You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Practice Away From Your Instrument - #14

Episode Date: February 13, 2018

We all have short periods of time when we can't be around our instruments. Don't let you playing slip, practice anyway! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Peter Martin. And I'm Adam Manus. Welcome to the You'll Hear It podcast. Today we're going to talk about how you can continue to develop, even when you can't practice, don't have access to your instrument. Maybe you're burnt out. Maybe you're in prison. There's all different situations.

You know, we did talk about the jazz police last week. That's right. Yeah, we've all been there. No judgments here. That's right. So, but, you know, a lot of times I'll hear musicians say, man, I just, you know, I just don't have time to practice, I don't have access to a good piano, I don't have my trumpet with me, whatever. We want to give you some ideas today that are going to take you out of any of those

excuses because we, you know, developing as a musician, especially as a jazz musician, in improvising creative musician, is not just about what you're doing at your instrument. And there's a myriad of ways that we can be attentive to our musical development, even away from the instrument. And I would just say that as pianists, you know, I don't know if you agree with this Adam, but I always feel like pianists have to even be more attentive to this because we can't, if we're traveling on the road, you know, in the hotel, very rare, we have much access to an instrument. And I always want to feel like I'm developing some. So sometimes pianos will have the best concept. If you play the piccolo, you don't have any, you could probably sneak a

piccolo into prison even, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you might not last very long. That's right. But I mean, it's like the opposite of a piano, I guess. So let's jump right, let's jump right in. And I'm just thinking, you know, the first thing that you can do to keep developing away from the instrument is to practice more before and after you're going to have that break. So, of course, this is when you know you're going to be away from the instrument. So you can put in some extra time in those days before you go on that road trip or that vacation or whatever. And what I find when I do that is I've got more stuff sort of percolating and floating around in my brain, sort of ideas and things that then I can go on to develop away from the instrument. But if you don't put that time and that kind of homework in that little bit of extra time, you're not going to have those ideas and you're not going to have access to an instrument maybe to develop them.

Yeah, that's a great point. It's just a great idea that if you know you're going to have a long stretch without it, to really hone in before that happens. And then after, of course, you're probably going to be, probably going to be, you know, itching to get back to the piano, hopefully. Yeah. Our second point is to listen, attentive listening. What do I mean by this? Well, when I was first developing as a musician as a kid,

and I discovered things like chord changes and melodies, and I discovered I could hear them, I couldn't listen to any music without trying to figure out what the chord change was, what the melody was. And that continues to this day, and that's a great way. You can be in a van, in the middle of nowhere, on the way to a weird gig, and if the radio's on, you can practice your ear training. You can practice like, what are the chord changes?

Even if you don't have perfect pitch, you could just say, oh, I'll just say this is an A-flat. And in the key of A-flat, even if that's not correct, if it's an A-flat to you, or you can use the Roman numeral system. This is the one, here's the flat three, the melody is the fifth. You know, it's a great way to develop and to keep your brain sharp and your ears sharp even when you're not around your instrument. Same thing with rhythm. You know, if you hear a rhythm around you, either in music that you're listening to, purposefully, or even like if you're in a restaurant and you hear something, try to break down that rhythm, try to transcribe it in your head. It's a great way to keep sharp.

Great. Yeah, I really like that. I think you can also extend that, you know, Beyonce, the chord changes and the melody and the rhythm, even into the forms of tunes. Totally. You know, especially when you get into more complex forms, but even on the simpler ones, making sure you really kind of understand the flow of that and a lot of potential development there for sure. The next thing that I think for developing, you know, away from the instrument is just thinking about music. This is kind of a funny thing because usually we're talking about hearing music and listening. But I find that I enjoy just thinking about music almost in a sort of meditative way. And so that sometimes is going through a particular tune.

And a lot of times I'll do this over tunes that I've written because they're very like kind of organic to the way that I hear music. and I'll actually just go through in real time like a solo. Like I'm improvising a solo. I'm kind of hearing it. So I'm saying thinking, but yeah, it is hearing it too. But I'm not singing or anything. I'm not thinking about it on the piano per se. I'm just kind of imagining the music

and what the flow of it is. Sometimes it's like the last thing that I was practicing or the last tune that I was transcribing or a solo. I just sort of go through in real time and just imagine it. Almost like you'd imagine an experience or imagine a piece of artwork. But I find that you can really, get inside of the music in a way that being at your instrument, there's always a physical

and technical barrier between you and the actual music. And so this is your opportunity. Let's not look at it as like, oh, I can't get anything accomplished. Let's see if we can even go a little bit deeper on music. And I mean, especially for, I was going to say for the young folks, but it's really for everybody nowadays. We're spending so much time like plugged in and listening. We have access to listen to music and looking at it on YouTube and being at our instrument. and we're productive all the time, that we kind of lose that, just clear your head and just imagine some music. When I was a kid, back in the 1780s, man, it's been a while.

