You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Finding Your Internal Clock

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

Peter and Adam answer a question that often gets overlooked. How much should you be keeping time with your foot? Internal time is a personal journey and in this episode Peter and Adam offer some helpful tips.Open Studio Pro | GATELISTHave 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

My name is Adamannis. My name is Peter Martin. You're listening to the Yule here at podcast. Jazz Talk. Jazz Talk. Brought to you by Open Studio. Go to Open Studio. Go to Open Studio.

com. Yes. You're going to deeper dive on most of the things we'll be talking about. And this is a great time to come and check in on Open Studio Pro. It really is kind of the best time. New Year is coming up or maybe even past, depending on where you are in the world. Yeah.

When you're listening to this, happy new year. If you are listening to this in 2024, we made it. We made it. That's right. They said we wouldn't make it. We did. Yeah. And by a day, I mean.

George Orwell. No, this is a great time to... If you would have said Jeff Bezos, I would have got worried. I'm fine with that. Well, notice he's got like a yacht that can survive a thermonuclear. I know, he's all up in space. Yeah, yeah. Where are you going, Jeff?

You know something? You know something we don't know. But, so, no, this is a great time. Check out Open Studio Pro because, or just regular Open Studio membership, whichever, you know, suits your fancy because... There's only two. Okay. We've only got two members.

That's what I said. Open Studio. or Open Studio Pro. And for those of you who don't know, Open Studio is all of our pre-recorded courses. Open Studio Pro is all of our pre-recorded courses plus all of our live Zoom classes, at least two every day.

Yeah, and kind of jumping in at the new year, I'm not exactly sure the timing of when it's going to be open because oftentimes it's closed, but you can always sign up at Open StudioJazz.com slash pro to get on the priority wait list for that. Well, hint, hint, it's going to be soon. Okay, well, you know stuff I don't know, Mr. Creative Director. Yeah, you're going to want to get on that wayless.

And it's fun, like, just to try. trying new things. I know we've talked about in previous year, like New Year's resolutions and stuff and pros and cons with that. But I think just in general, like with a new year, it's such a great time to kind of check in, maybe join in a new community, think about developing one's skills in a different way, recommit, perhaps, of course, to yourself, but to the music, to you, to the instrument, to your development. And there's no better place. I'm biased, though. Yeah. But I would say there's no better place than Open Studio. Yeah. Good Open Studio.js.com and sign up on that wait list. Peter. Yes.

Today we're taking some speak pipes. Now we've got a very different kind of speak pipe today. We've got a live in person speak pipe. Is this our first? Well, it's not live. This is the first one where we actually recorded the question. Yes. I say we.

It's you. Yeah. You were playing at the Village Vanguard all last week. Yes. With Christian McBride. Yes. Inside Straight. Inside straight.

Yeah. And a gentleman who's actually an open studio member approached Daniel. And I got to had a nice talk with him. He had some questions. And I said, you know what? I think other folks might be interested in this same question. Let's record something impromptu. And Daniel was game for it and kind enough to appear on camera.

So should we just watch it? Yeah, let's check it out. This is from the grounds, the inside, the basement, the hollowed grounds of the village Vanguard. You can see the stairwell right there. That's the door there. That's where they vibe you when you get to the bottom of the stairs if you have not purchased your ticket.

Completely necessary. Oh, shout out Quentin in the back. Great young drummer who actually works at the Vanguard at certain nights. You can just see him in the background. He doesn't appear on here. Fantastic drumming that was in the Jazz Ahead program with Betty Carter's Jazz A Hand. Oh, sweet.

Yeah, you're going to be hearing a lot from him. You must have a lot of people coming out to the show that you knew. I think every show was sold out. But it was cool. There's a great open studio contingent every night, every set, Mr. McBride, Mr. McBride, Mr. McBride, do you?

That's me for sure. But he was kind enough to kind of talk about open studio on many of the sets. Are you kidding? No, yeah. Really? Yeah, yeah. What do he say?

Some fans of yours. Well, he just said, you know, Peter, is the co-founder of something really cool. If you want to learn about jazz, check out Open Studio. You know, he says it's so much better than the greatest. We could possibly say it. Cool.

Let's check out. This is Daniel. Yes. Okay. All right, I'm here with my new friend, Daniel, and I can't even tell you his last name. Go to try. No.

