You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How To Live Musical Life In 2025

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

In this solo episode, Peter Martin gives advice on how to live a musical life in the coming year and what to do to set yourself up for success.Looking to drop a question? Want to listen to the audio pod? Look no furtherhttps://youllhearit.com/Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Today, we're going to talk about how we can live our most musical life in 2025. Let's get into it. I'm Peter Martin, and you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast, solo edition, Adam is out on break. We are coming up to the end of 2024, about to embark on yet another year 2025. So I'm excited to be here. I've been thinking a lot about plans that I have for next year, kind of reflecting back and wrapping up 2024.

And I thought it would be fun to talk about some ways. ways to best leverage what we've learned from this year, where we want to go on our musical journey, and certainly how we can practice better, how we can progress better next year. But really just this idea of having a goal of living a musical life every day, what can we do to set ourselves up so that as we enter 2025, we have the confidence, the clarity, the precision, the guardrails up so that we can effectively live a musical life every day. And as we go to sleep each night, really have that satisfaction that we're progressing, that we're on that musical journey.

But most importantly, that we're embracing where we are on that musical journey. It's such an exciting thing to be able to do that. So living a musical life, let's sort of talk about what that is as a goal and what that really is in practice. I think the most important element of that is to, enjoy that daily journey. Because if we're enjoying the daily journey of living a musical life, we're going to be able to get into the habit and also to be able to constantly remind ourselves that music can sit at the center of our daily activities. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that

we're listening to music or playing music 24 hours a day. We need to have silence. That's an important, very important part of living a musical life, I think, is to have time allocations. to silence, to be mindful about stimulation, musical stimulation that we're allowing to come into our world. Because if we're practicing too much, if we're playing too much, we're listening too much. Like if those, the proportionality of the musical input of externally coming to us gets out of whack, then we can feel like we're burning out. We can feel like we have too many different ideas. We can get discouraged in terms of our own development and think that we're not worthy of this journey. So we have to sort of be constantly calibrating how much external

and how much internal musical input and output we're doing. So if we get into a period, I think, of composing a lot, of extreme creativity at your instrument, that's a wonderful thing. But that might be a time to kind of pull back on how much external stimulation musically we're getting, right? So we're really trying to pay attention as we go on this musical journey as to where the information and stimulation is coming from. And so that's really, when we talk about guardrails, that's where those are important. That can come in the form of saying, I'm only going to listen to maybe one album for this entire week because I want to really go deep on it. And I'm going to avoid going to a gig or a concert that maybe is really appealing

to me, but I just sort of feel like I've had enough musical input. I'm really working on my own music, I'm working on my practice journey, I'm listening to this one album, and that's enough, you know, and we have to each sort of make those decisions as we go. There's no formula that we can come up with where we say X number of minutes of external music and an X number of minutes of practice is what we need. But I think that just as we start to think about these things and introduce and allow ourselves to have guardrails, I think it can be a really effective way for us to feel like we're moving on that musical journey and living that musical life. Very much like if you're going out to eat at a wonderful restaurant one night,

maybe the next night you go somewhere. But at a certain point, you feel like, I don't want to go back and have that same meal again from that beautiful restaurant because as good as it is, I had enough. I want to be able to reflect on that meal. I want to be able to enjoy the memory of it. I'm full, you know. So we want to think about when are we musically full?

How much of that is coming from our own playing, our own practicing, our own composing, and how much of that is coming from external sources. I find in talking with a bunch of people about this, that when you get in balance with that, when you're not overeating or under-eating, so to speak, in terms of your music, it can become really a self-calibrating kind of thing. And it's okay to say, I've heard enough, I've practiced enough. that's actually a big part of that musical journey towards living that musical life. And I think I mentioned already, but just really good to reiterate, we need silence as musicians,

as composers, as humans. We need time to not hear anything. That's as much about hearing music and experience music is hearing silence. Mozart talked about silence in music, if that's silence from a particular player or instrument that they aren't playing and others are playing, if that rests in the music where nobody's playing, that makes the impact of what you've just heard or what you're about to hear even more meaningful.

So the same is true in terms of how we hear music, and we want to always be mindful that when we are practicing or playing music, playing a gig, practicing at our instrument, we are also hearing that music. We're experiencing that music. So we need time for silence even as we're practicing. that often for myself comes in the form of thinking about, oh, I need to take a break.

