You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Stay Motivated Without Performances

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

Peter and Adam take a listener's question that's particularly relevant these days of canceled performances: how do I stay motivated if I'm not playing gigs?Interested 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.Thursday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)For the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Yeah. What's my motivation for doing this episode? Um, your motivation is to answer one of our dear listeners questions about motivation. I don't think it's going to be enough. Really? Come on. Chicken's done.

Espresso time. I'm Adamannis. I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the U-Hare podcast. This. This is a sugar shaggy-daggy-daggy-doo. What was that about? Skippity-Dood.

Daily music advice and inspiration coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. Go to open studio. Jails.com for all your jazz lessons. Well, just this one time. Couldn't that way of talking get COVID? Is that possible? No.

Not you. Okay. Sorry, I got dark there for a minute. No, seriously, go to openstudiojazz.com to check out. I know.

I know you were serious about that part. Today we have a question from email. We haven't taken an email question in a while, so I thought it would be cool to go through some of these. Well, that's because we found out that all of the dear listeners questions were going to your spam folder. That's right. Yeah, yeah. But we got you now, dear listener.

This is from... We pulled you out. This is from Andrew. Andrew says, I oscillate quite wildly between practicing hard and not really practicing. Also, when I'm practicing, I feel like the effectiveness of practice varies a lot. Motivation is pretty big factor. To be honest, it comes and goes. I haven't played any gigs for maybe 20 years.

So apart from informal music sessions of which there are a few and none these days, I'm pretty alone in my musical world. Keeping up motivation with just these long-term vague goals is a serious challenge. I think I drift off if I don't see progress. Also, I have a habit of taking on things that are maybe too hard. I find keeping long-term motivation in the absence of performance very hard. Maybe it is impossible. Thoughts?

Oh, we've got thoughts. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I really think in a couple, I was trying to furiously make some notes there as you went, but I think that, who is this from? Andrew. I think Andrew answered some of his own questions, as we often do. A little bit, yeah. Sometimes you've got to talk through it.

You've got to talk through it. I think, you know, motive, look, everybody that has come into my orb, family, friends, the open studio community, the you'll hear community, at some point over the last seven months has experienced, myself included for sure, varying levels of motivation, or at least a variance from what we're used to feeling. So that is like normal and that's the way the world is right now. Yeah. Can we overcome that? Yes. Yeah. But first of all, you have to acknowledge that it's there.

You can't just be like, I'm going to, I'm going to, you have to say you're going to fight through it and work on different techniques. And almost there has to be a certain amount of equanimity, I think, in how you approach this. Because if you just say that, oh, that's not going to affect me. That's not effective. I mean, it's sort of like you're standing there at the beach and the tsunami's coming. And you're like, well, I don't believe in tsunamis. And I've never been hurt by a tsunami. It's coming.

Exactly. Tsunami coming. but if we look at it and say, hmm, that's a tsunami. I'm going to deal with that. I'm not going to let that totally disrupt my life, but I'm not going to stand here instead and pretend like it's not coming.

I'm going to do the prudent thing. But there is going to be, it's just like with the lack of motivation, it's going to come because the world's upside down. Now you, Andrew, were, you know, speaking about, I'll just talk about the first thing that I want you to kind of hit whichever one you want because he brought up a lot.

But the thing of not performing for 20 years, So your motivation now is not because of COVID you can't perform. So I would look at that as a positive actually because a lot of musicians that are performing a lot, whether it's professional, informal or whatever, you know, everything has changed all of a sudden. But that's for everybody. So maybe your performance situation hasn't changed that much. So maybe you've actually developed some ways that you don't realize to be motivated that are more internal, that are more inward looking. And this I'm finding is a time when we have to have that real reflective state in order to be able to motivate ourselves, which sounds corny and impossible, but is possible.

Yeah. But perhaps, Andrew, you've got a better sense of that than you think because you haven't been relying for 20 years on performing. I know for me, I was like performing and like specific things I had to learn for gigs was like, it was beyond motivation. It was just like that would direct what a certain amount of my work was. So then when it was like, whoa, you don't have any of that. So it's like, what are you going to put it in its place? So I think that you might even be in a situation like I think all of us are to a certain degree as artists.

Like how do we create a situation, not create motivation? Because I think that's a little bit of a false construct. That's kind of like looking at yourself in the mirror and say, I'm going to be somebody today. No, but how do we create a situation, a goal, a framework, a group of people around us, an absence of a group of people, a community, a virtual, community. And a family, I mean, there's all different ways, but like, how do you create a family? That's going to take a little bit of time. But, but like, how do we create an atmosphere that we direct the setup of it that has the

potential to give us motivation? I think that's the way to look at it as opposed to thinking directly like, how do I get motivation? Because you can't go buy it. You can't rent it or else you'd have it. You have some of the richest people in the world that lack motivation to do things. So you have to have a reason to be motivated. I think, but you also have to have a framework

and a situation to be able to be motivated. Yeah, well, jumping off on the framework you just set up, which is just perfectly said, you might consider some ways to create some of that external motivation. If you needed Andrew, and it sounds like you might, you know, create your own YouTube channel.

Or how about a band camp account? Or some kind of project. Give yourself a musical project that has a deadline, a goal, and that is performative. And you can do that from your home nowadays. and it doesn't take a lot. You can just, or start an Instagram

where you just post something every day of your practice. And then I would, if I were you, it sounds like you go between practicing hard and not really practicing, depending on your motivation. But what if you just gave yourself some tangible goals for this week and this month, right?

