something I'm missing, let us know about it either privately or in the public chat.See you in five minutes.
So we did a lot of things on the last hour about different exercises to exercise your technique so that you can play in a very fluid way and be comfortable and relax.You know, loose hands are very important.Those are the right hand techniques and they apply to the left hand too.If you want to practice those same things with the left hand.Because it's good to be able to play in octaves what you're doing, doing in your right hand and your left hand.Sometimes, you know, or if your foot takes over and you want to do things with two hands, it's good to practice both.Now we're going to talk about a little bit more about soloing using all those.We ended kind of that way.So when you're building a solo, you know, there are a number of things you have to remember.
And you know, we're trained very early on.
And if you listen to a lot of organ music, music, especially the earlier music, it seems like most things were something that builds very lightly and then everything always builds into this big climax.You know, you don't have to do that all the time, you know, And a lot of the music and jazz as we know it from our legends did that too.You know, even Art Blakey needs jazz messengers.You know, solo started, one guy would play, then they'd break it down for the next guy and he'd start all over again.One of the people that really broke that was sorry, was Coltrane.Because what he did was he had McCoy Tyner on piano, right?And a lot of the time McCoy would solo first and he would build it and build it and build it and build and build up to this unbelievable climatic thing.
And the next thing, you know, trained would come in and he'd come in there and stay up there.Come right in, wide open, burning, you know, and then stay there for a while.He might bring it back down, but he might just stay there for who knows how long.
There's nothing wrong with doing it like that either.Or sometimes, depending on the tune or the situation or the mood, you want to just stay in a very solitude bag and walk or play two feel for a while.You don't go straight into walking bass line in your solos.You might want to play on the two field for a while and just play really simple.You might want to stay there.You might want to play your whole solo like that.There's really no right or wrong way to build a solo.What happens after you do it for a long time and you get used to doing it.You get to the point where it's like it's second nature, how you want to do it.And also for different songs and also different styles.
Not everything's always the same, you know, you can't come in burning on a ballot, you know, but you know, that something that just happens as you're doing this for a while, you realize you don't want to do it that way.So that's, you know, something that's important to remember when building a solo.You could build it how you want, but always remember to keep it, you know, play things that make sense, not things that you think you're supposed to play, things that you want to play and that feel good, you know, and if you're playing certain songs, you know, you play in another way.And there's so many styles and so many ways you could go, especially with this instrument.And to think it's pretty unlimited because you can use the techniques that I was showing you earlier with the sliding.
You could play more staccato.And so that allows you to listen to people like John Coltrane or Sonny Ross, other instruments and apply that into your improvisation.Because a lot of my lines and things didn't come directly from organ players.They come from saxophone players and trumpet players, you know, John Coltrane, Sonny Ross.I have a lot of miles in my playing, you know, all these things.And we all love all these different kinds of music, you know.And I love to say you pour all that into a funnel, all your influences, all the things you like, all that goes into a funnel.What comes out at the bottom of a funnel is you Just a big mix of things that you've been listening to.And you wind up playing it the way you're going to play it anyway, so.So let's start with the blues.
Here we go.Same thing.And we're going to show a little bit about building a solo.You know how I'm feeling right now at this particular point, the way I want to build my solo.
So we're going to take a tempo right here, right?And we're going to start off in two.Feel.
Two feet on the left hand, but we're going to play four with a foot.
So in the right hand.I'm just keeping it simple.
Stay right in this octave.Real gorgeous sound of the organs.Real bell, like, warm.
All right, All right.We're gonna take it for a walk now.
Starting to go up a little bit in the octave.
Play all the registers.A lot of people tend to play up here.
And that's fine.But it's real gorgeous right here.You gotta.Wait.Don't stay up here.Use them all.Even get down here.
And that way you have so many things because you got different tones going on and different registers.That allows you to build.I'm still building.I haven't decided yet if I'm going to go crazy or not.And you go crazy without playing a lot of notes.
Now we'll move it up an octave.
Now I'm not playing a lot of notes, but the tension is building, right?
I'm going to slide up.Sail building.
That's a nice little chromatic.
You want to still build tension.We drone.
You'll hold the root note while you play some things over here.
Build a little more tension.Throw the Leslie in.
Your drummer will be shuffled.Pop boop.
The trick is how to come out of this effectively.
If you want to go another chorus, you can even go into full organ.But we're not.We're going to stay here and we're going to come out of it.Last chorus, Straight down that blues can.
Yeah.Now we're coming to the end.We're gonna go back into two.
Start walking.And just playing that child student groove.
See, now I'm doing the ghost notes with the thumb in the left hand.
Now we're going to get into our pedals a little bit.
Little rhythm with it.
Double it up.Thicken that bass up.Now we're going to end it.
Play that half step above the F13 to end it.Turn your tremolo on.
You might want to reach up and play a high C with that with your left hand.
And Then we do our stock organ ending.
And there's one way of building a solo, and that's a very.I guarantee, you could walk into a place and there's a lot of stuff going on and a lot of notes flying around.You get up there and lay that down, you're going to grab the people every time.It's a guarantee, you know.And the thing about that is that when I say that, you're not necessarily playing for that reason, though, to grab the people.
It's something how you playing and how you feel.It's a sincere thing.And they get it.You know, it turns into a whole beautiful situation with the crowd and yourself, because you're giving them something straight from your heart that you feel, and they feel that.And it could be fast, it could be times.This is just one example of building something, you know, after all that technique talk, it always isn't about having good technique to run a lot of things.
He talks about ending solos cleanly, avoiding overplaying, and respecting tempo limits. He stresses that groove matters more than speed and that players should be honest about their comfort zone.
Speaker A
It's also to have so your fingers are smooth, you have fluidity in your playing.Because even playing something simple, You have to have some kind of technique to pull that off.So you hit the right note, you know, the notes that you want to hit, not the right notes, because I already said there's no wrong notes.Just it has to be sincere, you know, and that's how you build a solo over blues.
But we could pick a tune.I think we have a.We have a.
Okay.So, yeah, you know, we can mess with some drawbar settings here.You know, that's what I did, too.I pretty much stayed in the stock sound, which, you know, is always working good in a good way.And, you know, you know, that's how that works.
And so we'll take another tune.We talked a little bit yesterday, too, about that, like Bye Bye Blackbird and things like that.You could start with songs like this.And even if you're already a player who's playing and experienced, these are good reminders, too.We all need them.You know, even sometimes I listen back to certain live recordings or whatever, and I feel like, hey, you know, that's pretty cool.I didn't go so far the way I built a solo, or I didn't need to play that long, or I hear somebody else play, because you don't want another thing about solos.You don't want to take more than one within one solo.What I mean by that is, see how we played that, we built it up.It got very climatic, and it was cooking.And then we brought it back down and we took it home.
You don't want to do that and then sound like you ended and then you continue.
