You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Ways to Thrive on a Solo Piano Gig - #68

Episode Date: April 8, 2018

Today, Peter and Adam discuss some ways to get the most out of your solo piano gigs. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus and I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at Podcast. Today we're going to give you seven ways to thrive on a solo piano gig. Okay, good. I have a solo piano gig later tonight, so I'm going to use everything we talk about here on this gig. Okay, how long is your gig this evening? It's going to be three and a half hours. Well, that's perfect.

So with seven, you can use one of these every 30 minutes, okay? All right. So take notes. Sounds good. Okay, so this is a question from our Jazz Piano Studio Facebook group from Peter. And so, of course, you know, I always put priority on anyone named Peter in terms of their question. So that's a good way to get in there. Okay.

That's awful. That's kind of narcissistic. But all right. No, but this is an area where we have a lot. I mean, we probably have collectively, when we say thousands of hours of experience in solo piano gigs over the years. Days, if not weeks of solo piano gigs. Yeah. Yeah.

And, I mean, some of these things I think that we're going to talk about and just experiences in general, you know, we've developed over time. But some of them, too, are like you think back to saying, wow, wish I'd known this or I'd wish I'd done this. I think in general, solo piano gigs is a great time to develop as a solo piano player. I mean, we can practice all the time solo, but I mean, what a great thing to be able to do it on a gig with an audience, whether that's one or a thousand or 10,000, or 10,000, or 20,000. Well, that would never happen for solo piano, but theoretically. And, you know, any pianists out here listening really don't neglect your solo piano game.

It's such a huge part of our instrument. It's a part of our heritage is jazz pianists. and I know some pianists just like love playing with with just groups with rhythm sections, but you're not really, you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't have your solo piano game together. Not to mention you're missing out on some Buku Bucks. That's right. You don't have to pay anyone at the end of the night. That's right. Okay, so number one, let's jump right in. The first one I think is most important to keep in mind to thrive on a solo piano gig is to concentrate.

Now this is a special, I mean, look, we should always be concentrating when we're playing and we all experience different levels of concentration, and sometimes you're off your game, sometimes you're on, usually somewhere in the middle, but really spending some time and energy on concentrating on solo piano, I think is even more important because the good and the bad, any lapses in concentration are going to be amplified when you're playing by yourself because no one else is there to cover you up.

So any fluctuations in tempo, which are kind of normal if you stop to concentrate, you started thinking about, man, what am I going to get to drink after this set or whatever? And then all of a sudden, the tempo slip. There's no drummer or bass player to kind of keep you in line. So you've got to be concentrating more. And there's things about a lot of solo piano gigs that will keep you from concentrating, like people walking around or people not listening or people talking or attractive young ladies or young guys walking by you or whatever it is, trays of food being carried around you.

But that's the time when you've got to double down and really buckle down and concentrate because you just by yourself. Well, and the fact that, you know, if you're on a trio gig, you have two other people to interact with, right? To zone out. Yeah. Well, no, no, it's harder to zone out because they're going to be like, yo, you know. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's true.

I mean, you got the energy of that, of the teammates. So this is like a conversation with yourself that you have to keep your concentration level high for that. It's important. Number two is to embrace the space. And I don't just mean the space that you're in. I mean the space available to you musically. You know, I think when we get, sometimes when people get on solo piano gigs, they're trying to be a whole band all the time. Well, you know what? That's really not the vibe. You don't have to do that. You can have a lot more space than you might be comfortable with in a trio situation or a quartet situation. And that's totally cool. That's part of it. You know, you can play a whole solo if you want with just your right hand. And that can be your concept. You can embrace having a little more room around the music. You know, you want to be able to recreate the sound of a band and the feel, the big feel. But also embrace the fact that it's just one person and that you might.

might have a little more space around the music than the usual. I love that. Well, that leads to number three, which I think really goes along with that, which is to listen. And this sometimes is overlooked because we're thinking, oh, we're playing solo piano. We don't have to listen to anybody, so I can zone out of listening. But I think it's even more important than if you're playing with trio or a large group of vocalists, horns, whatever. Yeah, of course, you have to listen to what they're doing so you can interact so you can fit in.

but when you're playing solo piano, you have to listen to what's happening so that you can make the arrangement happen as you go. I mean, unless you're going to not be a jazz musician, and just come in and play everything the way you have it prepared or read charts, you know, like classical music or something. You still have to listen to make it sound right,

but I mean, it's even more important when you're playing alone to really listen to what's happening. Plus, you're always playing in different situations, different pianos. Solo piano gigs can be in some funky places. but, you know, to go along with the embrace the space thing, listen and then play something that fits into that space, you know. And if you're not listening as you're going, and that's hard to do to concentrate and

listen to what you're doing. I mean, this is what we're getting the big bucks for. We're not, you know, we're not splitting the money, but we got to, you know, rise to the occasion and make it worthwhile, that we don't have to split that 80 bucks and we can keep it all ourselves. That's great. Number four is to interact. Well, how are you going to do that when it's just yourself?

