You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Things to Practice When Your Time is Limited - #174

Episode Date: August 8, 2018

Today, Peter and Adam give some practice ideas that give you a lot of bang for your buck. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus and I'm Peter Martin and this is the You'll Hear Podcast Daily Jazz Advice coming at you Brought to you by Open Studio That's right Didn't sometimes we used to switch off with the intro and I would say I'm Peter Martin first

Because you've kind of exed me out of that I'm okay with it but Yeah we did used to switch off Would you like to switch? Would you want to try it? No, I feel like you go ahead Go ahead, go ahead I'm Peter Martin And I'm Adam Annas

And this is the You'll Hear podcast Daily Jazz I forgot see this is why we don't know what to Okay that's fine That's why we do it like that Oh man How you doing? I'm doing all right.

All right. Yeah. Feeling good. I got about three quarters deep into my ice coffee right now. I know. You still didn't bring me. That's okay. The summer's almost over, so jokes can be on you.

I mean, I'm just getting them at squatters at this point. I haven't made cold room in a couple weeks. That's right. Yeah. Well, you know. So today we're talking about seven things to practice when your time is limited. Yeah, this is a question from a user. And I think this is a good thing to talk about.

And we're not saying practice all seven of these things when you have five minutes. I know. I was wondering, I'm like, fit. If we practice all seven of these, your time is obviously not limited. We can choose from these seven things. We can choose from these seven things. So maybe we should say seven things to choose from when your time is. These are ideas, though, basically.

Just ideas of if you have five, 10, 15 minutes, you really want to get the most bang for your buck. Any of these seven things would be good. Yeah. And I think in general, especially when your time is limited, you want to focus. So like when you have 15, 10 minutes, even 20 minutes, it's not the time to try to do four things. Yeah. You know, it's more of the time to try to do one thing well. Because even in 20 minutes, 15 minutes, you're not going to necessarily be able to go deep with anything.

But if you have one thing and you can't and you get the right mindset and you practice at this, you can go deeper than you think. Yeah. I believe. Especially if you choose one of these seven. You know, it's the old thing. Someone asked Bill Evans, what should I practice? And Bill Evans said the least amount as possible, as little as possible. Practice like a little as little.

as possible. Oh, right. Right. So if that, like, one thing, like practice as little as possible. That's right. Okay. What do we got for number one?

Number one, surprisingly, is listen. Ah, our old favorite rears, it's beautiful head again. I mean, this is actually pretty good. If you have five minutes, you might not get the most out of your instrument. You might wet your read on the saxophone and your time is up and you've got to go.

But you can listen to a tune in five minutes. You can listen to a solo in five minutes. You can get a lot out of it with some deep listening. Deep listen. You can really learn a lot in five minutes. Yep. Yeah. And I think that's, I mean, it's a great reminder that the deep listening needs.

And now we're not talking about deep cut listening, although we do talk about that sometimes. That's fun too. But deep listening is practice. Yeah. You know, I mean, really, you could choose one of these other things and then maybe you could do some deep listening as you drive to your next busy event or whatever. But it should never be discounted, especially in conjunction with maybe some things that you're going to come back to practice on later. Like, say you've got just five minutes to practice, but then you know. that evening or that next morning you're going to have an hour.

Spending that five minutes, maybe, you know, listening to that solo deeply or that phrase you're working on, you'll be rewarded when you circle back to it. See, I can't do deep listening while I'm driving. Really? That's hard for me. Is that not legal in this? Well, just this driver's in the city, man. It's bad.

It's bad here. And by this city, we mean every city in the world. Every city is in the world. Every city is in the way. No, I miss trains. That's what's so great about a train is we really get some deep listening going. Absolutely. Okay.

So that's number one. Number two, I love this one, transcribe one phrase. Yeah, easy to do, a phrase you know already. Right, because maybe you've listened to it. You've listened to it before, but it's something that you can just kind of sing on your own. Yeah. Sit down to your instrument, transcribe it, take it through a couple keys, hard keys, you know. And it's great, too, because normally we would think, okay, when your time is limited,

transcription is such a time-consuming thing. It would be the last thing you'd think of. But you're putting it into little digestible chunks, basically. Little nuggets. Little nuggets. Little nuggets of information. And, you know, a phrase could be, bo-do-bo-de-bop, you know.

