You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How I Became A Better Player In My 40's

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

In this episode, Adam takes us on a ride through his musical journey, sharing how he transformed into a more accomplished piano player and musician as he's gotten older. He opens up about the challenges he faced, the hard work he put in, and the moments of self-discovery along the way. ↓ Links from the pod ↓Open Studio Pro | WAITLISTHave 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

Mademannis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hearer podcast. And I want to move to an organic vegan farm in Brazil. Why would you want to do that? Is that where Lenny Kravitz lives? He does. He does.

So, you know, the great Heather McCorkel, my lovely better half, always says about, I know what you're alluding to. It's how great Lenny Kravitz looks for his age, right? No, I was thinking about how great his farm in Brazil looks. No, but it is because of how amazing he is aging. Yes. But as Heather McCorke would say... Is he aging?

He's not. As Heather McCorke would say, the key to this is to start out looking like Lenny Kravitz in the first place. You just start out looking like that, and then you can age like that. That's right, right, right, right. No, we did a little it in it over till it's over because today's episode... Oh, that's what that was. Yeah, this is a bit of a weird episode.

We've been getting some very flattering. I mean, I've been getting some very flattering, but a little bit of weird comments on some of our YouTube shorts. Yeah. Some of our YouTube videos about my... playing in particular and and people saying, could you speak on the growth that you've had since you started working at Open Studio, which is a little bit like, oh, wait, did I suck before? But the thing is, I'm actually not offended by this comment or question because I think it actually

is true. I have grown tremendously since I've started working here at Open Studio. I started making videos, started working with you, Peter. And I thought we could talk about that because this all happened. Any growth that's happened that is noticeable to people has all happened in my 40s. Wow, which is kind of interesting. Before we get to that, can I just show you something? I don't know if you noticed.

I was a little distracted. And now you're going to understand why. Staring at, look at that guy. Take a look inside Lenny Krabb's Brazilian Far. How old is that guy? He's 73 in this picture. But look at that. I want to be there.

I want to be him. That's amazing. Okay. Anyway, sorry. Even the reins on the horse were fashionable. That's crazy. Look at those. Those are bespoke.

That's Ralph Lauren, Blue, and Matt's is. He's got to happen. Okay. But I digress. Please tell me this. He's been 30 years old since 1993. That's amazing. That's right.

Okay. What are we talking about? So we're talking about how I grown, how I've grown as a musician in my 40s, which isn't the time period that you think of as like a period of a lot of growth. Well, let me take over here because I don't want you to feel like you have to chew your own horn too much. Let me set the table. Well, we're going to be pulling me back a lot too, I think is part of the point.

You're in the mid-40s now. I'm 45 years old. Well, we don't want to doubt. Okay. I don't mind. I feel I'll... So you're halfway through your 40. Yes, that's right.

So things could still go downhill. Don't get too cocky, and I might be after this. But I think I can speak on this because I've known you for longer, you know, than since you're in your 40s, but we've really been working closely together now that I'm thinking of, certainly for the last five, six years. That's right. And even longer.

But I, so I've seen the whole trajectory. And I think a lot of times it's hard for us to be objective about our own progress unless we look back like a decade or a generation. or five years or something. It's very hard to look. And we talk about that struggle when you're practicing and when you're growing.

But for others, sometimes you can see these bursts of progress, sort of accelerated growth easier, I think almost in others than in oneself on a shorter level. Yeah.

And I think the fact that you're saying, you know, the comments, did we show the comments already? The beautiful comments? Yeah, we could put those comments up here. Yeah. So it's not just us here too.

And thank everybody for all the lovely comments. It's super nice to hear. And I like, you know, this is the thing with YouTube comments, if they're positive and flattering to us, they're all true and heartfelt. And when they're negative. They're idiots.

We all know this, right? There's two different kinds of comments. You have to accept them all. You accept the good ones. You've also got to accept the ones where you're like, no, you sound terrible, buddy. Right. But I have seen you do an admirable thing in specific ways with your playing and with other aspects of your professional life where you've accelerated your progress into your 40s.

