You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to CRUSH a 15-Minute Practice Session

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

On this episode, Peter and Adam give you some advice on how to make the most out of your shorter practice sessions.There's a new course from Open Studio: Elements of Solo Piano. Learn from modern jazz master Geoffrey Keezer as he shows you the strategies and techniques to become a better solo pianist. Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey, Adam. Do you have about 15 minutes to do that? Yes, I do. I am a robot making a podcast. Wow. I'm Adam Anis. And I'm Peter Martin.

And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily music advice. No, buddy, what's going on over there? Well, you, uh, during the break there, you, uh, did a little robot voice. I love the robot. I love the robot voice. I got that from you, though. I never used to dad joke it up so much.

Is that a dad joke? I don't know whether to blame you or blame the fact that I turned 14. but something has changed in me. When did the dad joke thing, I mean, I feel like it's so connected with hey boomer, okay boomer. Which one is it? I can't even remember. I love it.

You confused the boomer one. You say, it's okay boomer. Okay, boomer. But you always say, hey, boomer, which for some reason is the most boomer. Yeah, because I want to get the attention of a boomer. But you're not even a boomer. No, but you are. Ever since you...

I'm not a boomer. Since your last birthday, we talked about this. You went directly from the world's oldest millennial to the world's youngest boomer robot. No. That's not how it generates. generations work, man. Well, maybe. Let's talk about our sponsor.

I'm an exenial and you know it. Exenial, that's a made-up thing. Spell it. Users who were born between 1977 and 1983. Email in with your exenial stories of how the Gen Xers are too old and the millennials are too young. I'd love to. Okay, exenial. All right, whatever.

So let's talk about our sponsor, Open Studio. Open StudioJazz.com. OpenS Video Jazz.com. We have a new course that has just been released that is knocking it out the park. And do you think it's a special early release treat? Is that still available? Yeah, it should be. It's still available.

If you buy lifetime access, yes, you can still get. It'll say if you. It'll say. Yeah, there's a very special offer if you buy this course. What is the course, though? Oh, this is Jeffrey Kieser. Oh, you have me already. Elements of solo piano.

Elements of solo piano. Tell me more. So this is a mini course from, Jeffrey that I actually was not here when it was recorded I was gonna say why am I acting like I don't know what to say Yeah you were here but you produced it but I've been digesting it and watching it and he does I can just say that the pieste resistance as they say in In Paris and bordeaux and other cities

Uh-la la la is an amazing performance that he just sort of Knocked off on the same piano we play at in the studio it doesn't sound like the same piano that I play it didn't sound like and it was so casual yet so sophisticated So this is a The nearest to you, right? The nearest to you, but it's a solo piano arrangement that he's been kind of performing for a while. I asked him, like, do you have a chart on this arrangement? No, he doesn't. It's in 3-2.

Like, it's like a big 3. Yeah. And it's just the funkiest thing you've ever heard in your life. And it's just an amazing solo piano performance that he did in one take. And his whole being on the piano is annoyingly brilliant. And he really just crushes this whole seven-minute performance. And here's the real... The real...

Piest de Rizontz. Was that the word you were looking for? Yes, I don't know how to speak Russian. But it's that we have, you know, I don't know if you know Max Gamice. I do. I don't know him personally, but I know his fine work. He is a all-star transcriber. And he, I mean, when I say that, he got in the details of this transcription, he got all seven minutes.

And like. Every note. Left hand, right hand. Dude. Like, it is. Phrases, dynamics. Yeah, the transcription is as part of, it's like part of the impressive thing about this. like not as much as Jeffrey's performance,

but it's like, holy cow, how did you get all that stuff? So it's really, you can see a video of it. Maybe, Andrew, we can link to that YouTube video of the performance with the sound-slice version of the transcription. It's just so beautiful to see what he's doing, and it's so funky, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can check it out, of course, at open studio jazz.com.

And then the whole course, I think, is a really fun, digestible kind of breakdown on solo piano playing, really from one of our generations, if not the master of the... I mean, well, we've got a bunch, but I mean, Keezer's right in there with a very elite, small elite group of solo pianists

coming out of the great solo piano jazz lineage. And so we're so proud to have him and excited about this. Yep. So today we're talking about something that we get asked a lot about. Yes. We have a lot of people that are short on time.