Yeah, transcribe that right now. Well, come up with something better than that. Boodoo-D-D-D-D. Yeah, you got it. See? Good. And you still got some time left. But, I mean, whenever you're transcribing,

I mean, you might think, okay, that's only 1% of everything that you do. But you know what? You're 1% closer. That's right. So for number three, we have scales, but thoughtfully. Right. Practice scales. What do we mean by that?

I don't know. I never really thought about it. No, I mean that, okay, scales, we're always in danger when we practice scales at any time to just sort of, especially when you, if it's a scale that you know and you really have kind of conquered it technically, is to just kind of run through it and be mindlessly practicing it. So by thoughtfully, I mean that even though you've only got a few minutes, practice the scales. And it's not about, okay, maybe you know the fingerings if you're a piano. or saxophone or whatever and you know the notes.

So you're practicing like one important part of your technique as you play those scale. It's just sort of a conduit for like, say, working on staccato or dynamics. Maybe you just do a crescendo going up and a diminuendo. But very thoughtfully, I guess by thoughtfully maybe even more earfully, like really listening, really concentrating. That's what I mean. Is that right?

Thoughtfully? No, I mean, I think this is actually really great advice. I have a go-to for this. If I only have a little time, I will practice the B major. scale because on the piano, for me, it's a way that I can work on my thumb undercrossing, you know, because of the amount of black keys and where your thumb lands. So I practice this, you know, special thumb exercise that I have to really kind of lock that in. And it's something I can do.

It's almost like when you see a professional golfer doing a practice swing or something. Right. I know that it's going to lock it in for me later on the gig with easier scales if I can, if I can practice the B scale for five, ten minutes. That's great. Yeah. So number four, we have practiced technical exercises, and this really dovetails with the scales. It's the same thing, like, you know, just taking one and being thoughtful about your practice.

I think a lot of people, you know, especially pianists, get into technical practices and think, okay, I have to keep going to get harder ones and challenging and constantly go deeper into the book. You know, to tell you, too, most of these, like Cherney and McFerrin and Phillips and like Hannan, most of these that I practice and come back to, I don't get past the first couple of pages. I mean, I have gone on in them. But, like, I find so much gold in there at the beginning and use that to work on all the different things that I want to refine in my playing. You know, you could have one technical exercise and have a lifetime of learning.

Of course, a diversity of it is great. But when you've got limited time, just go to that first page and practice it very thoughtfully slowly. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, for the pianist, if you can do the first four of the Phillips exercises, I mean, that's like two years worth of stuff right there technically yeah and i mean it's almost like you know you hear and i remember back to be in a music school each different instrument you start to kind of

it's almost like you're haunted by the go-to first page of their you know like the first page of the arbin's book for trumpet player right canon da da da da yeah yeah yeah um but those things i mean there's gold in there in terms of yeah you're not being challenged because you know it but don't ever think you've mastered it because there's so many different ways to practice that small amount of time just take one way that's true yeah uh so for Number five, we, five, yeah, is that five? Yep, one, three, four, five. We have classical music.

Now, this is relevant to pretty much any instrument, and this kind of goes hand in hand with technical exercises, but I think it's a little bit deeper. It could be a piece you already know if you don't have a lot of time. You could be sight reading. Yeah, I love that. Which is very good little brain exercises you can do. And especially for certain, well, almost every instrument, it's important.

