You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How To Receive Constructive Criticism

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

In this episode, Adam and Peter get a verrrry interesting speakpipe from a devoted listener. Thus opening up the conversation about how we can receive constructive criticism. It's not always easy to get feedback but it's important to talk about it when you get it. Join us and let us know how it feels when you get some feedback you weren't expecting.  ↓ Links from the pod ↓Open Studio Pro | WAITLISTYou'll Hear It: LIVE in NYCFriday, April 12, 2024 @ 8pm EST – FREEat the Sheen Center in ManhattanSee the #1 jazz podcast, up close and in-person. Space is limited, so reserve your spot today.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

Hey, Peter, I'm... Adam. Can I tell you about... Adam, are you listening to me? There's a very special... Peter, do you know how I take constructive criticism? Do you? Well, we'll see.

I'm Adam Ennis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Jazz. Explain. Explained. Brought to you today by You'll Hear It.com. What? Go to you'll hear it.com, Peter.

To... Reserve your tickets. To... You'll hear it live! There it is. We're going to be live in New York City on Friday, April 12th at 8 p.m. Eastern Time at the Sheen Center in beautiful Noho that's just north of Houston. Man, we're in a hip neighborhood. It's the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture. Well, we don't.

As soon as we saw that place, we're like, that's where we belong in New York. We were thinking like Village Vanguard, maybe the Blue Note. That's a lot of pressure. We got to have thought and culture. I don't know if we can bring that. Okay, we'll try. Anyway, man, we're so excited about this because, The You'll Hearer Tribe is going to come together. All of our You'll Hearitors, Ull Heroes, what do we call it? Heroes. I don't know.

Do you know? Do you listeners? DLs, perhaps? Yeah. We're going to come together. We're going to do a live show on stage. We're going to be playing some music. We're going to be talking, of course, piano, Jeff, piano.

Maybe a little Q&A. A little Q&A. You can meet me and Peter. Producer Caleb's coming along. Right. Meet producer Caleb. And we're going to have some other nice surprises and fun things, too. And it's New York City.

I mean, what a great place to meet up. By the way, also? Yes. It's free. Oh, yeah. It's free. And it's not a big venue. Well, it's not free.

We'll just talk about it at the gala minute. So it's not free, but it's not a big venue. So you're going to want to reserve your ticket now because you're going to go fast. Your free ticket. And you're going to want to show up, which is the gala part of it. That's right. Gentlemen and ladies agreement says that if you reserve your free ticket at you'll hear it. com, which you're going to want to do soon because I think these are going to go pretty quickly.

It's not a huge venue. It's not very bad. But we require you. We're going to bring the fire. We're going to bring the thought and the call. culture, the discussion. You guys are going to bring the community. I can't wait to meet everybody.

We've been seeing everybody in the comments. For real. Last time I was in New York, somebody came in up to me on the street. I think I texted you excitedly right after this and said, well, you'll hear it. I love you guys. So we're excited to meet you guys. I'm excited for you guys to meet each other. It's going to be a party.

Yeah. It's going to be a party. Go to you'll hear it.com to reserve your free ticket today. That's April 12th at 8 p.m. Eastern in New York City, the beautiful Sheen Center. You'll hear it live. So, Peter, we're all. up now. We're on a high. It's time to go low. Oh boy. We're going to be dragged down. When we go high, they go low. We go low. So I haven't heard what we're about to do yet. This is something

that we kind of called an audible with like at the 11th hour. Can I interrupt you and get out of my comfort zone right at the same time? Because that's what's about to go down. By the way, that hat is fire. It's it's green. It's a lot going on. Your hat is fire. I'll trade you. No. I, I, let's show them both off here. So that's all day running company. Shot out Atlanta. Jesse. I, Isler, St. Louis. Shout out King Louis. Shout out the Crimson Serpent who has this hat made.

Ironically, this hat that says STL on it was made in Kansas City. Well, they have a better football team at this point. They have the only football team at this point. So we received a speak pipe and you can go to, you'll hear it, and still, as you're getting your tickets, your Gala tickets, you can

also leave a question anytime. And I just heard this question. You haven't heard it. I've only heard half of it. but it intrigued me because it's got some constructive criticism, I believe specifically for me. Although I'm hoping the second half of it, you're going to be reacting to the entire thing, because you haven't heard it. I've only heard half of it, like I said. So I'm going to be reacting to the second half. I vaguely know what's about, but I have not actually heard it. Yeah, I'm hoping that there's some criticism for you as well. I fear that the criticism is only directed at yours truly. Okay. And I'm okay with that. I'm putting myself out there.