Of something musical that you can achieve this week with some practice, right? With just very simple direct practice. And it doesn't have to be, I need to master stride piano like Art Tatum this week, but something that you can do. That'd be pretty motivated. It would be very motivating.

Maybe that's this year or in a two-year trunk or something. But for this week, what is one thing? Maybe it's like, I can't play this tune in the key of G-flat. Well, work on that every day until you can. But really put a goal, a deadline, and something reachable. Yeah. And do that for the next couple of months out and see what happens. And don't beat yourself up if you don't go past it.

Just reach that goal. Reach those simple goals. And then maybe think about developing some kind of performative situation for yourself. Like I said, it doesn't cost any. to create a new YouTube channel. And you don't have to attract a ton of attention, but you could scratch that performative itch. Yes.

Or to do something on Facebook, to create a Facebook group that's just for you and people who can see jazz piano or something that you want to see. One of those kind of things that we can now do and everybody is doing from the comfort of their own homes. Start a podcast maybe. I don't know.

We thought about that. And look at us now. That's right. That's great. Yeah. And I think, you know, sometimes we'll think like, Oh, the world doesn't need another YouTube channel. Yes, the world doesn't need another YouTube channel per se,

but the world may need what you have to say. And that's one way, one of many different ways, to put it out to get your word out there. And now we're in kind of a unique time in that you're restricted, but you can use that restricting to your advantage. Just think about if we've been going through what we're going through now and there was no YouTube or way to record yourself. Yeah.

So I think we have to think about using these tools. And then, you know, don't be so, it's almost like a selfish thing. Like people think, oh, I'm not good enough to have a YouTube out and no one's going to care or whatever. Like, that's selfish when you say that because you're thinking about really what you're thinking about, sorry, I'm putting on my kind of judgy Peter hat. Is that okay? No, you're okay. There we go. Do it.

So because you're thinking about how are you going to be perceived. You're caring about yourself, you know. And so people think, well, I'm not showy. I'm not good enough to do this. But you got to think about it from the other standpoint. of like, I'm not gonna know if I have something to say, unless I say something. Yeah, put it up there.

Yeah, you're not forcing it on anybody. And really, it's for you anyway. So from that standpoint, the selfishness is fine, you know. And it can be motivating. And you know what? Sometimes things that are negative are motivated. You got positive motivation, you got negative motivation. Well, but to your point though,

the more I think about it about like, I don't know if I can do this without performing. I don't know if you should be able to do it without performing. I think performance motivates all of us. It certainly motivates me. I know it motivates you. having a performance coming up it's a difference than not

you know so so take advantage of that absolutely I mean I really look at performance as as a musician that this is the foremost way that we serve others yeah you know and the more I do this and like play music or just I'm involved with music

there's all I really start to end up caring about is how do I serve other people like how do I give to others like because that cuts through all the thing I mean there's other things that can motivate you could have money you can have love. Can I have some money? Yeah.

I mean, I thought you were offering. No, I mean, money's been motivated. Look, but we've also both done gigs before where money was the big motivator. Yeah. And if that's all this there, you know, once you have enough.

It's fine. Every once you have enough. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I think that the money will come. The accolades will come. They're going to come different to everybody. But when you get into that service mentality, it just simplifies things so much.

So for me, I've been trying to make more like decisions, based upon, you know, how do we serve? And performance and teaching, like, those are the ways that I find to be able to do that and to help others along. Then you've got a community. Then you've got a reason to play. And then you've got motivation.

The motivation will come back to you in spades. I don't even know what that means. Come back to you in spades. I don't either, but it makes sense. If I play spades, I lose a lot of money. So I don't know. Makes sense to me. Well, speaking of community, go to, again, go to Open StudioJaz.com.

We have a big community there where we motivate each other on the regular. Yeah. And let's talk about something really quick with Open Studio as you play those luscious piano songs. I'm just trying to provide a little. No, it's good. We have a burgeoning bass department

headed up by none other than our good friend Bob Dubu. Now, Bob DeBoo is a good friend of mine and he's a great bass player. One of my favorite parts about Bob is that his name is automotapiac of a bass player. Baba Daboo.

Bapa, do you know what I mean? That's why he changed his name to that many years ago. And it's, of course, spearheaded bass-wise as well by none other than Christian McBride with his brand new course, your sound is your signature.

I mean, if you've got to have a spearhead on the bass. Yeah, no, it's just so wonderful. And yeah, so, I mean, you know, we're very piano-centric, but we have bass. It's probably our biggest up-and-coming situation right now. It's pretty awesome. So many cool things happening there.

Yeah, if there's any bass players listening to this podcast, go check out those Bob DeBoo sessions every Monday on YouTube or just on Open Studios YouTube channel and check out our courses. Those bass courses are popping right now. That's right.

And if you're enjoying this podcast, ask, what would our dear listeners do? Well, you should give us a rating and review. Just go to your phone, go to apple.com. No, don't go to apple.com. Go to iPhone slash podcast slash a yule. No, not that either. Just go to your podcast app and give us.

Are you nervous? Do you have a motivation to get this correct? Just leave us a rating and review. Whatever that means to you. The fun part of this is every, this will be a motivation for the dear listeners to leave us a rating review is that we give a shout-up for every single rating or review. Oh, do you have a new one? We do. We have a couple new ones. This last one is from Zach Wolf, our friend. Oh, what's up, Zach? Zach, but I'm also like, I say our friend, but is this the first time you're leaving us?

Really? We've been knowing you all this time, but that's okay. Better late than never. You'll hear it as the best music podcast around, period. Peter and Adams share musical wisdom and sometimes even some good laughs. Why is it the best? Just change. it out on an episode and you'll hear it. Cringy. You'll hear it.