You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Comfort Zone - #42

Episode Date: October 23, 2018

Today on You'll Hear It, Adam and Peter answer a listener's question about pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Pete. Yeah, man. Are you feeling pretty comfortable? Man, I'm in Zone. Comfort Zone. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Here at Podcast.

Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Brought you by Open Studio. Peter, today we're taking a question from YouTube. Shout out to YouTube. What's off, Google? Keep searching. We're on YouTube quite a bit. You can check out the videos of these podcasts if you're just listening. But we got a question from Johan or Johan.

I think Johan. is probably is a better chance. Johan! So Johan writes, do you think you guys could elaborate a little bit on pushing yourself out of the comfort zone?

Do you mean learning tougher tunes or applying new harmonic ideas and stuff? It's a good question. I think first maybe we could talk about what the comfort zone is. Yeah, now we're referring to, we must have said something

numerous times, possibly, in previous episodes. We talk about when we practice. We talk about pushing ourselves out of the comfort zone. Yeah. And so maybe we could just expand on that a little more about like what that is, what it means to be in the comfort zone, how to push out of it, how long you should be out of it, all that stuff. Well, seeing as we're in the pod cave, which we could consider to be the comfort zone. I feel very comfortable in here. Although sometimes after being in here for hours, I do feel that it's the uncomfortable zone a little

bit. So it could be both. I know. We got to up our chair game. We got up our mic position. because sometimes my neck gets a crick. Yep. But yeah, okay, so within practice, I look at it maybe as ultimately the goal with this is about how we play, how we improvise, how we actually perform on the gig, and being able to be out of our comfort zone into more of an exploratory in the moment, kind of like what are they saying now about, you know how people talk about like you want to experience something and everybody's on their phones all the time?

Yeah. And they say they want to like experience it, you know, in real time. There's some phrase for that I hear people talking about. But basically, you know, you want to put yourself, it's almost like what could be uncomfortable. You know, it's almost like you're putting your, you're turning that into being so comfortable with being uncomfortable that that becomes the comfort zone almost. Well, I think that's the key with pushing yourself outside of the comfort zone. So the comfort zone is, how's the mic man? Well, no, I think about comfort.

I was a little uncomfortable. bad boys right of body. It's kind of pressing you. It's like, it's like, what's up? It's a little aggressive here, but that's all good. Is that better? Yeah, I think it's just the same. Exactly the same as before you touched it. We are such a finely team machine. I know, right. Technically, we're just... Stop looking at me, Kranick and Bach. We're definitely outside of the comfort zone in this episode. No, so a little bit about the comfort zone. So the comfort zone is just anything that you are completely, that you can do on autopilot. Yeah. Right? And this is not a bad thing necessarily. There's a ton of stuff.

on our performances and our practice routine that you want to get on autopilot, that you want to have, like if I'm working on, you know, right-hand lines and a certain comping rhythm, I want to get that comping rhythm so comfortable and on autopilot that I could get creative and outside the comfort zone with my right hand. You know, there are certain things that we have to ingrain so that they're so comfortable they're in the comfort zone. Now, I think to your point, the real value in pushing yourself outside of the comfort zone is, A, it helps you learn things. We know that our brains absorb things when we familiarize and then we let that go for a while and then we come back to it and we're always pushing outside the comfort zone of what we have internalized. That's when we actually

learn and that's when things become comfortable. We keep pushing them out and out of the comfort zone. But there's, I think, the most benefit is what you alluded to, which is that when you get comfortable outside of the comfort zone, that's where magic happens. You know, when you're able to as an improviser, just live in that space of like, I don't know what's going to happen, but I can trust myself that it's going to be cool. You know what I mean? Like, everything's going to work out.

Yeah. That's when really magical, musical experiences can happen. Tired of pointless, generic YouTube instructional videos. Are you looking to learn jazz from some of today's best players? I would say yes to both of those. That's obvious, right? Yeah. So what does one do?

Well, one could go to Open Studio. That's right. Open Studio, where you'll find pros who are great players and teachers ready to guide you along your jazz journey. That's right. Courses on piano, guitar, drums, bass. Yep. And not just anybody.