Okay, so you're just putting out direct, you know what you're inviting here. What? You're inviting more people. to leave shame. A lot of it. Don't just think the speak pipe is for criticism. But if you want to give us some love, too,

you can put a pretty sweet fight. And we usually get that. But you know what? I did want to talk a little bit about how to receive and show you guys in real time how we do that. Actually, we, we're not just,

we, you know, the hair club for men, I'm a member. I'm not just the owner. Can I just say, though, honestly, before we even hear the criticism,

we've been talking a lot about growth lately around the podcast and personal growth. Nothing has actually been better for my personal growth than learning how to take, criticism, sometimes really negative criticism, but like when you can just like be okay with yourself, no matter what people are saying about you, that's a superpower, man. Yeah, that's a big superpower. And if you can honestly take criticism from people that are not there just to be a jerk

or whatever, but are criticizing your work and maybe how you do things. And if you can be honest, and maybe you don't have to agree with it, but I'm curious to see how this is going to go. Because this is a huge, huge part of personal development. I'm going to interrupt you. Yeah. I'm going into it with my growth mindset for sure. All right. Should we listen? Yeah. This is J.F.

Okay. Hey, Adam, Peter. How's it going? J.F. here in Las Vegas. Just want to leave a message. I don't think this one will make it on the show. However, I just wanted to share something. I love the show so much.

There is one area, though, where I struggled quite a bit, and that is very specifically how Peter keeps interrupting Adam, how Peter you keep interrupting Adam. I just don't get it. Your brain is probably super busy and so on. However, it does have the, the fact that, in my view anyway, Adam can't form a complete thought, I guess. That has nothing to do.

You keep interrupting him. So this is meant to be super constructive, man. Like I said, I love the show. I'm not going to write a review or anything like that. I just want to leave a vocal message instead. And I imagine myself, what if you had a two piano gig and you behaved that same way? It would be weird. You would never do that musically.

Oh, it's weird, yeah. It's very weird. So there you go, man. just wanted to share that. I was listening to the anxiety episode, and I had to pause and send this. It caused him anxiety to be interrupting. Again, big fan of the show, J.F. here in Las Vegas, nice sunny day today. Hope you are well out there in St. Louis and keep up the good work.

All right. Well, it was a nice sunny day here, too. Peter, let me interrupt you for just a second. Until you brought those clouds of shame upon me. No, you know what? That was actually fairly constructive. You could tell J.F. likes the show. He just doesn't like one.

No. Oh, we're joking. But I'm, I'm, I'm, you know what? How are you feeling? I'm a short guy anyway. This is how I'm feeling. No, no, no. So how are you feeling?

So the rest of the episode like this. So first of all, buddy, if this is the worst criticism that we get on the podcast today, that's a great day. You know, you get a lot worse than this. I think Caleb shields us from. Well, this is the problem. Okay, I'm going to come back up to size. I'm going to try to bring.

Oh, I can't. No, we get, you know, we, on the regular, we get literally people like, I don't like your face. Why are you playing? It should only be Peter playing. There should, there's all this kinds of stuff. Right. I didn't know, I don't like your face. Who was that?

Was that against me too? That was a DM from my mom to me. No, I'm just kidding. It's Sean Wilde calling. Peter, we got to go. Okay. So this is the thing. First of all, thank you, JF.

Like, to, that was, that was very big of you to leave a voice message and not to hide behind a review or, I mean, not that you wouldn't be. Feel free to leave reviews, honest reviews. Please, comments, we love it all. But that was, that was very humane of you to, so we could hear your voice. I could hear, I appreciate you saying you love the pod and I could hear that love from you. So I really appreciate the constructive criticism. And I'm joking around all this because I'm going to take this very seriously. But I want to ask you first, do I, obviously, if somebody, it's kind of like, if you have an ugly green hat on for perhaps, but you don't have a mirror, a mirror in front of you, one wouldn't know that.