And I think it's an inspiring thing. A lot of people do this, but not everybody does. It's not automatic. You know, like these things when we talk about, oh, once you get to this age, you'll understand this. Yeah, you might understand because you've got experience and stuff, but are you going to be able to put that in a practice? And are you even going to have, you know, sort of are you going to accept and take on a kind of mindset that would put you in a position to possibly accelerate your growth? Because a lot of people think, oh, there's in, what are these phrases like the inevitable decline, you know, be it physically or mentally or spiritually or whatever. there's this idea a lot of times in society that's put on it.

So like you have to reject all that, or even things that, you know, tropes that maybe we throw around where it's like you can't learn something like you can when you're a kid. Well, why not? Yeah. Maybe we can learn something's better. I mean,

but there's even even more subtle things, Peter. Like, so, I mean, we can start really at the beginning, you know, like, so you started playing when you were a really young kid and you had some really, you could say you're fortunate, but it's all earned because you were privileged. Privileged. You were so talented at such a young age that you got to meet Witton Marsalis when you were a mid-teenage, or 15 or something like that.

And then you got hooked up with peers like Christian McBride and where Hargrove from a very early age and moved to New York. And I mean, you're unstoppable force. But then I think there's a lot of people who are more like me. I was very good and got a lot of attention for playing when I was young and in high school. And I was gigging when I was 15 here in St. Louis. And I was making money as a musician from an early age, right? But I was never a Peter Martin level. I moved to New York.

I played with some great people. But it was like, you know, I looked up to you. I looked up to Kieser. I looked up to Brad Meldow. And like you all are... All the guys that are fizzling out now. No, no, not at all. But no, all my heroes.

And like, you know, seeing you do it. And then that never quite, I never quite got to that level. Right. So this is like a level of, of like, it's even more subtle than what you were talking about. Because it's like, okay, well, now what do I do? How do I continue? So I started to find my own way doing, you know, played with a lovely and talented Aaron Bodie for years. Writing a lot of songs for her, doing a lot of arranging and things like that, which was an incredible way to sort of find my own voice.

But I never believed that I could be a great jazz pianist because, you know, I was at the new school and, like, I was looking at a practice room one day and this guy was in there practicing. And I was like, man, this is just like a kid at the new school. It was Robert Glasper. but like I didn't know who was Robert Glassper at the time. It just thought it was another student at the new school. And I was like, this is insane. Like, I'll never be on that level, right? And so how do you find your way?

So I think that's like the first key to this is like, sometimes it's being, like finding a way to hang out and stick around long enough. If you can hang out long enough, you'll find your own pathway. Your, my pathway was not the same as yours. It was not the same as Brad Meldauer Keyers. And, you know, my trajectory might never, ever be the same of that. but if I can find a place where I'm comfortable with, I'm doing things that I love to do,

which I always have been fortunate of to find a way to make a living, making music that I actually really love. And I think that comes out. And then the longer you can hang around with that, the more odds that you're going to figure some shit out and you're going to find your way and maybe have a little more success and maybe become, you know,

grow into the player that you were kind of meant to be. And so my first, like, my first response to this is, Adam, can you talk about how you've grown, you know, since you started at Open Studio. It's like, well, it started before that because I think before that I figured out a way to hang out as a professional musician without the rocket ship trajectory of just being like solid, good

musician who can make a living. And this is unfortunately, this is like a class of musician that used to be everywhere. It used to be the most musicians were working class musicians just making their way. Right. You know, like Paul, I always think of Paul Simon's father. Just a bass player in New York, just making, you know, playing in the, in the TV and radio, orchestras, doing side work or whatever. That class of musician doesn't exist as much anymore. It's like we're all trying to be a social media star. We're all doing this stuff. And so like the

working class musician is not there. But I think that is your sort of first tip is can you figure out a way to stay in the music game long enough that maybe someday you'll, you'll have like the room to grow into who you were meant to be in the first place. Right. Because that also happens where it's like, oh, I'm not going to be Brad Meldow. I thought I was going to be Brad Meldow. It's not going to happen. to be Adamantis, which is going to be something different. And I'm going to have to... I'm going to be Lenny Kravitz at the piano.

