You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How Anxiety Almost Ruined My Playing...

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Adam and Peter tell all in this episode of YHI addressing the musician's most common ailment. Anxiety... Everyone can relate to the feeling but what can we do to avoid it getting in the way of your playing? Tune in and find out.↓ Links from the pod ↓Open Studio Pro | WAITLISThttps://www.openstudiojazz.com/proHave a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Jazz. Explain. Explain brought to you today by Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJas.com for all of your jazz lesson needs. Hey, Adam. Yeah. What are we talking about? Today we're talking about how anxiety can ruin your soloing. Now, this comes from personal experience, Peter.

I don't know about you. Do tell. And then I will do tell. In due time. It's not just in the past either. This is something that I deal with all the time about getting in your head as you're soloing. In fact, our dear listeners don't. know this, but just a few weeks ago, I got what's called the Yips.

I had never heard the term. So if you don't know what he's talking about, let's explain it to them. Go Google Rick Ankeel, who is a Cardinals pitcher who got the Yips. Oh, really? Yeah. Is that the origin of the term? No, no, no. It came before him. But the Yips are something that often happens. It's neurological. I didn't actually have the Yips in the sports term. So Rick Ankeel was a pitcher. He couldn't hit the catcher. Like, he got to the point where he couldn't throw. You're not supposed to hit the catcher, are you? No, you're supposed to hit the catcher's mitt exactly. Oh, God. Like, he couldn't hit home plate.

Yeah. And he had to start his whole career over and it's actually a fascinating story. I can't hit home plate. What are you talking about? That's all. Yeah, but you're not a professional pitcher. You are a professional pianist as am I. Yes. And a couple of weeks ago, we've been doing these intros and we were doing giant steps. Right. And I got the Yips. I couldn't, I couldn't like. It's a hard tune. Well, it wasn't that. I played giant steps a million times, but I couldn't play anything. Like, I couldn't play any ideas. I couldn't follow the changes. Something was going on in my brain. You were all up in your brain.

I got in my head. It took us like 50 takes to do it. We then discovered that the piano sound had gotten off. My keyboard was way over on the other side of the room. You were getting a little bit of delay. It was really throwing me because what I was playing wasn't happening in real time. It was a delay induced yep. It was a delay induced yet.

It was a delay in my head. I couldn't enjoy myself. And then the anxiety started to kind of snowball and cascade. I suck. Not only that, but I suck in front of Peter Martin and I suck in front of our dear listeners is what was getting in my head and I couldn't get out of it. And it happens to the best of us. Like, it's part of performing.

Yeah. Is dealing with things like performance anxiety. Yeah. Of dealing with comparative mind, comparing yourself to other people. Yeah. And I thought, or even comparing yourself to yourself at a different time. That's right. Or an idealized version of yourself.

I should be this. Why am I not this? I used to be able to do this. Why am I messing this up now? Well, that's part of negative self-talk. Yeah. Which is a part of this as well. We're going to negate that.

Well, you can't negate it, but you can embrace it. and let it happen and then just let it go. You don't have, well, not embrace it. You don't want to be like, come on negative self-talk. But you also, you can't actually block it out. You can't say, no, get out of here, never, or whatever. Do I need to text our attorneys for some disclosures before we start? No, not at all.

We are not doctors and we're not neurologists and we are not. We're not prescribing medication here. We're just talking about things that happen to everybody. I get nervous. Then you might be a perfect candidate for this episode if you're feeling nervous. This is inducing legal anxiety to me at this time. So let's play a little bit. more. Let's play, we were just playing some headhunters because we were watching this cool

herbie video, but let's play a little bit more. And I'm going to, as we play, I'm going to try to vocalize what's going on in my head as the thoughts come. Should we try this? That could be anxiety introducing. We'll see. I might filter it a little bit because I don't want to be lewd. What do we can play the same thing? Same thing. Let's just do a little bit of the same thing. Okay, that was good start. Peter thinks I'm weird for even wanting to do this. Quite a play-by-play. Am I doing it to adjust you? playing too much just groove

