You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - An Analog Mindset for a Digital World

Episode Date: January 17, 2020

Today, Peter fills you in on what he means by an "analog mindset" and how it can help you become a better musician.The SpeakPipe hotline is back! Go to https://youllhearit.com/podcast/ and leave your question for Peter and Adam. If we like it, we'll do a whole episode on your topic or question.Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.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, Adam. What's up? You have an analog or a digital watch? I have a digital watch. Are you a robot? I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast, a podcast about listening and playing music better.

Buddy, you surprised me with the live intro, the live theme music today. I love it, man. And I'm so happy for these Hammer 88s. We can do that. We're in the pod studio, so that's how we roll. The pod suite. PodSuite, sorry, what did I call it? It feels like a studio.

It is a studio-ish, but it's, Andrew dubbed it the Pod Suite. Now, this is a momentous day. We have our new audio intern, Alex, man in the board today. Well, we just met him, so we don't know how momentous this is actually going to be. So far, it's got the potential for a start of momenticity. A brilliant podcasting career here.

You know what? When you asked me, do I have a digital watch and an only watch, I said digital knee-jerk-wise, because I think I just wanted to do that robot voice. I have an analog watch. You do have a hell what I was talking about. Well, that's why I was trying to set it up. We're so spontaneous here.

You screwed it up, but that's okay. Yeah, you know, I love an analog watch. I know you have the old Apple Watch there. There's nothing old about it. It's weird because it's kind of an... I choose an analog face on my watch. You like have hands on the face of the watch. Right.

I have the old... I have the old, then it is old, the old Skagen. Out of Denmark. Out of Denmark. It's a beautiful watch company, and it's a beautiful watch. I love this watch, man. Fun fact, the first in-flight purchase, duty-free purchase I ever made was a...

Skagen watch back in 90, 1991. Skagen, which was kind of the heyday. It was, you know, pre-online sales. So it was like, you were up in the air. That was the only time you could purchase that item without paying taxes. Can I see a Skagen wants to sponsor the podcast? We could. That would be awesome.

We could drape the... Improve your time with Skagin time. That's right. Make sure you replace the battery. Just like you need to practice. So, yeah, for sure. So what are we talking about today? Yeah, why are we talking about analog and digital?

Well, this is, there's a reason for this. And this is something that we talked about. about in depth last week down in New Orleans, both anecdotally and informally. You gave a keynote about this. Then I gave a keynote because I kind of settled on this concept right before the speech. And so I ended up changing, kind of totally changing what I was talking about because I was so excited about this. I know.

I remember you were going to talk about one thing. And then you went for a run around New Orleans, probably saw five or six places you used to live. And you totally changed the direction. But I don't know if you remember this. You gave me the okay to when I mentioned it to. You were like, yeah, man. I definitely do that. I think it's a great idea.

And I actually love your angle on this, I think, is brilliant. So go ahead. Well, and it was funny, too, because when you were like, yeah, go ahead. I was like, oh, cool, Adam Approves. Because, you know, I looked you for proof. But then I was like, wait, is he like, yeah, go ahead. This will be hilarious as I watch you fall forward. I don't have to give the speech.

Like, either way, it's going to be fun. I think it's a really good analogy. I think you had it, it seemed you had it thought out really well. And I realized that I think like this as well. So go ahead and drop the knowledge. Okay. So the idea on this, an analog mindset. it. What am I talking about? This is the idea that we're doing something in, I mean, you know,

analog, all the kids now are like, oh, let's go analog. So anything that's kind of a throwback in time, but specifically what I'm talking about is a time when we needed to navigate the physical world, the musical world, the emotional world and everything without the aid of digital tools. Yeah. Now, primarily we think about this with the smartphone that whatever 60% of the world population or whatever it is has, I think that, you know, it's hard to even remember a time, especially if you've always been tethered to one of these things. But for those of us old enough to remember when you had to navigate things with more of an analog mindset.

And actually, without a digital tool, you just, that's what the world was. I mean, most of my life has been analog. This has been very recent in the scope of my old-ass life. But it's still hard to remember what it was like without it. Right. Like trying to, like, navigate to a gig or something without my phone seems like. Like, wait, you had to look it up beforehand. I know, you had to think it through.

I remember when, like, MapQuest was a thing, but you still had to print out the directions. Remember that? Yeah, yeah, of course. But like... And that was sort of a in-between. It was like using a digital tool to print it out old school. But the idea of any...