All right. We have to beep that out. We're here. Where are we? Tell them where we are. We are at the famous Village Vanguard. The world famous Village Vanguard. And Daniel has an in-person speak pipe.

Our first ever in-person speak pipe. Go ahead and ask. All right. I ask Peter. Hold on, first of all, it'd be amazing if you, at this point,

got out your phone and made him actually go on to speak pipe. Like, go on to you'll hear it.com. That's where, by the way, if you want to use speak pipe, don't go to the village vanguard,

unless you know Peter Martin's going to be there, but go to you'll hear it. com. Yeah. I'm just saying it would have been funny if you would have next time. Shout out Daniel is, actually,

can I give out personal information about him? I wouldn't. He's a dress? No, but Daniel is 61 years old. Doesn't he look great? Shut up. I'm serious. Shut up.

That's what he told me. No. I think he is. He looks five years younger than me, and I'm 45. Well, that's, you know, maybe he's friends with Jeff Basil. Dang it. But his philosophy is on tapping your foot to keep time playing jazz piano. Right.

And I've been wanting to ask this question for a while. And then I thought it would actually be better to watch Peter in person. Let's hear that again. Did we miss that? All right. We're going to have to beep that out. We're here. Where are we?

Tell him where we are? We saw this part already, yeah. The world famous, Village Vanguard, and Daniel has an in-person speak pipe, our first ever in-person speak pipe. Go ahead and ask. All right. I asked Peter what his philosophy is on tapping your foot

to keep time playing jazz piano. Right. And I've been wanting to ask this question for a while, and then I thought it would actually be better to watch Peter in person see what he does in practice. In practice, I think is what he's going to say. So, yeah, what did he come up with? Did he have an answer for that?

Well, what was funny was he, he was what him no really he's asking us I know but did he notice anything on the gig and did he have any notes because I don't think about my foot a ton when I'm performing. I know I stomp and tap and do all sorts of things right so apparently he was

he was with a teacher that recommended to him to tap in a certain way and so he was asking me you know kind of do I believe in that and blah blah blah and he wanted to see what I was doing but what I told him is I was like I don't think that this is a a fruitful area to imitate how others

do this. And the reason I would say this, like in other words, I don't think there's a right or wrong answer to this. I agree to that. You know, and you know, I can be dogmatic about certain things, but this is one area I would say, kind of anything goes. And that is only because I have observed a little bit. I haven't done a scientific study on this, but I've definitely checked out different pianos and just different musicians in general that I really think are great players, right? And look to see how they're tapping their foot. And there's quite a variety. In other words, there's some people that tap in time, like on two and four or on all four,

whatever, like some kind of metronomic type tapping. There's some other players that don't tap at all. And then there's some that are seemingly randomly tapping or like tapping with certain accents or something or a little bit less pattern-based. And these are all like really,

like it would be so much easier if you saw like some lesser players or somebody who's kind of struggling or a more beginner and they were tapping all over the place. And then all the really high-level players were tapping in time. Then it'd be like, okay, you got to learn to tap in time. But I don't think the case. That's the case. That hasn't been in my experience.

It's not universal. Yeah. You know, just last week we had the amazing Emmett Cohen on a mentor session. Yes. And he was talking a little bit about time. He was talking about a ballot, actually. But he mentioned something that I, it really resonated with me. And someone asked him, well, how do you approach like keeping time in a ballad?

And it was like, well, you have to find the dance. So the first thing I do, he said, is to find the dance in the song. Yeah. And I think that's kind of what you're talking about here. no like prescribed way to dance right you know in a if you're trying to just keep this the steady time and so if you can find the dance everybody's different everybody is going to dance a little bit differently not everyone's going to dance with their toes not everyone's going to dance with most i will say most people find it helpful to have some kind of physical movement to keep

time with yeah because it is rhythm is a dance it is a physical movement it is not intellectual it has to be moved through space look at you you're moving as i every time you just talk about Bop-a-d-bap-a-d-bap. Also, I think most high-level players, they're not consciously practicing this in a specific way. It's just kind of like what, at least for me anyway,

it's just what has happened as I've developed my time. Now, having said that, I do think that you, there are certain things that you can do with tapping your foot or like one-handed things with tapping your hand

that can be effective when you're practicing. Yeah. So this was more, what I was speaking of was more about what you could observe from somebody as they're performing. I wouldn't take so much from that. I do think that you can teach, and we've talked about at Open Studio, different exercises

that you would tap your foot as you're practicing, I think can be very effective. Like any kind of rhythmic practice or things that are getting your limbs going at different time. So like if you're playing something with two hands and then you're having to do something different with your foot, that's going to get your rhythmic independence and ultimately your hand independence, a leg up. That's horrible. Awful.

