You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Hittin' the Shed!

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

This episode features clips of Adam and Peter talking about their personal perspectives on how to practice!How to Practice (PM edition). How to practice (AM edition). How to supercharge your practice routine!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

What's up? You'll hear it listeners. This is Caleb Kirby in the studio today. So excited to give you a special episode. So let's get right into it. All right. So today we're going to be doing a run-it-back episode where I'm going to find all the clips and the content that we need under a central theme to really just get to the juicy bits of these past you'll hear at episodes. The central theme today is practice. You're going to be listening to Adam and Peter's advice on how to practice and get the most out of your practice sessions. This is really important. stuff in terms of just building a lifestyle around playing music and always getting better at the thing you love to do. So this bit of advice comes straight from Adam and Peter and how they approach practicing and infusing it with your everyday lifestyle. And I hope you enjoy. Let's say that you're learning, you know, a complex tune, an in-depth tune like Lush Life, Billy Strayhorn's beautiful composition. Say you don't really know it, but you've always wanted to know so like, I'm going to learn it. Okay, you're probably not going to learn it in one day, even if you practice all day. That wouldn't be advisable because that's not the way you want to absorb it. You want to take your

time with it, learn it deeply. So, you know, but in terms of productivity and seeing what you're getting out of your practice session, you want to see actually how many measures did you learn? How many phrases, however you break it up and you want to try to break it up musically as much as possible. But I think that that's very important. It's very, you know, nuts and bolts and very Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. But that's what productivity is. The other side, and Adam got into the sum about, you know, the more esoteric stuff is important, too. But I think, you know, knowing, it can be a great thing for your motivation to really

knowing what you got accomplished. Now, the quality, you know, you've got quantity and quality, qualitative and quantitative. There's always a push and pull with those in practice because it cannot just be about the number of measures that you learned of a tune. if you're learning it in an inaccurate way or a non-sincere way or if you're just kind of flying through it. So you want to learn stuff deeply, but you do want to be making progress. That way, when you go back and look at, okay, like maybe you try two or three approaches

to practicing learning a new tune. And you can look at what was your progress like? Let's assume that you're learning, you know, a phrase each way at the same high quality level. But you can start to look at, look, I practice for it. hour with these methods, how much did I actually, like how quickly did I learn that at that high quality level? Then you can start to compare and see which way works for you because there's never any one way that works for everybody. There are ways that work for us at different times, too. So even if we think we know the way that works best for us, we still need to be open to

trying other ways to do it. I think we start with just some general ideas of what do we want to get out of our practice? What is the goal of our practice? What's the ultimate high-end goal? I think about this. So do I want to become a player that has a lot of chops that can play fast? Do I want to become a player who knows a lot of language and tunes? Do I want to become a player that can play, you know, all this outside stuff and unexpected things, right? More avant-garde, a more niche player. So those are all legit questions that you can kind of ask yourself. But really, I've learned over the years.

I've always, I've had all of those have been on my radar at some point of like, what do I want to get out of my practice routine? And all of those have been goals at some point. But as I've gotten more experienced at this and aged into a period of my life where I kind of can see a little bit more from above what's important. I realize that I want to be the kind of player that is at ease with making music and it's really just the most direct route from me to you as I'm playing. That's what I'm thinking about. And so one of the things that I'm going to stress a lot as we talk about this in this episode is ease, that what we're doing needs to be

effortless and easy. And it needs to seem easy. You know, we talk about the power of the confident player. How many times have you gone to the club and you've seen the musician who seems like a complete master and has complete confidence? Well, what is that confidence? It's ease, right? It's they make hard things seem easy. And even when they make a mistake, it seems easy. Like they take it in stride and it's easy and it's still part of the show and you still feel like you're in good hands because it's easy there doesn't seem to be with really great players even when they're playing challenging things and and obviously putting in great amounts of effort there doesn't seem to be a struggle with that and with them and that has become in my later years here the goal of my practice