just groove I played a D natural over that E flat 7 that's probably not cool that didn't work with the sharp 11 okay everybody knows that sucks now

because I can't trim as good as Oscar Peterson and I put that sharp 11 what is happening what is happening to the solo so this is how it gets spun out of the job do you really think all that well I was real time

trying to like project what happening. What could go wrong? Yeah. And it's believe, you know, in my head, I believe it's a little bit more, there's not as much direct language, but these are the sort of feeling tones I'm getting. And this is how you spin out of, out of hand. Now notice what happened is it very quickly went from things that were happening in the music to things that were happening to my perception of status or my ego, right? And that's not what's happening in the music. It has nothing to do with the music. It has to do with how I'm being perceived. And this is a very common thing that a lot of people struggle with is like you play something that's not perfect and all of a sudden you start to get the negative

self-talk going. The anxiety starts to happen. All of a sudden, all of your thoughts aren't about what you're playing at all. They're about how you're being perceived by your fellow musicians or the audience or yourself like how you're how you're coming across instead of what is actually at hand, which is the moment that's happening in the music. And if you can if you can notice the self-talk, You can't actually ever, as Kenny Warner, who did a master class for us, a mentor session. What's that? Warner. Kenny Warner.

Okay. Does that what I said? I think so. Yeah. Did a mentor session. He said, you can't actually get rid of that voice, which is true. You can't ever just totally stamp it out. But we can redirect the conversation back to, we can acknowledge, oh, there's that voice,

that negative self-talk, and then redirect the conversation back to what's at hand where our attention is best served, which is on the music. But is it even about totally getting rid of that voice or is it about redirecting or even minimizing or by redirecting over time, it starts to minimize? Like if the goal is to totally get rid of it, then even if it comes in a little bit, like it's a gradient, isn't it? It is, of course, yeah. Yeah. And that can be hopefully encouraging to us because it's not like, it's not 100% but it's not 0% and it's never going to be either one of those in reality. It might feel like 100%.

Most of people when they start off on this journey of like, well, why am I spinning out on my solo? Like, why am I doing stuff I don't want to be doing? Why do I get nervous? They don't even acknowledge that their brain is self-talking them and comparing them to others, comparing themselves to their solo from yesterday, comparing themselves to Bill Evans or Herbie Hancock. And it's ruining their solo because their attention is not where it should be, which is in the moment, on the music, you know, enjoying life that's being presented to you, right? And so at first, you don't even know that that's a thing. And then if you can just start working on acknowledging, okay, there's some self-talk happening there.

I'm going to get my attention back to the solo. You're absolutely right. The more that you do that, the more that you just say, oh, there's that self-talk. I don't need to be following that. I need to be following the music. You can train yourself out of that so that just naturally the voice is always going to come up, but it's a lot quieter and it's a lot easier to say, that's not helpful. And I'm not going to follow that. Yeah. And it's always such a thing of like anxiety-inducing, you know, situations when we play, it's not that different than actually, you know, to be totally candid and transparent,

I'm going through right now with this episode and the earlier episode is a little bit of self-talk and doubt because of a negative YouTube comment. Not a negative, yeah, a negative YouTube comment that we got from a recent episode where it got me questioning like sort of our, the veracity with how we present things and, you know, oh, should I be careful about what I say? You know, and while, you know, I'll just say the comment was,

we did the thing about the Brecker Brothers and about due jazz. And I think we said that. And I think something that we might have said was misconstrued in that we were saying, this is do jazz, not as a negative or not as a positive. And we certainly didn't want it to be an exclusionary thing. Of course. And I think we said something along the lines of like, this is when the ladies leave the room or this is when our wife leaves the room or whatever.

I said this is when my wife asked to leave, which is because my wife hates that kind of music. Right. And it was just like, this is kind of dude music from that time, from that 80s, early 90s time. And like, but then you realize somebody and the comment was somebody who I think is a regular follower of ours and a friend of the pod and stuff. And it was very like, they really took offense at this. And I understand it. And like, so now that's in my head is giving anxiety as we go through this because I'm like, no, I'm a good person. I want everybody to see that all the time.

