Geoffrey Dean
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Interview Transcript
Read the full transcript of the interview with Geoffrey Dean below.
Geoffrey Dean (00:00)
My name is Dr. Jeffrey Dean. I am from McLean, Virginia, Washington, D.C. area. I was a classical pianist turned jazz and I also wrote a book during my dissertation called Kenny Kirkland’s Harmonic and Rhythmic Language, a guide for pianists, but really all that harmony and rhythmic stuff is really good for anybody. They don’t have to be a pianist. It’s just a lot of language and a lot of concepts.
Quentin Walston (00:22)
Yeah.
That’s
I like your setup. I see you got a nice collection behind you.
Geoffrey Dean (00:32)
Yeah
man, mostly hand-me-down. Now this one I got because my mentor Donald Brown told me to find these. There’s a set of four albums from Chick Corea called Jazz on a Saturday Afternoon. And he told me to get that stuff. I couldn’t find it for years. had to just, no one’s ever digitized it. But it’s a pretty cool little set of stuff. It’s got Dizzy Gillespie sitting on a jam session with a bunch of New York guys from like 1968. So, but yeah man, I’m always trying to just add stuff that I like and
Quentin Walston (00:44)
Ooh.
Oh man.
Geoffrey Dean (01:02)
stuff that you know new stuff and try and listen to that just round out the collection you got some bucks over there man you got a whole bunch of stuff
Quentin Walston (01:10)
I got books, I got a bunch of boxes on this side, but I got a collection myself. me… I met Chick Corea once. He played at JMU. I was one year out of JMU, but I still knew all the ways to get around, so they had security, and I was like, but they don’t know about this door. So I got backstage and met him, and then…
Geoffrey Dean (01:21)
Cool, man.
Hahaha
Quentin Walston (01:38)
And then apparently people were very upset that a student got backstage.
Geoffrey Dean (01:42)
it’s okay.
And I know Chick’s always been a nice guy from everything I heard, very welcoming, returned a lot of people’s letters and things like that. What do you got there?
Quentin Walston (01:46)
Super nice, yeah.
This is something I picked up at an antique store. guess it was like super early, but it’s like out. Like everything is.
Geoffrey Dean (01:58)
Interesting. Yeah, like that free period. See, I know there’s a bunch of recordings
during that period of time. I’ve only nitpicked because I only listen to so much free stuff, but I still always want to know what’s out there.
Quentin Walston (02:09)
Yeah, and I mean with like, I like Chicks Free stuff, or at least on that record, because it was still like, filled with his really cool digital kind of lines and stuff. So.
Geoffrey Dean (02:22)
Yeah. And I didn’t know how much of that free stuff, if
it’s all on piano or if he’s also playing it on Rhodes, because that’s what like Miles had him on at the time. don’t, you know, don’t know navigating all that, what the deal is there, but so many, so many Chick albums too. It’s like every time I think I sort of know, like dude just wrote so much music and played so much music.
Quentin Walston (02:33)
Yeah, I got to listen back to it. It’s been a it’s been
Yeah,
I’ve never I mean I Never done a big deep dive into like fusion and stuff So like I’ve been to like the obligatory return to forever stuff like 500 miles high, but yeah
Geoffrey Dean (02:52)
Yeah.
Yeah, me neither. Yeah,
I’ve just, you know, picked bits and pieces and I feel like that’s all you can do unless you just want to become a total chick disciple, but like, you know, you pick which stuff you want.
Quentin Walston (03:07)
today I want to dig into.
Kenny Kirkland and the other kind of I guess in your article you mentioned the four pillars of modern jazz. This is gonna be like the four pillars plus one because we want to talk about Kenny Kirkland. McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett and then Kenny Kirkland. And for this interview I want it to be beneficial for
Geoffrey Dean (03:22)
Yeah. Yeah.
Quentin Walston (03:37)
people that are just jazz fans that aren’t artists, but I know as we dig into these artists, can’t avoid talking about music theory, because that’s one of the things that makes them sound the way they sound. So I think it’s okay if we dip our toe into some theory, or dive into theory either way. And then at the end, I want to give some advice for teachers, because I always want to encourage teachers, whether they’re a high school jazz
Geoffrey Dean (03:50)
Sure.
Yeah, whatever.
Quentin Walston (04:07)
teacher or college teacher or just a private teacher like we want to get jazz more into the pedagogy. So I’d like to spend some time at the end talking about that but why don’t we dive into let’s go through the four pillars and then we’ll close out with Kenny Kirkland. Does that sound good?
Geoffrey Dean (04:14)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, absolutely,
absolutely.
Quentin Walston (04:30)
So let’s
talk about McCoy Tyner first. I think McCoy Tyner is one of the only ones of this list, McCoy, Chick, Herbie, and Keith Jarrett, that pretty much stayed acoustic for his entire career. So he’s kind of a good, I think, bridge for us from straight ahead jazz into the new stuff. But how would you describe McCoy Tyner’s sound? Or what’s unique about McCoy when you listen to him?
Geoffrey Dean (04:46)
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, it’s nice that we have early McCoy playing with Coltrane and like that Coltrane sound record. mean, McCoy very much comes out of the tradition, the bebop idiom. know, originally he’s playing with that kind of language, but he’s also exploring…
rhythms and then eventually he explores the shapes, especially what we’ll call chordal harmony, what we’ll get into that. then also pentatonics, I know people kind of throw those two things out, chordal stuff and pentatonics, as if that’s all McCoy did, but there’s so many levels of nuance and detail to that and where he takes those things. McCoy also really brought up the energy on the piano. It goes in with all that stuff.
wanting to grab low notes to add like almost a boom and and then go up and I think that also
Quentin Walston (05:49)
Thank
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (05:57)
you know, he’s playing, eventually he’s playing with Coltrane for like five years and Coltrane and him are both kind of taking that idea of the sheets of sound where McCoy lays a foundation harmonically and then whether or not he wants to stay inside of that sound, inside meaning like you grab an F, you know, and all you play is F minor stuff or if he wants to grab an F and play something a half step up, suddenly it sounds really out. And he’s, you know, using those pentatonic languages
Quentin Walston (06:08)
Thanks.
Geoffrey Dean (06:27)
spell those shapes in really clear ways and yeah and then he can access them whether or not he wants to yeah basically consonants first dissonance or dissonance first consonants and I can always go to the piano too I don’t know how it’ll come through with the mic and I don’t know how much you want example wise but I’m always happy to if it works and if not don’t worry about it
Quentin Walston (06:47)
Let’s
hear the piano behind you.
Geoffrey Dean (06:51)
Pin is
right here.
Quentin Walston (06:55)
cool. Yeah, so why don’t you just play a few notes and we can see if it comes through.
Geoffrey Dean (06:56)
Yeah, I don’t know.
Yeah, exactly. I don’t know, you know.
Quentin Walston (07:09)
Yeah, man, Google and Zoom have their work cut out for them. Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (07:16)
someone’s doing it.
Yeah, yeah, just to illustrate those things, like, know, this is harmony stacked in thirds is what we were talking about tertial harmony and McCoy, you you move through a scale.
one way, but McCoy decided that he liked these shapes in fourths better, which become this more open and more modern sound that every pianist ever since has at least had to tap into this. So that’s a whole, you different sound. And then he’ll couple it with the left hand boom stuff. That’s just me playing F minor stuff. Maybe I go up a half step for it.
you know, to make it sound more dissonant, which is what McCoy will do. So like, yeah, the side steps, those kinds of things, you know, he does that stuff really well. And he does it exactly.
Quentin Walston (08:11)
Yeah. Yeah.
He does, and it’s so fluid.
And you mentioned before the nuance to it, because when people wanna just sound like McCoy, yeah, they’ll do the open fifth, and then they’ll just play pentatonic, but I mean, his pentatonics were so, I guess you have to reuse the term nuance. Like if he’s in F minor,
When he’s playing in, he might use a C minor pentatonic. So you have some notes and then, yeah, when he’s sidestepping, he’ll go by half steps. And then I’ve also analyzed some of this stuff where he’ll move in whole steps. And that really creates it out. Like he’s an F minor and then he’s doing like C, B flat, A flat, G flat, E minor. And then he shifts back to F and you’re like, what did I just go through?
Geoffrey Dean (08:59)
Yes. Yes.
Right, right.