It's just awful. Pull out quote. But so that would be, I think probably the most important part of this is like differentiate between how you tap your foot when you're practicing from how you do it when you're performing. So in other words, if you have some effective things that you, and we can talk about some ideas, but some effective things that you in your practice don't feel like you need to be consistent with that when you play. It's kind of like everything we talk about when you're performing.

It's like you want that to be a manifestation and kind of a continuation and sort of a destination from what you've worked on where you can be a little bit more unconscious with your body movements, with your hand position, with your finger and all these different things. And this is a chance to just sort of let everything come out. Having said that, I had a little bit of problem because with Daniel was then, that was between the sets. And he's like, I'm so excited. I'm staying for the second set. So I'm going to, now that you've told me these different things, I'm going to really be watching your foot. You were in your head about your foot, weren't you? You were thinking about it.

Right there. And so the whole second set. And I think he told me after he's like, yeah, you were a little more consistent with your... Because I was saying about Daniel? I was like, when to go, Daniel? Yeah, it's like once you're observed, once nature is observed, it changes it. The observation changes it, yeah, for sure. Yeah, that was just a little bit.

But I don't think that they're in terms of what you could observe from somebody. I'd love to hear from people in the comments, though, because I could be off bad. Like I say, I've not done a scientific study. I will say that we've done lessons and courses with people like Sean Jones and Jeffrey Keiser. And both of them have talked about if you notice, and I think Warren Wolf talked, talked about this too, but if you notice people with really great time, not everybody, but a lot of them tap with their heel down. Like so their heel is the is the tapper.

Yes. And the ball of their foot or right here in their foot is the fulcrum, right? And this brings your whole leg into play. If you tap your toes with your heel as the fulcrum. What are you a structural engineering? Well, no, a little bit. But if you do this, it kind of takes your leg out of it. It's a little bit harder to control. Uh-huh. And if you use your whole leg as sort of an up and down.

That's interesting. That's how I think a lot of people feel it. Is this what you do too, Peter? Yeah, that's how I do. My heel is the- And it keeps your balance, I think, at the instrument in a little bit better place. Yeah, because you're on the balls of your feet.

And then tempo matters for this as well. Like if you're playing one, two, F blues, and this kind of medium tempo. I'm tapping on all four beats. He's tapping his whole foot. So imagine this is the foot, I'm gonna show you. But let's say if we were to do like, like an F blues, one, two,

One, two, three, full. Yeah, I'm tapping on one and three. Interesting. So I'm tapping in halftime here. And that's for a couple of reasons. A, this is going to get tiring after a while. And B, if you're in halftime, it relaxes your feel as your... It's like you're almost feeling the slower time and then double timing on top of it.

It's like a two feel, right? Yeah. But you try to keep that sort of... And it's not two and four, right? Like, I figure who... You're on one and three all through that, right? It might have been Joe Chambers way back in the day told me once, like, the, is Joe Chambers or Reggie Workman?

Someone, someone big at the new school that I was like just, you know, pie-eyed studying with or whatever, but said the lower half your body is for one and three, and the upper half your body is for two and four. Like, it's the nature of that kind of relationship. But that's like the original street beat. Yeah, that's the drum kit. If your body is the drum kit, that, you know, you need to be grounded on the one. Right.

Right. But that's not, you know, if you're playing a ballad, two, three, four, you can't, like, it's going to be hard to tap on just one and three. Right. Like, at this slower tempos. So I will definitely, and this is just by the way, just what I'm naturally doing. I'm just naturally going to tap on all four beats. And like you said, it's not consistent. Right.

