You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Forget playing just one instrument.

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

Peter and Adam respond to a listener question about expanding from a guitar player to a "musician". Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested 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.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hey. Should I learn guitar or should I be a musician? You're digging yourself into a hole there. I want to see how you get out of this one. I'll take my chances. Okay. I'm Adamannis.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast. Music, advice, inspiration, and listening, dopedness coming at you. I'm just trying some stuff out. You're always experimenting with the tagline. It's never been the same tagline for more than three weeks in a row. Well, you know what?

I feel like I'm a tinkerer. Sue me. I'm a tinker. Constantly tinkering. Plus, we're getting around holiday time. I got to tell you, you still got young, relatively young, really cute kids. They're getting older every second. They are.

But you're probably still in the time where you can tinker like Christmas Eve or Hanukkah Bunny Eve or whatever you celebrate over there where you're like, you're putting together the gifts, you're tink. I don't get to do that anymore. So I'm a tinker something. You're just sending like Amazon gift cards. Yeah, exactly. Cash money.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, by the way, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. That's right. And we just want to say that we are super thankful for. all of our you'll hear at listeners. You know, they've been with us now, Peter, for over three years. Right. And over 800 episodes.

It's amazing. And just want to thank you guys. We love you. We love you. We thank you. And it's because of you guys that we're able to come together and do this. Excuse me. Not to say that we wouldn't.

Hey, this is a live show. I mean, it's not a live show. Did you just have some turkey or something? What's going on over there? I'm trying to project myself. So this will be like, you know, we're always projecting ourselves a few days into the future of how we're going to be feeling. So if you missed that, dear listener,

he just took a second to belch here live on our podcast. But he didn't. He held it in like a pro. Well, it was off right. You know what? I'm on my second spin drift. Take it easy with that bubbly water, man. Plus the espresso, that's a combustible situation. It is. It really is. Well. Carbonated

water is the main ingredient. Peter, I'm going to let you off the hook here because we have a feature today. This is the second week in a row of a feature, which I think is a record for us. Usually, first listen Friday, First track, fast track. What is it called? First Take Friday?

First Take Friday. I was like, first listen. First take Friday, we're a good three to four weeks in on that. That's set. I mean, that's like locked. That is pretty locked. And we've got a good one coming up this Friday, actually. You will know intimately because you were there for it.

And so I'm stoked about that. But today is SpeakPipe. I was the Man in the Room with the Man from Hamilton. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. That's a great song. Today we have a speak pipe because it's Speak Pipe Wednesday. is from Bruce. Let's check it out.

Thinking of music first. Hold on, Bruce. Hold on. You're jumping ahead. Here's Bruce. And instrument second. Well, you know, as you're pulling that up, I can tell folks, if you'd like to leave us a speakpipe in the future, go to you'll hear it.com where you can leave

a speak pipe. We make it sound fancy. It's just a voice memo. Yeah. It's a voice recording. And you get a chance to audition it. Try it out if you don't like it. I wish I had a chance to audition it. Yeah. It's not working out so far. But here's coming together. Here's Bruce's question. Hi, Peter and I'm.

It's Bruce from New York again. One more question. I've been trying to move beyond becoming a guitar player and becoming more of a musician. Okay. Stop right. Just a second. Wait, let's think about what he did. I don't think he deserves its own swoosh.

I don't think Bruce manned it to sound that way, but that's funny. That is hilarious. That's hilarious. And because he's so dead pet. Can we listen that again? Yeah. I don't know. We'll see.

Is that within your technical? Sure. It's definitely not, man. Now, you guys, before you started, you got to understand something about Adam Maness. You guys know him. You love him. This guy is a musical genius. He's an educating genius.

And what you may not know is like he knows how to mix video, mix audio at a high level while simultaneously mixing video. Now, can he load one voice memo at a time? We don't know. But we know in general his technical abilities are at a high level. Well, I'm one for five today. Let's give it another go. Hi, Peter. I'm from New York again.