Exactly. I don't understand. The world is so simple nowadays. Oh, yeah, it's so simple. It's basically like agricultural and then you have a bunch of free time at night to do whatever you want. After you hunt and gather all day.

Yeah, you're not tired. You come back to a cave of wonders. Yeah. No, we get told all the time. We get emails. We get speak pipes all the time about. We get faxes. Facts.

We get faxes. We get telegrams. You said you got a telegram once. That's that true? I was a young lad back in the 70s. I got a telegram from my dad. Oh, no, it wasn't a telex. TellX.

What's that? It's like a telegram. We talked about this. No, well, it's kind of like a telegram, but it's, um. It was a service. Hey, boomer. Let me tell you about it. Hey, boomer.

Okay, Boomer. Yeah, it was like a thing that would print up. It was like an early fax, but you could send it from another country. Wait, wait, wait, wait. How was me not knowing about technology from the early 70s, a boomer thing? Because you were like, if I was a boomer, I would know, man. Right, exactly. Just try to trip you up there.

No, so we thought we'd, we do a little bit of an episode on how to crush a 15-minute practice session. I love how we're like, people are short on time and they need to be taught or they need advice on how to practice in just 15 minutes. Yet we were talking for 15 minutes about how we're going to do this. Yeah, but people listen to this on this. to listen to all this. Well, they're listening on the commute in the car, on the train, you know, things like that.

That's right. All right. So now we need to provide some values. So let's talk about it. And I love this 15 minute idea because it's, I mean, if you do this right, this may be, in my mind,

sort of the minimum amount of time that you can actually get something accomplished. Now, does that mean if you practice 14 and a half minutes? Will you not get anything accomplished? No, of course you will. But I mean, I don't know. Can you really?

in an ideal situation when you're on limited time you want to carve out at least this amount of time I think yeah for me this is more like okay I don't have a lot of time today but I need to get at the piano

we talk about that all the time how it's important to get to the piano every day just to keep being familiar with it and keep the feel right right and so there are days I know for you I know for me it's like man

I don't have a lot of time to myself even or that I don't have other things I got to be doing whether that's writing projects or things with kids or gigs or traveling or whatever. So sometimes I might only have 15 minutes. Sometimes it's the only time I have is at 9 p.m. 10 p.m. at night after a full day of playing or recording or writing or working.

And all I want to do is go to bed. Right. But I still want to get that time at the piano. Right. Right. I still want to get the time of my instrument. And so that's why it's kind of like a minimum. Right. It's a minimum.

Because a lot of people will only have five minutes. Well, could you at least push that? I think usually we can push that at least to 15 minutes. For sure. We can find 15 minutes. Everybody should be able. If you can't find 15 minutes, get up 10 minutes earlier. No, I mean, like, you know, you might need to rethink how your life is scheduled.

Well, and it's also like, like, think about, you know, because you say it late and night, I've been in that situation too. Or it's like, oh, I'm so tired, but I know I should floss before I go to bed. Yeah. Okay, so sort of the 15 minute thing is like floss. You don't have to do the greatest floss. Yeah, yeah. But floss every. Don't just floss one tooth and be like, that's it, you know.

Another thing when I think the 15 minute thing is cool is sometimes you can be like, well, I have time, but I don't really feel like practicing. I'll just do 15 minutes. And then you could be on there for half an hour, an hour. You know, just sometimes having that low water mark to get to the piano, you get there and you stay longer. So it's a little bit of a motivator. Yeah. And if right now that feels is five minutes, is that for you, that's fine, but kind of build it up to 15.

You'll be amazed at how quick 15 minutes becomes the new five minutes for you, too. But if all you have is 15 minutes and all you want to do is spend 15 minutes on the instrument, hopefully these ideas can help you get the most out of that so that you walk away feeling like you actually accomplish something like you're actually going to grow with this amount of practice. Yeah. And so I think the first thing in order for this to be able to even work is that you have to enter into a mindset that you can actually get something important and, you know, validate some learning and some progress in 15 minutes.

