You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - #1 Thru #7: LISTEN - #151

Episode Date: July 6, 2018

Today, Peter and Adam go old-school. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

And I'm Peter Martin. You're at podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Why are we talking like this? You started it. Okay, sorry, I got a little mellow. It's kind of our midday mellow vibe. It is, yeah.

No, this is our last recording of a podcast episode for the day. That's right. We're ending strong with this session. Well, it remains to be seen, but we hope so. You know, today I wanted to talk about something that we're running this podcast, we're running this jazz education website. We get a lot of requests for, like, detailed transcriptions of, things and a lot of, I'm not going to say cheating, because I don't mind providing that kind of

information or helping show things, but sometimes I think, especially in the day and age of Google, that it's a little too easy to just see things. And it's about to lash out of some millennials right now. I can see it. I'm about to get dog, man. No, actually, it's not millennials. Millennials are doing great at this, but it's older folks who are just all of a sudden like, wait, I can Google the voicings? Uh-huh. A little bit of entitlement, little jazz entitlement? It might be drifting, a little jazz laziness, possibly? I mean, everybody's busy.

Busy, but I do want to say that... Do we have some babies out there that got the little bibs on and they want to be spoon-fed? A little spoon-fed? No, really, this is a PSA, and that is that... We talk about listening on this podcast all the time about how important that is, but I do want to say that you're not going to be able to learn this music or any other music by reading a chart. and ingesting that information. Not at all.

It can help for reference and to maybe knock some concepts home, but you won't get this language unless you are pulling stuff off of records. There's a basic fact. There's no getting around that. And there's a lot of, like, I think, misconception that, oh, I just want the information. Just give me the information. But the information isn't the important part.

Yeah. The important part is the process of getting it. It's the process, exactly. And it's actually what you're describing in terms of learning this music, learning the vocabulary, learning the vernacular, learning the style, the culture of this music and how to play it, getting it from the recordings, getting it from live performances, getting it through trial and error at your instrument, that's actually the most efficient way to learn this music as well. So those of you that are worrying, oh, I know I could do that, but we want to hack this and do it a quicker way now.

This is the original hack. The original hack of how to play jazz is to transcribe, is to hear it. You'll hear it. I thought you could say listen, but yeah, that's good too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it is to listen. Yeah, to listen. And so I think that for those of you looking for the shortcut, this actually is the shortcut.

So what we're saying is not like you have to do it the old-fashioned way because we walked, you know, uphill in the snow both ways to school. This is not what we're talking about. This is just one of those things that technology Well now technology has helped it But the foundation of it's the same So in terms of like Learning things from recordings It's much easier now than having to go to an LP

Like little Peter Martin was doing back in the early 80s And dropping the needle where you had to find a phrase So they can actually speed up just being able to hear it But that's not a huge difference from the cassette And then the CD or whatever But I remember you used to have to deal with like the pitches Being off would drive me crazy So you've already gotten advantage there

The simple fact is, is that you're not trying to play licks or concepts or voicings. That's not what this is about. You're trying to play sounds. Yeah. Right? You're trying to get a sound. You're trying to develop your ears. You're trying to develop your ears.

You can't do that by Googling pentatonic licks and then trying to memorize those. Although, did we have a seven of our best pentatonic? Yeah, yeah. That was days ago. Yeah. No, but I think that what you can do and what we want to provide here, you know, certainly in a fun and lighthearted manner is some tips and some little things that you can add that you can supplement your listening with. And that's what this is always about. This is not a, any kind of

tricks and ticks, tics, nervous tics that we give you in your playing. Tricks and tactics and hacks. They're just, you know, kind of the window dressing around. It's the little icing around. You got to still have the cake. You got to work to bake the cake the old school way. And then, you know, look, We're realists too. We realize everybody doesn't have six to eight hours a day to practice. So you want to spend your time efficiently. But that's what I'm saying. Like the listening and the transcribing, even if you transcribe two measures or one phrase a day,

you're going to get so much out of it. And it's fun. Once you start to do it, I mean, it's like anything that's worthwhile. It's hard at the beginning and it's a pain. But it's just like starting to go to the gym. There's not, I mean, the hacks instead of going to the gym and lifting weights are taking performance-enhancing drugs. And they're, you know, dangerous for you, I guess. we talk about performance enhancing drugs a lot of the second episode you brought that up which really doesn't have anything to do with jazz but i mean maybe

some of these hacks are beta blockers yeah yeah that's like the performance enhancing drugs of jazz no but i think that it's i mean there's no substitute now you can more efficiently go to the gym and work out and and have really good form like that's the hack but you're still having to put the reps in but you yeah you want to do them well so it's the same thing which you're listening you want to be listening to the right stuff for your level and that's what we try to help here in talking about different recordings. You want to challenge your mind and your ears in different ways.