It is important. Yeah. Yeah, if you're reading music on your gigs at all, being able to cite read is a skill that you have to kind of sharpen. I mean, 10 minutes of sight reading practice a day, I would say if you did 10 minutes of really like the correct way to practice site reading, which we could go into on another episode. We should. Yeah, yeah. But if you did 10 minutes a day on that, as a pianist, which is some of the most challenging sight reading. So really for any instrument as well, 10 minutes a day, after a month, I mean, I would think that you'd have like a two to three acts.

improvement in your abilities. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty good return on 10 minutes. It is, it is. And you don't, you don't really need more than that for sight reading. Because site reading isn't something that's like,

you know, I mean, yeah, of course, you spend three hours every day on site reading. You're going to be an amazing site reader. You better get yourself a gun and shoot yourself at the end of that little period. You don't actually need to spend that much time on it. It's kind of like a muscle that needs to be exercised,

but it's one muscle. Exactly. As opposed to like being able to improvise, which is like, you know, a full body of muscles. Right. And I think the site reading too, like you would be more rewarded. In my experience, I don't know if we've ever talked about this, but it's not like riding a bike that you never forget it. Because I find like if I'm not doing it regularly, I lose the skill. I don't lose it totally. But there's sort of a baseline. So maybe it is like riding a bike. Yeah, you can still get up on it, the bike and not fall down. But some regular riding is rewarded. Wow, I just confuse that analogy. Well, again, not to talk about like this strictly as pianist,

but if any other instrumentalist, if you want to like a nightmare sight reading, try this I read a piano thing. Yeah. I mean, pull out a little grade three. Yeah, we're looking at like, you know, up to eight notes at a time. Yep. That we have to kind of get. Different class.

Sometimes as the eighth notes, you know what I mean? It's, it's... That's why we get paid so much. It's challenging. But you're right, man. Whenever I'm, you know, the last couple years, I've had some opportunities to do some more like classical concerts where people are going to... I mean, they weren't classful.

classical, whatever. It was like... They were classy, though. It was like Claude Bowling. It was like classic. Classique. Classique. Classical. Jazz-ish.

But it was still enough reading that my... By the end of it, I was like, I felt like super reader. Now, I'm pretty sure I was mediocre compared to like... Bud's this. Yeah. Your average like Broadway accompanist. I'm like, you know, lowly, but I felt... Claude bowling level one.

That's right. Good. So now we got, that's... We got number six of our seven... things to choose from to practice when your time is limited. This is a tune that you know in a different key. This can be done relatively, you know, relatively quickly, if not successfully, who knows. But basically you would just take a melody. And, you know, maybe if you're a pianist, you might want to do a little baseline, but something very basic. And it's more of like a melodic, you know, ear training

exercise. And just, you know, get a tempo that you can kind of handle, but it's not going to be perfect, but commit to just playing through a couple of choruses with just that melody in a key that's difficult for you. How good is this exercise? This is so good because, I mean, if it's a tune, let's say it's autumn leaves or whatever, but you do it in, you know, G flat, like major. You're getting so much out of that

out of something that you already know really, really well. And I think it's important, especially if you're going to do it in limited time because you're not going to be able to do it a whole bunch of different ways. If you do this, like just say, I'm going to do five choruses on the melody and then get the metronome going or something going so that forces you into not going back and fixing something. So I mean, you'll be able, if you want to record yourself and listen later, but you'll kind of know you might hit 50% on the first course.

Maybe you're at 60% accuracy or maybe you're 30%. You just need to slow it down. But you will start to get better and you will start to hear it, you know. But you need to force yourself with time to continue on because it's not about being perfect. I love that one. I'm doing that one today. I got about 10 minutes between recording podcasts. So number seven, our last one.

This is one thing you can't do. And by that we mean pick something that you really have never done or can't do and just dive in. You know, do it for 10, 5, 10, 15 minutes. Like computer coding or Python or what? No, no, no. Like playing the head, playing a head that you know with your right hand, but maybe you've never played with your left hand as a pianist. or maybe it's a lick that you know in one key but you don't know in another key. Anything that you're not familiar with or an exercise or any of these things that we've just listed.

But not one that's an unfamiliar way. I like that. Yeah, because I mean when we were talking about the scales and the technical exercise, we were coming at it from the standpoint of something you really know, but you're concentrating on one particular technique. This would be concentrating on something that you really don't know, the challenge is to try to tack that in a small amount of time. That's right.

