You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Getting Beyond the Changes

Episode Date: June 6, 2019

Peter's still in Washington D.C. calling in remotely to talk with Adam about improvising, but without having to think about it.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.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, Adam. What's up? Stay tuned at the very end of this episode. I got a surprise for you. At the very end. Okay. Okay. I'm Adam Manus.

And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hearer podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. Hey, check out Open Studio for amazing courses from such incredible jazz artists like Peter Martin here. Jeffrey Kieser, Christian McBride, Diane Reeves, Warren Wolf, Peter Sprague, Ameriobambo. Ulysses Owens Jr. Who am I leaving out?

Steve Wilson, Sean Jones, Greg Hutchinson. I mean, come on. Ruben Rogers. Alvese coming soon. Adam Manus. Alves. Jumpstar piano jazz.

There's truly, I mean, I've got a lot of stuff now, Pete. We've been working hard, man. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, come see us at openstudionetwork.com. And is it still openstudionnetwork.com?

It is. We're about to transition, but we're not ready to announce that yet. All right. They'll always be able to find us somehow, some way. I mean, you're listening to our podcast. So, you know, there's probably a good chance you know what that's all about. Anyway, man, today we're talking about getting beyond the changes. Do you have any idea what that means?

I've been trying to change up a bunch of things in my life, and I'm getting beyond it. So I absolutely do know. We should just know we are remote. We're so smooth. But people, if you're seeing it on the YouTube, big shout to YouTube, keep searching, keep videoing, keep doing all that. Way to go Google. But we are remote for day, too. But I'm excited because it went so good yesterday that, I don't know.

Maybe I'll never come back. I wouldn't be opposed to it. You're in D.C., is that right? D.C., Washington, D.C., our nation's capital. Nice. Kennedy Center. Nice. Yeah.

Sure's quiet around here. Peaceful and quiet. It's really nice. Piano's all to myself. It's great. Nice. So we got an email from Nick. I'm Nick from the UK,

and my question is, I have started a couple of monthly jazz clubs in the area, and they're going really well. I get to play with, and people get to see the top UK players in our town, so all good. It's a real learning curve for me, and I sometimes get roasted, particularly on soling, on really fast tempos. You did a podcast on fast tempos, and something you said struck me, and I wonder if you could elaborate on this.

You said you don't think about the changes anymore. I'd love to find out more about this way of getting beyond changes. Cheers and keep up the amazing work. Nice. Thanks, Nick, from the UK. Yeah, that's a great question. You know, it's something that we don't really talk about a lot, but it's, I think very, very important when you're improvising.

I mean, let's talk about like sort of some mental goals while you're improvising. For me, it's to think about nothing. And I've heard you say that as well. I don't want to think about it. It's easy for me. I'm empty-headed. My wife says empty-headed. Not a lot going on up here either, man.

But, you know, when we're improvising, I think we're at our best when we are just listening and reacting and not thinking about changes or our time. or what we want to do in the solo or what we want to eat for lunch. You know what I mean? Like the more we can be out of our heads and in the moment purely with the music and the people we're in the room with, the better. So, okay, that's easy to say. But actually achieving this is something that takes a lot of work.

Yeah, I think if we, yeah, easier said than done, but also actually not that hard to start on that. journey to sort of that promise land of what you're describing. We can start this today or the next time you play at one of your organized jam sessions, as you said, give yourself the leeway to just get a little bit better at this. It's kind of like meditation. We've talked about meditation and this will help you if you do meditation, you know, guided or otherwise.

But the idea is that, yeah, you want to kind of get everything out except for the thing that you're thinking about. But the other, it's not that you can actually keep every thought from creeping. Something will creep in a car. our horn will honk or play a wrong or whatever, that's okay. But like, are you ready to go back to being empty-headed or whatever? So that's the goal. If we get just a little bit better each time, that's fine.

Don't put the pressure on yourself of like, boom, roasted this time because it's not binary. It's not like I failed and then I succeeded and you pass some line. It's going to be a gradual ascent. And then all of a sudden you're going to be like, wow, I'm kind of in the moment. And, you know, 97% of what I'm playing is really good. So I'm well into that category where the momentum starts to kind of take care of itself. Yeah. Is that your experience with it?

It's totally my experience. And meditation has helped me achieve that too. We've talked about that before that, you know, for me, I use the tools that I've learned in my meditation practice on stage all the time. Because you're right. Like, no one has achieved enlightenment that we're aware of. And so, like, what happens when thoughts creep in? All kinds of thoughts from, like, what are we going to play next to? who's that

do I know that person that just walked in the club? Like to all this, you know what I mean? Like all that stuff can get in the way of what we want to be, which is in the moment.

