You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Cut Out the Noise

Episode Date: July 6, 2020

We live in a noisy world, but distraction is the enemy of efficiency. Learn how to block out the noise in today's episode.Today's episode is sponsored by Anytune (featuring an Anytune remix fn the theme song!) Anytune is the perfect tool for anyone looking to improve their practice sessions. Learn, transcribe, and practice solos by slowing down the tempo, adjusting the pitch, and (for Pro+ users), isolating specific instruments in the mix. For more info, follow this link. And for access to the Android beta of Anytune, click this link.Today's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)For the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkInterested 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. It's noisy in this pot hall, isn't it? It is noisy, but we are going to cut out the noise. Listen, right now, noise, noise, noise, bam. I still hear stuff. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin.

And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Music advice, life advice, and what was the third thing? Practice advice. Practice advice, yeah. Wait, hold on. Say it again. We got to drill this home. Music advice.

Practice advice. Music, practice, and life advice. Music, practice, and life advice. Did we just come up with a new? Catchphrase? I mean, kind of. We did it the other day, and it's morph. You know how these things go.

We give them a floor run and see how they play. That's awesome. Well, hey, how about for our Yule Here listeners here, go ahead and leave us a review and give us your idea for our new tagline. We really don't have a tagline. It was daily jazz advice for many, many years. Right. And we're trying to find something else for a while.

That didn't work. Yeah, then we went back a little bit. Yeah, it's been. So give us your idea in a rating review of, what we should tag our title with. You'll hear it. Peter likes, what is it, daily life? Wait, music advice.

Music practice and life advice. Okay. Surely you can come up with something better. You liked it the other day with that. Well, today's episode is sponsored by AnyTune, per Uge. They have a great, you know what their catchphrase is. It's really good. What is it? It is music practice perfected.

Music practice perfected. Yeah. It's lovely. It's a lovely little sentiment. it. And it's true, too, which is what's so cool. Go to natune.us. You'll hear it to check out one of the most useful tools that you can use when you're trying to transcribe music. And we talk about transcribing a lot here because the name of our podcast is you'll hear it. And we believe in hearing it. And any tune really helps you hear it. You can set markers. You can change the speed without changing the pitch. You can change the pitch, if that's your thing. You can set loops. You can isolate instruments, all with a beautiful interface. And I'm talking about a gorgeous interface here. It's gorgeous here in St. Louis. It's so much fun to use. Go to Anytune.us.

You'll hear it available on desktop app, on iOS. Soon to be coming to Android. Get in there on the Android beta. Check it out. Anytune.us slash you'll hear it. Yeah, and I was just checking. They are there. The beta program is still going,

and you can access that from Anytune. com. You'll hear it. There's a link right on there. So you can just kind of go. You can check out. at anywhere. They've got this cool little fun video that I did on there. Peter Martin

shot out. I don't know if you about that. So there's some nice things. And I love this yeah, the actual transcribe mode. We're always talking about, you know, repeating the different sections that they're actually calling that now the transcribe mode because that's what people are using it for. That's perfect. That's what it's so valuable along with the markers,

the timed annotations. The list goes on. Music practice perfected. Awesome. So today, we're talking about something that if you were, if you wanted use any tune for cutting out the noise. You could use any tune as a bit of a noise filter, but we're not really talking about the noise on a track. We're talking more about the noise in your life. Right. And, you know, I think that this is a interesting concept because

we're going to talk about it mostly as it applies to practice today. But I think like any kind of, you know, well, we hate to say life hack, but we often fall down into. Hacking. to say. But this is really more of a framework. Yeah. You know, more of a mindset because it can be applied. I always think of like a framework as being something that can be applied to several different situations, several different genres, several different aspects of things that you want to develop. Well, we decided to do this episode. We were just talking about, you know, our business here, open studio, another sponsor of the podcast here, but where we make our jazz lessons, our jazz courses, and we do lives and practice sessions and all that stuff. And we were just

talking about, you know, it's always a struggle when you're trying to run something like a business to cut out the noise and to do what really matters, right? And to make sure that you're spending your time and your energy in a way that's the most effective. And there's really no difference between that in running a business and trying to become a better musician or a better French speaker or a better ballerina. It doesn't matter. It's like trying to make sure that you are practicing and using your time wisely and effectively is some of the most important work you can do. And so that's what I think we're going to get at today. Yeah, yeah.

