You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Ways to Keep Your Playing in Shape on the Road

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

Peter's still on tour in Europe, but that won't stop him from giving some jazz advice to our loyal listeners. Today he's in Taranto, Italy, talking about how he likes to keep his chops up when away from home.7 Ways to Keep Your Playing in Shape on the RoadListenPracticeGo see some other genre of artSit in on jam sessionsKeep a keyboard in your roomCompose musicWork on ear trainingBONUSFor more lessons at the piano with Peter and Adam, check out our brand new course: Jazz Piano Technique. In Volume 1 of this series, you'll get a 4-week bootcamp entirely focused on improving your ability to play pentatonic scales. For more info, go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/jazz-piano-techniqueLike those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey Peter, what's up? Why are you talking to yourself? Because you started talking to me. And plus, I can't find Adam anywhere in Italy. I'm Peter Martin, and you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast, Daily Jazz Advice, coming at you, coming at you on location today in Toronto, Italy. This is a solo edition. I believe Adam did one or two of these solo editions way back early on on the podcast.

but I think this is the first time I'm doing one. So excited to be here. Thank you guys for joining. Today, what are we talking about? Well, we're talking with ourselves, so this is going to be fun. But I'm going to give you seven ways to keep your playing in shape on the road. So obviously I'm in the middle of a tour right now. That's why I'm here down in southern Italy in the boot and heel.

I guess I'm kind of at the top of the high heel. At the bottom, there's kind of a boot situation happening in Italy. So I'm down there kind of in the crux, Toronto, it's beautiful city here right on the coast of, I had to look this up, it's actually the Ionian Sea. It's not the Adriatic or the Mediterranean, it's the Ionian. So maybe we can work in a little bit of Ionian scale practice while we're here. But in any case, yeah, in the middle of a tour, having a lot of fun. Me and Adam will be back together with some remote episodes very shortly. I hope you enjoyed the best of episodes last week. I actually listened

to some of those walking around when I was up in Northern Italy the last couple of days. and really had a kick. I even texted at him and told him, we sound so dogmatic when you put together some of our advice the best of from different episodes. So that was pretty fun to listen to, kind of inspired myself and a little bit of slapping myself on the wrist

with the ruler, as it were. But today, I want to talk to you guys about seven ways to keep your playing in shape while on the road while you're on the road. And so, yes, of course, this is very topical, and I've been kind of doing all of these and I actually came up with a bunch more. I kind of whittled it down to what I think of the top seven ways.

So we're going to start out with number one, listen, of course. Okay? I find it's a great time when traveling kind of the different isolated situations that I find myself in, be it in a hotel room or on an airplane or just walking around or whatever. Just a wonderful time to listen to music and to explore. new things, maybe go back and explore some old things, but to really have some focus list in time. Certainly can do that when I'm at home, when I'm at the studio, open studio, or whenever, and I do, but sometimes being in a different environment, although there's all the lack of, you know,

kind of familiarity and creature comforts and our routine that we have when we're at home, I think that there's some advantages to being in a new place. You don't have a lot of distractions possibly, or at least you can put yourself in a situation where you don't have a lot of distractions. So what better time than to focus on some really active listening? Now, we've talked about this a lot of the podcast, and I think the best way to kind of get into a mindset of really active and musically profitable practice type of listening is to think about, you know, listening not as a lover of music, but as a practitioner of it. I think the realities of how we listen to music as musicians is always a combination.

But if you want to get into this kind of really tactical type of listening where you can actually keep your playing and your musicality in shape while you're on the road, it's a matter of, we've got a little police action coming by. They're not coming for me, though. Oh, I hope that's not the jazz police. If they made it all the way to the boot of Italy, we're in trouble. But yeah, so the type of listening where you're trying to do some ear training, you're trying to really identify. what's going on. You're totally focusing on the music and thinking about it from the standpoint of, like, how could I play that? What are they doing? What is the time signature there? What is the underlying rhythm? What is the specific voicing, maybe even that the pianist is playing? What

key are they playing? I mean, there's so many different ways to challenge yourself and work on your musicality and your overall music skills that will truly, you know, work into keeping your playing in shape. listening is is absolutely number one. All right. So number two, this is a little bit counterintuitive, or maybe I guess it's intuitive, and that is to practice. Okay, so as pianists, we have a little bit more challenged than other instruments, but I'm noticing in hotels being on the room with horn players, being on the road with vocalists, you know, bass players. A lot of times it's tricky to practice because people complain. You feel self-conscious making all that noise. But, But as a piano, some things that I've done on the road, and actually even been able to pull

up on this tour, is finding a piano in the hotel. A lot of times they'll have them in, like, ballrooms or meeting rooms. If you're nice to the folks and ask them, you'd be surprised at how many pianos you could find them. That's already happened on this tour for me. And a lot of times, you know, with talking to the right person, you can get a couple of hours isolated in a room where you can just practice, you know, right there in the hotel. So that's the first place I would say to look.

