You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Grit - #61

Episode Date: April 1, 2018

Peter and Adam tackle the issue of grit and the value of sticking with your passion through hardship. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Menace and I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Today we're going to talk about something kind of different for us. It's a discussion on how long should you try to be a jazz musician before you give up. Now, Peter, you wrote out this topic, and this must have been on your mind. What brought this up? Well, I almost gave up the other day, and I looked at the calendar and counted back the years to when I started being a jazz musician. I was like, ooh, can I muster another day, day by day?

See, folks, you could be playing up, the White House one day. and then wanting to give up the next. Right. No, but this is a good thing because jazz is hard. It's hard to play, and the business is hard. Yep. And you have to be thick-skinned, and you have to be dedicated. So this is a good question.

Yeah, and it's actually a question that I've never thought of myself, but I have gotten it from students and even, you know, we're all students in this music because it's difficult, but even older folks or whatever, like, oh, should I just give up or whatever? And so I wanted to try to address it and hopefully we'll have some inspiring words or some informational things that will help everyone on their jazz journey. Yeah, no, this is important to me too because, you know, I kind of took a step away from jazz in my musical career to write songs and play more pop music and stuff like that. And I never totally went away from it. I always kept something up.

And now as I'm in my 30s, my late 30s and I'm starting to get back into it, I'm so glad that I didn't give it up totally that I kept with. it because it's so rewarding the longer you stay with it, you know, as an art form. Right, right. And I think it's important that we have a little bit of healthy separation between the professional side, the business side of being a jazz musician, and then just the, how you identify yourself within this art form as a jazz musician. And I would say, to answer the question of how long before giving up, I would say never, for anybody. And I don't care what your skill level is. I don't care if you've never made a penny playing this music or if you're making a million dollars a month playing it.

You know, if you consider yourself a jazz musician at one time, I think you should never give that up, no matter what life is throwing at you, and you can always have that connection on some level. Now, the kind of professional side, I think it's maybe not a matter of giving up, but if you're having trouble making a living at it, you need to look at, you know, augmenting your income in different areas. And I think we have another episode on, like,

how to make money playing jazz. And you could check that out just from some different ideas and probably from some folks smarter than us that are richer than us than playing jazz. But I mean, the whole thing of like being a jazz musician, I really think it's a mentality more than anything. And so once you put on that mentality, I don't think you ever give it up.

It's always a part of you. Even if you stop playing an instrument in a way, you know? Yeah, there is a process of thinking about things and I think jazz musicians have a unique outlook on music and the world, in my experience, than even other kinds of musicians. There's something about the improvisation of it and having to be your own composer in the moment

that develops a certain kind of person. And I'll say this. I tell people this when they ask, first of all, if you're really serious about it or if you're really passionate about something, you're never really going to give it up. You couldn't, right? I could never actually give up playing the piano or being a jazz musician because I just love it too much, right?

It's so a part of my life. But also, I will say this, that if you stick with it, like, if you're going through a time where you think, like, I don't know if this is going to work out professionally, that's cool. And you can do side hustles to make some bread. But the longer you stick with it and you keep that time and the devotion to bettering your craft, you know, after 10 years, you start to see some real dividends in playing. You know, it's that 10,000 hours thing, right? Like, obviously, it's good to get it in when you're five or four, you know, five to 15. And then you're Joey Alexander. You little demon at the piano.

He's not defensive about that at all. No, but obviously that's the best case scenario. But that doesn't have to be everybody's path. You know, if you can stick with it and grit it out while still working on stuff, I mean, you can have a career later in life. I mean, we hear stories about this all the time about people getting gigs later in life or people all of a sudden, you know, they are a player and they can play. The level just keeps creeping up and creeping up.

So I would say, no matter what, if you are super passionate about it, even if you are having a hard time making a living at it at the moment, stick with it, work on your practice, basically. Practice, practice, practice. And it's going to happen. Yep, yeah. Well, I love that way of thinking about it because that really makes it less of a binary choice of, I'm a jazz musician or I'm not.

Or I'm giving up or I'm not giving up. You can defer certain professional aspirations maybe. you can defer with, I mean, the music forces us to defer certain levels of achievement within the music because it is difficult and there's just certain number of hours, whether or not it's exactly 10,000, the verdict's still out on that. Yeah, no, it's not settled. But I mean, it's a large number. It is.

And so there's just, the calendar defers progress. But it's like, it's like a lot of things that I'm starting to learn in life. Like, we kind of overestimate what we can accomplish in. a few months or even like within a year in terms of building up our plane. Like we overestimate, oh, I'm going to do this, this, and this. And maybe you do that and then you look at the level of your plane. You're like, man, I haven't really got any better. But add that year up to the next year.

And then five years, ten years. Then you can really see some progress. So that sounds like a long time and it is a long time. Hey. But, you know. What else are you doing? Yeah. We're living this life.

You're right, though. Eventually that you push that boulder up that mountain. Yeah. And you're looking down, you know, from the top. Yeah, yeah. That just takes some grit, man. It just takes a little determination. Absolutely.

And, I mean, your concept of, you know, maybe some professional things coming along later in life, I'm actually applying that to my basketball career because my NBA aspirations turned out not to work out as I thought they were going to in my early 20s. I'm going to be one of the first 5-foot-6 point guards like in their early 50s attempting to get into the NBA. Interesting.

You promised it, so. You just keep pushing that ball off the mountain, man. Keep pushing it, yeah. Now, I would say, you know, to answer this question, how long should you try to be a jazz musician before giving up? The answer is, if you ask yourself, do I love playing this music? If the answer is yes, then you're not ready to quit. That's right. If the answer is no, then you might have to do some soul searching.

Yeah. And look, there can be, you know, in terms of giving up, you can never, you can decide now. You say, I'm never going to give up. I mean, that's the way I feel. I'm never giving up being a jazz music. It's just not possible. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't because I'm stuck in that mentality. Even when jazz kicks you in the gut, artistically.

I'm going to get back up. Financially. Even until that very last kick when I can't muster another breath. No, but I mean, does that mean there are going to be failures? Have I had failures? Yes. Am I going to have more failures? Yes, I am.

I mean, both on the micro level of missing a note or playing up to the macro level of, you know, screwing up a whole tour every night. I don't know. I mean, of course, what we're working on is minimizing those things, but there's going to be failures. You're going to put, you know, this music is about putting yourself out there every time you play. So you have to not only be prepared to fail, but almost enjoy it or enjoy the journey. So in terms of giving up overall, that's not even an option, I don't think. Yeah, you know, that's some great stuff. I hope this has helped answer this question for anybody

who's out there. I would say, you know, if you're having trouble getting inspired about jazz and you're worried about it, go see some great music. That's always, for me, that's like the antidote whenever I'm like, uh, jazz, it's so hard and what am I doing? You know what I mean? I'll go hear some great players, and then I'm like, all right, let's do this. Yeah, and I mean, we are, that connects us with the music and the humanity of the music. And remember, this is not something that there is a scoring kept as far as, you know, this is the greatest player. This is number two, and you failed if you haven't got to this point. This is art.

So everybody has something to say. So in terms of, you know, does that always get lined up in terms of the monetary, you know, renumeration, no. I mean, it's not fair and like, you know, somebody's getting, you know, that's another thing. But as much as you can, and look, we all have the realities of life. We have to think about money and making a living. But in terms of your connection with the music, as a musician, as an artist, as a jazz musician, you never give that up, you never let anyone take that from you. That's right. And if you're having trouble, you'll hear it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hear It podcast. You can go to you'll hearat.com to get more information,

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