It doesn't give a nice flow in the music.It also confuses other people in the band because they're playing with you.You know, as a band, you're all playing together and everybody, they're listening to each other.You're listening to solo and the guitar player or any other Mr.They're supposed to be listening to you and copying for you.And that's what that means.Accompanying is accompanying.So they have to be sensitive to what you're doing harmonically and rhythmically.They don't want to get in your way when they're comping for you.And they want to be able to follow you.
And they're also building with you.So that's part of it too, you know.So if you build and you all build up and then they think, wow, he just building this plant and it's finished and you keep going.It's like, ah, it's like taking wind out of the sails.It's like if we were up here, right, and it's cooking.
And it's going, right.I mean, you don't get any higher than this.Then we're going to go to say we go into full Oregon now.
One more chorus, right?The band's chunking along with you.
Everybody's swinging, everybody's happy.Next guy is getting ready to go.He's like, he's done by now.He's getting excited to come off what you do.All right, next guy, right?And then you say.
Then you keep going.Now you're taking a second solo, basically, and it just, it disrupts the whole tension that you just built so beautifully.And sometimes you could do that in three or four choruses.You don't have to play 75 choruses, you know, that's part of it too, because you could wind up playing five or six.I mean, nobody's going to play five or six on a play.We're going to all play about 12, 15.Chorus is minimal or more.But the point is, when you're done, you're done.Now, if you could play a long time and it's still interesting and you're still building and you're saying something, then by all means.I mean, John Coltrane, they would play sometimes, you know, I was talking to Alvin Jones.He said they would play a matinee for two hours and play one song.And it kept.
And it still was fresh and inspiring and there was something happening.You know, it's spirituality, the whole thing.Is going on when you're playing.
So if you're doing that, you can do it.Unless there's a certain time constraint that you can't do it.Then you got to learn how to build very shortly.But the point is, you don't have to solo forever to mean something.You could play three choruses of amazing stuff, or you could play 75 choruses of nothing.
So that's just a very important thing to remember for all of us, even the experienced guys.We all have this issues sometimes.And it's not because, you know, sometimes we just.We love to play so much.I played that.Now I want to play.You have to get past.It takes a long time sometimes to do that.When you get to that point, you'll realize it, that the solo is finished.You should really start recording yourself.That's another thing, you know, a lot of people do.It's easy nowadays, right?Just with our phones or whatever, we could record ourselves and you could listen to these things.And a lot of the time, that's what you'll hear.Wow, I guess I should have ended there.
I didn't really need.Or even when you're listening to the other guys in the band, you'll know what I'm talking about, too.He played too long.I mean, he played an incredible solo.And then he should have stopped here.It sounded like he was going to stop, but he didn't.And even when he continued, sure, he's playing great things, but it messes with the story.It's like if you read the book, you finished it, and then there's three more pages after you've read this great ending, you don't want to do that, you know, so that's what's happening with that.And of course, when you're playing tempos and things like that, there was a question about if you're playing and you get lost in the tempo, you know.Well, number one thing is, if you're not really comfortable playing a fast tempo, you shouldn't play them until you are comfortable.
And there's nothing wrong with that.I mean, you know, like I said, groove is the most important.So if you can groove here all night, you know, you're going to have people like this, and that's what's happening.But at the same time, everybody's tempo limits are different.So, you know, my groove, you know, my drummer, he could play super fast, no problem.I've always had drummers that could play really fast.And I came up, you know, loving Miles Davis records four and more.You Know which had all tempos on it.And I would hang out with Miles and I'd ask him about that.He said, when you play live, the more familiar a tune, the faster you should play it.
I don't know why he said that, but I think he just meant because it makes you think in a very quick way.And the audience, you know, all those things go together.But we could play very fast tempos, and we always could.So when somebody said, you know, fast to me is different than you're fast.I mean.
And you learn that when you play with some of the older cats, too.I mean, I remember playing with Houston Person, and we were playing everything here, pretty much the whole set.It was grooving funky.And then he said, okay, we're going to play something up now.Okay.
Up to him was just above that.This was up.
And there's nothing wrong with that.For a lot of people, that is their up tempo.When somebody says fast, to me, that means this.
The beauty of that is that means these kind of fast tempos here.That's like a.Like kind of a medium, or even this is a medium.Or you got guys that'll say.Or musicians that'll say, that's fast, man.And I'm like, that's fast.That's not fast.So those all depends.It's a personal thing, and it's always.Be aware of that.
So if somebody calls a tempo.If you're on a gig and somebody calls a tempo and says, 1, 2.Hold on, hold on, hold on.Bring it down a couple notches.Don't put yourself in a position where you're not going to be comfortable.
Talk about it before.If you know you're playing with a cat that likes to play really, really fast and you're not comfortable, you know, I'm not really, you know, real up tempo player.Can we keep things like kind of.This is kind of my limit where I'm comfortable.Just let people know.
He explains how to comp behind other musicians with space, sensitivity, and rhythmic awareness. The emphasis is on listening, leaving room, and making the band sound cohesive.
Speaker A
And musicians that are cool, most of them are good musicians, will say, that's fine.Cool.They know that.But the other question is, okay, you can play kind of fast, but sometimes when you're playing it, you lose your place.And what to do.
Well, that's a tough one.What you need to do is if you have a solid guitar player and a solid drummer, they're still going to be in the place that they were.If you listen, just listen strong enough to them and you could find your place again.Take a minute.So if you're soloing on, say, a Blues Upstairs, a Little bit like.
And you lose your place and you flip the beat or something.I just did it.Wait the guitar player stop for a minute, okay?Just, you know, groove and then get back in.
As long as your time is good and you keep that time.Don't stop.Even if you're in the wrong place, it's still 1, 2, 3, 4.1, 2, 3, 4, 1.Just keep going until you find your place.
But just be aware, like I said, of what your limits are.And limits are not a bad thing.It doesn't matter if you're tempos.The main important thing is the groove.So like I'm always saying that, because if you play fast, fine, it still has to groove.If you're not comfortable there, play at the tempo you're comfortable at.And that's what matters.Now we're going to talk about comping.This is one of my favorite subjects because it's so important.And as an organ player, I think in the history of the instrument.
The reason the guitar wound up being such an important instrument in an organ trio.I mean, I know there were guitarless organ trios as well, but you know, with tenor, organ and drums and also just organ and drums.But the most famous one was guitar, organ and drums.And the reason for that is when Wild Bill Davis came up with this great idea to play bass lines.Bass lines was left hand.
He couldn't comp for himself when he was soloing, right?So just like we're doing right now, I'm playing and I'm soloing.You don't necessarily need anybody comping.But it's nice to have in there to have, right?But if you're playing behind somebody else, you have to compare.
But the guitar player comps for you when you're soloing.So it's basically like the piano player and the piano trio.Because you have a bass, piano and drums.While here you have organ, here's your bass, and then the guitar player is your piano player, right?It actually becomes a quartet sort of.
But when I'm playing and I'm playing a solo, you know, This is like a horn player here and a bass player here, you know what I'm saying?