And he wrote, there’s a song, I believe it’s on the Real McCord, there’s a song of his called Four By Five, where it’s like he wrote…
Quentin Walston (09:18)
Mmm.
Geoffrey Dean (09:21)
Is that? Yeah, I believe that’s it. Yeah, where he’s moving around in whole steps. He wrote that almost as a practice device. You know, it’s like E, F sharp, it’s like, so he was practicing that and that is something that was brought up to me is that he doesn’t just move them around in the same way. He’ll move around in whole steps. I’ve even was given a lesson by a pianist named Dave Frank who would go…
Quentin Walston (09:37)
Yeah.
He’s from the
Tristano school, right?
Geoffrey Dean (09:45)
He is from
the Tristano School. Yeah, I studied with him for about three years through Zoom lessons when I left Berkeley. I really got into the Tristano, Dave McKenna kind of solo piano. I was like walking bass, so I continued with Dave. But he, at one point, I went into the McCoy thing with him because he, you know.
Quentin Walston (09:54)
Mmm, me too.
Geoffrey Dean (10:01)
articulated it well, but he talked about McCall going up a minor third, down a minor second, up a minor third, down a minor second, and that eventually will land you back at home if you keep doing that all the way up. So very intricate ways to move around that it’s hard enough to think about it slow, but to execute it fast.
Quentin Walston (10:16)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (10:21)
which is what McCoy is doing
Quentin Walston (10:21)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (10:22)
without it even seeing horror. That’s where the trick is. can sort of talk about these concepts real fast. Like you say, you can become a McCoy clone in about one minute by learning the low thing and that, but to really be great at it is just such another level of fluidity like you’re talking about.
Quentin Walston (10:36)
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s such a point.
Geoffrey Dean (10:45)
So, you know, he worked it out and he kept working it out. I think I talked in that article at the end, like he’s barely doing any pentatonics or anything in that Coltrane sound. And I like that as an example of where he starts. And then, you know, he plays that same song. It’s like 1975 on that song for my lady. you know, Donald Brown had me transcribe that. That’s why I did it. And every chord man, like if it’s a G minor, he’s playing like a C sharp minor pentatonic.
Quentin Walston (10:46)
Little bit.
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (11:10)
He was going out. Like everything is the tritone sub for what’s there and he just took it. He takes it as far as he wanted to take it and it shows you can go really out with it or you can store, you know, look at him in the early 60s and find a more in-hybrid.
Quentin Walston (11:25)
I wish that.
that the later McCoy when he’s really matured on those concepts is more talked about. like, even if like, like if you do like Google, like a McCoy Tyner transcription, maybe you’re like, man, I want to get, I want to know what he’s doing. Maybe I don’t have the time to sit down and transcribe it myself note for note. Almost everything out there is in his early period, either blues on the corner or it’s a love Supreme and a love Supreme has some great
But you can tell he’s still figuring out this pentatonic language
Geoffrey Dean (12:02)
Totally,
And he continues to just explore harmonically too. I had a teacher, there’s a record he did in like 89 with George Benson and it’s fantastic. It’s not his record so he’s kind of doing some really nice comping and like, I don’t know, I was told to transcribe an intro for a tune of his there and it’s very forward thinking still. Some stuff that he would not have been doing in the 60s that…
Quentin Walston (12:29)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (12:30)
He was doing it in the late 80s. So I do think it’s unexplored turf. There needs to be almost like a McCoy from 75 on book or something. I would love that. Totally,
Quentin Walston (12:37)
Yeah, yeah.
Well, let’s
pivot to the next pianist that also used a lot of fourths, chordal harmony, used a lot of side steps, but still had a very distinct sound, which I would say would be Chick Corea. mean, so yeah, let’s open it up. What does Chick Corea sound like to you? What are some of your favorite things about Chick Corea sound?
Geoffrey Dean (12:55)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think it’s the best transition. think that he absorbed McCoy while still being his own individual better than pretty much anyone. you know, again, Chick comes out of, he comes out of tradition.
I know his biggest influences, that’s why I really like that Fungi Mama solo, because he’s still playing like his influences. The first, the first, I’ll go this piano. Like basically.
Chick comes out of Three People before he becomes himself, which is Monk, which he does a lot of kind of sidestep stuff, like that’s his Monk kind of stuff. And then he comes out of Bud Powell where he’s just playing bebop. And then he eventually comes out of McCoy where he’s playing the chordal stuff, but he creates his own language. And we can eventually talk about how there’s a little crossover in the rhythmic stuff that he does with Herbie. Like Chick and
Herbie seemed to cross over in some of that more rhythmic tight stuff. yeah, basically Chick became as he crystallized, he becomes like,
lighter version of McCoy. McCoy is very heavy, right? Like and Chick, if you listen to that, now he sings, now he sobs. He is playing at blazing tempos and still able to keep his left hand so light and his right hand so light while playing this very new language. He’s playing very modern language that he kind of crafted himself, a lot of it I have to say. I mean he’s grabbing those chordal voicings, but you know Chick also
Quentin Walston (14:25)
you
Geoffrey Dean (14:48)
did some creative stuff like if you look at that matrix solo where he’s taking just a regular maybe a voicing we do for the blues or something and he’s moving that around in minor thirds so he’ll see that as an F7 voicing that is an F7 voicing so you can be playing blues all day and if you’re in it sounds like that and you start doing some of the chick stuff and so
Quentin Walston (15:04)
you
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (15:16)
It’s like very creative use of ideas that were already there, but applying them in his own ways. And so Chick moves those voicings around in minor thirds, right? Like diminished stuff. There’s a lot of diminished stuff in Chick’s stuff. More stolen. Yeah.
Quentin Walston (15:28)
Yeah Yeah, I’m gonna say Exactly
that I have a book called the diminished cycle that talks about exactly that moving those thirds because all those thirds are in the diminished or those Chordal voicings when you move them in minor thirds, they’re in the diminished scale in there all Are their chord tones or altered extension? So it all fits
Geoffrey Dean (15:48)
Right.
Right,
right. So it’s like a very creative way to use what we have maybe in not the most traditional way, maybe not just grabbing that same standard stock voice thing that we all start learning. But then Chick really was good at growing and finding new ways to be creative. Chick also was obviously a prodigious composer. He just never stopped composing. yeah.
Quentin Walston (16:01)
Thank
you
Geoffrey Dean (16:20)
I don’t know of anyone who can play as fast and still sound light without tripping over themselves than Chick. I really think… Yeah. So crisp and so lack of tension. And then of course I think it’s worth mentioning that…
Quentin Walston (16:26)
That’s still crisp.
Geoffrey Dean (16:35)
of all these four guys that Chick is definitely the one who embraces Latin music the most. You know, geez, I don’t know of many Latin threes at all, tunes and three that are Latin and Chick has two, think La Fiesta and this song called What Was, which is off of Now He Sings Next Stop. So like it’s not even only one kind of Latin, like he’s again, very good at taking that music and finding ways to be creative with it in ways that other people just…
Quentin Walston (16:41)
Mm-hmm.
See you in a
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (17:03)
They weren’t, I don’t know. And so, yeah.
Quentin Walston (17:05)
Yeah,
creativity. I remember coming across Matrix and Naughty Sings Naughty Sobs in college. it was just so ear opening. I remember our professor was like, does anybody know the form of this? Like, you just put it on. I never heard it. I mean, really, it’s a 12-bar blues. Like, yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (17:19)
Yeah.
You would never know the way that, I
mean, you really have to do a lot of listening to just know that right away. And that’s what my, that’s where Donald Brown, Donald Brown has some of the biggest ears I’ve ever heard. His, his, his ears are incredible. And I was so happy when I was getting into these sounds, cause I came into the music through Ahmad Jamal and then bebop like Hampton Hawes, bluesy, the soulful stuff. And then I was like, Donald, this is a lot on my ears. And he was like,
Quentin Walston (17:45)
Mm.
Geoffrey Dean (17:50)
Even when he first heard it, he told me he had to digest it in chunks and let it kind of settle and then keep going back through it. And eventually his ears warmed up to those sounds. I’m always amazed at the people I meet who are like, I came into the music through Chick Corea. I’m like, man, you got some big ears or you got something special. Because that was intimidating music for me for a while. And it’s still, I mean, I have a lot of respect for it. It is hard and it is, you know.
Quentin Walston (17:59)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (18:19)
Yeah, technical and so.