Good. Yeah. I love the diversity of this list. It's a good list. So, okay, so now I'm going to get into our list recap feature. Let's do it. Brought to you by Open Studio. Pull over now.

Get your phone out. Get your notepad out. And so these are, again, seven things to practice when your time is limited. Number one, we had listen. Big surprise there. Number two, we had transcribe one phrase. Number three, scales, but thoughtfully. Number four, technical exercises.

Number five, classical music. site reading. Number six, playing a tune you know, but in a different key. And number seven is things you can't do. That's right. That's a great list, man. I think we're providing a little bit of value here. We hope so.

We hope people enjoy it. So I got a question for you, Peter. Yes, sir. If someone wanted to stay like up to speed with what we're doing here on the podcast, is there some kind of newsletter we send out? Is there a way for them to connect with this newsletter? Glad you asked that, you know. Since you pulled over now right in that,

list down, you can send a text to us if that's your thing. Oh, that's convenient. Yeah. 4-4-2-2-2. Are you sure it's not 44-333? It is not. And every time you say that, I feel like you're confusing people. All right, 4-4-2-2-2. 4-2-2. That seems weird because it's not a phone number. And you've got to do this in the U.S. We apologize to folks. Well, don't we have something for you if you're outside of the U.S. You can go to you'll hear it.com. But if you want to text, if you're all about the text lifestyle, four texts, you'll hear it. One word. to 4422 and then at your leisure later on when you're not driving or anything you'll get a nice little message back you can send us your email and basically we just want to send you an email once a

week on a Monday because you know who needs one more newsletter on a Monday you do yeah we can keep you up to speed on what episodes are coming up on what day so you don't miss something that you like not that you can miss something on a podcast but you know yeah just a little way to connect yeah you can also go to you'll hear it dot com to leave us uh your questions or ideas for future episodes. You could leave a voicemail. You could leave a written question. We do appreciate any ratings or reviews that happen to go up on iTunes or Google

podcasts or Spotify. Love those. Love the seven, 10, 12 stars, whatever you got. 10 and a half. It's all good. We got to leave it up to them, though. Yeah. I want to thank our engineer for this session, Eli.

What's up, Eli? Yeah, we have a glut of audio engineers right now. We do, man. We are blessed. We are blessed here. And then, yeah, I mean, I think the whole thing is go to you'll hear it.com. That's your sort of home base for all things you'll hear it. And, you know, we're sponsored by Open Studio.

We're very excited. I just want to throw a thing. And I know you know about this, Adam. We got some great stuff happening this week that we've just inaugurated our shed and share. Shed and share. Shed and share. We love to say that. Shed and share.

Hashtag Shed and share. It's a new program that we're doing on what we call the HANG, which is our in-house social network. no fake news allowed. That's right. It's because we're controlling it. But basically, it's just an idea that Adam and I have, for now it's Adam and I, you know, we're probably going to roll it out to other open studio artists and maybe even users. But basically it's one thing for us to all practice on each week.

And it's been so fun this week because we've got folks already uploading videos of them practicing it. And we have like different levels. We're going to do another video today. But throughout the week, it's a way to shed, which is practice. of course and hopefully get a little better, have a little fun, get some ideas not just from us, but more importantly from other community members of the hang about how to, and we just take one concept. Yeah, this week we're doing like a little chromatic enclosure.

Chromatic enclosure, right, which was a cool thing because I realized I used it, but I'd never kind of gone through and practiced in this sort of discipline way. So I'm going to have my own little video. Oh, good. Yeah, I'm waiting for you. Yeah, no, we give you kind of ideas of how to practice this one chromatic enclosure all around different changes. And yeah, we're excited about the Shed and Shared, man.

I think it's going to be a game changer. Game changer. Yeah, yeah. We might have to go to Steak and Shake to celebrate Shed and Share. Shake Shack. Winner. Shaken Shack for the Shed and Shair. Good. Well, until tomorrow, you'll hear it.