Listen close. One more question. I've been trying to move beyond becoming a guitar player and becoming more of a musician. I've certainly listened to the Eol Hearer podcast has greatly advanced my ambitions of becoming a musician, really thinking of music first and instrument second. And I was curious whether you think there's a benefit or a big benefit in spending time to learn piano in addition to the instrument I've been playing guitar, or am I better spent, spending my time just focusing on guitar and improving on guitar,

do you think there's benefits in learning piano? Thank you very much. Well, Bruce, first of all, let me just say that if you're trying to become a better musician by listening to this podcast, you're already barking up the wrong tree. Yeah, and I would say, yeah, exactly. And then I would say, you know,

I like the way you presented the question. Should I become a better musician or keep playing guitar? I think those are my two choices. You know, get what he's saying, though. You know, it's interesting as I was listening to Bruce's question here, I was thinking about it, and like, I can't tell you how many pianists I know also play guitar and how many guitarists I know also play piano. Right.

Even if it's just a little bit of, like, you even play a little guitar. Very, very little. But, I mean, it's something you're interested in for sure. And me too. I love the guitar. And I know a ton of guitar players who are actually pretty decent at the piano or at least know enough to get around. Yes.

So I think if we just start there from that baseline, they seem to be pretty compatible. Right. Which would speak to the point I kind of was thinking. I wanted to make first was it doesn't have to be one or the other to become a better musician. I mean, either one is going to enhance your musicianship. So, I mean, unless you feel like, I don't know, sometimes we get into this thing of like, okay, I've got to make this decision so that I can move on to the next step. So if working on both of them at the same time is a little much, then just kind of pick one for now. And I would say whichever one you're more

comfortable with or more advanced, like more further along, I always figured that's better until you get to the point where you're going to be doing two at one. So it's like if one of the faders is already up and you know you're still not there, you're already closer, right? So you might as well keep pushing that fader up. Now, if later on you can push two faders up, that's fine. But there's also that kind of passion thing. Like if you're kind of just passionate about the piano and maybe frustrated with the guitar

or whatever, there's nothing wrong with switching gears a little bit. But you don't want to make this decision kind of the be all end all to becoming a great musician because you can just play like the flute and become a great musician. You don't have to play piano or guitar. We've talked about the importance of one or the other being able to play a cordal, not the importance, but the doors that it can open for you as an improviser and stuff. But it can be done without those. So I mean, it doesn't have to, it shouldn't be a pressure thing. It should because you want to do it. I'm glad you're setting it up because I'm about to go deep on why he should learn the piano. Actually, before I even do that, Bruce, I'll say this. And Peter, I'm sure you can

back me up on this too. It almost like the piano I think and I'll get into this in a minute is the perfect choice for your second instrument but a lot of musicians I know just also play many instruments. And like actually learning any other instrument than your primary instrument can be very, very helpful for your primary instrument. Learning how to play the drums can be super helpful. Yeah. As a guitarist, of course like bass is a natural fit because it's so closely related. But learning how to sing or play a horn, you know, a single note instrument if you play a multi-note instrument can be very, very handy. Yeah. You know what I mean? And just as far as like, oh, I have to breathe with the horn.

Like that can, for us pianists and guitars, we can just run notes after notes after notes. That can be very, very handy. Yeah. And so I'll say that too. And of course, you know, we always say learning the drums is super crucial. Yeah. Because learning the drums makes you better at everything you do musically. It's like part of, it's like how getting better with your ears and hearing pitches or chords or chord progressions or things is, is universally good no matter what instrument you play. Learning how to play the drums and learning how to move your body and rhythm is is universally good for you music no matter what your primary instrument is.

So with that said, learning any instrument is good. Yes. Yeah. But the piano is the best. No, it really is. For a few different reasons, especially if you're not a pianist, it's handy in ways that you don't even think. I think the biggest thing...

This is good. This is like saying, you know, I love everybody. No. But Portuguese language kind of boldly... I'm a pianist. I love to play the guitar. I play a little the drum

I play drums in high school I play a little bass I'm thinking about buying a little upright bass that I can mess around with because I think it's

handy to know what other people you're playing with and how their instruments work and what they're dealing with and where their sweet spot on their ranges are

I think all of that's cool however if you're looking for one second instrument right one instrument to enhance your musicality I think piano is perfect instrument because you can first of all

and this can't be understated if you have good vision and you can see things, you can see music on the piano easier than any other instrument. Guitar would probably be a close second, but you can't get to every place.

You don't have the range on the guitar that you do on the piano. And it's actually not as easy to see across the fretboard when you're holding a guitar. It's from the front. It's easy to shoot. But it's actually easier to see all these little black and white buttons

here in front of us. That's right. And just see how music might work in shapes. Right. So in that way, it can be very easy. The other way it can be easy is because the range is so huge and you can cover a lot of range

between your two hands, which you really can't on guitar. You have one hand that can cover the range of the range. And then there's even some things close that you just cannot do. It's so hard because of the way it's set up. Now it has advantages in that.