Or having your own gig. And remember, I remember thinking about... I remember when you told me about this analog versus digital, but I remember having to think about like, okay, well, when I call the dudes for the gig, I got to remember to give them directions to the gig. Right. Like, it's on 7th Street,

but you have to go down Kings High way a little bit, make a right onto Euclid and, you know, or whatever. And then like, that's gone. That's gone. That's right. And I think, you know, what sort of spurred this line of thinking to me was actually, as you said, was running around New Orleans. So I lived in New Orleans from 1991 through 2005. You are so old. Yeah, I'm old A. F. You know, it was weird. I was three years old when I moved down there and drove and everything. No, but so, I mean, I was sorted down there for formative years, you know, age 20 to 35. All my kids were born there.

You know, I mean, just a lot of important things. But in terms of music, I really developed. Like, all through my 20s was in New Orleans. I was touring a lot, but New Orleans was such an exciting place then. It still is. They had music down there? They had a little bit of music. Yeah.

I mean, this is post-Luess Armstrong, but pre-Lawain, you know, somewhere in between. That's a wide swath. Yeah. But the thing was, I mean, you know, Nicholas Payton, Brian Blake, Chris Thomas, Bryce Winston. You had a trio with Brian and Chris, right? That's right, yeah. I mean, and so it was a lot of development,

Germain Basil, Victor Gohins, Ellis Marcellus, so many people. That saxophone player. Bryce Winston. Bryce Winston. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we saw him.

He's checking him out, man. He's great. So, but sort of separate from that, as I was running around New Orleans and I went to some different neighborhoods I hadn't been to in years, not only the ones that I lived in, but like Bywater and the Marini

and like through the French Quarter, which I didn't even used to hang out a lot of the French quarter. New Orleans has the coolest names for neighborhoods ever. Like, we here have, like, Lindenwood Park, but they have, like, Broadmoor and bywater. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's amazing. Well, if you say them the way you're saying, Lindenwood Park, yo.

Well, there is something when people with a Norland's accent say Broadmoor. You're like, what? Exactly. But, oh, they'll give you a quick test. Remember, I was trying to help you master. What's the name of the street that we, that was by the river? Started with a tea. Come on, you can do it.

You can do it. Come on, Adam. Chop a tulis. Oh, like a native. Bam. Like a native. I like it. I use some phonetic things to remember that.

That's good. Well, it must be a lot of them to remember that. Okay. So if you, if our listeners saw the word chopatoolis, you wouldn't think of it sounds like Chappatoulis. Well, it's got so many letters just to be able to get through it with any kind of diction is a success. But to say it correctly.

Okay. So I'm running around these neighborhoods. And what came to me, the epiphany that I kind of had just for me personally was, I was like, wow, I know New Orleans so well and so intuitively, I shocked myself that I could still get around. I wasn't using my phone. I'm just running. But not only that, like, I knew intuitively, not even the names of the streets, I knew what it felt like.

I knew what direction, and it wasn't north, south, east, west, because that's never been a thing in New Orleans. Right. Because it's a crescent shape. It's a crescent shape, and it's, but it's like, I could feel where the river was, even when I, because you normally can't see the river, because there's a berm there, what do you call that, a levee, you know, and then

even towards the lake, we were far from the lake, but I could feel which direction the lake was, because I learned to navigate around that city in an analog way. That's right. And so I realize how deeply I learned that. Sometimes when you learn things in more of a digital way, you forget them the next minute even or the next day because you know you can reference back to that digital tool you have. Of course.

And for super mundane things, that can be good. Or like if you're visiting a city just for 24 hours and you're using your navigation, you don't have the time or the wherewithal to really learn it in that old school way. But I was so happy that I was just able to kind of roam around all the same. uptown and going all around Broadmoor, my old neighbor, I mean, that neighborhood I really knew well because I lived there. Yeah, yeah. But I was just so surprised, and I'm definitely one to like,

I'm traveling so much, and I feel like I know a lot of cities, but it's like, how can you remember something that you haven't really been in it in a while? You kind of made it your mission that whole week to just put your phone away when we were going places. I know. You kept on. I was like, no, no, no, I got there. Follow me. I got it.

Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, I've remembered stuff like avoid these blocks because there's so many potholes in it. Oh, yeah. And I didn't know the names. I was like, no, we can't go down there. I mean, if you did that there, you might not get around anywhere. Exactly.

Exactly. So what I started thinking about was like, wow, this is the way we learn how to play jazz. This is the way we learn how to play music. Yeah, I was going to say, how are you approaching this analog mindset? I mean, the need I remind you as well that you are the CEO of an online jazz education site. Yeah, this is not an anti-digital thing. And I mean, I love. And you're very tech savvy guy.

