You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Be an AMAZING Jazz Pianist by Practicing ONE Simple Thing

Episode Date: July 3, 2019

It's an extra-clickbaity title for a clickbaity SpeakPipe topic: if you could only practice one thing, what would it be? Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Just go to https://youllhearit.com/podcast-contact/.And check out the book Peter plugs in this episode: The ONE Thing by Gary W. Keller and Jay Papasan http://www.the1thing.comWe're proud to present the new-and-improved platform for Open Studio: https://www.openstudiojazz.com! Head on over, check it out, and let us know what you like and what needs improvement. (We have over 1000 lessons to move to the new site, so check in over the following weeks as we update our courses)And if a new platform wasn't enough, we have a BRAND NEW course available: Jumpstart Jazz Piano! This is a course for very beginner-level pianists who want to learn the basic fundamentals of how to play jazz. And to celebrate, we're offering an early-bird discount of $10 off for THIS WEEK only! Just go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/jazz-piano-jumpstart and use the discount code JPJ10.Today's episode is sponsored by Soundslice. Soundslice is a web-based music-learning software that is a hybrid audio player and notation viewer that syncs music notation with real audio. To find out more about them, visit www.soundslice.com/transcribe. And check out our Slice of Emotion In Motion (the You'll Hear It Jingle)!Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Pete. Hey, man. You know what today is? July 3rd. Any other relevant? Canada Day. It's Wednesday. Anything?

No. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Coming at you today is Wednesday, July 3rd. Take two. Take two.

I said something inappropriate. As happens. That hopefully we'll never hit the light of day. I mean, it is starting it over again. It is rare for it. It is hump. Day. But that wasn't even the inappropriate thing. And I didn't know.

That was not a little cute thing we were doing to be it. But now that I know we're actually talking about hump day on hump day, I'm excited. I want to know what today feels like. But tomorrow's a holiday. So it's... Yeah, it's like the weekend for those folks. I'm trying to clap my hands like Adam Manus to see if it works. Make your point, emphasized

by clapping your hands. Today's episode of the You'll Hear its podcast is sponsored by SoundSlic. We love SoundSlics around here at Open Studio. We use it all the time. It's an amazing transcription tool go to soundslice.com slash transcribe to see you for yourself you could also check out the incredible community where you can view other people's slices to see what they've transcribed i've been having fun in that community yeah you've been bouncing around in there it's it's a lot of fun i kind of

forgot about it for a little while and then uh not only our page there's some great great guitar stuff pat martino is well represented in there and it's it's a cool little community happening go check them out yep uh so today let's uh let's check out this uh speak pipe it's hump pipe speak pipe Wednesday. Did you say hump pipe? No, hump, hump day, sorry. Hump day, speak pipe Wednesday. I think he said hump.

Andrew's laughing. All right, this is good. Hey, Peter and Adam. My name's Anthony. I'm from North Carolina. I'm a beginner jazz pianist. And my question to you is, if you had to choose one thing to practice

every day, whether you had 15 minutes or five hours to practice, what would that one thing be that you'd practice every day no matter what. Thanks, guys, love your show. Keep up what you're doing. Oh, I love this. I mean, this is like, this is tailor made for the kind of click-baity titles we have.

What do we call them this today? Oh, if you could choose one thing to practice, what would it be? And that's exactly what he's asking. I mean, if we wanted to get real click-baity, and we'll see how Andrew posts this, dear listeners. But it could be like the one secret thing you could practice, you know. Right. Number one, I'll blow your mind. Right, right.

Well, no, that'll be like, what it does to you're playing after seven weeks will blow your mind. Exactly. You're not going to believe what you look like after 70. seven years of practicing like this. Let's give a, we're going to give Andrew a clickbait challenge to see what kind of title he can come up with on this. That's right, right, right. This is a dangerous proposition.

Yeah. Well, but this is both a clickbaity subject, but also a very, I think, important subject. Totally. One that we've kind of hit on a little bit in terms of from maybe more from the angle of flexibility in your practice, knowing that, you know, some days you have 15 minutes, some days you have five minutes. And we really like to preach the concept of get to the instrument, get to your instrument every day, whether that's for five minutes or for five hours or 15 hours. And so you got to know

kind of, I mean, look, practicing one thing comes into play more when you've only got 15 minutes than if you have five hours. I think we need to be careful at the piano, actually about practicing the same thing, both from a physical standpoint and from a mental standpoint when you have long stretches. You want to take breaks and you want to mix it up because definitely the law of diminishing returns. This instrument is like a prime example. of law of diminishing returns of repeating something over again. I mean, probably all instruments are,

but there's some specific physical things about it that you'd want to keep from doing this. Well, and there's a risk of injury as well if you're just doing the, you know, and like we always say, we're not doctors of, we're not medical doctors, but we're doctors of jazz podcasts up in here. So we have a little bit of opinion on this.