So if I'm going to go out and walk for 10 minutes on a break of a practice session, I'm definitely not going to be listening to music during that time. I might be listening to the music of the streets, cars, the birds, or whatever else. But I'm really going to be giving myself a chance to sort of reflect in a very informal way in terms of what I've just been hearing myself practice and what I'm about to practice. Okay. So yeah, living a musical life, it's such a great thing. It's really just having music as sort of the focus as the theme for our life journey. So we still are eating and spending time with loved ones, of course, and doing all these things. But music can kind of be the soundtrack to our ongoing life, even without an actual soundtrack playing all the time. It's like in a great movie that leverages music beautifully, the music is going to come in at different times. And it's going to

sound like, it's going to feel like there's a constant soundtrack of music. But if you go back and really check it out and analyze it, music might only be there for 25% of the movie. It seems like it's there all the time because the impact that it has is so strong. I think you'll find a lot of times in weaker movies where there's constant music used to play off your emotions and stuff because visually that can't be done. But it's very, very effective when it just comes in and out, and then you have time to just let that resonate, to let that sound marinate. Such an important thing.

Okay, let's talk about some ways that we can actually get, some things that we can do, some actual tactics that we can do as we are coming up on the new year to make sure that we have an opportunity to live this beautiful musical life. The first thing I want to talk about is taking inventory and reflecting on where we're at from this year. A lot of times we get so excited about the new year and new things, new habits, new practice techniques, new things to listen to in the new year that we don't afford ourselves that opportunity to look back on what worked and maybe even more importantly what didn't work

in this year. So a lot of times that's like, what gigs did you play this year in 2024? What were the gigs that were energizing to you, where you felt like you're. you learned a lot. Not necessarily thinking about what are the gigs that you made the most money or that were the most exciting or where you think you played the best. I mean, those things are important up to a point. But I think really thinking about the energy, the things that you learn, the opportunities for growth, such an important part of playing gigs that as a professional musician, as a semi-professional musician, as a non-professional musician, it really doesn't

matter. Those opportunities for growth are the things that you're going to look back next year, those gigs that you took that you could really grow on and say, I'm so glad that I did that. So let's look back on this year and I want you to just sort of list out your top five gigs or your top two gigs or even your top 10 gigs and think about what made those top gigs for you. What were the areas in your playing that you really grew on? I know for me a lot of times, especially thinking about it, you know, many years ago when I had felt like I had some really media, meteor, media growth like a meteor, right? Those kinds of abrupt growth were oftentimes from gigs in which I was very challenged, like where maybe I wasn't prepared, I thought I was

prepared and I wasn't, or when there's a lot of new elements coming in. And it was very aspirational for me. Maybe I didn't, I didn't hit those aspirations during that gig, but it gave me something to shoot and to practice for afterwards. So it ended up leading to a lot of growth. So other things to take inventory. How did we practice? What was, maybe we could even just sit down and write out some top practice sessions that we had so that we can make sure that those are parts of our plans for next year. What were the days when we practiced and we felt like, wow, I accomplished so much today. I was in such a flow state. I was so, I felt like I had improved so much today. I felt energized at the end of this practice session. What was it about that practice session? What were we practicing?

How long did we practice? What time of day did that occur on? The more we can kind of take stock of the elements that we already have dialed in for our practice routine, the better we can leverage those for next year. I mean, some of the things will be obvious, like if most of your most effective and joyful practice sessions occurred between the hours of 8 a.m. and noon, that's going to be a clue to some of our scheduling for next year, right, in terms of when we practice. If that happened 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. to 2 a.m., that's going to be another clue. If they were kind of all over the place, that's still a clue for us, meaning that we can schedule our practice. We have a little bit more flexibility. I think for most people, myself included for sure, practice.

is in general more effective at certain times of the day because we're able to take advantage of the energy and the flow state and the creativity, if that's needed as part of the practice during those times and we're just better attuned to that. So that's something to be thinking about. What was the listening in 2024 that really inspired you? That really inspired you to feel like you were living your most musical life. That could be in the form of just pure enjoyment of that music, that could be in the form of discovery, of a new artist, of a new genre, of a new sound, of a new instrument, whatever it is, that could be in the form of a recording that led to some important development for you in 2024. Maybe you learned a solo, maybe you learned a

phrase, maybe you learned a voicing from a particular recording. So taking note of what our listening habits were this year and which of those listening habits really led to some musical growth is super important as we plan for next year. And then just in general, what were the habits that you felt really good about in 2024? Was that a particular practice habit in that you always started your practice routine with scales? Was that that you committed to practicing every day? That's a great habit to have. Was that that you always were mindful and did some brief.