is to be the kind of player where things are easily coming out from me to you, no matter what that means. That could mean more technique and that could mean more language and knowing more tunes, repertoire and arranging techniques and all this information. But I really think more than that, it's a philosophical approach. And this can actually, it's not as like, it doesn't have to be as ethereal as it may sound. It can be very practical. So one of the things that you might think about with this is even if you're doing like very technical exercises, which I still do a lot of because I think they're insanely valuable for being able to get ourselves to our audience as clearly as possible. But even in those things, where I would

in my youth really, you know, grit my teeth, bear down, you know, all these adjectives that imply, you know, a tense attitude towards it and trying really hard. You know, that works up into a point, but then you're, you never learn it in an easy way. It doesn't project what you're, what you're working on easily. It projects to someone who's trying. And that's not, you know, as I've, I've come to realize, that's not the kind of projection I want when I'm, when I'm playing for an audience. So, so that's kind of like the first big rule for practice sessions for me now.

Everything has to be effortless and easy. and or you know if I'm going for perfection then I can really try but that's not really I haven't found much value in it by the way you might recognize some of this if you've ever read Kenny Warner's book effortless mastery and there is as I've got I've read that book when I was a teenager but as I've gotten older some of those things become like very true you start to realize like oh man Kenny Warren had it right this whole time like it's all about this effortless attitude as we practice and so so what are some practice things that we can maybe apply to this, not just like the big picture, you know, ethereal stuff. So,

like, if I'm playing technical exercises as I was starting to say, if I'm, if I'm really going for it, that might mean it's, I'm more feeling it. I'm more, it's more about the feeling of what I'm doing, that it's an easy feeling than it is about the absolute perfect execution with the idea and the knowledge at this point that my body and my body and my, brain, my ear and my hands will make those changes for me. That if I'm effortless as I throw out a difficult technical passage, that my body and my brain will adjust, right? And so, and that's no matter how my attitude is towards it. So if my attitude towards it is very, I'm trying really hard and I'm tense in my shoulders and my face and I'm bearing down, I'm trying to get this

thing out. It's going to happen eventually. I'm going to get it, but it's going to be tense and seems stressed either way, right? So because I'm stressed coming into it. Now, if I go into it as this is easy, this is easy, and I can do this. I just can't do it yet. It's just, but it is easy. There's no tension here.

Now, I'm not going to get it, just like I wasn't getting it first with the tension, right, with the trying really hard. And then eventually I do get it. I adjust. But when I come out on that other end, it's just a much different vibe. There's no tension and I still have it just as much as I have it when I'm trying really hard,

but now it seems easier on that other end, right? I haven't trained myself to have to try really hard to get something technical. That's a straight up practical thing from what could be kind of a wishy-washy attitude about this stuff, but that is a true sentiment that if you are, however you're training yourself to approach your is how it's going to end up when you perform it. So be that confident, easy player in the practice room. Realize that that's part of what you're training here. You're training yourself to make things easy and to project a confidence that you can't get by straining and putting tension everywhere in your body and just trying so, so hard. You have to relax into it and you have to let it happen

the way it's going to happen. So that's like, that was like, that's a huge lesson for me. And that has been an ongoing lesson that, you know, I'm not perfect every practice session or every exercise I'm practicing with that. But always with that in mind, right, trying to be mindful about that. So that's kind of a big picture look at a practice routine that you can think about is what are my goals and am I living in the values of those goals as I practice? You'll hear.

All right. Okay. So what are we talking about today? Today we have a question from email. Yes, we do take emails. You can go to openstudiojazz.com. No, you can't. No, you can't.

What are you talking about? You know what you do? Oh, yeah, Andrew at openstudio network. He may not. He's kind of moved up in the podcast producer world. So I don't know how much he's actually checking his email anymore. But you can try it. Yeah, give a shot.

Just him and Robin Quivers hanging out. Is that what we're saying? Exactly. All right. We'll see. Today, we're talking about practice routine. We have an email from Jacob. Jacob writes, hey, Peter and Adam, love the podcast.

