You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Get Your Kids Into Jazz

Episode Date: May 31, 2019

Answering today's SpeakPipe, Peter and Adam talk about getting your kids interested in jazz. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Check out the bottom of the page at http://www.openstudionetwork.com/podcast.Be one of the first 20 people to leave us a rating or review at https://www.youllhearit.com/sticker and you can score a FREE You'll Hear It sticker.The ending theme song for today's episode is "V.S.T. (Valse Sans Titre)" by Stefan Sirbu Trio (sent in by listener Stefan Sirbu). To get your music featured on You'll Hear It, send an MP3 recording of your music to [e-mail] 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 Peter. Hey, man. How young is too young to get kids into jazz? One day old would be too young, but two days old is perfect. I'm Adam Maness. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the Uly Air Podcast. Daily jazz advice coming at you.

Relentlessly coming at you. Relentlessly. Jazz advice. All up in your grill. We're talking about kids getting into jazz today because we've got a speak pipe from Roman. You ready for this? We're ready. Let's do it.

Hey guys. My name is Roman. And I'm a piano player all the way from Ukraine. And I wanted to ask you, guys, would you share some ideas about how to, what's the best way to involve the kids from a very young age to, how, what's the best way for them to study jazz and all this kind of stuff? Because, you know, we don't have that strong jazz education in Ukraine and that would be very, very, Good to know, to hear some of your ideas. One more time, guys, you have a great resource. And thank you for what are you doing, what you are doing.

Sorry, sorry for my poor English. Okay, thanks anyway. Well, I guarantee Roman's English is way better than our Ukraine. Exactly. Yeah, thank you, Roman. First of all, I've been to Ukraine once, and I love, I want to go back. I was in Leviv, Lviv, Lviv, another one of those cities that might be missing a vowel. I'm not sure.

But so big shout out to Ukraine. And thanks for that. It's like Roman might have been in like a Ukrainian coffee shop or out on a Ukrainian farmland or something. I was imagining that his children were playing with his metronome. Okay. Oh, wow. It's funny how we put, yeah, you kind of bring it in topical. And so, yeah, so Roman, you said, you know, that you don't have strong jazz education in Ukraine.

Don't worry. Here in the U.S., we don't have strong education, period. So we have our own battles with bringing up to the children. as we say. Yeah, yeah. But for jazz education, you know, we're here to help.

We are here to help. And I think that, you know, I don't think that there needs to be either the barrier or even the excuse of you don't have something

in your country. It will make it a little more of a challenge, but it sounds like you're up for it that you're thinking about this with your kids. And a lot of times

we idealize any way. Like maybe we think for, I don't know, like, what's something that exists? Okay, like opera. So obviously, it's,

Italy has a very strong opera tradition. Both opera and Italy exist. Yeah. But we think that like, you know, oh, if you are growing up in Italy, you're getting this amazing opera, you know, immersion all the time and the kids coming up. And that's not even always the way it is. So the same way in the U.S., it's not like we have all this built-in great jazz education. It's very much on the periphery here, especially in our public and private education.

I mean, this is like a thing that I think if you want your kids to appreciate jazz and then we can talk about do you want them to go from appreciation to the next level. as being great jazz players. That's a little trickier because that's going to be up to them, I believe. But you know what this starts with though. What? Number one.

Listen. Exactly. I mean, that's, and it has to start in the home, I think, too. Totally. So the listening,

like if you want your kids to even have the possibility of being great jazz players or appreciators, now getting them to appreciate, I think is a lot easier. But, yeah,

because you just, you have surrounded them with it. Now, it may not be till later because a lot of people kind of believe and a lot of times this manifests itself as being kind of grownful.

music or what we would call grown folks music not being the easiest thing for like how many times you see an eight year old whether they've been hearing it all their life or not be like i love um john coltrane stuff you know once it was joy oh no he was like hey look i'm playing like john coltrane yeah but that's pretty rare but it's also like you got to be patient with this if you have it in the environment and i believe this is anything that's like really culturally deep and rich um if you you you know have it if it's if you nurture that in your children great music around them by listening recordings by taking them to live performances as appropriate not like forcing it down their throat so they hate you and hate it but just having it around them that eventually it's going to become part of their their their thing you know and it might be when they're 30 might be when they're most likely it's going to be when they go off to college that's a lot of times when like with my

kids I just have one now and I had one before they was in and they were always like I heard jazz all the time I hate jazz or they didn't necessarily say they hate it but it was more like oh that's your thing but they didn't realize like how well they do it yeah and then they get to college and somebody's like you know hey you want to try to be a hipster I know a little something like you then all of a sudden they're like wait I already I'm already way ahead in this yeah yeah I actually know a lot about this that's so true and that's what I'm trying to do with my kids who are now younger they're nine and seven little younger and we just have it around you know I have it in the car when we go to school I have it just in the house yeah I'm always obviously playing it and

practicing it and they go to gigs. Yeah. And they're around it. I take them to concerts here at Jess St. Louis just to expose them to the music. And they love it. You know, it's just something that's part of dad for them, I think. Yeah. It's part of my life.