Like you've got the Apple Watch. I'm an early adopter, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have this new thing I haven't even told you about. Hold on a second. okay cool I just sent an email for my brain I got an implant I would never do that that's messed up messed up

Trump just read that email woo beep so yeah no this is not an anti-digital thing but it is a thing to say okay what like let's make a decision about what we're going to learn with an analog mindset and I think learning to play music learning to develop

as a musician learning to develop as a storyteller learning the skills that we need to be able to translate our story that's innately in us through the music, through jazz, through whatever kind of music we want to play. Improvisation is so important to not learn digitally. Now, that doesn't mean you can't use digital tools. It's a very different thing.

That's why we said analog mindset. It's not about analog tools. It's not like, oh, that means I have to learn the solo with a turntable by ear instead of with a streaming device. That doesn't actually matter. You just need to hear it, right? Right, right. But it's with the mindset.

It's like, okay, are you going to use these tools to make so many shortcuts that you don't learn it to the depth in which your ears need to develop. Are you using IRELB on the session? Are you leaning on the crutch of the digital tool as opposed to using it

to make you absorb it in an analog way? I think you're on to something here because what we're making, what we're talking about here is art and art is such a uniquely human expression. Yes. You know, and it's really about

the humanness that makes most art great. I mean, even digital music, right? Like, I'm a huge fan of electronic music, but even... Well, no, no, no, but the things that hit me the most even electronic music are things that are very human feeling. Like, it's a universal feeling. It's not like it...

Like, for me, there's no disconnect between that and, you know, Charles Mingus, even though Mingus is using all analog instruments, but the feeling can be very similar. Well, think about, like, the early synth sound, and not just because they're early and, you know, analog, but I mean, just the early electronic music and experimentation like the Stevie Wonder did,

Herbie Hancock. Yeah, I mean, a lot of the... people were kind of most familiar with them. Can't tell me that Stevie's voyage into electronic, like with scents and stuff wasn't human. It's so human. It's so analog. Or what we would call analog now, you know, the mindset behind you. But even someone like DJ Shadow who use all samples to make his greatest records, you know,

that feels so personal and human to me. Well, I think that's actually, like, that's the manifestation of this analog mindset in a digital world with digital tools. Right. It's like they're not approaching it with the standpoint of like, okay, I'm going to turn over all the creative process to the machines. It's like, no, I'm going to use the machines. I'm going to use any sounds that I want to tell my story.

It doesn't matter if it's anything from hitting a rock against the wall to just a straight synth or whatever, but I'm using it with the analog mindset, the creative mindset, the process of a human creating it. So what's the analog mindset that we can focus on as we're learning here? So I like that you talked about directions because I think that's a clear cut way for people to, and we kind of talked about that we, oh, hello, my voice is. We had, we'd kind of talked about this in Norlands when we were discussing this concept originally, like, if I look at my phone for which way is the river, I want to get to the river, right? It's going to give me a direct route.

If I ask someone on the corner, like, hey, which way is the river? They're going to be like, oh, it's like you have to turn right here and then just keep going straight. But if you go over a block, there's this really killing coffee shop that's like, or this tour of the river that you could check out. And it's going to enhance your experience. It's the same thing with, with this. if you kind of approach it from a, I need to learn this, you use these digital tools if I have to to learn it in an analog way because it's really not about like the quickest way to the goal.

That's not the efficient part. It's about the journey of the experience. Right, right. And I think this applies so well to learning improvisation because this can build in a lot of the sort of necessary organic ear training needed to become a great improviser. That's right. to continue to develop as an improviser when you do that.

No, that's why you can't take the shortest route. Of course not. Like, you can go look up the Omni book and see what Charlie Parker played on a given solo. And that can be very handy information if you're trying to analyze something and trying to get the intellectual, you know, thinking behind it. But if you learn that same solo from the record, it's going to be so much more ingrained. Your playing is going to improve in ways that you can't even count on. It's not just about getting that information. We talk about this all the time.

And I think this is maybe something that is unique to the digital age. you can't information your way to becoming a better player. Yep. It's all about experiencing it in a way that's human that makes you a better artist. And I think that's the important part of this analog mindset. Yeah, and I think this idea of, let's repeat, that can't information in your way to become a better player, this is a trap of the digital world that we want to make sure we don't go into. So that's kind of information overload.

Like this is sort of the first time over the last 10, 20 years, however you want to look at it, but that we've had access to really more information than we need to develop as a player. You listening right now have access to more music than John Coltrane had when he was alive. Yes. By far. In your pocket. By 100 times. Yeah, by 100 times.

And it's instant. But how come you're not as good as John Coltrane? Yeah. I mean, you've heard probably more music and different kinds of music than he's heard, but he probably listened to things in a very focused way. Right. And probably had a little bit less of a spectrum of what. what he listened to, but it was very focused and intent listening.