Be careful here. with your answer. No, I mean, what you want to do is, and this goes to the listening topic that you were just discussing, is you want to listen and you want to answer your own questions. I mean, you're the only one playing, but you still want to have this feel of there's some kind of interaction in the music. So, you know, I know Peter, you like to have little answers in your, I mean, this is some technical stuff now, but, you know, if you play the melody, you have a little counterline in your left hand that answers. And I think things like that can be very important. And that could be down to rhythmic things if you play, you know, but-da-d-d-d-d-tun, answer it with ba-da-da, you know, something so that there feels like there's still some kind of interaction going on in the music. You have two hands for a reason, right? Yeah, well, sometimes I'll even do something as simple as, you know, Peter, are you listening? And then the left hand, Peter, yes, I am. You know, question and answer. Talk to yourself. It's all good. All right, good. Interaction. I love it. Number five. Now we're going to get, we're going to get them to the biz side, the biz dev, business development side of solo piano.

All right, all right, all right. This is take requests. Can I hear Misty, please? Take requests. And I didn't say play every request that you take, but take them. Now, younger Peter and probably younger Adam, little Peter and little Adam might have scoffed at this because we were fancy bebop jazz players that wouldn't do such things. Yeah, I used to get real, real miffed at requests. Yeah, then we had families with little kids that wanted to eat.

and have their daddies to have more gigs. So you want to hear Hey, yeah? Yeah, okay. Yeah. So, no, I mean, I think that if it's the right kind of gig, and I mean, I could tell you, there's a funny thing, I remember years ago, we were doing a gig at the Bluno Jazz Club in Tokyo, no, it was BluNo Jazz Club in Osaka with Joshua Redmond Quartet. This was probably 1996 or 95, and Brian Blade was on drums, Chris Thomas bass, Josh Redmond,

saxophone quartet and there was a middle-aged Japanese gentleman that had thrown a few back perhaps during the set he might even stop by

somewhere on the way to our gig and had a couple after work now was he just quietly sitting there listening to you guys at this point at the beginning yes he was as a matter of fact by the end of the set

he might have been overserved by the staff but he ended up you know at the time very uncharacteristic for that club and for that audience of actually approaching the bandstand and making a request in not a totally disrespectful way and he kind of, Brian at the drums

was the closest there, so he sort of came to him and said, you know, play this or whatever. And Brian instead of just totally blowing him off, somehow sort of conveyed it up to Josh. And we ended up playing the tune. And at the end of the tune, the guy gave Brian $100.

Well, basically $10,000. It was the equivalent of like over $100. Gave him the bill. It was so appreciative. So although it was not the proper venue for a request, It turned out, and Brian took us all out for drinks after the game, which was nice. Do you remember the tune?

Do you remember the tune you ended up requesting? Man, it was something like that we didn't normally play, too. You know, it was just like some kind of generic standard or something. But Josh was in the mood or whatever. And so we played it. So, but I think that, you know, not all gigs, it's appropriate to take requests. But I think a lot of times solo piano, I don't think we should think of ourselves as, as above that, you know, or beneath that.

And we should be open to it. In a way, you know, taking requests on a solo piano gig is, it makes the most sense because even if you maybe don't know the tune all that well, yeah. It's like, well, okay, but I don't have to like worry about what the bass players changes are. Right, right. You kind of figure it out. Fake it to you make it. Yeah, I mean, I used to do, I used to sub for a gig at the Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans

years ago for a great pianist there, Mike Polera, who had a regular gig there. And it was nice piano, but no one was ever listening. But every now and then, I mean, usually at least once during the four hour, five hour gig, someone would kind of ambled by them, like, man, you sound good. And, you know, they would be like, man, can you play countdown? Like, they'd be sort of a jazz head to let you know. I'm trapped in this fancy hotel, but I hear you. Yeah, yeah.

I hear you. And so it'd be so fun, even if I didn't quite know, it was like, let me try to, you know, it would be a challenge. Yeah. Or maybe I had never done in a solo situation, but I actually developed a lot of my solo chops on that gig. That's awesome. Yeah. All right. So our number six way to thrive on a solo piano gig, very important that is not to zone out.

This might be the most difficult one, especially during like a cocktail piano gig. But I actually look at these as a bit of a exercise in themselves. Whenever, and this is on solo piano gigs or cocktail gigs in general, even trio gigs that maybe not everybody's paying attention all the time, like what you're talking about, I look at it as a way to practice my ability to concentrate. You know what I mean? To visualize myself on stage at like Carnegie Hall or somewhere and actually make it a performance. And like you said with this guy requesting.

countdown or something, you know, you don't really know who's listening. Right. Or not, you know, chances are some people are actually, and I get this a lot where it's like, you think no one's listening and someone's like, I've been listening all night, it sounds great. Where are you playing next? I want to see you, you know, you in concert or something or do you have a CD, whatever, you know, that happens quite a bit.

So don't zone out. Treat it like it's a real performance. Even if you don't think anybody's listening, chances are they actually are. Right. But going back to our number three or four, whatever, we're listening, right? Right. So at least one person listened. Okay.

So number seven. Um, this is, uh, just purely mercenary. Put out a tip jar. Okay. All right. You know, you got little kids at home. That might just be the difference between, you know, an extra little, little, little, little snack for, for, for little Johnny or, or little Jill.

Hey, if it's not beneath Brian Blade, that's right. It's not beneath you either. Yeah. Or make it, make it a virtual tip jar or whatever. Yeah, that's right. Um, I mean, regardless. Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hearat podcast. You can go to you'll hearat.com.

to get more information, submit a question, or just say hello. Wait, you can do that. Absolutely. All right, and if you like what you heard, please leave a review and a rating below. Thanks.