I'm still working all that. Peter's, when he's 60, he's going to be Lenny Kravitz. So that's the first thing. And then there is the fact that, like, because I had some of those skills that we, I developed on my own with Aaron's band and orchestrating and arranging and things like that. And I met you and we hit it off and had a lot in common about shared music and you saw something in me that I could be of help and service in Open Studio.

And I spent the first few years here at Open Studio, which brings me in my name. next point of just really transcribing everything you were doing and being over your shoulder. And so getting a mentor, getting someone that you can apprentice with, which is what I was doing, you know, six, seven years ago. By the way, at this point, I'm 38 years old, right? I'm fairly into my career, but I've just been doing kind of my own thing playing guitar, accordion, piano. I still play jazz, but I'm not really considered considering myself a jazz pianist. It's not until I start shadowing you here at Open Studio, transcribing everything you're doing. I had a good ear.

I can do all that. But I was like, oh, I can see now a pathway to being a better jazz pianist, right? And that kind of brings me to my next point. So staying in the game, finding a mentor, number two, number three is finding some focus and saying, I'm going to focus here on jazz piano. I'm actually going to like, instead of trying to be all things to all people, jack of all trades, which actually I think is still my biggest skill set is a generalist. but I am going to spend some time focusing on being a better pianist,

being a better jazz pianist, getting more steeped in this music that I love so much. And so it's like, it's crazy to even think of myself now as a jazz pianist because I kind of let that all go in my 20s. I'm like, I'm not a jazz pianist. I'm a musician. I play guitar.

I play piano. I play accordion. I write songs. I love jazz. I can play it. But now I definitely consider myself more of a jazz pianist than I did then. And that's from shadowing you. That's from focusing on that.

And then like the last approach that I'll talk about. We can go deeper on these however you want, Peter, is just like, and this happens, I think, to a lot of folks, musicians are not in your 40s, and that's personal growth. You see the other side of the hill. You realize you might have less time here than you've already had. You're not over the hill, but you're aware of the hill. You can see the top of the hill adjacent. You're hill adjacent. And you do start doing a lot of personal growth. For me, that was like, you know, I got sober, which we haven't really talked about it here, but that's been a huge part of my personal growth. I'm in therapy, which is a huge part of my personal group, dealing with a lot of the things that I just was pushing off.

And that's made me a better musician, a better artist, because I'm a lot more honest. I'm a lot more able to deal with the things that I want to say, right? And then meditation and just working on that head game of being able to stay present in the moment has made me a way better performer. I think a lot of the, when people say Adam has gotten so much better since he started at Open Studio, earlier things that I would be doing on camera, I was just super nervous, right? Because I didn't want to play the wrong thing. I wasn't comfortable, like making mistakes. We still struggle with that. You'll never stop struggling with that, but I'm so much more confident and like... You can get to your stuff. Like the barrier to entry is so much lower in terms of just your...

I mean, I know this, having experienced the same thing. 100%. You know, that's such a big part of it. And that's all like shout out to my meditation, Matt, and shout out to Deidre, my therapist for like that those that kind of work that kind of personal growth work yeah super helpful yeah and the and I think but like I said that's not just a musician and we don't talk about that or not I mean we do talk about it here but we want to and part of it I think we we we shy away because we're like look we're experts in this yeah and we don't want to but I mean if you look at the percentage you know that these things contribute to the kind of growth that people would comment on say like wow you know like you take one thing of like

wow you've gotten better wow you you look muscular while you're your health is, you know, any kind of thing. There's always all these different elements that go into it. 100%. So just because we don't talk about it all the time doesn't mean they aren't huge. One more thing that I think is key, and this is more of a practical thing, is that a lot of what I do here at Open Studio is try to interpret what a lot of our masters, you included, are playing and explain that to our members, right?