It's an interesting question too, because I don't want to take these headphones off, but. Oh, I think I'll join you on that. I can't really hear anything, Andrew, and that's, I mean, that's on you, buddy. Yeah. But yeah, so, you know, when we talk about what to practice, we always take a lot of the same things. We talk a lot about the chromatic scale and the good it can do for your fingers and your hands and just your awareness of the instrument.

So there's scales and arpeggios. Those are things that are always in my routine. But if I could only practice one thing. I know. I can feel us dancing around a little bit. And so we have to like center in. And we're going to have to both either do. Well, you know what, a little bit later in the episode, we might have to just say it at the same time so that we don't.

just agree with each other what that one thing is, you know. Yeah. Like do a countdown or whatever. To what, yeah. Well, I'm thinking of options here. So let's talk about all the things we wouldn't want to do. Yeah, okay. No, no, this is good.

So I actually wouldn't want to do the chromatic thing if I could practice one thing. Right. No, no. Because that's not really going to give me all the tools I need to do. Right. What I need to do. It's an important part. It is.

It is. But it's not like that one thing. Yeah. And actually, I think, you know, it's interesting because, you know, I remember reading a book about Something like the important, what is it, the important things about, no, no. Something about one thing. No, it's called the one thing. Yeah, it's called the one thing.

Well, Anthony, check that book out. Check that out. No, no, but it's got nothing to do with music. It's kind of like entrepreneurship kind of book. But the idea is that, you know, there's always that one overriding important thing. It's different for everybody, different for every business, different for every organization, for every musician. I think you can extend that to. But the idea being like, are you willing to focus?

on that one thing and it's usually a concept and or a construct or framework. And I think that that sort of idea we can take and this may not be what Anthony's looking for as far as like a magic pill as far as practice the secret blue scale every day for five hours and you'll be great. It's not about that. But like, you know, we can think about starting to focus in on something that's important. It's still not going to answer his question. But we're going to get to that in a minute.

Yeah. Yeah, there's so much. Let's talk about some more things that we would do. Cromatic scale. I think any kind of scale. Any scales I wouldn't do just because it would, it's not all encompassing. It doesn't give you what you need to get. I probably wouldn't practice just, you know, doing voicings or some kind of thing like that or site reading.

I wouldn't practice. Yeah. One thing. Although those are all things that are in my regular practice routine. Right, right. You know? Right. I wouldn't say like transcribing or even playing solos.

I thought about transcribing. I mean, that's great. But it's not the one thing. It's not the one thing. Yeah. I think we're kind of, we're both heading. towards the same direction. You're thinking what I'm thinking?

I might be. Kulao Sanatina? No. No, no Beethoven either. No. Well, it's kind of like this is almost brings you back to the desert island record concept.

If you're, first of all, what a stupid thing. Okay, if you're on a desert island, if you're deserted on a desert island, what do you can be worried about having a record? You don't have electricity. You don't have a record player. You know what I mean?

How about some food? Yeah. How about a big bag of trail mix that never goes back? I'm going to process food. Use my record as a throwing star to hunt the animals that I need to eat. Exactly.

Let's get tactical of it. Totally. No, but I think actually what I would come up with for this, whether you're going to practice five minutes, 15 minutes, or five hours is a great piece of music, a great piece of music that you love,

that you're most passionate about. Do you like that drum roll? So for me, that was very good. And I was so, I actually started answering while you're still doing it, so I screwed up the drama. Sorry. No, but for me, I mean,

a tune like, like, like Lush Life, Billy Strayhorn's masterpiece comes to mind because that's something that I could practice a lot of parts of my musicianship and my piano skills in the context of that tune. And I would never get tired of playing it. There's so much beautiful music as part of it. You can practice so many different facets of your jazz musicianship within it. So it's kind of like repertoire, basically.