Quentin Walston (18:21)
It’s fascinating to listen to. think that’s what is always, like the analyst in me just like sparks up and is just so delighted because I’m just like listening like, what was that? Why was that? How was that? Like it’s so fascinating. Like I have the transcription pulled up and like, I mean, he’s doing planing differently than.
Geoffrey Dean (18:41)
Yeah.
Quentin Walston (18:46)
McCoy a little like he’ll come up with this little idea and then just move that idea around Where McCoy will move a whole scale around so?
Geoffrey Dean (18:55)
Right, right. Like
there’s that thing in Matrix, well he’ll grab this as a sus chord. Chick does that and he’s just grabbing a certain sus chord he likes. And just moving around in whole steps, but it’s such a refreshing sound and he does it so, you know, naturally. It doesn’t sound academic when he’s doing that stuff. That’s the big thing.
Quentin Walston (19:22)
Yeah, that’s really well put.
Geoffrey Dean (19:24)
And it’s really
easy to sound academic with McCoy. A little harder, you can, you know, chick, I don’t know. It’s harder to fake chick. But it’s the same thing with someone, you know, know saxophonists are all super sensitive about this with you want to study Coltrane, but you don’t want to just sound like Coltrane. So we all struggle with that with the greats from our own instruments where you want it to happen to what they’re doing without just…
Quentin Walston (19:33)
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s a good point.
Geoffrey Dean (19:51)
ripping it blatantly and doing nothing else with it, or know what I mean? Or not just, you know, making it part of your entire language. But that’s, with that, I’d say on that McCoy thing, you can still hear him practicing certain licks and certain rhythms. So like, we’re all trying to interject what we’re learning at any time. And so, you know, that’s part of the balance of being a student.
Quentin Walston (19:54)
You know.
Yeah.
I’m remembering this interview I saw with Chick and I think it gets at the idea of like academia and just inserting what you practice. And this interview led me to believe that that Chick was operating more from his ear than like, here’s this hip thing that I’ve constructed and crafted. I’m going to insert it because this person was asking him like, hey, I love on this record, this amazing
can you tell me what you were working on at the time to do this?” And he was like, I don’t know, you listen to the record and tell me.
Geoffrey Dean (20:52)
Yeah. Yeah.
Quentin Walston (20:53)
like
that was either like a teaching moment or maybe that’s like a little window into Chick’s development where he’s like, hey, I’m just exploring sounds. I’m not really so concerned with the music theory. I’m more concerned with the end result. And so maybe that’s why his sound is a little bit less contrived and in mathematics. I don’t know.
Geoffrey Dean (20:56)
Right.
I
I agree. And I think…
We’ll end
up talking about a little of that same thing with Keith when we get there. I think that when you come to him, it’s that same thing. like, I was told by, I believe Donald or someone that opening chord in Matrix, that someone asked him about how he formed that. He was like, I just kind of grabbed what I wanted to at the time, in the head. And so that kind of is going what you’re saying. It wasn’t like he was trying to just grab this certain kind of voicing or something that we learned. Like, he’s experimenting and it sounds like he might not even play that thing the same way every
Quentin Walston (21:36)
no.
Geoffrey Dean (21:48)
time he plays it, which is something to consider, you know? That way you’re not locked on some goal, you kind of want to get the concepts and then see how you can develop them instead of here’s the Pratrushka voicing from, know, whatever. Like, you know, some stuff gets real boxed in and luckily Chick doesn’t, and I think that’s really cool about Chickaria.
Quentin Walston (21:49)
Mm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (22:11)
Yeah, and there’s no shortage of his compositions
Quentin Walston (22:11)
That’s great.
Geoffrey Dean (22:13)
to play, like I say. It’s just, I’ve definitely played more originals from Chick than anyone else, than McCoy, Herbie, or Keith. Yeah, yeah.
Quentin Walston (22:20)
Hmm.
That’s cool. That’s cool. Yeah, I haven’t
explored his book very much. That’s awesome. Well, let’s pivot to Keith Jarrett. think he’s a good transition point. Yeah, I I think for me, I’ve listened to more Keith Jarrett’s acoustic stuff than his electric stuff. Same with Chick. yeah, Keith, so.
Geoffrey Dean (22:32)
Sure.
Quentin Walston (22:48)
Yeah, I guess how would you describe Keith Jarrett or how would he be different in your ears to maybe Chick Corea or someone else?
Geoffrey Dean (22:57)
Yeah,
well, Chick can play any rhythm and stuff. I would never call Chick rigid, but I would say that Chick stays in the time more, whereas Keith, there’s a loose fluidity of playing with time in kind of a floaty way that Keith Jarrett has established. When you listen to early Keith Jarrett stuff with Blakey, there’s a secret love.
Quentin Walston (23:05)
.
Geoffrey Dean (23:22)
He is playing so fast. There’s not as much left hand as Chick, but he is playing so fast. But it’s very much, it’s not bebop language. Like when you talk about all these guys, I think all of them are affected by bebop language, but Keith the least so. Keith is a, he’s a great exercise in feel. Like he’s a great exercise in patience, the way that he rolls out.
Quentin Walston (23:29)
Hmm
Geoffrey Dean (23:47)
Solos where he can be very constrained and you and you maybe if you didn’t know Keith you’re you’d say Is this all this guy can do it, but by the end of the solo he just has opened it up into so much Musicality again. He is not academic. He is very much coming from the heart and you know, that’s always been his thing He goes out of his way to let you know that he’s not over planning anything, you know, that’s his big
Quentin Walston (24:09)
Thank
Geoffrey Dean (24:13)
claim to fame with the solo piano, which is, you know, and I think that’s also awesome that Keith is this incredible solo pianist, but also an incredible ensemble player. Sometimes you get one or the other, you know, like Ramajamal didn’t record a solo piano record till I think he was 89 years old. Like some guys only do one or the other, or maybe do a little bit. Keith just did them both. Awesome. Like,
Quentin Walston (24:15)
Yeah, the Krone concert, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like
the recent pianist that followed in Keith’s footsteps in that way would be Brad Meldow, because he’s stuff up in both regards, solo piano and trio work. But that’s interesting that you bring up Keith in his ability to slowly roll things out, because I remember listening to one of his, I was looking for some rhythm changes to transcribe. was like, man, I got to shed my rhythm changes. was like, OK, Keith Jarrett playing oleo. This has got to be good.
Geoffrey Dean (24:47)
Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah.
Quentin Walston (25:09)
was like 10 choruses of like him just toying around with this little like major pentatonic scale thing and it was just like totally threw me off there.
Geoffrey Dean (25:16)
Right, Yeah,
it depends on what you want to get out of. I remember going through looking for some Keith on rhythm changes too and deciding that it wasn’t what I was looking for. I think that I have gone to more, what was I thinking? I’ve gone to, I lost my train of thought.
Yeah, I forget. forget. It’s something about how he was rolling something out. But yeah, basically I’ve got, that’s what I was gonna say. I’ve gotten more Hank Jones solos for rhythm changes than anyone else because I’ve heard more diversity of language within the same box of traditional rhythm changes from Hank Jones than anyone. So depends on what you’re looking for at the time. I wanted traditional language. And again, like I said, Keith was not where I ended up finding that.
Quentin Walston (25:54)
You
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (26:12)
Not to say he doesn’t tap into that, but I’m looking for certain chord surrounds and things like that with that. Whereas Keith is playing very, very melodically and it’s less of that bebop language, so it depends on what you’re trying to get out of it. Like you say, it’ll be a slow, slow roll out sometimes.
Quentin Walston (26:30)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (26:31)
So, you know,
whether or not you like to do full transcriptions or do chunks, that’s its own subject for students. I used to want to just do the full transcription on everything and then there’s only so much time in the day. So you kind of got to pick chunks. you know, I think also looking at Keith Jarrett’s left hand kind of devices that he developed for solo piano, I mean, that could take you years and years and years.
Quentin Walston (26:36)
Mm-hmm
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (26:58)
alone. So it’s like, you kind of figure out what you like with Keith and then and then you go down that rabbit hole because he’s got a lot to offer. It’s you have to box him in.