It's not like I never tap on all four beats on a faster tempo. It's never, sometimes I don't tap at all. Yep. Sometimes I'm just kind of like. And I don't think there's. any connection between, oh, you're not feeling the groove when you're not, like, it would be great if it was like that because then it would be like, okay, make sure you do this with your foot,

everybody, and that'll line up, that'll line you up with the groove. Can I make one more case for the one and three tapping or stomping? State your case, brother. If you're playing a new piece of music, it's a little bit faster. And you think about it as the bars are going by as like one, two, two, two, two, three, two, four. It's just easier to keep the form, actually.

Like if you're, say you're like reading a complicated chart, this is also good for sight reading. Like keeping this on the half note for faster things, it doesn't, it kind of slows down the chart. It slows down time. Right, because the way it segments it. You put it in two in your body. And even sometimes you'll notice Peter Players, and I do this all the time. One is on the outside. Two is on the inside of the heel. So my heels like actually one, two, two to kind of give it this. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. I've definitely done that. I think too, like what you were saying with one and three when we were doing. Yeah.

Where you'd be like, this would be the foot. Or more like, like a lot of people afraid to do that because they're like, they need down, dang, dang, dang, okay. But if you think about the feel, either one can work. And in fact, that's a good way to practice with your tapping. And you could do it with the left hand also with just like one, two, three, four. So that's on two and four, right? Now, it goes to one and three.

His foot has switched to one and three, too. Switch again. So I think that, like, practicing like that, you might do one and three and then switch to two and four. The idea is that you're still swinging and interacting with the groove in the same way, but it's a little bit of just like a challenge, a little bit of simplifying and isolate. But it's just to show that, like,

because I thought when I learned like the two and four thing, I was like, okay, I can see how that's important when you get to give that a little bit of emphasis, like the forward propelling of the groove. But even if you're a boom, the groove can still propel forwards, right? Because especially when you get to faster temples, I remember seeing McBride in a clinic we were doing at Indiana University where he was saying, like, for bass players, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, like he recommended either the ones per bar tapping. And when he said tap, I remember, I don't know, he might even said feeling it, but also one

and three. He's like, if you try to feel it on two and four, he's like, you still are feeling the, the groove moving forward on two and four, but it's like, it would be like, you know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Caleb and I just played a gig last week. Either one can work, but like the one and three can be a nice place to play. Where was that tune we did? The song is you or something like that? And the singer like counted it off there.

Oh, yeah. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da do. And that's exactly what I, at least what I was doing to get through it. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, was tapping on one. Right, right. There's also something that can happen, Peter. If we do another F blues, like one. Yeah, because people, sorry.

They confuse. They think, oh, if you're on one, then it's not going to be swing. It's like, once you get that swing feel, that's going to be there wherever you place your tapping. And it should be. It's a good way to challenge yourself. And it actually, it's way more,

like if you're doing something at that tempo, da-da-da-da-da-do-d-d-do-do-do. Like we were doing a C, but what key you in? E-flat. Yeah. So if you're doing it one, two, three, four, one, two, three-four, one, two, like if you can get that one going, you're going to do some more interesting shit

other than just like, Like try to overplay from the beginning. Try that again and I'll play like a bass line which you'd be playing over. One, two, three. Yeah, that's a great way to really be able to fly over it because you think you have to be doing that. Remember, that's sprinkles.

That stuff is sprinkles. Like get the melody in you and relax. One more thing I want to just say about this and back to Emma Cohen's point about the dance of movement and keeping, really, we're talking about feeling the music in our bodies. Yeah. is like if you notice we do like something in a nice one two F blues one two three four a lot of players and I do this too it's not just about the foot there's a little sway that

starts to happen in the rest of your body is the head and we're not thinking about this maybe the gaze shoo it's gazing at the shit I did this a lot I don't I bob my head a lot like up on the one just trying to like I think what I'm doing here I don't think about this this zone baby I am I am kind of, I'm dancing. Like, I'm trying to dance to the music to try to like, it helps so much, right? Because you're like, it makes it, first of all, it makes it kind of happy.

It doesn't help when you're looking at you. That's why I was like, I look like an idiot. But don't, I can't look at that. I can't look at the monitor. But, no, like, actually, like, thinking about it, like, I'm going to dance with this music right now and to see what comes out. It's a huge part of it.

Look at that. Look at the face he's making. Look at the. It's going to bite his lower lip. Come on now. Podcast listeners, if you could see that. Well, this is great, man. Check out the YouTube channel if you want to see it.

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