So it's part of their life in that way. And then like you said, I hope that by the time they get old enough to start developing their own taste, which they don't have now really at all. I mean, you know, left to them, they're just listening to nothing but Disney songs all the time. Yeah. But once they start developing more of an adult palate for everything. Yeah. that this has been part of them and they understand it.

Yeah. It's a language for them. Yeah. And you know what? Sometimes it isn't for them, which is fine because they still get so much out of it. I look at this very similar to learning another, a language. I know it is different way I would say music is a language. But it really is.

I mean, in terms of certain aspects of how you learn and how you learn to appreciate it. And somebody, a kid that's grown up around the parents or the grandparents or the adults or older siblings or whatever speaking in a language that's not their first language will at a minimum get some appreciation for it and some understanding and then if they decide they want to take it somewhere they'll be in an advantageous position educationally to be able to take that on i think well speaking of putting them in an avatageous position to play it you're in the ukraine i'm assuming you have some similar traditions as the russian classical tradition especially if you're roman if you said you're a pianist and you want kids to play piano yeah get them in classical lessons that's right

I mean, that is a huge advantage if they have that from the time they're small. Right. Because they're going to get, you know, as we talked about earlier in the week, great fingering. Yeah, yeah. Technique. And then if you are still playing jazz or in the house, if that's a part of you and a part of that, and then they get into it later. Yeah.

They can already kind of play. Right. And now they're starting to play with the hear and improvise. Yeah. And look, we don't get into politics here because that's not our thing. And I know like Russia with not only with Ukraine, but with Cuba, different places, it's a storied path. But culturally there's been, yeah, you want to take the advantage of even if there's there's a negative thing politically because like you look at Cuban, look at all the great Cuban pianists that came out of that Russian taught technique. And I never want to be like, oh, they brought them called. No, it's not that. But there's a certain aspect of the piano tradition that was so helpful. I mean, in the U.S. too. I mean, you know, we know some, we have some great Russian teachers. And then other teachers that just use that. I mean, that's just a very special thing, that Russian piano technique that we can all use to our advantage. So, yeah, if you have that around.

Whatever the classical tradition, Roman, that you're around there, you know, if there's not, if there's not like great jazz education for them from a young age, that's fine. Yeah. Just make sure they're around an instrument if you want them to play. It's so fun. Like them, like direct what they want to do with it. Yeah, yeah. You know? Absolutely.

And I think, too, that like what you get out of appreciation of jazz, even if they get into other things, like that'll help them develop their ear. And then as they become musician, like they'll, even if they get into other things or just say like, one of my kids is just really the classical music and it's like jazz, not really their thing. but because he's well-versed in jazz, I think that that helps inform his classical playing. It gives you a flexibility in ear training, a worldview, a lot of different things that's super helpful and important. And it's not all that different than, you know, having your kids appreciate and participate in athletics.

Like that is actually, if you approach them playing soccer, or as you would say in Ukraine, football, and in most places in the world, if you're having your kid play football because you want them to be, you want to force them or hope that they're going to become a professional athlete, I kind of think that's the wrong reason. Because first of all, you can't make that, like that's going to,

you can expose them to these different things. If that's going to happen, that's going to be their choice. And it's really going to be more of the choice of that sport or that music or that language to get them. You know, that's going to be sort of preordained. You can't really push that in.

But what you can push them into is an appreciation of having an athletic lifestyle and being an athlete. It's not about professional or whatever to an appreciation for like using their body in an athletic way. And so when we talk about it with music, It's like using your mind and your hands to play an instrument in a musical way and an appreciation and all the things that brings to you and enhances your life beyond just even if you're not at the so-called professional level. That's kind of the smallest part of it in a lot of ways, I would say. And so like as a parent, because we are not only expert musicians, you and I, Adam, and expert pianists and expert podcasters, obviously.

We are expert parents as well. Could we say that? Yeah, I mean, I think that's evident by our general demeanor. Is it evident by our children? That's that's TBD, but yeah, we hope so. Come on. That credit has to go to not us on bond bond. Well, we'll see how they turn out.