Quentin Walston (26:59)
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that’s where I, so it’s interesting is like, actually got deeper into Brad Melodow before I got into Keith Jarrett. Cause when I first listened to Keith Jarrett, I was put off by the vocalizations, which I know some people are. and, but after, but once you listen to Keith Jarrett enough, you’re like, man, I don’t care if he’s grunting. Like what he’s playing is killer. but that happened after I heard Brad Melodow. And of course, Brad Melodow solo stuff is filled with all
Geoffrey Dean (27:29)
yeah. Yeah.
Quentin Walston (27:38)
all of those really like momentum building devices in the left hand. And then I started listening to the Kron concert and I’m like, Keith was the one that did this. Like he did this first, he opened the door and now other people have gone through.
Geoffrey Dean (27:48)
Yep.
And I believe Brad gives him the credits due. I remember the first Brad transcription I ever did was his Blackbird.
Quentin Walston (27:58)
Mmm.
Geoffrey Dean (27:59)
And at the very end, he goes into like a solo piano thing that’s quite funky and awesome. And I remember someone asking Brad, where did that come from? And him basically saying Keith Jarrett, like that solo piano, outro funk thing. He is thinking about Keith Jarrett. So I love, I love when people acknowledge their, their influences correctly. Some people kind of try and hide and hide, you know, say it’s all magic and stuff, but I very much love, you know, Brad giving Keith that credit because it kind of confirms what we’re talking about.
Quentin Walston (28:12)
Mm-hmm.
Geoffrey Dean (28:29)
about that that’s, you know, and I would say Aaron Parks is a is a continued extension of that today. If you listen to early Aaron Parks, because he’s been recording since he was like 15, it’s it’s much more traditional bebop in those early records. And then it lightens up the sound, you know, the freedom, the fluidity. I think it’s the Keith Jarrett to Brad to Aaron Parks. And, you know, you maybe get some of that with Sullivan Fortner, too. But Brad, Brad Sirius.
Quentin Walston (28:30)
Yeah.
Yeah.
With Aaron Parks and especially in regards to Keith Jarrett taking his time to roll stuff out, I think takes a certain degree of confidence as a player. Because I think, I mean, I don’t want to ascribe it just to musicians that are still maturing. think I know I sometimes do it where you’re tempted to give all you’ve got or to show the audience all you can do, like right off the bat.
Geoffrey Dean (29:07)
Yeah.
Right,
right.
Quentin Walston (29:28)
Like,
look, I’ve got some technique and I want to blow you out of the water. like, Aaron Parks always, I don’t want to say always, but I I feel like every time I listen to him, he opts for the more musical choice than just displaying technique. And Keith Jarrett too, he’s like, I’m creating music in the real moment. Yes, you already know I can play burning stuff all day long, but listen to this instead.
Geoffrey Dean (29:33)
Right.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I there’s a certain maturity there and confidence, like you say. It’s surprisingly hard to develop that and form that. I think that’s something that every player, professional or not, will continue to battle. And so, I don’t know, not to say that some people aren’t exactly where they want to be, but I know that for me, I’m still trying to chase that sort of patience and figure out how to roll things out.
Quentin Walston (30:06)
Mm.
Geoffrey Dean (30:24)
in the most, you know, touching way musically while applying all these ideas that we academically try and learn. And that’s the, you know, the bridge of the heart and the mind. you know, Keith, he seems to have worked that out pretty good.
Quentin Walston (30:30)
Yeah.
Well, I’ll listen to your album this morning before we started and I was definitely hearing that. So I think you’re succeeding in that endeavor. definitely have some.
Geoffrey Dean (30:48)
That’s
good. I appreciate hearing that from you. And I think one way that we all get better at that, whether or not we like it, is recording ourselves and listening back to ourselves. Because it can be honest sometimes. It’s hard for me to listen to myself. I know a lot of people, but I’ve heard enough teachers say that recording yourself is your best teacher. And that goes into its own thing, too. When we got to Kenny, but also Mulgrew, that I’ve had teachers talk about
that that’s a skill you also have to really form as a sideman in recording studios that if you’re only given one solo you better say what you want to say in it but you also can’t maybe
reach for something you might not be able to get to because it’s recorded forever. so, you know, don’t know, George Colligan told me he always respected Mulgrew’s ability to go in the studio, play what he wanted to say without overstepping and finding a way to do, be your most efficient in a three minute take or a 10 minute take, whatever time you’re given and how are you going to use that time to roll out your solo perfect, whether it’s short or long. And that’s just a big battle we all fight.
Quentin Walston (31:57)
Yeah.
It is so tough. think it’s, yeah. I think that’s something where maybe non-musicians don’t understand the battle of like, have to be perfect, like on point, especially as a sideman or even worse if you’re a studio musician. Like you don’t want to be screwing up someone else’s takes. Like it is stressful. is.
Geoffrey Dean (32:19)
Exactly. But you don’t
want to make it a boring take either. You got to play it safe, but you don’t want to be so safe that it never gets anyone involved or gets any blood pumping. So it’s certainly a battle. Yeah.
Quentin Walston (32:30)
Mm-hmm.
It’s yeah, and I mean that reminds
me of like you mean you mentioned Hank Jones I think he was like the like the pole chambers of piano like the amount of records Hank Jones has been on is just ridiculous
Geoffrey Dean (32:49)
Yeah, there’s no shortage of material there. And he’s one of the guys who still kept playing straight ahead right through the 70s. There’s a lot. came back to him because I was told about this. I think it’s like the great American jazz grotesque or something. It’s like he did three or four records. They’re all in Japanese on Spotify, if you find them. But he’s just playing really great straight ahead in the 70s when a lot of people jumped into fusion. And so you have decades of Hank Jones just just playing great straight ahead. And so, yeah, like there’s lots of.
transcribe in there. Lots of good language.
Quentin Walston (33:23)
Let’s talk about Herbie next. That is a hard one. Well, why don’t we do it this way. What period of Herbie did you first hear or first start appreciating?
Geoffrey Dean (33:26)
Yeah, it’s a big one.
Yeah.
That’s a good question. That’s a good way to go into it. I remember being shown a video when I was in Boston of Herbie playing with Myles’ second great quintet. He was playing a solo on no blues and it was swinging but the language was not…
just traditional blues language. I was like, don’t really understand like some of this language he’s using even though it swings real hard and you know, and that’s the beginnings of him for me. So, you know, I know right before that he was playing some very the pop friendly stuff, you know, he on his own writing the Watermelon Man and Cantaloupe Island and all that.
Quentin Walston (34:12)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (34:23)
But then that, yeah, he just kept growing. Again, he’s another guy who you can just track the growth over time. And he’s awesome because he also grew with the changing genres of the time and did it really well when other people maybe, you they’ll take a shot at another genre and it doesn’t always fit.
Quentin Walston (34:31)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (34:43)
but
you have Herbie coming out of the soul jazz, know, hard bop period. Then you have him, you know, pushing modern jazz forward with the Miles second quintet from like 63 until 69 or so. And then he immediately embraces all the roads and all that. I mean, I know he played a little bit of that with Miles, but like just creating that funk sound with the head hunters and stuff. It’s like, just doing it really well. And then of course,
Quentin Walston (34:51)
Mm-hmm.
Geoffrey Dean (35:10)
finally embracing drum machines and stuff in the 80s and creating rocket, which I don’t even consider a jazz tune. It’s like a breakdancing, almost hip hop tune or something, but it just shows the versatility of the man. mean, he just never stopped learning. Learning all that early tech was a pain. mean, man, the little green MS-DOS whatever screen, and he’s programming just the most ridiculously great beats.
Quentin Walston (35:27)
Yeah.
you
Geoffrey Dean (35:39)
So Herbie, and that makes sense. think Herbie, wasn’t he gonna be an electrical engineer or something if he wasn’t gonna be a jazz pianist? I think I remember hearing something like that. So his ability to go into the technology and embrace it, that makes a little more sense to me. But there’s really no one who jumped genres like him or within the change in time periods. guess it almost all still fits into jazz, but Herbie’s got rhythm, Herbie’s got harmony.
Quentin Walston (35:45)
.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (36:10)
And yeah, he knows, I don’t know. And he’s also a great composer too and composes in different genres. He makes that pop music that people like and then he’ll write a song like The Sorcerer or something that’s like one of the hardest tunes for jazz people to play. I think that’s cool too. The accessibility and not being above that. And that’s also where eventually Kenny and them leads to the next generation because it still was taboo for a lot of those guys to go into pop world or do some of that stuff. And I think Herbie helped break some of those
borders down because if he’s you know like in the Miles Quintet but then he can go make a breakdance tune and who’s someone who was anyone to say that he shouldn’t or can’t do that
Quentin Walston (36:41)
Yeah.