I can get some really cool sounds with the guitar, of course. But there's no beating the piano, I think, on that scale. Oh, there's beating the piano. I hear it many times. Oh, yeah, yeah. But as far as like learning

sort of the nuts and bolts of music, how harmony works, even how melody works, even some rhythmic stuff. I think the piano is a great, great choice. I agree. I do agree. I was kind of thinking it's like, how do we, it's not, well, okay, especially for certain things, composition, improvisation, you know, understanding, you know, working on ear training,

understanding, harmony, things like that. And I think that's why certainly for like jazz musicians and, you know, anything that leans heavy into improvisation, I would say it's the most common of the secondary instruments, or you're going to delve into an additional instrument of really good players that I know. I'm thinking like just, you know, great horn players and stuff. If they play something else, it's very rare. Like, they might play piano and guitar, like what you're talking about in bass and drums or whatever. Yeah.

But it's very rare if they're just doing one thing that it's anything but the piano, actually, now that I think about it. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Perfect. So that's more of a science-based approach to analyzing this. But Bruce, honestly, if you really want to become a better musician and you don't play piano or drums, learn how to play piano and drums.

It will never, the time you spent learning those instruments will be very useful. For your guitar playing. What about the clarinet? Why are you hating on clarinet? I'm not hitting it. Actually, I think it's a noble endeavor to learn a woodwind instrument. It's super hard to do. Yeah.

And it doesn't serve much purpose. Big sounds like that. Not Cohen who was just a... No, as a secondary instrument. There's not much you can do as a hack clarinetist. Right. That's true. That's true.

Yeah, and that's the thing about learning... Well, so to actually to learn as a second or third instrument, I'm just... I'm kind of playing devil's advocate a little bit here with the guitar. That does have some advantage. Like, we've talked about the piano advantages. Guitar has got a few advantages. Mobility?

Absolutely. Being able to take it to the beach? Totally. Is that something that might interest do you? No, I mean, this is not actually to be... on. Yeah. And I actually think...

Being able to strum romantically for somebody that you might be interested in wooing. So another thing that we're not talking about this is sometimes being on an instrument that's not your primary instrument can be incredibly inspiring. You know, I've written a ton of songs in my career, like pop song songs. And I've written almost all of them... Hitmaker, what? Not quite, but I've written almost all of that stuff on guitar. And that was just not my main instrument.

And it's almost because I don't know as much. and I have to rely on my instincts and my ear and I have to kind of find things and keep things a little more simple. Different relationship you have with the instrument. When I write that kind of stuff on piano, I get too tempted to make it too complicated and too whatever.

And guitar, I just simple. I write a tune. And then later, if I want to make it complicated and stupid, then I'll do that. We always have time for that. We always have time for that. Bruce, great question. Thank you so much.

If you want to leave a speak pipe, go to you'll hear it.com. Leave us a speak pipe. Say that faster. Leave us a speak pipe. Leave us a speak pipe. I leave us like, I believe it this possible. Really, leave us. Because we love answering these questions.

We're here to serve. We are, thank you for, thank us for our service, right? Don't. Can we board the aircraft first? Please don't fish for compliments from our users. Hey, everybody. Users. Our users are listeners.

Everybody who's in America here, have a great day tomorrow. Wow, that was super exclusionary. Well, because they don't celebrate Thanksgiving. I know, but that's not true. Canadian Thanksgiving? But that was in October. Well, why? So it's less valid because it was in October?

I'm saying, have a great Thanksgiving tomorrow to our American friends. No, but you were like, have a great Thanksgiving in America. You were very loud. It wouldn't make any sense to be like, to our German listeners, have a great Turkey Day tomorrow. Donkishane. They actually love Turkey. They do love Turkey.

Germans would love Thanksgiving, but they're not invited. It's an American, no, you're always invited. But it's an American holiday. Oh, boy. Oh, this is great. Well, we thank you if you made it all the way. to the end of this episode because this is where the real

the jewels and the gems exist. So thank you. Yeah, thanks everybody. Have a great holiday tomorrow to all of our people who celebrate Thanksgiving. How about that? That's better.

Okay. Until that. Until next time. Until Thanksgiving. You'll hear it.