You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Gotta Get That Boost!

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

How to get a 37% boost in your practice session every time with Peter Martin!Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey Peter. Hey, what's up? Uh, got a little something I got to talk to you about. Okay. Um, you seem to be talking to yourself today. Oh, really? Uh, yes. Do you know why? Yes, in fact, I do. Could you tell me why? Yes, because I am rolling. We are rolling solo style on the you'll hear of podcast today. I'm Peter Martin and you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast. Jazz explained. And yes, I am here for yet another once again, solo. edition of the podcast. Adam is out in the woods of Minneapolis, not Minneapolis. What is that state? Minnesota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, somewhere. He's up somewhere doing something. I have a little vacation. So I am in the pod front at the new Open Studio HQ. Big shout out to our sponsors, Open Studio Jazz. You'll be hearing a little bit more about them later. But I'm here at the new podfront by myself and excited to bring to you guys a, a podcast. pod that I think will be very helpful. I hope it's very helpful for some of you. I hope it's helpful for me as a reminder to myself because we're talking about practice today and practice.

I mean, listen, we're talking about practice. Yes, thank you, Alan Iverson. This is such a big part of our development as musicians. And so we've got to love, we've got to fall in love with the process, fall in love with the practice and it makes it so much more fun when we can be more efficient when we can get more accomplished when we can feel like we're getting better every day with our practice

and there's very specific things that we can do and talking about specific specific specific specific let's talk about some specificity see I'm practicing how to say that word but let's talk about that because today I'm going to give you away

actually five ways for every one of your practice sessions to be boosted by 37%. Now you might ask Peter, how can you guarantee that this is 37%. I'm going to guarantee if you follow these five ideas, these concepts, these hacks that you'll have a minimum of a 37% boost in your practice. Now that number of 37% might sound sort of arbitrary and full disclosure, it is entirely arbitrary. But the idea is just that we're getting better with our practice, with a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more intentional approach in these ways. So I hope you enjoyed today.

And let's jump right in. Okay, number one on how to give every practice session a boost by 37%. Number one is to have a plan. Now, we've talked about this many times here on the pod. and in getting the chance and the honor to work with the great Ron Carter, the maister himself on his course recently. Those are three words that he repeated several times, many times during that course. And he certainly knows a little thing about practicing and getting better in a lifetime of mastery of an instrument. But those three words of have a plan are so important.

And so that's where we're starting. I mean, it's very easy to sit down at your instrument or stand up, as it were, depending on what you're playing. but it's easy to like just jump right in you know you're excited about a new tune you've been learning a solo you saw something on youtube you want to try you just want to feel the piano you want to just like you know play that flurry of notes on the trumpet whatever it is it's very easy to just start playing right and it's fun and it feels good especially as you're getting better so no problem with that but if you want to have a practice session where you're really going to you know, see some gains, see a boost in your efficiency, see a boost in your playing,

then you've got to have a plan. And once you start to get into actually going on that practice journey, it's very hard to develop the plan as you go, right? So this have a plan can be a mental model, a framework that you have, if that's kind of the way that you roll and that's the way that you can do things. Oftentimes I find writing it down is helpful. I think for many people writing it down, on paper.

You know, maybe you have a practice journal, a Poojo, as we used to say here at the, at the podcast, practice journal. But however you need to do it, just you want to organize that plan and do it in a way that you understand it, that you feel like, okay, I understand what I'm going to try to do. This is what the plan is. It's not, it doesn't need to be so rigid that you're like not giving yourself any chance to alter the plan when you need to.

But if you don't have a plan to start with, you're just going to end up kind of meandering. You might still make some improvements. You might have some fun. You might have some breakthroughs even. But if you have a plan and a framework with some flexibility, but a full proof plan to say, I'm going to go through and do A, B, C, D, and E today. And this is the order I'm going to do it in.