Totally. Like if you don't believe that that's, this is going to be, sound a little wishy-washy, feely-y-touchy, you know. Feely-touchy-feely-touchy, you know. But I mean, this is going to be, this is going to be-wishy-washy, feely-y-touchy, you know. But I mean, this, but it's important. Like, you've got to believe that you can do something in 15 minutes.

And it's funny how, like, time this starts to adjust. I'll give an example. And I got a little experience with this recently. I've been doing this 30-day challenge. And I know you're about to start one. I knew you were going to go there. Yeah, that's specific around practice. Yeah, I'm about to start a drop-to 30-day challenge.

He's about to drop a drop-down and give me a drop-to, son. Yeah, so I've been doing. That's Hey, Open Studio on Instagram. Yeah, that's right. So on Instagram Hey, hey open studio Hey boomer Hey open studio boomer

That com No, so For the month of January I've been doing A challenge Which is just to practice something Yeah In all 12 keys every day

Anything It's been fascinating I've done voicings I've done you know melodies of tunes I even did like The first couple of phrases The Giant Steps

That was one of the harder ones But some you know Just some scales So many things You know All of January We were at the Jen conference In Orleans

You were gankin a free piano Yeah Gankin a free keyboard here. Yeah. But what I realized was 15 minutes was kind of, like some days I practiced it. I think the max I probably practiced anything was maybe an hour or maybe 45 minutes. For the challenge. Yeah. And that's not all in the videos.

But in terms of what I needed to practice, oftentimes because it was so busy, it was just 15 minutes. But man, I really, it helped me so much. And like really identified some holes that I needed to do. And I was amazed each day with what basically just 15 minutes of practice what I was able to accomplish. So, I mean, you, I didn't. Even necessarily, at first I was like, it's going to have to be longer and some days it was. But then when I realized, I was like, wow, I'm really getting something. And I'm also sharing these short videos as kind of a challenge for others to take on too.

But, you know, once I really believed and was able to concentrate and not be like, oh, I don't have an hour to put into this today. So it's just, I'll just throw up the video and it won't be anything. I was like, no, no, no, I'm still going to go through all the 12 keys. It might not be as long. Yeah. But I'm still going to get into that mentality of getting something accomplished. It kind of locks in. So you want to go into the saying.

I am going to accomplish something in this 15 minutes. It's not just going to be, I'm going to mindlessly play or warm up. Well, that's exactly right. And I think this leads into like maybe what I'm thinking, which is to just start with an idea in place. Start organized, organize yourself before you sit down, even if it takes you 30 seconds to just think so that you don't just sit down and play the same tune that you've been playing and that you know for five years that you just want to blow over. That's not going to really make you accomplish anything important. Then you're just sitting down to play for 15 minutes. But if you come in with a mindset of I can learn something, I can actually improve in 15 minutes.

And then before you sit down, organize your thoughts. Decide on what exactly it is you want to practice. Maybe it's that pentatonic run that you tripped up over on your last gig. Maybe it's a set of voicing that you don't have in all keys. And okay, I'll do the hard keys for 15 minutes. I'll do E, B, G, flat, and D flat for 15 minutes. Get right to that stuff. And just do those voicing.

whatever it is, going with the plan. You know, we talk about this all the time about coming in with a practice journal and coming in with a plan before your practice session. I think it's even more important in a short practice session like this to have it organized before you get in. Absolutely.

I mean, and we're not disparaging the sitting down and playing a song that you love and having a good time. That's fine. That's for days when you've got an hour, a couple of hours or whatever. But you're not necessarily going to get the kind of development

that you're going to get from this kind of practice. So it's important to kind of, you know, adjust your thought, your mindset, really. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't have to be fun because you're still playing music. You're getting better. It's actually like the passion for learning and improving has to be right up there with your passion for music. So like it's easy to manifest your passion for music when you're sitting down and playing like lush life. Yeah, for sure. Because it's such a beautiful fun song to play and it sounds great. And if you know it, it's like, wow, you can just play it and that's fine.