breathing before you started your practice routine, no matter when that was, whether you'd miss some days, whether it was at the wrong time of day or not. What were the things that you did as a habit, meaning very broadly defining a habit as something that you do automatically and without a lot of effort because you've developed it through repetition and dialing it into a part of your practice routine. So that could be the habit of adjusting your piano bench every time you sit down an instrument. That could be breathing for 30 seconds. Those kinds of things that you do pretty much every time automatically are really important for us to take note of because sometimes really good habits can be hard to continue. I know we think, oh, it's a habit. We're always going to do it.

But things can throw us off, especially during the holiday time going into the new year where we can lose really good habits. Maybe you brush your teeth every day, but then you go to travel and you forget to bring your toothbrush and then you got to go fine when you miss a couple days. All of a sudden, this great habit that you have isn't a habit anymore. So we don't want to take for granted and we want to leverage that as part of our taking stock of this year, those great habits that we've developed within our practice, within our listening. You know, maybe that's a habit that you have. You listen to music every day.

Sometimes you listen for just a few minutes. Sometimes you listen for a lot. But you have that as part of your everyday routine and you're actively listening. You're not just listening when you walk into a store and hear Taylor Swift playing in the background or whatever. That's not really the kind of habit listening. That's sort of forced on us, right? But what is it that we do every day with our listening, or at least almost every day? It really has become a habit that you feel like really enhances your musical life.

Make note of that. Okay? Because as we take inventory of the things that we have, it can really be inspiring as we move into the new year, I find, to not just get caught up in like, what are the new habits I want to develop? What are the new things I want to listen to? What do I really want to practice and learn this year? What do I want to do?

A lot of that can become really exciting, but it can also become, it can turn to being a little demoralizing as we start the new year and we start to realize, wait, I'm not going to be able to do all this, or I'm already falling short of what my goals were, right? If we have some important habits and activities

and momentum already dialed in in our practice and listening and just general musical life routine, then we're better able to go into the new year and say, okay, we want to really protect these practice habits. We want to really protect this connection with music through, you know, maybe that's going to a classical concert every single month that you really get inspired about and prepare for by learning and listening to the particular symphony that's being played. This is just an example. There could be any. style of music. But what are those habits where you feel most connected with music, where you feel

most excited? And I think that energy level is such an important thing and such an important clue. Because sometimes we can say, well, I have a musical habit of listening to classical music for 20 minutes a day, every day at 7 p.m. And that could be a beautiful thing. But it could also just be something that we say because we think we're supposed to do that. Or because that makes us a musically intellectually, uh, musically intellectually advanced sounding person or whatever. But do you really enjoy that?

If you do, that's great. Is that something that is furthering your connection with music? Is that something that deep listening that you do for those 20 minutes? Do you get an extreme sense of purpose and energy from that listening? That would be more the clue as to like how you think it's going to sound when you tell your spouse or your partner or your friends or in your writing in your blog or your newsletter or whatever what your listening habits are if it's giving you energy if it's giving you connection with your musical soul and the greater community of musicians and music in the world

than it's great and i think that's sort of the best thing to think about in general as we take inventory as we take stock of the musical interactions and habits that we have okay so now we've got nice list of things that we're doing well. We should also make a list of things that we're doing that are not working for us. And I think that that'll come through and will come up as we're going through that inventory of good habits. Let's talk about some bad habits. Maybe every time we sit down at the instrument, we just start ripping through something that we love to play really fast and that we're really good at. That's not always a bad thing. But if it's a habit is not necessarily leading to further musical development or technical development,

which I would say probably it isn't, then that's something that we want to take stock and inventory on as well and think about, you know, how can we remove this bad habit? Not that it's the worst thing. I mean, the habit of sitting at our instrument and playing is always good, but we want to get a little more granular and talk about the things that we want to do better and the things that we want to maybe remove, even if they're not awful, like sitting down and ripping through something right away,

it's not going to destroy our playing, but it's probably not going to help it. And it could lead to some sloppy outcomes. And I think more importantly, it could get in the way of the flowering of some really new good habits. Sometimes we have to clear out some weeds. They might not be horrible weeds. To some people, they might even look like green, okay stuff in the garden. But if you want some really beautiful stuff to grow, you got to make some space because the sunlight is going to come in. and what do we want the sunlight to be hitting?

