You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 5 Fundamentals

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Peter and Adam break down the 5 fundamentals to being a great musician throughout your life. Wanna check out Upright Citizens? Click the link.Check out the Open Studio course "Language of the Masters" right here. Check out a YHI classic - 17 Tunes You Gotta Know.Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Instagram

Hey Adam. Yes. What is a fundamental element to effective production of a podcast? Well, you got to have humor. Yes. You got to have a sense of humor. Check. You got to have some inkling to talk without stopping.

Check. We both have that. Does it have to be good? I don't think we've proved that yet. Check. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast.

Music Advice coming at you. Coming at you today. Coming at you hard. Coming at your hard today. Sponsored by Open Studio. Yes. We got a special lurker in the house. Bob Dubu's hanging out over in the corner.

Bob Dubu of the Upright Citizens podcast. Big shout to Upright Citizens. It's a great show. The initial, the premiere episode of 2023. See, they're a big-time podcast over there. Yeah. They take off time for the holidays.

We're too desperate and giving to do that. But their premiere episode just dropped the other day. We'll have a link to it below. But if you're looking for another pod to enhance your podcasting listening experience, we highly recommend. Yeah, part of the Open Studio family. Yeah, upright citizens. Yeah, I was going to say it's like the base version of this podcast, but it's definitely not. It's better.

It's the own thing. It's base centric, but not base exclusionary. Yeah, go over there even if you don't play bass. So you're going to learn some good stuff. Features Ruben Rogers as co-host and a number of great guests in the past and stuff. But mainly just Ruben and Bob doing their thing, as we say. Yeah. Speaking of doing their thing, we have an important job today.

Yeah. Well, we recorded an episode last week. Why you keep looking behind you? Are you okay, man? I'm just keeping some noises. We had a little sensitive to sound. An episode last week where we talked about sort of the sports psychology and how we can use it. One of the things we talked about is having, you know, using fear as a way to wake up every day and work on fundamentals.

And as I was talking about that, I was like, you know, we've never, it's been a while since we've actually talked about what are the fundamentals. that you can work on. Right. And what are like the things that everybody sort of works on because everybody does work on similar things, right? Right. And if we can break those down

into categories, what would they be? So today we're talking about the five fundamentals. And these are basically just categories that you can work on every day. Now, how you work on these things can vary and should vary as your career moves along. So if you're starting out, this is going to be very easy

because it's very clear what you should practice in order to get these fundamentals down. And all of these fundamentals contribute to your overall musicianships, each one of these. And I'll just list them out here from the start, and we can kind of go deeper on each one. These are basically things that you need to be able to control and contribute to the music. The first is you need to be able to control your sound. You have to be able to develop a sound. You have to have a variety of sounds and express yourself through the sound of your instrument.

The second is speed. You need to be able to control the speed of your instrument. you need to gain some speed likely. That doesn't mean you have to be Jesus Malina-style chops, but you're going to have to be able to play fast and slow and control that. The third is time,

which you think is like, oh, isn't that speed? No, this is the ability to be able to control your rhythm in all aspects of what you do. It's a crucial fundamental, and it's worked at in very specific ways. The fourth is... Aren't fundamentals crucial by the nature? They are.

You're not going to be able to do anything without these sort of foundational. Crucial, very important fundamentals. We put the fun in crucial. The fourth is the repertoire, and you're thinking, oh, how is this a fundamental? But you have to have a bedrock of whatever genre you're learning, even if you're learning multiple genres, if you're learning at the same time jazz and bluegrass and hip hop, there's some repertoire that you're going to need to learn on all of those, right?

And maybe it's even, you know, specific to the, the, the, subgenre or the area or the country that you're living in or the time that you're living in, but those are going to be part of your fundamental development. And the fifth and final, and maybe the most important, is the musical language. And again, whatever genre you're learning, whether that's bebop or postmodernism. Like you need to, or again, like hip-hop or country or whatever it is, learning the musical language that has come before you is part of the fundamentals and can be practiced from an early point in your development.

And practice all the way into the later points of your development. So whatever end of the spectrum you're on, all five of these things, sound, speed, time. I'm off the spectrum, buddy. Repetoir and language are crucial, crucial. And things that you can work on and should work on every practice session. Can I add a number six? Sure. Like a bonus?

Yeah. Poster. How's my posture looking? I've been trying to work on this. I'm not going to add it to the list, but it's good. It's decent. I don't know. This big ass.

hoodie is kind of... Buddy, don't disparage big-ass hoodies. It's my entire repertoire of... Where does posture on a serious note fall on that spectrum of five fundamentals? Because that's always something, I mean, so different for every instrument, but attention to the physicality of how we approach the instrument.

It's very important. It doesn't get any more fundamental than that. I'm gonna add posture. Well, no, no, I'm thinking, no, no, don't make it six, but maybe it falls, because those are, your five are so wonderfully... I would put it with... Inclusive.