So guitar players can going to be comping for you.
But he needs to listen to what you're doing harmonically.So if you lay on, say you lay on the flat 5 for a while, he should be like.Or if you go, he has to find a chord that matches what you're doing harmonically.Now that's them comping for you.But when you're comping for another instrument.
It's very, very important.This is when it's important to know your harmony well, to recognize notes, to recognize when somebody's playing.And that'll happen after you do it for a while.But even some people that do it for a while.I hear them playing and they comp too much, too busy.
Because they're not listening to the solo.You know, if a guitar player is playing, he's playing all these things, right?So you have to hook up with the drummer.You know, when the drummer is swinging or playing anything.But if we're talking about swinging, he's playing the ride cymbal and he's grooving.
What he's doing over here with the snare drum is accompanying it.So the time is here.
The bass drum get on.You know, this is comping for the soloist.The drummer comps too.So you have to be hooking up with the drummer while somebody else.So it could be the guitar soloing or the tenor player soloing.You have to be able to hook up with both of those, and it has to be done.Now, you're not going to make every little hit that they make, because that's impossible.But if you play with somebody long enough, you will be able to get that telepathic thing.And sometimes some of you didn't play for a long time.There's telepathic situations that go on that are pretty amazing anyway.
So, for example, now if somebody saw them, we're going to go back to the blues.I'm playing my blues, somebody's song.So I'll just scat.
You see, I'm playing very little.If they say you're hitting that chord that has that note in.
So the idea is to stay out of their way.Because if they're playing.
If you play real busy like that, it gets real mishmashed.And it's not musical and, you know, and.And it's not fun for the solo.If you're stepping all over every idea.If they're playing and you're going, why not throw that, you know, that sharp nine in there.
You know, you should be able to hear that.Or if they even play, you should know.I'm going to grab a flat, you know, flat nine, you know.So these are important things to know.And that's just by doing it and recognizing the tones, you know.And even for advanced music, this is very important for you to know.If you're not already doing it.A lot of them, you probably are.Keep the comping very simple.It's supposed to just be a little nudge accompanying what the soloist is doing.
If the soloist is leaving space, like a lot of space, you could do more things.So they say, Now they layout.And then you can say, now they're back.Boo ba da da da da.Take your hand off and then you can end it.
So those are the kind of things you have to do.So you have to be aware harmonically and rhythmically.And you think of it the same way as how the drummers comp it with the snare.You know, it's like, say, the left hand is the symbol, right?
Here's your snare, Dubsy.
Even if you're not to the point harmonically, where you can match everything that the soloist is doing, if you stay very rhythmic, spacious with your comping, you're still going to be in good shape because you're not going to play.And if somebody plays something that you're really unsure of, another one of my famous phrases.When in doubt, lay out.Because then you leave the space.You don't need that happening.
And that's another important thing to know.So that's when you're comping on a blues.And if you're playing on a fast tempo, you want to even try to leave as much, even more space.Because there's a lot of stuff going on.Drummers, And the saddle is, you know, they're doing a lot of things.
So you don't need to do a lot.You know, if you're playing something like Impressions, you know, it's only two chords, right?So you're like the solos is playing.
You hit some ones, lay out, keep that bass line grooving.That's what's most important.
And then you might get a little thing going on where they play and you, you know, call the response.
Then at the end of their solo, you lay on that for a minute before you come in.
So that's the idea behind that.When you're playing those tempos, stay out of the way as much as possible, but get things happening, you know.And like I said, you'll be doing a lot of that with the drummer and the solos, everybody together.Because the group.That's what it's all about as a band, as a group, making it sound like one thing, you know, that's how.
Even if you have 10 guys up there, the idea is to sound like just this one big beautiful thing.And that's one of the things about an organ trio.You have three guys and you can make it sound like a big band.No problem.And that's.
That's part of the instrument and part of the sound.And that's why it's so important to leave as much room for your soloists when you're comping behind them.You know, I can't stress that enough because I know when I'm playing and somebody's not listening or they get really busy, you know, it just.It interrupts ideas that you have.You might really be flowing.
And that's.You know, guitar players that play in my group, they got an easy game gig.They don't have to comp a lot.A guitar player shouldn't comp a lot, and you shouldn't comp a lot too much behind them when they're soloing.Comping is just as important as soloing.
He expands on comping in vamps like 'Impressions' and discusses how to support soloists without crowding them. He then moves into long intros and how he uses them to decide what tune to play next.
Speaker A
In fact, if you really love playing the organ, you should be just as happy to get a gig and not solo and comp all night, because that's so much fun, you know, if you got a tune, you take a tune, you know, like a great standard like Sat and Doll, for example.That's one of the big organ tunes, right?And you get to comp behind the soloist all night like this, you know, And you could do some things like this when you're playing the sa.
Somebody's playing, you know, so you got to picture somebody soloing on top of this, you know, it's just so fun to groove.
And the thing is, is you're playing your own bass lines, so there's no problems at all.Imagine what you're doing harmonically as a chord with your bass playing, because you're your bass player.
And then you could hold some chords, Put a little bit this in there.Not a guy starts real cooking, Then just play bass lines.
You get real creative with your walking.
Sometimes just what you're doing with that is competent enough.
And you don't always have to start on the root.Like we're going to get to the G minor and the bridge.Start on the two.
Sometimes I try to walk no roots in my bass lines.It explains.Expand your harmonic possibilities back into the chords.And when you're comping, you know, most of the time we're comping in our lower manual.
And once in a while, just for a little thicker chord, go top, You know, bring your expression pedal down a little bit.
So that's the idea to keep it rhythmically grooving hard.And again, we don't have somebody soloing.But even if you're not real fast at catching what people are doing harmonically soloing, that's what I'm saying is if you keep it spacious, it's not going to get in the way.Still, it's a grooving pulse happening.Okay, somebody requested a little bit more ideas on comping and chording and vamps on impressions.
So, you know, again, we have two chords on that.So if you play it, if you play it at a tempo like, you know, This is something nice to, you know, you could play a lot of pentatonic things on here solo wise.
So you remember.So if you're playing an E flat minor, if you change the bass to an A flat, that E flat minor becomes an A flat sus, which is nice too for the soloist.If you're playing, if you're walking your bass line, we're in D minor, Just drop it down to hold the chord and they'll go nuts over this who's ever soloing.And we'll do the same thing because D minor with G on the basis Fs, you know, then you back to here, the G sus.
And then you can move it up back to G minor and D minor.
I'm going from the 6th to the 5th here.
There's another thing to slide into the chorus.
So that's a good example.And you could, you know, vamp on that and hold that for a while too, you know, or hold the fifth over that D minor nine.Then you get in your pentatonics, The player's playing.