It's been really helpful. One thing that I struggle with is keeping a practice routine. How do you build a routine, like an hour or something, that covers all the bases? What do you practice when pressed for time? Thanks, Jacob. You know, Jacob, we've covered this many times, and we get asked this still on a regular basis, and that's how we know that it's really important. And we really can't talk about practice or developing a practice routine enough,

because it's fundamentally one of the most important things to improving your playing. Yeah, and we like to say we put the fun in de mentals. Okay, no, we don't. Anyway, the mental and we put fun in da mental. No, but yeah, I mean, the thing about this is, I'm really happy about this question because I remember when I struggle with the same question. So it's always fun like when, it's not that I've mastered the practice routine or anything. No, never. But I think it is the thing that the more time you spend with it, the more successful you become with your ability to basically, you know, execute productive practice, the more like anything, it just sort of becomes automatic.

So it's kind of like, you know, have you ever skied before? Yeah. Okay. You know how like when you first learning, it's like how do you put the equipment and all this kind of stuff? And then once you know how to ski, you just kind of put the stuff on and go, things that you never think about before. Yeah.

And I think that that's very much with the practice routine. Like I never worry about if I have an hour like, what am I going to practice? Oh, for sure. I mean, I've already got a priority list going, and I can just kind of sit down and know that I'm going to be productive. But I do remember the kind of chronology to get to that point. So I think we can kind of help a little bit. I think it's very important what you're saying here.

And I just want to reiterate that first thing, first, Jacob, you are not alone in this. Every musician, you are not alone. You're making fun of my empathy here, man. Come on, I'm trying to get in there with Jacob. I'm not going to be. You are not alone. I will be, wait, now you got that song on my head.

It's a great song. No, every musician who has a, great practice routine has at one time wondered what to practice or how long to practice or any of these questions that we get all the time. So it is something that everybody deals with and we're still dealing with. And it's just a lifelong thing. It's part of the gig is working on the practice. And I think that within your question, you've actually answered a big part of it or you're already on to something. How do you build a routine? That's how, you know, build like, you know, a routine, I think is very similar to a habit. It's not exactly the same thing, but I think

a routine is like a combination of several things, but, but most of them are kind of habits. Yeah. And so, like, a routine can become a combination of habits that you develop. And really a habit is something that you do, you know, in this case, we would probably measure day by day. So, like, once you get into the habit of practicing certain things, that becomes part of your routine. And then it becomes routine. Like, where you just kind of sit down like, oh, I'm going to do this. It's like brushing your teeth or flossing or whatever. And then you fall off for a day, but you make sure you don't fall off for two days.

That's one of the most important things I think about building a routine is that you never let two days go by where you don't hit that routine. Now, you're talking about an hour, and I like that as a place to start as far as building that routine. But we talked about before, I love this concept of having a percentage of time that you're practicing different things and keeping it simple too. So it might be 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, where it's like 25% technical work. That would be like scales and Hannon or whatever, you know,

if you're a trumpet player or whatever that crazy stuff, they do Arbids and stuff. Yeah. Really just technical. And then 25% repertoire. Yeah. 25% learning a solo and then maybe 25% ear training. Totally.

You know, and then there's other things you can bring in. But you're saying then what if you have two hours all of a sudden? You think you have an hour to practice, but you're like, wow, I was supposed to teach a lesson and my student didn't show up. Yeah. So now you can kind of double up everything. So as opposed to saying I'm going to do 15 minutes of this or 20 minutes.

I like to think about the percentage. Now, that gets tricky if you've only got 10 minutes. What are you going to do? Two and a half minutes, maybe. Or you might have to drop something off. But I think as long as you have at least 30 or 40 minutes or even 20 minutes to practice, you can certainly get through three or four different things. I think that's true.