Like, so sound speed, and time are essentially technique. Be able to control all of those things, that's your technique. That's how you make a sound on the instrument. Poster goes, I think, into all of those. It's almost like just one of those fundamental of the fundamentals that we always want to be

kind of framing the way that we approach what we're doing. I put sound as number one because I think it's the most important thing that we can work on to help us progress. If you ever want to make a new kind of of stride in you're playing. Focus on sound for a month. Focus on how you get...

Focus on stride for a month. Play what you see, Peter. Play what you see. No, but focusing on your sound, how you get... I'm having trouble focusing now. I know, I know. We're almost done, buddy. But focusing on the sound that you get,

like, just... Getting a good sound on your instrument, Peter's got a great sound, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, but focusing on sound can make you sound better than you actually are. So this is almost like posture then, because we can focus, I mean, we can definitely have the focus part of the practice,

but there's no time when you could be playing that you can't focus, even if you're working on something else. Just like your posture can always be, you can always kind of pull yourself back to an attention to that, you know, not debilitating the other parts, but just as like always we have a chance to work on sign. It's not just on a ballot or when you're practicing one hand out or something. No, it's everywhere.

actually, for it being the most important part of our musical development, it's often put as a backseat to what we're playing. So the content of what we're playing is usually what our ego puts forth is like, I got to play some killing shit. Instead of, I want to sound good. Oh, and this is so instrument specific to, like, how we approach this because the piano has the advantage. But in this case, I would say the disadvantage of being able to create, we always forget. Everybody can make a sound. And so it's like, oh, I don't have to think about that. Like a baby can walk up, a cat.

I can send you some YouTube videos from 1989. And they can press a button. But like, 99. The, you know, trumpet players think about this way more. Yeah. Vocalists think about this way more. How hard do you have to work just to get to a bad, K-C?

A lot of work to get to a bad C on a trumpet. That's true. But for us, yeah, like you said, you can just press the button. You think, oh, I got a sound out of it. But there is more to that. So if you're a pianist, if you're a guitarist, if you're a drummer, a vibes player, actually spending time on your sound on how you play as opposed to what you play is a game changer.

It will be a game changer if you haven't done that yet. Spend some time focusing on how you sound. Game changers. That was one of my favorite athletic documentaries that I forgot to mention the last episode. The next is speed. Now this gets kind of a bad rap because this can be seen as sort of showy or flashy. Right. But working on getting your.

speed up. It's an important step in the journey. You have to have a certain baseline of speed or else you're just not going to be able to hang. Yeah, both hands. Baseline. That's exactly right. And that doesn't mean, again,

that you have to be able to blaze like Bud Powell, you know, or Art Tatum. But you do have to get somewhat of a fundamental... And this isn't also just like fast eighth notes or 16th notes. This is a speed of mind. Yeah. So being able to feel music that's at a certain tempo and hang with it, without slowing down, without losing yourself in it. But really being able to focus on speed as a way to get up to the level that's sort of the baseline that everybody's in. Yeah.

And I think that being able to play very slow also. Yeah. Like that's next level with this. That's the sort of like grown up level of it. That's right. And dexterity is kind of another way that's a little different than speed, but that we want to really think. about in terms of especially specific technical things. You gotta have a baseline of dexterity.

That's right. You just have to if you wanna sound good. The third is time. And I'm really talking about being able to control time. Yeah, so understand it, hear it, play it, manifest. Swing. I'm talking about polyrhythms. That whole thing can be a section of your practice time, a fundamental that you, again,

you have to have a base level of to, like if you want to say, oh, I'm an advanced player. First of all, no one talks like that at all. No one cares if you're intermediate at advanced. It's not even a thing. You don't even know the difference. But if you want to be able to play a gig, you've got to be able to swing. You have to be able to play with other people

and control your time. You have to be able to keep a steady tempo, right? You have to be able to play in different fields of eighth notes, in different time signatures, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 7, 4, all of these things are things that are fundamentals that we can work on. And again, there needs to be at least a little bit of proficiency at this before you're able to, you know,

move up to the next level. Knowledge Bob Alert. Knowledge bomb alert until we get, we're going to get a new audio thing because I'm about to drop some knowledge. We should have some kind of signify. Yeah. Boom, boom, right. So, interesting thing about the time thing. This is a little bit of an on-off switch.

Obviously, there is a gradient to getting better with your time, being able to swing. But there is sort of a, like either it's binary. So you're talking about like to be able to play with people and stuff. But that is based upon not totally with skill. it's a combination of an understanding, of humility, and confidence with that. So, like, once you can hear swing and acknowledge that, even if you're like, well, I don't have this yet,

like, all you have to do is to go with the spirit of humility and, like, less is more, and just kind of submit yourself to the music, and then you'll be swinging, actually. So the gradient is just in sort of the amount, like how hard you're swinging or how much people can rely on you to put all of them on your back as needed.

