You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Ways to Get Better Fast - #65

Episode Date: November 23, 2018

Join Peter and Adam in the pod-cave as they discuss 7 ways to get better fast in today's episode of You'll Hear It. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam. What's up? Do you like clickbait? I do. My computer is a total garbage dump. I'm Adam Annis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the Yule here at podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you on this? Black Friday?

Yes. Today's Black Friday? Today is Black Friday, man. I'm doing like 90% of my yearly shopping I will do today. Really? In person or online? Online mostly, yeah. So if anybody's listening who works at Amazon, just go ahead and hit me up because I'm going to be buying a lot of stuff.

stuff for you're gifting for if you're looking for a gift from me not to make it too personal i'm not sure if amazon sells small batch bourbons so we might have to direct you somewhere else we'll talk about that after the show how about that we need some new tennis rackets okay okay a little modular synthesizer and what's i may have those though so what are we what's our subject today because the reason i was mentioning clickbait it seemed like our subject might be a little clickbait which we like right buddy all of our subjects are clickbait that's what we do here our topic but you know what I mean, stuff that we would click on. That's really the only clickbait.

Stuff that we're interested in, right? You know, it's reflection time. We just had Thanksgiving yesterday. We're all still a little turkey hungover here in America. I feel big. I feel bloated. Do I look bloated? You look great, bro.

Okay, thanks. Yeah. No, but today we're going to do seven ways to get better fast. Now, we've covered a lot of these things over the course of this year. We've been doing these podcasts since late January in 2018. It seems like both yesterday and forever ago somehow. Seems like we've been doing these forever. But these have been some, like, you know, over talking about this stuff and getting questions and answering questions, these seven things have been sort of the things that keep popping up, the things that we keep answering to try to help people really make progress in playing this music.

And these are also some tried and true things that I know we've discovered over our now longer and illustrious careers as jazz pianists. And, you know, we're always trying to refine these for ourselves. Yeah. So we would, you know, you and I would probably be talking about this. over coffee anyway about like ways that we can improve and and we're happy to help uh you know our listeners here well we would talk about it over coffee had you not drank all the coffee this morning i notice you have a coffee mug and i don't but we'll talk about that again and i feel really really buzzed we're gonna get through this list ultimast well but i think the thing about this

too yes we've we've mentioned all these things before but the idea was that we're consolidating them into one um list that that's kind of specific with all the different tips that we've given that are more around a particular subject, like how to do, you know, for ear training, learning a solo, all the different things. These are more just ways to improve your playing really quickly. And so some times that you might need this, or if you're feeling a little bit frustrated or not of the mindset, like, okay, I want to take on this really big project that's going to help my playing, but in a slower way. Like, these are ways just to get better very quickly. And you can integrate them into many parts of your practice, but you can also come to this when you're like, I want to make some big progress. I think that's exactly.

You know, this time of year is the time of year when people start to think about, you know, I really want to make some changes. I want to make some progress in some aspects of my life. A lot of musicians they're playing is that aspect always. But wait until next month when we start getting our New Year's resolutions practice tips. We should do a boot camp series for New Year's resolutions. That'd be fun. Well, you'll hear at boot camp. That's right.

I like you got kind of authoritative and military as you even said that. I'm about to yell some folks. Get dogmatic. Get your hands on the piano. now. Whipped you in the shape, maggot. Diminished, fingering, wrong. Push-ups. So let's kick it off. Seven ways to get better fast. Okay. Number one. Listen. Huge surprise here. Huge surprise. But can we reiterate this enough? Can we iterate this enough? No, there's no better way to develop as a musician, to develop as an artist, develop as a person than to listen to music that moves you,

to do deep listening, to do transcription. Yeah. All of these levels, of listening do nothing but make you better fast. And look, this is not just in music. We are giving you actionable life advice. How can you get better in a relationship? Listen. How can you get, how can we get better at this podcast? Listen.

Okay. Andrew, how can you get better in the engineering of how you do this podcast? Listen. Say hello. All right. Mic drop, holla. All right, I wasn't paying attention to any of that, but number two. Number two is to practice every day.

If you want to get better fast, you have to spend some time at your instrument. There's no getting around it. No one who is a good player has not spent quality time. Yeah, much less a great player. So, I mean, so true. And like the analogy I could say is, like, if you're trying to get in shape or trying to become a better runner, how about run every day? You're not going to do it from the couch.