That teaching something to other people is, I think, the most direct way to really understand that concept. So if you can start just teaching someone, so you don't have to become a teacher, but if you can teach someone something, that will get you to understand that concept, to be able to play it better, to feel it better than anything else. My son's piano teacher, who's a brilliant piano teacher for kids, by the way, just had him for his homework this week, teach my wife how to use the sustain pedal. Right. So your job is to teach your mom how to use the sustain pedal. Because he was having some problems with it. And so, like, he had to show her how it works and where to use it and how to feather it. I'm sure Heather was like, hold up. I'm paying this guy to teach you how to do that.

Don't worry about me. I thought, Pat, that is so brilliant to get him to teach her how to do it because now he has to understand it deeper. It's great. Yeah. Well, that's fantastic. You know, like some things that kind of jumped out of me, and thank you for sharing your story on this, is this idea of stacking habits. I think that you were doing that in preparation and the way that you did that, I think, was very much linked to something that you mentioned several times, which is making a living. I was always making a living. And I'd always think back to something my dad really instilled in me and he still talks about it's like, how do we remain productive as musicians or whatever it is we're doing? We're musicians, right? Like finding different ways.

Don't not getting caught up in. Am I a jazz musician? Am I a folk writer? Whatever? No, it's just like what opportunities come along. don't like the people that end up within a position, you know, along with some maybe some serendipitous, you know, entrances as well. But like with any hope of getting to a point where you're 40 and like, okay, maybe I'm in a

situation where I can really kind of revisit this one part of my passion and maybe I'm in the best position I've been in my whole life, even better than when I was 15 because of your particular circumstances and how you're let. I mean, we haven't even talked about like family and like all these things that affect who we are. Kids make your time management so much better. Yeah, exactly. But I think the idea that you always remained productive, like took what situations gave you, you know, and didn't say, like, you didn't, I didn't hear you anything focusing on. I didn't get the opportunity to this. It was like, well, I got this opportunity. And so I learned how to write for strings or I learned

how to play accordion. Like you were open and, you know, you looked at it as like a spectrum of different activities that you could contribute it with your musical talent set. Not like when we think narrow, and this was actually, I think what has stunned my growth at different times. Like it's both been accelerated sometimes. It's done it. Sometimes when we think too narrowly about ourselves as in service to the music, really in service to the world with our music.

So like if we come to it from a thing of like, I'm a jazz pianist, like a swinging tip in jazz pianist through 1967, that's all I'm interested in. That's what I'm going to do. Yes, maybe you will find success because there is. a market for that, right? But is that the only thing that we have to contribute to the world? Well, it depends on where you are in your soul with what you want to say. But I will say that your dedication to jazz piano at the highest level is it brings people around you to be around that. So there's nothing, that's not a bad thing. That's the focus that I'm talking about.

I didn't have that until I started hanging out with you. Well, that, I appreciate that, but that might have also been somewhat coincidental or serendipitous that that happened because what you did have, you had been stacking up the habits up to that point in your musical life to be able to take advantage of that. By necessity, and shout out to all my freelancers out there, all freelance musicians, you got to do what you got to do. I remember when I was in college seeing Dave Chappelle on the inside the actor's studio show. Remember that show? Yeah. With James Lipton and he would get everybody to cry. Exactly. And Chappelle's, he's smoking a cigarette on TV still. And he's talking about how when he was starting off in stand-up, he told his dad, listen, you're a teacher. Because his dad was like,

don't go in a stand-up. It's too risky. There's not guaranteed that you're going to think. He's like, listen, if I can make what you make as a teacher as a stand-up, I'm cool. I don't have to be rich and famous. Like, if I could just do this, but make what you're making, but I get to do stand-up comedy. And I took that to heart when I was in my early 20s of like, if I could just make what a teacher and play music for a living, that's like the dream. It's golden. Totally. I like, I don't care. I don't need anything else. Now, some years, it was like a substitute teacher in a very small district. That's right. It's really a grind. And some years, it's a great, you're in a, you're in a, you're a big suburban district.