But do I have an ugly green hat? Or more specifically, do I interrupt you on the pot a lot? I have honestly never noticed that you interrupt me. And I mean, now that I'm self-conscious about it, that J.F. has told us, I'm really worried about interrupting you.

Like, I'm thinking about it in my head, like, okay, let him finish his thought. Right. I think that you and I, we shotgun a bunch of coffee before we get in here. We go down the street to Hilo, we drink a bunch of coffee,

talk about what we're going to talk about in the podcast every time we record. We get here. And then sometimes, like he was talking about this, I think specifically from the anxiety episode. That's one of my favorite episodes we've ever done, by the way. And you had so much to talk about. Yeah, you're still a little low,

but you had a bunch to talk about with that. And it was such an amazing experience for you to open up and be vulnerable and talk about your fears and anxieties. And I did not notice you cutting me off or interrupting at all. In fact, it felt like a pretty natural, flowy conversation. So I hesitate to say, you know, to, I think you naturally have a very, like, playful energy when you have a conversation with anybody, whether you're on the podcast or never again. No, no, no, no, I, I just, of that are over. It just feel like.

Sorry to interrupt. You know, what, you know, I think I do, I definitely do this kind of thing. You do this kind of thing. Which can be disconcerted. Have you ever noticed, Peter, though, that a lot of the times, like 85% of the times, this is what I'm. I catch myself doing actually is I just barrel right through. I don't even acknowledge your interruptions. Yeah.

And so I'm self-conscious about that. Like maybe I should stop more and be like, what were you saying, Peter? Because I feel like I'm just like, well, Peter, he's going to interject some funny shit here. And I'm just going to keep going. You know what I mean? But I think, honestly, J.F, I appreciate the feedback. I think the more that we are in our heads about how we're talking to each other, the less natural it is.

I think if people know Peter Martin, Peter Martin is the same on the podcast as he is talking to you in real life. And it doesn't ever come across as like being a jerk or stepping on someone's toes. It comes across as playful and a good energy to have in a conversation. My humble opinion. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. But I do want to,

so, I mean, just to depersonalize this a little bit because we're talking about constructive criticism that we could always get at any time, right? From a, often from a spouse, from a child,

from a parent, from a friend, whatever. And we don't give and get enough of it. So I relish in this opportunity to get it and in thinking about it. And I think two things can be true, right? So we want, when we hear constructive criticism, when we're giving constructive criticism that is about ourselves, we don't want to just like wallow in it or just be like, oh, I'm horrible. But we also don't want to be, oh, I have to fix exactly what like they say.

Like you have to do some evaluation. It has to resonate with you. Because sometimes they don't necessarily mean wrong, but they may not be correct for your situation. Like in this case, what this makes me want to do is to like kind of take a poll, not even a view, because I don't think you can be very objective because you know me so well. You might say, well, it's not a big deal. You're not interrupting because I know you. But somebody listening to the pod shouldn't have to know me. Yeah. So I think it could be a little bit off putting my interjections. I think it's probably, honestly, there's probably just, interrupt me like that, huh? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Big time. I'm going to start doing it more now. No, I think there's probably like all constructive criticisms,

especially from people like JF, who obviously are not just trolling, but actually care. It's probably a kernel of truth, right? But it's, it might not be affecting everybody the way that it's affecting. Oh, wait, there's a kernel of truth. Okay. There he goes. Back down. I was feeling better about it. I can't see you. Okay. Come back up. Come back up. Come back up. By the way, if you, if you're not watching us on the YouTube, you're missing all the visual gags and you're probably a little off-put by that. They're not missing much. Let's be honest, they are not missing much. Yeah. No, but I think so.

So how do we calibrate then? Like when we get constructive criticism. Well, I think it's a lifelong pursuit. I just interrupted you. Now I'm super in my head about it. I think you calibrate. If nothing else, you've, and you've just interrupted me,

then I just re-sporated. You've thrown off the pacing of this show. See, this is what I'm saying? Now we're heads, JF. You've ruined the whole show. We can't. All right. Should we cancel the life?

No, no. I know we just announced. Oh, that's right. Oh, I'm excited about that. No, but in talking about calibrating, like, because that's up to, First of all, I think the mistake that's made is when you get constructive criticism, when you put up a barrier and you're either shameful or you're just like, no, that's not right.