Back to that sus.So those are a lot of interesting things where you can keep it hip, it's cooking along, it sounds good and it gives a soloist, you know, depending what they're playing, you have to listen if they're playing ideas that will sound good over that or if you feel like you need to give them a little bit.I don't like to lead a soloist.They're soloing, so that means lead.But a nudge is okay.Just hey, man, you hear this?And that means, you know, hear this chord and they'll say, oh yeah, I hear that.Maybe I'll play something that, you know, they'll look at you and say, yeah, man.So you get that going on the bandstand, another thing we touched on a little bit, but intros and my approach to that, well, you know, I use those for different reasons.And sometimes when I can't remember, not can't remember, don't know exact, I don't have a set list.
If you come to one of my gigs, for the most part, I don't really play the same sets.If I have two sets, you Know, I play different songs each set.I don't play the same set.If musicians do do that, that's OK for me.I just don't.
And I don't tell my musicians what we're going to play either.I just start playing and I don't even ask in a lot of cases if I'm going to play a standard.I don't ask them if they know it.I have enough confidence that at least by two or three choruses, everybody will know the changes and they'll be able to play.And that's what I'm talking about.All of these things we've been talking about that I say, you have to do them, get them under your belt, because once you do that, they're in there and you'll have total instant recall.And that's when you recognize tones and you can play a tune and hear the chords pretty quickly and have it figured out.Okay, so what's happening with that is, okay, we're going to.We just finished the tune and we're going to go into another tune.
I'm going to play long intros by myself because I want to figure out what I feel like playing next.
And the band is just looking at me, like, listening, like, hmm, here we go.What's he going to play?And I don't know.But what I'll do is eventually get to my idea of what I want to play and I'll start working my way harmonically to that.But I'll just.My approach, like, say, we're going to play the song I Want To Talk about yout.It's a ballad, right?So I'm going to say, okay, I don't know that yet, though.So I just start playing.
I still don't know what I'm going to play.
So you start using the organ and doing cool stuff, Playing nice chords.
Okay, now I figured I want to play.I want to talk about you.
Now, if they know the tune, the guitar player is already comping for me.
So I'm going to move the foot just to show you what.The guitar player should be playing chords behind me.He should be saying things like.
So my left hand is acting kind of like the guitar player now.
And if he.He didn't know the tune right away, I'm just playing the bass lines and trying to play little lines with the melody along with it so they could hear the harmony of the chords.
So that's basically, that's what happens.I'll play until I feel like a song that I want to play it doesn't always have to be a ballad.I could play one of these long Roboto intros out of time and go into another tune.But that's my approach to it.There's no specific harmonic approach.It's whatever I feel like.That's by having all these ideas and all these things that you've worked on right there, your vocabulary, right?You just start playing.You sit down and you start playing something.By doing that, you come up with other things, you figure out other things, other ideas.
It's endless.It never stops.And that's what's really cool about that.
I'm looking over here, my monitor.Okay, So.
Okay, we got some questions here.Okay.We covered a lot of that.
Yeah, so we covered most of those things.I'm just going to keep going here with different thoughts about my ideas of approaching things.So people have the want to know about playing outside changes.You know, when you play it outside, like harmonically going.We call it.Oh, that guy playing out.He plays out, you know, most of the time.And that.That goes back to that thing where if you wind up on a note that you feel like.I didn't really want to land there.
Come off it with a pentatonic.You could come off it with whatever you want.And the chromatics all relate to each other, but that's when, you know, the pentatonic things really come in handy.The stack fourths.
Larry Young played a lot of those things, so did Jimmy Smith, but McCoy Tyner was the master of that.You know, he'd play fifths here.
And that's when he'd take these and run them.
And you mix those in with the pentatonic.Straight pentatonix.
And a good thing, you know, you take a vamp, like just vamp, say three.A waltz is nice to vamp in like an F minor.
To really get your pentatonix going on this, you add that little flat 5.Get that blues element in there.
You can move up a half step.
When you go up to F sharp, right?You can have that B natural in there.But you take you back into the blues scale when you're playing in F. So you could say.
It leads you back to that.So that you can have, you know, the pentatonic off of that to the blues scale.If you do that, keep doing that, you come up with different.The thing is to work on these things on your own.Because if you keep doing that, you come up with different ideas.
I mean, it's endless.And if you're playing this for hours, you know, this Vamp, You know, F minor runs, too.
You see, that's.You get the idea.That's how you can move around and do all those cool things like that.All right, I'm gonna play another tune for you, and then we're gonna take five before we move on to our last section.And let's see, what do I feel like playing?
Let's play a waltz.Since we're doing this, I'm going to play up Jump spring.And the other thing is, when you're playing these tunes, what's cool is you could play your own.When I played this song, I recorded it a couple years ago, and it's a Freddy Hubbard tune, but I didn't really play much of the melody.I kind of play around the melody.
I think it's important to play a melody of a song, but if you want to do your own kind of thing with it, you can.Could do that, too.That's what we're going to do now.There'll be elements of the melody in there.I'll play a little intro beforehand, too.
This is when I play an intro, and I do know what I'm going to play.Sam.
Sa.
Sam.
Sa.
It.
It, Sam.All right, we're going to take five and we'll be back momentarily.
He answers questions about practice routines, learning tunes, and writing original music. He demonstrates how chord progressions can inspire melodies and how improvisation often becomes composition.
Speaker A
Get your questions together, if you have any, and let us know what they are.
So we're on section three here, and I'm going to start out talking.There's a few questions.Some of them were already answered, so we'll touch on them.But, you know, when you go back to look at this again, you'll see your questions were answered.But somebody asked me about practice routines, different styles that you should know how to play as an organist, and you know, how many songs you should learn.
I sit down and I play and try to come up with new ideas.Something I hear might inspire me.I might be introduced to, reintroduced to something that I haven't heard in a while.And I said, start playing that, and I'll work on that for a while.As far as different styles, you know, pretty much all music is based out of the blues.It all comes from the blues.So if you got a good grip, good handle on the blues, you can cover most genres and styles of music.You know, we're talking a lot about jazz style race now.But, you know, for example, if you want to be a.There's different.There's a jazz blues we call like what we're dealing with.Then there's a real stone cold blues where it's a little bit different.Of a feeling, but you should be able to play that too.
And you should be able to play funky from learning these things.And again, it's about listening.
What you want to do is play the things that you enjoy joy playing.And when you know what you can do that you're confident in doing, that's what you can call yourself.If you're confident and comfortable in a lot of different areas, that's up to you.But learning this style, learning how to play through the changes, a good understanding of groove and rhythm and the blues, you could pretty much cover any bag.And that's the good thing about that.
As, as far as far as learning tunes, if you don't already know a lot of tunes and you're still wanting to learn, it's always good to learn.The standard song book is a crucial thing because there's so many elements of harmony in those songs.You should know as many of those as possible.And that's what makes the brotherhood.If you could sit down and play with other musicians at a jam session, or if you sit in, there's thousands of tunes that you could call.
That most people will know.That's one of the things that musicians will say, oh, man, he knows a lot of tunes.He doesn't know a lot of tunes, man, he doesn't know any tunes.Know and learn as many as possible.And if somebody calls something you don't know, go home the next day and learn it, check it out, get a grip on it.