So that's part of the inventory as well, thinking about some bad habits. And so we talked about maybe you're listening to too many things at too many different times. Things kind of a cluttered musical mind can be a difficult one to really connect with music. We don't want to get overwhelmed. We don't want to get overburdened.

We also don't want to get demoralized in terms of our progress. But we can also think about times when we're not connected enough with music. We might hear music out in the world, but maybe we're not finding enough new music that excites us. You know what I mean? So again, we check in on our energy level. If listening to that same Thelonious Monk live in solo piano, live in San Francisco, I love that record.

But if that record is not energizing me anymore, if I'm listening to it, maybe I take a break from it, you know? I could never imagine it with that record, but that's the kind of thing we want to take stock on. Are we getting enough new music? We don't need new music all the time, but if we're not getting the energy from the things that we're already connected with, we don't need to keep listening to those. We can come back to those later

and get those energy and get that energy. Okay, so now we've taken inventory on the good, the bad and the ugly. It's time to do a little bit of cleanup. This is sort of step two, I think, in the process before we get into next year. A lot of times this can be manifested just in our physical space,

and it's sort of the easiest way to think about it and to start really feeling good about the transition into the new year. So think about what is your practice space like? How cluttered is it? What are the tools that you have around you? What are the things that you need? What are the things that you don't? How can you get your practice space as simple, as beautiful, as inspiring,

and also as energizing as possible? Because when we sit down at our instrument, we have a couple of different goals. And those change from day to day, sometimes even from hour to hour. But the general physical setup, I think, can usually be presented for us in a way that no matter what direction we're going in

at that particular time, we have the tools necessary, kind of no more than necessary. So for me, a lot of times, you know, at the piano, I want to have a blank notebook, a musical notebook, just so that if I get any kind of ideas to compose something,

something I'm working on. I want to kind of get it out of my head and onto paper. I've got that available, and I don't have to be running around looking for that. So that's just a simple staff paper. It could just be individual sheets. I kind of have a notebook that I'm constantly putting ideas in that's just for that, not for finished projects, just for working on, and a pencil and easy access to a pencil sharpener. It doesn't have to be right there. Maybe I get up to the pencil sharpener, but pencil and paper is a great way to be ready for ideas. And the blank musical page of staff paper a lot of times is just a beautiful reminder.

for us to create something, right? We can sit down and improvise something. We can sit down and play a solo. We can sit down and maybe compose a song in our mind, but at a certain point, it's fun to be able to get it down on paper, get it out of there, and start to make it real. So those are the kinds of things I think about in my space. I don't want to have a whole bunch of notebooks that I've written in

and just random music around. I want just sort of the minimum that I'm practicing and then the possibilities for creativity. And then in terms of the things I'm working on, maybe that's some sheet music for a gig or whatever. Maybe that's a classical music book of the Beethoven's Sonnals. Whatever it is that you're working on, have that available there at your instrument,

but don't have stacks of like everything else. We're looking at getting rid of clutter so that the inevitable clutter of living a musical life and try to progress in our instrument that's going to occur in our minds and in our hands and then the sounds that come out, that stuff is going to be there. But at least we don't have any additional

clutter. We can just focus on that. If we've got visual things that can distract us, we're going to make it harder for us to get into those really good practice habits, those really good creative habits. And so I found that some of my most productive practice time has been in front of a piano sometimes that's not even here in my own studio. Maybe I'm on the road and I go somewhere and borrow a piano or borrow a studio or something. And there's nothing of mine around. So yes, there might be some things on the wall, distract me, but basically, I'm kind of forced to just be present with the instrument. And that's been some of my most successful practice routines. So I just try to recreate that here. And each

year, the uncluttering, the moving things away, the less is more, I think is really effective for our space. And using this kind of the prism of like removing, looking at it through the prism of removing distractions, I think can be really effective. Other things that we can do is to take care of any sort of 2024 lingering things as part of our musical journey to take care and put those things to bed that need to be. Maybe you've been working on some composition. You've got four unfinished tunes. How about having a goal of finishing those tunes off before the end of the year? So we go into the new year, your creative mind can be a little bit less cluttered. Okay, I mean, you don't want to force things.

