You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Lessons Learned From Whack Gigs

Episode Date: December 11, 2019

Nobody likes playing a whack gig, but Peter and Adam show you why they're really a blessing in disguise.7 Lessons Learned From Whack GigsHow much do you love music?How much do you love being a musician?Ask for more $$$ than you think you shouldYou can develop in any situation - don't blame othersConfidence = preparationHow to lead (transform that whack situation)I don't want to be in that position again - what do you do?Want 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/KsdhVXE5ovILet 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, Adam. Yeah. Have you been to a whack gig lately? Man, it seems like I've only been to whack gigs lately. Ooh. I'm Adam S. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast.

Daily music advice, coming at you. Coming at you. Today's episode is sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open Studio jazz.com to check out a bunch of courses that we make. We make a bunch of piano courses. You know that we have this thing called the Piano Access Pass. Yes, print piano access. I'm very familiar with it.

I have access to it, and I will not give it a pass. I should hope so, man. You made like half the lessons on there. No, it's a lot of fun. I don't know why we didn't think of this earlier because we have so many piano students. You like to run our business with one hand and time to hide our back. I think that's the thing. That's right.

That's right. No, but I think that, you know, the perfect use case is certainly at any level, but if you're not sure exactly which of our courses looks good to you, but you've got a little bit of a time, say a year, or even a month, just to try things out because you can go monthly or annual. but if you're kind of not sure and you want to sample a few things and jump around. Like if you're a kind of guy, do you like to go to the cafeteria?

Do you even know what that is? I enjoy a cafeteria. Okay, because you're a little younger. Are they still around? You remember the park more? Of course. Yeah, of course. You know what the park more is backwards?

What? Think about it. We'll come back to that. But if you like to go to a cafeteria and take little pieces, that this would be the perfect, yeah, this would be the perfect kind of situation, and then you can go on a deep dive

whenever you want. And you can still go lifetime with one of the courses, but we're really getting some great feedback. It's been awesome. It's popping off. Hey, I don't know if we're on YouTube today, but I got a new hat. I don't know if you saw my hat. Oh, I did.

Did you see my hat? Yes, I did. Can you see this thing right over there? That's the... That's the Stanley Cup. I got a blues hat and I got a Stanley Cup on it and I never thought in my lifetime that I would have this. And there's some exciting news. I don't know if I should drip it out now.

Yeah. Tomorrow sitting right here is going to be the actual Stanley Cup. We will be filming with... No, no. Not at all. But I felt like everybody else... I've seen pictures. Everybody's Instagram is like me and the Stanley.

I know. Everyone we know had a picture on Instagram with the Stanley Cup. How do we not get to get? I don't know. I don't know. I don't actually know all the rules to Pocki, so that's probably the reason I'm not involved. Well, what are we talking about today? So today we're talking about seven lessons we've learned from whack gigs.

Oh, man. Wack gigs are a blessing in disguise. And you know what's funny? They're kind of a curse in disguise as well. I mean, it's an obvious curse. Yeah. But it's funny is like it doesn't matter what level you're on. seemingly.

Yeah. It doesn't matter, like, how far I've progressed in my career, a whack gig is going to happen every so often. I feel like I'm going to actually have one in a couple of days. I'm hoping not, but it's always going to happen. No, not the one with us together. I was going to say, well, but it is holiday season. This is a time of year, right, prime whack gig.

You know, this is... Wack gigs are... They're lurking around every corner like a burglar downtown. Oh, my gosh. So, no, but I think that, yeah, you're absolutely right. right, it's at every different level. Dare I say, even the Rolling Stones, are they the world's most famous band?

I don't know. They have a big feat. They'd have to be one of them. I bet they've had done some whack gigs. Not for a while. Okay. What was the one Altamont where all the security guards were like Hell's Angels and killed someone?

Yeah. That was pretty whack. Yeah. That was like late 70s. That's right. Okay, so a bad example. But everybody else has some whack gigs. So we thought it would be fun to talk about

things that we've learned, hopefully things we can help. You know, maybe sometimes it's just a matter of looking at things a little bit different. Because a lot of times, when you get in that, first of all, what is a whack gig? Since you're the world's oldest millennial, you can explain that. I mean, I think a whack gig can come out of nowhere.

Sometimes you think a gig's going to be great. You're going to be at a concert hall, and it's going to be this great time. And it could be whack for many reasons. It could be the sound. No, I meant actually describe what the word whack gig means in case someone doesn't know. Oh, whack means terrible gig that is. There's no other word that fits it better than whack. It's just like it didn't go well.

Everybody tried, or maybe some people didn't try, and that's why it were you whack. Oftentimes there's an element of like nobody's listening or people are talking loudly. That could be part of it for sure. But I will say this, with the whack-wackness of a gig, don't get down, realize they happen to everyone, and every whack gig is a learning opportunity. Right, right. I'll prove that here today. A smile is just a frown turned upside down. That's our motto here.