Yeah. I mean, a lot of times people are like, oh, hey, I want to be a better runner. I need to get a trainer. I need to get a training program. I need to get some other shoes. I need to get some app or something. Yeah, I need to get an app. I need to get the right music.

Okay, all those things are like little 2% optimizations or whatever. But when you want to get better at something fast, you need to commit to doing it every day. And notice we didn't say practice seven hours every day. Hey, if you have seven hours and you have the stamina and the will to do it, that's great. But most of us don't have that kind of luxury. And you should work up to that anyway. Even if you think you have seven hours a day. You're going to burn out.

Yeah, yeah, you got to ease your way. But the reason why I think daily practice, or at least daily engagement with your instrument is important, is because there's nothing that you can replicate that goes deeper than that connection that you get with daily interaction with your instrument, even if it's for 10, 15 minutes or whatever. Like if you have an hour one day, two hours the next,

four hours the next, and then 10 minutes on a Saturday, take that 10 minutes to just sit down and play something on your instrument because you are going to keep that connection between your hands, your brain, your breath, everything. It has to stay there. It's a habit too. To practice is a habit.

And when you break that change, just like learning any habit, I mean, it's like for me, flossing. I finally, I mean, with just, because I hated flossing. Finally. Yeah.

I mean, within the last year and a half, two years, I've been consistently flossing. I mean, I floss before. I understood the concept. But I finally got the right shoes, the right floss, the right YouTube instructional video.

No, no, no, no, what it was, I just committed to like not break. breaking the chain on it. There you go. And for me, it's like actually practicing, playing the piano is even more, like, when I'm at home, and for some reason I didn't play the piano at all day and I'm like about to get in bed or about to floss. Like, I'll go downstairs and just play a little bit. I like, I can't not do that. I mean, if I'm on the road and don't have access to an instrument or something, that's one thing. But if there's a piano there, I just feel weird not doing it. So, so great. What about number three? Number three, practice mostly things you can't do yet. This is very important. This is very important. We've mentioned this throughout this last. year in various contexts, but the general idea is something that you can apply to almost anything that you practice, scales, even like listening or ear training and stuff. But the concept is that like don't start on something that you're really good at because in terms of like challenging

yourself and what you need to learn, you're just going to be more like solidifying that or kind of warming up type of thing that you probably don't really need to do. Jump right to the hard section. Go to listen to something that you don't already know everything. about. Go to something that's going to challenge you so that you can really maximize your time. And do that at the beginning, front load that, and then you can do some stuff to kind of just chill or whatever later. We're talking about techniques and tempos and keys that you are not good at yet. Focus on that kind of thing, that thing that you don't have mastered. Whatever that is, you know, we'll get into how to spot those a little bit later. But I always equate it to athletics,

right? If you're a runner, you're never going to get faster by just running at the same tempo or running at the same distance. You have to confuse your body. You have to challenge your body. If you lift weights, you're never going to get stronger. You're never going to build muscle. Unless you're the same ones you know. Right. Unless you confuse those muscles. Same thing with learning an instrument. You're never going to get better unless you confuse your brain and your muscles to the point where they have to learn it ingrained. I'm confused now. So this is perfect. Exactly. Number four. Number four is to practice performing. I think this is a crucial element that actually you hit me too. I mean, I've always done this a little bit, but you've put such an importance on this,

and it's really helped me in my playing. You're welcome. Thank you very much. But at the end of every practice session now, I do just a little mini performance of a tune. You know, I will record it usually, and I try to pretend like I'm in a venue with an audience, you know, at the Village Vanguard or at the Blue Note

or, you know, at a big concert hall or something. I'll literally, you know, make believe that I'm performing this with, you know, great musicians, too, and I'll pretend that that's all really happening. and I tried to nail a performance. This has really helped me in my performance because if you don't practice performing, you're practicing all these things you can't do yet, which is great,

and you hopefully will make some huge strides and being able to execute that. But to practice the entire art of a performance, you know, of the architecture of a solo. How to curtsy. How to bow. How to walk up to the other. Just to imagine those situations and try to develop something presentable.