And that comes to composition, writing your own songs.I've always been somebody who wrote a lot of music.I didn't always record everything I wrote, but I've been pretty involved in writing.And lately in my last few records, I put more of my original material on there.And the way my approach to writing usually, and it's not always the same, sometimes I'll get a melody first, but usually I'll come up with a set of changes, set of questions, chord progressions that I'm hearing right.
And once I got those, then I start to hear a melody on top of that.I know, I think a lot of people, a lot of musicians will hear a melody first, but sometimes I do hear that, but most of the time for me, I hear a set of chords.And, you know, I can compose a song anytime because there's so many ideas going around in my head.And when you know all those other songs, all those standards, that helps you to compose too.It makes you understand structure and how long.
32 bars, 24 bars.But sometimes a song is 11 bars or 15 or 36, you know, there's not always an even number because again, there's no right or wrong.And I have songs that change time signature maybe two or three times within the song.So, you know, my, my approach has always been to hear a set of chords, you know, but there's a few songs where I've heard a melody first and that's how I do it, you know.So like right now let's say we take, we're going to take a couple chords, alright?So we're going to say D flat.This is a D flat, 6, 9.Okay, so let's see what's another chord.Let's move it up A minor third to E minor nine.And then after that let's go to G minor seventh.
Then after that let's go to E major, D major seventh.Okay, so now that I know what these chords are, so they're.
Right.And then from that, what do we say we had.See, then you got to remember it.So to this, right, and let's say we're going to play G minor seventh and then D major seventh.All right, so now we have the chord.So I'm going to play the chords in my left hand.Now we're going to play a melody with the right hand.Okay?
Okay.So I just wrote a song live right there.So that would be a nice ballad or.Okay.Does it work as a ballad?Yeah, it sounds pretty as a ballad.How would it sound if we play it as a walking tune?
Okay, that's kind of cool.How about a little bit more F?
Wow, that's not bad.How about if it's a waltz?
I think the waltz worked the best.So after doing that.Oh, I like a waltz.There's that.So a blues.You could come out with a thousand melodies.I don't anybody steal my little tune right now.But that's how that works.I come up with some chords, I come up with a melody, I record it, I play different ideas, things come in.Sometimes I'll wake up from sleeping and I dreamt a melody.
And it's funny too.A lot of the time you'll dream a melody, a song.And you know you're dreaming and you're like, I don't want to forget this.I hope I remember this when I wake up.It's a strange thing.
Most of the time I do.And if I have a tape recorder or something near me and sing it into there, or go right to the instrument or have my trumpet next to me and pull that out, play it, you know, so that's my approach.But everybody has their own approach.But if you spend time at your instrument, you're going to come up with different melodies.And that's part of playing and improvising.
You're making melodies all the time.Every time you take a solo, you're writing a song.You're simultaneously writing music when you're improvising.And that's one of the good things about.When I say you should record yourself.
You might play a little phrase that when you hear it, it's so catchy that it turns into a melody.You know, that's how most melodies get written, from phrases that you played when you were improvising.You stumble upon something and you say to yourself, that's pretty cool.And it keeps going on and on in your head.You keep thinking about it and it becomes a song.
You know, I have a song on my new record called A Unifier, you know, And I kept hearing, because you're talking about pentatonix, and that melody is all pentatonic.
So it gets to that part and then, Okay, that's pretty much all pentatonic.It comes from these ideas and things.You could switch it around.You could say, You know, those are the same rhythms with different notes over the same chords.And that's why you have.
You know, over the bebop era, guys would write tunes, people would write.Musicians would write tunes that were classic sets of chord changes.And there'd be a million other million melodies that went with those same changes.Like when Charlie Parker wrote Confirmation, right.Or Donna Lee, which there's a discrepancy.Did Miles write it?Or Charlie Parker, who knows?But those are based over the standard song back home in Indiana, right?But it's a different melody.So that's the beauty of chord changes.
And if you come up with your own, the idea is to try to come up with your own.But I've wrote some.Written some melodies over, like Cherokee, you know, everybody knows Cherokee.
And when you first start to play, one of the big impressive things that you want to do is be able to play Cherokee fast, right?
You know, that's one of the things you go to jam sessions when you're young and you call Cherokee because it's, you know, play it real fast.It's not an easy tune to play, especially when you get to the bridge.So when I was.I guess I was 20, I came out a record called Reboppin, and I wrote my own melody over the Cherokee chord changes.And it went something like this.I haven't played this in forever and it's not easy.
So.And that's over those same chord changes.So that's the idea.So you can take confirmation.Charlie Parker's doing, Right?You take that and make your own melody over the same chords, See?And record yourself because you might play a couple different ways, you play it different, and then you'll lock into something that's catchy and that's when you can develop a song from that.So that's.It's really the way.A good way to approach composing your own songs.
And that pretty much is my approach.
He discusses choosing bandmates, staying open to new influences, and creating a unified group sound. The section emphasizes mutual respect, flexibility, and learning from other musicians.
Speaker A
Okay, so we kind of touched on these things.Working with a band, there's the musical element, but there's also the camaraderie.When working with other musicians, you want to try to make players that you have similar interests, but also guys that have very wide open musicians that have wide open mind.When I say guys, I mean everybody, by the way, it's like you guys doesn't mean just males, but I just want to clear that up.
But it just means, like, if you're hanging out and you're playing or you're not playing and you're flying to the gig, or you're driving in a car for many hours, musicians will always want to put music on.And you're obviously playing together because you're a group of musicians that kind of knows each other.You've heard each other other, and you like what each other does.So you want to play together.
But there's also somebody's going to be into other music or other things that you don't know about.And that's about keeping an open mind so you can stay fresh and learn things from the other musicians in the band.That's what you do.You continue to do them.That's how you grow as a musician yourself.
And you have to have.You have to let your band members have special space.You have to let them play, you have to let them breathe.You know, you hire people because you like the way they play.And you know, you're also a band leader, so there's other things that are involved with that.
But as a leader, you still want to make the band feel like everybody is a part and a leader in their own right.Musically, leader just means you're the one that your name's out there and you're the one that's responsible to make sure we keep working.All the pressure is on you for that.But when it comes to hitting a bandstand, everybody is involved with making a sound.And have a personality.
That's why each band, and depending on who plays it, has different personalities.I had a Trio together for 20 years.My first trio, then I had a couple bands.Each one of them sounded different.Each one influenced me another way.
Now I've had a quartet for the last six months that's influenced.I've got a tenor sax player now, Troy Roberts, and he's great, and he plays all these things.He's an example of somebody who could go in any direction.And that's important with me because I might go in any direction at any time.So you want to try to play with musicians that can already have interest in what you're doing, but then can open your ears up to other possibilities.
And that's what working with a band is all about.Not always about what am I doing.Everybody has to play.Because I've played with some guys like that that, you know, they wanted it all to be about them and they wanted the comping to be with them.Even if somebody else was solo and you pay attention to them, that's not how it works.