Next, piano stores. I haven't done that this tour, but I've done that before. A lot of piano stores, especially like the Steinway dealers and stuff, will have places that you can try out pianos. So, you know, once you get in there, you've got to be kind of honest with them and tell them, you may not be in the market for buying a piano that day. But who knows? Maybe you find some. But it's a way to get in there and get at a keyboard. Also, of course, the venue, if you have an opportunity to play there, sometimes there's other places even in the stage.

and the last one as far as to try to find practice and I've had a lot of success over the years with this are churches and I don't know if I've ever done it in a synagogue or a mosque but I would think of any place of worship a lot of times they have pianos there and if you ask somebody could I come in and play some music practice a lot of times they love to have their instruments played

so that's something to think about so that's number two practice now on to number three of our seven ways to keep your playing in shape on the road wow this is so easy without having to talk toss it back and back and forth with Adam. I'm kind of liking this. Okay, number three, this is go and see other genres of art.

And this will really give you inspiration to improve your playing, maybe to give a little bit of a different viewpoint on your art and kind of what we play in the jazz world to make some connections. So you could go to a museum, you could go to a museum, depending on where you are in the world, and how you talk. You could go to a park. You could go to a concert.

I mean, there's like free concerts, especially in Europe. I'm always seeing stuff around, you know, maybe a different genre of music to get inspired. Maybe go check out a little classical. Go check out, go to a club and check out a little bit of funk or R&B or rock show. You know, open your horizons. Just try to go hear something really high quality. You'd be amazed at what's available. If you're in a different part of the world that has different kinds of music that aren't available where you live,

What a great opportunity to do that. And I think it certainly will help keep your playing in shape for sure. The museum thing I love doing, especially when I'm in Europe, so many great museums here and try to make some connections. And just expand your artistic palette. That's always a great thing we can do for our playing. All right. Number four, or seven ways to keep your playing in shape on the rope.

This is to sit in at a jam session. Okay? So this is going to take a little bit of asking around for availability. ability. A lot of times I end up doing this and different musicians that I travel with will, you know, when there's a festival that we're performing at there, oftentimes are jam sessions, you know, multiple jam sessions or at least one happening almost every night of the festival. So a lot of times we think, oh, you know, and I used to do it more, but I still try to get in there and do it some, even if I'm tired or whatever, because there's nothing like keeping your shape,

you know, you're playing in shape than being challenged at a jam session, especially if you've got some good players there, which oftentimes you do. You know, play some tunes you're not thinking of, playing in a different situation with different musicians. Great to challenge yourself. Gives you a little bit more time on your instrument, which is really what, you know, staying in shape on the road in terms of your playing is all about. Okay, let's move on to number five.

I think I've forgotten that other guy now. What's his name, Adam, something? I've already forgotten about him. Don't even need them as it turns out. Okay. Number five, this is to bring a keyboard on the road with you. if you're a pianist and practice in the room. Now, we have a little bit of an advantage over other instruments because, you know, there is a problem,

especially like horn players I'm always seeing, you know, saying they feel weird playing in the room because it carries all over the hotel. But the keyboard, you can get the headphones going. And I haven't done this in a while just because I've pared down my travel setup just with the carryons and the luggage and having another thing to carry would really kind of mess that up. But I used to do this and just bring a keyboard and practice. and you try to get something, I would always try to have a keyboard, a travel keyboard, that might not have been a lot of octaves, but was actual correct size keys so that you could

practice a few technical things even. But you can certainly, you know, work things out, do some transcribing. There's so many different things that you can do when you do have a keyboard available to you. So they even have these rollout keyboards. I had that for a while. I think I left it in a hotel room. I should get another one of those. But it's basically like a USB rollout keyboard that passed.

It does not feel like a great keyboard, but you can do a little bit of playing on it, so I would recommend that. And that leads us right into number six, which is to compose music when you're on the road, to really think about composition. And maybe it's something that when you're at home, you know, in your normal routine, you just never have time to do or you want to do more of. You know, it's kind of like reading more. Sometimes when you get out of town, taking a trip, you know, you bring a book along.

You can be a little more focused to hit that. I think composition is the same way. And you can do this anywhere. You know, you don't have to have a piano. You don't have to have a guitar. You can do it by ear. Obviously, it's harder if you haven't done a lot to be able to compose away from your instrument. But it's basically, it's definitely possible.

And in fact, a lot of times for me, it's a preferable way to compose, at least the early stages of working through a composition. And actually, Adam and I have talked about this, I think on the podcast, but definitely we've talked about it with each other. He really likes that at selected times of the composition process to compose away from the piano, away from everything, maybe go outside somewhere. And so all it takes is, you know, some notation paper. Or you can even just bring your phone along and, you know, sing something or make some notes that way, you know, with the audio recording. But I find traveling is a great time to work on composition, and that ultimately is a big part of our musicianship again that's going to contribute to keeping our playing together. All right, we've made it all the way to number seven of our seven ways to keep your playing in shape on the road. Oh, and I just thought of a bonus, so that's good.