Let's circle back to the beginning of that point, though, which I think is a pillar of this, and that is developing the routine. And you mentioned not going more than two days. And I think the key to developing this routine is finding a routine that you can keep. That's the one that's the best. Whatever is the routine that you can keep, that's the one that works. So for me, and I've talked about this a lot, I saw a lot of growth when I switched my routine to first thing in the morning. Like before I do anything else, I head to the piano and I spend at least half an hour, most days an hour.

Staring at it. Staring at it, crying a little bit. And then I... Stroke it, blob it. I procrastinate on emails for a while, and then I play 10 minutes. No, no, no. But I do, for me, early morning before too much stuff gets in the brain and I get too, tired or whatever. It's perfect time for me. And it's the one that's worked the best. Yeah. And so,

you know, at one point of my life, it was late, late at night. Yeah. You know, so it's like whatever can work for your daily human routine, that's the one that you want to approach. That may be the most important part of developing a routine actually, like making it convenient in a way. Like, you know, talking about what to practice during that time. Of course, that's important. But just being in a routine as far as being at the instrument for an hour a day, like the more do to make that easy to, you know, make your practice area pleasant. Make it, like, clean or whatever makes, put a plant there. Put a bottle of whiskey.

Whatever you have to do to make it, like, I want to be there. It's kind of like, you know. It's a studio, man. Yeah. I do a thing when I'm, like, on the road, especially, like, if I know I got to, I want to work out, I'll go for a run and it's going to be like, I got to get up earlier than I wanted to or it's going to be kind of difficult. Like, I try to make everything.

I mean, look, you got to get up early to do that. If that's when you want to do it, that's always going to be. That's always going to be hard. Yeah. Even if you're in the routine of it. But make everything out. So you can't control the clock. Or like, say you're going to bed at two and you've got to get up at six to go for a run.

Like you can't turn back the, turn back the hands of time. You can't do that unless you share. Is that share? That was share. I don't think that's how that song comes. Well, I was sharing a little. I was sharing a little. I could remember it.

Sorry. If I could. There it is. That is. Yeah. So, but like, what can you control and make it more convenient? Yeah. you know, put out your clothes, like, remove every other excuse or impediment.

Yeah. So that once you're like, well, I might as well do it. It's easy. It's here. And then you start to get into the habit of it. You get in the rhythm. And then you're like, whatever, I'm doing it. So like you're going to the instrument in the morning.

Then you can kind of go next level and be like, let me optimize my time and really do the stuff maybe in an order that works well. Because you can also maximize that hour. Yeah. You want to have a flow to your practice that really maximizes. and that also gets flexibility if you get to go to two hours or four hours or whatever and those nice little surprises come up. You don't want to be limited to that hour either. That's really good.

And something that I want to get back to about what you were saying with the percentages. Yeah. Because Jacob kind of says, he alludes to how do you build a routine that covers all the bases. But you can't cover all the bases. You can't cover. You don't need to. You don't need to. Not every day.

The fastest way to get close to that is your percentage thing. Because you could at least cover some of the things like a broad range of things. But I will say that, like, that's one way to do it. And you could do that for weeks, if not months, if not years. Yeah. But you might burn out on that way. And sometimes you might just want to take an hour and just play a tune for an hour and see what happens. That's right.

Or do two things. Or maybe not even have a plan. But the idea is, is that when you start getting burnt out like, I don't really feel like heading the piano today because I don't feel like doing 20 minutes of scales and 20 minutes or whatever, do something else. Switch it up. You know, that's the beauty of self-practice is that we can kind of. be our own coach.

Is there any other way to practice in itself? Yeah, you can group practice. Yeah, I mean, well, if you're like in sports. Is that legal in every state? I don't know. All right, that was really, really cool. That was really cool. So if you're looking for the original podcast for these episodes,

I'm going to have the links to each individual one in the description of this episode. And remember, if you like, you'll hear it. You got to like and you got to subscribe because that shows us support. Remember, you can check out Open Studio Jazz. That is going to be our sponsor. That's our sponsor forever and for always. And if you need more connections towards getting better and closer with your instrument, you're going to find the best content for that there.

So until next time, happy practicing.