And the end result in the music, you can hear it, it is affected.It doesn't sound cohesive, it doesn't sound like one.That's the idea.There shouldn't be a break in that.Band means band, it's one piece, and that's how it has to sound.
If you take a rubber band and it snaps and it breaks, it hurts, you know?So you have to do everything that you can do to stay together musically, you know, and if you play for long enough, it's great.And sometimes familiarity happens.You have to make changes, you know, but it could still be a positive thing.That's very important to stay positive with the musicians you're playing with.
And I think that if you keep an open mind, you can learn so many things.Because I know musicians, I'll try to hip them to some things that I'm into because I'm wide open.I might be listening to Johnny Cash for hours, because that's a bad dude, man.Once you understand about music and feeling and how you feel when you hear, that's when you really get to another level of understanding that it's not necessarily about what style or whatever is going on.It's about how it makes you feel.
And you could be influenced by something that you totally don't play like that.You don't sound like that.But it's an influence from another perspective.The sincerity.Sincerity and the beauty of the music or the song or the artist.That you're listening to, and those are the kind of people you want to be involved with and musicians you want to be involved with and try to, you know, promote that within the group of guys that you're working with musicians, because, you know, it's important, and if they don't want to get there, then you'll figure it out.And, you know, you just positively say, okay, I want to try playing.And try to play with highest level musicians and highest caliber at all times that you can, you know, somebody that's on your level or above, because that affects what you're doing and you're growing and your possibilities as a musician and play as much as you can.
You know, if you're.If you're just starting out and you want to learn more and you want to just go around and hear as much as you can.
Once you can figure out two or three tunes that you feel confident enough that you could play, go to the jam session, sit in.You know, even if you feel like, oh, I messed up, you know what?That's how you learn.You just keep doing it and you stay at it.And that's my.
How I feel about that.
He talks about playing trumpet, breathing through phrases, and adding other keyboards like Rhodes and Clavinet. He then compares vintage Hammond organs with modern digital alternatives and their practical advantages.
Speaker A
All right, I want to talk a little bit about playing other instruments, other keyboard instruments.I mean, you know, everybody knows I play trumpet too, and I play trumpet in organ at the same time, usually a ballad.I could play the bass line here or with my foot, and I could play trumpet with my right hand.And it's nice playing.
If you play organ or any instrument, it's always nice to play another instrument.It gives you other ideas.Like for me, for example, playing a trumpet taught me to breathe more when I'm playing.See, if you're playing an instrument like this that's on all the time, you could play a note and it stays there forever.You don't have to think about breathing, but if you play a wind instrument, you have to take a breath, right?
So it allows you to breathe more when you're soloing or something.So you don't just play concert because you have to have space when you're playing.Space is.Is very important.If you just keep playing all the time and there's no breathing, the human element of the music starts to go away.
So that's why playing a wind instrument or even get a melode in with a keyboard on it, you have to blow in it and you run out of air.You have to take a breath.So my approach, when I'm playing the organ, when I'm pressing a key, I exhale I'm breathing out, and I run out of breath.Then I play again, run out of breath.So that allows that space to happen.Because, you know, when I was younger, I was playing a million things all the time.That was one of the things that Miles told me.Put some holes in there.And that playing the trumpet helped that or any wind.That's what I'm saying.If you don't want to bother playing, because the trumpet can drive you crazy, or saxophone, whatever, get a melody and play a blow into it, and that gives you that same approach.
Or just breathe out when you're playing.And when you run out of breath, take your hand off the keyboard, take a breath, go back to it.Also, you know, adding additional keyboards is fun.That's something I've been doing.I mean, I always kind of did that, and then I didn't, and I'm adding it.A lot of places now have their own Fender Rhodes, which is cool.You put it over here, you know, or some other kind of keyboard where you can get Rodes sounds and, you know, all these other cool things.Rose or a Wurlitzer or a Clavnet, you know, those classic kind of sounds.Sometimes I might even play some string pads or some synth things, you know, and that's a nice little element to add in, too, along with the organ sound.
It's interesting and it's good for you, to open you up and think of other ideas because it's a different sound, different, different approach.It's great musically.And nowadays with the technology, there's so many great instruments out there to get those type of sounds on.The best thing to do is to go out and check them out for yourself.You know, there's so many great things.There's Korg, there's Nord, there's Yamaha has great things.There's so much you should check out for your pianos and your roads and your whirlys.And if you're into that and you should think about it, I mean, even now you could buy just a MIDI controller, and if you have an iPhone or an iPad, you can load sounds into that.They're amazing.You know, technology is pretty crazy for that now.
Which brings us to talking about other options as an organ now.There's many of them out there.And, you know, I talked about it a little bit yesterday.These instruments, just.The B3 was made from 1955 and was discontinued in 1975.And all tone wheel organs were at that time.So your C3s, your A1, hundreds, all of them.So even if you have the newest possible tone wheel organ available, which would be from 1975.Right.So you're talking about some.
Something that's 45 years old that even if it just sat in somebody's house, there's certain components and the way they were built, certain things that deteriorate, but most of it can be rebuilt.And most, you know, I know this nowadays, or probably the last 10 years, 15 years, maybe longer, maybe 20 years.There's been much more of an interest in keeping the older instruments alive and working well among players.You know, their personal instruments, they really take care of them as good as they can, especially when they start to learn.If you start to learn, sometimes you buy something, you think it's good because you don't know a lot about it.
But then when you do further research or play another instrument and realize, wow, my organ, my ex needs a little work and there are little simple things that you can do.There's a lot of support for that for your personal instrument.And you can learn a lot of these things on your own.I started taking these things apart and putting them back together when I was 10 years old.And they're very basic.So there's a lot of things you can learn and do that.However, traveling all over the world, you're talking about an instrument that's all said and done, just the organ pedals and the benches.It's about 300 and something pounds.And when you put dollies and covers on and it's a massive instrument size wise, you can't travel with this everywhere.Some people do.
We're talking about jazz now.So if I could play this everywhere and have my own instrument every night, that was working right, that's great.But you can't.So you have to travel and you have to play at different venues.So they in most cases will rent an instrument.Especially when you go abroad.Some of the clubs now have some pretty decent instruments in them in the States, a couple of them in Europe too.
And some of the rental companies have a good instrument by luck, but they're still backline companies doing so much business with other things that to them, if you turn it on and it makes sound, it works, you know, and then they bring it to a venue, then there's a lot of other styles of music.Or if a bass player is required with a lot of bands that are using a Hammond organ, they pay no attention to the pedals, right?So sometimes they'll show up with no pedals, or they show up some really jacked up pedals like they just don't work right or notes are sticking and ugh.There's so many things that you kind of have to have a little bit of technical abilities to tune the instrument up, get them ready for your performance.But, you know, I'm getting wearier and wearier over that the more I play.