Yeah,
I think too with him, like, I love when he did venture into other genres and stuff. Like, he wasn’t afraid to, I think, like…
tamp down his like being willing to play something out or dissonant or something. Like it reminds me of like Duke Ellington in that regard. Cause like Duke, he’s like one of the most popular big bands and then he’ll play a piano solo and it’s like weird clusters. And we were like, what? Like, how is this guy? Like, how, how does he get away with this? And like, when you listen to chameleon, it’s like, all right, this is like a 12 minute funk tune.
Geoffrey Dean (37:32)
I agree.
Quentin Walston (37:38)
just in the pocket the whole time. And then you hear his synth solo and it’s just like the weirdest exploring weird sounds. And you’re like, I love it, but who else could get away with this?
Geoffrey Dean (37:50)
That’s very true.
I didn’t really think about that. You’re absolutely right. I remember looking for more Ellington stuff to see how he soloed and coming to the same conclusions as you just said. was like, this is not what I expected from how Ellington would navigate changes as a soloist. And Herbie’s that way too. You can’t count on anything. know, and even with if you look at how he solos over like when they make him replay or when he chooses to replay Cantaloupe Island or Watermelon Man.
He’s certainly playing them different than he played them when he recorded them and you just don’t know which way he’s gonna go. It might turn into a rhythmic, you know, I won’t say mess because it’s a beautiful mess, you know, almost rhythmically driven as opposed to harmonies and other times he’ll be riffing organically on licks and stuff and it’s just like…
Quentin Walston (38:24)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (38:41)
The creativity just flows out of him. I can tell why him and Chick were buddies. I feel like their creative minds were on the same wavelength about certain things. And, you know, they did some two piano stuff. I don’t know of McCoy. I certainly don’t know if Keith doing any two piano stuff, but, know, there’s videos of Chick and Herbie playing two pianos together. And I think that’s cool. And it shows how they tie together in a way that they were cool enough with each other to do that.
Quentin Walston (38:42)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (39:11)
You know, not everyone wants to do that. I think Keith’s happy playing solo piano.
Quentin Walston (39:19)
Is there anything that you ever transcribe from Herbie or little nuggets of language that you like?
Geoffrey Dean (39:27)
Yeah, I will say, yeah, I was told by Don Brown that…
to really listen to the Plug Nickel album, the Miles Live at the Plug Nickel album, not only for Herbie, but for how hard Ron Carter swings. The nice thing is because they released that full Plug Nickel, you get some of the same tunes on different nights and you can hear how they don’t just play them the same. I will say, so I record all of…
Quentin Walston (39:52)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (40:00)
all of you, Herbie plays on that album, play it on Miles in Europe as well, and it’s interesting because as you go through it, like…
He, Miles definitely took or really listened to Ahmad Jamal’s All of You, because Ahmad Jamal just plays the tune and basically just does a turnaround for like five minutes. And as you listen to Miles play that tune over time, that’s what he does. They eventually just play the form maybe one time. Maybe they’ll just even play the head.
and then they go into a turnaround. There’s the 3-6-2-5 and it’s like… So that’s interesting that Miles sort of went in that direction. But on the Plug Nickel album, they’re still playing the form. And one thing I always know that I stole from Herbie on this is this… If you’re playing a Bb7… Herbie is great at the tritone sub stuff. So he’ll play a Bb7 and he’ll play off the flat 9 of it… E, E, A, D.
the third of Bb7 so he’s getting up there using like a half step up so that’s the language so that’s like a real modern it’s built in fourths he’s playing B minor as if it was going to E7 and then he’s landing
Quentin Walston (41:02)
Thank
Geoffrey Dean (41:20)
back in bebop world. But I think that’s one of those things from him that I got where he’s not only playing a tritone sub, but he’s playing it in intervals that make it sound more out, which is that McCoy influence. And he’s playing it not, I don’t know, he’s not using it as a lick. It’s something, it’s just a sound that he’s accessing. So that’s.
That’s one herby thing I’ve done. Whatever your dominant chord is, you go up a half step and you spell out the next four notes in fourths. And that will get you a very out sounding sound, but it lands back at home.
And so Herbie’s real slick like that. And that’s the big modern thing that Donald Brown would always tell me is that you go anywhere you want as long as you know where you’re gonna land. As long as you know where you’re gonna end up. You can go do that Chick or McCoy thing or where you’re going around in whole steps, but you better know where you’re gonna end up. know, have an ending goal or just end up there. And then it doesn’t matter how you got there.
and Kenny Kirkland will talk about that too, about using more obscure chords to still land on the same place. it transitions right in and I don’t want to cut off Herbie, but Herbie and Wayne are also, you know.
kind of a combo. Every time Wayne’s writing a new album during that period, Herbie’s on it. And Wayne was exploring a lot of new sounds. And I think when you look at Kenny Kirkland as a composer, his sounds, you you look at Chance and DeAnda, they remind me more of Wayne tunes than anything. And he talks about how Wayne was his favorite composer and he knows all the Wayne’s standards and stuff like that. But yeah, how those sounds are affected
I think it just directly plays out of Herbie and Wayne right into Kenny Kirkland and you know Kenny Kirkland will talk about taking a two five and instead of it being a minor two and dominant five he might make the first two a major seven sharp five like and those are like you know you’re still playing with the same root
But those are the colors that you’re getting out of Herbie and Wayne and the guys that are, you know, exploring a little more dense harmony. And it’s, that’s how you get to Kenny Kirkland, in my opinion, out of Herbie. But yeah, Herbie’s, Herbie is to Wayne what McCoy was to Coltrane. They’re both there during these periods of growth and a lot of composition and everyone got dragged up, I think, because of it. Yeah.
Quentin Walston (43:51)
Yeah.
I
saw Herbie and Wayne together in New Jersey and yeah, just like lifelong buddies. They were just like, they’re just having fun on stage. It’s like the audience wasn’t even there. Herbie had his little laptop and he’s just like messing around making random sounds and Wayne’s like will respond with like two notes. It was, yeah, it was, it was great. It was like a conversation between friends, but yeah, let’s talk about Kenny Kirkland. So
Geoffrey Dean (44:06)
Yeah.
Aww.
Yeah.
Quentin Walston (44:22)
How did you get into Kenny Kirkland? He’s someone that I’ve known about but never really did a deep dive until I started talking with you. So tell me about your Kenny Kirkland story.
Geoffrey Dean (44:33)
Yeah,
I mean, it definitely came through Donald. It came through me trying to push forward through these guys and then saying, okay, what’s next? You know, I think I was still aware of Brad before I was even aware of Kenny. And it was kind of the missing period that eighties period. I was pretty late to Mulgrove too, like for any, any deep dives, but, you know, Kenny became the guy for the
Marsalis Brothers go to out of the 80s and so it’s like okay if you want to see what kind of stuff made a splash it usually leads you to Wynton and Brantford and those albums any of Wynton’s but also that Black Coats of the from the Underground record and it’s hard music but Kenny never makes it sound hard like Donald told me Donald would do a lot of producing he still produces Kenny Garrett’s records and stuff like that and like he told me that
Kenny was maybe the only person that he’s ever been in the studio and never seen him take, do a bad take. Where every take just flowed out of him like water and that it was just, you know, he could do no wrong. And so, yeah, I was trying to look at how, what, after looking at the four guys we just talked about, okay, well, what do you do with all that? Like, they’re all kind of different. How do you assimilate it? And I think Kenny Kirkland is really good at all of that. Like…
Quentin Walston (45:47)
.
Mm.
Geoffrey Dean (45:54)
Mulgrew’s a different beast and they both have a lot of the same tools, but how they use them is maybe different. Kenny is very hard driving. I’d say that comes from the McCoy thing that if you had to like, there’s a fire there and he is maybe a little more locked into time.
