You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Don't Do These 7 Things When You Practice

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

It's one thing to know what to practice, but do you know what NOT to do? Peter and Adam break it down for you in this episode.Don't Do These 7 Things When You Practice:Try to practice everythingWait until conditions are perfectPractice what you're good at alreadyIgnore fundamentalsBeat yourself up/let yourself off the hookPractice only what you planCheck your phoneBONUSCalling all pianists - get the Piano Access Pass today! Save money with this bundle featuring every piano course ever from Open Studio, including teachers such as Peter Martin, Geoffrey Keezer, and Helio Alves. For more info, go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/piano-access-passAre you going to the JEN Conference? If so, stop by and say hi to us! From January 7 - 10, Peter and Adam will be doing special live You'll Hear It's, giving away special prizes, and answering any jazz or music questions you want to ask them. Just look for the Open Studio booth (Booth 718) and get your daily jazz advice in person.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.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, Peter. Hey. I can tell you what to practice, but what if I told you what not to practice. Well, if you happen to have a list of seven of those things, I count me in. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to You'll Hear It. A podcast about listening and playing music better.

I got it. That's all right. Third time's a charm, buddy. Well, I got it on a, we've had a couple of false stakes, which is unusual for us, but not unknown or not unheard of at this point. It happens, but no, we have a new tagline. I'm excited about that, but I'm still reading it. I'm ashamed to say that. Yeah, I mean, we had that other tagline for like two and a half years.

Yeah, so it was sort of by road. But also we went through a few iterations. I wanted to make sure we were locked and loaded on this. Locked and loaded. So I think we are, right? Yeah. And hey, let's not forget today's episode is sponsored by Open Studio. Right, which is part of the reason we had to redo this take because I got so excited.

I was offering something that's actually not available anymore. Yeah. But let's not talk about that. You got to stop doing that. Let's talk about all the wonderful. You almost did it just now. I know, right? Because I get excited.

No, but let's talk about all the wonderful things that are available. Well, you know what's popping off over at openstudiojazz.com is the piano access pass. If you're a pianist and you like any of our piano courses and maybe you like more than one, it just makes sense to get the piano access pass. It's a very affordable subscription. It gets you all the piano courses we've ever made, plus any that we will make. And you and I just got out of a meeting planning 2020's piano courses, and there's a lot of good stuff coming down the pike.

Exactly. And the beautiful thing about this, you can go monthly, but I would recommend you go annual because you're going to save some ducats. as we used to say, old school, some lamb's tongue. Another way of putting that, you're going to save some money, some euros, some dollars. But you also have kind of the whole year. This is always fun at the beginning of the year. We've got our New Year's resolution.

So if you're thinking about learning to play jazz piano better, this I think, I dare say, is the most affordable option for you to have a lot of options throughout the year. Everything from pre-beginner with our jazz piano jumpstart all the way up to the most advanced, advanced jazz concepts by Jeff Kieser and everything in between. I know. There's a lot of stuff. So go to open studio jazz.com and check out the piano access pass. Now, today we're talking about

seven things not to do when you practice. We called this, don't do these seven things when you practice. You know, there's a lot we can talk about about what to practice and how to think in a positive way, but I think sometimes thinking reductively, like if I don't do this, it'll probably be a good session. Right. Is the way to go.

Inductively. Man, that's, I'm going to, Andrew, I'm putting that on list for my first new word I've learned this year, reductively. I think I made that up. Have you ever made a reductively sauce? A reduction? Yeah, yeah, yeah. A reduction, okay. I'm going to call it a reductively.

A little white wine, little butter. Right. WWB. All right, so let's dive on in here. Yes. So the first thing not to do when you practice is to try to practice everything you need to practice in one session. Sometimes we get off a gig and we feel, say, a little dejected maybe by,

by our performance, and we're like, well, I know what I need to practice, everything. Right. I need to practice drinking first. Voicing scales, time, playing out, whatever it is. Don't try to hit it up all in one session. I think there was a quote from Kenny Warner's book, Effortless Mastery, where he actually asked Bill Evans, or someone at a party asked Bill Evans, what should I practice? And Bill Evans said, practice the least amount you can, which means the least amount of material

in a session, right? So try to focus on one, two, three things in any given amount of time. You're going to be way more productive. It's going to stick harder. You might even find your way deeper into the concept or whatever you're practicing. So don't think that you have to hit the kitchen sink every single session. No. And I think along with this is like if you kind of come up with a regular routine where you're at the instrument almost every day, you know, you're going to be able to hit everything you need to hit over the course of a month a year.

You know, just be patient. Absolutely. And look, trying to practice everything is going to lead to burn on anyway. So that's going to work against, if you commit, you're better to commit to being at the instrument every day. Yep. And over at the boot camp, we're preaching that hard. Better to be there. I mean, could we even say better to be there five minutes a day as opposed to missing days and trying to practice everything for seven hours on a Sunday?