But then it's like, do I be careful about what I say and have to explain myself? But I'm like, you know, we all, who we are. And isn't it the same thing when we play? It's like, it's not having this false sense of confidence as we play. But it's also like believing that we can have fun when we play. We do have something to say and to share. And that that's okay. There's going to be some self-doubt, but we can kind of push that away or whatever.

We're not going to let that become like constant questioning because we're never going to be able to solve that. And there's always going to be doubting and hating. and the hating and the doubting or hating that we put on ourselves is going to usually be the most kind of potentially destructive, right? And we can't expect people to be like, don't say negative things. Like, we don't get that many negative comments on the YouTube channel. And I miss a lot of them, you know? Yeah.

And so I don't want to put too much stock into that. But then we do want to please everybody. And we don't want to come across who we aren't, who isn't us. And when we're playing, it's like, that starts to become a thing. It's like, no, I do know how to play on giant steps. And I'm not so I'm not myself, actually. Yeah, I am good. I've done this so many times I can do it.

And it's not based upon a false sense of like, oh no, in reality, you've got a skewed, like you have snow self-awareness. You're actually a jerk or you don't lie out of play or whatever. I don't think, but it gets you questioning those things, doesn't it? Well, the honest answer is, sometimes I play great over giant steps, and sometimes I don't. And sometimes we are extremely full of light and love. And sometimes we aren't. We're human beings.

Right. You know what I mean? And so you and I do this podcast, thousands of hours of the podcast, and we are not going to be 100% right, just like we're going to play thousands of solos in our lives. And we're never going to, we're not going to play everyone perfectly and great. And not everyone's a banger. Yeah. But we get, the percentage gets better because we get better at coming from a place of love and light and understanding what that feels like as opposed to following the ego, right? And so I'm glad you brought up performing this podcast because that's part of the giant stuff. for me thing too, that intro thing, the yips that I got. And I think it's a lot of people can relate to that, is that anytime you are putting yourself

out there and performing anything, which is this podcast is a performance, right? We're putting it out there. It's performance art. It's your, you're vulnerable. It's crafted performance art. You're vulnerable to criticism. You're vulnerable to people not liking the way you're doing it or what you're saying. And so it doesn't, like you could police that all day, but you're never going to be perfect

100%. You're never going to... But do you think that the anxiety that that can create is... is like, yeah, we're not going to be perfect with our playing or with this podcast or accurate jobs. Duke Gallagher was born in 1921. No, he wasn't. He was born in that, you know, whatever.

We're going to make mistakes. But it's harder. And for me, it induces more anxiety when I'm not, like, seen as who I think I really am as a person. Yes, I make mistakes, whatever. But I love our list. I love everybody. I don't, you know, I don't want to make, I certainly, like, the worst thing is to make anybody uncomfortable or like, why would you do that?

that's like that's not cool so so your your anxiety is based off of your perception which is an expectation you have an expectation you are this kind of person and that everybody should see you that way right but peter that's never going to happen just like i have an expectation that i'm going to play giant steps a certain way right and that's never going to happen 100% of the time and this is where like working on the internal game as we age usually is what we do is like if we can just get rid of those expectations it's not like then you don't don't care about other people's feelings or you don't care about playing beautiful music over giant steps. In fact, it's quite the opposite. When you let go of your desire to be perfect

every time you do a podcast or perfect every time you play giant steps, you actually end up being more with the moment, being more, you know, this coming from a place of love and less of coming from a place of fear and I want to say the right thing. And then inevitably, you don't say the right thing or you don't play the right thing because you're too worried about what you're playing. that's what was happening to me. But when we're playing, like, because of this music, like the way the things that it demands from us to have that intimacy and that immediacy

with how we react to the moment, that being the exciting thing and not playing it carefully and not like saying, well, I'm going to play in a way that I'm not going to be exposed as a fraud or to get offbeat or have to do a retake. And, you know, there's challenges to this.

It's not like a gig where, at least on a gig, if you're screwing up, you're going to get to the next course and you're going to move on. We always have the option to be like, oh, let's do another take. And we feel like we're letting each other down, But we can do that, and at least the world doesn't see.