Quentin Walston (46:01)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (46:16)
And so that’s a good thing if you’re trying to play Antyne and everything. But he also, yeah, I probably have like 30 examples in the book and there are bits and pieces of everything we’ve talked about from these other guys. Here’s Kenny doing a diminished scale through this whole chunk. Here’s him moving things around in thirds. Here’s him on giant steps at first when he’s playing giant steps because…
Quentin Walston (46:20)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (46:40)
that form is somewhat limiting, like you need to keep playing the form and you’re trapped in that cycle. Well, how can you make it grow? At first, he’s maybe playing two-note voicings in thirds, and then it grows, and as it gets bigger, he starts maybe playing in fourths, and it’s these subtle ways of assimilating all these guys that we talked about as ways to grow within your solos or access new sounds while soloing on the same old thing. I know Giant Steps isn’t like…
the same old thing to everyone, but even if it was the standard, he would be doing that same stuff where he starts with thirds, he starts with the traditional sound and then goes to that more open sound so you can, you kind of grow with him through the solo, which is really, really intelligent. Yeah.
Quentin Walston (47:23)
challenge of having your accompaniment subtly grow. I mean, that’s just like such an indicator of mastery and being like comfortable playing at that the high demands of giant steps like crazy tempo, crazy harmonic motion. Like when I play giant steps, I’m still like
Geoffrey Dean (47:33)
Yeah.
Quentin Walston (47:47)
Let me make sure I’m outlining the harmony. Like I’m still like at that, like, I don’t know. I wouldn’t say I’m crawling, but I’m not running. I’m still walking.
Geoffrey Dean (47:55)
No, and there’s,
yeah, like different ways to approach that. know, I eventually found out there’s an album called Olly Jackson’s Big Round Get Down from 2006 or 2007, and it’s got Aaron Goldberg on piano. And he’s playing Giant Steps, and what Donald showed me, just like for our own knowledge, is that, you know, Giant Steps, it’s moving through these three major things, and so…
If you have the augmented scale…
You can’t really hit a wrong note there as you go through them. So that’s something that Aaron Goldberg is doing, just like you were talking about when you go to Keith on Olio, where like, it’s actually a great piece of language, but he stays on it for like five courses. He’s playing it in different rhythms. Like he’s having fun with it, but it’s like, you wouldn’t want to just do that. Like it’s, it’s just a chunk that you can take and say, this works.
And but but it’s not like the end all and so I thought about what you said with with your chunk of Keith and on olio we’re like well this is good stuff he’s playing it but this isn’t all I want and that’s what Aaron Goldberg is playing whereas Kenny plays basically bebop language the whole time and then adds fourths or adds pedal tones or adds some diminished tones and things like that and so it’s interesting to see what modern masters do with the same material you know what I mean
So yeah, and then, you know, obviously Kenny also went pop, which was not popular either. He went and played with Sting. He’s on all like, you know, from Sting’s debut album. And then like, he went and played for this night show band. And I think some people gave them some crap for that, which is interesting. Even after Herbie kind of broke down some walls that there were still some more that had to get broken down by Kenny Kirkland and Grandford.
Quentin Walston (49:55)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (49:57)
And so they went and he played tonight show band and all that. And then Kenny, you know, had an untimely death in 1998. He had heart failure and he basically had a chance at 50 50. If you get the surgery, you could live or you could die on the table. And so he just passed on the surgery and then died in, in, in, believe in late November of 1998. So Kenny has just about an 18 year, 19 year career. So it’s, you know,
not as long as the other guy. All those other guys have lived full lives, luckily. We got a lot out of them. And it makes you wonder what Kenny Kirkland may have grown into. You never know. Certain people, some people feel that way about Jerry Allen, where Jerry Allen was doing certain things in the 80s, and then in the 90s, she maybe started absorbing more herbyisms and actually sounding more like herby. Sometimes people…
Quentin Walston (50:29)
Yeah, yeah, that’s a point.
Geoffrey Dean (50:50)
almost go back to tradition while other people keep pushing into new territory and their life. Whenever you want to sound is how you should sound, you know.
Quentin Walston (50:53)
you
Glad you brought
up Jerry Allen. She’s one of my favorites, especially of that period that is able to like instill all of those various modern techniques and have it come out so fluidly and so effortlessly and masterfully.
Geoffrey Dean (51:21)
Yeah,
she’s even more so, know, cause she’s taken from that avant-garde vibe. Like she is really floating over the beat, but then at any time she’ll lock right into where she wants to be. And just, you know, you know that she’s doing it intentionally. It’s, it’s this really nice balance. She was your number one, right? On your women in jazz? Was she your number one? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s a good number one. She, she, you know, she really, really got the job done. But yeah.
Quentin Walston (51:40)
She was. Yeah. Yeah.
With,
Geoffrey Dean (51:51)
Yeah.
Quentin Walston (51:51)
yeah, I was gonna say one more thing on Kenny. Do you have, or do you hear specific kind of delineations of his development in the same way that you might hear the evolution of Chick or the evolution of Herbie? Like, does Kenny have like, man, this is where he’s really locked into bebop and here’s where he starts to explore with this and that.
Geoffrey Dean (52:15)
I would say Kenny came out pretty blazing. it’s, you know, he’s, he’s on the earliest records he’s on are on Miroslav Vitas stuff, which is the bass player on Now He Sings, Now He Sobs. And it’s almost free. So I know Kenny’s early, you know, come up and said he was a classical guy. And then he started meeting the jazz guys and like right when he was about 20 and
It’s like he just absorbed everything like a sponge. think Kenny certainly had a special brain. I will say that is.
It’s weird because of how he was recorded. He was recorded on free stuff, then he’s recorded on pretty forward-thinking modern stuff with the Marsala stuff, or like definitely on the forward end of standards, and then he’s playing pop. And so it’s like…
You almost, you aren’t going backwards with him, but you’re seeing these devices like in the book there’s one thing he talks about on one of the sting tunes where he’ll always go to this Latin thing where he’s just playing, you know, octaves and he’s playing them, you know, maybe with a line cliche. And he and like there’s an interview about that exact thing. Do you like that Latin thing?
you do it a lot and from like keyboard magazine he was like yeah I always try and get into that on this sting tune just to access the Latin sound and so earlier I don’t know that I know him doing that much in like those earlier because it’s like free stuff right so if anything he’s working it out but because of how he’s recorded you just kind of get new Kennyisms as he goes along but when you listen to those straight ahead with Wynton it’s like from the first record on
Quentin Walston (53:37)
you
Yeah.
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (54:05)
He’s just smoking and he’s got all that language. How he developed it so fast, I don’t know, but he, yeah, somehow shows me the least evolution, I would say. Because he just seems to have it all. Yeah, yeah, I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I guess it’s good because every thing of his that I’ve…
Quentin Walston (54:05)
Wow.
Yeah.
Mmm. That is a special mind. Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (54:30)
isolated you can basically find throughout his career you don’t have to listen to a period which is nice it’s like okay he always kind of had this and so you can go to the first Winton record or you can go to one 15 years later from 1996 with him playing as a sideman he’s probably doing the same stuff and Brad’s kind of interesting that way too you know we go to early Brad and like
Quentin Walston (54:33)
Mmm.
Thank
Geoffrey Dean (54:50)
know, Brad eventually gets into that stuff where he’s doing stuff in his right hand and then he’ll get real fluid on the left hand. I mean, even like on that earliest, like anthropology or like earliest recordings, it’s like he’s kind of worked that out. It’s like the Bradisms. And so I know that they they had to develop it, but somehow they were able to develop it before even being recorded. And I don’t know, you know, how we reflect on that.
Quentin Walston (55:03)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (55:17)
You pick your concepts, you get them in as fast as you can. Yeah, it’s interesting how that seems to have been absorbed. yeah, Kenny’s always just been smoking since day one is the best way I can put it. Yeah, trying to think of it.
Quentin Walston (55:22)
Yeah.
I love that. Let’s
pivot to any advice you have for teachers specifically that want to get their students inspired by jazz piano or listening to jazz piano. Do you have any?
any tips on transcription or learning language or listening? Is there anything that if you could help teachers out, what would you tell them for this kind of stuff?
Geoffrey Dean (56:02)
Yeah, I mean, I know everyone has their own different feelings about transcription and how to go about doing it. you know, I will say for me, it depends on how much time you have. That’s one thing is like whether or not you want to sit there and write notes out and then.
read them while playing. That’s how I would first do transcriptions as a guy coming out of classical. But I found that over time I much better absorbed a transcription if I just listened to it and played it and never wrote it down. So that I was getting it in my ear, getting the ear to hand connection more direct and not using the eyes as a crutch. You know, like you’re internalizing things deeper and then if you want to at the end write it down is what I would say.