I like the positive attitude, man. Okay. So what do you got for number one? Number one is kind of a question. And I think that, you know, whack gigs will bring this question up. Actually, number one and two are both questions. And if it comes up and you can address this in the right way,

kind of a little bit zen, a little bit, you know, philosophical. And that question is, how much do you really love music? Okay. That question is going to come up. You've got to be ready for that when you're on a whack gig. And even like sometimes there's an element to the gig that is whack. Like that could be a long flight that's bumping and you're sitting in coach in the middle seat.

How much do you really love me? You know, there's a couple guys I travel with that we have a saying, like when stuff starts going wrong, flights canceled or you're getting up at three in the morning to two hour drive, you look at each other and say, so you wanted to be a jazz musician. That's right, yeah, yeah. But so when the actual gig is whack, it's like, man, how much do you love music?

Are you willing to go through this to just to play music? And I think that that doesn't have to be a negative thing. Yeah, we don't want to find ourselves in that situation over and over again, and we're going to talk about ways maybe to stay away from that. But once you're there, you're still playing music. You know, how much do you love music? Are you willing to play when everybody's talking or they got you in a tuxedo and stuck in a funny thing and say, use the back entrance or whatever it is?

Can you find beauty still in the music that you're playing? I mean, you know, we could be driving a taxi. We could be doing something else. So how much do you love music? That's a great question. And your number two here I love because it plays off that. And that's how much do you love being a musician? Because that's a very different thing than playing music.

That's right. Because the lifestyle of just playing music is one thing. Right. But the business of being a musician, that's a whole other kind of hell. Can be very whack. Can be very whack. And that is actually when some of the wackest situations can come to be. Because we can get ourselves into whack situations via a paycheck.

Yeah. You know, that comes our way. If it's big enough, it kind of dulls the whackness sometimes. So it could be, you know, if you're on a whack gig and you're like, well, how did I get here? How much do I love playing music? I get to play music. Well, how much do I love being a musician? Yes. That's the second question you can ask yourself. And a second lesson you can learn because if you say like, not this much, maybe it's not for you. Exactly. And then you'll see, you know, different people and they usually fall off, especially on the touring scene early.

If you don't have that level of commitment to music and to you being a musician and look, this is not about like, oh, I'm so great of a musician. No, no, no. It's like, what is your commitment to doing this? It's like you see, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, New York Marathon or something, those last couple of people crossing the finish line, they're not, like, they might have more commitment than anybody based on their age or their talent level or if they tripped or if they got, you know, who knows, they made it across the finish line. Obviously, they're committed to finishing that thing.

So it's about that. It's not about skill level. Yeah, if you're Herbie Hancock, maybe it's a little bit easier to have that commitment. Of course. If I was Herbie, I'd love, there's no question I want to be a musician. I love being a musician. And notice I'm never on a whack gig either. Everywhere I go, there's a gold carpet laid out in front of me.

Okay, so this led me to add this number three, and this is a lesson I've learned. I started learning in my 30s. Yes. And the more I play whack gigs, the more I realize this is true, ask for more money than you think you should. Because this will, like I have a price. I mean, the simple secret is, if Herbie Hancock asks us to go on tour with him tomorrow, we would pay to do that. Yeah, that would be a negative price. He's like, how much do you need?

Yeah, he'd be like, I'm not paying you. You have to pay your own way. I'd be like, yeah, okay, I'll do it. But I have a, I have a FU price for gigs that I don't want to do. It's called a whack price. It's a whack price. And if they say yes to it, you know what, I'm all good. The gig can be as whack as possible, but I'll still be like,

all right, I got my whack price. Yeah. And I think the lesson learned from that is that make sure you identify that whack gig in advance so that you can ask for that price so you don't get stuck on the, so that's what you probably learned this from being stuck on a whack gig. Yeah, exactly right. The worst of both worlds. If you want to pay me this amount, I'm happy to go to your whack gig.

Right, right, right. That's great. That's good. I like that one. I'm going to make a note of that. Number four. Oh, yeah, I love this one. Okay, this is something that I learned early on when I was, you know, as most of us, when you're starting out, be glad that you have any gig that you're getting paid on or not. It's going to be whack, but you're not very good yet anyway.

But that's that you can develop in any situation and that you should not be blaming others or the situation around you that you haven't. develop. So if you have a mindset of like every time you get a chance to perform music that you can develop and get better in some way, because that's a personal responsibility that you have for personal development, then really no situation is totally whack because at least you develop some. Because ultimately, we're not doing this for the money. We're not doing this for the glory. Of course, we love it when that comes along, but we're doing this to get better. We're practicing the piano. Why are we like grown adults still practice? what we're doing is because we're trying to keep getting better.