And then you go in and start to do that. You have a much better chance of success. Okay? So that's number one. Have a plan. Let's move on to number two. as part of your plan, I want to encourage you to have one thing that you want to accomplish each day. Okay?

Now, I know I said A, B, C, D, E. There's going to be different steps. It might be just A and B some days. It might be A through Z. There might be 10 steps. It might be two steps in your plan. But you want to have one thing that is your most important number one thing that you want to accomplish each day. And you want to identify that as part of it.

of your plan. So what are some examples? Well, it could be to learn eight bars, the next eight bars of a solo you're working on. It could be learning the next 32 bars of the solo. If that's a realistic plan. You need that number one thing to be a part of a realistic plan. So you're going to have to use some judgment and a little bit of kind of reviewing in terms of how you work and what your pacing is and how that will work into the time frame that you have to practice. but I find it really useful when I have just one thing that I know I want to accomplish because then if the plan goes awry or let's say things get cut short and you know the place that you have to practice you can't practice there anymore or there's an emergency or I don't know a lot of things can can happen that can cause us to you know for a practice to be cut short but if you have that number one thing in mind and you get that accomplished then you can always feel like, okay, part of my plan went awry, but I got that one thing. So that one thing should not be pushed all the way to the end of your practice probably. It should be more front-loaded

so that you've got the energy so that you've got the insights and you've got the timing to be able to get that done. But you always want to kind of look back at your practice session each day and say, okay, I got this accomplished. And that doesn't have to just be learning new bars or solar or learning a new tune. It could be, you know, reviewing your scale fingering on your diminished scales. It could be, you know, any of the things that you practice. But you want to identify that kind of number one goal, the number one thing that you want to accomplish. And then I think it can really help us as we develop, you know, multi-day plans and multi-week plans to be able to start to give some priority to what that number one thing is. When you're first starting to kind of get

your practice skills together and boost your efficiency in your practice session, just have one thing that you know you want to accomplish. Don't worry so much about it stretching over days and days. Just have that one thing that you want to get done. And a lot of times this can be based upon like, I want to review this particular tune because I'm going to a jam session or I've got a gig coming up and I need to know it. So those things start to unroll themselves to multi-day plans organically. So if you knew you had a gig this weekend and there was like five tunes that they were probably going to call that you need to know, maybe over from Monday through Friday, you're committing

to reviewing one tune per day and that's going to be your one thing each day. You're going to practice other things too because maybe the reviewing is only going to take you 20 minutes or 10 minutes, whatever. But you've got that thing locked in. So then the multi-day thing starts to happen. All right. Number three. Now, this is super important.

kind of works with have a plan and the number one thing. But that is when you start to practice, if you really want to boost your efficiency, this is going to be counterintuitive, but it's very important. And that is to not just jump right into playing. So even after you have your plan, don't just jump right in. Identify that number thing. One thing you want to accomplish. But then when you're ready to start to attack your instrument, take a breath,

relax. Don't start your practice out from a frenzied standpoint, from a frantic standpoint. from a frantic standpoint. Think about how you're going to warm up. And this is very dependent upon, you know, the weather and the time of year and what instrument you play. And if you're a vocalist, you need to do particular kind of warm-ups. But regardless of what you play, you want to take a breath, a very deep breath, at a minimum

before you start practicing. If you have the time and the inclination, you might want to do a short meditation practice, two minutes, one minute, five minutes, whatever stage you're in with your meditation. but regardless is don't just jump right in. Even if you're on limited time, if you have 30 minutes to practice, it's very easy to kind of skip over having a plan, skipping over having that number one thing and starting out from a frantic place.

And what happens is you end up kind of wasting a lot of that 30 minutes because there's no order to it. 10 minutes of practice that's thoughtful and intentional can really be very meaningful and can have a huge part of your development. Now, you got to have to take it beyond 10 minutes some days, if not most days, but don't throw away a 10-minute day just because it's short by just jumping in too quickly without intentionality. Okay, let's move on to number four.