They turn out great. It definitely goes to us. If not, it's the moms, the guess those. I was thinking as you were just talking there, I wasn't listening to anything you're saying, but I was thinking about what I was going to say, which is more important to me. We have a producer that's not listening to where we say either,

so that's all good. You know, last time we had a conversation about this once before on this podcast briefly, and I remember thinking about this and saying, like, because this was my strategy was to, like, play your kids things that you would consider palatable or simple for the kids that they would like Oscar Peterson yeah stuff whatever but then I have I have friends now who like have a kid who's really into like really out stuff yeah and I was thinking like this is what's

sort of the beauty about about kids is they're so these raw pieces of clay yeah that can mold into anything and also every kid is different so maybe some kid loves Oscar some kid who some kid like really loves Wayne shorter yeah weird phase you know what I mean the good thing is they're so instinctual in terms of their responses especially the younger they are. Totally. So I think that you can like just, just play them a variety of different jazz things

and then see what they respond to and then give them more of that. Exactly. Just follow them and where their nose leads. We definitely wouldn't want, we'd be reticent here to give you like a top 10. We can give you something to try and like ones that worked on my kids

and this was totally by accident. It was like the West End Blues. You know, one of them like literally, it'd just like they'd stop crying, whatever they heard that. So I was like, oh, maybe it's Louis Armstrong, maybe it's that, you know, whatever. You try different things like that.

Honestly, I think a lot of it is repetition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Like our kids now love the emotion in motion, which is the theme song for this podcast. Oh, yeah, because they just keep... Oh, you listen to you this a lot? I have to do quality control, buddy.

Come on, you know, that's part of the job. Hey, no one's going to believe that. They're like, the quality control, they don't do quality. Actually, I haven't really been listening since Andrew took over his producer. Yeah. Well, no, but I do think that it ties in with earlier in the week

when we were talking about habits. And you're training your kids to be in the habit of listening to good stuff. Right. You know, and don't also be too dogmatic about jazz or styles or whatever just really good music you know something that we just we kind of we're selfish to as parents so like we listen to i'm talking about mild we listen to the stuff that we like luckily most of it's pretty good quality so the kids come up kind of listening to that

you know a lot of stevie wonder because that's been important in our families for a long time and just stuff that we like and so it's it's like it's like having your kids being you know giving them good food you know like you you can't just give them what you think is healthy you got to find something that actually is healthy and that they like and then do it from a young enough age and then be disciplined as far as not letting to have too much or at the wrong times and teaching them as you know it's it's all part of a thing sometimes treats sometimes treats are okay little treat is okay not that all the time though you know yeah so it's the same thing with i think with music that's great well thanks roman for the question great question good luck with that uh with the kids

yeah yeah and i think too just be confident like this is a time where no matter where you are in the world. It's such a cool thing when people are so into this music that we think of as I mean it was, it's long ago become global and so I encourage everybody to look at it jazz. And the reason it's global is because it's important and it's great and because people are interested in it all over the world. So cool.

So this is Friday. It's the last day of our big offer for the all access pass here at Open Studio. That's right. You know, you are going to get on that. We now have two offers this week actually. The first is $77 off the annual membership to the all access pass. I'm going to give that 77 claps. It's so good. I don't have time.

for that's all-as-all-access pass is every course we make that's courses on piano from people like peter martin jeffre keiser myself courses on guitar from hamero lobombo peter sprague courses on the bass from christian mcbride reuben rogers try to do better than that courses on dionn reves and drums from greg hutchinson ulysses owens i mean there's like a ton of good stuff yeah and you get all of it with the all access pass and you get access to all the courses we'll release in the next year which is quite a few because we've been averaging one a month i don't know if you noticed that. I did, I did notice that. From 2019 and we're on schedule to release

12 this year. Yeah. And there's some good stuff coming down the pipe. So, uh, definitely. Speak pipe. No. No. No. The regular. Oh, the regular pipe. Maybe it's the pipe. Pike. Pike. Come on the pike. Coming down the pike. Yeah. Like Pike speak. Yeah. Don't edit that out, Andrew. Let's keep that in. Uh, but you can go to to open studio network. We never read it.

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anyway recently. So we're going to be virtually joining each other, all right? All right. Until then, you'll hear it. You'll hear it. All right, Peter, this is twice now that we forgot to listen to the end of the episode. We had a rule after you'll hear it. We never talk anymore, but yet we're talking. Here we go. So

what's the tune? Oh, yeah. Okay, so today's listener tune is VST Valss T-Vos Trio by Stefan Sierbu-Trio. This is all I remember. Are you making this up? No, this is for real. This is actually the second tune we've used by Stefan or Stefan. Remember the grape escape? A little while back?

Yeah. This is another one. This is VST. Enjoy.