And the reason we like to look at different examples, different situations, as opposed to only talking about, say, practicing your instrument, is because a lot of times, especially if, like, music is your main focus. And I think, you know, for many of you listening, if not everybody, at times at least, it becomes, your main focus and it should be your main focus as you're practicing obviously so we can get so inside of that though that we lose track of how we want to approach it and so sometimes it's easier to look at other things that maybe aren't as big of a focus for us and place the framework in that example and be like oh okay well how can we take this back to our our instrument practice and apply it so that can be useful that's why we'll jump around to maybe athletics or cooking or diet or

business or whatever. Yeah. Not so much that, oh, these are different, they are different things, but the same kind of mindset and framework that we use there, for many people can be more, you know, you might see in your life that you're able to put these techniques for cutting through the noise and getting rid of distractions and stuff better than maybe your music practice for some reason. So that should emboldened you to apply these things and to say like, oh, you know what, I'm actually

pretty good, you know, because some people are like, I'm just a distracted person. Right. And I just, I can't concentrate when I practice. But then when they examine their life, they may see another part, you know, and especially for an amateur or semi-pro or whatever you want to call somebody who doesn't have the confidence of being a pro player. I always say that being a musician is something that we all share. It doesn't matter what level you're doing it at. It's really a mindset of being like, I am a musician.

But a lot of times people that say, I'm so distracted, or I don't have good time, or are these different things, they look into other aspects. Keep that. Oh, yeah, no problem. They look into other aspects of their life, and they actually exhibit extreme concentration, and they can apply that to their musical practice a lot easier than they realize.

And so I would just put out there as kind of number one in this day and age to being able to cut through the noise and to be a more effective practicer is to turn off all notifications. And this is from the actual, like you say you're using the NETune app, go into airplane mode, turn off all your notifications. But I want to take it beyond that to just everything else. What else could possibly notify you?

Somebody coming in the room. Yeah, that's right. Telephone ringing. I mean, just anything that is going to distract you from what it is you're trying to accomplish it. You know, and so we don't want to be so rigid that it's like, okay, this is what I'm doing today and not be able to have that creative mindset where you kind of go off the path and wonderful things happen. But you want to minimize or eliminate anything that's going to notify you and that's going to distract you.

And the hardest thing of that is like we want to be able to be notified by wonderful things. That's right. You know, but this is not the time. Like if you want to cut through the noise and get right to what you need to work on, you have to eliminate everything else. So you don't have any other choice but to deal with that painful thing that you've got to practice. Right. And this actually, so this is going to bring me around to why I left and briefly came back and screamed from across the room. Can I describe what you did because we're not on video today? This is an audio

podcast. Adam went to the other side of the pod hall and grabbed his boojo. My boojo. Not to be confused with his poohojo. Right. So, so. Or kujo, a deadly dog. Or goojo. I don't know what that is. But no, so I went to go get my boojo. I have several of these, by the way. I have like, tell the folks in case they're new listeners. It's a bullet journal. And so I think this is, for me, this is one of the most important tools for everything we're going to be talking about today, right? Whether that's what it is we need to turn off as far as notifications or where we need to be putting our priorities, having a journal as sort of like my, the storage space for my mind, right? A dumping zone.

A dumping zone. Intellectual dumping zone. I think one of the biggest things for everything we'll talk about today is awareness. And really this journal that I keep with me, this is my sort of walking awareness. I put my awareness of everything in here and then I don't have to like remember it, right? So if we talk about like, second brain, that's right, it is. It's like, it's like the extra storage space where I don't have to put things into long term memory. I would also let people know a little behind the scene secret on Adamannis. It's not only his second brain and his dumping ground. It's his security blanket. He coddles. He cuddles it a little bit. I have a very expensive ones because I love them so much. But I will say this. So like we were talking about notifications, right? So the The first step to turning off notifications is really noticing what it is distracting you.

Yeah. Is it text messages? Those should go. Is it your phone in general? Can you figure out a way to just turn your phone off and use some other device to help you practice? Yeah. Is it the people in the next room? This is a very challenging time for personal space.