I think five minutes is a little, that's a little short of time. But maybe like 50. But to start there. 50 minutes, yeah. Yeah. The habit of practicing your instrument every day. is like even with all the technology and the reminders and all the different things that in theory

it should be easier, modern convenience. Look, we don't have to go hunt and gather. So we should be able to practice a little bit, right? Thank God. You know, but that, the art of just showing up every day cannot be understated. And trying to practice everything is basically going to work against that. For sure.

So just avoid that. All right. So what's our number two? Our number two thing to don't do, to not do, when you practice, is to wait until, Conditions are perfect. Yeah. Oh, this is the classic procrastinator's, you know,

dogmatic approach to like, I have to get my, my pencil hasn't arrived from Amazon yet, so I can't go into the practice. Yeah, the position of the sun through the window. It's kind of in my eyes. Yeah, my, I need to shave the back of my neck

because it's uneven from the left and the right side. There's a new episode of the Mandalorian on. Well, that's actually, that's good. That's not perfect. I don't know. I mean, I see it. No, but yeah, but I think especially we get into this,

like the beginning of the year where it's like I have to have the perfect practice setup. The perfect practice setup is you and your instrument and that is it. That's it. You know, that there you go. See? You're already practicing over there. I mean, yeah, there's the ideal setup, there's the perfect setup, but there's also just getting, it goes back to the first thing, you know, getting in front of your instrument every day and

Or even waiting until you feel inspired. Like just go and just go on. Just go to your instrument. You know, you precious pianist. I know. inspiration is not going to hit. And, you know, again, this just is, really, as much as these, all things are different,

they all work against just showing up, getting in front of your instrument. All right, what you got for number three? So our third thing not to do when you practice is to practice what you're already good at. So we preach this a lot. Yeah. Don't go there and just play, you know,

autumn leaves in the same key. You've been playing it the same way. Yeah. Showing out the licks, you can already play well. That's not going to cause any growth. We call that no bueno. Yeah. And actually, you're going to burn out.

not going to grow at all and you're going to just get sick of it. Yeah, yeah. And then you're just sort of a, you're almost like a recreational player. You know, you're just sort of playing what you used to do. It's going to eventually get worse even. You're not going to really, I mean, at best you'll sort of maintain a small little repertoire. And it's kind of another form of, I mean, it's better than not getting to your instrument. We'll say that. For sure. But not much. Not much. You know, I would say 85 to 90 percent of your entire practice routine should be things that are just out of your comfort zone. Like you want to be pushing yourself. And you know what, the experience of pushing yourself just out of your comfort zone, that is a practice in

an in and of itself. That's right. To be able to recognize that and to be able to recognize, okay, well, I'm doing this scale at this tempo with this articulation and I'm fairly comfortable. What if I did it just five clicks faster? I would be just a little bit outside. That's right. Comfortably aggressive.

Comfortably aggressive. That is where real growth happens. That's right. Good stuff. All right. So number four, this one is, I love this one. I love all these. I'm so anti-bad things.

So I love these. Number four, ignore the fundamentals for something not to do when you're practicing. So this is so fundamental and foundational. But this is actually a good one. Like once you get in the habit of not doing these things, not ignoring the fundamentals, this I really believe can become sort of an automatic part of your practice. Like certain things are just, they're harder to get in the habit of doing it the right way than the wrong way. And I was looking at habits as like the yin and the yang of them is like if you don't have good habits, you usually have bad habits.

It's not like you're at zero. so you're actually going the wrong way. But this one, once you push it into like, like it's not actually harder to play with like, you know, good hand position or mouth position on your instrument and stuff. I mean, it's hard when you've developed bad fundamentals. But once you get them and if you're lucky enough to have kind of developed good ones, that's kind of all you ever know.

But it becomes like a snowball effect. It affects so many parts of you're playing that it's a beautiful thing. That's right. If you're a pianist and you just spent, you know, a good portion of your practice routine working on solid fingering or you're a saxophone player and you, worked on your ambassure, a trumpet player, you worked on, you know, some long tones, you would see a greater improvement in your performance, right?

Because that's when fundamentals really kick in. Right. Is when you're on the bandstand, like, it's easy to just play things that are super out or hard or whatever. You know, it's like, I'm going for these high-level things all the time. And then you get on the bandstand, you can't play a B-flat blues that hits anybody anyway. And then you hear someone who maybe isn't, doesn't know as much as you, but they have these fundamentals. They can connect with the music.

Big difference. Good. All right, number five is... By the way, quick thing on fundamentals, you know, we like here at the You'll Hear a podcast, we like to put the fun in Dementals. Oh, boy. Sorry, okay.

Number five, go ahead. That's a shame. Okay, so the fifth thing to don't do when you practice is to either, and this is a two-sided coin. 5A, 5B. Is to beat yourself up too much. Right.

Or let yourself off the hook too much. There's a sweet spot for this. You're boxing them in. Well, we're talking about the human ego here, right? So you want to be as objective as possible. Imagine that you're watching someone else practice and how you would guide them in their practice session. You wouldn't be like, you suck.