But you have to adopt that same kind of passion for practicing scales in all keys and doing different things that are going to make your playing better. But have a plan. So maybe the first 11 minutes you practice the voicings in all keys and that last four minutes,

that's my time to play whatever I want. That's my time to play lush life or whatever. There's nothing wrong with that. Because like you say, the fun part is still an important part. And ultimately we're here to make art and play music. And so that involves performance.

But I'm just saying, don't just sit down and start rambling and thinking that something's going to come to you to practice because you're probably just going to ramble. Yeah. You know. And I think another thing, and this, this, like, definitely scales out to any length practice that you have, but becomes, you know, so much more magnified on a shorter practice session like 15 minutes. But, you know, prepare with your mindset. Prepare to be uncomfortable. Oh, yeah.

Because you're not going to improve unless you are. There's so much like, you know, music is something. such an amazing and pleasurable and entertaining thing that sometimes I think we think that it always has to be pleasurable. And you know, you can definitely get to the point where something that's uncomfortable is actually pleasurable. And I don't mean in like a S&M way or anything. I just mean like, like what I mean. I'm like with this episode going. No, but I mean, it's like you can take you're not even taking solace. You're taking joy in the fact that not how it's sounding or feeling at that moment, but knowing to when you're going to get to the promise land that this is part of

your improvement. So people talk about like when they exercise at the gym or when they run or do something like, all that great feeling when you're done. And yeah, of course it's done. Oh, I got this accomplished. But that's only going to take you so far because that's just a teeny part of your exercise routine. You better figure out a way to love it when it starts to hurt.

Yeah, lean into the discomfort. Yeah. Elliot Kipchogi, the greatest marathon of all time, you know, just hit stuff. Well, I mean, you know, you know, he's a lot of the way. he's pretty good. No, but he does a great thing that we can apply to our practice. Like when he gets in pain,

everybody thinks, oh, he's so effortless. No, when he really starts feeling the pain, he smiles. Like, that's just kind of what he does. And no one, he's never really talked about it a lot, I don't think,

but maybe it's to psych out the competitors or whatever. But it's also him being like, okay, now it's, now it's getting interesting. Yeah. Now we're getting to the fun part. Yeah, yeah.

And I think when you're developing as a musician, like, we shy away from these things. And when you're practicing longer, you don't have to spend as much time. You might practice for an hour 15 minutes is that really grind, uncomfortable. Oh, I'm having to really concentrate and it doesn't sound good, but I'm getting better.

But when you've got 15 minutes, you better figure out a way to get right to that kind of practice. Yeah, when you're practicing, like, in that zone, it shouldn't always sound good. No. It should sound bad, as a matter of fact. That's the point is you're finding things that you're not good at. I mean, this is for any practice session, not just, but it's especially important because it's easy to just play what we want to play in that time because you think, oh, I only have 15 minutes. Somewhere in the back of your ego is thinking like, well, you better sound good in those 15 minutes. Exactly.

But, you know, and sometimes there's even people around, like, you know, family or spouse or whatever. So you got to, like, shut that out and be like, like, why are you practicing that same? I mean, I've heard that all my life. You keep playing that same thing over and over again. I can't play, yeah. Yeah, it's not a gig. Yeah, you're going to pay when you come to the gig. Get off me.

But let's just be clear, though, what we mean by uncomfortable and painful. We do not need physically painful, like a running situation. Right, right, right. You shouldn't be playing the piano or the guitar or the drums to where it's, like, really physically hurting you. never hurt. It should be more of how it sounds, possibly. Right. And it shouldn't even always sound painful, but I mean, it should be like you're really concentrating, you're not playing the things

that are pleasing necessarily to you, but you're doing the things that need to get you. What's great about this too is it helps you practice that mindset of I'm here in the practice room to judge the music I'm making. I'm not judging me as a person here. Like, there's a difference between that. We want to be critical of the music

without being critical of us as people as we're practicing. So, like, that takes a sort of mature mindset to not be like, oh, I suck. That's not the point of that. It's not what I mean either. We mean judge the music, honestly, as it is. Yeah. And try to make the most of that time you have. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's playing the long game. It's playing the long game. It's being