These are like some of the top people in jazz. Yeah, Christian McBride, Diane Reeves. We're going to drop a few names here. Gregory Hutchinson. But I think the main thing is, yes, we have the lessons, we have the instruction. But what we want to do is kind of help you to unlock the sea. secrets of jazz, how to get to the vibe. That's what our concept is here, is those things that have been held back for years. And now we're laying it all out there for you. That's right.

So join us at openstudio network.com. Open Studio, jazz lessons from jazz legends. It's almost like a, maybe we could describe it as being, you're still outside of the comfort zone, because if it does become too comfortable, then you've got to go further away to get into that outside the zone. But it's like you're confident in being, it's working on the confidence of being outside of the comfort zone so that you can really, you know, succeed a big percentage of the time. And look, once you get out of the comfort zone and you take those risks and you go out on that diving board, you're not going to have that 100% success rate of execution as if you stay right within what you know. And this even goes to like who you play with. Like there's the kind

of safe players that you know what they're going to play. You know they're no better than you and that you can kind of do your thing in a certain way. We've all been there. And sometimes that's okay. But, I mean, if you really want to start to explore and stretch and grow, you know, it's just like going to the gym. If, like, you're always doing the same amount of weights, the same exercises, you're just going to kind of maintain it. That's good. But if you want to sort of bulk something up short of going the steroids route, don't recommend that. You have to stretch out to bigger weights, different kind of exercises, things that aren't comfortable for you to see how your body's going to react. And we want to do that with our musical mind.

Yeah, I mean, if you're in the studio doing like a commercial. recording and you only have so much time and you know they want a certain vibe, maybe stay in your comfort zone. You know what you know, play what you know will work. But if you're at a club and maybe the audience is a little restless or whatever, that's the time where you can make a little magic by kind of stepping out. And so to Johan's question about, you know, do you mean learning tougher tunes or applying new harmonic ideas, it's really all of that. It's really, it's really being comfortable practicing and performing things. you don't totally know yet. You know, the things that you know about, but maybe they aren't there.

You should be doing that every day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, too, there's, man, this is a great subject. I'm so glad to ask because now that I'm thinking about it, there's so many different areas that we can challenge ourselves out of the, and that's really what it is, right? We're challenging ourselves to play something that, for instance, is not, we're not 100% secure on yet.

So that might be a thing of like, you're learning a tune and you're memorizing it, maybe as you're learning it, or you've learned it, and now you're like, okay, I'm going to memorize it. And then all of a sudden you're on the gig and there's tunes that you really know, but there's that one that you're like 80% memorized. Go out of your comfort zone and try it. You know, maybe you're going to mess up a little bit of thing, but really concentrate, try to use your ears because you can get some great development.

And I know we want to always put our best foot forwards on gigs. But I mean, I do this all the time where I'm like, you know what? I mean, maybe somebody will kind of notice that I mess one thing up, but there'll be that edge there that will make it exciting enough and that I really commit to concentrating in a way to not just play. it's safe. So I'm like, I'm going to do it without the music because I'm never going to really memorize it without. And plus for me at this point, I think that you have these situations too. We don't always have the time to learn fully everything we want to before the gig comes. It's like,

bam, the gig is there and there's something new to know. And yeah, if I'd had eight hours to practice that day, I would have had it 100% secure. But we're supposed to be professionals and we need to, you know, react in that same way. And that's okay. And I'm, I do this. And I'm glad you mentioned this because I'm sure you do this too. Do you ever like throw yourself out on the edge? just knowing like, all right, I'm going to go here. Oh, hell no, that's on professional. Come on. No, but you know, like I was thinking about I was playing, I played yesterday.

And I did a couple times, like, I did these like chord things up high that I don't really know. Like I was hearing a sound or whatever. And I was just like, all right, well, here I am. Like, I either make this happen or I don't. It's either going to be good or not. And I got to figure it out. And there's, like, for me, there's a thrill in that for sure that no matter what I play, even if everything's not perfect, the audience feels this like danger, this like,

spark. You know what I mean? There's an energy to that that really, that's what jazz is all about. And that's what jazz has over every other kind of music is there's this like, I like it. A little jazz police. No, but I mean, it's why we all love this music is because there's these like, what is going on? And those happen when you, when you stretch yourself. And I think that, yeah, that same feeling we have as we're playing the music is not that different than the listener has. And it's not that different than we come as listeners when we hear it. So it's not just an inwardly facing thing. It's like, well, this is fun for us to go out on the edge and to be crazy improvisers and but that's only for us. No, if you've done correctly, you're right. That's,