So hopefully you wouldn't be like that. Get down and give me 20, son. But you would also want to give something constructive. So think about that with yourself. Don't beat yourself up that you can't do certain things. Of course you can't do certain things. That's why you're in the practice room. That's why we're always in the practice room.

And then don't like think too much of yourself that you let yourself off the hook for things, especially things like fundamentals, that maybe aren't all together there. Try to be objective. Record yourself and imagine that you're listening to a student of yours practice

and try to guide them in the best way that you would someone like that. Good. Love it. Okay, number six, of our seven things not to do when you practice, this is what you shouldn't do. Practice only what you plan. Yeah, you don't want to be too rigid in there.

No, and this is great. So you want to have a plan, so this is going to sound counterintuitive. because we've often said have a plan. You do want to have a plan. But be flexible with your plan. Go with the flow. And if you're lucky enough to get into any kind of flow state, definitely go with the flow.

For sure. Don't use this to let yourself off the hook. Right. By being like, oh, this isn't going that good so I'm going to ban it. You got to know when to push through and be uncomfortable. I mean, I think being uncomfortable in your practice is a very important and misunderstood part of flow state. For sure, yeah. So there is going to be a lack of comfort because you suck.

and you're trying to get better. We all do. That's why we're practicing. We're not practicing the stuff that we know. But be understanding and be in the moment, and number seven is going to really help with that so that you can be aware of the things that are going to be most beneficial.

So when you make those turns, and maybe even a you turn sometimes, you can be doing it with your goal in mind of having the most productive practice session. Yeah, some great discoveries can happen while you're practicing something you thought you were going to work on and something a light bulb goes off and you think, oh, this is it.

This is what I've been. missing, go with that. You can go with that. It's fine. All right, so number seven. Oh, and let me just say, before you hit number seven, I thought of another one, so we're going to do a number eight bonus at the end. I love a bonus. Yeah, I love a little bonus.

We'll get back on a bonus for 2020. Ow! Okay. All right, number seven, this is just some basic advice in general when you're trying to focus. Don't check your phone. Right. Even when you go take a break. Sometimes I check my, I'm guilty of this.

I'll check my phone and then 20 minutes go by. And I'm like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So just try to maybe put your phone on airplane mode. Yeah. Hold on. I'm going to check my phone for just like.

No, but I mean, the thing is, you know what? Most of us are not that important. Actually, you know, it's not whatever you think is going to be coming. Turn your notifications off, first of all. Yeah, for sure. Everybody gets mad at me. I did it years ago. Yeah, I don't know if you know that.

I mean, my phone doesn't even ring. People like, you never answer your phone. I don't, I just because I want to be able to concentrate on what I'm doing. So as much great information as this brings us, this is a real detriment to sleep. and practicing, I find. And that's two places I just don't bring this. You know, agree.

It doesn't go in the bedroom, and it doesn't go when I'm practicing, because it's just, it's going to be the biggest. You can follow all this other stuff, and if you still do that, you're kind of kaput. So,

all right, well, there you go. That's our seven things. And I got one more. We're going to hit that at the end. Okay. But as we said before, we are brought to you by Open Studio Jazz.

We're so excited to have our OG sponsor back with us. And we've got so many exciting things. You know, we talked about the piano access pass, so we just encourage you to check in on that. We have you know a couple things came really quickly at the end of the year Jazz piano technique jazz piano basics yeah so checking on all that kind of fun stuff and Yeah see what you think open studio jazz did come what you gotta say like that I don't know

I'm a character tell stories Okay here's our bonus for our final don't do these seven things when you practice and that is don't think about other players Oh yeah okay A little comparison syndrome. Don't think about care. Now, if you're transcribing chikaria, whatever, you're thinking about the music. You're still not thinking about chikaria, okay? Practicing is about developing and getting to the point where you can better tell your own story.

If there's one thing I would say is the overarching kind of responsibility of you in every practice session is to develop. Everything is in the service of telling your story. So don't be thinking about other people and aspiring to aspire to be the best you. And that's good enough, you know. So many times we get into practice, like you said at the end of the gig, like, oh, I mess this up. I want to be more like, no, remove that from your line to thinking, we are giving you permission. We will send you a certificate signed. You'll hear it if you need it.

But you have permission. We really won't. But you have permission to not think about others as you practice. And having your, not having your phone on, that'll help. That'll help. I really like that one. Dang, Herbie texted me again. That dude was awesome.

Let's do a little summary here. Number one was try to practice everything. These are things not to do. Yes. Number two is wait until conditions are perfect. Number three, don't practice what you're already good at. Number four is don't ignore the fundamentals. Number seven, don't beat yourself up and don't let yourself off the hook.

Number six, do not practice only what you plan to practice that day. Number seven, don't check your phone and the bonus. Do not think about others and they're playing. Think about developing yourself and getting better. And until tomorrow, you'll hear it.