It's so important. I mean, it's just like if you're going to give a big speech, it's not just about writing it and then even practicing that. You need to actually practice the walking up to the podium, practice the mic, all the things that could possibly kind of throw you off. So the best way I always think to do this is to do it on a gig

if you can. But if you're on a gig like at a hotel lobby that nobody's listening to you, pretend like you're at the Village Vanguard. That's not that hard to do. Like don't just say, oh, nobody's listening so I can just slack off. No, pretend like everybody's listening. First of all, somebody might start listening, you know.

But yeah, that one's great. So number five, can I take this one? You got it. Okay, thanks. Find a teacher slash mentor. I love this. And this is something that as pro players, we is not as intuitive, but I think is very important. We can almost add a slash here of community.

You can find a teacher, mentor slash community. And sometimes it's like a mentor, like if you're lucky enough to be around a mentor or teacher that can really guide you, that could be somebody that's physically there. If there's not somebody around you, maybe you could do it by Skype even. Yeah. I know some people have had great success in learning a language and they didn't have access to a teacher, but they have a regular Skype lesson with them, something like that. And then, I mean, if you're kind of isolated or an introvert or don't have access, read. Like, you can read and learn about music. That can become your mentor.

That's right. This really, this number five, find a teacher mentor slash community goes back to number three. Practice mostly things you can't do yet because what a good teacher is great at is finding your weaknesses. And you have to take that without ego, without feeling. deflated. You have to really want to pinpoint those weaknesses. You have to have to have a hunger to find the weak spots

in your playing so that you can address them. What if you're like a bass player and you want your teacher slash mentor to be Christian McBride? How would you go about doing that? We're going to talk about that later. Stay tuned because we have an idea for you on that. All right. So number six. Let me just say one real quick thing. I know we're moving through this. I already called out number six. I'm sorry. But number five, this is important.

Because Diane Reeves has a great like Diane Reeves amazing vocalist. Like we've played places where people like she has the most beautiful voice I've ever heard, you know, like top of her game. She still gets lessons, talking about a teacher or mentor. She has a vocal coach.

Now, she can pretty much coach anyone on voice, but she goes to a vocal course, like it's almost like a professional development kind of thing to keep her on her game. That tells you how important it is. Yeah, that's really great. It's Mariah Carey. That's the name of her vocal coach.

Just kidding. Well, number six is to keep a journal slash record yourself. Now, would that be a bullet journal with ink all over it by any chance? Buddy, I just ordered a bullet journal for the new year. Oh, I know you're excited this topic.

Dang, I was going to get you one for Christmas. I got my fountain pink that, my fountain pen, my fountain pen that either spews out ink and chunks or doesn't write at all. That's right. And I'm going to have my new bullet journal. Hashtag, hipster lifestyle. No, so this keep a journal slash record yourself. This is an important part of the process of being able to document where you are,

where you want to go. Yeah. And to write down things that you want to put in your playing. Question for you. Yeah. If we don't know where we've been, how do we know where we're going? Are you some kind of philosopher or something? That's amazing.

No, so you know, you and I talk about this all the time. We both keep journals. We both have always kept practice journals where we write down things we want to work on, tools we want to learn. And then I record, as I mentioned before, I record, you know, frequently my practice sessions or performances or something like that, just to kind of keep stock of things of what I have and what I want to get rid of, what I want to work on, what I want to add. If there's anything I don't like, I can hear it more clearly after the fact.

Yeah. So I think, and I think what ties in with with this. one in terms of getting better fast is that like this step is not going to actually in itself get you better but it'll help you to optimize the things and identify the things that are really working well and maybe some things that aren't working so well as you kind of document your journey you don't have to like keep a journal and write stuff down and you can still get better but this is a way to make it faster your progress because you can kind of go back and reflect on and then also plan out as well plus you know any I mean it's just like with music

too when you when you write something there there's certain things that for most people it's sort of triggered mentally in terms of doing that that solidifies those habits a little bit better. Totally. Just helps you keep track, helps help speed up the process. Yeah. And makes it so that when you're like going to the coffee shop with your little bullet journal, you actually have something written in it. That's nice too. It's not just a fashion accessory. Oh, look at me. What's number seven? Number seven, stay in the moment. Super important. Super important. Why don't you talk about this? Because I actually don't know what this is.

