You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Things to Practice When Working From Home

Episode Date: March 26, 2020

It's a special "shelter in place" edition of You'll Hear It as Peter and Adam bring a remotely-recorded episode all about ways to be a proactive musician while you're stuck at home.7 Things to Practice When Working From HomeKeep a structured dayHit important things firstGet up early and/or stay up lateGet plenty of exercise and sleepKeep a practice journalStay in touch with other musiciansStart teaching over ZoomIn light of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, we understand that money is tight for a lot of people right now. That's why we've decided that for the duration of this crisis, we'll be running a Choose What You Pay campaign at Open Studio. Choose whichever course you want and then let us know how much you're willing to pay - that's it. For more info, click this link.There's a brand new course from Open Studio: Jazz Chords for Beginners. Learn from YHI's own Adam Maness as he teaches you the important chords you need to know to play jazz. You can also follow along with Adam thanks to our Guided Practice Sessions™, where he'll teach you exactly how to practice the concepts of each lesson. And as a response to the tough times many of us are going through these days, we've decided to launch this course at several different price points. For more info, follow this link.Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey, Adam. We should probably invest some money into Zoom stock at this point, right? We are making good use of Zoom. I think we missed that train, though, buddy. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast.

Daily Music Advice, coming at you. Coming at you remotely, we have upped our remote game here. The people are no longer hearing just a grainy version. from your computer audio, your phone audio, we are set up at home for our you'll hear at podcasting. That's right. Well, they're not hearing crappy, grainy audio if I'm operating this new wonderful at home in the basement setup correctly. You seem to have a lot of confidence in that, but if you guys are hearing our clarion voices coming through clearly, then hats off to us, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Hopefully it sounds good to you at this point, but yeah, only time we'll

tell as this is the first go with our new setup. I even have the podcast, Mike, like, attached to my dining room table. I'm about to record some daily guided practice sessions today here from the comfort of our home. We are, of course, sheltering at home right now. We are sheltering at home. How quickly did we become accustomed to that term? Shelter at home. I mean, that's all I hear now. But it's kind of got, it's got. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, I was saying, see, that's our first little hiccup. This is good. We're working it out.

Yeah, it's got a, it's got both a positive and negative. Actually, it's a very kind of positive sounding term, sheltering and home. There's a very beautiful things. It's not like evacuating in stress. It's sheltering at home. But, of course, it comes from a very scary and fearful place. You know, we're all having to limit human contact. I mean, this thing that, I mean, especially as artists and musicians that, that we not only crave so much we need and we're accustomed to,

human contact, I mean, with the podcast, with playing in ensembles, I mean, symphony orchestra. Every concert shut down. Every gig. Have you talked to any musician that has any gig anywhere? No, and the ones that have tried have been like socially shunned. Right. Probably rightfully so, yeah. So it's just a time to kind of like chill out and reflect. Don't you feel like, you know how at the end of the year, it's like Webster's Dictionary puts out of like words of the year? you know and it's usually some kind of like tweeny social media word that happened and was invented in this year they're going to be like a dozen like like sheltering from home social distancing all these phrases are going to be like you know completely new to our culture but so ingrained with us by the time this

thing is all said and done it's it's pretty incredible yeah yeah and i'm just i mean i'm really amazed it but it just shows you the human spirit and and how we've all been able to adapt so quickly and And yeah, anyway. But that's not the only thing we're talking about today. Oh, and let's just be clear here. We are upping our audio game. We talked about that. What we are not upping yet, but we're about to is upping our video game as well.

We're kind of trying to take this in stages. And we know we have a lot of folks that watch on the YouTube's, and we're going to be back there with our new setup. But we want to make sure we get that right. We really want to make sure we got the audio right today. In fact, we're looking at each other, which is fun. Yep. And as you said, our audio is not grainy, but you're grainy AF what I'm looking at.

I know, it's a combination of old computer. camera. I'm backlit from the windows behind me and I just don't care what I look like right now. Yeah, but by the time we're back on YouTube shortly, we'll be caring and we'll be let it all hang out as we say. So what are we talking about today? Well, hold, before we get into it, I just want to say just we're thinking about all of our listeners. We really appreciate you all for hanging on with us and listening and love the messages we're getting and the notes we're getting. And, you know, if you want to check out any of our Open Studio. courses. We're still running our Choose What You Pay promotion.