And so a lot of times people kind of get a defeatist attitude about this and say, oh, well, this is the world we're in now. There's never going to be more John Coltrane's because kids aren't coming up focus. I don't think that's true. No, I mean, we can actually use, you know, a smart way of using the digital tools. We can actually cut right to that great information. But that's that analog mindset. The analog mindset is I'm going to listen to just one album.

I'm going to listen to just one track over and over again. just like John Coltrane. Actually, just like we, I mean, when I was coming up, I just didn't have, I accumulated a bunch of records and CDs later on, but it was in a way, like you had to buy each one of them. So there was like a fit, there was a monetary barrier to overload. I say this all the time. I could afford about one CD a month on my pittance as a teenager. And so I just listened to that CD over and over again for a month. I was obsessed with it. Even if it wasn't that like the most iconic whatever, I just. But we can still be obsessed with things and not be hermits. You know what I mean? Oh, for sure. Like, like, you look at, you know, I'm kind of obsessed with studying Elliot Kupchogi, the great marathoner, because he seems, he has such an ability to live. He's so iconic, you know, he just ran the first sub two-hour marathon ever. Yeah. But he could live like, I mean, he's very astute at, like social media and different things, but he has this like old school mindset, especially about training, but even about his writings and things that he does online, like very focused. I mean, obviously, you don't get to the point where you can run like that. Everyone thinks, oh, he's so talented.

Oh, yeah. There's a bunch of guys talented like that. Of course. How do you go to that next level? Yeah. But he has an ability to tune out all that stuff and just focus on his training. And, you know, everybody thinks, and I actually got a chance to train. No, I didn't get a chance to trade with him. But I did run in very close when I was in Kenya.

It was such an honor to be able to run in the area in the Rift Valley because we were doing a gig there. It was crazy. So, I mean, it had nothing to do with him. But I was in the general couple hundred miles. Amongst the greats. It was amongst the grades, a horrible one. But the idea is people think, oh, they're up there, stuck without communication. And no, it's not like that at all.

Like they go out and focus and run, but they're using technology and he has, you know, coaches and stuff that are analyzing heart rates and all these different things. But he uses still the mindset of like focus. You got to put in the miles. You have to be very regiment about your thing. Still getting around it. And is able to tune out, but still to bring that in. So I think really we have the opportunity to now to develop and train a whole new generation

of players as good or better than ever with the technology. But you have to learn how to tune things out. and you have to bring this analog mindset into this time. And then it can become very exciting, you know, because you don't have to take advantage of everything. You don't have to go to every, oh, this related video.

Let me go check that out. But you've got to make that decision to have that analog mindset. Yeah, I think the key to all this is just be mindful of where your attention is and your focus, you know, as you're practicing, as you're planning out what you want to work on. And the great thing about it is,

as far as become a better musician, these are ideas and concepts that have been developed for a long time they don't get thrown out with technology they can be enhanced by that. A lot of other things like specifically in the technology world as things develop and things are innovated a lot of other things

yes they're built upon previous concepts but certain things become obsolete you know like you can't bring out an old computer from the 60s and be like man this is actually better than what we have now because it's so analog the things don't even work anymore I mean you know takes up a whole room

it takes a whole pod studio yeah we wouldn't be here without that but that's kind of over but this stuff in terms of creating great art is always going to be valuable and important. So I'm really excited about it and just even thinking about it because we've been,

you know, we're always talking about things related to this. Now it's just, we're kind of codifying in a way that I think makes sense. I think it's a great analogy, man. I think it's a great thought experiment. Yeah.

Cool. So. Well, hopefully people hear this. This was, yeah, we want to congratulate Alex for us the final, are we? Yeah.

If Alex screws up, no one will ever hear this. So if you're hearing this, this was a big success for today. Yeah, Alex, did this record? Yeah, he says, yeah. So where could people go if they wanted to maybe, I don't know, leave us a rating review? They would want to walk towards the river down to Chaputula Street.

There's a great copy to have a blog over. Look for a secret scroll where you write it. No, you're going to want to go to wherever you're listening or watching this podcast. This is our, we're giving you license to enter the digital world and to leave us a rating review. We haven't asked for that in a while. Yep. Did you have any of them up? No, I don't want to beg for it, but I just want to let people know.

They can leave this a rating and review. It helps us spread the word about the podcast. Also, you can now leave us your speak pipe full time. Yes, you can do that. Go to You'll Hear.com, leave us a voice message, and ask us a question about music or anything you want. That's right. You can do that.

And as always, we're sponsored by OpenStudio. OpenStio,Jazz.com. Check out the piano access pass, which has quickly become, we might have to rename the site Piano Access Pass. It's so darn popular. It's really good. But we still got a lot of other stuff.

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