I don't know about you, but I don't live in a huge house. And I have three other people, two of which are pretty much chaos machines because they're young children. Oh, don't talk about Heather. Oh, I can't, sorry. No, but it's true, though. Like, you know, finding an hour where it's just me in silence to practice my piano can be challenging. That's right. And so how can we organize ourselves?

And so I think even just starting out with your journal, making a list of challenges for your attention. Oh, I think you said making a list of people that are irritating you in your journal. That's a whole other. That's my revenge journal. No, this is my rejo. My rejo. This is my boojo. Yeah, my revenge journal is just the line.

long list of people that I have spited me. But this can be very effective and we'll talk more about how you can use the journal to a really great effect. But keeping a list of, of, or just observing, right, just sometimes taking the, taking the energy to like list things out, written out, can really uncover some things you might not have even thought about as far as distractions. Right. Yeah, no, that's great. And then, you know, kind of next level or or really, you know, segueing directly with this is no matter what notifications you turn off and tell the kids to be quiet and get your own room and go to a padded windowless area. I mean, you can only go so far. There's always going to be things that come at you. And so very important with this and something

to write down and to journal on and just to meditate on is that distractions are coming. Noise is coming. No matter what. You cannot eliminate, especially during this time. Don't be surprised and upset. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You have to have a calm demeanor. And the great thing about this is like as you develop this and you develop as a jazz musician as an improvising artist, these two things go hand in hand. For sure.

Actually, because like this is like you have to be able to play during chaos to be a great jazz play. Totally. And like you cannot panic. You know, I mean, think about like the greatest players that you know and everything that's going on and things go wrong. They are not like nervous Nelly type of people. Big shout out to all the Nellie's out. there. And big shout to Nelly, my cousin, my, you know, that Nelly. But the idea is that we're not, it is getting hot in her. So, uh, the idea is that you cannot, like, you don't want to be like,

I've eliminated all distractions and then the slightest thing comes and you're like, oh my God. Although our friend Keith Jarrett, friend of the podcast, definitely along those lines, unless you're as good as Keith. No one can afford to be Keith. Let's be honest here, right? No, I think it's a great point. And not even that, but like, don't be surprised by emotional. distractions, which happened on the bandstand all the time. I remember, like, I went through a period of practicing while I was pretending I was being vibed, because that used to really affect me. Like, if I was, if I thought I was being vived, I would, like, not play well. Is you viving me? Yeah, exactly. So, like, I would practice performing as if the drummer was

viving me, and I'd have to overcome it, you know? But that kind of stuff is really important to do. So don't, don't freak out about distractions, but just note them, I think a lot of what we're going to talk about is observing and acknowledging these these the noise and and ways we can get around it. Yeah. And look, this is also like we're thinking about things we can apply from playing, from performing, but we're talking primarily about practicing. So what this is really, you know, as we talk about and preach all the time, practice is not the same as performing. You might have a little bit of little 10% or 5% of your time spent playing. But most of the stuff that we're doing and need to accomplish when we're practicing

is not the same as playing. And so along the lines, what I was talking about at the beginning, finding different things in our lives that we can apply and help to clarify this process of learning. For me, a big thing was, as I go further down the running journey

and learning more, you know, I have a running coach now, because I'm trying to improve, you know, and it's just like anything. You got to get somebody that knows more than you. You can't, I mean, I can just go out and run like I've been doing for years, but if you want to try to get better at it

and learn things, you know, you seek out those, and know more than you. So the beautiful thing about this, and I love learning other things because you can bring them back and apply them and help clarify in music. You know, professional athletes

and professional runners, I didn't even say professional, just elite, like high-level runners. They spend only about 10 to 20% of their time on average. There's always some outliers and stuff running at their, anywhere close to their top speed

at any distance. Wow. You know, most of their time is putting in miles at a much slower speed, partly because they don't want to get injured, but mainly just because they don't need to do that. And then it gets into very advanced things. But the idea is I was realized I was like, that's the same thing with music.

If you want to learn how to, you know, play, and it's not even about speed, play fast, but to be able to, like, do a lot of different things. The things that you're actually practice on are like broken down in a way that are much more simple. That's right. And that you can like really concentrate on, but that build up those muscles for you to be able to do that.