And I would say you grab something, you choose something that you love, that you're passionate about that you could never imagine getting tired of and you make that your one thing. I was going to say nearly the exact same thing and it was, you know, I would practice some form of solo piano performance and I would record it if like every day, if that was my one thing I could practice. So I could give myself feedback and hear how I progress. But in that performance, practicing the performance, I'm getting, you know, I'm able to practice voicings and playing the melody and interpreting a melody and soloing and all the things that I'm going to need, and I'm practicing how to perform it in front of people.

Now, if you only did that, you're not going to progress as much as you were to practice individual technical things, individual voicing things. Yes, you know, all of that comes together to make for great jazz musicians. But if I only had one, which is very limiting, I think that's what I would do. That's good.

I think I like your little extension on it, and I think we're close there. And, you know, if you think about it, like if you're a beginner player, like Thomas from North Carolina, Thomas, right? Anthony, Anthony. What am I thinking, Thomas, Anthony? Tony, Tony, if he's of Italian extraction. So the idea being, if you are more on the beginner side, you can still do this. You might not choose lush life, but you would choose something that is really, that you love and is simpler and is in your wheelhouse, kind of at your level. And really look at, you know, taking it through different situations and with an eye towards developing that musicianship that the, the impover.

I love this concept of recording yourself. We've talked about this before, but we could never talk about it enough. Like it's funny yesterday I actually pulled out my phone to record something I was playing and I do it more sort of on the fly now, but it was a little kind of an idea for a tune that I had. But then I also wanted to look and when I wanted to be able to listen to see if I was really hearing it the way I thought I was. Because that's always that thing about recording. It's like how close is it. I mean if you have a photographing memory or like the equivalent of that for sound.

Yeah. You would never need to record anything because you'd remember exactly how something happened. You're like a court reporter or something. Like you hear how it goes and you're accurate with it. Right. But we want to be challenging ourselves to see how accurate we actually are. Yeah. And it never sounds exactly how it sounds as you're playing it.

It's good to take that step back and hear yourself as you truly are in relation to the actual time, you know, and everything. I've actually got an ultimate tip that we can do on this. Cool. So throw it out there. Well, thank you, Anthony, for sending that speak pipe. If you want to send us a speak pipe, which is, you know, you know what those are? Yeah. It's like you take like a old tobacco pipe and speak into it and then hold it up to a phone and send us a voice message.

I feel like you're not taking that question seriously. I feel like it wasn't a serious question. No, but it was. It was a rhetorical question so that our listeners would know. Yeah. And you know what? I actually went and tried to do this. Not that I was going to send us a speak pipe, but I wanted to see the process.

It's a little trickier than we think. So I'm actually surprised we get as many as we do. So you go to you'll hear it.com. That's the first part. You press podcast. Yeah. There's a few little barriers on your way. And then it's like, you know,

You got to press that. Yep. And then it's like leave a speak pipe. But as soon as you press speak pipe, it's like the recording thing comes up. And I think some people may be intimidated. You should not be intimidated. Yeah, leave a voice message. Well, yeah, but no, no, but you're thinking, oh, I got to record and then it's done.

No. You have a chance to review it. Oh, nice. Just like you would, you know, play a performance and then listen to it again and then fix it if you want. So don't, do not fear. Go ahead and record it. And we would be happy as you hear. We often do to answer your question.

Yeah, we want to hear from you. Yeah. And go check out soundslice.com slash transcribe for this amazing transcription tool. Shout out to SoundSlice for being our sponsor today. And you know what? Another big day. It is another big day. Because we have day two of our brand new course, Jazz Piano Jump Start.

This is a course for novice jazz pianists, for aspiring jazz pianists. It's the seven-week jumpstart course taught by you and I. Right. In partnership. Yeah, and almost you'll hear it style. One of our team members mentioned today that they thought we had honed our skills on the podcast for witty banter and education all folded together, you know. So check it out. We have like a ton of play alongs.

We'll teach you all about about voicing and rhythm and a bunch of stuff. We even have intervals. Intervals. We even have these guided practice routines, which is. I'm excited about those. I am too. I've been describing those across between a guided meditation and a Jane Fonda, aerobic workout video.

Right. Without the leg warmers. No, I wore leg warmers. You just can't see them because it's just from the shoulders up. But go check that out. It's, well, and the most exciting. Yesterday we couldn't put it out there. We couldn't say, but now we can say. Now we can say it. Can we say it?

