You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Practice Strategies You Can Implement Today

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

Peter and Adam start off the week with a list of tips you can use to enhance your practice sessions.Practice Strategies:ListenMeditationFocused Technical PracticePractice PerformanceTranscribe Solos From Other InstrumentsPractice Easy Things in Hard KeysRecord Your Practice Session/Take NotesThe ending theme song for today's episode is "Bright Size Life" by Jeff Mitchell. To get your music featured on You'll Hear It, send an MP3 recording of your music to [e-mail] us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.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, man. What'd you practice today? I haven't practiced yet. Me neither. 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 from beautiful St. Louis, Missouri. It's a Monday morning. It's gargous, as we say here. Yeah. Is it actually gargous? No, it's not. It's March in St. Louis, man.

It's not. That's right. It's windy. It's cold. That's right. For you. Yep. 300 miles north of here, though,

there was a little place called Chicago, Illinois, which I can guarantee you is colder, windier. Yep. and hippo? Oh no, we're not going to say that. A little bit, a little bit. Maybe a little bit. What are we talking about today?

Today, we're giving the folks some extreme tactical advice. We're giving them seven practice strategies that you can implement today. Don't ever say that we don't give you what you want. That's right. Or what you need. That's right, right. Well, so, you know, we're always talking about big picture stuff, small picture, middle picture, no picture. It doesn't make a difference.

But we're getting back to our core. No picture. You know, visualization. I'm working on my no picture stuff. Do you ever have told you my George Garzone story? No. Someone asked him like, George, what are you working on? He's like, I'm working on my no sound stuff.

That's awesome. That was a legendary story around the new school. Go ahead. Yeah, so we're giving folks seven practice strategies that you can implement today. And by this, what we mean, and we'd like to encourage you to do, and we might even be non-hypocritical and partaking some of these ourselves. I don't know what your schedule's like later. But these are things really that you can jump in. into today. Like sometimes we talk about things that take six months, nine months of preparation.

Actually, no, we never talk about that. But we do, some things do take more preparation. And I, and what I do hear from talking to folks is like, man, thank you for all the advice, blah, blah, blah. But I get the feeling sometimes the listeners are thinking that they have to get to a certain point before they do certain things. Yeah. And you know, there's something psychological about practice where we tend to become overwhelmed with choice. Yes. And so sometimes it's, it's, it's necessary to just say, I'm doing this thing today. Yes. You know, to give yourself one concept, one thought that you can just implement right away.

Sometimes you need someone to tell you that. Sometimes it's a good teacher. Sometimes it's a couple of knuckleheads on a podcast, and that's what we're here for. I feel like that's us today. Definitely. Well, look, I'm doing my own little technique today. I'm trying to work on my posture, so I'm raising up the microphone. You see that.

I'm not saying you have to do it. No, no, no, no. If you do it, I should do it as well. I need to do it. Okay. So just just to sort of reiterate and clarify the focus of the focus of, you have, of these practice strategies are things that you can start today. Is your back supposed to spasm when you sit up straight?

No. Let's focus. Let's focus. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. So these are things that anyone or all seven of them, if you've got the time, you could actually jump in there today.

So in other words, we're not going to be telling you things like, you know, obtain a Bosendorf or Steinway from the Vienna factory, you know, showroom and have a chip to you, which would come presumably a few months later. So you couldn't actually implement that today. No, but is that an option? That is an option to, you know, we have a very high demographic. audience. Yeah.

So, okay, what do we have for number one? Number one is listen. All right. Bam, mic drop. I can't drop the mic because I'm working on my posture. Classic number one answer right there. But what do you mean by listen in your practice routine? What do you mean by listening?

You're the one who wrote it. Oh, that's true. Well, what I mean is that if you don't have your instrument or something, so that could be the ultimate excuse. I can't practice because I'm not at my instrument. But listening to music, but with that kind of practice mindset that we've talked about before is something that you can always do no matter where you are. I mean, I guess, you know,

they always talk about Desert Island. Is there electricity on there? You need some good battery power on there, I guess. Man, it's so true. You know, we're artists. Yeah. And being an artist, you have to be constantly checking out other people's stuff, I think. You have to go through these flows of

ingesting, ingesting, so that you can output, output. Yes. And so listening is a crucial practice technique for that. You're totally right, and I'm sorry the question. No, you were asking for more explanation. It wasn't a question. I took it in the spirit. But remember just, you know, as you're listening from a practice standpoint, from a musical standpoint, from a musician's standpoint,

that's wanting to develop because that's what practice is about. This is not like, I mean, of course you can enjoy the music, but you want to put that mindset on. You're talking about deep listening. Deep listening, but not from the stand. Yeah, exactly. But maybe for something specific, like it might be tied into some later ones, like the transcription or whatever.