But I think learning how to grind like that as part of it. And then I want to touch on a, go back to a couple of things here. So one of the things about finding a mentor, it's not just like being over Peter's shoulder and figuring out what you're playing over what chords or whatever, but it's like your level and being around people who are better than you at a high, the highest level of musicianship and play the big gigs,

which I'm so, this is what Open Studio has, actually everybody who comes to work for Open Studio, gets better as a musician as a as a as a player as a person because you're around people like you people like geoffrey people like christian mcbride people like ron carter people like dion reves who expect the quality of things to be at a very very high level and i'll never forget one of the first projects i did for you peter was transcribing the great peter sprague's course on guitar right and i never really notated a lot of guitar and i had to do some tablature things and it just wasn't that i wasn't as

accurate as it should have been. I didn't take the time to really comb through every transcription, every note of tablature and make sure zeros were on the zeros and everything. And Peter called me and he didn't chew me out, but he was like, this isn't acceptable. And you know, Peter's an amazing guitarist played with Chick Corea. He's like, this isn't good. This needs to be better. He probably said it in the nicest way ever. He was super sweet. He's a sweetheart of a guy and he's an amazing monster musician. Yeah. But he was like, this isn't going to fly. Right. Because he cared. Because he cared. And no one that I'd really worked with up into that point, it was like, oh, yeah, good enough. We're playing jazz, whatever, you know what I mean? Or whatever. We're doing whatever.

We can fix it. But he really had a high level. And I mean, again, I was 38 years old when I learned that lesson. Right. And I'll never, I'll never forget that. I immediately started upping all of my attention to details. Being around you immediately, you know, can we have nice things? Right. You know, like those things, they, they, and you probably don't even realize that you've had this being around Witten Marsalis, being around Roy Hargrove, being around all these incredible people who are so, Diane Reeves, so attuned to the details of things. Yeah. But if you're not around people like that, I think you're doing yourself a disservice. Try to find people who are doing things at a high level and just try to be around them. You know, I'm not sitting here playing with you when I start working here.

I'm like working for you trying to make what we're doing here better. like that is worth, you know, every transcription, every hour spent working here was being around that, getting that level up. Yeah. Of quality for myself. Right. And now I expect things of certain people that I never would have expected before. Well, it's the exciting thing. You, and I think that you really hit on something there in terms of leveling up, people say, but I think what you, the activities that you had, your productivity, your make a living, stay in the game, you know, be a be flexible, be, um, try things, you know, um, like you had done some really interesting things before that point, you know, most notable that I had seen was your writing and creation of,

of your, of your group, not only your trio, which I think was a little bit later, but the 442s. And that was something that was super and continues to be super interesting to me and seeing your growth with that. And that's not a jazz group per se, but it's, it's something in a lot of ways in terms of like putting yourself into a position where you can level up in some very specific areas of that if you get that time and the season there's seasonality to all these things too right sometimes sometimes we're growing sometimes you're just kind of hanging those seasons because they're not open to that so like when you talk about leveling up like there's levels to every game right and and most people by the time they get to their 40s are pretty much accepting that whatever

level they're at in the game they're playing the is it you know what I mean and they're like well this is good enough or this is this is the top level for me they might see some other things but how do you get somebody like a lebron james who's about to turn 40 yeah right this is crazy this still out there like like he's hit all the levels right yeah but because he's got that mentality of like hold up there's levels to this game now maybe teaching his kids and different things like have seen them come up keeps keeps his mindset but like he's somebody that i wouldn't be shocked if he didn't obviously there's physical limitations to the body at certain points but like he's got that kind of glimmer in his eye that you've got. Well, and this is, again, you know, this is all credit to you in Open Studio. And this could be

another lesson, I think, for people listening who might be wondering, like, well, what can I do? I want to start leveling up in my 40s, my 30s or when, it doesn't actually matter, like the decade or whatever. But it is like, don't wait until your 40s. Yeah. You can, but if you start a project like we, like we have with Open Studio. Yeah. Which is like open studio is not just, you know, it is us connecting with community. But for me, it's like a personal growth machine. Like, it's like I get to push myself and see what I can do. And it seems limitless what we can grow with this. And I think if you can find a project like, start a project where it's like, we're starting from basically nothing. And let's see what we can do with this. And that's all your vision, dude. That's all your mentality.