So I find it very, very helpful. Another thing that I think of sometimes when I'm, when things are popping in my head is, and I remember a teacher told me this once that our attention tends to follow our eyes. So if I start to wander, I'll either look down at the keyboard

or maybe at a musician, that I might want to make a connection with, like the drummer or the bass player, you know. And I'll focus my visual attention on something, and that will kind of bring me to the moment, you know, even just being like, I'm just going to watch the bass player's finger, hit the string.

And I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm just going to watch that. And it kind of, that's where my attention goes. Or I'm just going to watch my hands on the piano and not think about the chord changes. Those things I find very helpful. And then, you know, go ahead. You know, I was just think of Sophie for that.

You could apply what it really is. There's a number of different distractions, you know, and certainly visual and things that happen. There's all these different things. And somebody could say, well, I have a different kind of distraction. But the idea is that we're getting in the habit of overcoming them, removing them, or putting ourselves in the position. You know, it's like we talked about habits two weeks ago, I think.

Yeah. And, you know, something that is, you know, really takes a higher level, maybe of concentration and, kind of combination of concentration, skill, agility, dexterity, all these kind of things that we have to pull together in order to be able to play fast, so to speak, you have to get in a lot of good habits and combine them, you know. So that's why we, you know, we sort of take our time with this, but you can do certain things like, like maybe you position yourself, maybe just close your eyes. That's the easiest way not to be, you know, if you're being distracted by something

visually, or you position the seat a little bit or whatever you have to do. And then, eventually you'll get to the point where you're in the habit of just not being distracted visually, then you can open your eyes again and it won't bother you as much. If you kind of focus, if the drums like distract or throw you off, even if they're really good, if that like keeps you from being able to play fast or whatever, concentrate on the base. Get in the habit of doing that. But whatever it is that we do, it can't, you can't just do it once. You know, to form a habit. Some people say it takes two weeks or 10,000 hours, whatever. It's never that easy, but you got to do it over and over against till like it just sort of, because, you know, there's the undoing

of bad habits, and I want to talk about those, you know, to the point of Christian McBride, we always come back, I can tell you some things not to do. It's almost easier to focus on those. But as we're getting rid of the bad habits, we want to be bringing in new habits. But sometimes as we get rid of the bad habits, especially with this kind of thing for playing fast, you'll be actually kind of automatically almost replacing them with good habits. That's so true. Yeah.

And I think actually the biggest bad habit that will get in the way and kind of rear its ugly head for playing fast is breathe. Yeah, for sure. We talk about number one listen, but a lot of times when we're playing fast, remember we had Rubin Rogers in the studio and he said number one, we were like, listen, he's like, no, breathe, you know, and so. What a breather that guy is. Man, he's a breather.

Man, that dude is straight oxygen, man. It's like he's in Aspen, Colorado, even when he's at sea level. It's incredible. No, but he did that exercise. I think you guys were playing Cherokee or something, like just crazy fast. And he kind of exaggerated how he breathes, and he breathed. and he breathes these beautiful, big, slow breaths as he's doing this unbelievably physical activity on the base,

you know, these super fast quarter notes played, like, perfectly even and, you know, struck in just the most beautiful way. One thing I was thinking about as you were talking about getting out of your head is, is like, instead of thinking about the changes as a intellectual concept, think about the changes as a sound, right? Sometimes I'll think about that. I don't, I won't future cast like, okay, next up is two five to E flat. But I try to think about the sound that's about to happen.

You know what I mean? Or I mean, that just naturally happens where like the sound comes to me of what's about to go on. And so that's in a way like I think when we're really out of the changes. We're just hearing what's happening. What's happening next is anticipated, but in the sound of it, not in like the name of it. You know what I mean? I like that. Yeah, yeah.

Now, I'm thinking like what that made me think of was sort of sound. in kind of a general maybe harmonic area that we could apply our improvisational sounds or melodies or whatever, like thinking about what sounds are available. That's what comes to my mind. And maybe even stretching things out bigger than they are. Like if the chords are moving really fast,

like we think of Cherokee as the chords moving really fast, but if you think about tonal centers and kind of diatonic movements and stuff, you can actually stretch about that they're even really fast. You're sitting there for a while. Is it a couple? Like every two beats. Yeah.

