You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 32 Years Of Musical Wisdom

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

Peter lays out his 6 laws of progress and explains how they've helped him over the years. Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

What's up everybody? Peter Martin here. Welcome to today's episode. Things are going to be just a little bit different than normal. Have you noticed yet? Have you noticed yet? You will. You will. I'm Peter Martin. This is the You'll hear a podcast. Music advice coming at you. Normally with two of us here, Adam and myself, Adam Annis is on vacation, down in the Florida Keys. Actually, he's not in the Keys. He is in Florida. We just said Keys because we thought that would be a fun pun. Producer Caleb is still in the house. We're keeping things rolling and we're going to change things up just a little bit. We're still talking about music, piano and all that kind of stuff. But what I thought would be fun today would be to kind of do a brain dump for me to be able to hopefully be focused in on passing along some knowledge, some wisdom from, well, we're calling this 32 years. And I know what you're thinking. You're 32 years old. So this is my whole lifetime.

I'm in fact a little bit older than 32. I'm 52. And so I decided to go back to age 20. 32. Is that correct? Is my math correct, Caleb? I think I'm okay, my math is correct. So not to say that I didn't learn anything worthwhile before I was 20.

I definitely did. But 20 seemed like to be the first point where I think I was sort of, you know, I got a chance to play with Betty Carter when I was 20. So that was like a big thing like on the job, learning musical wisdom, how to perform, how to swing, how to how to, you know, be of service to the audience, to the music and all that kind of stuff. And things started to kind of click for me around that time. So a little bit arbitrary. 32 years of musical or piano wisdom.

And I've broken it up into some different areas that I'm passionate about and I think that I may have, you know, some helpful things for you. Some of which you've heard before, some of which you maybe haven't heard before. It doesn't really matter when we're on sort of a learning journey on a growth journey. I think it's so important, equally important often for reinforcement or like looking at something that you know or thinking about it from a different angle through a prism, upside down sometimes, whatever it is. because these core fundamental things, and full disclosure, there's nothing I'm inventing here today that hasn't been said that it wasn't taught to me either by circumstances, by reference musicians or recordings,

or being in different situations, or trial and error, or making mistakes or whatever it is. But I think that there's solid things that will hopefully refocus all of us in terms of what our growth trajectory is, wherever we are in our growth trajectory. Okay? So the first area we're going to talk about is technique.

And technique matters. It matters no matter what you're doing as an artist. When we kind of zoom in and think about us as pianists, if that's your instrument, it really matters. And I think a lot of times, you know, everybody knows it matters, of course. But in terms of us being able to execute our feelings and our emotions and to be able to get our story across, especially in the improvisational arena of which we are dancing most of the time as jazz musicians, technique is such a difference maker.

And so a lot of times we don't always talk about it enough or focus on it enough, I think, because one, it can be hard to practice and it can be hard to make breakthroughs. And also, it's not the sexiest part of playing. It's not the like, you know, it's more like the building blocks as opposed to sort of the end result. But the longer I play this music,

the more I realize that technique, matters. And, you know, I had some really, really, really strong technical foundations from when I was young and first learning the instrument before I was even necessarily applying it to jazz, although I was listening to jazz since I was pretty young. I was super fortunate with that as far as having music in the household. But just the technique that you go back to learn your instrument, we have to focus on that forever, you know? I think if we're able to lock in certain things at different points, along the way, you know, as we're growing as musicians, that's great, but we always have to at least do maintenance with that kind of thing. So don't ever feel like, okay, I've mastered these scales.