The 1980s, like, I spent a lot of time bored. In fact, that was part of my thing. Like, I would go over to the piano or the violin because I was bored. I'm bored. And there wasn't a lot else to do. And I also got interested in them. But there was definitely some time of, like, just sitting on the school bus, just, like, walking home. And it was just, you know, I didn't have headphones in.

I didn't have Walkman. I didn't have an iPhone or whatever. So I was forced to kind of just imagine music. And I think it's a healthy endeavor to partake in. I think that's great. Yeah. If I could execute some of the solos I've played in my head. My goodness. But no, I think it's really important because that is the goal, right? Is to get so good on your instrument practicing that you can play what's the music that's in your head. And you don't have that music in your head unless you're developing that. You can't develop that just at the piano. That has to be all the time or just at the saxophone or just the trumpet. So the fourth point is to read. This is a really great way to stay plugged in with music and actually improve your skills without being at the instrument. Read about great players, read about composers and other artists, read autobiographies and biographies about your favorite musicians.

You know, I was on vacation last year for around the Fourth of July, and I read Herbie Hancock's autobiography for the first time, and I'm, shame on me for not reading it earlier, but it was so great, you know, and not just... Well, his life is still unfolding, so that was good. You're waiting to see what the next chapter was going to be. He's still making good music, too. But even just reading about, you know, you think like, oh, I mean, the story is great and it's inspiring and it makes you want to practice and all the stuff. But he actually, you know, in a lot of these autobiographies, like there was some good musical advice or good, you know, anecdotes about how he thinks about music that opened Maya.

You know, when he said that Miles told him not to play the butter notes and he thought that it meant, you know, don't play the thirds and the seventh. And that's how he got those voicing. And then you go to the back to the piano and you're like, I'm going to try that. And, you know, you start sounding a little bit like Herbie. in that era, you know, it's pretty cool. And, you know, then this one time when I was on vacation in St. Croix, and I picked up a book on Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, and I wrote this whole musical.

Wait, right, no, that's not me. That's not me. No, but just think about, like, if he hadn't, Lynn Manuel, if he hadn't picked up that book and created, I mean, you know, art springs forth and artistry springs forth from a number of different areas, and you hear continually about how books, you know, can really spur some great ideas. That's right. So, well, I mean, another thing along those lines is really just, you know, art in general inspiring our artistry.

And so, you know, I like to read poetry. I mean, I'm not trying to sound like I'm overly cultured because I'm actually not. I just enjoy reading some of it. Tell about your wine cellar. Yeah. But, I mean, the thing with the, you know, the poetry is, there's some rhythmic things in terms of how poetry flows that it's a little different than listening. I think listening too, I mean, you know, like the way prose or say in hip-hop, the rhythm of how a lot of that great music flows we can really apply to our playing.

But that's more than listening to music that you discussed earlier. So this would be reading, but not reading necessarily for information, more for the art of it, which is really what poetry is. and it can kind of get us into the forms, the flow, the rhythm of the words, things that we can bring over to our improvisation in a way that I think is interesting. And I mean, that really just would go into any of the arts. You know, the visual arts, when I'm traveling, I love going to different museums and just, you know, I don't even necessarily know what I'm looking at, but I know I'm looking at great things.

It's great just to be around beautiful, artistic things. It kind of brings you back into the mentality that we're supposed to have, as musicians. We're really artists first. It's not about like I'm a jazz musician. This is my little walled off silo. You know, we're supposed to be part, and we are a part of something bigger than that. And I think that visual artists do a better job a lot of times than jazz musicians or just musicians in general in making that connection. I mean, you talk about, you know, the great artist that, and I'm forgetting his name, now the great American artist who was so into John Coltrane and like so many of his paintings were made, you know, he composed the paintings as he was listening to specific

John Coltrane and other jazz recordings. You're not helping me here at all. You don't know what I'm talking about? Okay, so that'll be a good one for you guys, Steve. As you're giving us our great podcast ratings. Right in circa Peter Martin. Yeah. But anyway, you know, a lot of artists have done that and they're listening to music as they're creating. So there's definitely a connection there. Absolutely, and I'm so glad you mentioned poetry and prose, because poetry is, you know, really great poets use words and use their language, in our case English, and they use the sound of the words in the same way that we use notes and the sound of the notes. And you can learn so much by how they deal with context, how they set their readers up for an expectation that they then will

cleverly disguise or go somewhere else. And it's really, really a good learning tool for jazz, for improvisation, for composition. It's pretty awesome. And don't sleep on great poets, don't sleep on great authors. Of course, visual art is always, you know, a fantastic inspiration just because it's so immediate, you know, there's no time to it. It's just right there in front of you. And it's an excellent way to understand form and composition and how it applies to music. Absolutely. Okay, Jackson Pollock. You might have heard me clicking it, my little keyboard, and that's what I was thinking of. Oh, that's what you're talking about? Yeah, although he died in 1956. What's going to say? No, I'm rethinking. But I'm pretty sure. I remember seeing a little documentary.

Anyway, there you go. So, you'll hear it. That's it for today's episode of the You'll Hear It Podcast. For more information or to hear more of these podcasts, go to openstudio network.com slash podcast.