You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Practice Efficiently in Limited Time - #10

Episode Date: January 11, 2019

On the final solo Peter episode of the week, Peter discusses ways you can make the most out of your practice sessions. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam, how are you enjoying Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and all those other Disney characters? Oh, you're not here, so you can't answer. I'm Peter Martin, and you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast, Daily Jazz, Advice coming at you. And today is truly going to be advice. I mean, sometimes it's banter, sometimes it's controversies like yesterday. But today we're going to get super tactical and answer a listener's question from, I think it's from a Facebook comment or something. but try to get you some good jazz advice and Adam is on his final day of vacation

we think he's down in Disney hanging with Mickey Mouse getting all Mickey up in there so we're rolling solo for the last time I've kind of enjoyed it but I miss Adam a little bit my partner in crime on this so he'll be back next week but today we're going to answer this listener question about how to practice efficiently in limited time

and I love this one because I love to be helpful. I love teaching, but I love kind of giving out information if I can that helps folks teach themselves and like more of an ongoing thing. I mean, yeah, I can give you a voicing or an idea for a line. That's a one-time thing. But let's talk about some things that can hopefully, you know, help your routine for 2019. And these will be great reviews for myself as I try to, you know, always optimize my practice routine and at the beginning of the year is always a wonderful time to do that. So we're going to say thanks to Chi Yi Lee, who in Facebook asked this question.

And actually, maybe I can actually just sort of look at the actual question. I think I have it here. Oh, yeah, we just sort of put out a thing of like what's keeping you where you want to be about practicing and learning jazz. And the question was about the art of practicing efficiently in limited time. Okay. So within that, the efficiency in limited time, that's great that you're focusing on that because we all have limited time.

It's never like, I've never heard anyone say, I have too much time in practice. I have an unlimited amount of time to practice. And as we get involved in more activities, as we grow older, as we go deeper into the music, it usually becomes a problem or a potential problem, this thing of limited time. So we absolutely must be, it's imperative, it is required, it is not controversial, that we be efficient with our time. So let's look at some ways. Did I come up with, oh, I came up with seven.

That works so great. Even though I didn't say seven ways to practice efficient. in limited times. Maybe we should call it that. But let's look at number one. And this is what I like to call focus from minute number one. Okay. So if we want to be efficient, we don't really have time to just like sit down at the piano or at our instrument and kind of fiddle around and like kind of get it warm up and get into a vibe. You might warm up as part of your routine. That's fine. But you need to be focused when you first start to practice. So what that's going to mean is you're going to, if you're doing something else, and you're always going to be doing something else unless you're, I guess,

just waking up, when you start to practice, you're going to need to have some buffer of time before you start in which you can kind of let your mind shift to what you're about to do with your practice. So if you want to be focused from the very first minute, you've got to allow yourself that transition time. If you're doing something else like in a meeting or talking with someone or listening to music or, I don't know, eating or something, and then you sit down at the instrument to practice, and you haven't given yourself at least five minutes to kind of transition and maybe meditate a little bit or just concentrate or think about what you're going to do to get into that headspace of efficient practice, then you're going to have trouble focusing. So do whatever you have to do to get there. And then when you start, you know, really commit to focusing from when you first get to the instrument.

Okay. Now, in order to do that, you're going to need to limit distractions. Okay. So that's number two. Limit distractions. And a lot of this you can kind of plan out just from a physical standpoint before you practice. The biggest distraction device in most of our lives nowadays is the mobile phone, the smartphone. So you're going to want to practice without your smartphone.

Now, you guys have seen me at the piano many times with the phone, like using it as a metronome or with reminders or stuff. If you're high level like me and you can do it and you got all your notifications off and you go into airplane mode and all that kind of stuff, then it's possible to have it, that's fine. But whatever you need to do to limit distraction. So the phone is the first thing. Just put it in another room most likely or airplay mode, whatever you have to do. But there's other things that can distract you. Like just having a bunch of music books and stuff sitting on the piano or on your stand, I think can be distracting.

Just have the stuff you're going to practice. You know, be somewhere where the phone's not going to ring. Someone's not going to knock on the door or whatever. Be in the most isolated situation you can if that's possible. Just think about any possible thing that can distract you. a dog, a cat, a pet, another person, a spouse, whatever it is, limit or eliminate as many of those as possible before you even practice and have that to be part of your routine. That's going to be one of the biggest things that's going to help your efficiency.

Okay, that's number two. Number three is to have a plan. And we've talked about this before, and Adam is great about reminding me about this, but that is have a plan before you start practice. Don't focus on that when you start to practice. like what am I going to do? I already have a plan. So maybe take that time the night before or earlier in the day to kind of come up with a plan.

That should include, you know, goals that you have for your specific day of practice, but also kind of maybe for the whole week and maybe for the whole month or a whole project that you're doing, multi-day goals. But definitely goals for that day should be part of your plan. So it should look like, okay, I have an hour to practice. I'm going to practice 20 minutes on these scales. And my goal with the scales is to improve from 80 per quarter note to 90 and contrary, emotion, whatever it is you're working on, but to have specific, aggressive, but doable goals.