So, like, it's a little bit more tactical listening than just like, what am I in the mood for? You know, almost like, remember when we did the episode about specific things, like running playlists kind of thing? Yeah, yeah. So it's like, it's not even necessarily what it's things to hype you up during your run or whatever or specific to that time. So I'm thinking here is like listening things that tie in with something that you practice. So like let's say that you're really working on rhythm changes. You like that's sort of a theme for the week or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's kind of easy. What are we listening to? Great. Clifford Brown. Exactly. But specifically playing rhythm changes. How about that?

Yeah, yeah. So this one's kind of easy and simple, but for some reason, it gets overlooked. I love it. Well, number two is meditation. Meditation. This is, I think, a crucial thing for me, and I know you practice this, too, and it's really, really helpful. If you're, you know, we're committed to practicing for the rest of our lives. We're committed to music, and that means that we are committed to working at it.

And I think that requires a headspace that is not to conflict with your app here that you mentioned, which is called the headspace. I do use. I actually use that. Yeah. You used the app headspace that you wrote down here. No, but it requires the headspace that's clean and ready to work, right? That isn't constantly judging or trying to take you away. So it's not as mystical as I think people may think. Meditation is literally recognizing when your attention is away from where you want it to be.

Yeah. Or where it could be. And bringing that attention back to a place of calm, focused. You know what I mean? staring at me right now. No, I'm, I'm trying to, I'm exhibiting, yeah, in a musical way. And we've talked about this, how you could do this in practice a little bit. It's very simple, actually. Yeah. When you're practicing, if you're not

relaxed and focused on the task at hand, if you're thinking about other things, if your thoughts are drifting, step away. Stop. That's right. Take your hands off the piano. Number three, stop. Yeah. No, and then get back into a good place where you're focused and thinking about what you should be thinking about or not thinking about anything. Yeah. Either one of those things are great options, and then go back to the instrument and start again. Right. That's great. And I mean, the reason that we have these first two specifically listen and meditation as possible strategies for you to be able to do today to enhance your practice that actually have nothing to do with the instrument or can be done away from the instrument, but we really feel strongly that this can enhance. Like this is a very thoughtful way of kind of strategizing your practice session because normally the thing is like, okay, I have to, you know,

You know, I want to practice today. I want to get something like that accomplished. Let me immediately sit at my instrument and do this scale or practice this tune. And that's great stuff. But these are things, these two things listening and meditation, are things that we can always do. And we can definitely start today. But they will enhance whatever we do. If we do great practice, if it's like, eh, I mean, there's always going to be peaks and valleys.

But if you start to incorporate those two, at a minimum, I think it'll enhance. You know, even like you're kind of off days with practice when you're not feeling it, you'll still be able to really get something out of that. Totally. Or a small amount of time. too. Right. Imagine if you had, you know, 20 minutes and you had an off day and you couldn't even get to the piano. Yeah. But you listened to something that was like you hadn't really checked out and you'd really deeply listened to something that was important to you. That'd be great. And that could change. And when you listen, not to jump too much back to number one, but but one thing to think about there is you might just get one phrase or something. Like say you're doing the rhythm changes. You're listening to Clifford Brown and you're cycling through or whatever. You might have one phrase and you don't even know it. Maybe you can't even get to the instrument, but you just sort of write that down or write the time down. Or sing it, I mean, just, you know, one thing that you can take with you for a long time to develop your ears, to develop your vocabulary can be really a game changer with your playing. Yeah, there's no bad listening.

No. Yeah. Well, sometimes. That's a whole other episode. That's right. Okay, so that's number one, number two. What about number three? Number three is focused technical practice where you focus on either sound, tone, you know,

your feel, your touch, dynamic. I think would be in this fingering or speed, anything like that. You know, you can literally just say, okay, today I'm just gonna run a B major scale. And I'm gonna focus on getting it as even as possible dynamically. Yeah. I'm gonna focus on getting the duration

as even as possible so that there's no gaps between the notes and there's not too much overlap between the notes. Yep. This is what I'm thinking on the-evenness. I love it. And then I'm gonna do that in three or four different speeds in three or four different dynamic ways, either. loud, soft, or with a crescendo or day crescendo. If that was your

whole practice routine, that's a day well spent. That's a day well spent. Yeah, and I think that, you know, the idea is that you know, it's very possible to do technical practice. It's even recommended depending on where you are in your development, certainly if you're at the kind of beginner, intermediate, really any level,

but technical practice as part of your routine every day, unless you just have the bare minimum of time. But given 20, 30 minutes minimum, I think it should always be part of it. What does not always need to be part of it is the kind of technical practice that we normally associate with like fingering and velocity and just the purely technical. So this is more musical. I mean, you're still maybe playing scales or arpeggios are the normal things, technical exercises for your instrument.

