You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Fitness & Diet Check-In

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

It's another live edition of You'll Hear It where Peter and Adam take your questions. Today, Peter and Adam discuss their latest fitness practices and how it improves their jazz playing.Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Wednesday's Open Studio Live Events (All Times EST):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Edu Ribeiro + Joe La Barbera | Drum Conversations + Q&A on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

All right, now it is time for, do you know what? Fitness and diet check-in. So I'm going to give you some music. Fitness and diet check-in. Are we doing the same? No, we can't. Okay. I was thinking maybe, I don't know.

Fitness is important. Hey, baby. I don't know if you notice, but I've been working on my flexibility. both in and in my yoga game it's the fitness and diet check we're on a diet we're not dying

I want you to know that I'm plant-based but only before five after five is all on baby after five it's just meat all the time after five I'm like a bad fragrance a bad perfume leaking all over the place we don't even know what the hell we're saying What are we doing?

Diet and fitness checking We're getting back on track Right to diet and fitness check it We don't want none of that You gotta eat right To feel right to practice right It's diet and fitness checking Right now coming at you

That's so horrible So horrible Okay so this is my special request From our friend Ian Marling who is actually on here, driving across the country, soon to be a meditation and mindfulness expert guru for Open Studio. We'll talk about that later.

Yeah, we're going to get him in on the old Open Studio Pro, if you all know what I. OSP. OSP. But it was a request that we get back on track with our fitness and diet check-in. So I did a fun thing yesterday. I did an easy 10-mile run over on the Katie Trail. And what this reminded me of is, you know,

we had some nice weather yesterday. It was a little on the cool side, but it was sunny. And I think especially during this time, get out in nature. Get out in nature where there's some trees and there aren't some people. This is a great time to really push

the limits of some social distancing maybe because, you know, it's just easier to relax. Like I think we need to think about, it's the same thing like for playing music, you know, like we've both had some experiences where we've played in the studio

and like you're masked up or people having to take tests before you go on film. Like this is a difficult time to commune with other people. So let's just not, let's embrace that. Instead of just saying, oh, no, we can't spend time with people.

Let's spend time with nature. Nature's still safe, as far as I know. The maple trees aren't going to give you COVID. Absolutely. No, this time has actually convinced me that it's, I need to be outside a little bit every day. Yeah. I've got to. And it's hard this time of year, right?

Because it's like, you know. It's not that bad. It's not like we live in, you know, Saskatchewan or something. I know. But, I mean, it's like you got to kind of, you got to kind of make an effort to do it. But I was so rewarded for doing that. And it brings back so much energy to me. the energy between nature and music,

you know, nature and art, really. It just is such a, there's a couple of different levels that it comes at, but I think just on that very primal level of we want to make music like the way, you know, and it's whatever you believe in God, Mother Earth, it doesn't matter, like whatever the creator, whatever created all this beauty that's outside that when we're inside, we start to forget about,

we're looking at men and woman made great creations as far as music. It's not even close, though. It's not even close, exactly. And, you know, nature can give inspiration to all of us. And it gives you a chance to get out there and hear stuff. Like, I was just hearing music that I'm not normally hearing because it's quiet. You're hearing the river.

I'm on the Missouri River. And I'm hearing the water lap. And I'm like, there's so much inspiration there that we can directly take. So that was, and then, you know, getting some fitness in is always good as well to be, to going along with that. But it's definitely along the mindfulness vein. and along the vein of being able to have something once we come back to our instrument, creative juice that's not just external

from other music that we're listening to. Totally, super important. Fitness and die and check-in for you, big guy. Fitness and dying and checking for me, oh yeah, you know, I'm still trying all sorts of stuff. I realized, I think, oh, boy. Trying different stuff. This is border.

on that Saturday Night Live sketch. He's trying different stuff. He's on the border. Make a run for the border. Taco Bell, your Kiro, Taco Bell. What do I do? The what up with that? You know, I'm talking about this bordering.

I like it. The hi-hat starts. Yeah, exactly. Fitness and diet. All up in your lion. No, man, I just, I realized the other day, I'm trying so much of like, of subtraction with my diet,

and then I'll add things back in. and I'll be like, no, I don't like the feel of that either. I think I'm just bored. I think I'm bored with like eating every, you know, before COVID, I don't know if you knew this about me, but I was like, I'm a huge fan of restaurants. I love restaurants so much. You're a foodie. You are the prototypical, you are to foodie what Lewis and Archang is to the West End Blues

in the pantheon of music. I mean, I love food so much, but I specifically love restaurants and I love people who care about food. I think they're just as nerdy and interesting. interesting is people who care about music. And so before COVID, I'm like, you know, I'm at least a one meal a day out kind of person. Yeah. And I like to go out, like go out to the restaurant type of diner.

I'm not a big carryout guy or delivery guy. I never have been. I am now. Not by choice. But, you know, so now I'm like eating at home all the time. It's part of the whole experience. It's part of the whole experience. And I can't cook for squat.

And so, you know, my wife is amazing at it, but I can't. She's not going to cook me every meal. So I just get been getting bored. I think I've just started like taking stuff out just to see what happens. Right. So anyway, long story short, I tried adding some fancy chocolate, some sugar back into my diet. That's not going to work. I don't tell you that much, right?

