You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Change and Exploration: How to Build Skills

Starting point is 00:00:00 All right, let me see what I got. I'm at Amanda Maness. I'm going solo today. I thought I'd take a swing at our theme song, Emotion in Motion by the Great Peter Martin. Today I wanted to talk about a couple of things that I've been really working on in my own musical growth. And I thought they were really interesting and I wanted to share them with you.

Starting point is 00:00:41 But before I do that, I just want to mention our sponsor, Open Studio, go to Open StudioJadJazz.com to check out all of our courses. Hey, check out our new magic voicing system course that I made. It's become super popular. It's a really easy system for playing five-note voicing that give you a ton of melodic options with the top notes. You could actually play melodies in a very like slick, fourths-based kind of thing. It's very, very cool. Check it out.

Starting point is 00:01:04 We'll put a link here to magic voicing. That's open studio jazz.com. So today I want to talk about a couple of things we get asked about a lot. The first is when should I move on from practicing? And we talked a little bit about this, but I've been doing more and more thinking. and more and more research on this. And the second is exploration and our own ability to find things that lock in with us as opposed to just reading from a book or taking from a video,

Starting point is 00:01:36 the importance of growth and the importance of exploration within growth. I want to start here. I've been reading this book called Transcend by psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman. It's great, by the way. You should check it out. And his chapter on exploration starts with a quote by famous philosopher Soren Kierkegaard from Either Or, which is a book I used to try to impress women with when I was a young man, if I'm being honest, reading it at cafes, as a 19-year-old would do.

Starting point is 00:02:14 But it starts off with this great quote from Soaring Kierkegaard. If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth or power, but for the passionate sense of potential for the eye which ever young and ardent sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what's so fragrant, what's so intoxicating as possibility. And then Scott Barry Kaufman begins the chapter by saying the need for exploration, the desire to seek out and make sense of novel, challenging, and uncertain information and experiences is an irreducible fundamental need.

Starting point is 00:02:50 And I, I, I, this resonated with me so, so strongly because I, in helping other people grow musically and really focusing on my own musical growth, I've noticed this trend that is ongoing and seemingly happening forever and frustrating, I think, psychologically to us as we try to go. And that's, we find something, right? A way to work on something or an idea. that feels like it is infinite, and maybe it is, but it feels like it's going to resonate with us forever. And we're going to, we found this one thing.

Starting point is 00:03:31 That's the secret, right? That's the key, this little thing I found, whether that's some voicing or some technical aspect of our playing or some scale or something, right? Something was like, oh, this is it. Now everything will lock into place. and that thing usually has a shelf life in our in our brain until it stops being so resonant with us. It stops helping us to feel like we are making progress or making better art. And it starts to get stale. And for some reason, we're always the last,

Starting point is 00:04:09 the last person to notice this thing in our own selves, right? We're holding on to this idea of like, well, why isn't, why am I not, you know, Chick-Korea, all of a sudden I have this Chick-Korea scale that I learned. And this was solving my problems for a while. It felt invincible for a while. And now I'm kind of back to not feeling everything I'm playing. What is that all about? And I think what this quote and what Dr. Kaufman here are talking about is something that

Starting point is 00:04:42 needs to be addressed in our growth and the way we practice. And that's the fact that human beings are just. designed for exploration and we're driven by dopamine by uncovering some order in chaos. There's some things that we don't understand and it makes us incredibly satisfied to figure those things out. And then once we kind of have them figured out and worked out, it's almost like a banana, right? There's a green period where they're not great to eat, where they're unripe. Then there's a four or five day window where they're just great. Maybe. three, depending on your banana. And then there's a point where they just get spotted and they're

Starting point is 00:05:24 okay, but it's not as the returns are diminishing. And then they get brown and mushy and they're gross to eat. And I think it's a very similar idea as we explore new concepts in our playing. And I just want to kind of take some time right now to recognize this and maybe develop some strategies we can have to help us get past that hump, right? To have to have. To have to have. help us stop beating ourselves up when what we're working on isn't working anymore, to recognize that it's not working, and to realize that exploring new things is the process. And it's not like we have to hammer down everything that we explore in every key until we're insane. We really need to spend time with things until we're ready to explore other things and realize that there's only so

Starting point is 00:06:17 many, there's only so much to learn, right? We have only so much time and we only have so many options. And we can come back to things. And this is something that I talk a lot about in like the daily guided practice session. A lot of people say like, I just don't have these in every key and we're working on these voicings. And now you want to move on to scales. It's like, yeah, we're going to come back to these workings. I think one of the things that I've noticed in my own playing is when I'm good at acknowledging that, okay, this idea is spotted now and it's getting mushy. And it's still a great idea, but I need to move on for my own exploratory sense of well-being. It's healthier for my playing if I'm passionate about what I'm doing, if I'm getting those dopamine

Starting point is 00:07:04 hits from exploring something novel that I don't understand yet. And I need to work that in to my practice routine. Like, I need to understand that there's going to be times where I find something and it lights me up. And my initial gut reaction to this is it's going to light me up forever. And for some reason, we're designed with this dichotomy of we need to explore the novel, right? But we somehow want to want to hold on to the things that we find novel at first as if they still are, as if they're still doing us this good work when they're not really. And so I think one of the first things to do is something that we talk about a lot.