I've mastered these arpeggios. So I've mastered piano technique. No, it's like, how are you using that? How are you applying it? Are you going back to review? Are you being attentive to it? Because that, you know, this is the foundation of the tools that we have to express ourselves. So it's just super, super important. And I think it's, you know, it's talked about, but it's not talked about enough. Now, is technique on its own, the be all, end all, the bees, knees, as it were, of course not. And we've all been around, you know, we can expand it beyond just jazz music and just to art in general, you know, the visual arts, to dance, to, to movies, to all these different great mediums. When somebody has a lot of technical prowess and maybe,

Maybe they're missing some on the storytelling side or the emotional side or the vocabulary side. You know, all these different elements. Sometimes there can be a little bit of a disconnect there in terms of what they're able to serve and to give to the audience. But when we look at technique as that foundational block as that kind of, you know, secret element for us to be able to not be impaired when we want to tell our story, when we want to be creative, when we want to compose something, when we We want to spontaneously compose a great improvised solo. We're looking at the invisibility that a great technique can give us so that we can get as close as possible to that direct connection between we're hearing something and then it's coming out of our instruments.

So technique matters. That's number one. These are kind of in order, but they're not necessarily in order of importance like number one's more important number six than number six. I don't think. foundational, you know, sort of points of musical wisdom, hopefully. Number two, reference points matter. Okay, now what am I talking about with reference points?

This can mean something, anything from as simple as I love to listen to Thelonius Monk. He's my reference point, or one of my reference points as a jazz composer, right? It's like the standard bearer. It's somebody that you look up to. It's a mentor. It's an idol. It's an idealistic level that we're looking to orient ourselves as artists and storytellers. So it's not about saying the reference point is the lonelius monk.

And until I'm able to compose as good as Thelonious Monk, I'm nothing. No, no, no, it's not that. But it is setting the bar high. So when we talk about the different artists and artistry that we orient ourselves to and that we surround ourselves with, if that's listening or hearing live or whatever, we want to have these reference points for the different elements for piano technique.

Piano technique matters, but it's like, who is your reference point for piano technique? Is that Horowitz? Is that Herbie Hancock? Is that Andre Watts, who we just lost, one of the great, great classical pianists?

And so, like, I was really lucky because I was able to, and privileged really, to hear, for instance, Andre Watts, from when I was at a young age, I heard him play several times live with the St. Louis Symphony right here and got to, you know, start to think about, nothing about like classical music or jazz or pop or whatever,

the different things that I was interested in. But just like what can be done with this instrument? What is the reference point to how somebody can approach this instrument from a technical standpoint? You know, what kind of technical mastery is my reference point? And so that was definitely one of them. I'm thinking about Andre Watson, because we just lost him.

But I mean, looking back, like, he was a real reference point for me. Philonious Monk with composition. Now, these aren't the only ones for you to have, but have somebody or have several folks in each of these different areas. Nina Simone, when I first heard her play the piano, she became a technical reference point,

a reference level, top shelf level of reference for me, just for piano technique. I mean, I loved her singing. I love what she played. like how she played the instrument and you know the nuances the voicing um and just the beauty of the phrasing of what could be done that was and continues to be my reference points so it's like have reference points and set them really high don't ever be like well i'm not that great of a player so i need to orient myself with lower level players no no no set your stuff high because

once you get into that neighborhood you're more likely to absorb from the bass and that's what we want to do. But you also have to think about those reference points. You need to talk about them with your friends, talk about them. And that's what we're doing here a lot of time on the pod. It's like, you know, we're trying to orient ourselves around greatness. And in order to do that, you have to have those reference points. All right, number three, should I do the swoosh? Wait, I'm afraid to even go towards the swoosh. Should I do it? I'm going for it. Woo. Okay, I just got to do that between each one, right? Caleb was laughing. Okay. Number three, consistency matters.

This is so, so, so, so, so important. And we need to apply this to everything that we're doing on our musical journey. It's so much more important to consistently show up in the practice room at the jam session, on the tour, on the concert, playing for your spouse, whatever it is that's a part of your musical development. it, but it's so much more important to show up consistently than on, you know, every day with some sort of musical interaction than it is to be chasing after these big breakthroughs. You're going to have to, by showing up and being consistent, the big breakthroughs will come, but you can't schedule them in, right? I mean, they're going to come unexpectedly. That's like a little bit of a bonus. It's just like you're showing up at your job, your paid your salary to show up, okay? So our salary for showing up as musicians is, consistent development. I'm sorry, not consistent development, consistently showing up and development over a period of time. There's going to be some big jolts. There's going to be some plateaus. There's even going to be some going down. Our only job is to show up, right? But then when we get