So you don't want the goals to be so easy that you get done early, but you don't want them too aggressive that you can't get through them. You've got to find that middle ground. All right. Number four, in our waste of practice efficiently, is going to be to go with the flow and practice what will work best for you on that particular day and in that particular situation. So yes, number three is have a plan. But number four is you got to go with the flow.

If the time that you have to practice becomes shorter, for instance, don't try to shove everything in your well-made plan into half as much time. You've got to all of a sudden call an audible and think about, you know, what can I practice on? What do I feel in the mind frame and for this situation that I can be most efficient with my practice? Out of these four things, I got to cut it down to two, which two are going to flow the best today. So you've got to be smart about it like with that.

But the idea is to go with the flow. of how you're feeling on that day and the time and all those kind of things. All right. Excuse me, a little water. I realize, Andrew, I usually drink water and eat snacks while Adam is talking.

Like there's multiple layers where this is difficult. You guys are looking at me saying, man, this is so good what you're doing by yourself. We don't need Adam. And it is so good. You're right. It's absolutely good.

It's amazing what I'm doing. But it's not as easy as I'm making it look. And that's one of those little funny things out there, you know, eating and drinking while talking. Okay. Probably sounds disgusting right now. Number five. Take breaks.

Even if you're on limited time and even though you want to maximize efficiency, if you don't take a break and, you know, how much break and how often is very personal. So I don't want to dictate that. I can tell you for me, it's usually like when I've really started to look at this. I do it kind of just on a natural flow state in terms of when I feel like I need to get up and stretch or go outside. But it usually comes out to like five minutes about every hour, sometimes every 45, 50 minutes. Depending on your schedule, you don't have to really dictate it.

But if you are on a schedule, you may need to kind of give yourself a reminder or just kind of look at the clock. I know no distractions, but however you need to do that. But you've got to figure out a way to take a break. I mean, unless you're practicing for 20 minutes, then you don't need a break. The break is before and after. But make sure you always take a break. And that will not make you less efficient. It will make you more efficient, actually.

I mean, this has been proven for focus, you know, studies on focus many different times and in music, it absolutely applies. And I've talked to many other musicians that practice and improve and everybody pretty much to a person agrees that you got to have breaks. All right. Number six, commitment. Commit to getting things accomplished. Okay, this is really important if you want to be efficient in your practice because that means when you go into it with your goals, you're telling yourself, I'm committing to getting these goals done. Okay? So they, yeah, if they're aggressive goals, you may not get them all done or you may only get 80% there, but you've got to have

some of them that you get done and you have to make that commitment to yourself and you're going to adjust your goals if you're not getting things accomplished. But more likely you're getting distracted or you're not committing from the beginning. You just have to commit to getting specific things done. There's no way to improve otherwise. You can't just be creative every day or just feel it and flow along. You have to commit to say, I am going to get these things done. And when you're doing it on limited time,

you've got to follow all these other ones even more and focus right from the beginning or else you're not going to be able to get stuff done. But you have to commit within that time frame to say, I'm going to get A, B, and C done. And it's really as simple and as complicated as that. Number seven, our final way to practice efficiently in limited time.

Have a creative section of your practice. I think this is so important because when we're on limited time, this is the most likely thing to get pushed out and it shouldn't. Everything we do cannot just be tactical and getting things done. I mean, that's important. But this is an art form. This is a creative music. We're improvisers. We're creative spirits.

And it's such a big part of being a great jazz musician. So you have to be creative. And by its very nature, creativity is not as easy to kind of be tactical about and to be able to say, I'm going to get this done because creativity comes and goes. and sometimes nothing gets accomplished from being creative, and that's okay. But you've got to have at least three minutes or five minutes. I mean, come on. You can always squeeze five minutes in your day. When people are like, I don't have time for this.

Just get your ass up five minutes earlier. It's more of a prioritization thing. But whatever amount of time you have to practice, some part of it needs to be being creative and just playing without thinking about the things you're working on. Because otherwise, you're never going to give your chance, a self, a chance to have all these great things that you're working on. come out in your plane. Okay? So there, I don't know. Andrew, I got to say, I think Adam will

see this when he gets back. I nailed this one. I really knocked this one out of the park. You know, dare I say it would have been no better with Adam here as well. So take that however you want to, but that's my personal assessment. You guys can let me know what you think. All right, a quick review of our seven ways to practice efficiently and limited time. Number one, Focus for minute number one. Number two, limit distractions. Three, have a plan with aggressive goals but doable goals. Number four, go with the flow.

Number five, take breaks. Number six, commit to getting things accomplished every day. Number seven, have a creative section or time period of your practice. Okay? We hope that you have a fantastic weekend, everybody. Please leave us a rating or review seven stars preferred. the place you're listening to this podcast or on YouTube. If you're checking us out on YouTube, big shout out every day to the YouTube folks.

Join us there for some discussion and banter in the comments. Let us know what you can do or what you do do do. I hate saying that, but that's grammatically correct. What can I say? What do you do to practice efficiently? I would love to know that. Maybe it's something that I need. And we're back in the pod cave.

And I think that's it. Until next week, you'll hear it. Thank you.