So just go to Open StudioJazz.com. We don't want money to be a barrier for you during this time. We want you to play jazz better. That is our mission for all of our students around the world. Absolutely. I'm glad you mentioned that. And you can see a link below that goes right to the Choose What You Pay page. It's openstudiojazz.com, who continues to be our sponsor, both remotely or locally, slash Open Studio Jazz.com slash CY. See CW. CW. CWYP. Choose what you pay.

I think so. Yeah, that's it. But really the idea is, look, we're really trying to support all of our artists. We are supporting all of our artists during this period, too, and continuing on with content remotely from all of them. But just, you know, keep in mind. All these artists, all their gigs are canceled in concerts as well.

So we want to support them. And as we all make this. transition during this period. So thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you guys for listening. For sure. I love you guys. For sure. So today we're talking about seven tips to practice and work from home. Something that, wow, where do we come up with that? Topical. Something that we're all getting used to right now. And I think you and I have actually talked about this personally about how we approach our work, how we approach our music right now, because there are still things to do and there's still work to be done. And so there are some tips, some ways you can go about it. I

definitely seen on social media some ways to not go about it that I see people getting frustrated by. And I've done a few things to tweak how I treat my time here sheltering from home that has made me actually more productive than I would be, say, on a weekend when I'm home and just chilling. You know what I mean? Right, right. And look, I think, you know, as musicians and artists in general, we should be pretty good at this because many of us, I mean, very few musicians approach, you know, music as like a nine to five job. I'm going to clock in and work and then I come home. Most musicians are already working on their craft at home.

And then, you know, perhaps if you're like, you know, we have a studio and office space that we go to and can work. But we've also, you know, Adam, both you and I are used to that, you know, I mean, my kids are kind of grown now mostly. But, I mean, they grew up with me practicing in the middle of the night. Whenever, like, you know, there's all different ways you have to do it to work on your career. and develop when you're at home. But we should probably all have some experience with that. And so it's a matter of incorporating, you know, maybe if you're having to work at home for your day job, if you're not a full-time musician, you might have to take some of the skills

that you have as a musician in terms of practicing wherever and whenever and then apply those to your life. That's right. That's right. All right. So let's get to it. Number one of our seven tips to practice and work from home is to keep a structured day. This is like of all the mental health things that have been going around and tips.

to just kind of staying with it as we're sheltering from home. This is always at the top or near the top of all these lists. Keeping some kind of structure your day, writing out a schedule that you can sort of stick to as a weekday basis can be extremely helpful to just take the decision of what I'm going to do out of it beforehand so that you wake up, you have an agenda. Normally we wake up and maybe we have to take a shower and then have to take the kids somewhere and then have to go to work by a certain time. And so the structure is kind of built in to our workday.

But if we're at home and working from home and if we're having to practice and there's not, you know, classes to teach or work to go to or gigs to happen, we can really lose sight of our day. And I hear these things on social media. My day is just blending one into the next, you know. And luckily for me, I haven't felt like that at all because I'm up at the same time every day. I still, we've made it a rule in our house to still take showers and get dressed as if we were going somewhere. just to kind of, you know, make it happen and get in that mindset of like, I'm not just staying at home, lying on my couch, eating chips all day, and then seeing where the day takes me, you know, having some kind of structure. And then we actually have, here we've made a

fairly detailed schedule with some room for, you know, some choice and some freedom, but just trying to keep a workday, essentially. Right. No, that's great. And I have to tell folks, because they can't see you. I'm very impressed. I'm looking at you. You are wearing full tuxedo with a top hat, you've really taken to, like, get dressed for the day thing. Pretty far, man. I'm very impressed, man.

I'm a professional. It's shave and suit and tie every day. Yeah, but no, I think that these, you know, and the ideas for this, you know, take from how you normally, like, you normally don't go to work in your pajamas talking to everybody. You normally don't, like, you can still,

it's not like, oh, no, I have to invent a new routine to structure my day. You can take the same structure. least elements of it from your regular day. And I know for a lot of kids that are on spring break and going back now, you know, this is a big challenge. But they seem to be falling into that well because, like, you know, my daughter's here, but she's doing, she's still in college at Boston University.