What? You do this all the time? So my fresh me on. My thought on stay in the moment was actually to, you know, not look back with, again, with ego, not look forward with dread or anticipating something that's not there yet, but stay focused on where you are right now. I love it. Address where you are today in this moment. Do not get hung up on things in the past. Do not pat yourself on the back too long for their performances.

Do not, you know, berate yourself too long for bad performances. We all have both and do not like look too far in the future of like, oh, well, when I get here, I'll be this. Or when I do this, I'll be this. Or, oh, man, I have a gig and I'm nervous about it. Don't think about any of that. You can't control it. You ain't at the gig yet.

Practice. Stay in the moment, enjoy the process. Enjoy the process. We always talk about this. Fall in love with the process. That's right. That's the most important thing. You know, I think about, we've been talking a lot about Roy Hargrove,

and I don't know of any musician of our generation of, you know, around our age that was really in love with the process. As much as that catch. I mean, jam sessions, he obviously had such a deep way to hone his skills and his art. And that is inspiring for me. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that the way this is going to make you get better faster is that when you enjoy the process, you're going to start doing more things that automatically improve your playing without you having to think about even one through six.

These one through six are important. But when you add in seven to these other ones, that's going to be like a multiplier effect on all. those kind of things because within the moment is where the progress really happens, you know. It's all that matters. It's all that matters. And so like this, this is the thing that's going to kind of push things exponentially for you. Man, this is great. This might be our best list episode ever. This is like a mega list. Now I feel like we're looking back on it. Let's stay in the moment and think about the, oh no, we can't even think about the next either though. I don't know to stay in the moment. Yeah, let's just fall in love with the process of making this. Man, it was so glorious what we just said.

That's good. Well, speaking of glory, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, Smooth. Yeah, yeah. We had some, don't we have some ratings and reviews maybe to read? I know I read one earlier in the week, but there was another one, and I'm just perusing. Do we read the 11-star one? Oh, yeah, we did read that one already. How many 11-star reviews have we ever had?

I know. It's like I wanted to come back to that. Okay, maybe we don't have another one. But we do want to tell people, please go, leave us a rating review. Wherever you get your podcast, you know, if it's with Apple Podcast, Google, wherever, Stitcher, we're still looking for that Stitcher, love. Come on now. But really, it's not so much that it helps our egos, although it does, but it helps spread the love of this podcast. And that's actually how this little phenomenon, this little minor, you'll hear it.

And you can hashtag, you'll hear it whenever you like social media. Please do, please do. You know, it has been spreading around. And I was just in Japan, met some fans that actually come. And actually, this young man said he loves a podcast and he said he loves it for the jazz banter. But he said he also loves it. He said it's his daily English lesson. Oh, well, there you go.

Yeah. He said he brushes up on his English. Now, I don't necessarily see either one of us as master of the English language or being particularly verbose, but we'll take the love wherever we get it. Isn't that wild man that go to Japan? We're sitting here in our musty-ass pod cave with a Kranek and Bach and Andrew over there. Just eaten, usually Czech's mix or whatever Andrew is eaten. And some cat in Japan is like listening right now working on his English is great. So there you go.

Now, today, we mentioned this a little bit already, but today is Black Friday. And we want to Snap. Who Snap exactly. And we want to invite everybody to come and join us at OpenStudio Network.com slash BF.

That's right. And if you didn't catch any of that or you're just particularly lazy, just Google Open Studio Jazz. And we'll come up. But what we put together, we think, well,

we don't think, is the biggest savings offer ever. So this is like the best deals you're going to have on any of our courses. But more importantly, we have everything available. we have it all laid out, you know, clearer than we ever have for you. I think it's always been clear, but like you really are getting the best of the best.

We're not holding anything back. We're not like just giving you the crappy courses because we don't have any crappy courses to tell you the truth. It's all killer, no filler with us. Not to toot our own horn too much per se. I mean, can we talk about the number of Grammy awards that our instructors have won? We can't talk about it because we can't count them all. It's a lot of grammies. It's so many.

We lost count. No, you know, we've been saying this all week, but if you've been on the fence about this, We are selling this hard this week because we want you to know that this is your opportunity to really save a lot of money on any of the courses we do. We have tons of piano courses. We have courses on pretty much every instrument that's applicable to jazz.

