You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 3 Levels of Listening (And Why They're All Important)

Episode Date: November 22, 2019

There's more than one way to Number 1: Listen, and today Peter and Adam list them off and tell you why you should make sure you're doing all three.3 Levels of ListeningCasual listeningListening with intentDeep listeningWant every Open Studio course for free? That's right - over 300 hours and 1200 lessons can be yours with free lifetime access! All you have to do is enter Open Studio's 2019 Holiday Giveaway. Go to https://learn.openstudiojazz.com/giveaway/, or watch this video of Peter for more info: https://youtu.be/KsdhVXE5ovILike those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey, listen to me, man. Well, how deeply? I'll, one, two, three, what, level up. What, let's do this. Definitely not for enjoyment. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin.

And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Coming at you on a Friday. Yes, hump day. No, it's not hump day. It kind of is because you've got the week, Monday through Friday, and then you got the weekend. This is like the bridge day. You're humping between them.

Again, to explain hump day to you for the 50-somethingth time, Monday through Friday is most people's work week. Yes. Now, a work week is something where people go to their job and work. Oh, believe me. Let's do this a few more days. I'll understand what a work week is like. Wednesday is in the middle, and you're over the hill.

You're coming down. You're almost to the weekend. But I love working. What do you mean? That's why I'm like, you know, Friday is just starting to jump off. All right. Anyway, all right. So that was fun yesterday.

I'm jumping into the future and all the positive feedback we got for us both being back together. Oh, of course. It got a little bit emotional yesterday. We had to bring, Ryan had to bring out the tissue. Not emotional. I just had jet lag and I spilled my coffee everywhere. Is everything working still there? Pretty much.

I mean, my computer was still fried from the last time I spilled a bunch of stuff like. Yeah, you poured liquid in there like you're some kind of mad scientist. It is ridiculous. I bought this computer like outright. I usually lease. Yeah. That was a huge mistake. You can lease a computer?

Can lease a computer. Let's do this big time. I don't know. You got good credit, don't you? Well, not anymore. Not since I've destroyed like three computers in a row. Cool. Well, what are we talking about today?

Cool. No, I'm not, that's my That's like my hump day segue to the next section. You got a new, you got a new sticker. Oh, the jazz. Oh, jazz intent. What is that? A head.

I was a festival, a festival in Turquant. Turquant? Yeah, I played last month. Yeah, actually, you know, we're always getting questions. I don't know if you know about that. Some people on the YouTube's have actually focused in to try to read all of ours. So maybe we just give a quick, I'll give a quick breakdown. Okay, okay.

These are the stickers on the back of our. stickers on our laptop because we're like you know teen i was going to say teenage millennials that doesn't exist we're like a millennial in a coffee shop we we drink our pour over while we have stickers on our lap on our mac laptops okay that didn't go over as i thought anyway open studio uh jazz on tep that's from the festival covering up is the um jenny's ice cream and i kind of covered that up because i love that so much and it's so unhealthy that i was seeing it and it's so close to here that I was going there too often. But I still have it sort of sneaking out.

Cat and a Cloud Coffee, great coffee shop in Santa Cruz, California. Shout out to West Coast. Of course, you'll hear it. We need to get some stickers away. We're going to do that soon. You know, next week, we're going crazy with the giveaways. We've got the big... Well, yeah, it's going to be Thanksgiving, Friday, for sure. Everything for sure. Boston University, big shout to B.U.

ACLU, We the People. Big shout out to ACLU. Tokyo. Adidas. These are all, like, self-explanatory. Blueprint coffee. Kelly Martin Yoga. Oh, Kelly Martin Yoga. Kelly Martin Yoga. What's the goat?

That's Calde's. That's the Calde's goat. Oh, that's the Calde's goat. So I have KDHX 88.1. That's our community radio station right across the alley from our studio here. Of course, open studio, you'll hear it. This St. Louis profile, it's literally St. Louis on a horse.

Or as they said in France. Saint-Louis with the Flertile there. This is actually the logo for Apotheosis Comics on South Grand. My friend Martin Kossis owns it. It's an amazing coffee shop bar venue. They do music and stand-up comedy in the comic book shop. Wow. A great comic book shop. And then this is, of course, the St. Louis Blues Honey Bear, which is painted on the side of our building. Right. And during the opening of that mural, they had these stickers. I grabbed one. And it would, of course, be featuring the world champion NHL Stanley Club. Oh, is it called Stanley Club?