It's not like giant steps. No, no, no, no. Yeah, just a couple in the C sections. Yeah, worst case scenario, we can just go, you know, straight B flat major scale. I mean, it won't work great, but it'll work, right? Yeah, don't be a hero. But don't be a zero. Don't be a zero.

One more thing, Nick, and I should have, we probably should have started with this, but the obvious thing on this is you don't want to get stuck thinking about something because you don't know it. You know what I mean? Like, if you don't, if there's a B flat, if you want to play a B flat 7, flat nine and you don't know that your half whole scale that great, like, that's going to be a problem. So really, you have to put in the work to just get these things in your finger, in your brain so that you can recall them without having to think about them. Like, that's the first thing, you know, obviously. Yeah. And the other thing, too, is I just heard a story that I

remember because I was there, it was years ago. It was great Marcus Princeup, who's wonderful trumpeter from Georgia, who's up here teaching with us. He told the story about when we were on tour with Whitmer Salas years ago. And I remember. ever being there and it was such a cool thing. Witness somebody who's known to trumpet player, I mean to everybody, but like as being a master of like being able to relax and really just kill at fast temples. And like he's been playing Cherokee for years.

I heard one at first when I think when I was in high school. Just incredible agility and like right in the time and like, you know, phrasing and everything. But there was, we were playing somewhere and he, we did like it was with the big band, I think, the Lincoln Center. And then like on the encore, he called Cherokee. It was just, it was kind of funny because, like, he played okay, but it wasn't the usual, like, Winton thing.

And I think he'd been dealing with a lot of stuff and maybe, you know, it was still really good. And if you didn't know him or hadn't heard him, you'd be like, wow, that was great. But it wasn't the typical kind of went playing over Cherokee. And we all kind of felt it on stage, but it was like, yeah, whatever. You know, everyone could have an off night. But it was weird for him, especially on that tune and playing fast. But when we came off stage, you know, normally wouldn't it's so great. Like, right afterwards, he's, like, signing autographs and meeting young musicians and all this kind of

stuff I've never seen this like he went in his dressing room closed the door right after and was in their shedding slowly over Cherokee he didn't care that everyone and he sat there for like an hour like just practicing you know so it's also it's not a thing of like oh we've achieved an enlightenment and now we've mastered this you know you have to be checking yourself all the time and you know trumpet piano bass all these different instruments have different technical challenges for playing fast And once you get it, don't think you're always going to have it. You've got to keep maintaining it, you know. But you've got to have that dedication, discipline, and commitment and love of the music and love of coming through at those fast temples to be able to sustain that over time.

So true. Thank you, Nick, for sending in the email. Great question. Yeah. If you want to send us an email, Pete, where should they go? They should go to Gmail and form an account and then go to their outbox. and say, what is it, create email? And then send that to, I don't know where they send it, actually.

Do they send it to Andrew at Open Studio? Andrew, can we get Jeff clap back in here, please? Just much more. Is he much? The clapper, clapper. No, they send it to, I really don't know. Where do they send it? You know, you go to You'll hear it.com.

You can leave us a message. You can leave us a speak pipe. And I set that up for you on a golden tea. No, you didn't because you said, where would they send us an email? And that's kind of a funny thing because we've never had a you'll hear it email address. Oh, that's true. Okay, so that is, that is my bad. That is my bad. That's okay. Yeah, go to you'll hear.com. Check out the new blog. Maybe it's not new to you, but it's new to somebody. We've been having a lot of sharing and ratings and reviews. We're not going to ask for those, but just say that that's being done.

But it really leads to we just got that message today about, oh, I just heard about your podcast. You've been living under a jazz rock? Do I have to call the jazz police on you? No. I mean, there's still people discovering us that want to hear this. So keep that up. And then do we talk about our special? secret surprise after the... Oh, yeah. That's enough. Oh, they'll see it. They'll see it.

Hey, but you did say you wanted to end on a song. What song you're talking about? Um, I did not say that. What are you talking about? No, I said we're going to, after the ending song, our normal one, there's going to be a surprise. Oh, okay. I got you. A new tradition.

This is, I mean, you surprised me, man. I don't even know what's going on. Hey, man, that's how we do it. So, we'll talk about it more tomorrow because... You'll hear it. I'm Matt Amis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast.

Daily Jazz Advice coming out. you coming at you today sponsored by open studio open studio is a place where you can uh get jazz lesson la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la that's a good blooper that's your blooper right there no that's the kind of thing dude tell andrew this should be easy a f because we have bloopers every time see andrew