We're not doing this live. Right. Yeah, exactly. That's the other part of this is in my head. One of the things that happens is like, oh, well, you just messed that up, and this is going to be on YouTube forever, for everybody to see. And a lot of times this is the first time they hear you play, the piano, and it's you messing this thing up.

And is that the same thing? And it's just casually us sitting here, just, you know, BSing, doing something casually, right? And it's like, everything's got to be in the internet age. Everything's got to be perfect. And all of our speech and our ideas have to be. pitch perfect and aligned with everybody else or else we our ego thinks that's it but is the equivalent of like what you when you were playing when you were like oh that's when we were just doing the demo and you're like oh that's sharp 11 oops that didn't work oh and then the next kind of thing is like

was it bad enough that we should redo it exactly am i going to be you know is that the equivalent of like oh man this is do jazz wait is that going to hold i just said something is that going to sound exclusionary to people is that i know that's not what i meant but how is that like that's that's a tough slope. And I think that's why a lot of the YouTubers and stuff are kind of losing their, that have, not losing their minds. Sorry. Having, see, like, I'm saying it now like, oh, oh, did I just screw somebody up? But having a mental health challenge, because when your mind starts thinking, and you are putting yourself out there, I mean, look, we could become very, like, you know, careful. And we've done that. That's another problem we have. Sometimes we're like,

we love everything. The Grammys. We love every single track because we're afraid to offend. I know. And then, I remember someone called us, someone called this watered down vanilla sexless robots. Sexless? They called this sexless. Well, because they were too voice-in-watching. But they don't know that. But this is what I'm saying. You cannot, you cannot, whether we're talking about perform, like playing or talking or being, just being a person, right? If you're- Sex-less. I know, but aren't all robots sexless? Dude, I don't. I don't pretend to know what YouTube commenters are always talking about here. I don't, if we, again, if we went down that road of trying to understand what everybody on the internet is trying to say. I think we would be really in a lot of trouble. But we have, but we've gotten comments, many of them. That's why I don't like to discount any of them, like, that are so spot on and poignant. And we're not great about replying, but we see, I see most of them or many of them.

And I think that it's such, that's another thing to get in your head because you can be like, oh, well, they don't know what they're talking about. I'm this. But it's like, oh, but somebody else said something. They were like, oh, you guys are so great, you nailed it on the head. Do we pat ourselves on the back? Same thing when you're soloing. Woo! Somebody in the audience.

Oh, so the Sharper 11 does work. I'm going to do it again. Wait, can I not do it again? Because it worked the first time? Or was that person not really listening? Wait, were they saying, woo, to the drummer? Wait, what's going?

Yeah, yeah. Like, there's a lot that you can get in your head about. I think the key here is to give yourself permission, to be honest and be yourself and to learn from when it doesn't work for you, you know? And I'm grateful for the experience of having the yips that one day, of not being able to play. I'm grateful for Wendy's comment on our previous video because it's like, We all have blind spots that we don't see even how little things that we think are just these off-the-cuff moments or whatever, like affect people.

Right. And things that happen in our solo affect us and affect our ability to perform in a way that is true and honest and in the moment to speak in the manner that's true and honest in the moment from a place of love. And if we police ourselves too much and we have expectations of, I have to be this here. somebody's calling. Hi. I have to be this here and now. Yeah. Right?

Then it's going to muck the whole thing up. The whole thing is going to be from a place of fear. And ultimately, even if you're trying to be great, if you're trying to play the perfect thing, if you're coming from a place of fear of not playing the perfect thing, you'll never do it. A couple of things I want to talk about

that we can just touch on briefly about how, again, we talked about the sort of first step is acknowledging that your attention is on negative self-talking. or you're in your head about something, whether you're performing or just living. And once you can acknowledge that, you can move on to what's important, which is the music and the moment that's in front of you.