Stanley Cup champion, 2019 Stanley Cup champion. St. Louis Blues. Let's go Blues. And then of course, the 442s. That was the first sticker on this computer. And you know, this St. Louis sticker that, I don't know if you notice, it's kind of hidden by the Fleur-de-Lee, which is the logo of two of my favorite cities that I've lived in most of my life, New Orleans and St. Louis. Yeah. But you've got the confluence there, representing of the Missouri and the Mississippi River coming in. That's right, man. A little, little backstory there. Okay, let's get into what we're talking about today, which is three levels of listening and why they're important.

So this is like beginner intermediate advanced or one, two, three, or red, green, blue? It's kind of beginner intermediate advanced, actually. Yeah. So, but really, at any level, you can do any of these. Right. You know what I mean? Because, well, let's just start out. Number one is casual listening.

This is listening for enjoyment. Yes. Listening in your car, listening, you know, on your commute, or just any kind of casual listening to music. Right. This is, like, I say this is for everybody because, you know, I still casual listen all the time, obviously. Yes. It's one of the main ways I listen. I probably spend most of my time casually listening

because I love music. Yes. And I just want to make it a part of my everyday life. Now, do you have trouble casually listening when you can't pay attention or focus? I have a little trouble with that. I'm going to put it out there. Like you need to be able to focus on the music?

Yeah, I sometimes, like, I'll start out casually listening as in, well, maybe we should delineate between background and casual listening where... Well, casual listening normally is in the background. I would consider background part of casual listening, but not all casual listening is background. Okay. So I would consider listening to music while you're driving. It's really hard to listen more than casual for me while I'm driving because then I'll just get in an accident.

You know what I mean? So when I listen to music when I'm driving, it's literally just like a soundtrack that I put on for a feeling. You know, I listen to a ton of like pop music and hip hop and singer-songwriters when I'm driving. Because if when I listen to jazz, I kind of get way too into it. Me too. You know what I'm saying? If it's something that like, I mean, it's almost like a distracted driving, texting like driving situation. So I, you know, if someone put on Herbie Hancock while I was trying to drive, I'd be like, oh, oh, you know what?

It's just too much. It is, it is difficult. But I think it's, yeah, casual listening, background listening. You know, background kind of has a bad connotation. But I think, I mean, you know, I think the more you're, as we get into the other levels, maybe this will make sense, the more astute and experience you are with all things. three levels of listening. I find this first level is, it's not like you're too good for it or you can't do casual listening,

but what you're listening to becomes more, you have to really be careful what that is, or it can be difficult for it to be either in the background or while you're driving. Well, but you know, there are things to learn from this casual listening, this listening for enjoyment or in the background or whatever, like lessons as a music maker, because this is really, this is the litmus test for

how good of a vibe did they create on the recording? itself, right? Because you're listening to it because you want something that puts you in a mood right or gives you a vibe. Yeah. And so even though you're not like paying attention maybe to the form or what people are playing or every little detail, if they've created like an interesting vibe, yeah, then I'm going to listen to it. And so that to me is like, okay, I want to create music that creates an interesting vibe for people. So what is it about? So then later I can be like, why did I like having that on as I was driving so much just now? Right, right. And I can get deeper later. But what you're saying, I think, really

explains what this level is. You're saying why did I like having this on as opposed to why did I like listen? to this. And it's not that you're not listening on the casual level one, but it is kind of a I don't know, sound, not soundscape, but it's like a

tapestry of sound that can exist that's pleasant and that's pleasing. But there's value to recognizing that. Absolutely. Absolutely. And sometimes, you know, I know that I like to listen to, I like to listen to music while I'm working, but it's the same thing. Like with driving, I have to be very careful what's on, because if it's anything I'm

going to start to focus in on, I'm going to lose my train of thought or whatever. I can listen to a lot of classics that I've been listening to for a year. Like, I can listen to Kind of Blue casually at this point, right? Because I know every, you know, so detailed that there's no surprises. Right. And it creates obviously an incredible mood. Well, there's no surprise to our listeners that we are mentioning Kind of Blue today, because we do that every day.

We have to, at that point. So number two, what do we have? So number two is listening with intent. Okay, so this I think is both in terms of choosing what you're going to listen to and what you're listening to as you're listening to. That's what the intent is. You're listening for something specific. Yeah.