those bonuses just like on your job, you might get a Christmas bonus or something unexpected, that's on top of, you know, that's like an appreciation for what you're doing. And the universe will conspire to give you those bonuses of some breakthroughs, but you got to show up, you know, because sometimes the universe is going to be there to give you that. If you're not showing up, you're not going to be able to receive that. Okay, so stop chasing after those big breakthroughs and let them come to you, believe in the process and know that they will come. You know, by having great reference points in reading their stories and listening to their stories, you'll see how they've done that same things. That's another great

thing about having reference artists that we want to orient ourselves around in terms of how they develop. We're going to be the beneficiaries of those same things. So then you're starting to think about it less from the standpoint of like, I want to have the piano technique of Andre Watts. And it becomes more about I want to have, I want to have that as my reference point for a top shelf piano technique. But I want to orient myself, orient myself around the same type of musical lifestyle that includes showing up and practicing, putting in the work, and then having those breakthroughs as a bonus, like Andre Watts did, like Thelonious Monk did, like Nina Simone did, whoever your reference points are. And I think with the consistency, what makes showing up

easier and then can eventually become habitual is really understanding and getting to that point where you're really enjoying that process, especially for practice, because it's such a solitary thing. What can we do in order to not only love the benefits of practice, but love the actual process of practicing? You know what I mean? Even the difficult parts, the parts where it's like, I'm playing something that I'm not good at. That's why I'm practicing at it. I'm grinding. I'm working. Some days it's a grind. I'm grinding, grind. But how am I enjoying that? Knowing that there's going to be those breakthroughs, but they might not come today. They might it even come this week. So what are the little micro breakthroughs, the little developmental

things every day where we can enjoy that process? Are we listening to what we're doing? Are we taking the time as we're being consistent to practice performing, right, at the end of our practice session? That's one little technique that you can do. But regardless, consistency matters. And consistency matters so much, I would say, that it trumps like practicing the right things. Okay. So obviously practicing the right things is important. But if you had to pick one or the other, consistency is more important. Because if you show up every day and even if you are orienting yourself around some wrong things to practice, by showing up every day, you're going to practice some right things as well.

You're still going to be at the instrument, which is the most important part. So we want to be, you know, developing, you know, in acute sense of what is working, what we need to practice at a particular time in our development, all those things. But don't get caught up in that and wait for perfection in terms of, of a practice plan where it keeps you from being consistent. Consistency is showing up every day. And the great thing about it is that it does matter. It leads to results.

It leads to joy within the music. That's something I've definitely learned over the years. But it's also a very simple concept, just show up every day. It's not like show up and execute this 77 point standard operating procedure that has a lot of complexity and difficulty to it. It's a very simple thing to just show up. Now, what you're going to do when you show up, that's these other elements that we're talking about,

but just honor consistency because it does matter. All right, I'm swooshing. Is it a swoosh if you announce it, though? I don't know. I mean, if I announce it, boom, there you go. Okay, number four, okay, your network matters. So in terms of like just musical wisdom and musical development, piano wisdom that I've developed over the years,

this one that's kind of crept up to me over time. And I have to acknowledge. And this just means, in terms of network, it means who you know. But it's also like, not necessarily just who you're born with knowing, as in maybe your mother, maybe you have a father, grandparents, siblings, whatever your family structure is. Maybe you don't have that. And you're by yourself or your foster family, whatever. That's kind of the network that the world gives you.

