You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Biggest Wins and Losses of 2023

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

In this episode, Adam and Peter spill the beans on their rollercoaster of a year! Get ready for the highs, brace yourself for the lows. Taking a trip down memory lane isn't just about reliving moments—it's our guidebook for navigating the thrilling journey ahead! Open Studio Pro | WAITLIST↓ Links from the pod ↓Peter Martin's GEN S ProjectDynamic Modern Jazz CompositionSeamless Key Change WarmupHave a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Hey, Adam. Yeah, let's keep going. We got Caleb that time. I'm Adam Maness. And I'm Peter Martin. And you'll listen to the You'll Here at podcast. Jazz. Explain. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio.

Go to Open StudioJazz.com to go on a deeper dive. You know, we've been getting so many requests and so many great comments about the playing to start the episode that we thought we'd do something even better, which is just to stumble our way across the finish line. And it was harder than I remembered. Yeah. Well, we've been. of practice, man. I think we use the music as a crutch. A little bit. We use the keyboard as a crutch. As we do in our own lives. So let me just play a little bit. So I know. When you get an uncomfortable question when they call up, excuse me, sir, you haven't paid your

credit card bill. Really? Well, check out these chords, my fine, sir. I think I was about 35 when I realized that the majority of my personality was made up of my playing. And that's not a good thing to be as a human. I'm just going to start answering the phone like this. Do you have a landline? I mean, most people are so impressed by it that it just seems to get you through a lot of things. That's right, right. Okay, today, I'm kind of excited about today's episode. Okay. I know I've said that before. Most of them. And sometimes I don't say it doesn't mean I'm not excited about those. But this one I'm excited about because we're going to catalog and take inventory of some of our wins and losses from last year. And I think, you know, we've talked about New Year's resolutions

before. We've talked about goal setting. Yeah. We've talked about a lot of things kind of as the calendar turns from one year to the next. But I think that the reflection, you know, the reflection of how the last year went to oneself. And then a little bit of public reflection, since we have this platform, can really be helpful for ourselves and hopefully helpful for other folks to kind of stir up some thoughts. And we'll see how this goes. But a lot of times I find the failures inform my future sort of successes even more so than the success. Are we going personal with the failures? I think so. Okay. Yeah. I mean, we're not going to point finger at each other are we okay well wait was your list prepared about my failures no no no no

i'm just i'm just wondering uh how vulnerable are you going to get with failures because man it can go you can go pretty deep here well yeah i mean we don't yeah we it's as as as as as as as as deep as you're comfortable with your failures i'm going to be losses they can be yeah it's like wins and losses wins and failures you know but i i do think like a lot of times in teaching we talk about even in the specific parts about like playing music like you've got to fail to progress. But a lot of times we forget about that on the bigger scale because when the stakes are higher, when you're doing a month-long project or like a whole gig or a couple of hours it even could be or maybe even a year-long thing. I mean, hopefully we figure it out that it's

going to be a failure before then. But sometimes we don't. When the stakes are higher, we have more to learn and to grow from potentially. A lot of times because of shame or guilt or doubt or whatever, we sweep that under the rug. But today, we're going to pull the rug up from under each other. proverbially and explore. So I think our assignment was three each. I've got three each. I have a few, yeah, yeah. We can just, I think, just have an open discussion

and see where it leads is probably the best. We could go back and forth and point the finger too. You want to go first for your first win? Sure. Are we going to start with wins? I think we should start with wins and then go into losses. And let's not do failures. Should we go back and forth?

We could even do that? We could do that. Okay, our biggest loss. We overprepared for these episodes. Also our biggest win. Okay. So I'll start with the win here. Okay.

I think for the year, 2023, my biggest win, like if you were to wake me up in the middle of the night and be like, what did you do good last year? What do you feel good about? And that's kind of what I see as a win, something that stretched me. But also for this one, like something that I had sort of been procrastinating on a little bit, but it had been something I've been dreaming about in the middle of the night and during the day. And that was the Generation S project, this record that I made and

wrote all the music for it. That was a big part of the win. It was a big challenge for me. just to like fit it into the schedule and to harness all the resources and the team and the musician you know the whole thing but it was something I was very confident about in terms of my ability to do it so it wasn't like a win like oh you can I mean I've made records before I'd written music before but this particular way of doing it was a challenge

you know so like at the bigger level and really just earmarking the time and then getting into the mentality of like doing something because you believe in it and you feel like it needs to get out into the world that this music. It doesn't necessarily have, you know, much of a monetary payoff. Maybe, maybe not, probably not. But it has some kind of like connect with the music, connect with the spirit of why I'm doing this. And like lead something that'll provide some joy to hopefully anybody that comes into contact with.