And that could be, you know, a certain instrument, how a certain melody is woven, a certain harmonic progression, a certain form, something that's on a little bit more of a pro level. I kind of put question mark here because we're not going full pro, but we're getting into an area where I don't think you necessarily have to be a totally trained musician, but you need to have some musical aptitude, at least in a sort of esoteric sense. Yeah. And so I think this level is what, like, a non-musician that has great musical aesthetics and has studied music, kind of like the way, you know, like we both consider ourselves foodies.

Yeah. Actually, you can cook. I can't really cook, but I appreciate it. I'm just all right. Okay, so maybe that's like for us, like, but we've been around great food. so much so we can identify certain things, but we can't actually do them. Oh, yeah, I'll judge everybody else's food all day long. Super judge, man, you're super judgy.

Yeah, so, I mean, I think that that's, but that's what, what to me is, I love talking to people that really know music, like, basically as well as we do as musicians, but they don't know any of the garbage nerd stuff. Like, they don't know that it's an A minor seven, but they're like, wow, that chord or that, that's right. They don't know any of the nomenclature, but they can identify it. But even pros can listen like this. To me, this could almost be called, like, listening with curiosity.

Right? Like maybe you don't know everything you're listening to, but you're kind of listening with some intent of like, what is this? Yes. You know, what is going on? This could be the question. How does that work? Or how does that work? How does this work? Or why do I like this? Or maybe even to the, like, you know, nudging up against our next level. Yeah. Which is like, why did they choose to do this? And that's, we're starting to get now into some, some deeper listening, which is coming up. But I think this listening with intent, listening for something. specific is like a, you know, it's still like halfway between casual and deep listening. Yeah. Because you can kind of come in and out. To me, this is like, I'll put a record on, on my record player, and I'll read the liner notes, right? So I'm not listening to every single note that's happening, but I'm curious, like, who's on this? What's going on? Like, you're curious. I'm curious. And I'm just, maybe it's new music, you know, this kind

of thing, I think, but I'm not going like deep into every single what is exactly happening here. Yeah, and I think that this level, well, first of all, I love the curiosity. But remember, curiosity, but it made the musician better. Okay, that's true. But I like this level. We're starting to get into an area where you might not just slap on something

that you love the way it sounds. You're a little bit, you're starting to take a little bit of a risk with your time. I think this is a great idea for this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're taking a risk with your time. You don't know that you're going to love it.

Yeah. It's really curious listening. And if you end up loving it, it's not about, you know, it's sort of like if you're going to put some clothes on and you go try something else that you know, you can put on that pair of jeans that you know works and is great, it's safe, it's comfortable, you don't have to think about it.

This, we're getting into some sort of thinking, let's maybe try this on. Does this fit? Does this, you know? Think about how many times you've checked out an album or an artist on a recommendation of a friend. Like, this could be that as well, right? Where someone's like, oh, yeah, you know, people have been telling me I should check out Thelonious Monk. All right, I'm going to sit down and listen to this, yeah, monk and see what I think. And you know what?

As much as, you know, we talk about sort of organic, old school ways of, I mean, look, you just said put on an LP with a liner notes, it doesn't get any more old school than that. This kind of listening, with recommendations from friends, I actually like sort of some of these algorithms that recommend things. I actually think there's some value to that. Totally agree.

I know this might put off some people and we might lose some of our, you'll hear it listeners. I don't think so, though. No, but I mean, like Spotify and these things, and I mean, like, I remember when we had like a Spotify account and everybody before they had the family plan, everybody's listening was jumbled up.

So you get to hear stuff that, other people in the family was actually recommended. So I like it when it's a little bit imprecise, but this idea of recommending, and it used to be like my dad used to tell, I think I missed this period sort of, he was always saying like when he was a teenager, he'd go to the record store. It was as much by going to buy

records as to learn, to find out about something. Yeah, you might have heard something on the radio that you're going to get, but you also, there'd almost be like a DJ there and you could sit down and test out the records and try things. And so I think this idea of, yeah, Frank could recommend it, but it's also just good to be exposed to try out some new stuff. curiosity.

I think it's great. Yeah. All right. So that brings us to our final level of listening and why it's important. Yes. And that's number three. It's something we've talked about a lot here on this podcast, but it's always worth really good.