I am a big advocate of doing left-hand transcription. You know, when I see a transcription of line playing and there’s no left hand, I go, I wonder what he was playing in his left hand. You know, like I always want to know. so like, always try and get two handed transcriptions is one thing. mean,
Quentin Walston (57:04)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (57:13)
You know, there’s omnibooks. can get language from the right hand, but I think it’s good to see, as pianists, we’re two-handed instrumentalists, so why neglect both hands, or one hand over the other? And then…
Donald told me at one point, look, if something out there is already transcribed, save yourself the time and look at the transcription if you think it’s good. You don’t have to just transcribe something like, again, that will save you time to learn that thing and then go transcribe something else instead of just taking the time to do that. I also used to do full transcriptions. Now I definitely believe in chunks for language. I know some people are all about moving.
moving a piece of language through all 12 keys, absolutely. Moving a transcription through all 12 keys, I don’t know that I would do that. Even Tatum, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that book, I think it’s The Right Hand According to Tatum. It’s all these runs. Yeah, and there’s somewhere in there where he talks about, look, I do certain things in certain keys on the piano because they fit into the hand that way, you know?
Quentin Walston (58:11)
Yeah, I got that. Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (58:21)
It’s not this will not work in all 12 keys and that’s something that we need to you need to fight You need to pick that battle is this something I want to do in all 12 keys and is that feasible or is this? Something that lends itself to the piano in this key, you know like that all that stuff
Quentin Walston (58:25)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (58:42)
It’s like you’re either doing it on a white key scale or a black key scale. You want to do one that has a little bit of both. It’s going to start getting more mucky and more trouble than it’s worth real fast. And so, yeah, that’s something I try and stress to teachers. I’m trying to think what else.
Quentin Walston (58:49)
Yeah.
Yeah.
What about…
learning someone’s book, learning someone’s tune. I’ve heard some people on the one polarized end, like, if you want to call someone an influence, you better learn their book kind of thing. Where then also, think, I remember I asked Branford point blank, do you transcribe? He’s like, no, I absorb everything by ear. So like,
Geoffrey Dean (59:34)
And that’s what
I’ve heard Cyrus Chestnut say that I was at a Boston masterclass and someone asked Cyrus Chestnut, how did you, how much did you transcribe? How much did you listen or, you know, do that? And he was like, I really didn’t. He’s like, for about two years, all I did was walk around with headphones on, listening to Red Garland and getting that sound in my ear. And he said that I feel like I assimilated a lot of that sound by just constantly absorbing.
And there’s something to be said about that. Especially if you’re on the go and you can’t sit down, well, if that’s what these masters think the next best way to absorb the information is, then we probably should heed their wisdom.
Quentin Walston (1:00:04)
Yeah.
And
even less specifically about transcribing because I mean like I think transcribing is great if you have the time I’m 100 % on board with that. When you think about like learning their original tunes, like I think that’s like a slight difference, you know
Geoffrey Dean (1:00:20)
Yeah.
Absolutely.
think it is because you gotta… I mean, you obviously want to stylize things in your own way, but especially with more modern tunes, you don’t just generalize Wayne’s harmonies. You gotta really nail those harmonies. And I think that’s its own troubleshooting. Whereas with real book stuff and more the traditional sound, you kind of know…
Quentin Walston (1:00:45)
Mm-hmm.
Geoffrey Dean (1:00:57)
what you’re gonna do with it, or you can take some liberties. You can make that minor two five into both dominance, and it’s not gonna change the world. But Wayne’s stuff, you know, that was something when I was in Illinois, like guys would bring in originals, and I would be trying almost to fatten it up too much with my own stuff, and I had a teacher there, the guy who runs the program, Chip McNeil, being like, look, he wants this thing with a flat six sound, he’s like,
That’s all you need to focus on. You get those bass tones in and you get exactly that tension he wants and you sit on it. Don’t feel like you have to do more than that. Nail the sound he wants and let it ring. And that was a really good one for me because sometimes we’re as pianists, you know, we’re expected to do a little more than it’s on the page to add more, you know, life to it or movement and color. But sometimes
Quentin Walston (1:01:44)
again.
Absolutely.
Geoffrey Dean (1:01:50)
that can be defeating because you’re trying to put in too much instead of just letting a color hang and I think that’s why Wayne’s stuff is good because he hangs on tunes, you listen to how Herbie does it, you know, and he’s…
You know, they don’t write minor major on a lot of the stuff, but a lot of times that’s what Herbie’s doing too. And I think the more you explore those modern sounds, you go, he’s adding this little extra something on it, or this is written on it. I better get to it. I think that’s, it’s very, very valuable to pick people you like’s tunes and get inside of them that way. I think, you know.
Quentin Walston (1:02:27)
That’s
such a good point. I feel like there’s a tension with that. we’re talking about like teachers, teachers having to wrestle with that. Like for me, I didn’t listen to a lot of modern stuff.
early on. mean, like I had my I’ve always loved Monk. I listened to Dolphine, but that would be like, and then I really got into the second great quintet, but I would rarely move beyond that because I was like, man, I’m not done absorbing bebop. I’m not done absorbing hard bop. And I remember one time I was playing a tune, kid wrote a super modern tune. It had like negative harmony and those major chords with flat sixes and all that kind of stuff, or minor chords with flat
Geoffrey Dean (1:02:46)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah.
Yep.
Quentin Walston (1:03:12)
sixes and he just was getting so frustrated with me and I was getting so frustrated because I didn’t know what he wanted and I wish I had your professor there to tell me because I’m just playing like Bill Evans I’m doing the Bill Evans school like all the chords all the passing chords everything has a 9th and an 11th or like it’s yeah
Geoffrey Dean (1:03:12)
Right, right.
Right, right.
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
And we think that
that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. until, until someone says you’re doing too much or you’re, or that’s yeah, more than I wrote, you know, that’s why I think you’re, you it’s good to do that with the composer of a tune because they generally have a very specific idea, especially when you’re dealing with people that are writing those kinds of chords and, and for better or worse, they’ll let you know, you know, they’ll let you know that they want their tune played the way they want it. And sometimes it’s good to be at the whim of
Quentin Walston (1:03:56)
Yes.
Geoffrey Dean (1:04:02)
someone else because that teaches us things in our own way by the restrictions that are given to us and so yeah you know I hope you gave I hope that you guys came out to a happy medium but I’ve been through the same thing what there’s the same exact stuff man it’s like someone writes a tune with a very specific idea and and that’s what they want if you try and do something else they’re gonna say that’s that’s not that’s not it and so you learn you know learn a hard way but makes you better
Quentin Walston (1:04:04)
Yeah.
Yeah.
is a lesson for teachers. Do what the composer says.
Geoffrey Dean (1:04:32)
Yeah, pretty much. it’s just, it’s interesting because
jazz is like, it’s sketched out for us a lot of times. When we’re learning through that real book, it’s not often very specific. I mean, I remember that being a big thing for me when I was trying to learn how to navigate minor tunes like Softly in the Morning Sunrise, the function of the minor sixth versus the minor seventh. Like I would listen to Sonny Clark and he’s always grabbing C, E flat, A. You he’s always grabbing a sixth.
And I was like, so is that what I’m supposed to, this is the correct way? And that was just through watching performance practice, because it’s never notated. It’s just as minor seventh, but everyone’s grabbing a minor sixth, you know, that minor sixth sound. And so sometimes what’s notated, it’s not because Sonny Clark didn’t write that, someone took it and made a lead sheet out of it.
Quentin Walston (1:05:15)
Yeah. Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (1:05:25)
and they took out some of those subtleties that were actually put in there by the playing. And so it’s a balance. can go both ways, if that makes any sense. Yeah.
Quentin Walston (1:05:35)
Absolutely, And
that gets back to learning through recordings, learning through listening. Jazz is an aural language.
Geoffrey Dean (1:05:44)
So the paper’s not gospel like it is
from, you know, the classical people because they didn’t even, unless you’re getting a lead sheet from the composer himself or herself, you’re maybe not getting all the information. Always be skeptical. You know?
