You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Organize Your Practice Routine

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

Maximize the efficiency of your practice sessions by setting up a routine - Peter and Adam walk you through how.* Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipe at https://link.youllhearit.com/speakpipe* Support the pod by spreading the word with the link openstudiojazz.link/yhi* Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested 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 Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Adam. Yes. What's your routine like? Okay, so I get up at about 5.30 in the morning. I make some eggs. I make some salad, actually. I like it's morning salad. Yeah.

I head downstairs. Wait, hold on. I was asking about your practice routine. Oh. Yeah. I don't really know. I'm Adam Maness. And I'm Peter Martin.

And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast. Music, advice, and inspiration coming at you. Coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. Go to open studiojadjazz.com for all of your jazz music. Lesson needs today, Peter. We are talking about practice. I mean, listen, we're talking about practice.

That's right, yeah, we are talking about. Yes. Practice. You're already practicing. I'm practicing. Noodles McGee is back. Noodles. Noodles.

Noodles. I'm getting hungry for a little. Poodles. For a little smack ramen. And you know what? I'm feeling so confident in the knowledge I'm about to drop. I'm about to smack you down with knowledge, audience. Don't put smack in your ramen.

They'll just make it crazy. No, you know, I remember this back in the 80s. Okay. I'm going to take you back to a time. Here we go. When young Peter was a burgeoning teenager. Okay. And you were but a non-burgeoning teenager.

You were a single, single digits. And there was those little packets of ramen, and some of them were called snack ramen, but some were called smock or smack raymond. Those are still around. But do they still misspell it with the S-M? Oh, I don't know. I don't know about that.

Smack ramen. That's hilarious. That's awesome. A little factoid told you. But that's not what we're talking about today, is it? Are we here to talk about? We're here to talk about. I mean, listen, we're talking about practice.

Not a game. Not a game. Not a game. Not a game. Not a game. Not a soup. We're talking about practice. Yeah, that's right.

So, yes, we're talking about a practice, specifically a practice routine and how to organize your practice routine. And this was actually a request. I just threw out a little thing on Twitter. You know about Twitter? Twitter? I know about Twitter, but I don't know about Twitter. Twitter is a new thing I've developed.

The British Twitter? Yeah, British, yeah. Brita, it's, no, I just said, you know, and look, hit me up. Twitter. Yeah, Twitter. Twitter. I'm from Roxburgh. I don't know what I'm talking about.

Oh, boy. Okay. Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire. I'm from Worcestershire. Oh, many apologies to our UK listeners. I'm from Worcestershire, where sauces are available. No, so this, I just threw it out on Twitter that we're doing some podcast today.

as we do and if you have any requests hey when's that going to start right now well they said can you talk about can you and adam because they were added me i am peter martin if you want to hit me up i'm at nothing right now yeah we're going to get you on twitter man i was on twitter i didn't you're on tic-tok you're on all that other stuff aren't not really i didn't know quite well um anyway so somebody and i apologize for forgetting who it was now uh i got a couple of nice requests but this one really jumped out to me, how to organize your practice routine. Because we love talking about practice.

We do. And I think both of us probably, not to speak for you, but I would just say for myself, I'm very routine oriented. And then over the last year and a half or so have become even more routine oriented, being home more during the pandemic.

Totally. But actually enjoying it and really been thinking about it. And we're talking about it all the time amongst ourselves, like different routines and, you know, how we can use them to help our own development. with music and other things, with our children, and with our students. And it's a really exciting thing for us because as we start to organize these things,

I do think it's one of the most helpful areas we can impart upon our students and listeners. Totally. I find a routine to be crucial for my entire life, actually, for my whole day. I mean, what do we do on Mondays? We do podcasting. That's right. Every Monday. That's right.

We wouldn't do it if we didn't have a routine. It would never get time. It was just like, hey, let's text this week and maybe do a, podcast. Right. It would never happen. And right now we're like we're sort of gliding over into dinner time, but we're a little bit late starting, but we're still doing this because we have a routine. That's right. We got to get a row. Just like with a gumbo needs rue. We put the rue and the teen, okay. We put the rue and the teen. Right. All right. So let's talk about this. How to organize your practice routine. Okay. Yep. Can I throw, can I throw one idea out first? Do it. Okay. Make it

routine. That seems obvious in the name. It is. But what does routine mean, actually? It means regular. It means regular, yeah. But like a regular sequence of events. It's like a pattern. Right.