And it was a sort of a long-term thing, multi-year thought process to it. But then once I decided to do it, I was like, okay, this is going to be a lot. but it's got to happen like we got to get on the schedule we got to boom there's all these things or it won't happen there's too many steps involved if you if you worry about it too much so I was really proud of that I felt like it was a big personal win even though I was really only a small part of the actual output of it but I was sort of the spark and the fire I think behind it I mean you were a huge part of the output of it are you kidding it's all of your compositions and everybody was there to help you with your vision it was a huge yeah but there was a lot of kind I mean it

wasn't the like come play these compositions i mean there was a lot of input from the musician input from you um you know so it was very much a collaborative effort i think one of the biggest wins about that gen s project uh was your reframing i'm glad you mentioned like you know the monetary thing of it like nobody's making money on records anymore jazz records well any records really unless you're taylor swift or bianza or someone like that it's just really hard with the way the record industry is laid out to make it kind of like there's there's maybe 10 people Total. But it's just hard to make a significant income selling albums, right, or streaming. And I think you're reframing of it. Well, we're going to do this thing live. We're going to have video assets of it. We're going to share this in attempt to just make this music and get attention in different ways that aren't traditional, especially from people of our generation who grew up selling CDs, which was a very profitable way to make music. I mean, it's never very profitable for jazz musicians, but you could make money. you know, making albums.

You could turn a profit on it. You could turn a profit on it. And it's just not the case anymore. And I'm super like, I think that was a huge win for you of sort of reframing it in, in this modern context and using all of the resources we have available to us here at Open Studio to make that happen. It was inspiring. And I think a big part in terms of the Open Studio connection that I think was a big win too was that we did the course. That was a big part of it. You know, kind of gets lost in the shuffle.

You know, I did a whole course within Open Studio on the composition process. of every single tune that I think is actually one of my best courses that I've done. It's very kind of unique. And composition is something I think is very difficult. It's more just sort of a peek behind my thought process and some ways of getting over some hurdles to write. I think hopefully it inspires in that. But we've got cheap music and transcriptions for all the tunes. And so it was fun for me to put together something that's like for the open studio community available to all members that goes along with like sort of a, it's like, you know, I love drinking this wine.

Let me go to the winery and meet the winemaker and see how they make it. It's like it doesn't change the way the wine tastes, but it can be really fun to go on that deep dive and to learn about it. So super proud of that. My biggest win of 2023 was something very similar, which was a musical project called Pop Pop, Pop, which is a Pops orchestra, string orchestra that I began in 2023. We played seven shows last year, which I'm super proud of. Crazy. Proud of all of the arranging that I did. I'm just realizing, Peter, our biggest wins here.

are, and this might be something interesting to talk about, but like, we have so much going on here at Open Studio. Yeah. That I think for us, and we've gotten a lot of attention with Open Studio in the last couple years, shout out to all of our amazing listeners here on the podcast, all of our members, all the people that watch us on YouTube. It's incredible. But I think for us, 2023 was about like, well, how can we find our musical voice that's not just talking about instruction or what? Like, we still are musicians that are trying to create art here. And it's so easy. to get caught up in, you know, making lessons or making videos or podcast or whatever. And we're getting, and it's the loudest thing that we're doing right now that is easy to, like, stop making music, right?

And I put that on the back burner. And I think my experience with pop, pop, pop, pop was like, what do I really want to be doing? I want to be writing for orchestras more. I get to, you know, I get to write for orchestras that aren't pop, pop, pop, regularly, but I want to do it more. I'm going to start my own. Yeah. And that is a cavalier idea.

The entrepreneurial musical mind is what that is. But we did it. It worked. We now have an orchestra. And we're going strong. We're going to keep it going. So I was just stoked to get that off the ground. It's a fantastic orchestra.