It's a lot of that is like your push for this. And you, you know, again, are, are seen ageless in that, like, there's always another level to get up on. Well, and I think what you did in this situation was like you, And I don't know how conscious is, well, I'm sure it became conscious at a certain point or in how intentional it was, but you did it, which is you found a way, I think maybe because, you know, you have younger kids. You still have young kids, but they were much younger than, you know, family time pressures that anyone who's a parent and a husband or wife or whatever in a relationship feels. And then, but you still had things that you wanted to do. So when this open studio thing came along and you are as much as me or anybody in terms of creating what it's become now, you know, what, yeah, I had a certain vision. But. The smartest thing I did was get out of the way and be like, let's let some other visions in here. Let's see where we can go. But you were accepting, you were receptive to the concept that you could grow as a player, as a very specific, like, jazz player at the same time you taught that. Right. Like, you knew you.

Well, they go hand in hand. Like, so it's like you could be of service by sharing, to a certain degree, your journey. I mean, you are way ahead of most of our students. So you were able to like, and you, like, if they had a question. like how do you do that? You didn't have to be like, I don't know, I haven't learned it yet. You knew it, but you also kept in mind that like that wasn't good enough. Well, this is like you were looking further and you shared that experience. So it became an inspirational and instructive thing for the community that they wanted to be part of.

Buddy, this is what's so great about the master apprentice relationship is if you have that. If I have a you, then I'm, I'm never going to be like, I have something to look forward to as far as like I, something to aspire to, right? So it really humbles you to the project, right? Because you're like, well, I'm not quite, like, I'm just here for the music. I'm here to, like, see what Peter's doing and find my place within that. That is a, is a, and this is why people, like, you see, uh, John Batisse still has a piano teacher, even though he's like multi-Grami award winning, like having that relationship is important to this. There's another part of the personal growth thing that I just want to touch on really quick. And that's like one of the things that you discover when you sort of uncover some things is like, you know, outcomes become way less important than process. And so one of the things that I think has practically been a game changer just for my piano skills has been realizing like there's no finish line to it. There's no moment where I'm going to be a great pianist. But there is something that I can do, which is to include what I want to do every day in my daily routine. And so daily practice has become a, and that's daily practice by the way,

of anything that I want to, that I want to be doing. That's writing. That's piano playing. That's that's dadding. That's meditation. That's all the things that's working out. That's all the things that I enjoy doing. Stack and habits. Stack and habits. It's in my 40s. I figured out like there's not, I don't need to set a goal of a result so much, I set a goal of spending my time doing these things every day.

So when I do that, the results fly in. Yeah. You know, so that's just one thing. So just to sum up here, uh, Adam 45, great. No, no, no, no. No, any growth that I've had is due to a mentorship relationship. It's due to a lot of focus. Very small part of it.

Finding some focus. it's due to a lot of personal growth and working on, you know, like rigidity of uncovering some things that were kind of pulling me down. And that's finding daily practice, letting go of results more, focusing more in process. Those are the things that. And then stay in the game. If you can find a way to stay in the game,

you'll find your time is essentially what it is. And I would just add also that, you know, understanding that there's levels to the game and that your ascendancy in those levels is not limited or diminished by age. It can actually do to seasonality and paying attention to which way the wind goes. It can accelerate a different time. So if you've got your ear to the ground, your ear to yourself, and you're able to find those times to take advantage of them,

you can actually have an advantage of when you're younger, where you're a little bit more thrown by the wind, when you can line yourself up with that wind as you get a little bit older, exciting things can happen. And I would just direct you. that says it all right there. I think he understands the seasons. How can I shift my daily processes so that that's the result?

Yeah, exactly. Well, when you put your ear to the ground, Peter, you know what happens? You'll hear it.