But you're really focusing, as you said, sound and tone, evenness, things that are a little bit more musical and maybe are not always associated with technical practice. Yeah, maybe you're improvising over a common set of core changes that you know really well, like autumn leaves or something like that. So you don't have to think about changes or scales or anything like that. But you're only focusing on getting a good, round, beautiful sound out of your instrument. Yep. And the technical things that go along with the licks that you already know, you know, with the things that your language that you've already developed, but trying to get it even more beautiful.

Yeah, and this is a great one to start today because you can take anything that you're working on for your specific technical, you know, and start where you are and then start to build from there. That's right. All right. All right. Number four. Yep. Oh, that's me?

That's you. Practice performance. Yeah. Now, we love this one. This has showed up in a number of our different lists of ways to practice, and this is one that you can definitely start today. You can do any day. Yeah.

And that can fit into your practice routine, again, depending on how much time you have in different ways. A lot of times I've traditionally done this one kind of as a nice ending of the practice routine. It's a great way to end. It's a great way to end. There's even times where this could be your only practice sometimes, or maybe even like a supplementary later practice.

Like, say you've got 30 minutes. in the morning and you're knocking out your technical, maybe some of the transcription, whatever, but of course, after you're listening in meditation session. We can really kind of, you know, map out people's days here. I smell the whole sample practice routine coming on here. But then the practicing performance could come a little bit later in the day.

Maybe you have lunch and you're feeling a little chill. You know, maybe you had a little two martini lunch or something. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes. That's right. You're stepping out stage on Carnegie Hall. That's right. And scene.

Bill Stewart's waiting at the drums. That's right, right. Chris McBride is waiting at the base. You really link it up that meditation with the practice of performance. It's a little visualization. Visualization, I love it. Yeah. It's a packed house.

Chick Korea just got off stage. You burn the house down. Now it's your turn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like your visualization voice there. You're going to play all the things you are, but you're going to play it in the key of A. All right. So that's great.

So I think the main thing to remember on that as far as practicing performance is that we're taking it. And this is the reason it's today. We're taking ourselves where we are today. And so put, this is not judgmental time. Like when you're practicing your technique and maybe your time and recording yourself, that's time to be real judgy of yourself. This is to be like, I'm going to enjoy where I'm at today and I'm going to practice. And, you know, if that's a visualization, I'm at the vanguard. I'm at Carnegie Hall.

I'm playing with this person. Yeah. But I'm doing my thing where I am today and I'm kind of assessing my development. And treat it as a performance. Treat it as a solo performance. Do not stop and fix anything. That's right. Don't get in these bad habits of, you know, stopping and trying to redo something that you might have

flubbed. Yeah. Treat it like there's actually an audience in the room with you and, and practice that. And practice being okay with mistakes and being able to get over them or hide them or whatever you want to do. Right. You know what I mean? I think that's why you practice like this.

Yep. Okay. Number five is to transcribe a solo from a different instrument than your own. Bam. Love it. Love it. Have you ever transcribed a drum solo? I have on drums.

Oh, I've tried to. Yeah, yeah. It turns out I didn't quite have the technique. I thought I did to get that Max Roach, but I got a little bit. bit of it. It's fun. Yeah, yeah. Oh, the Max Roach. I think I did a Max Roach solo too. On drums or my only drum solo that I'd transcribe? Yeah, but I mean, if you're not a drummer and you hear about you're like, oh, I want to do that. Oh, yeah. Can't do it. Yeah. Yeah, so this really could be an instrument, including the drums. And this is just to kind of get you out of your same space. And also the reason

I was thinking about this one as something that you could implement right away is that a lot of times I hear people, you know, students of the music being like, I really want to transcribe this McCoy-Tiner. solo. I want to transcribe this John Coltrane solo, but I'm not ready yet. So they put off transcribing period because they want to get to the mountaintop. But you got to climb up the mountain top. So especially for pianists, it just can be simpler to take a horn solo because you don't have as many notes to deal with. It's not that a Miles Davis note is simplistic compared to, you know, a McCoy Tyner solo. But it's going to be easier for you to pick the things out and to make some progress today. Like you could start a McCoy Tyner solo

today and not even be able to get like three notes of you just like listening whereas if you did like a simple nice simple miles davis solo or a number of different horn players you could actually get a whole couple of phrases today and so it's all about sort of moving things along and then when you get to the point where you're able to hear more stuff but it's also just a great way to kind of you know the reason i was thinking implemented today is you might choose us we're always talking about this choose a solo you know really well yeah so even if that isn't on your instrument it doesn't matter because you know we're trying to learn music and it's coming from a place of something that you already know and you're passionate about it's going to be so much easier. Yeah, I'm going to expand on this a little bit and say, you might even choose something that's not a solo. For instance, like a baseline. Yeah. You know, a ray brown chorus of a blues is useful for any instrument. Yep. Or how Ella Fitzgerald phrases a melody on a ballad.