So with the technology now, you can have a great sound on an instrument that's not a vintage instrument.Over the last 20 years, there's been many attempts.In fact, even when they stopped making the tone wheel organs in 1975, there were attempts to try to make something lightweight.There were other companies that made things with draw bars that sounded pretty good, but the technology just wasn't at the point where they can make it feel good, look decent.Lightweight still wasn't as the light wet meant.Instead of £300, it was £150.You're still talking about something that's difficult to move around with, but now you have.There's several options out there.People like to say clone wheels.I don't really like that because you know what, they're still organs.You know, they should be respected as an instrument, as what they are, and they are organs.
They might not be this organ, but it's a modern version of an organ.And there's several of them.
People ask my opinion about them all the time.The best thing to really do is to go out and check them out yourself.Once you have a little bit of knowledge about them, you know what sound you want.And that's the thing is a vintage organ.Every single one of them, as you know, has their own personality and they sound different.
You know, there's things you could do to make them sound similar to one another, but they're never going to sound.And another thing, feel alike.You know, I have several of these and none of them are alike.I love them all for different reasons.And there's certain little tweaks and things that I could do that I could make them sound pretty close to one another, but making them sound exactly the same.And yes, I have some favorites.You know, there are some favorites, but if any of them are working good, you like them.But with the new ones, there's, like I said, there's several companies making lightweight alternatives to this, and they have pedals.And my biggest opinion was at first, okay, now, sound wise, I think anybody that tells you they could tell the difference between some of these new instruments, one of these older ones, if it was in a closed room and it was coming through a Leslie speaker, because let's Be fair.
A big part of the Hammond sound vintage is because of the Leslie speaker, right?
So let's be fair.Let's take one of the new ones, put it in a Leslie speaker, close the curtain.You're going to have a rough time, and I don't care which one it is to be unable to tell that it's not an original Hammond.So then it comes down to how it feels.Feels.And that's something that they're still working on because there's a lot of things involved with that.You know, you have a key, first of all, okay, you just see this much of the key.The key is bolted on a key channel.That's another.So an actual key is about this long.
So the way that key travels up and down, because of the length, if you make it shorter, it's going to have a different angle on it.These are things you don't realize, but that's why something might feel.Feel different.But again, as technology goes on, these things become better.And I'll tell you right now that things are feeling really good.I've played several of them, and they all got a good vibe to them.You know, I'm not going to give you a direct opinion which one I think is better, you know, because that's my personal choice.And I don't want anybody to say, well, that's why I'm going to.You need to check it out for yourself, you know, and there's a lot of them out there, and I'm happy about that.And eventually it'll get to the point where I want to play one of those probably all the time.
Because when they show up, everything works.The new pedal boards, I'll say this, they feel better than the old pedal boards.That's something.They've actually improved on the pedal boards on an older organ like this.This.This one is feeling really good.It's got new felt, it's got new everything, but it's still very.You know, they're crude.They're not.You know, they just.
It's.It's all very mechanical, you know.Now they have better switching.They could use lighter lumber that's still durable.And, you know, it just works, you know.You know, you're not going to get a note sticking.Like, sometimes I'll have my organ, my own organ.Everything's new on it.Everything's perfect.You show up in a certain situation, a certain club, there's a hum, because the organ doesn't like the power of that place.
That's not going to happen.On one of your new digital organs, you're not going to have noises, you're not going to have hums.So anybody that gives you and frowns upon you because you're not using an original vintage tone wheel organ, just say, okay, you're going to move it everywhere for me and I'll have it.You know, you know you can't do that.And honestly, I don't think there's really any need for it.
These are great instruments, easy to move, and they work.And you have support from the companies that make them because they're still making these.You know, you get a vintage organ especially, you know, you find a lot of good deals now.And when you find good deals, you'll find, okay, this is a good organ, but there's going to be a lot of things you have to do, do to it, and a lot of them you could do on your own.But we will say these things are built.These instruments are built incredibly.They really.I don't think they intended for these to last this long.And I told you, I put this organ together from a bv, but the tone wheel generator and the manuals are from an instrument that was made in 1947.And those.
Okay, I rebuilt everything.I put new felts, I put new key combs, I recapped the tone generator, but all the notes worked, all the keys worked, all the contacts worked.The bus bars are the same.Everything's original.Okay, I put a B3 drawbar, bass.
I made it.Look, if you sit here and you sit down at it, everything looks like a B3.Everything.You wouldn't know it was a BV because the case of a BV is identical to a B3.But the point is, you know, it's still working, you know, but there are components that are older that can go at any time.
But there's enough stuff out there that you can get to keep it working.But these are really for the home, in my opinion.Or if you can move it to certain gigs.I have Oregons on the west coast, organs on the east coast.So if I'm playing in certain areas, I could have my own instrument with me or my own box, like we like to call it.
And that's really nice.And when I can't, there's rentals and, you know, more and more, you'll see more of the digital organs because they work properly.And I don't want anybody to be embarrassed to be using one of those.Or if you have a single manual, they have a lot of good single manuals that's okay too.I understand.
Not everybody can get a van.And as long as you're getting that single sound, it should not matter what's under your fingers.The sound is there, you're playing musical ideas.Then the instrument should be secondary because that's really up to you to make that happen.And, you know, people will get used to that.Things move on, times change and we have to change with them.It's important.
He answers questions about pedal boards, maintenance, and the realities of traveling with an organ. He shares a story about being unprepared for a John McLaughlin gig and the importance of clear communication.
Speaker A
It's part of innovation.
We have some questions.
Oh, okay.Oh, yeah, so that's a good question.
Yeah, I mentioned that before.The pedals, the newer organs have a very good feeling.Pedal board.And they're built well because on an old pedal board, if you know about that, these pedals come out, you know, the contacts for the pedals are inside that make the notes, but these pedals come out and there's little razor blade type metal springs as they call them, on top that break very easily, that you could cut yourself very easily.And the pedals are very heavy.
But with modern day pedals, all that's built onto one unit so you don't have to take them in and out.That's another reason why everything is working in a better way, you know, and that's always great to not have to worry about that because a lot of the problems become the pedals.You know, I'm playing and I have to have them right?And you know, if one goes out, you know, if it goes out up here, you can kind of get away with it.Or if one sticks like this and then you have to push your drawbar in and not use any pedals, that's super, super annoying.
And I play the organ.I need everything working at all times.And once you get to the point where you get used to having all your things working, you feel the same way and that's what you want to do.You want to have it that way.So that pretty much covers, I'm going to play something for you.
Trying to think of what I want to play for you.
And before I do that.
Well, I kind of already covered that when somebody asked how do you pick your band members?You want to pick band members that have similar interests that you do, but also like other things, because that's how you can advance and get more ideas.And you want to get along.You don't have to be best friends, but you got to get along and where you could be together, travel and have a good time and make good music together when you're on the road, that's what's important, is that Everybody gets along and get as much rest as you can because sometimes you have to do some crazy traveling.There's some very crazy traveling schedules.