It's like a thing. A pattern is something that you get going and then it sounds or feels normal, just like in your playing. If you start a pattern, then you change it or whatever. And so having a regular sequence of events that occur, and I'm going to recommend specifically the beginning of your practice routine, having that routine built in. Yeah, yeah. It's so important because it gets you into it.

It gets you over that. hump of like oh what am i going to practice oh i'm confused do i want to do this like you know decision making indecision and you know confusion and all that kind of stuff sometimes your routine is just like that's what you do and if you think about other parts of your life like you said if you come downstairs and your routine is to make eggs or make a salad and especially if it's like a healthy routine that's just sort of what you do it's not difficult anymore because that's what your routine is totally and you know what it does it creates a bit of a psychological transition time right yes where you can go from

the stress and the lists of endless things that we have to do, things that are bothering us, or people that are bothering us, and we can then just sit down and be with what we want to be with at that time, which is the music. For me, my practice routine, especially the last couple of months, starts with silence, stillness, actually. I'll sit down on the piano,

and this has come from watching Fred Hirsch's amazing course here on a studio thoughts and experiments. I'll sit down the piano and I'll position my, myself in a comfortable and solid way. My posture. And you'll start doing this? No, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. A little shoegaze noodles. Shoodles. No. What I'll do a new breakfast. No. I'll sit down and you know what? So I'll do, uh, I'll just do a brief like 10 seconds of silence. I'll take a couple like, I mean, it's like what you would do in a meditation practice too. We're just the first couple of breaths.

are nice and deep and long and force. Like it's intentional. I'm just like setting an intention for your practice a little bit. And just being still for a few moments, right? Just not doing something for just a couple of moments. And then. And that's the first, that's like the number,

that's the first part of the routine. That's the first part of routine. And then I come out of that and maybe I'll start with some scale work or something technical, but I have that little buffer. That's right. Where I'm not doing anything. Yeah.

That's so great. That's worth the price of this podcast. alone right there. Which is pre. No, but I mean, that's like, and look, 10 seconds is a long time in this day and age, actually. I would check a lot of people like, oh, if I'm going to meditate, I'm going to do 10 minutes. No, you're not. You're not really meditating.

I mean, you could build up to that. It takes a while. But you don't necessarily need that at the beginning of a practice routine. I think the 10, this kind of 10 seconds you're talking about, if done correctly, will feel like a minute. So this actually came out of a really interesting book called Mindful Eating about eating your food with like your attention on your food, which hardly ever happens. Usually when we're eating, we're watching TV. Right.

Or you're having a conversation, which can be cool, you know, in a social setting. But how often do you actually like take the time to like be aware of the weight of your fork? Right. Or like, you know, what it is. You're actually eating the colors of what you're eating, right? So the author of the book asks you to just take one deep breath before you, each your meal, right, so that you can actually just kind of like, realize, oh, like, I'm about to eat. Instead of just shoving stuff down your hole, which is what I usually like to do.

Right, right. So it could be, when it works this way, it's just one deep breath. Ten seconds is, it's not even a deep breath. But I think it's such a great centering thing. Totally. For not just that moment and the next thing it happens, but for all this stuff you're doing. Because I think even what you're talking about, too, is reminded me of something that I've really been recently trying to reincorporate into my practice routine, which is like, you're, Like make sure that you enjoy as you go through this routine each of the each each parts of it. Even the hard parts.

You know, we're going to talk about that later. But it's like, don't just make it a routine where you're like, oh, these are just steps I have to go through. Yeah. You know, like you're baking a cake. It's like it's not just about the cake in the end and shoving it in your mouth. It's like, you know, the flour. How does it feel on your hand? Wait, wait, are you supposed to put it on your hands when I don't know.

Well, it gets on your hands. Okay. Yeah. You never baked anything before? No, I haven't. But I mean, you know what I'm saying? I've seen chefs where they're like enjoying it. It's like a tactile thing.