So like they have classes at the same times. She's got to figure out the time zone. And then you're there watching online. And so there's a certain amount of that structure built in. But I think for us, yeah, what are we normally do when we get up in the morning? What time? What do we do? And there's usually triggers like during the day, you have a cup of coffee.

Then you do some deep, deep work. you were doing before, you can keep doing a lot of that. You just have to do it at a different place. Now, obviously, you have to make adjustments like what we're doing here. You know, we do the podcast. We record them usually around this time. So we're like, we need to get, you know, this is the way we do it. We're going to make it as good as possible.

We're not across from each other, but we're going to keep the discipline of the structure of how we do this as close as possible so that we can continue to produce the content. Now, are we still going to go to Union Lofer's after this? we're going to do a virtual union loafers but you know what's interesting what I realized like and I love that you put this first to keep a structured day

like I'm having so much time within the structure that I had before it's really amazing because so much of especially when I was like I would have been touring at this time and I miss that deeply especially the performances and meeting people and getting to play music

and travel around the world but there's just a lot of lost time to the touring lifestyle of a musician I mean your average day is, I mean, you're maybe doing gigs probably every other day, sometimes two days in a row, but maybe four days a week. So, you know, 90 minute gigs, 75 minute gigs, the amount of time that you spend playing music or even at the piano during a week of touring, especially international touring is minuscule. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The amount of time sitting in airports,

going to the airport, waiting for somebody to, but plane delay, you know, I've done that for years. So now being able to engage in music, I miss those 90 minutes so much. Yeah, but I'm trying to take all that other loss time now and apply ways to get better so that we become out of this. I'll have something to say, hopefully. So true. All right. Number two is to hit the important things in your day first. So when you make your schedule, as you said, you know, usually like the first thing you might do is some deep work.

Really try to prioritize what needs to be done for you that day to accomplish the goals that you want to accomplish. And you can even prioritize through the week. Maybe like Monday and Tuesday is when I hit important things I want to get done this week first. and then during the day, I hit the important things I need to get done first. This can be so crucial, especially for things like practicing the piano. We've talked about this, not when you're sheltering from home, but if you want to try to get some good practice in, try morning practice. Some people are great at practicing late, but if you have a day job or kids, that could be really hard just on your energy level.

You know, like sometimes by 3, 4 p.m., I'm just out. Like, my brain is done. So that's why I wake up and I'm usually in the practice room fairly early in the morning so that I can just knock out an hour and have that time to myself. And you know what, too? It honors to yourself your connection with your primary instrument for the day when we do it first. You know, I know sometimes there's certain types of practice I can do really late at night, especially the more creative stuff. And I'll still do those at that time. But I think whatever kind feels natural doing it as the first part of your work day or even right when you get up is so important.

I've been doing that as well. Just like very technical exercise, working some things out that I had a backlog on because it sets the tone for the day of like I'm a musician and I might be involved in other things and family and other kinds of work. But this is the most important. And I mean, even like little other triggers that I've been doing for a while and I've been keeping that up, you know, it's harder when I travel. It's easier at home. Like, you know, I drink a big glass of water. every, that's like the first thing I do when I get up with a little lemon and a little Himalayan salt.

We can do, you know, and that's like triggers to me. It's like it sets the tone like not that I don't fall off and, you know, maybe drink some less healthy things later in the day, but it sets the tone for the day for me. And to me, practicing for at least 20 to 30 minutes on your instrument when you're most focused when you're making a commitment to this is the most important thing of my day. Yeah. And if I can give a little plug, you know, I launched just a couple weeks ago these daily guided practice sessions.

So if you're looking for something to practice. And you're an open studio member, a member of our piano access pass or all access pass. Go check out my daily guided practice sessions. He's practiced with me. Absolutely. For about 25 minutes every day. Okay. Number three is to get up early and or stay up late.