We didn't get to some place and say this is it. I love this that you have don't blame others either because one of the things I was thinking of is like a whack gig is not a license to be a jerk on the gig. It's not a license to shut. No, no, no, no. But with your other musicians, you know what I mean? If the gig is whack or whatever, you still need to be engaged with the music. You still need to be trying to make your bandmates sound good.

You know what I mean? You can't just all of a sudden just play everything. Just be like, oh, screw it, I'm done. You know, that's a terrible attitude to have. And that's only going to make the gig worse, honestly. And that's kind of an anti-leader thing. Like great leaders, whether they're the official leader of the gig or not, kind of elevate the, you know, when there's a bad situation around,

they kind of pull everybody up with you by focusing it all. Like, let's focus it on the music. If nobody's listening, if the sound system's going crazy. I remember we were doing a gig in North Carolina with the orchestra, and it started raining a little bit. It was outdoor, beautiful place, North Carolina Symphony. But we were totally covered. But the orchestra players, like, stopped playing.

and like we're packing up because they're like our contract says we won't play in the rain which I understand I mean nothing it gets but it was like we all kind of looked at each other and we're like well our contract didn't say that plus we're not getting wet actually and there's people still in the audience there you know it was a whack situation but we kind of just focused in on the music

and said let's let that lead us for sure yeah so even if you're in like say a solo piano situation at a holiday party where everybody's talking around you and no one can even see you this was my gig last night I think it's on your mind Not that it was on my mind. But you could develop.

I bet you developed something. I pretended like I was at the Village Vanguard, playing a solo piano concert. It was great. And then thought about the money that was my whack price that I'd give them. That's right. Because you learn from number three.

That's right. One, two, three, four, five. Number five. This is one that I learned and still learn. Sometimes a whack gig can happen because either you or someone you're playing with isn't at all prepared for the gig. Right.

So the easiest antidote, the easiest vaccine, against that kind of whackness is to just prepare. And we've talked about this lots for just being a good bandmate or a musician. That's part of the three P's as we've talked about. Preparation, preparation, preparation.

Okay. It's important, right? No, but this is a lesson I learned, I think, from not being prepared in like, oh, this is whack. I don't want this to ever happen again. Yeah. So always be prepared.

Yeah. Isn't that one of your things, when you're always A-B-P? No, we're going to add it in there. Okay. No, I think that that's absolutely right. And then could I just, add a little side note to that one, which is

when you find yourself for whatever reason, and hopefully not your own dereliction of duty, if you're not quite prepared, like, oh, I didn't know this was going to happen, use the confidence, the other part that you had on there to charge your head. Don't let it be like, oh, I didn't prepare the right thing, so this is a lost cause. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're a professional musician. You're still, you still got to do, you know, because the audience doesn't know that. For sure. And that's another thing. You know, there's always a chance that someone is listening, even in a whack situation. So, you should like to your point of last night, pretend like you're at the Village Vanguard Carnegie Hall all the time. And that's something that's that will spread to everybody else on the band.

Oh, no, people are listening, even when you think they are. I know. They are. Yeah. Yep. Good. All right. Number six.

Oh, yeah. How to lead. So this was kind of what we were talking about before. You can use an adverse situation like a whack situation on a gig to really work on your leadership skills. And what that means is like you don't let it get to you. You don't let the level of your playing and those around you go down, the expectations. is still that you're performing at a high level, like we say, even if nobody's listening.

And so that's kind of, I think, how great leaders in this music are developed. And it's usually from their instrument. It's not about, come on, guys, let's do this right. It's like, no, no, no, I'm going to double down on whatever needs to be virtuosity or musicianship, you know, whatever aspect of musicianship needs to be accentuated at that time. That's great. Okay. Number seven, what is this?

Seven lessons learned from Waggig. Did you forget? We're all the way down the list, man. I can't even see the title. It's that I don't want to be in this situation again. What do you do? I like this because this is a little bit of like, for me, this reads as, you know, I have a list of things that I don't want to do anymore.

Yeah. Like, sometimes saying no can be a very powerful tool for any artist, but we get in this sort of habit of just kind of saying yes to things that are, you know, in our pay scale or whatever. But you can really refine your checklist of what you should and shouldn't be doing. Right. On a whack gig. Like, I'm not saying no to this, or I'm not saying yes to this person anymore. I need to learn how to say no. That's right.

That's right. So that's more of a like, not when it's a surprise. Wack gig. That's when you should have known better before you go into it. Maybe just don't get yourself into that situation. For sure. Good. All right.

All right. Good. Well, once again, we nailed that. Bam. But look, everybody, hopefully, you know, you're not getting in the wax. I've never said wax so many times in 17 minutes in my life. Word has lost its power. It really has.

This is whack, what we're saying here. So tomorrow we have something very special coming. Did you know that? No, what do we have? They're going to have to tune in because you'll hear it.