Starting point is 00:07:49 Peter and I've mentioned a lot. And that's keep a practice journal and really keep a record of when you start working on something, what it feels like as you're working on. It's one thing to just acknowledge, okay, I'm working on this. But like I've started in my own personal journal and my practice journal, started writing down things like, you know, worked on, let's say the magic voicing. Worked on the magic voicings in the key of B today. Felt really, really fresh.

Starting point is 00:08:17 Discovered this one thing about maybe a hand shape or something like that, right? Some kind of detail about what was going on and why it was fresh. And maybe, you know, three days later, I'm like, I worked on magic voicings in G over, like, out of nowhere, didn't feel fresh. It was easy. and that's cool. It feels, it feels great, but I'm a little bored with that. And being honest with that and not being like, I shouldn't be bored, right? Sometimes I get into these like head spaces where I'll be like, Wayne Shorter wouldn't be bored. He would find the minutia in this and work on it in a practice room

Starting point is 00:08:52 all day long. And that's just not true. You know, like one of the things that our heroes are great at is knowing themselves and one of the things great players are good at is moving on. and exploring parts of their playing and themselves to get the most out of it. I've seen it up close, you know, with some of these great artists that we have here at Open Studio. They don't beat themselves up for not working on a new thing in every key in it being perfect. They want that to happen, and that's part of their MO, but they realize that it's a much longer time scale.

Starting point is 00:09:26 So just keeping a journal and keeping track of where you are, like in the process of that banana, right? Where, where am I with, like, major scales? Like, I could find days and days and days of interest in simple things like major scales. And I've got to recognize when I'm interested in it, and I've got to recognize when I'm not anymore. And so keeping track of that journal is one way to do it. Another tip that I recommend for being able to do this smoothly is to be searching on the lookout for those sparks of inspiration where this could be something that I am very, very interested in. And kind of having that on deck. And again, you can use your journal to keep track of this. So I will have like, again, let's say magic voicings and I'm working it on giant steps or

Starting point is 00:10:19 something. And I'll say, kind of write down like, but I just saw this Chick-Correa pentatonic lick and I kind of want to go there. And I will try to be as honest with myself as possible. not beating myself up. If I don't finish the magic voicings in all 12 keys in every tune I know, that's okay. I will come back to it. I will eventually, you know, play these magic voicing in a situation where it will remind me or something will spark, a new thing will spark. I'll get bored of the new Chick-Correa thing eventually.

Starting point is 00:10:51 Maybe I'll go back to the magic voices. Maybe I won't. But I need to have some backups like on the back burner. And maybe even I'm starting to sprinkle those in. I mean, definitely I'm starting to sprinkle those in as I'm working on other things. kind of what you want to do is, again, it's kind of about awareness for all of this, being aware of where you are with what you're currently working on and being aware of things that might spark your interest in the very near future and just letting yourself go to those places without

Starting point is 00:11:17 the guilt or beating yourself up for not drilling them into your head until you hate music and you don't touch your instrument for a month. That's not the point. The point is to constantly be finding things that spark you. So again, keeping a journal can be very, very beneficial for that process. So one more thing I just want to talk about as we as we talk about change and exploration is giving yourself time at your instrument to explore completely free. the other day I was just kind of working on a problem and I found what to me was a whole new way to approach, you know, a dominant chord to a minor one. And actually, I'll do an episode about this

Starting point is 00:12:10 for our next episode and I'll fill you in on what that is. But I was trying to figure it out. I was hearing something in my head about how to play a dominant seven chord, like an altered chord going to a minor six chord, right? I didn't want to use the altered scale. And it just took me about half an hour of just being free with that exploration, of just testing and trusting my ears and maybe referencing some recordings that I knew there was a sound I wanted, and working that into my time. And I had other things that I was going to work on, by the way, this day. I was going to work on some pentatonic stuff. And I recognized that there was a spark here, that I was searching for something, that I was in that exploratory mode. And,

Starting point is 00:12:56 when we can put some value on that and recognize that's what's happening, right? Recognize that, okay, I'm here to explore. This is a basic human fundamental need. This is why I play music. This is why I'm here. I need to set time aside so that I can do this. And if that means abandoning what I had scheduled to practice and what I thought was going to be the thing that makes me better, so be it. That's okay. That's why we practice on a regular basis. That's why we make music is to discover new things. So that's it. Just the idea of actually putting some value on exploration and realizing that it's part of us as human beings, it's part of us as artists. And it needs to be as valued as trying to get something or trying to drill ourselves into a whole.

Starting point is 00:13:51 this idea of being an explorer and exploring our own curiosity can make a huge difference in how much things stick to us and our overall growth as artists and people. So that's my thought for today. A bit of a, a bit of a rah-rah rant. Again, thank you to our sponsor Open Studio. Check out OpenStudiojazz.com for all your jazz piano or jazz instruction needs. I'll be back tomorrow with another solo thing is we're revamping our pod recording situation. Again, during this pandemic, everything's a little bit up in the air.

Starting point is 00:14:31 So trying to figure it out. But I'll do another solo on exactly this new scale that I, well, quote unquote new, new to me scale that I started using over a dominant seventh chord to a minor six chord. And until then.

You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Change and Exploration: How to Build Skills

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