But what I'm talking about is the network of people that you go out and acquire, right? So I think back to my network as an example. You know, I had a chance to meet Winton Marsalis when I was 14 years old, 13 or 14 years old. And that was a huge breakthrough for me because, you know, it opened up some musical information that I really needed at the time because he was and is a fantastic teacher. but more from the standpoint in terms of being a mentor, right? So, like, he's the first one that told me about Thelonius Monk, which led to, you know, me falling in love with his music and trying to learn about its compositions

and learning about, you know, his technical approach to the instrument and how that worked. It led me down all these wonderful rabbit holes, but it all started with a network of people. Then that network of Wint Marcellus led me to meet a couple years later of Roy Hargrove because Wint Marcellus told me about Roy Hargrove. He's like, do you know this? He didn't even say, do you know,

as he knew I didn't know. He's like, there's this great trumpet player about your age. I just met in Texas. You should seek him out at some point. This is pre-internet or Instagram or anything. How am I going to seek him out? Well, I actually got a chance with my high school band to play at the NAJ jazz convention, which is like, now it's called the Jen Convention, but it was the National Association of Jazz Educators. And our band was invited to play in Dallas, Texas. And I was like, wow, I'm in Dallas playing with my high school band. I wonder if I can find this guy, Roy Hargrove that Witton had told me about. And it turned out his band was playing from the Arts Magd Dallas Arts Magnus. I went over and introduced myself. Turned out, Winton had told Roy about me.

And so he's like, yeah, I wanted to meet you. So it's like the network effect after you meet one person that's helpful, that's a mentor, that's a teacher, that's a connector, then that leads into all these different directions, you know? And so your network really does matter. So if we're only in the practice room showing up consistently, working on our technique and all these things, but we don't get out and network. And I know that's a little bit of a loaded word because like, I'm a networker. It's not about like you're trying to meet,

you're trying to meet people so that your musical development and musical world can be enhanced so that you can serve the greater musical and world community with your music. As much as your networking is going to help yourself, it's going to help others too. So it's not a negative thing. It's a very positive thing, and it leads in a lot of different, you know, really interesting, you know, directions. So people that you're able to meet, you need to be a little bit, I think, aggressive at different times. That could be people that you want to maybe form a bandwidth, that you go to a jam session. And you're like, oh, I really like this player. I'm looking for a bass player and a drummer.

You've got to create that network sometimes. You know, sometimes you have to go, if you're a young player that's really wanting to, you know, acquire some new skills and stretch and get a chance. to maybe have your compositions played or play other people's stuff or learn how to, you know, learn tunes on the gig, all these different things that are great for our development, you might need to go to another locale because maybe there aren't enough, there's not enough of a musical network, say, in your particular genre where you live. So then you're looking at going somewhere else. You got to check out your network first. I hear a lot of young musicians that are like, I got to go to New York because that's where all the best players are.

And I'm like, yeah, I mean, New York is, of course, fantastic. It's not. the only place where there's a bunch of young players or whatever, but it's a place. But I always ask them, like, have you fully exploited your local network? You know what I mean? Have you seeked out the best older players in Omaha, Nebraska, where you live or whatever? You might think that there aren't any, but make sure, because there's somebody there that's got some information for you, probably. You know, so that's up to you to seek them out. You can't just look online for them or whatever and then start dreaming of another place.

But however you do it and go about doing it, you know, the network matters. So like nurture that network, love that network, take care of that network. So it's not just about like, you know, what can you get from these people. Yes, you're going to be imparted knowledge, information connections, gigs, pathways, if you're able to exploit your network. But you've got to be there for those folks too. How are you helping them? You know, it's just like a friendship.

Like it can't just be you're taking from them. If you're down and out, yeah, you might need their love and support, but you got to be ready for when they're down and out or whatever. So you want to be thinking of nurturing your network, not just when you need them, but when they may need you. And then you become that connector and that one that's helping the scene to flourish. Boom, I just did it that time. See? Well, I'm still talking about it, though. Okay.