And it's not just about let me get the cake and get the money to sell it. It's like give yourself permission to enjoy every part of it. And it starts with those 10 seconds. Even the challenging things. Yeah. Especially the challenge. If you frame it like again, we were just talking, you know, about framing things. Right.

If you frame it like you are like it's challenging and therefore it's not enjoyable. Yeah. Then that's going to be tough. Yeah. Or if you frame, if we frame your session like everything's going to be fun to play and feel great. That's going to suck. Well, you could do that, but you're not going to progress. It's like, you're not going to make any progress. No. And you're going to, you're not, because you're only going to do things that feel good. Right. Right. If you frame it like, okay,

there are going to be things that are going to feel natural and easy and then they're going to be things that are going to be challenging. But that's, I'm going to really lean into that. Yes. Kind of a stoic approach. Absolutely. Absolutely. Of course of like, um, going through. Okay. So let's talk about how do we the meditate, the, the, the 10 seconds is a great thing. How do we make this regular sequence sequence, sequence go along and kind of set us set ourselves up for success set ourselves that's i gotta talk set ourselves up for success like what's what's some stuff we can do with that for the actual sequence yeah so we so i start with uh uh no distractions right that's like a huge one to do uh and again you know going back

to like eating and we're always kind of distracting ourselves as we're eating or whatever like on our phone as we're eating dinner or whatever yeah like it's the same thing we're practicing like set the attention that I'm going to leave my phone in the other room yeah I'm not going to have a TV on in the background right I'm really going to like concentrate on what I'm here to concentrate on which is practicing the piano and when I notice myself getting distracted I'm going to bring my awareness back to the task of hand which is playing and then you know really not checking your phone I got to say that like that's the biggest possible distractor like turn off your notifications which you should have off anyway but at least like sometimes I'll leave my phone

upstairs and I'll go downstairs to practice. this, I mean, not even sometimes, a lot of times. I'll leave my phone upstairs, go downstairs to practice, and then go get it, you know, when I'm done. I almost think that that's a requirement in this day and age to be able to. Well, first of all, it just makes it so much more fun. I mean, the phones are great. We all have fun, whatever. But if you don't give yourself a break from it, it's like French fries are great.

You're going to eat those all day. You're going to be dead in a couple years. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, I think the no distractions thing is great, too, because there's only so much we can control. So, like, you mentioned, like, if you do get distracted, because even if you have the perfect environment, something's going to happen. You know, so be expecting that.

But how quickly can you get back to the task at hand? And then we should also, what I like to do too, is to include some time for breaks and for rests. And then also with that, no phones in those breaks. Yeah, that's not a break if you're going to check your phone. Like, stillness and silence can be so powerful for just a couple of minutes as you're practicing, as we're doing all this crazy, you know, you're practicing like coal train changes.

giant stuff, right? There's a lot. There's a lot of mental energy that's being... And physical. And physical energy that's being expelled as you're doing that. So when you take your break, go get a glass of water. Sit in a chair. Check your Twitter feed, maybe. Do not check your phone. Do not check your phone.

No, here's what happens. What if they're checking for practice tips from us? That's okay. Save it for later. Here's what happens. You check your phone on your five-minute break and your five-minute break is now an hour long. Right. And now you don't have time to finish your practice session. Right. Just don't bring your phone down. So, so great.

So my daughter has a great thing. Like she checks herself continually. And if she feels like there's any of the apps, like social media apps, are distracting to her, she removes the app from her phone. Me too. So I asked her, I was like, so you're off Instagram? She's like, no, no, I still do. But she's like, but if I want to look at it, I got to reload it, put my password in. She's like, it's like, it's kind of a drag.

By the time I started doing that, I'm like, I don't really want to look at it anymore. I do that with, I do have a TikTok account. I don't do anything on it, but I don't have it on my phone. But I still go on there a couple times a week. Exactly with that. I have to reload it. I have to re-enter whatever. Because the first time I downloaded it, I was on it for about 10 minutes,

and I looked up, and I actually been on it for about four hours. Yeah. Oh, it's crazy. Holy smokes. It's phone crack. Anyway. So don't forget to include some dedicated time for a little bit of a break in your practice routine without your phone. And it's important, too, for the break because like some, like, you know, like you're saying,

you know, if you're like, And you're like, you know, you're practicing the soul that you learn or you're just, yeah, you're just like thrashing, especially that kind of stuff. When you take that break and maybe segue to some other practice or maybe you're going to come back to it. You're just going to take a break. Silence is so important because that gives your brain and your ears and your mind a chance to absorb like what you just did. It's like going to the gym. Everybody thinks, oh, I'm in the gym building up my muscles.