Oh, no. Well, you could. But that's deep listening for the whole picture to really get the nuances, the details of a record. I would say, I would say, this is music that you love and that you want to internalize. And as a musician, you want to understand the inner workings of. And this is one of the most important tools you can learn to become a better musician. Just keep listening.

It's something we talk about a lot on all of our courses. Because this translates to listening to music casually or listening to music at home on recordings, but also translates to the stage. Yeah. This is like, this is where I think you're really starting to get into combining practice and work, happy work, with the listening. It's almost more about like, what are you learning from it? Maybe later on you know it so well that this ends up being something you listen to just in the background, but probably not. This is probably like your real, your grits, your baking, your eggs, the whole meal you're getting out of it. For sure.

And you learn some listening skills from this that translate to playing music directly. Because nobody's on the bandstand of any pro gig that you go see where they sound good. Nobody's listening casually up there. No. They're all listening. Well. Well, if they're phoning it in. Yeah, yeah.

But there's a lot of deep listening going on most bandstands on most nights. on most nights. And this is such an important, I mean, that's why we've talked about a lot, and I think that we've, this kind of just hopefully will summarize what we're always preaching. This is the kind of listening

that really is only required, um, and sort of fitting for pro musicians. And by pro, I don't mean you're getting paid, you're not, I mean, just like you take your craft seriously. You want to get better.

You are a musician. Um, and that can be anybody. That doesn't need to mean you're the greatest musician. But you're like, I want to, I have the confidence to say that I am a musician and I want to get better. I want to dedicate to my craft. Like, just if you're a home cook or if you're a, a Michelin Star cook, you're still all a cook. You're all chefs, right? Yeah.

So it's just different levels. But at a certain point, you have to put your steak in the ground. You got to draw a line in the sand and say like, okay, now I'm going over to pro level. I'm a musician. And so part of that that's required and is rewarded from this deep listening is this kind of investment. of your time and your attention and your understanding. I love the idea of investing your time. You know, it's like the old saying, you reap what you sow.

So if you sow attention and deep listening to music you love that you want to play like, you will, you will sow the rewards. Like you will, wait, you will reap, you will sow the seed. Well, I was always confused because you sew, I always thought that was like sewing. No, no, no, no, that's something different. It's sow. Yeah, it's sow. S-O-W, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, if you put the time in, you will get rewards from this. Yes. You just have to, and maybe we can break down a little bit more by deep listening, but it is listening for the details of recording. What is the pianist doing? Yes. What is the bassist doing?

What is the bassist doing? What quarter they're playing? What key are they in? What are they in? What are the notes over the quarter they're playing? How does the solo architecture work? Are they building in the middle? Are they building towards the end?

How does that work? How does that work? How does that solo architecture? What is the drummer doing? And where's the time come between the bass player and the drummer? Is there someone more on top? Are they both in the center? What's going on there?

All of these details are what you... And the great thing about this is, is when you analyze this, no matter what level you're on, there's something that you can analyze. Yes. So maybe you're kind of a beginner, but you can still analyze,

okay, what are the rhythms the piano player are comping? Yeah. That's easy enough for anybody to kind of figure out. You don't have to learn every single thick core that McCoy Tiner plays. No, yuck. say like, what is he doing rhythmically? That you can figure out.

Yeah. Yeah, I would say there's a big portion of this is analysis as you're going and then really thoughtful analysis. And this, look, deep listening as a musician, this goes under the category, not of recreation, but of practice. I mean, you know, if you're doing this right, it's all fun. That's right. It's all recreation in a sense.

But I mean, this is work. Like, and like I said, this is a good kind of work. Yeah. But this is when we talk about, you know, what do you practice, listen, this can be, you know, in the right proportions of your practice routine can be just as important, is just as important. It can be just as edifying and can give you just as much as practicing scales as learning a solo. Well, first of all, to learn a solo, you've got to do this deep listening. It's part of transcribing. Yeah, as part of transcribing.

So this is, I think, to break off the number three, this, the deep listening part as a musician, you really, you really. putting it in the category of practice. So when you say, okay, I've got an hour a day to practice, you better have at least 10 minutes of that. Absolutely. Yeah, you've got to commit to this. Commit to the deep listening. You have to. Oh, I love it when we get dogmatic. We're back. I know. We're back in the pod cave.

It feels like we're back. Commit. Commit or stop listening. How about that? No, don't stop listening. If somebody listens to this podcast, is this considered deep listening? Oh, hell no. This is recreation. This is recreation. This is one. This is casual listening. I mean, yeah, I, well, I have for enjoyment. so I don't even know if we could say that. Well, I know, actually, I'd say we fall under listening with intent for something specific, some knowledge. Sure.