patient. It's knowing that you have to combine two things that seem like they're going to be disparate and not go together, which is you can get a lot accomplished in 15 minutes. Yeah. But Rome wasn't built in a day either. So you've got to like build these 15 minutes sessions. I mean, hopefully you've got more than one in a day. But if it's 15, 15, 15, 15, if you're getting right to it. In a week, you're making progress. In a month, you're really making progress. Most people really underestimate with how they develop as a musician on an instrument. And this is any instrument, because every instrument has this child. I never believe that some instruments are harder than others. They all have their unique challenges and capabilities

except the Okerina that we're putting down below others. We're going to get emails from Okerina. Well, let them try, because I own one. I know how to play one, actually. I'm going to bring one in and play it sometime. I think another important point in this. is to you have 15 minutes, don't try to take on too much. You know, we've mentioned just a couple things to practice, maybe. And these are not all for one day either.

These are different ideas. I would only, if it were me, and I've done this before in a 50 minutes, I would not do more than one idea, one concept or one. Yeah, 15 minutes is... Like, that's just enough time to really get into one specific thing.

Yeah. You know, so try not to, like, organize your practice sessions. Well, I need to do, like, I need to learn three new tunes. I got 15 minutes. I got three new tunes. I need to practice these voicing in all 12 keys

and then work in my blue scale in E flat and D flat. Don't do that. Just bring one of those things. Yeah. The great thing about this, if you nail this correctly, is that you can take this to the days then, and you will, I don't believe anybody. I know sometimes, yeah, you only have 15 minutes, but something's out of balance

in your life if, like, you go the whole year and you never have more than 15 minutes to practice. You got to figure how to optimize your time a little better. But once you learn how to do this, then an hour becomes like, Wow. Luxurious. Yeah.

And I mean, it's not that, I don't know that you can necessarily, you know, accomplish 4x, what you can in 15 minutes because after a certain amount of time, you got to take a break and different things. But you start to realize how valuable, you know, 15 minutes is. It's kind of like sometimes if you see somebody, if you're just sort of like sitting around like not really doing anything, which is a great thing to do at times. But then you see somebody else like, you know, mowing a lawn or painting a wall and you kind of zone out for like 20. minutes. All of a sudden you look up in like half the lawn is mode. You're like, wow, I didn't really get anything done. And they're like stuff's getting done. And if they're working fast, maybe they did the whole thing. So it's like, you start to really appreciate what can be done. And that doesn't mean, oh, you have to rush around all the time. But it means like, okay, wow, I've got an hour now. Let me see if I can fit in three 15 minutes segments because I know how much I can get done on just one thing for 15. I really like this idea. Meditate for a couple. Yeah, 15 minute modules. Yeah. And so this helps not only the short days, but it really helps your long days too. Awesome, man. Well, I love this idea. And hopefully we've maybe dropped a little knowledge.

I think this episode is going to be longer than 15 minutes, ironically. Oh, is it? That's the way it goes sometimes. Leave us a rating review, dear listeners. Not just for our egos, although... Mostly, though. Yeah. We're not asking you send us money.

We're asking you to massage our egos, but also... Hold on. Not so fast. We wouldn't turn down money. Okay. Send PayPal to Adam at Adam. Manus.org. So.

You get a dot org for that. No, no. Leave us a rating review. And the reason is because this is how this podcast gets spread around. And we're getting a lot of growth in the podcast as the new year starts. And I mean, because it's amazing, obviously. Wow. But also, no, because of you guys, because of the community, we were in New Orleans a couple weeks ago and met countless listeners, which is so cool. Because we're sitting here looking at each other.

We're looking at Andrew. We are literally in a windowless room, also known as a lot of. the pods. Well, it has a window, but it's totally shut. Yeah. I mean, we are in a bunker. We're bunkered down. But knowing that you guys are out there listening and maybe getting a little something out of that means the world to us. So just let us know and spread the word. And that's all you got to do. And until tomorrow. You'll hear it.