If they're not ready to be finished, that's fine. But sometimes the calendar, a deadline, if you will, is one of the most effective ways to kind of close some things out. So we want to, nothing says that every composition has to be finished. But there's also nothing wrong with giving yourself a deadline to close out some compositions, to close out maybe practicing some scales. Maybe you're going through some scales and, you know, some more advanced scales. And you've got them through eight keys.

and your goal was this year to get them through 12 keys, put a little pressure on yourself to finish that out so that as the calendar flips to 2025, you can have that satisfaction of that being done. And then also your new plans of your new scales that you're working on, you'll be able to really start with that clean slate, as we like to say, right?

Then we want to think about a little bit as we're cleaning up too is our systems. Like, what were the systems that really worked well for us in 2024 in terms of scheduling, in terms of like active listening and things like that, and maybe closing some of that stuff out so that we're ready to go into 2025, so there's not too much bleed through. Maybe you made a goal for yourself of like every month listening to a new jazz artist, really doing some deep listening.

Maybe that meant one new album per week. Maybe that was every fortnight, as they say, overseas. But what was that system that work that you want to carry over, that we identified when we were taking inventory of the year that worked really well, but that we want to kind of close out, maybe alter a little bit, but really get that system and that habit ready for 2025. Great opportunity to do that. Okay.

Now we're going to move on to number three, and this is our plans for 2025. And, you know, with having goals, with this overarching goal of living a musical life, we need a plan on how we're going to get there. And a year gives us, you know, a somewhat arbitrary, but interesting and certainly dialed in with the rest of our community, the one year gives us a really nice kind of marker to think about where do we want to be on our musical journey, living our musical life a year from now at the end of 2025. What are the most important things to you about where you want to be at that time? that should really be a big part of your musical goals for the year. Because the overarching goal is, at the end of 2025, we feel like we are living our true and full

musical life. But what does that actually mean? So when we talk about the different chunks that we can identify, think about how you want to feel, maybe more than what you want your title to be. So how do you want to feel in December of 2025? Do you want to feel more technically able at your instrument? I think we all probably want to feel that. But that's an important part of a chunk that we can work backwards for.

More accomplished technically at our instrument. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I think it's actually a very important part of living a musical life is to get more adept at our instrument, because that's going to connect us musically more because that's the mechanism with which we make music. with which we collaborate with others, with which we play other people's music,

with which we compose. So that's a super important one, becoming more technically proficient. And then we would take that back in terms of, okay, what are the areas that we need to get better dialed in this year, right? So now that we know technique is important to us, it's like, well, my arpeggios and sort of my arpeggiated playing, for example, needs some work.

So we're going to look at like each month identifying some different arpeggios that we work on throughout that month. Or maybe, you know, scales. Maybe it's, we want to take some, you know, some specific ear training techniques and better leverage those. So then we can start to work into our practice some specific things throughout the year. Because if you want to feel more technically proficient or have better ears, as we say in music, better ear training at the end of 2025, maybe you just want to be like, I've got this wonderful technique and I'm able to identify, you know, sort of standard chords, major, minor, diminished. We're not necessarily saying I want to have perfect pitch at the end of 2025.

I mean, that would be great. That may not be achievable, but that also may not be as important as some of these other things, but be able to better identify different chord qualities that we hear in different recordings. That certainly could be something that we say at the end of 2025. And so the beautiful thing about kind of having those chunks that combine together to be a great person living a musical life is that they're going to lead to actionable things. So if we want to be that in a year from now, what are the things that we need to do in order to further art training to get there, right? Then we identify those things and say, how do we develop habits of practicing those, of listening to things that will look.

lead us to that place, that we can also enjoy as we move throughout the year. Because if it's going to all just be work that is just a grind, it's going to be very hard for us to actually live a musical life throughout the year. And that's the ultimate goal. It's not just about where we're going to be a year from now. It's like, are we going to enjoy that journey? How do we set up our lives very much to enjoy that journey? So that has to be part of the plan.