You're writing for it is even on, you know, from what I've been able to hear and even play with it some, it's on an even higher level than things that you've done for other orchestras. I think because it's a bespoke set. up with your vision and again a lot of collaboration but you framed that situation you know you frame that possibility part of creating it was creating my was creating a schedule for myself that i would get to write every day right which is that's that's the that's the most important piece is like your daily experience with it you're in i mean i you did this with generation s where you set

it set aside time as you were writing that album every day you were in here certain time i got to write and it just morphed into the album and it's the same thing with me it's it's an experiment of getting my schedule together so that writing for orchestra is a regular part of my existence. And just for folks, you know, if you're inspired by this, just so that you understand how this works, there was days that I remember you, Adam, came in here. We usually meet at 9 a.m. You know, here to talk about the podcast, to plan it out and then to record where you had already been up for hours, right? And you're like, yeah, I'm getting up early before my kids get up to write this music and, like, that's the reality of how you make something like this happen.

For sure. I mean, I was riding at 7 a.m. This morning for things. So it's, but it's like once you get into that flow and you adjust your schedule and you realize what's important to you and you practice getting into that flow, it becomes actually super easy. Yeah. It's just part of your day. And so maybe that's even the biggest part of these first couple of wins. For sure.

That's the biggest win. You know, it's like, how are you going to brush your teeth and floss? Like, what's the most important thing to do that every day? Have those suckers sitting there right by the sink. For sure. Don't have them up in the cabinet. Well, don't you think like the result of having pop pop pop, pop exist or the result of, you know, the Generation S existing, that's not the win. The win is the process of doing it. Like being

able to get that process together, that's a bigger win. Yeah, because otherwise it'd be like, if you have the money, you could just be like, I'm just going to go buy an orchestra. Yeah, you could easily buy some arrangements. You know, you could easily just buy an album. Exactly. You know, or like, have someone write it for you, like purchase the players, like whatever it is. Have somebody else. Right. It's that process. Give it to a company to promote or whatever, but it's the process of figuring out what do I want this to be. And what do I want, really what do I want my daily existence to be around music? Right.

Because believe me, you wouldn't be getting up at seven doing that stuff. And by writing at seven, I know that means not getting up at seven, you know. Because you've got to get your hair. You got to get your sweater. You got to get your swag going. It's a precise clockwork of a schedule. But I mean, you know, the love of the process, if you don't embrace that and have that, that's going to get old very quickly.

So good stuff. Okay. Should we jump to a, let's jump to a failure. So we go back and forth. Sounds good. I will go with, okay, I feel like kind of a loss slash failure for me for last year that I'm already remedying and adjusting for this year is really having a great. There's Max Camese right there.

Hey, it's Max Camis. So is like really having a regular practice, schedule, discipline, like everyday practice streak. So I started out last year, 2020. Oh, you did that challenge. Doing the challenge, which is as much a challenge for. me and to help others that want to be inspired and come along for the ride. And I did that. And then I kind of fell off and then I got back on some different things. We talked about that

last week, though, that's great accountability. Like a public challenge. Public challenge. Yeah. And so I just didn't have a, you know, and part of it was because of like the Gen. I was writing so much during that time. I just wasn't practicing. I was at the piano so much, but not practicing. So I let that go a little bit. Ideally, I've got, you know, a regular running, I mean, running, a running schedule of practicing. kind of always going along. So that was something I didn't feel great about, but again, kind of informed for how I want to move forward. It's like, you know, if you're taking like some supplements or eating food that's healthy sometimes and you feel great, and then you go through a period

of not taking it, like you miss it, you know what I mean? And you want to adjust to having that every day. I would say from the outside perspective of your loss here, I would say that's not a loss, that if you want to do something like Generation S, and I'm going to be saying this about myself here in about one minute. You want to do something like GenerationS. You want to be the CEO of a, you know, exploding company like Open Studio who's changing the game of the jazz education market, TM. You're imagining. You're going to have to, there's a balance, right? You also, you want to be a husband and father and have a life outside of, you know, your work. Yeah. Then there's going to be a balance. So you can be easier on yourself as far as like you wrote

this thing, you made this project. Yes, maybe you didn't get to practice as much. You didn't get to practice as much. or get a routine going, but I think that's... Still a failure, but thank you, friend. Well, mine is very similar, and I could actually say the same thing about me. I just realized, as you had mentioned this, the concept of this episode about, like, sort of taking accountability for what happened last year, I was kind of

going through everything I did and wrote and all the music I created, and I realized it's the first time in, I can remember that I didn't write any new original music. Wow. I didn't write any new original music. I wrote

all the stuff that was new for the 442s the year before. I wrote all the KBA stuff that Caleb and I played in the year before. I didn't write one new song in 2023. Original composition. Original composition. I wrote so many arrangements of things, which was... I know. I'll throw back into your face what you just said.