You got a little crack cocaine situation going on. You can't just add a little chocolate back into the diet. Cool. All right. Well, that was very successful. We got a check in. Let's move on. Okay.

You know, we've lost our buddy Brian Fielding on that. Ryan goes, boarding on cray craye fellas. What's cray craye? I don't know what's going on. Cool. Adam, I'm falling all over your laughter right now.

Look at that. Bam. I like it. Boopoo, boom, Barry White Boys. Okay. So let's move on now to the question and answers. Oh,

but let's, you know what we haven't been doing? We've missed the last couple of weeks with our remote situation is wins. Wins of the week. Oh, yeah. Let's talk a little bit about that. You got one front of mind?

Wins of the week. Oh, man. Oh, I got it. I got it. I successfully wrote an arrangement for four contra bases for Al Langsine. Wow. I know. I didn't think I could do it either.

That sounds like it has a deadline of New Year's Eve. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, no, no. It was a little project commissioned by the St. Louis Symphony that I'm so proud to be a part of. And man, I didn't, they asked you to do a bass quartet, and you're like, what? But luckily they're monsters over there. And so there's pretty much nothing they can't play.

Yeah. So I had a really fun time writing it, actually. I'm very proud of it. I can't wait to hear it. Well, nothing says dumpster fire year and pandemic, like four basses ending the year playing. No, I shouldn't say that at all. In the bass, I mean, I'm really interested to hear that

because the bass is a difficult instrument to write for things that are challenging unless you have really good players but when you get into multiples like that you have to be very careful for sure you know I mean improvising is one thing because you can like I'm thinking about I heard some live a great duo

at least two times with Ray Brown and Christian McBride and but they're able to like play to like physically you know go up when they go down but you know you can I've heard a bunch of actually those duos that are wonderful I spent most of my time mapping out the the geography of it like where was everybody

going to go if everybody was playing at the same time How can you make beautiful four-note chords? There are some bass quartets in the literature that I was checking out a little bit, but it's not a lot. And so how do you do a whole chorus of like choral bass music essentially? Yep. It's tough. Yep. Good.

All right. So let's move on to some Q&A. We got some good ones. I'm going to jump as I like to do to the bottom of the list because I'm like a squirrel with my attention. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. A practice.

Like is A, is that short for Alata or I or Allen practice? Who knows? Anyway, A practice is asking, Peter, do you listen to music while running, jazz or what kind? Okay, I do not listen to music generally when I'm running. In fact, I've stopped listening to anything when I'm running for quite a few months now at the behest and recommendation of my coach. And it's been a real, because we're doing something. some ties between mindfulness and running specifically.

It's kind of not necessarily a requirement, but it would be very hard to practice any level of mindfulness. I think while you're, at least the way I listen to music. I'm not a big background music guy, as I think that you aren't either in that it's very hard for me to just have, I mean, maybe like white noise or something like that,

but if it's something good, like it's going to get my attention at some point. So, you know, although with running, you could certainly be listening and focusing in on that, because I'm trying to like really be free of a lot of things except sort of some specific thoughts that I'm going through

or kind of just being commuting with nature or just you know emptying my head which is not that hard with this guy did you ever do this guy's got two thumbs in an empty head I used to like you know daft punk did you ever do that like some like like hype music yeah I have trouble with that unless it's like right in some kind of rhythm with you know some runners do that They get the BPMs where they want it. Oh, there's a whole playlist you can do now with like your running cadence. Yeah.

Yeah. But I just love the sound of like either the feet kind of moving or the rustling, whatever. So for a long time, I was listening to podcasts and like audio books, which I love doing. But that's such a like you're paying attention to that. So I've just found by really just doing one. I mean, how often do we just do one thing that's a little bit more primal, you know, go for a walk and not be on your phone or listen. I mean, it's nice sometimes to listen to something.

But like, you know, I mean, just have a conversation with someone where it's just, you know, not online and everything like we're doing, you know. But, I go on epic daily walks. Have I told you about these? I go on like two hour walks. Are those escape walks? I sure I don't want to read. Well, I do need some alone time.

I live at a little house with three other people. No, but I do go on these long walks. It's a great way for me to do like, I can do three things on a long walk like that. Because it's like two hours long, right? So I can listen to music. I can listen to a whole album. And then I can be very quiet and actually do some mindfulness practice, some walking practice, either slow practice, if I'm somewhere where that's possible or even just walking along.

and, you know, whatever that is. Focusing on the sounds is always great for walking. And then listen to podcast too. So that's where you got to go. You got to go, these 10-mile runs, you're probably too fast at it now. Well, dude, no, no, no, I'm taking them nice and easy because that's my instruction, and I'm loving it, man. Easy running is the way to go.

So that's another thing I'm doing in terms of it's almost become a mindfulness exercise in itself. I tried it for the first time yesterday. It was every mile I do a mindful check-in, but then every half-mile, Every mile on the halves, I recite something, some poetry or Pledge of Allegiance or something to make sure that I'm not overstressing. Like, if you can have a hold of conversation, then you're on an easy run. That's kind of the way it works. So instead of having to worry about your heart rate or whatever, you just sort of check in on. And if you're running with someone, it's great because you can talk and there's only so fast you're going to go and still be able to talk.

But if not, I have that little once, you know, once a mile checking. That works nice.