It's not going to just happen automatically, and that's why so many people quit doing things because they get burnt out or they get discouraged or any number of reasons that they would sort of leave the pathway. If the hike and the journey isn't enjoyable enough and you can't find joy in that journey, you're never going to make it to that mountain top. The hike has to be really the main thing, because once you get to the top of the mountain, once you get to next December, if you achieve these goals, it's a lot. It's going to be great, but you're going to be thinking about the next year, right? So it's going to be a very quick enjoyment and then sort of moving on. So we want to have a plan. And a lot of times that means we want to add certain habits that we've maybe identified and get rid of some of the bad habits that we have that are getting in the way of us living

a musical life that we've talked about. And then part of that plan is specific things that we want to do. So as we talk about technical things, but it should also be about repertoire. You know, do you want to be well-versed in jazz standards next December? You don't want to have your plan to be to know every single Thelonious Monk and Wayne Shorter and Gershwin song. Like, you want it to be realistic, right? But you also want to think about what is the pacing that you can actually go about to make an effective plan?

It can be a little bit aggressive. And it's okay if you have a plan of learning, you know, say 50 songs next year and you end up learning 40 composition. instead of 50. I think you're going to feel really good about that because you've enjoyed that journey. You've gotten better in your musicality. You've expanded your repertoire. So you want it to be a little bit aspirational, I think, what your plan is, but you also want it to be something that's achievable, for sure.

What gigs do you want to be doing next year? And what is your plan to be able to do those gigs? Do you want to be playing at the Village Vanguard next December or at Carnegie Hall? Or do you want to be playing, you know, feeling confident to play? play at your local jam session by next December. These are important questions to have because you need to come up with a plan to get there. Everything is achievable and is possible, I think, for anybody. But the plan starts to become like the actualization of you enjoying that journey,

but having a journey to enjoy to get to what your goals are. So if your goal is to play at the Village Vanguard next December, you can start to think back, You've got 12 months to get to the level of doing that. What is that going to take? Who are you going to be playing with? Are you going to be playing your own gig? So it starts to sort of inform what your process is going to be to actually achieve those things. I think a lot of times with gigs as opposed to saying particular places that you're going to play,

I think it's more about experiences that can be really effective. So it's sort of like maybe by the end of next year you want to be playing a gig that you are, totally energized by you enjoy and that some of your loved ones can attain. I mean, can achieve. I think that's very much attainable for a lot of people. And I think could be one of the most energizing activities for you to feel like you've really, that you're living an effective musical life. You know, a lot of the places that I've ended up playing that I always sort of dreamed

about, it turned out the actual room, talk about the village vanguard or Carnegie Hall, places like this was great, but that was more of a fleeting part of the achievement for me. It was more about the musical experience of what I played, what my contribution was during those performances. So the exciting thing about that is, it turns out that could happen anywhere. When you're playing in a beautiful spot with a great audience and a wonderful piano and a historic venue, of course, there's the excitement of that. But that's not going to happen every day to anybody, you know. And so, like, how do we have some gigs, some live performances spaced out throughout the year that we can be excited about, that we can plan for, that can be part of

our goals that the musical growth that we need, the practice that we do for those gigs, is really something that we enjoy and that becomes a big part of us living an ongoing musical life, right? So the musical life is not once you get to do the gigs once a month or once every quarter, whatever your pacing is going to be. The living and musical life is the preparation, the thinking about, the looking forward to, the reflecting on those gigs. It's much more about that. That's going to be 95% of it.

The actual gigs are going to be exciting, but it's going to be that preparation, that the things that we get from that experience that will lead to the next level of growth that I think. So whatever you decide your kind of dream goals, aspirational goals, but also just very, functional gig goals in terms of like I want to do a gig once a month that I'm really excited about and that will either lead to some unexpected musical growth or will lead to some expected musical growth in terms of what I have to do to prepare to play with that. A lot of times that we think about what we can learn on a gig by playing with better players and that for sure is true,

but also times playing with your peers can be a wonderful thing where you can all really come together on a level playing field. So there's opportunities for growth and excitement and energized situations, I think, at all different levels. But you do want to have a plan for doing those, okay? And you want to put a little pressure on yourself to do that, to say, you know what, I'm going to get out there and play. Performing is a scary thing for a lot of people, really for everybody at some point

in our journey, right? I still get on gigs where I'm like, wow, I'm kind of scared about what is going to happen. Am I prepared enough? Am I good enough? Am I worthy of doing this? I mean, that's part of the human nature. The more you do it, the better you're going to get at being able to control your emotions and your contributions to the particular gigs.