I know, but I'm not... Time is a finite element of our lives. A lot of at least, you know, pop songs or something that is like... Yeah. Some kind of tune that is original as me. Did you feel before now like there was a hole your creative journey last year by not-

I didn't even notice it, honestly. Okay. So maybe it's a seasonal thing. Maybe there's a season for everything. Maybe you go into, maybe you set that as an intention if you want to. Sometimes it's hard,

because for me to practice, there really was a whole. Like, I would feel it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I didn't notice it, but now I'm kind of like itching it. Like, you know, I like writing original music so much. I love that process,

and it's different than arranging. It's a whole different thing. So maybe we might have to do an original concert with pop, pop, pop, pop, or something. There you go. Okay.

So back to the wins. This is my number two win of the year. So this is really for a personal thing for me. And that was I ran a full marathon last year in April. Was it in April? Yeah, April of 2023. I'd been planning for it for a while. I'd been doing a run streak for like 500 and something days leading up to the marathon.

The run streak did end the day after the marathon, as I figured it probably would because I couldn't run the next day. I could walk. I mean, I probably could have run a little bit. I was ready to be done. But I mean, I think the marathon was the win, but to the point of like the process, I think the run streak and the preparing for it was really the win. Like, I really got into the process of it. I had a great running coach, shout out coach Ian that just gave me what to do every day. I ran every day for, you know, almost two years leading up to that.

And the last like four months were like on a specific marathon training program for a 52 year old dude, not an Olympic marathon, you know. And so I pretty much stuck to it. You know, I was even doing some travel during that time. But I was like very like if it just was a part of my day. And so it was fun to have the accomplishment because I'd always sort of had this on my mind since I was a kid. I don't know why it was like, I want to run a marathon. Like that's a bucket list kind of thing. But then as I got into learning about it and especially kind of doing it a little bit later in life than, I mean, I guess some people do it at this time.

But like wanting to do it like safely and like kind of having some goals with it and stuff, it really became about the process of preparing. So that was kind of just a big win And I sort of got the bugs I'm gonna do it one or two more this year We'll see what happens Nice Yeah Another profession

Oh by the way 26.2 miles That last 0.2 really was the hardest That was it Wow Because the one set up here You're going straight uphill Coming off the river

I don't know why you add like that Gross I have one more professional win here And that is the Open Studio Shorts program So at the This is a little inside baseball but on January 1st, 2023, the website, YouTube.com, completely changed the algorithm in an attempt to compete with TikTok.

They started... TikTok.com. Yeah, they started de-emphasizing longer format videos and emphasizing short format vertical videos. Right. And we were not really in that game in 2022 at all. I mean, we made a few. Yeah, we tested a couple. We just tested a couple, but it wasn't really what we were doing.

And... Remember the cheetah? The block cord cheetah? Totally. Totally. Crunchy cord, Cheetah. And we were, though, making lots of, I was making 20-minute videos, 18-minute videos. Weekly at it one time. Weekly at some time, and really spending a lot of my Open Studio intellect on that endeavor.

And then to see the, like, just YouTube throw them off a cliff, really not put them in front of very many people. All of a sudden, it was hard. And we weren't the only ones. A lot of people. A lot of creators were talking about this. And so sometime in late January, early February. we started pivoting to making more of those minute-long vertical videos. And sometime in March, we...

And just to emphasize, because we're getting a lot of these comments. Why is this so sure? Okay, we are limited by a corporation called Google. Yeah, to 60 seconds. To 60 seconds. It's a little bit beyond our control. I know people think we have a direct line to Google. We don't.

Everybody, Mr. Beast is limited to one minute. When anybody mentions, like, well, why didn't you mention this? It's like, because I got a minute to talk about this very complicated concept. You've got to kind of like pick and choose your battles or whatever. One little nothing. And so, but I'm so proud of our shorts program. And this is not just a win for me. It's for our entire team.