You've got to wait until you get in the performance situation to be able to do all that. And you'll be ready for it, you know. That's right. And so like we're taking these things. So it's the same thing like when we're practicing, we're getting rid of all the distractions. We're getting rid of as many as we can so that we can concentrate at the highest level. But there's still going to be some. So you've got to have that mindset for sure to be able to work through that.

And you will. So let's talk about decluttering what it is we practice, right? Because I know for me a challenge to overcome during my practice. career my whole adult life has been like going back to playing things purely for pleasure purely that make me feel good about myself you know you're going to hit that old deaf blues and that tempo that feels awesome right uh that is wasted practice uh for me if i do that too much right that is wasted time that's wasted energy and uh i think what what i'm trying to allude to here is that we we only talked about this a little bit last week he's like what kind of player do you tell yourself you are. Like, what's your story about the kind of musician you want to be? And are you

practicing into those values, right? So I think, again, going back to our Bujo here, and our Mujo, our music journal. I like the Rejo, the Revenge Journal. Our Poojo, our practice journal, our rejo. You know, making a list of priorities, right, so that we cut out the things like, are my priorities to really, really sound great on enough blues at 220 beats per minute? Right. Because if that's the case, I'm a master, right? Like, or is it, to do other things. And what are those things right now? What are they this year, this month, this week? Right. Like really getting granular on what our priorities are. And then asking ourselves, is that what I'm practicing? Is that what I'm working on? It's so great. I mean,

there's nothing, I mean, there's nothing like, like basically you can't get rid of the noise if you don't know what the signal is that you're trying to concentrate on. That's right. So like, it's going to be all for naught, as, as they said in, in years of your, um, is that one? I don't know. Olden times, old times. You know, if we don't have, if we, if we get rid of the distractions, get the perfect practice situation, but don't have our priorities straight, we're going to be distracted by trying to figure out what the hell we're supposed to be doing. That's right. And whether or not what we're doing is in fact, as good as the next shining new object that we mentioned or somebody else does or whatever. If you're focused in and you know what you need to do, you can hear out other things and be like, wow, that's really cool.

But you know what? I'm focusing on on these things. I'll put that in my brain dump journal or whatever. Once I can do that, there's only so many things that you can do at any one time. So true. We talk about for me, it's always like a practice session, four to five segments is kind of the thing. Oftentimes three even. You know, if you talk about some technical stuff, you know, I've been working on some site reading things that might cycle in and out. Learning a solo, practicing performing. I mean, you're getting to the limit of what you can effectively do. I mean, you can list 12 different things you want to do. but, you know, how deeply are you really going to be able to, you know, how deep is your love?

How deep is your practice? It's so true. So one more thing to kind of put a button on this, right, for even more clarification. And this is really a new thing. This is something for me that I didn't learn until being a part of Open Studio and the way we would do things. And I've since read a lot about how helpful this could be. And this is the art of reflection. This is after you're done practicing, going back again to your practice journal,

your Pujo, not your Rijo. And reflecting on things that went well, things that were, did not go well that you didn't understand or were challenging and you just couldn't pull off or really struggle with. And then how you would do things differently next time. And it's something we do when we do projects around here. You know, we want to do a little, a little, what do we call it, post-mortem on things. Like what happened with this, you know, what happened when we did this, you know, this program here for Open Studio? well, this worked really well, this thing that we thought would work well, didn't work at all.

Right. You know, this we didn't understand. And then we had a customer call about this. We didn't even think about that. Right. This happens in our practice session. That's right. Right.

Where we're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, look at this. When I do this, this happens, right? Don't let that slide by. No. Go to your journal, really focus on that. And with that, we're cutting out the noise of the next time you get to the piano, like, wait, like, something cool happened.

What was that? Or like, I remember I kept messing this part up. What was that? Right. That's all going to be there for you in that, again, in that brain dump. And just the act of writing it down is going to help you remember those things, you know, more solidly. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that really speaks to, you know, I mean, in theory, you can reflect on something that you've done in your practice at any time.