Number five, we're almost up to our number six. We've got six of these. These are humbly titled 32 years of musical wisdom. Okay, number five is humility matters. Okay. So this one kind of speaks for itself, but it's all so important. And this one probably more than any of the other ones, you need to fully ingrain this in your personality,

at least in your musical personality, if not your persona in general. because this is not something that you can just put on a humility jacket when you need it for the right situation. But you're going to need it at some point. You're going to need it more often than you think. And in fact, if you aren't humble, there's a little bit of a problem because you're not even going to ever realize most of the time when you are going to need it. So that's why you have to orient yourself around a humble attitude about your own. place in the music. You've got to find some way to just be that. Now, that's not going to always

happen overnight, but to start it is quicker than happening overnight because it can happen right now. So basically, you just need to commit to yourself to start on that journey, right? It's not going to be a perfect journey. There's going to be some stumbles. If you're lucky, there won't be many stumbles. If you're unlucky or unskilled at this, or you don't follow through and execute and have some discipline about it, you're going to have a lot of stumbles. But once you start to understand the benefits and the peace and the vitality that it can bring for you, that the habit is really rewarded in a number of different ways and you likely will continue on. So the way that this, I see this benefiting us and manifesting itself is that when we

are humble, when we have humility, we're better prepared to be able to, um, you're, uh, grow, you know, like a growth mindset we talk about. It's very hard to have a growth mindset and then to actually grow as a musician or anything that you're doing if you aren't humble. Because if you're not humble, if you're not humble, you don't think that you have much to learn, if anything, right? So it's not about like trying to rate yourself as a musician. When you're younger, I think a lot of times it's very natural for us to sort of place ourselves like, okay, I'm a jazz pianist. So how do I rank with other jazz pianists around my age? Or are just a just in general or in my city.

You know what I mean? And I was definitely guilty of doing this when I was younger as well. But the quicker you can kind of move away from that, the faster you'll get into a very joyous area of humility to the music, right? Like if you start to look at all of us here to serve the music as a whole and being part of something that is really part of the betterment and joy and entertainment and edification of humanity in general, not to over. blow it, but that's what it is. I mean, art elevates humans. Like, that's the whole point of it,

when it's done correctly, right? So, you know, we're looking at all these different elements to be able to do that better. So when we approach something humbly, it's not a sense of false humility because I've seen Chick Korea act super humbly around other musicians. And he was Chick Korea. You know what I mean? Like, so like if you're at the top of the food chain, you can be the big dog, but that's not the way he acted. That's the way he played. but even that there was a humility, there was a humanity, there was a connection with his playing, even with the incredible technique and everything that really served the listeners and fellow musicians. So we want to adopt, you know, all the different elements of humility that we can.

And we want to kind of consciously try to infuse our personality, not in a false way, but in a very authentic way, with humility. So that means when we come to a certain musical challenge, be it a technical challenge, be it an ear training challenge, be it a, you know, what are the proper changes to this tune?

Like, let's think about it to be humble, even if we think we know it, even if we're sure we know it. And this is hard. Once you actually start to learn stuff really well, because it's very easy to come and be like, oh, that's what this is.

And so we've talked about this here on the pod and different episodes, part of the reason we don't like this attitude in terms of music theory applied to jazz when people say, oh, well, that's just G flat over B. Well, that's just a B altered thing. Just a, like, that's a loaded thing sometimes because there's like a lack of humility with that. Like, we still want, like, when you're humble about something, you're still a little bit in awe of it.

It's like, wow, this is a B7 altered and it gives this beautiful sound. And I want to learn how to do that even better. Yes, I know exactly what it is, but how can I do better? How can I approach the music with some humility? You know what I mean? So it becomes less about being a pecking order and who am I supposed to be humbled to and who am I supposed to be above? No, we're all supposed to be humble before the music. And I think you see that manifested in very interesting ways, very consistently among great artists in a number of different genres.

So we can use those as our reference point, as we talked about early, really for developing our own humility. And it really, really, really matters. Like, the better you get at this, the simpler all these other things become. The more fun it becomes, the more joyous and the more you're able to ultimately serve the music, which is what we're here to do. Okay, we are swooshing our way to number six. And if you're still here, thank you for being here. Why do I say if they're still here?

If they weren't here, they wouldn't hear that. Thank you for being here because you are here. You know what I'm saying? No, some people skip ahead in these things. I do know that. We see that. Some people are like, I want to go to number six because that's the most important. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, by the way, just to jump back to number five, if you want to see a lack of humility and a lot of humility, YouTube comments, I mean, not some, well, I mean on this channel, but especially like some of our videos over at Open Studio, you can see some examples of the polar opposites of that. Like total lack of humility, and then just like an abundance of humility.

