Playing Outside the Changes? Here's a Different Way to Think About It!

Pianist, author, and human loudspeaker Jeremy Siskind shares a way to think about playing outside the changes that doesn't need a lot of theory or scales!

[alphaomega]

I'm not a jazz piano player but I follow this channel to learn about music. For years I've been recording myself just playing the keys of the keyboard and seeing what sounds good to me. In the last 3 or 4 years I've been trying to get my head around music theory to try to understand what makes combinations of notes sound good and how to combine chord sequences. The concepts expounded in this video are liberating. Thank you.

[felixtani]

Very cool! Hear a lot of Mehldau in this.

[kwixotic]

I could see the song "Round Midnight" lending itself to this kind of unorthodox approach and Monk would love it.

[chieflief]

Many years ago, when I knew even less than I know now, I tried something along these lines at a jazz jam... yeah, the excellent and experienced house bass player wasn't happy. "Play the changes!" he shouted

[urbster]

super cool way to gather new ideas while playing a tune!

[paulelliott]

Great video, very interesting. Definitely tune-ing into a different way of thinking.

[grantkondo]

I would love to hear you improv a solo for a standard tune in this way!! I know you did that just now with tune up but I'd love to hear you solo with swing, 251s as you would normally, then "out" like in this video.

Sounds fresh to me, i like the sounds!

[bobbachelor]

This is really good ! Not many jazz guys have the balls to play "out". I"ve recently been checking out Andrew Hill and Herbie Nchols. Your version of "Tune Up" is legit !

[alexanthony]

Love your playing and your videos especially those about jazz harmony. Super interesting… I’m not a pianist btw, that’s how good your channel is.. thank you for sharing your creativity and knowledge! 🙏🙏🙏

[martincloke]

Found this really interesting thanks. You're really covering the UK musicians last couple of weeks! I'll check out the tune you transcribed also.

[brian]

The video(tunes) got better toward the end when the bigger picture came into focus. I guess that I might use this for a few measures for tension but not as a whole style.

[pianoman_JP]

This is not a looney toon, can't imagine me doing that...yet! Need to get back to your Book 3.
Question: How do you approach playing out when you have guitar or vibes in the group?

[neilfaeskene]

Your website is currently not responding :(

[barryo]

I’ll use two letters from your word and improvise the rest. Tone

[GizzyDillespee]

I've been listening more to King Gizzard than to Dizzy Gillespie for months now. So, you don't have to apologize to ME that this video is merely jazz-adjacent🤣.

In this video, there's a little magic in the part of the solo that's transcribed, which is missing from the practice examples afterwards. Sure, that's why they call it "practice"... nevertheless, I wonder if there's an accurate way to conceptualize what that difference is? I don't think it's a simple answer like "modal mixture", or analyzing the specifics of each example using functional harmony. That stuff can be a great play-by-play of one specific magical moment... but then, someone else will try a similar series of plays, and the magic isn't there. It's the same thing with over-generalizations... you can say it involves "defying expectations", but I can show tons of examples where that falls flat. On some level, I doubt that there's a consistent answer, that can be conceptualized, to that question. The mafic definitely is imputed by the listener, but it's not entirely independent to the specific music. Some music is more conducive to that feeling of wonder. And I don't mean Hollywood tropes that are used in wizard and dragon movies.

Once it gets closer to Christmas, I'll be thinking about standard jazz and bebop more often again. Maybe that's SAD, but for now, I'm most interested in experiencing magic in music, regardless of genre. Probably, if you could come up with a formula, it would lose its mystery?🤣 However... for example, I still find magic in modal mixture even after I learned how to do it by the book, with intention and recognizing what I was doing. Same with lots of other techniques - learning and recognition hasn't killed any of the magic. But then, I suspect it can't be reduced to a simple formula. And yet, I also suspect that AI will be able (probably already is) to produce something that stirs those feelings in many listeners... if only because it copies the works of people whose music has had that effect.

That's mainly what attracted me to music that's been called jazz - the improvisational aspect bringing out magical moments... and also the somewhat meditative process that happens when you're uninvolved with obtaining either magical or mundane results. In tgis endeavor, I've found that it helps more if I tune my process, rather than consciously to apply specific results-oriented techniques. IDK whether that's the best approach, since it's been mostly trial and error, in that respect. Thanks for the vid. When you said this tune was written by Kit, I thought of Night Rider's car composing, and I was like, "I always assumed the talking car was a synthwave producer. Very interesting."🤣

[alonwiesz]

There was just a tiny bit of girl from ipenema in c major there at 06:45

[federicomelo]

Without the swing feel, it sounds like Wagner's Operas.