But to participate in this, The bar is actually lower than most players think, I think. I totally agree. And for any group, it's not just about swing. It's just about what, as you say, the fundamental time being that fundamental area that we have to pay attention to. I mean, it can go from just the basics of being able to play a steady eighth note to being able to play incredibly complex polyrhythms in swing over odd time signatures at sort of the highest level. And all the control in between. Number four is the repertoire.

And this is really an important fundamental that, again, might get overlooked when you, you think about fundamental as though you might think about technique, but repertoire understanding like the baseline of tunes you need to learn to help you learn whatever music you're trying to learn. So if you're learning straight ahead jazz, there's like 20 tunes that, of course, you could start with on green Dolphin Street and Autumn leaves and all the stuff that you're going to need to know, various Charlie Parker heads and monk heads and everything that you're going to need to know

to at least go to a jam session and not, you know, go up there and being like, I don't know that, I don't know that. You know, take the A train in a sentimental mood. I thought it was take the A Train. Take the A Train. But like all of these tunes are super crucial. We've actually done our 17 favorite standards. One of the more most popular episodes from the early days.

Yes. I don't know if you remember this episode. But you can go check that out. You can find that on YouTube. Some of those tunes died so long ago. They're not just standards anymore. You could find it way down the list. It's like episode 90 or something.

I don't even know if it's available. You might have to be a, you'll hear it premium members to access that. Remember that? I remember that. RIP premium membership. But rep is super important. And again, even if you're, whatever, I want to be a garage rock musician. You're going to have to listen to a lot of garage rock and learn those songs.

And I think that, you know, as described just now, a holistic and truly fundamental approach to repertoire is what we're talking about. We're not talking about a numbers game of like learn the 17 and then stop or whatever, but a deep learning so that you're getting all the other fundamental ancillary benefits from learning that. It's not just you're checking a box. Yeah, these are things that it's not just like, oh, I learn this and now I stop. I'm talking about these are things that masters still work on on the regular.

Like, masters are still learning new tunes. I don't know if you know that, but like they're still checking it. Like they're finding tunes they love. They're going to learn them, you know, the best players in the world. Yeah. But it's not because they're like, oh, I might go to a jam session and have to play us and I never knew it. It's the fundamental nature of that repertoire within the canon of the music. But it's also these other fundamentals that it teaches you, these new explorations.

to like solidify your fundamentals in general. Totally. Totally. And then the last one, which is sort of a piggyback on the repertoire, is language. And this is more involving idiosyncratic things that happen in certain genres.

So like if we're talking about straight ahead jazz, you know, is part of the language. Even if you never play it. Right. Language in the masters. You have to know these kinds of things, right? You have to know, you know,

even if you never, want to play that you have to know what that is it's part of the language you know it's it's something that we all go through and build our sound off of I build our individual style and our rhythmic our improvisational vocabulary off of so the language of the masters you know and this could be learning music from records it could be you know getting books of language not my first choice but it can be kind of helpful to read transcriptions even if you're starting out just to kind of get an idea This could be just listening, a lot of listening.

Yeah. You know? Well, it's like, you know, and I love that. I love all these. Notice what's not in here is sight reading or reading notation. Yeah. So I think this is intentional in terms of... I mean, that would be a fundamental if you were Broadway pianist or something.

Right, exactly. We're talking about fundamentals for being a jazz musician, being a creative musician in general. Now, this is not to say that you shouldn't practice that, and that may become a part of your fundamental training, or just that you want to be able to do that, or you want to improve that. This is not in all, this is,

I think these five represent the, the kind that are truly, truly fundamental in terms of like the cross-pollinization between them and the ability like with posture and with sound and like that you could apply that to anything that you're playing, practicing, technical work, you know, new tunes or whatever.

And that is so important that you can really hang your practice hat on this. It'd be like, yes, I'm covering the fundamentals here. So, but it's not to mean, like, oh, this is an exhaustive list of everything that you can or should practice. But these are the kind of things that I think that if you frame your overall practice, even if it's sight reading or whatever and you're bringing these things in, you're going to have constant reinforcement and that confidence that I referred to earlier.

That's going to come organically. It's not going to be a false confidence. It's going to be like, yes, I know the fundamentals. I don't have to be the fastest at all these, but I am in tune with speed. And like I'm thinking about that. I'm aware of different ways to be improving my fundamentals and being cognizant of that. It's part of my work. It's something I'll always be working on, right?

And so, again, the five fundamentals just to a recap, things that you want to have proficiency in and being able to control. Number one, sound. Number two, speed. Number three, time. I'm sorry, I was late on speed. Number four, repertoire. And number five, language.

Finally. Until next time. You'll hear it.