You know, that's something to consider when you want to do this.Because if you want to play and you want to travel and do things like that, you have to be prepared for that.
Oh yeah, somebody asked a good one now.
I got the gig with John McLaughlin in 1993.He called me and said, I want to put a band together with you and Dennis Chambers on drums.And I was like, wow, cool.This is going to be fun, you know.Organ Trio with John McLaughlin.
So he sent me a pile of music and I didn't read a note of music at that time.I mean, yeah, if I looked at it I could say every good boy does fine.I could figure out what the note was.But I was not a sight reader.He didn't send me any tapes or anything to listen to.And I also didn't tell him that I needed to hear something to play it.Anyway, it's just a funny story and this is.I'm telling you this as being prepared if you get called for a gig on any level.But this is where I was and this is what happened.So he sends me all this music and then so he sends it to me about a week before and so it's time to go.And the first place we do is we're going to go to London and we're going to rehearse.
Rehearse.So I fly over in my first class ticket and I get there and everything's great.Staying at the Hilton Hotel in London.And the next day is the first rehearsal and we get there setting up.
John says, so what do you want to start with?Would you have a chance to really go over?I said, well you sent me a lot of music, but I don't really read music.He said, you don't read music?He said, how do you play like that with all that technique and all those things without knowing?
I said, I'm self taught.I really.He says, oh my goodness.I said, but if you would have sent me a tape, you know, this is before cell phones and all that too now.So the communication was a little different.
I said, you didn't send a recording.He said, so you don't know any of this music?No.And we were rehearsing for three days and then we were hitting the road right after that.If you know anything about the record, Tokyo Live.
This was some difficult music.And I thought, well, you know, I'll get over there.And I was 22 at the time.So I'll get over there and I'll talk them in and we'll just play some tunes.No, we were going to play that music.
So I'm like, man, I have to learn.He wanted me to play every note the way he wanted.He wanted unison lines together.And I thought, man, how am I going to learn this music?So he played everything with his guitar that day at the rehearsal.All the notes into a cassette recorder.And then I was like, man, can you get me a little keyboard or something to bring to my hotel room to tonight?So that's how I could go over these and learn these.And he says, yeah, we could do that.And, man.And he was so patient.Like, he was really cool.Because if somebody pulled that on me now, I'd be pretty upset with him that they didn't know the music or didn't communicate to me, say, I'm not a reader.Can you send me a recording?I didn't do any of that.
So being young and not thinking.So I went to the hotel room and I was up all night.I mean, it was a lot of music.It was like 11 tunes I had to have down.I had to memorize them because I didn't read.I couldn't have a chart, so I had to memorize it.And it's like.It was like unbelievable, man.I had tears in my eyes learning this music.But I learned it.
I learned it.And I also learned, don't ever do that again.Really communicate and be open and honest about your situation and which way you need to learn, because everybody learns differently.There's no right or wrong how to do it, but you have to let somebody know when they call you for a gig.And that was like a major situation, but every gig is important.
So, you know, your local guy calls you up and say, I want to play.We're going to play Friday at this club and we're going to play the tunes from, you know, Jimmy McGriff.Record Jimmy McGriff at the organ.Get the record and learn the tunes, you know, or ask him.Or if you are a reader, get some charts or however.
But be prepared and be honest and communicate about the way.That is the best way for you to learn, because that's important.Just want to tell you that story because that's what happened to me.
He closes with 'Lush Life' and reflects on how standards keep revealing new ideas over time. He finishes with advice on comping, soloing over 'Impressions,' and a final blues sendoff.
Speaker A
Okay, so with that, I'll play a little tune for you and we'll wrap things up after that.See, what do I feel like playing?See, here's.When we Go into one of those intros.
It.
Sam.
It.
All right.Anybody know the name of that tune?That's Lush Life.Great tune.A lot of chords, a lot of things going on in there.And you know what?It's endless.I've been playing that song for 30 years and maybe longer.And every time I play it, I hear other ideas and other approaches.And I'm going to work on it some more later.
Because I just thought of some other things you could do on there.It's pretty amazing because when I play these songs, there is no patterns.I don't have anything worked out.I know the basic chord progression, but I play it pretty much different every time, even though I know the tune.And some of these songs like this, I haven't played that in a while.
So it's a fresher approach to it.Because I'm thinking of some other ideas and a different way to play it every time.This sometimes can drive your other band members crazy.Because, you know, guitar players in particular, they really have to be on the case to hear these different chord voicings every night.Everything's so different.
But that's when I use the phrase, when in doubt, lay out.So that goes for us, too.If somebody's playing a tune that they play different chords or whatever guitar player wants to play chords and chord melodies.Try to stick to the bass note.And don't play too much on your right hand, you know, because, again, you want to stay out of the way.
That's important to do.
So we're going to wrap it up here in a few minutes.We got a little time and got a couple other questions.So there was some questions about impressions and other solo ideas on that.I'll just play a few things that you can look at.You know, when you get to watch this again.
And you can look at it again and I'll play a few things for you.There's, you know, there's two chords, right?So it doesn't seem like, oh, what am I going to play over two chords.Of course, that derives from so what?From Miles.And then Coltrane's answer to that.Use those same two chords.That goes back to what I was saying.You could play a different melody over the same set of chords.So instead of, you know, Coltrane wanted a bass walking and he wanted a melody.
So some good solo ideas to play on.Now let's just play up.Slow it down a little.
Oh, that's another thing I should explain.You can go up a half step before you get to your next chord.Even though maybe, you know, sometimes the bass line will follow you.And that's one of the great things about playing the organ.You have total control over your own harmony.The bass player follows with your right hand.You don't have to guess.Since you're playing a bass line, it can go where you want it to go, wherever you feel like going harmonically.So there's two changes in there, but we know the next one's E flat minor.So let's play something a half step above that to bring us to the E flat minor.So a half step above the E flat is E. Right.So you can play a little quick phrase to bring us to the E flat.So let's start back in D minor, E flat, E minor to bring us into the E flat.
Or you could play what we call a 25 to bring you to the next chord.Right?So 25 to bring us back to D minor would be E, A, E minor, a seven.So when we're in A.When we're in that E flat minor and we want to get back to D minor, we can play a quick 25 to bring us to D minor, which gives us more solo ideas.
So E flat minor.
See, that works smoothly again.
Or you could play the 25 to E flat too.
Or you could go down chromatically, start at F, work your way down to E flat.So there's all kinds of ways to do that.So that's pretty interesting too.So hopefully that will give you a few ideas for that to work over.Impressions.
Well, we're going to wrap it up now.I'm going to play another one for you.We're going to call this the so Long Blues.But we're going to play some funky blues for you this time.And we're going to pick the key of G for that.
And here will be some cool stuff.It was a great time.And we'll see you somewhere on the gig somewhere.Be sure to say hello, take care of yourselves, and shed keep shedding.And you get to where you want to.
Sam.
It.