But it's the most efficient. It might not be when you want to do it kind of right after. But that's when it's going to be the most efficient because it's fresh in your mind. and the things that you think you're going to remember, you probably won't remember later. So I think it's good to do this, you know, and whenever we've skipped over, I know for me,

with practice or, you know, it's kind of like, you know, you go for run. If you skip over that stretching afterwards, I almost think that that's worse than skipping, skipping,

over the stretching before. Yeah, yeah. But it's like, yeah, you can get away with not doing it, but you're not getting the full benefits of your workout, your practice session,

by skipping over that, that stretching afterwards. And I think that the reflection is very much along those lines. And that helps you to get to the kind of ongoing clarity in your practice. That eventually will become kind of automatic and you don't have to like, you know, just like really good athletes and stuff. The way they stress, I mean, they just do it. Like there's not even a question of whether or not it's just part of the gig.

Your reflection becomes reflexive. Yes. And you just do it. And it also is a huge boost for actually retaining what you practice. If you can tie it to your own story of previously acquired knowledge and tie it all together in your own words, it really helps your brain to lock it in. And so you could do it right after practice. I would say, like, you could do it up until maybe 24 hours later.

Yeah. I sometimes will not do it right after I practice, but I'll wait until like right before I go to bed. I'll just kind of write down just my day, reflect on what worked, what didn't work, all that stuff. And then that's good on a daily base, especially tying it in with other activities. You might have musical or other words. Yeah, yeah. What worked for like parenting my work. kids or you know what I mean like all that stuff it really really helps to kind of like just pinpoint

like what did I learn today overall like what was an important part what was the highlight what did I really mess up which happens a lot what could I do better in that same situation and that kind of stuff for me uh as I'm rounding my 40s here has been crucial yeah you know what I'm saying and I would say too this this is an area I would say definitely YMMV I don't know if we're pulling that back out of the pandemic well you officially have your mileage may vary this for for for me and I think probably some other folks, make sure you clue into what works best for you. Like for me waiting even up to 24 hours or even until that night is really hard. Because like my brain is like I'm moving on to the next thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unless it's one of those rare times when it's just like those wonderful times when like, and this is so rare now where it's just like practice is the only thing I have to do in a day. That's so great because then it's going to still be there. You can kind of go walk around. What are you 15 years old? Exactly. You know, like we value that time.

but for me it's really valuable to do it right after. But, yeah, you just have to kind of check in with yourself and see what you got to just trial by error. That's right. Trial, not trial by error. Trial and error. Yeah. That's right. Cool.

Should we do a quick post-mortem of this podcast? Let's do it. Too soon? No, no, no. We should absolutely reflect on this podcast. We killed it and gave a bunch of great information. There were some good things. I forgot to bring my boojo out in the beginning.

and I had to go get it. A nice little dramatic flame. That's something I would definitely do differently next time. I think we really hit it on the head about how to get clarity and what we practice and how to get rid of distractions. Yeah, I was a little distracted and probably distract you by finishing up this vegan Trader Joe's Indian food, which was a little bit odd. They'd be eating right before we recorded this. I did. I noted that in my rejo, actually.

Nice. We did hit the sponsor, AnyTune. Go to Anytune.com.us. I'll hear it. We did that really well. We told you all about their great features. I think we nailed that part of... We nailed that part.

And I would just say, too, just to renail it, is that there's nothing wrong with a few shiny objects if they're well chosen, like any tune, for sure, like a metronom. Like, we don't want to get distracted by, oh, I need this tool, I need this or whatever. But a few well-placed tools that make your practice more efficient will actually cut through the noise.

And, you know, you're still going to get some distractions here or there, but they can kind of help focus you and just remove some things like having to worry about what, you know, like your frustration with on Spotify. It's like I can't find the place. Well, any tune does that for you. So like as long as you use these tools. Now, if you start getting into practicing, you're like, I'm going to transcribe. I've got any tune.

We obviously know that's a great tool for that. But then you start saying, wow, look at these other features. Oh, it's got this. And it does have a lot of other features. You got a focus still. Otherwise, you're going to be blaming in any tune. You're like, well, I got so, you know, distracted by all the features. That's your fault.

And I'm going to put, I'm going to put your name. I'm not pointing to you. In my re-jillo, if you try to blame my boys over at any tune for that, they ain't their fault. So until tomorrow or next time. Next time. You'll hear it.