And then some stuff in between too. That's always interesting. Number six is patients, patients matters. Patients, not patients in the hospital, patience as in I'm going to wait on you to finish what you're doing because I'm a patient person. But this, like orienting yourself around a long-term horizon for musical development and growth is just paramount. And it's just so crucial for our development. And we have to be patient and then we have to continue to be patient and then we have to be patient some more. It's never ending.

So it's a little bit like the humility. We want. want to figure out the most efficient way for us to become patient musicians, patient people, patient practisers, patient learners. Because that's going to get us through all that kind of 99% of our development that is slow. And that's just the reality. That's for everybody. Even the ones that you see Joey Alexander or something, you're like, oh, my God,

he's amazing since he was nine years old. He has to be patient. He had to be patient. He might have hit a certain level at a younger age than most, but there's still, believe me, a lot of patient practice, disappointments, all these different kinds of things that are worked into that. So when we are able to adopt a patient attitude in everything that we're doing, it starts to manifest benefits in all sorts of ways. We can look at like really the micro level of we're practicing, you know, scale. So just this one part of our practice routine. Well, how are we patient in doing that?

So we don't skip ahead. Like if we commit to saying we're going to start at this metronome level and slowly move things up, we stay with that and we stay patient, right? And we don't start to, it's just like when you're trying to lose weight. Don't look at the scale every day. That's not being patient. It's not going to change every day. It might even go up some.

You know, wait to wait, look it for a month or whatever. Same thing with the scales, the technique that we're doing. It's like we're being very patient with that. It doesn't mean we're moving slow. We can execute and be decisive with what we do things, with our consistency and showing up for sure. But in terms of our expectations about what the music's supposed to give us and what our practice, what we're putting into it, what we get back,

that's where that humility comes in because the humility layered with the patients, they help each other, right? When you're really humble before the music and you're consistent and you're working things out, you know, you really start to present yourself in a place where the patient starts to come early. So for me, that's probably been the most important element of all these different things that I've learned over these last 32 years plus in the music is just being patience. And it just helps so much with the joyousness and the enjoying the process, you know. It makes it so that practice is fun.

It makes it so that the composition process is fun. I mean, I've been in here writing a lot of new music over the last nine or ten days for a new project that I'm doing. And like almost every day has been like kind of just breakthroughs and I'm writing stuff that I really like and I'm posting and getting feedback even from folks. It's great. And then a couple days ago, I just like hit a wall. I'm in there for a couple of hours and pretty much going backwards, you know. But I've been able to develop my patience enough to know that like it's okay. It's going to come.

It might not go anywhere today. But maybe tomorrow we come back and we pick that up. it just goes right there. Or maybe we wait a couple of days. Maybe it's even a couple of weeks. But that's that development, trusting the process, being patient with it.

And then the great thing is like the benefits that start to come from these things, especially the patients, is actually an expedited manifestation of your development, which is a little bit counterintuitive. You think like if you're too patient, something doesn't ever happen. But with that consistency and with really attention to detail

and, you know, attention to really executing on what your practice and musical and compositional improvisational goals are, your development is actually accelerated when you, when you're looking with a little bit of a longer horizon, right? So it doesn't, because what you're not doing is saying, I'm going to be patient about starting the journey. That you're not, you're not, I'm not going to start practicing yet because I'm being patient. No, that's not that kind of patient, but you're patient in terms of the results. So if anything, you're surprised when some things happen quicker when you get some breakthroughs. And having that longer horizon is huge,

you know, and highly recommend it to everybody. All right, that's it. I hope that you gained at least a little bit of musical wisdom, a little bit of piano wisdom, a little bit of jazz wisdom, as we do here. We invite you to come back. And if you are watching this on YouTube, Thank you for being there. Please like and subscribe and consider adhering to the gentlemen and ladies agreement. If you are listening to this,

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