Now, I don't recommend the and. Right. That's true. That's why I said and or. Sometimes, you know. But I was thinking this really ties in with number two as far as how important it is to practice because, you know, unless you're living alone, you're going to be, everybody's at home now. So you got to, you know, and practice can be, like we always think, oh, we're so great and everything. Oh, isn't Adam Maness great?

Yeah, but when Adam Manus is practicing and his wife and kids have been hearing him since they were little, they're not as impressed with, you know, diminished scales or whatever. They really aren't. So, I mean, real productive practice is not usually the most, you know, even if it's Keith Jarrett practicing, is probably not the most interesting thing to hear. So I think that, you know, getting up early, getting up late, especially if you can kind of isolate. But I would also just say that, you know, what goes. along with this, most people, you know, try to look on the bright side of things.

If you're having to work from home or if you're unemployed or if you're at home, whatever, regardless, once you get adjusted to this, you're probably going to have extra time. If nothing else, like, what is the average commute? 30 minutes, 20 minutes each way. You know, so there's an hour of your day that you didn't used to have. How many times have we heard from people, Open Studio members, and you'll hear at listeners, that are like, man, I only have 15 minutes to practice, 20 minutes to practice. Well, now you've got an hour.

Or you've got an extra hour of Netflix, your choice. that's right I love that one so number four is and this is kind of a caveat sorry did I get too dogmatic there no no no no it's just dogmatic enough for this podcast

so number four is to get plenty of exercise and sleep this is also just a mental health recommendation that I've been seeing going around that I think really applies to practicing and working from home because we can if we don't have the impetus to get out for work or for gigs or whatever

not actually get a lot of exercise throughout our day, just sitting around our house, make sure to spend time every day, at least go for a walk around the block. That's still allowed, as far as I know, right, at the moment. In most places. In most places. But some is not.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. If you're in Spain or Italy, maybe not. But if you're in a place where you are allowed to go up and get some exercise, even if you're just at home, if you're quarantined at home, do some push-ups, do some sit-ups, do some calisthenics, some jumping jacks or whatever you want to just get your blood moving once a day, every day.

be shocked at how much it changes how much you can focus, how much energy you have to work on your music. It's really important. And the same thing for sleep. A lot of people I see on social media are posting like, I'm just not sleeping. One day's blending into the next or whatever. And it's because you don't have a structured day, like our number one tip here, but really structure in your sleep as if you had to get up and go to the office in the morning or go to school. Yeah. And what I'm finding is that I need more sleep during this period. I think everybody, to a certain degree. I mean, there's no way, whatever we can do to relieve stress through music, through music therapy, through yoga, through exercise, you know, through really good diet.

All these things are important. But I mean, the world is a stressful place right now. And I mean, even if you follow every one of ours and everybody else's recommendation, there's going to be more stress. And one of the biggest reliever of stress is extra sleep. You need extra sleep. And one of the big dangers of increased stress is it pulls your immunity down. They've had numerous studies that show this. Of all the things that de-boast your immunity, and we all need really good immunity now, you know, because no one needs to get sick, especially from coronavirus, but anything else either can derail you, and you're at home and you're making everybody else sick.

So you've got to get more sleep. Again, take the things that you were wasting time on before, commuting, whatever, eating out, or whatever. Now you've got extra time, dedicate that to sleep and definitely dedicate that to exercise. That's right. Number five is to keep a practice journal. Now, this is something that we recommend anyway, but I think it's so crucial at this time

when we have time to practice and when we have this moment at home where we can work on stuff to really set goals for yourself with the time you have and then keep track of those goals. That can be such an amazing tool for you actually progressing on your instrument

and in music. Again, set goals, weekly goals, daily goals, monthly goals, yearly goals, hell, it doesn't matter. Set some goals and then keep track of how you're working on them. right that's great that's great and i think too like it's going to be a nice thing once we do get out of this period and we will i mean the world will be different we know that but um we're going to get

out of this somehow we don't know when or for how long and in different parts of the world but we will get through it do you want to have a journal of all of your practice and musical development uh or do you want to have like a you know an algorithm of netflix that's so attuned because you've been watching it so much that it knows exactly what you want because those are two very real choices facing you right now. Yeah, yeah. Okay, our number six, I think this is an important one, and you and I have both been doing this one somewhat together and then separately,

is to stay in touch with other musicians. That's right. I've been working on a video collage series of my band The 442s. We did one with you, and I know you've done some stuff with Hamero and are doing some stuff with Inside Straight along this line, just collaborating with other musicians on projects that you can do right now, that we can all do from Hall, you know, it's nothing that is like propelling our careers forward or anything, but it's really just something to occupy or creative brains, you know.