We had Aaron Parks in here recording his course, coming soon, by the way. And he mentioned some of the things that he uses is like feeling his body when he's playing. So like if he gets some negative self-talk happening or in his head a little bit, he'll think about his seat on the bench or his feet on the floor

And just trying to feel those as it's happening, like bringing your body back into the moment. First, it seems super remedial and simple, but it's a great way to just connect with what is actually here, which is the sensations of being alive and the time we're in. Right. Instead of, here's a story about what I'm trying to say and who I am and it affects this and this lives on forever and all that stuff. That stuff will just crush you. Yeah, yeah. When I think all these techniques and tools and ways, like the goal and the end result, I think, for us, for sure, with the pod and just us individual with our playing.

And I would encourage everybody for your artistry. And we're all putting art and trying to put beautiful things out into the world. Is like these are all ways to get our message and our true selves and our stories out there. It is accurate and as beautiful. I mean, not accurate like a computer or a sexless robot. But, you know, accurate as in, this is me, the good, the bad, the frayed, the incongruent. But also- Squiggly lines, buddy.

Yeah, man. It's like, you know, let that out there, give grace to each other, but also give grace to ourselves to be like, you don't have to be falsely confident, I think, to get over this anxiety. But if you lower your expectations to that of like, you know, how I can represent myself in the podcast,

that I'm having some anxiety, you know, to be able to not be exclusionary for this example. Or how do I represent myself so I don't feel just totally befuddled and beaten down. by giant steps, something that many millions of people have gone through, but it's very frustrating when 10 minutes ago you weren't going through it. That's right.

And so then all the things that that do, like, how do you take... Didn't even know as a thing. Right, right. How do you take a breath and say, okay, this is a challenge. There is a way to overcome it. Overcom it is not perfection or reversal, but it is like getting through this and becoming stronger at the end and being able to be more helpful and to be a net gain. I mean, like, if we don't get anything negative, we don't want to.

ruffle any feathers than we're just bland and vanilla and nobody cares. But I want to say, I want to say, though, this is also just a game of expectations, right? So the biggest, my biggest problem with giant steps was I was I was expecting myself to always be able to play giant steps perfectly because I have before. Oh, a little giant steps taken for granted there. Take it for granted. You're expecting to always just be seen as this, you know, benevolent, perfect person in everybody's eyes and that any sort of difference in your expectation versus how reality is, which is, which is I'll never be able to play Giant Steps perfectly 100% of the time. You'll never have 100% of the people liking you. Right.

I mean, think about this. Like, people hear John Coltrane and they say, I hate that. Right. I don't like that music. This is someone who we consider to be one of the greatest artists of all time. Yes. In the history of recorded music. Yeah.

And they're, or take your pick, Miles Davis or Stevie Wonder. They're like, yeah, it's not for me, you know? So it's like, you're never going to be everything to everybody. and once you sort of like see your expectation what that is oh I'm supposed to be perfect for everybody all the time and then you can say like well wait a minute that's not true it's not going to happen right I'm going to mess this up eventually it's going to happen squiggly lines it's never cookie cutter and straight

and you know what I think the number one um anxiety reduction technique for us for both of us for these two different issues is right now what are you thinking what I'm thinking what gala that would reduce my anxiety No pressure. Do what you want, folks. But if you could please... A man's a marketing genius, everybody. No, really, that'll make me feel whole again.

Wow. It's not about me. Oh, so it is, but it's about external results. It's about external approval, everybody. I just want to put that out there. Think about it. I wouldn't say this at the beginning. This is for those that want to go deep.

Okay. And have made it all the way to this part of the pot. That's a special breed right there. If you are, if you made it this far, in the YouTube comments only of this video, I want you to put Gala for Peter's... ego. Gala for Peter's ego. No, Gala's, no,

Gala, Gala, Gala, Gala, Gala, Gala, Gala, Gala. It doesn't matter. Gala. And what does that stand for? So, gentlemen, and ladies' agreement. For Peter's ego. No, it's for Peter's anxiety reduction. It's the anxiety reduction act. The anxiety. Okay, okay. That's the Gala, anxiety reduction act. That's what you put.

Gala, A-R-A. Please. A-R-A. Until next time. You'll hear it.