Please stick around for that because we're going to throw that. That'll actually be number eight. But number seven is to work on ear training. Now, this is another good one that you can do. in fact, you should do away from your instrument. There's some really good apps available. And in fact, we're going to be getting into those really soon. Adam and I have started evaluating some apps because we got so many questions about this.

And, you know, when I was doing a lot of my ear training work early on, obviously there was no apps to help you do this. You had to find someone that was going to do it. And because you really need some feed. Not necessarily feedback you need, but you need somebody to test you on this as you're working on your ear training. I talked about earlier listening to recordings. You can do a lot of great ear training if you're doing very, very adhering to that, to some very intentional active listening. But you can also, with some of these apps, really work on your ear training.

So that starts from the basic thing of listening to intervals, listening to chord types, listening to upper extensions of chords, listening to different kinds of scales, being able to identify those, being able to sing them working on that kind of, the actual vocal. of your ear training. So that's a great thing to work on because you know, you're away from your instrument and it's going to contribute in an outsized way, I would say, to your playing as that more advanced ear training starts to seep into your musical consciousness. It'll really benefit your playing. So another thing, kind of like composition that can

fall through the cracks sometimes when we're in our normal routine. So maybe when you're on the road, take the opportunity to attend to some of that. So there you go. That's the seven ways to keep your playing in shape on the road. I got one more bonus for you in a minute, but I just wanted to say thank you guys for listening to my first ever solo episode of the You'll hear of Podcast. I'm kind of excited about this. I got to say it went pretty well. I'm missing Adam a little bit.

I'm not going to lie. We have the nice rapport, a lot of fun there in the studio. But hopefully this worked well for you guys. Hopefully I provided a little bit of value for you guys in your day-to-day things. And hope everybody's well. I'm doing good. I'm having fun on this tour and really thinking about the community and everything. Just want to say we are sponsored by Open Studio, as you guys know, and we actually have something very exciting that just happened in the last few days. Since I've been gone, I am kind of involved in it, but this is really from a core standpoint been Adams baby, so want to give up some props to that.

but the name of it is it's a whole new series we started available at openstiojazz.com, of course, called Jazz Piano Technique. And volume one, which we've just released, is all about pentatonics. And this was really the number one question that we have gotten for a long time, specifically about piano technique. So if you look into, you know, kind of, well, we break it down into four sort of main aspects of specifically jazz piano. technique. Speed, power, dexterity, and control. If you're looking to up your game in those four areas, I think that this series, jazz panel technique will really be good, especially starting

with this pentatonic, because this was the one we had most questions about people wanted to know, and this is probably the quickest to be able to apply what you learn into your playing. And so we structured each volume as a four-week boot camp, and Adam and I had a little bit of argument back and forth, because I wanted to make it four weeks, 28 days, seven days, seven days, a week and he's like come on we got to get people two days off i was like two days off now maybe one day off but he ended up winning so it's 20 days um so you can actually go through it quicker than four weeks if you don't take any days off which is be fun um but it's you know it's it's 20 weeks of i'm sorry 20 days not 20 weeks that would be a little long four weeks 20 days and um it covers uh the core areas

of jazz panel technique this volume is specifically pentatonic we've got a bunch of fingering we go through a bunch of different keys. You know, we actually go through and are your personal technique trainers. We have extensive guided practice sessions, which have been super popular. GPS. We are going to be your GPS, your compass to becoming a better pianist and to up in your technical game. So if you're looking for someone to do a little bit of handholding with you, this is the course. You know, some of our other courses, we've got a lot of comments that they're great, but they don't have enough handholding. So I think we went over the top with the handholding on this one. So anyway, you can check it out at open studio jazz.com. The course is called jazz piano technique, volume one

pentatonic, so we hope you enjoy that. Now for our number eight bonus of our ways to keep your playing in shape on the road, this is learning a new instrument. And I was thinking guitar. That kind of popped in my mind as a pianist. You know, and years ago I brought a guitar out on the road for just a short tour. I said, you know what, I'm going to try to learn guitar. And I learned a little bit and I kind of dropped the ball. I mean, I've done a little bit over the years, just mainly from kind of learning to play it a little bit so I could compose for it, because I love the instrument. But what a great time. And when you're a pianist, especially, and you can't really bring a piano, you can bring a keyboard, yeah, but to bring another instrument, I used to

play violin. I actually brought a violin on the road for a while just as a chance to practice something in the room. So I think that's always a great perspective changer, a game changer truly for you. You bring something else, another instrument onto your palate. Not necessarily to perform. I mean, I don't know. Maybe you get to that level, but just as a new kind of approach. So keep that one in mind. And until

tomorrow, you'll hear it.