So I don't know about you, but I spend most of my time making stuff for people to listen to. And so if I'm not doing that, if that's not part of my regular practice, I'm just not feeling balanced. So I'm just finding things that I can do with my friends, with musicians that I normally would do stuff with and making stuff for people to listen to and then putting it out there. And it's been, you know, really one of the things that's keeping me going during this whole thing, you know? Yeah. And I think it serves such a great dual purpose, too, for us staying in touch with other musicians collaborating in that it gives us some musical group edification outside of the practice. I think everyone's feeling that the opportunity, whether or not they're taking advantage or not, is depends on each individual.

But there's definitely the feeling of, wow, I have an opportunity to really start to develop, learn a new instrument, learn something that's great to see. but this gives us a little bit of a chance it's not the same as being together but to actually collaborate on something but also to put something out there into the world for people people need music and new creative things you can only yeah you can listen to old recordings

and that's great and we're not saying what we're putting out there on Instagram it's as good as kind of blue it's not about that but people need things that are created now like that means something to people and we're seeing that yeah the quality isn't that great because everyone's using whatever they have at home but people want to like

Like that gives people hope. That gives people hope. And that's part of what our job is as musicians and as artists. It's not just to give each other hope and ourselves hope. We are supposed to, you know, fill the void where politicians and leaders, most leaders, don't know how to do that. I mean, they can say words or whatever, but we can put music together and be like, you know what? This was created today. And we're putting this into the world.

And people can listen to that and feel things so much deeper than they could ever verbalize, you know. And every musician, professional, non-professional, I don't care about that. I'm talking about anybody who has an instrument and a dedication to wanting to tell their story with their instrument, put it out there. That's actually your job. That's your responsibility to the universe to do that. Yeah. Darn right. Darn right.

All right. And finally, this one applies if you're used to teaching music and you can't right now, start teaching over platforms like Zoom or Skype or FaceTime or anything. like that just to stay connected with your students, just to stay in the habit of teaching. And really just is another way to make some money during this time. I know a lot of musicians are turning to this. Even musicians who aren't usually teachers have started doing sky lessons. It's a great resource for us. Yeah. And look, I can give you just two quick family examples here that are doing this. My mother's a Suzuki violin teacher for many years, really a master teacher, study with Suzuki in Japan in the 80s and 70s. And, you know, was one of the first teachers to bring it

to the Midwest. But she's still teaching all of her students. via and I mean my mom like a lot of moms and grandmas not the most technologically savvy so I thought but she's figured out how to do it on Zoom and FaceTime and to figure out which is best with different setups and she's doing her lessons and you know at first she's like this can never be done and I mean when we first started Open Studio she's like that's ridiculous you can't learn music online you need a human being there but she's really shifted over and the students are getting something out of it and she's getting something out of it and it may not be 100% like in person, but the ball's still rolling and is still moving, you know.

Yeah. Absolutely. All right, man. Well, it's good, man. It's good to knock out. You'll hear it on a regular. I know. This is like, you know, shelter in place episode number one, remote edition, right?

Cool. That's right. Well, once again, we'll just say real quickly, we are sponsored by Open Studio. No matter where we are. Go to open studio jazz.com, especially go to open studio jazz.com slash CWYP. for our ongoing limited time, but ongoing special, choose what you pay on any course. The details are there. The reason we're doing it is there.

But it's very simple. We are here to serve anybody in the world who wants to get better playing jazz. And especially we've got these courses that can do it for you on a number of different instruments. We have a number of new content coming out. We've got new artists coming on now. And we're always putting up like the guided practice sessions that Adam mentioned very important. That's free for all members. We just add these things in there.

So we want to be a resource for you to be able to develop while you shelter in place. And price is not an object. Absolutely. And until next time, you'll hear it.