That's not who I am. Like, I think that we should always, I mean, I don't care if you're Herbie Hancock and somebody says, I don't like your jazz piano playing. You suck or whatever. Okay, yeah, that's a little ridiculous. But if someone's like, you play too loud or something, I would imagine even Herbie, be like, well, I'm going to think about that. And it's easy for him to be like, well, that's funny because millions of people think I play great.

but maybe there is something to this. So I think that that calibration, you know, is important because we don't want to just wait. And, you know, sometimes it's the canary in the coal mine, right? I don't want to be like, you know what? You think I interrupt you a lie. That's funny because nobody else has ever said that. And we have an award-winning podcast. It's having a live in New York City on April 12th.

Yeah. Because sometimes they, you know, constructive criticism can be tapping into something that a bunch of other people are not saying. and it is a little off-putting. I mean, think about entertainment that you consume. I'm thinking about that myself where there are certain things. I still enjoy about it, but I'm kind of like, this is a little bit off-kilter. I wish they would fix this little thing. Or you go to a restaurant that's great, and everything's great about it, but maybe there's

one little little service part. The food is so good, you still love it. Yeah. So it's so a little bit of constructive criticism. And I do that. Like, when I'll go to a restaurant, especially if I like it, if there's something, because they don't always notice, like they don't see it the way we see it. They're on the other side of the counter.

They're on the other side of the table, you know? And so I think if we love each other in this world and everything and we love something, it's great to speak up and say like, you know what? Because he's not saying like you got to change this. But so in us receiving constructive criticism, we have to calibrate how deep of an issue, how much we want to think about it. You have to be honest. You have to figure out exactly what's going on for you. Is this true for you? Yeah. And it doesn't seem like it's, I mean, now you're going to be thinking about it a little bit, but it doesn't seem like it's anything that's been true for you. I also, again, man, I think it's just part of your personality and does not come across. as anything but playful. It doesn't come across as, like, disrespectful or anything to me or anybody else you're speaking with. But I can see it.

It's interesting because it's not a... And this might be helpful for people, especially what they're playing. Like, if you get... Playing's different... Please don't go up to artists after their show and give them constructive criticism. I don't think JF would ever do that.

No, but a mentor, and we're in a mentor situation, especially you with a lot of our students at Open Studio's like Open Studio Pro, and constructive criticism is all about... We're not here to be like, oh, you sound... Like, you can be supportive. You can be supportive and giving constructive criticism at the same time. And I think when we get that about our playing, when we're in those situations, like, I've gotten those, like recently. Yeah, I mean, if you, like, can you not be so busy during that section?

Oh, there's a pattern here. I'm interrupt. No, but I mean, like, that's a very similar thing for me to be like, oh, really? Well, Betty Carter didn't say that when I play with it. When you're making music with other people, I think that can be part of the process. I'm just saying it's like you go to see a show. I mean, there's some cultures where this is way more acceptable. Yeah.

If you've ever toured around and you've been in certain parts of Europe, you know that they'll just tell you exactly what they thought without any pleasantries at all. Yeah. I was just like, yeah,

you sound okay, but I feel like you could work on your time a little more. And it's like, oh, well, nice to eat you too. If I slap you upside the head, will you think that would, would that make it sound better time?

Yeah. In the Midwest, it's so foreign to us that you would ever do that. I mean, if we see any show, we're like, it was amazing.

Here's some cookies and a hot dish, you know? I want to just, but for artists, this can be rough to take criticism, even for great artists. Here's a classic example. We made this up on stage in London one night.

Oh, classic, right? Call Tyrone. Erkabadu. Keyes was playing this music for sound check. And I was like, that's dope. So I got on the mic and I just started just making up some stuff. 97. So I'm going to test this out.

Now keep in mind that I'm an artist. And I'm sensitive about my shirt. Yeah That's great Right Happens to the best of us Keep that playing I love this track

We should go out on this Yeah Yeah All right Thank you for the constructive criticism If y'all want to leave us Anymore

You can leave us a speak pipe Look I'm like on the track Now keep you on It's so This whole album But you better Bring it strong Like JF

Or else I'm gonna call Tyrone I'm gonna call JF Until next time You'll hear it