But you have to, in order to get there, you have to be doing it regularly. So make sure you have as part of your plan for this year, some gigs, some jam. sessions for those types of things for you to be able to get out of the practice room and actually let the world hear what you have to contribute. So yeah, that's really what it is in terms of having a plan. It's like thinking about where you want to be a year from now and then working your way backwards in these kinds of steps in terms of your practice, in terms of your performance and identifying these chunks. And also you're listening, your ear training, like what are we listening to each month so that we don't get into next year and let like let the year sort of

slip away or we get distracted because if we don't have a plan for what we're going to practice, what gigs we're going to do and what we're going to listen to, the world is going to kind of put that in front of us and then the rest of the world, other folks, other situations are going to decide that for us. And that may or may not work out good. And there's going to be some of that anyway. Some of that's not avoidable. You're going to walk onto an airplane. There's going to be music playing. You're going to, you know, we can't control everything and we don't need to. but if at the end of the year we want to be a better listener, a better active listener, both in terms of recordings and listening to ourselves and listening to others on gigs,

if we haven't put into place opportunities for growth in each of those areas every single month, then the world is not necessarily going to give that to us. Yes, you might get lucky and somebody calls you for a gig every month that turns out to be super interesting and energizing and edifying for your musical growth and your musical journey. but it may not happen either. Some of those gigs might just be things that other people need you for and that don't help you at all or only help you with giving you some money for the gig. Nothing wrong with that.

But we're talking about musical growth. We're not talking about financial growth in this episode. So we want to make sure that we take control of those different types of things. And you might say, well, I can't get a gig. There's not available. Make a gig. That gig could be a performance that you schedule each month in your home or at a local school or to piano outside, or if you play saxophone at the subway station, I mean, wherever there's people or not people,

and you invite your spouse or your friend, like one person playing music and one person listening, that's a gig. It might be a free gig, it might be indoors, outdoors, whatever, but that's a gig. So there's no excuse, I think, for not having something on the books in terms of gigs. And, you know, music gives us all a lot in this world. So we owe it back to the world to play music. It's not about I'm not good enough. I haven't gotten to a certain level. You're probably never going to feel like you've gotten there unless somebody else validates you.

But we owe it to the world for our voice to be heard. So that should be part of the plan for sure. Okay. The last section number four I want to talk about I have in my trusty notes here is rewards for yourself. This is important. So we're taking inventory, taking stock of where we're at. We're cleaning things up. We're preparing for the new year.

and then we're developing a plan, not too regimented, not too strict, but really inspirational and connected, that plan being connected with our specific goals and where we want to be on our musical journey along the way and then where we want to be a year from now. But none of this works without having some rewards built in, I believe. I mean, that's the way it works kind of for me. And I think there's a lot of interesting science and study in terms of especially developing good habits in any area, but specifically we're talking about musical habits, you know, developing those habits when there's rewards connected with us, that's going to keep us motivated,

interested, energized, and it just makes the whole kind of thing more fun. The beautiful thing about this is that the rewards for living a musical life and developing really good habits to developing as a musician and as a listener, the rewards can be pretty much every day and ongoing. And that's not true for like all types of habits. If you think about the habit of brushing your teeth or flossing, you're going to have rewards, but they're going to come later. So that's actually a more difficult type of habit to develop because you're not being rewarded right away. I mean, I guess you are a little bit the satisfaction of doing something that you know will have positive health impacts and implication later on. But in terms of immediate gratification, with living a musical life, I find that there's a lot more immediate gratification.

So it actually is a way to leverage developing good habits, I think, a little bit easier because the most obvious reward is listening to something that's really entertaining and exciting and feeds our souls. So if we want to develop the habit of listening to great music every day for 30 minutes, that 30 minutes of listening, you're probably going to be enjoying it. You're going to be rewarded with hearing something great. It's possible that you're having to listen to something that you don't enjoy, but I don't know how that could end up helping you live a musical life anyway. There's going to be days when you're listening and you're just like, I don't really want to hear anything.