We pivoted in a month's time we were making shorts. And then by March we were making shorts every other day. And the advantage of the shorts program is not just for YouTube. They also go up on Instagram. They obviously go up on TikTok and Facebook. And all of a sudden. Facebook. Are we on that?

Yeah. All of a sudden, we start getting tons of attention for these short videos. We get good at making them. I think we really improve. the quality of the video and the audio. We learned you and I and some of our other content makers here at Open Studio learned, I think, quickly how to make effective shorts. And I'm super proud of our shorts game, man.

I put them up against anybody in our niche for what we're doing. And so to me, that was a huge win. And just a general, again, about process, a general win about pivoting quickly, about, you can't control external circumstances. Whether you're talking about making videos on the internet or you're talking about soloing at a gig, you know, the drummer could, we just saw Montez on the last episode, just walk away. Right. Like, things change and you're not expecting them.

And you have to be able to pivot quickly and still keep your head about you and keep your confidence. And so that was a big win, I think, for all of us. Yeah, no, it was fantastic. And I think, you know, really the foundation of that was your ability with the shorts, which you develop pretty quickly, your ability to hone in on one key thing. Sometimes it was a musical concept. Sometimes it was like a musical emotion. Sometimes it was a specific chord or way of doing something.

But it was like you always could get to that one thing and make it seem so much bigger than it was within that minute. And I think that that's what resonated with people. I mean, great playing and great instruction and just a laser-like focus onto something that was really stunning in its ability to hit, you know, like emotion and instruction. I mean, truly edutainment. We joke around with that tune. It's powerful entertainment, though. It's very powerful.

And like, you know, you took to those, I mean, I think we did all in general, you know, in general, the whole team, and I had my moments, but you really have that ability to to lean into those guardrails, the main one being one minute, also like the verticality, but to how to have this aesthetically pleasing. moment within what I think is a kind of chaotic feed for a lot of people, especially like, I mean, I'm not on TikTok, so I don't see it as much. That's my loss. It's a very chaotic feed, yeah. But it's very like, even on YouTube, like the shorts thing is so like when it gets to your video, your shorts, it's like something, even if you're playing something fast or whatever, it's something very much connected to the spirit of music, like, which is not easy to, like, I think we didn't realize how, how that could be. possible within a minute.

We kind of discounted that. How musical, how personal, how deep you can get in 60 seconds. It's true. It's actually, it's all about your mindset going in and trying to connect to something that's deeper than just some kind of, you know, bullshit short form internet thing. And also like, if you actually still connect to the source of what's happening of music, of, of that thing that we've been talking about, like the mystery of it and the, the, the beautiful connective tissue of music, if you can do that, genuinely to do that within 60 seconds.

it's a huge win. Yeah, and I think it's a great reminder. I know for me, like, let's shed off the limiting beliefs, the limiting thoughts that we have any limits. Because I think what kept me away from it and probably in terms of how I was steering the team for too long was I used to do those two-minute jazz back in the day.

So I get it in my mind. I was like, man, that's hard to just do one thing. But I kind of learned how to do it. Like, I was early on. But then it was like, well, there's no way. If you're not hip to Peter's two-minute jazz is from like 2015 era, get ready for some dower. Damn, that's good stuff.

Dower. Dauer horizontal two minutes of your life. Oh, man, that's good stuff. No, but I mean, but what happened was it got in my mind that, like, that was hard to do in two minutes, so one minute's impossible. And so I think that we've proven that wrong, which is super exciting. And I just want to play this one thing. We're just going to do audio here.

Seamless key change warmup. We start with a goal of just wanting to get from C to F. And you're saying, Adam, yeah, well, I can just go from C to F? But can you do it in a seamless way where your audience doesn't even know that you're getting there? So first we're going to find a common chord tune. How about A minor? It's shared with both the key of C and the key of the key.