Yeah, okay. Maybe, maybe. This was fun. This is our last weekend before big week next week. Oh, my goodness. I'm so excited. Yeah. Yeah.

Why? What are you most excited about? Well, we have a new sponsor that we're going to unveil on Monday. That's coming Monday. Can we tease it? I know we're not supposed to. I think we can. It goes hand in hand with deep listing, that's for sure.

It does. Okay. I'm going to just, look, this is as much as we're going to tease it. It's an app. and this is going to send your play. If you don't have this app, I know some of you may have it, but I think many of you don't.

This will send your next playing, coupled with the deep listening, will send your practice routine next level. That's not overstating it. No, this is going to be awesome. It's game change. And it doesn't matter. It could be on any tune.

Oh, yeah, exactly. Oh, on any tune. Yeah, yeah. So that's coming up. We're really excited about that. So tune in on Monday for that. But also we are running our giveaway, which you can actually go sign up for now.

If you go to open studio jazz.com, this is our biggest giveaway, our biggest sweepstakes. No, so you're supposed to correct me when I say that. It's definitely not a sweepstakes. It's a giveaway. We legally cannot call it a sweepstakes. Sorry, okay. You have 33 days left, no, 31 days left. But go today because you can get, I mean, there's so many different ways.

Look, all you got to do is visit Open Studio on YouTube and you get 10 entries. I mean, how hard is that? Do we, they just have to go to the website? Yes. Well, YouTube page, yeah. They got to go to the YouTube page. Yeah, we're trying to help our YouTube get more viewers. How does that work?

I don't know. Sign up for our email list. You get 10 entries. Follow us on Twitter. I mean, there's like a lot of really easy ways. But if you want to go next level, we talk about this yesterday. Send in a video of you playing emotion and motion. You're about to hear it.

You can even buy the sheet music now, which is available on Open Studio Jazz. But you know what? You can learn it by ear. All you got to do is learn some of it. It just has to be recognizable. And we've had a bunch of people send it in. And look, 95% of it has been recognized. Those are that one, which I'm not sure what they were playing.

Yeah. But as long as you'll get 5,000 entries. give a five-star review on the You'll Hear at Podcast will get you 200 entries. Oh, now that's something our listeners should be able to do. That's something you should want to do anyway. Exactly, exactly.

Why don't you vamp on that a minute? And then I'm going to read, we've had a bunch of reviews lately. Oh, you're going to read a review. This is my favorite part of the You'll Hear at Podcast because the delight that comes over Peter Martin's face as he reads a positive review is, it's hard to describe.

You have to see it on YouTube to believe it. Well, why describe it when they're about to see it no. Well, if they're not on YouTube, but just for our listeners, it's, uh, he lights up. I do. I love the, he loves positive praise. Yeah. I feel like I can make you do anything if I just praised you and I. Oh, come on now. Come on now. Okay, so seven stars times seven stars. Five, uh, this is from Pacman 13 from US on, uh, Apple podcast. This is literally the best podcast for jazz musicians. I'm just reading what it says. Why is that funny? I know. Yeah, I'm just reading what it says. The joy. Yeah. The self-adulation. Uh, if you need advice,

both in and out of the music. This is it. From the pros, check it out. Adam and Peter are thebom.com. They actually linked to bomb.com. I don't know if that's actually what they think it is. But anyway, thank you so much for that.

Shout out to our older listeners. And we'll give one more title. Great companion for all musicians. Not just jazz. Five stars. Excellent information. Lighthearted banter and nice bite-sized chunks from Bobby Sippick in the UK.

Big shout out to UK. for getting us up really high on the charts. You know what? USA is kind of lagging. I love the U.S., having been born here and being a resident. Yeah. But we're like number 13 in the U.S. We've got to get better than that.

Yeah, but we're number one in Poland. Big shout out to Poland. Come on, U.S. Yeah. Japan number four. Anyway, that's all coming. But go to openstitojadjazz.com. Check out the giveaway.

We're going to be very excited about that. We're giving lifetime access to all of our courses, a much of swag, a swag bag, free lesson. with either of us or both of us via Skype or your, however you want to do it. And we cover everything today. I think we did. Until tomorrow, you'll hear it.com.