And you want to, you know, like one thing that we've taught and we talk about a lot at Open Studio is like learn music phrase by phrase. Don't learn it measure by measure. That's really getting you away from the page. So that's a little trick and hack that'll make you more efficient as you learn. But there's more information in listening to something and getting that information than there is than just reading it. You know, there's that famous book, The Inner Game of Tennis, which was very

popular in the 80s. It's a performance book about the mental game of tennis, but it's skills that could be applied to any kind of performance. A lot of musicians were into that book, and I still apply concepts from it. But I remember one of the examples from it was, you know, if you try to tell someone how to hit a forehand groundstroke,

they're not going to be able to hit a forehand groundstroke. But if you hit 10, 20, 50, fourhand groundstrokes in front of them, where they're watching you do it and they go to mimic that, they get it so much faster. Yeah. You know, it's that experience. They're experiencing you. They're taking information that can't be conveyed in language.

Just like you can't convey everything about how McCoy Tyner plays pentatonic's, you know, how he uses them in just the written note. Right. There's a sound he gets that's part of it, you know, and where he uses it and how it lays and how the eighth notes feel like that's, you can't, you can't replicate that on a page. Yeah. And it sometimes seems unapproachable when you try to learn by ear McCoy Tyner. But if you stick with it a little bit, once you start to learn it and maybe use a few little aids to get you there, but you're really listening, listening, listening. Like, it's so much simpler than going through an explanation and seeing it on the page. That actually makes it seem a lot more complicated.

It may get you playing it sooner, but it's going to make it harder for you to actually integrate some of the, those techniques and skills into your playing. Plus, you're not going to get the ear training stuff, which is so valuable anyway. Well, that's the thing. Which is actually the meat. People think of that as the bi-product. That's like the main, not meat, that's the main course, plant-based diet. Yeah.

Big shout out. No, but you should have, you know, by the time you get to McCoy, you should have already transcribed some Miles Davis, some Whitney Kelly, like some red garland, some kind of more palatable things. And your ear is then ready to go on. I mean, that's really the key, right? It's like, the more you do it, the better you get at it. It's like anything else.

And then you can start really hearing some advanced stuff, and you don't need the page. So you're saying you'll hear it at that point? I'm saying you'll hear it. And I know I'm, again, kind of preaching of this, but I just feel like it's like we talk so much about things, about information that we can give and things people want. But, you know, really, it's all there. We've said this before. It's all there. If you can develop that one thing, if you could develop your ears, I would take that over any other skill for this.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, as the music goes in different directions, as it does, as it should, as in any kind of living, breathing art form, you're going to be better positioned to be able to explore these other areas and contribute. I mean, that's what we're all supposed to be contributing in our own ways to this music. And with the development of your ears, then you start to be able to execute on the things that you hear, the ideas that you have, which is ultimately the most important thing. We all have something to say in this music.

And I think a lot of times, you know, we don't want to do a disservice to everybody by saying, you know, too much to get caught into the tricks and tactics and all these different things of learning other people's things. That's just a means to an end for us to kind of getting to that place where we can contribute and say what we want to say in the music. Absolutely. That's great. So you're saying that number one through number seven today is... In my life list is listen. Listen. One through seven in music.

Well, it's good because we were leading so many lists. with listen and we kind of got away from that a little bit but we still believe it we still love it we still talk about it here so yeah I mean it's the biggest part of this yeah so we're gonna start a new little thing we wanted to show so you guys have been showing us so much love with the ratings and reviews thank you guys please keep them coming don't stop but we really appreciate all this five six and seven star reviews um nothing below five accepted but you know over at i tunes apple podcast and google podcast wherever you listen to your podcast thank you for that It just takes a minute, you know, rating review.

But what we wanted to do is to reciprocate, I guess, you know, a little bit. Give a little something back. Give a little something back. So if you go to make a rating, and we're not even going to say it has to be five stars or seven stars. It's whatever you honestly feel. If we provided a little bit of value for you, make that rating, maybe leave us a review, take a screenshot. I'm going to say you've got to take the screenshot on your phone. Okay.

I don't know why I'm saying it has to be on the phone. That's easy to do. Because it's easy. Hold the one button and press the other buttons down. Take a screenshot and then send it to us on Twitter or Instagram. Or on you'll hear it.com. On you'll hear it.com? There you go.

So on Twitter and Instagram we're Hey, Open Studio. That's right. Should we start a Hey, you'll hear it? That's too complicated. That's too complicated. Okay. Hey, open studio. Hey, open studio.

Hit up Adam, you know, hit up Adam or Peter, maybe a little hashtag, Adam, what up, or whatever you want. But show us that screenshot, show us that love. And we've got a little something. We're going to actually mail to you. And I think the powers that be are going to say only U.S. only for the mailing, right? Probably only U.S. But you know what?

We're going to try to make it happen no matter where you are. Yeah, yeah. So we got a special little, we can't even say what it is, but you're going to like it, I think. It's going to look great. Ooh, you're giving it away now. A little something for you guys. So hit us up, please. And we got anything else? Any more housekeeping,

house cleaning? I think that'll do it. Yeah. Go to you'll hear.com to leave suggestions for future episodes. And you can leave voice messages, taped voice messages. There's a tape machine that we have on our desk here. Adam has it hooked up to his

ADAT system. Yeah, so I digitize all the tapes and then there are digital audio tapes. On ADATs. On ADATs. We have a huge machine in the back that then converts that to reel to reel, which we've made masters of.

Right. But it gives us that great audio sound, that old school audio file. Someday someone's going to discover this physical archive and be amazed. That's right. All right. Well, thanks a lot.

You'll hear it. Thank you.