of f and then from there we can maybe add a secondary dominant a c7 which brings home that key of f even more and from there what if we added a two chord to that secondary dominant now we can approach that two chord from its secondary from its and then we can approach that secondary dominant from its secondary dominant and before we know it we've seamlessly transitioned from the key of c to the key of f do that to the key of f to the key of g the key of b to the key of E flat to the key of E flat. You do that and you'll have a real handle on this seamless key change. Oh, hello, loop. Remember that? So I wanted to play that first of all. Bravo. You know that's one of my, that's my favorite. You love that one. Okay, but I'm going to tell you like,

and this isn't your biggest short, but it's big. Like this, I remember when I first heard this, I was like, okay, we're on to something now with this. Because I'm potentially one of the most outside of you and a very small select group of pianists or kind of content creators in our space. I'm the most jaded, like, seen everything, made everything, made some of the original stuff. So, like, when I'm impressed and moved by something within, on a number of different levels within 60 seconds, and I wanted to just play the audio to say that, like, that's what makes this. Shout out Caleb for the sound he got on here. And the whole team. But I mean, like, the video is beautiful and it's cool. And you can actually learn to do something. Like, I knew how to do

this. But a lot of people don't know how to do this. But it was still fun for me because I love the way it's sound. And it's a great reminder. So I can only imagine the excitement, and somebody would have if they'd heard that sound or maybe heard it for the first time and could actually learn how to do that. I mean, it's transformational. Can I, can I segue into my biggest loss or my last loss for the year?

Sure, because that's what we like to do, build you up and then tear you down. Because it goes right in from actually this short in particular. Yeah. It goes right into my loss. One of my losses for 2023 was getting too caught up in the comments. So when you start making more videos,

you start getting a lot more attention and you start getting a lot more comments. a lot, mostly by far positive, but a lot of, like, criticisms, fair criticisms a lot of time and even just like, you know, trolling. I'm going to give you a bonus win. You are the master at somehow focusing direct laser beam right into the negative comments. This is what I'm, this is a big loss. This is something I'm working on in my, in this, it's a personal journey for me to work

on not taking the negative comments. So seriously. So this video that you just played, it's, I think it's beautiful what, what I'm playing there. I love everything. But a lot of people pointed out, well, like, well, you're not really. it doesn't sound like you actually transitioned to F. Right.

It sounds like it's just all in C because you're going from C and then you end on F. It's just the four chord. Right. And like the original, and Caleb can attest to this. So many of these shorts start out. And Caleb's like, yeah, that's like a minute and 30 seconds. And you got to keep trimming down.

And in the original... That's what I'm talking about you. You adjust those guardrails. You use them as a positive. In the original, I make it to F. And then I sort of redefine the chord on F, you know, and bring it into F more fully. Too much splice.

Right. And it was a minute and 30 seconds long. So I got to keep cutting it down. And then I just end on F without reinforcing F. And then I get all these comments. Well, you're not really changing the key and everything. And I'm like, I know. And I only have 60 seconds. And so, but that's, the loss is not getting those comments. You're going to get comments about everything. You're going to get criticism. And like I said, it's almost deserved in this with the way we're framing it. It's the, it's the hanging up on what other people think. And it's something I've been working on for years now to be less and less with this. Yeah. But it's been so intense. with the sort of frequency of what we're releasing here at Open Studio, that that's been a journey for me this year specifically of like really trying to lighten up. And I took actually all of December off from even looking at anything that we were doing, which I don't usually do. Did you fully? I did. I did fully do that. I stopped watching videos and comments, which I can't afford to do all the time because I need to see how we're, what we're making is hitting people. But it was a nice relief and it was a good break to have. So yeah. I, I I mean, I think, well, you know what that reminds me of now?

Because I'm remembering the whole debate about that. When I had, you know. Oh, yeah, from the Steve's video. Yeah, like, that was my first thing. I'm like, man, it's so effortless the way he makes that keychain. That's not a modulation. And then people are like, that's not a modulation. I mean, if you do anything that's theory related, you're going to get someone who pushes back and says, that's not what it is.

But it's so positive for the discussion, actually. I'm so proud of what we're doing because it, like, puts us all, like, there's a humility there. I take it as a humble, like, like, maybe they're right. Actually, they are right. and my theoretical information is not deep enough to know. But it's also for them, for both sides, like let's all come together and be like,

to the listener, it sounds like they're going there. Or maybe it doesn't. Like, that's a fun thing to talk about. One of my favorite comments of 2023 was on one of our, you'll hear it shorts, actually. We met a you'll hear it short. It's when you discovered that Giant Steps was a, that goes through three keys, right?