But before we do, I would like for you to hear from our sponsor. And we are back. We are talking today in case you're just joining us. Well, how could you be just joining us? Because you've been listening. I know you're not fast forwarding. But in case you are, I'm Peter Martin, Roland Solo here at the You'll Hear podcast today. And we're talking about ways to give you, to give every practice session that you do a 37% boost.

Okay. So we've gone through number one, two, and three. Let's move on to number four. Now, I know I say all these important, they are all important. But this one can really give you a huge boost, kind of an exponential boost beyond even 37%. And that is to have fun when you're practicing. And we have to approach our practice session with. the license and the idea

giving ourselves license to have fun. Like that's the most important thing because a lot of times we look at it as work. Why can't work be fun? Of course it can be fun. But we have to approach it from that standpoint. So that means even though we're going to be doing hard things, we're going to be having that number one thing

that we want to accomplish with our plan. But that doesn't mean we can't have fun or we can't make music. You know, a lot of times we turn ourselves off to music when we practice scales or technical. exercises, but we don't have to. If we're learning a soul, a lot of times we're like, oh, this is drudgery because I've got to learn all those different notes. But look, look, you're listening to McCoy Tyner. What could be better than that? It's like having play at work, you know what I mean? So a lot of times that's just adjusting our mindset and giving ourselves

a framework of having fun. And what that leads to is really loving the process of learning and being inquisitive and getting better as a musician. So, you know, as you see these boosts in your practice and And you're like, wow, I can't believe what 40 minutes a day can do. I'm getting like two hours worth of practice out of a shorter amount of time. That is fun. You know, and I think that you will start to love the process. But you've got to have that as a goal first. And you have to even, you know, a lot of people don't even believe that they can love the process of practicing.

They're just like, I have to practice so that I can play. No. Playing, having fun, making music can be part of the practicing process while still boosting your efficiency. All right. we are coming up to our number five and final way to boost our practice sessions and make them more efficient. And this one is very fitting for the end, very important. And I think we'll kind of pull things together.

And that is to review what you practice so that you can lock in what you've learned. And so you can kind of start to assess things that work, things that didn't work, wins that you had in your practice and losses. too because then you can be able to make adjustments for the future days and that's going to boost your practice exponentially on later days because you're not going to have to do this in the same way every day. You're going to want to assess every practice session, but you're going to be able to start to learn things not to do and to do in your practice session, like I'm sure you already have, but even better when you give yourself a time to assess. A lot of times we practice,

practice and then it's like, okay, I've got this amount of time to practice. And then at five o'clock, my practice is done because I have to go and meet somebody at 5.15. So we practice right up until 5. That's fine. But you're going to lose a lot of, a lot of, I don't know how much. I can't tell you, but some, if not a lot of the benefits from your practice session. If you don't give yourself at least five minutes at the end. So stop at 455. and then just sit, take another breath, give yourself a little bit of bookends, a little bit of peace and stability

from the beginning to the end of your practice session and think about, okay, what were my goals today? What did I plan? How much of that did I accomplish? Did I hit my number one thing? Assess wins and losses? Ooh, I didn't hit my number one thing. Why not?

Did I get agitated? Did I get, you know, did I get thrown off by some pathway that was fun? thought was going to be better and so I lost side of that. What can I do better for tomorrow? You know, those kind of things, assessing. And then also thinking about, you know, those things that went really well and how you can ensure and lock those in and kind of make those automatic in your practice session. So this one is, you know, probably just as important in a similar way as number one with having a plan. This is kind of assessing the plan, reviewing the plan, and looking at your wins and losses for

future development of your practice. All right. That is it. That is the way that you're going to boost your practice seven practice sessions 37%. I mean, I laugh every time I say this. I don't know why I came up with this 37%. But it's fun. I mean, think about that. It's like, whoa, I'm going to actually improve 37% today. That's something that I would be interested in. All right. Until next time, you'll hear it.