We're working on trombone. We don't have that yet. But we got some great trombones in the bullpen. I just got to say. Come and look for that trombonists. They've signed at the dotted line so I can't say their names. But we do have Sean Jones on the trumpet. We have Steve Wilson on the alto saxophone.

We have Christian McBride on the bass. We have Homerulubombo on the guitar. Peter Sprague on the guitar. We have Warren Wolf on the vibraphone. We have Peter Martin, Jeffrey Heiser on the piano. I'm up in there doing a lot of answering questions on our Facebook page on our in-house social network. The community we have of professional musicians, too, that are subscribers, is incredible, where people are helping each other on our site. It's amazing, man. Yeah, it's really, it's really amazing. And we are really just sort of the conduits, the platform for bringing together some of the greatest jazz performers of our generation

and not only performers but just great teachers Christian McBride, Sean Jones, as you mentioned, Gregory Hutchinson, Peter Sprague, Romero Lubombo. I mean, literally, jazz, Brazilian guitar, Google, search, bam, Romero Lubombo comes up. So, you know, we've got him laying it out in English and in Portuguese. Fala Portuguese?

No? I don't know what you're saying. I don't know what you're saying. I'm saying, do you speak Portuguese? I don't know that. Okay. And Ulysses Owens, Young Gunn on the drums. What a great course.

A great course. And if you're familiar with Greg Hutchinson's course and not Ulysses, you're going to want to get in on both because they really dovetail nicely, you know, talking about a lot of the same concepts and filling in where the other letters, some great stuff there. Yeah, what do you know about about to drop some more rhythm section knowledge from Ruben Rogers that's going to blow your mind. We've got the art of swing is coming. The art of swing. You know, we humbly name that title of that course. And the great thing is, you know, and I'll give you a little secret. Come to Black Friday, look for the All Access Pass special because this thing is like,

we have never offered it at this price and we never will again until next year, maybe. We've never discounted the All-Axed Pass this deep at all. No. And the thing is, with the All-Axas pass, it just gets stronger every day. So if you sign up now for the annual All-Axcess Pass, you're going to get the New Kieser course in a couple of weeks when it comes out with all the beautiful transcriptions and all his performances right here in studio. That's right.

You're going to get some exciting beginner jazz piano stuff that you and I are working on now, yeah, that we're working on now, which is great for any instruments. So like,

if you're like, oh, I want to pick up on some of these concepts, but my piano chops aren't that great, we're going to bring you there. Anything we release in the next year.

Anything we release. So it only becomes more valuable every day, but you only pay once. So that's my little recommendation, but you can do what you want, yo. Well, thank you all so much

for listening to our podcast. We love talking to you about jazz every day. Yeah. And go to Open Studio. Network.com slash BF. Yeah. If you're on your iPhone

and you're on the podcast app, you can check out the details description of this episode and you'll see episode web page. That'll take you to that same address. OpenSruidunetwork.com slash BF. And yeah, anything else? Are we leaving off anything?

Well, no, I was just going to say, look, you have a lot of choices in like holiday gifts. We have gifting too. So if you listen. Like an airline, you have a lot of choices. You have a lot of choices

when you fly. Every time they say that to me, I'm like, I had no choice. What are you talking about? You're the only one who flies this route. But, Oh, big shout out to Southwest Airlines. Another one of our non-sponsors that I like to help out.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I just achieve companion pass status. I don't know why I'm giving them a plug. Congrats. Would you like me be my companion? Let's do it. No, no, I've already got one. But the thing is, no, I was just going to say, it's Black Friday.

You know, everyone wants to do their shopping. I know I'm going to be doing it for my kids and my spouse, as I know you're going to be doing. But if you want to do something in terms of, like, truly a gift that will be with you all throughout the year. Come check us out at Open Studio Network because we've got courses, especially the All-Axas past. This is really like, we talk about lifelong learning and stuff. This is stuff for you to learn all year or your loved one or whatever. Yeah, you can go get them a big screen TV, but that's going to cost you a lot more and you're going to get bored with it. Well, I guess you could watch videos and learn on your big screen to you. So maybe get both. That's right.

Open Studio and the big screen. That's right. Okay. Well, until next time, you'll hear it.