It's like this A2 that goes through three keys. Peter didn't know that. We've got our most watched short is you discovering that. And one of the comments on that short was, this was the most informative video I've ever seen, not because I learned that Giant Steps goes through three keys, but I learned that it doesn't matter. Because Peter Martin can kill on this, and he had no idea that was the case. And so it doesn't matter what, like, that you know the theory behind it.

Right. I love that comment because it's so true. Yeah. There's so many arguments in a lot of music videos, you know, either on performance or instruction, about what to call things. Yeah. And it just doesn't matter, you know, in the end, what you call things. If you're trying to translate it to someone, it could matter how you frame it and what you say about it.

But as a player, you don't have to know what it's called. You don't have to know the concept behind it. If you know the sound and you can repeat the sound and you're clearing that pathway from the music that's in your heart to the rest of the world, that's all the matters. I mean, it could be fun to talk about it. It's super interesting. That's where people like... Totally. Don't feel like you have to be in camp theory or camp player.

And there's a lot of stuff that I understand the theory. very intricately and still love playing. So it can go either way. But I think it, yeah, it's a, it's a fun thing to kind of think about that and, and to talk about it and to realize that how things sound and how we interact with them is an iterative thing and should be, but which, between all of us, even as we go through and we're like, I didn't know that. It goes through those key keys. Yeah, no, the video of you figuring that out in real time is unbelievably. I like that. Well, and that I think is why I don't know it was a favorite 2023 when we had the stop clinging to music theory.

Yeah. Was that a, you'll hear it or a, yeah. That was big too. Yeah. That was controversial. You got one more loss for us,

Peter? I got losses for days, but yeah, I'm going to go, okay, so this one I think maybe somebody needs to hear this. I know I always need to hear it, so I tell myself.

But I think that, you know, kind of a failure, at least at times, and something that I'm really working on this year from 2023 for me was not fully embracing the present of where I was.

Like, not embracing and appreciating and experiencing like all these beautiful things. It's easy for me to kind of recount them. And, you know, with Open Studio and what we've done here, I think was really the biggest win. And that was, you know, but I don't know that I did a great job of like really, it was always moving forward. It was always like the next thing. Even like the JanS project, it was like, what are we going to do?

And then we're going to mix it. Like I, there was times when I would do it and I wish I'd done that more. Like as we were recording the thing, thankfully, I got lucky and like I really embraced like, I could tell you. You were in there. Yeah, I was like, but that was also like, shit, I have to in order to be able to keep up with the playing. Just a hang. You know what I mean? And I was like, plus I'm thinking about, I'm still having to do a fair amount of like leading like we're doing this, make sure we don't. And so like that can get in the way of like being in the moment. But then I was just like, you know what? There's so much going on. I'm just going to have fun. Like that's

the best thing I can do and really embrace and enjoy this moment because we don't have another take. So this is it. Yeah. And I did recognize that was going to be able to pull the best performance out for me. But there was other times just like on the company side that I really failed to fully do that. And I feel like to, you know, just to get on the proverbial psychiatrist or psychologist couch to really be able to inspire the team with that. Because like I didn't take the time to be like, damn, look what we've done. Look at these people that have come into our community, created the community that we've just kind of like set the table for. And look at these beautiful things that are happening. I mean, we had the OS experience here with some of our old.

pro folks, you know, one of which, you know, came on a train across the country to be, not with us, really. I thought it was to be with you and me. I mean, it kind of was, but it was more to be with each other. Shout out to Alexa. Yeah, shout out Alexa for doing that and just everybody that came in and just, you know, the folks that we hear from and the folks that we don't, you know, this huge growth and, like, trust in what we're doing, but mainly trust in the community of Open Studio.

Like, I'm definitely fixing that this year and going to be more appreciative and just experiencing that as we go, because it's super inspiring. every day. Yeah, man, that's where it's at. It's just being with what is here now. It's the hardest things for humans to do, and it's somehow also the most rewarding and engaging when you can interrupt, as Kenny Warner just said in our mentor session last Friday, if you can interrupt that voice that's telling you what to do next and that this isn't good enough where we are and that we have to be better, if you can interrupt it just for a moment, it's never going to get rid of it because it's always there with us. It's a human condition. But if you can interrupt it for just a

moment and just experience what is here and what we have and be grateful for everything. You ever heard of an interrupting cow? Moo. Boo! You'll hear it. Shoot.