Are we going to do it? Let's do it. Openstudiojazz.com. Openstudiojazz.com. That's the new home for Open Studio. That's right. And we don't have everything up there now, but we do have the jazz piano jumpstart. Right. We have jazz piano jump start. I believe we have jazz panel for beginners, which has been ported over. And all the other courses are on their way. We have over a thousand lessons and many more PDFs and audio downloads and sounds like we have a lot of content. This has been fun for us for the whole team to kind of do this project and then to realize how much content we've created here, our artists. I mean, our amazing artists. And so it's going to be there in the next couple of weeks. But we wanted to get this Jumpstar Jazz out to you and give you all a chance to check out.

the new platform so we think you're going to love it. Openstudio network.com is still there but eventually it's going to be in the graveyard. Finito. It's going to be finito. But everybody's account's going to be moved over and everything. Don't worry. All your courses are going to be there. The new platform is incredibly fast, beautifully designed.

Very proud of what our team here is done. I think you guys are going to love it. And it's just the beginning. We've got a lot of new cool stuff with the quizzes and the support materials and stuff. We think it's going to be kind of a game change. An ability for people to move through our courses and OpenSum. Jazz Piano Jump Start is a great example to move sequentially through

as you finish a lesson or a guided practice routine or PDF whatever it is that's next crosses it out and then you keep moving on. Keeps track it right where you are. Yeah, so go check out. Jazz Piano Jump Start. It's only $77. Why $77?

Because we love the sevens around here. This is our lowest price course ever outside of the packs, I think. But also the first 100 customers who buy the Jazz Piano Jumpstart get a free workbook. That's like a physical work. book worth about 38 bucks that will ship to you for free. You pay nothing

for it. First 100 customers. Free shipping anywhere in the world, I believe. I'm not even sure if that's true, but you know what? We're going to make that happen. That's a deal. Because you know, a lot of times people like free shipping, U.S., Canada only. I'm like, we got love for everybody in the world. I don't know if we can afford to get it to you, but we're going to try. No, no, free shipping, free physical

workbook. But look, when you get the, and actually the workbook's not even quite, we don't even have it here yet. It's going to be here in a couple days, but you will get it shipped as soon as it's ready, which will be momentarily. But As soon as you get the course, you can download a PDF version of the whole workbook anyway. So you're not going to be missing anything. This is more just the thing to put on your coffee table so that when your friends come over, they can be like, oh, what's that?

You can be like, oh, would you like me to play a little something I learned from Jazz Piano Jumpster? That's right. Yeah. So if you want to learn jazz piano for the first time, go check it out. If you're one of our Open Studio members already, be on the lookout for the new platform to your course coming soon. Yep. And until tomorrow. You'll hear it.

Hey, Adam. Yeah. We signed off. before we gave the ultimate tip. Did I forget that? Did I forget that? Well, we both did, man. Sorry.

We're in this together. Do you remember what it is? I do remember. Okay. So, look, whether, you know, this concept of one thing to practice on, we talked, I think we gave a couple of really nice ideas. But with this, the ultimate tip on how to do this, whether you've got 15 minutes or 15 hours to practice, is to challenge yourself the appropriate amount.

Okay. So, like, if you're going to take one tune and practice it, if you're going to take one concept and really work on it, you want to have it. you want to have it, you know, say with the repertoire, it'll be just challenging it up, maybe 10%, 20% above where you are so that you can both have an edifying experience as you're practicing it and also be challenged and progressing. So it's got to be something you're passionate about,

but it's got to be something just a little bit out of your reason. That's right. Now, it's not a scientific thing as far as how do you figure that out? You have to be able to get through the tune, you know, but it can't be just so easy that you're zoning out on it. But don't only play things that you're good at. We preach this all the time. Exactly.

You gotta challenge yourself a little bit. Love it. Yep. Well, until tomorrow, really. You'll hear it. Oh, hey, Adam, you didn't let us say our ultimate tip. Yeah, I dropped something. What?

Why'd you cut me off? Sorry, what do you got? What do you got? Okay, ultimate tip for, um, if you only had one thing to practice. You know what? I forgot what I was going to say. But I knew I had something really good, man. Now you're making me nervous with that sound.

No, no, no, I'm remembering now. I'm remembering now. So what it is, I'm going to tell you now. It is that sounds like you're stolen. It sounds like you're still. I totally forgot, man. Well, you'll hear it.