that's a big selling point for the music. That's a big part of the music and we have to, in fact, do that. Otherwise, you know, it's kind of like with the piano trio, there's a very fine line between a, you know, a great lounge trio that's playing in the background and a really finely tuned, exciting jazz trio playing the same tunes. Yeah. Where you want to sit there and listen to it. But if you're just playing it like background, never taking a chance, doing everything well, it's going to be a little bit, you know, anti-jazz almost in a way. Totally. When somebody's listening. And so I agree. And I think that in terms of practice, it goes back to the same thing that we've talked about before, like, how can you practice performing? Can you have some of your

practice routine to just be in the moment pretending like you're on a gig? That's how you practice being out of your comfort zone. Like practicing scales and arpeggos is not necessarily, that's more about getting that stuff into your comfort zone, into your hands and like really working on that regimented thing. But you've got to have a part of your practice to really push yourself out so that you have some confidence when you go to do it on the gig. Yeah, you can you can rehearse this for sure. Exactly. But, you know, again, with the practice, almost everything you practice should be a little bit out of your comfort zone. You should be trying for things that you can't quite do yet. Stretchy. Even if you're playing a C major scale, four octave, something you may be done for 10 years,

you know, you should be trying to articulate it in a way or get a sound in a way that you can't quite get. Something aspirational with that. But I think that's more like just challenging yourself, right? And like there's also, well, I mean, yeah, that's like we said there's several living kinds of comfort zone. There's like to challenge yourself technically taking yourself out of your comfort zone. And then the other part that we mostly talked about, which is kind of the creativity side. Yeah. And yeah, I think if you apply this to each part of your musicality, this is how you grow.

That's true. is how you grow? Well, thank you, Johan, for the question. That's a great question. Really fun topic to talk about and think about. Yeah. Yeah, you can go to you'll hear.com. If you want to ask us a question, you can leave a voicemail, you can leave a written question. Please don't sleep on the ratings and reviews. We've been sleeping on asking for them. Well, you know what? It's a new week here, so, you know, we actually had, I don't know if you saw this. We had a beautiful rating. We have so much love. It's starting to like, it's starting to like, it's

to really, I'm not going to, is this thing going down, this mic? Yeah, we're going to fix it after this. You know what we should do like a Kickstarter for some new mics? All right. Can you still hear, Andrew? Okay, good. There we go. Whoa, now it's just got, okay.

No, no, no, we're cool. We can make it. Okay, so this was a review from Ryan, Ryan on iTunes. I don't know if you saw this, but the title of this rating and review of this review is a galaxy worth of stars. A galaxy worth of stars. Because, you know, we were talking at some point about seven stars, blah, blah, blah.

So he went galaxy. Okay, and then this is great. The average galaxy has something like 200 billion stars for what it's worth. This podcast is exactly what I needed. It helped reignite my musical curiosity and has greatly inspired me to improve my playing. I'm more excited about learning jazz

and getting better at piano than I've been in years. I love listening to these pros talk about jazz the stories and insights, the advice and strategies they give us free and all the great album recommendations. Oh, good. This podcast is truly motivating and will make you feel like you're getting to know Peter and Adam on a personal level. The Open Studio programs are also amazing.

Highly recommended. Thank you so much, Ryan, for that review and your beautiful five-star. This is great, man. This feels like season one up in here. Review after the episode? That's right, right, right. So, yeah, feel free to, you know, leave us a rating review on iTunes or Google Play or whatever. Stitcher. We're still looking for that

first Stitcher review, man. Why you laugh every time I... Why are you hating on Stitcher, man? I don't know. I don't know why I hate it on Stitcher. People that are... that like Stitcher. It's a small group, but they love it, man. That's... You better hope they never come after you, Adam. Oh, I know. You know, they, Stitcher was the

platform that took down the whole Alex Jones thing. Sticher was the first and then they all... Oh, good. See? There we go. There we go. Well, until tomorrow. You'll hear it.