No, it's the eight hours after. when your muscles are starting to respond to that. Yeah. Getting a chance. It doesn't happen right away. It happens when you're still, actually. Same thing with especially really intense kind of music things. You've got to give yourself your mind.

If you're continually moving right on to everything else. And sometimes this can be like quick, like one minute or something. Absolutely. But you got to have some silence. Well, you know, and you know what I like to do too on my studio is to keep like so I subscribe to Downbeat magazine. Jazz is magazine. A couple jazz magazines.

Also, I have some. Jazz magazine. It's for our work here. It opens. Okay. I want to keep up at the times. Yeah. But I also have...

Oh, Jazz Times. I love that one. Jazz Times. Good one too. No, but also keep like, you know, I have my favorite sort of orchestration books and arranging books on my coffee table where I take my break. Oh. This dude is classy A.F.

So I don't, so I can grab like, oh, that's kind of like a cool orchestration technique. Yeah. Like I'm kind of, I'm still taking a break. I'm not thinking about giant steps, but I'm still kind of in the game. You know what I mean? I'm still like, or I'm like, oh, Ron Miles does a new album out or whatever. You know what I mean? I'm like still kind of in it.

Yeah, that's really good. Cool. Man, this is so much fun. This was awesome. So this was more, you know, the question probably was more about like the specific things to practice. We've covered that a lot before. And we'll talk about that some more on future things. But I think that this little bit higher level of like, you know all this stuff.

People know. Like a lot of it's addition by subtraction too. Like don't have a list of 30 things that you're going to try to accomplish. You ain't going to do that. Yeah. You know. Technique, ear training, repertoire. You're good to go.

Yeah. Like I would say maximum of five. areas, if you have some time to practice, you know. Totally. But really, you know, as opposed to think about what you have to do, think about, you know, putting in some spaces, some real mindfulness, some thoughtfulness. Love it.

Yeah. Well, in. I caught you out with that one, buddy. That's our new, that you know what that signifies? What? That we're going to another segment, a more commercial segment. A more promotional. Yeah, I wanted to ask you a question, Peter.

What if I have like two open studio courses already? Yeah. Yeah. But I want to get like four more. Should I just go buy those individual courses? Or is there some kind of pass? Well, I got a question for you before I can answer. Yeah.

Do you have a rich auntie or uncle? No, I don't. Do you have a sugar daddy or a sugar mommy? I wish. No, I don't. Are you independently wealthy? I am not. Do you have a trust fund?

Are you a blue blood with a trust fund? Man, I wish, but no. Okay. So if you answer no to all those, then what you're going to want to do is get either the piano access pass, the bass access pass or Open Studio Pro. If you want the whole enchilada. That's everything. That's everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the reason is, is because then you become, first of all, you get access to everything that you're going to need. Totally. Depending upon your, you know, your instrument. But you're going to get access to, like, all of our great live events. Absolutely. Like, we just had Orrin Evans do a master class for all of our members live. That's right. And you get a chance to even be able to play in front of people like Fred Hirsch and Orrin Evans.

You get access to our courses before everybody else does as well. You get early access. But most important, you're part of the Open Studio community. community, you know. And so no problem buying a course here or there. But once you're ready to up your game, join us for a membership. And you save a bunch of money. You save a ton of money. If you've already gotten a few Open Studio courses, which I know a lot of you have, and you just want a regular output, which is quite a lot of courses and quite a lot of material beyond even the courses, like live events and stuff like that. Just give the piano access pass a shout out. Give the,

give the all access pass a try. We have so many different ways to become a member. All our subscriptions have a 30 day. No questions to ask. I mean, well, we ask you one question if you want your money back. What the hell wrong with you? No, we don't ask that. No questions asked. So for 30 days, we were gladly, look, these are, these subscriptions are not for everybody. But, you know, if you don't like it, we give you your money back.

It's all good. Well, thanks, everybody. Until next time, you'll hear it.