So it's not always rewarding, but I think most of the time, the listening part is really, an area that we're going to get some immediate gratification and connection with music. So I think that's kind of the most exciting and sort of entry level to rewarding you. I think that the rewards of listening to yourself play, that's a little bit of, or a lot of delayed gratification, right? So we're not necessarily looking towards us playing a song that we're just learning as being an interesting gratifying listening experience. And that's where a lot of people get discouraged, especially early on. They're like, I sound horrible. I can't keep doing this. That's a time to really not listen to yourself

as much as possible. You need to listen, of course, to practice and make adjustments, but you're not listening for enjoyment because it's not going to sound very good. If you're learning lush life by Billy Strayhorn, beautiful composition, but you can't really play it correctly, it's not going to be that fun to listen to. As you start to get better at it, it's a beautiful song. So it's going to become a beautiful thing and a really direct connection with you and living a musical life once you can play it on even a rudimentary basis because the beauty is going to start coming out. So you want to pay attention for those opportunities in your playing where you're listening and you're actually enjoying it because that actually becomes one of the best feedback loops,

that gratification for how you sound and how you've improved and that you can actually make music that's edifying to your soul, that's one of the best feedback loops and then kind of flywheels to living a musical life. There's nothing like listening to a great recording of Lush Life, but I would say there's nothing quite like

being able to play that composition and actually create the manifest a performance of it where you can listen to it and play it and make all the little adjustments for your own ear as you go. That's when things start to really get exciting. So we want to be paying attention to both in terms of rewards, things that we can listen to, and then listening to ourselves as well.

We can also reward ourselves in kind of more specific ways that can be exciting. Like maybe we have a certain practice regimen that is a little bit more challenge for a period, say for a week or something. And we're going to reward ourselves with buying a ticket to a really exciting concert or going to a club or something. something on Sunday night. So you're working all week and maybe you're passing up listening some other things because you're really working on your playing and you need to have silence at the times you're not practicing, but you've got that reward coming up on Sunday with this great musical performance that you get to go and sit down and be entertained, don't have to play or anything. So I love kind of rewarding myself with things like that that are still connected

with living a musical life. We don't necessarily want to reward ourselves with a chocolate clip at the end of our practice session. I mean, you can do that as a separate thing, but that's not going to really lead to a more musical life. You know what I mean? So try to find rewards that are really still connected with music. Maybe you reward yourself with buying a special LP pressing of an album that you love, you know, in a way that you would normally not do because you'd say, well, I've already paid for my streaming service. I can just listen to it. I'd love to have that, but it's 50 bucks and it's maybe a little waste. That could be your specific reward, if that's something that's important to you for some really effective practice.

And then I think a lot of the things that we talked about in terms of having a plan can end up being a reward as well. The gigs, the going to the jam sessions and stuff like that. Sometimes they'll be terrifying. Sometimes they'll feel like punishment. But I think that you'll be moving into an area where you can look at those very much as being rewards too. Then there's bigger rewards that you can do that can be very connected with you living a musical life like taking a trip to see a special performance at a special club or going to a beautiful concert somewhere else where it's part of you know learning about the musical culture in that place there's so many different things it kind of starts to snowball as you're living a musical life and you look at travel food

listening, reading, study, school, family. You start to look at all these things through the prism of music. You'll start to see a lot of different things that you can reward yourself with. They go beyond just concert tickets. They're kind of obvious thing. But I think that that's very much where it starts. So that's it. This is your blueprint for living a more musical life in 2025. I can tell you these are all things that I follow that I'm doing here that I've tried before, that work. This is not a perfect system, but living a musical life doesn't need to be a perfect thing. It's just about connecting with, developing, and also giving back, having that gratitude throughout the year. And when I talked about showing up to play music, scheduling a gig,

that's what we owe. That's the gratitude that we have for what music is given us. That's giving back. Somebody else is going to hear you. Some of you are going to think nobody ever wants to hear me play. That's not true. There's somebody out there that needs to hear you. The world needs to hear you. So we live a musical life, not just to take and to ingest, but to give back as well. That could be in the form of teaching. That could be in the form of performing. That could be in the form of just showing up at a jam session. But we want to find those areas. Maybe that's making a video and putting that on Instagram of you playing your composition. Whatever it is, have that as part of your goals, but also your feedback and also your rewards, hopefully pretty soon for next year

as you live this more musical life. And we go on this journey together. All right, until next time, happy practicing. We'll be back with a new regular edition soon. This is the Yolhear podcast. This is how we do it here, whether we're solo or not. Until next time, happy practicing.