You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 4 Practice Hacks - #91

Episode Date: April 30, 2018

Today, Peter and Adam list 4 of their favorite practice hacks. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Today we're going to give you four practice hacks. Man, I've been hacking my way through practice for like 20 years, dude. I'm ready for this one. But you know what?

This is exciting because these four are going to be so good. We usually give you seven of something. Yeah. But we both got a lot of stuff to do today. So that's the number one hack is don't give all the hacks away. Number one hack. If you've got seven things plans, you can cut it down to four. Yeah, cut it down to four.

That's right. But these are going to be so good. That's all you're going to need. It's interesting first that hack, because doesn't hack mean, that's a term my dad used or probably still uses, you know, oh, he's such a hack. What a hack. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of got a negative connotation, wouldn't you say? Yeah, but I think Silicon Valley kind of flipped all that on its edge.

Like, you know, it's a coder thing, right? You hack your way. I don't know, you're a hacker. You're trying to get in somewhere. Right. Kind of cheating the system. So we want to give you some effective hacks, but we don't want to force hacks. upon hacks.

These are not hacks to become a hack. No, no, no. There's the hacks to get out of hackdom. Okay, so let's look at these. Now, as always, we should start with listen. But because it's only four, we're going to avoid that, you know. But that's a given. Yeah, given.

But the first thing is to practice in all keys. And I think in terms of a practice technique or practice hack, you can really apply that to just about anything. Some things may not be too feasible given the amount of time you have to practice, but certainly scales, arpeggios, phrases that you learn in solos, all those come to mind. Tunes, yeah. Tunes, you know, melody, if you're a horn player, if you're a singer, definitely practice them in different keys.

And in terms of a practice technique, it's not just that you would ever play them in those other keys. You may, you may not, but as an ear training exercise, as an ability to be able to play in those other keys, as an ability to really be able to learn those melodies in a very effective organic way. There's no better way than going into other keys. And I would say do it relatively quickly in your learning of a tune or even learning of a solo. Now, to learn a whole solo and then take it through all 12 keys, that's going to take months. It's a big task, yeah. But you could take your favorite phrase and I say not measure, not chorus, but phrase.

Because we're learning music as a phrase as phrases. So you take your favorite phrase and maybe take that over 12 days into all 12 keys, you know, then you're going to. You're going to be. You're good to go. Yeah. I like to actually, you know, if I'm practicing a tune or voicings or some kind of phrase or something, I'll start usually on the key of A flat or D flat and work my way through fourths there instead of starting on C and hitting all the easy keys first. I mean, I'll start on the harder keys and that way I get through B, I get through E, you know, like I get through the ones that always give me trouble and it's really lifted my game up over the whole keyboard, right? Because I have more command over those harder keys.

I'd say that was a game changer. Definitely game changer. I knew that was coming and I even set you up for it. So what, that's interesting. So you're going through circle of fifths or cycle of force? I go through fourths usually. First, interesting. Because I usually go chromatically and I'm thinking part of that is to sort of mix it up to do some

easy keys and some difficult kind of jumping back and forth. That's a good idea. But I think, you know, either way, it's just have a system and, you know, start with something that's doable to go through all keys. you know, don't get overwhelmed and try to, you know, to bite off more than you could chew. Take a very simple phrase that you know really well and commit to it over a number of days, you know, under promise and overdelivered. That's right. Isn't that what we say?

That's right. I mean, chances are, like if you're a pianist, you have some easy voicings that you don't, you're not very comfortable with on all 12 keys. So start there. That's where I would start. Or maybe it's a scale. Maybe it's, you know, the Lydian scale. Work that in all 12 keys starting in the hard keys. Nice, nice.

All right. So let's move on to number two. Number two is to write down what you're going to practice before you practice. And then after you're done practicing, you can go over that list and see how you did on everything, kind of start planning for your next practice session. I think this is really key. There's a lot of evidence that writing things down helps us grow at a much faster pace than not. So it's always good to kind of reflect on what you're about to do.

It helps keeps you focused in your practice session so that you don't start random. It helps you kind of really focus in on what's important to you for this session and really make the most out of that time. I think it's super important. That's great. I mean, that actually reminds me of what my uncle Bruce used to say. Plan your work, work your plan. Your uncle Bruce was a wise man. Yeah, he was a wise guy.

And it's, yeah, it's really the, you know, kind of laying out, like laying out your plan. I mean, somebody that's, you know, building a house, you know, they unfurl the plans. they look at it and they look at the empty space and they start building and then they're referring back to the plans, working the plan. And it's really like we think about that, I think in terms of music and writing it out. But I think that can be done a little bit less even than some people think in terms of, you know, for advanced ear training and stuff. But definitely I love this idea of just kind of getting those steps down because that's how you hold yourself accountable. Yeah.

And you know, they don't call them thought prints. They don't just think about how a house is going to, what they're going to work on on a house and it gets built. Really? They write it all down. They have steps. It really helps kind of structure everything. They call it it blueprint. They call them. Because on blue paper because they wrote it on blue paper. Nice. Okay. Number three, for our effective practice hacks. This one I love. This is practice the hard stuff first. Actually, I hate doing it, but I love the effectiveness of it. And this is really about maximizing your time and maybe secondarily challenging yourself. but it's really something that you can apply to anything that you're practicing. So like if you're going through scales, like we were talking about before,

going through all different keys, it would be a matter of practice the scales that you don't know. You really don't need to practice the ones that you do know, maybe a little bit, but start with the hard stuff. Start with the stuff that's not known. Start with the, if you're practicing a classical piece or a difficult bebop piece, jump to the part. Don't just start the beginning that you know, the first section.

Jump right to that part you need, because that's really what you need to practice. You're going to be spending more time reviewing the part that you know. Yeah, we've talked about this a little bit before, this concept of, you know, your practice session can almost be like coming to getting easier and easier progressively as you're going through the session. By the end, you're performing almost. I mean, we talk about practicing performance too. But, you know, the idea with this is to work on the stuff you really aren't good at. You're really unfamiliar with and help get that more familiar and then maybe start working through a tune and a difficult key, but you know the tune. And then

by the end, practice performing. I think this all goes with it. So it's key, though, to get the meat or get the vegetables out of the way before you hit the dessert or else you're just not going to progress. That's right. And if you're vegan or vegetarian, it's really key to get the vegetables out the way first because that's all you get. That's all you got. You're going to starve.

Well, and this actually goes hand in hand with our last tip here, our last hack, number four, which is to record yourself. And when you record yourself, the point of it, is not to bask in the glory of your playing and how good you are, even though that's what we tend to want to do first. It is to, and it's also the flip side of that, it's not to berate yourself if you're not very good. The point is to find the spots that you're weakest,

find your holes in your playing, and work on those. And that's how you know what to work on first in your practice session. If you don't like your time, if you don't like your technique, you know that those are the things that you have to. to work on first. But you won't know that if you're just listening to yourself as you're playing in real time. Sometimes you have to step back. And sometimes I'll record myself and I won't listen for a day or two and then I'll check it out. So it's pretty fresh. That really helps me evaluate where I am in an honest way without putting too much judgment on it as me as a person. You know

what I mean? Like you're like, all right, what does this player need to work on? That's what I'm going to work on. There's a fine line between self-judgment and self-esteem. That's true. That's true. Musicians are the worst about it. Exactly. But yeah, nothing like recording yourself to keep it honest on both sides. Totally. Good. All right.

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