You know, that's easy to transcribe. And I don't mean like write it out. I mean to learn how to play it exactly how she sings it. Right. and where she puts the time and where she ends the phrases is enlightening. Yep. And the reason this is very strategic, you know, doing another instrument and doing it today is that it's going to immediately put you into another place,

especially if you do something like that, a baseline or something, to be hearing this music and hearing the foundation for improvisation in a different way, which is so important to challenge ourselves with that. Same thing like you're going to the gym every day, Monday is leg day, Tuesday is thigh day, Wednesday, is, what are these things called? Obviously, I don't go to the gym very much. Biceps.

Biceps, yeah. But there's a certain point, you've got to confuse your body a little bit and change it up, something to try to build it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Number six is to practice the things that are easy for you, but in the keys that are hard for you. Okay.

Is that called transposition? It's called transposition. In other words, so maybe you can do, you know, these great five-note voicing in the key of F if you're a pianist. Can you do them in the key of E? Can you do them in the key of G-flat? These things are extremely important to be able to be comfortable in all keys.

And if you're not, it's going to be exposed at some point. There's no getting around that. Absolutely. Either in just a small section of a tune or when someone calls a tune in a weird key, practice transposition, practice the things that you can already do if you know all, you know, the bebop scale and F7, but you don't know it in A-flat 7. It's time to get on it. You know, work on the triad pairs and all keys.

on everything in all keys. That's right. The main thing is just get started with it today. Just get started with. You can say, and I've done this before, you know, everything I do today is going to be in the key of A because I had a gig a couple weeks ago and I kind of folded on some A. I heard about that. No, this is hypothetical. That hasn't happened. That was totally hypothetical.

But that's what you could do. You could say, all right, today is A day. Right. Not like today's a day. Today's a day. Today's A day. It's bold. Yeah, yeah. A friend. Got it. All right. Number seven, our final on our beautiful list of seven practice strategies you can implement today is record your practice session and take honest notes. Yeah, I really love this one. You know what? Don't even take the honest notes directly after it. Give it a day. Come back the next day and before your next practice session. Hold up. This is stuff we've got to implement today, buddy. Yeah, no, that's what I'm saying. Oh, the recording part. You could record it today and then maybe later on in the day, whatever,

but just not right after. Give yourself a little bit of a bumper between that recording and that practice session and the honest notes so that you're a little bit even more detached from who that person was that's practicing. A little objectivity on there wouldn't wouldn't hurt at all. Well, great. Don't beat yourself up, but be honest. That's right. Yeah. Right. That's it. Good stuff. So quick recap and this list will be in the show notes because we're up in our show note game. Do you know about that? No. Well, we didn't even know where the show notes were. We just recently found that. What are show notes? I don't know. Oh, description. Isn't that the same thing? Show notes? What are we doing show notes? Uh, Andrew. Is this a PBS television show? You know, the description.

The description, yeah, yeah. Number one. Listen. Number two. Meditation. Number three. Focus, technical practice. Number four. Practice performance. Number five. Transcribe a solo from a different instrument than your own. Okay. You don't have to say the whole thing, but okay, that's good. Number six. Practice the things that are easier for you, but in the keys that are hard for you. I'm going to say the whole thing. Okay, that's what the show notes are for, buddy. Number seven, record your practice session and take honest notes. Why you got to say the whole thing? It's right there, right? It's all good. All right, well, we hope you enjoyed those.

I think the main thing is that we really wanted to focus on today is that you don't have to do all these today. Don't get overwhelmed. No, no, no, these are just ideas. Maybe pick one. I mean, the seven days of the week, you could do one and see which ones resonate with you the most. And then you can incorporate into that into your ongoing practice routine. Love it. Love it. All right, we've got, we're back on our listener outro tunes.

Did you know that? I did know that's a feature we have here at the Yieldierre podcast. It is a feature that we have. If you have a recording that you want to show. with the you'll hear at audience. Let's say, do you give it good or great? Minimum good. Great is better. Man, we've been getting some good stuff.

I know, because we've been saying sending good stuff. Don't slip up. Don't send in your bad stuff. Exactly. You know, we have standards here. You could send it to Andrew at openstudio network.com. That's right. And you might get featured on a future episode.

Last week was not that we didn't get good recordings, but apparently our producer, Andrew forgot that we had these recordings. I heard that from Andrew actually this morning. You know, Andrew's a busy guy. He's a busy guy. lack going on. So this week, actually today, which is going to be from, and I haven't even heard this yet, so I'm excited to hear this coming up, from Jeff Mitchell. And this is Pat Mathini's Bright Size Life. It's a great tune.