Quentin Walston (1:06:00)
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah. I remember I did a deep dive trying to figure out Nefertiti because I was doing it for a buddy’s recital and like the, the lead sheet.
is wrong. So was looking up like interviews with Herbie, like trying to get to the bottom of this. And it’s exactly what you’re saying. Like Wayne didn’t write E major seven sharp 11. He wrote this, like you play this, this is what you’re supposed to do. So
Geoffrey Dean (1:06:27)
Right, right?
Yeah,
and that little extra bit of homework, sometimes it can be a pain, but it’s worth it. That’s how you get those deeper understandings of all these little subtleties, I think, that these guys are doing through that deep, diving. And that just makes you better. say, now I know what.
what that sound is, I can re-access it on my own terms and stuff like that. Yeah, that’s a good tune. I did the same thing with like Pinocchio too. There’s just stuff, there’s tunes like that. You know, exactly what they wrote. Yeah, I dig it. But that’s nice thing is we have Wayne’s tunes. I wish, I’m surprised there isn’t like an official Wayne book by Wayne. But maybe there is and I don’t know about it. You know?
Quentin Walston (1:07:05)
yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe they do it like, I have the Oscar Peterson Omni book where someone did some pretty hardcore transcribing. Maybe someone will do that for Wayne. Well, I’m.
Geoffrey Dean (1:07:32)
Right. And there’s bad transcriptions. The
Hampton Haas book, it has a bunch of runs that are totally off. they aren’t, someone just phoned it in on those runs. And I realized that you have to just retranscribe when you realize it’s wrong. You sometimes you run into that too.
Quentin Walston (1:07:39)
Yeah.
Yeah, I wanted to get a Fats Waller book and it was the same thing. I did a little bit of research and people are like, this thing is just filled with errors. It’s filled with what people think he played, not what he actually played.
Geoffrey Dean (1:08:01)
And that’s why Donald told me to find every transcription, or when I’m looking, find everything by Bill Dobbins. Bill Dobbins is the guy who, yeah, you know about Bill? Yeah. Donald said there… Right, right.
Quentin Walston (1:08:10)
Yeah, I mean, he’s he did. Now he sings now he sobs. He did the entire thing
with with left hand to.
Geoffrey Dean (1:08:15)
Right, I have that thing.
I’ve got a couple other old books of his from the 60s. Donald said that there is no one who transcribes more accurately than Bill Dobbins. So if you’re ever looking for a source for certain things, now he sings and I said that that’s awesome. And then there’s other stuff too. I forget what else he did, but he’s like, you can count on that. So finding people that you can count on, which there’s only so many, but.
Quentin Walston (1:08:37)
You have
his, the contemporary jazz pianist series. He did this like.
Geoffrey Dean (1:08:42)
I don’t know if I do. I
used to have a PDF of a bunch of stuff, but I don’t know if I do.
Quentin Walston (1:08:48)
This can be what we close on, because I know.
Geoffrey Dean (1:08:53)
it’s all good.
Quentin Walston (1:08:55)
We did a four volume set and it’s like the most… Okay. Yeah, you did four volumes and it is the most comprehensive jazz piano thing. It’s crazy. Like just like every iteration of a 2-5, but I’d be interested, it’d be like a really unique…
Geoffrey Dean (1:08:59)
That’s it. See, I only have PDFs. I’ve never had a hard copy. Yeah.
That’s awesome. Yeah, I need to get some… Right, right.
Quentin Walston (1:09:22)
experiment to get a jazz musician to do the whole entire series from square one because like it starts off with like just pages and pages of left hand chords like get these so ingrained in your playing because his whole thing is like if you have to think about what you want to play it’s too late so but
Geoffrey Dean (1:09:37)
Yeah, right.
Yeah, I believe it. Yeah, it makes sense.
Quentin Walston (1:09:50)
But then also, I feel like the player in me would be like, I wanna play tunes, man. I don’t wanna play chords anymore.
Geoffrey Dean (1:09:57)
Sure. That’s the tough part.
Maybe picking some of those voicings and then applying them to a tune. There’s a guy named Ed Palintero, he was a Trishano student and he wrote a book like My Time with Lenny and I went and got it. it was kind of crazy. Some of it was like, just play this left hand voicing like 50 times. Now here’s a slight subtlety. It was…
Quentin Walston (1:10:05)
Yeah.
Mm.
Geoffrey Dean (1:10:25)
It was very much overkill of that in a sense. But I know they’re trying to get to somewhere with that. I don’t mean to sell it short, but it was a bit daunting when you see it on a piece of paper. There’s no timeline for it. It’s like, am I just going to play these left hand chords for like years until I can move on? It’s hard to figure out, OK, how much time do I spend on this?
Quentin Walston (1:10:25)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Geoffrey Dean (1:10:46)
versus whatever else I’m learning. And I think that’s a big thing for us as students too. It’s like, you know, I remember looking at an interview with Oscar where he said, like, he spent his morning practicing tunes, but when he was coming up and he spent his whole afternoons practicing two-hand voicings for comping and whatever. That’s what he said, at least at a period of time. And I was like, wow, that’s a lot of time to spend on just comping voicings. So, you know, I’ve always kind of stuck with that too and remembered like, be like, okay, don’t be afraid to practice comping and things like that.
Quentin Walston (1:11:03)
Mm-hmm.
Geoffrey Dean (1:11:16)
If Oscar took the time just to do that for hours, it’s something probably worth doing.
Quentin Walston (1:11:23)
That’s a point for teachers. Yeah, like telling them, get your students to practice comping. Because I remember one it it stuck with me when a teacher said, like, like 90 percent of what you’re going to do isn’t soloing, like when you’re when you’re playing like in a band, like unless you’re maybe like in a trio or doing a solo gig. But if you’re in like a jazz, like a big band or something or in a quartet.
Most of what you’re going to do is comping, so you can’t phone that in.
Geoffrey Dean (1:11:54)
Yeah, I wish I had a copy. I did, when I was in the master’s program with Donald, there was one other guy in it and I chose to do the now he’s, no, the Coltrane Sound, what was it? Whatever that song is. The Night Has A Thousand Eyes, the two versions of it. He did a project where all he did was transcribe Chick and Herbie comping on tunes and their comping voicings and their comping rhythms. And like, I mean, it was some really, really crazy stuff.
Quentin Walston (1:12:19)
Mm-hmm.
Geoffrey Dean (1:12:24)
I don’t know like like a sixth chord I’ll grab from from chick now like What is it? That’s a chick, you know like He’s building it in fourths instead of your so what? He’s going you G C F B flat and then putting that six on top So it’s that it’s that sixth thing we’re talking about which is a little more abrasive and like I think he grabs that
Somewhere in Now He Sings Now He Sobs for a second or but like yeah, just saying okay, that’s an out sound That’s something I moved through all keys and like just figuring out You know Picking those battles, but yeah Yeah
Quentin Walston (1:13:06)
Where to put it? Wow, that’s awesome.
Can you tell us where we can find you on social media or streaming services?
Geoffrey Dean (1:13:15)
Sure, yeah, you can find my jazz basically at Spotify, iTunes, any of those places. Jeffrey Dean, Jeff with a G, G-E-O-F-F-R-E-Y. And then I also make electronic music as Baraka. And then let’s see, what was the other thing? Just, I guess socials, yeah. What kind of puppy is it?
Quentin Walston (1:13:41)
dogs.
This Eli is a mix of some type of sheepdog and something else. Hey Eli. This is.
Geoffrey Dean (1:13:52)
I love a doggy. Yeah, then you can
find my Instagram at what is instragram.com forward slash Jeffrey Dean music.
got an album coming out on Seller Records in April, April 3rd. I just established a relationship with them, a second album with that same personnel with Harish Raghavan on bass, Eric Binder on drums, Justin Copeland of all original music. So.
Quentin Walston (1:14:10)
next.
that’s
awesome
Geoffrey Dean (1:14:21)
Yeah, yeah, we had done all the hard bop stuff and felt like that was the foundations of what we’re coming out of. But we also wanted to show our compositional side and that we can play, while we love traditional, we also can play more modern music too. So it’s just a nice mix of everything. that’ll start rolling out next year. So
Quentin Walston (1:14:37)
Very cool.
Geoffrey Dean (1:14:40)
Yeah, man. Yeah. But I just, yeah, I appreciate you and I appreciate this is jazz and I can’t wait to keep supporting y’all and keep doing what you’re doing because this is great.
Quentin Walston (1:14:45)
Yeah.
Thanks for sharing the knowledge.