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

Episode Date: September 4, 2019

Today, Peter and Adam list some easy ways you can streamline your practice routine and get the most out of your time.It's Hump Day! This week for Peter's Hump Day Special: get a free Open Studio t-shirt when you buy Jazz Piano Jump-Start. Go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/jazz-piano-jumpstart and use the offer code "humpdayshirt" for a free shirt!Like those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Okay, Peter, this is the question. Everybody's been waiting to hear you answer today. What day is it? Hump day. I'm Adam Annis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Daily Jazz advice.

Coming at you. Coming at you on a hump day, a Wednesday. Folks, he's finally got it. Wait, wait, wait. Today's actually Thursday, though. So that's the only reason I thought, oh, we're projecting into next week. Yeah, man. We're professionals.

And you just pulled back the curtain and the professors back there working the great and powerful Oz. And thanks a lot for that. Okay. Sorry about that. Yes. No, today is hump day. I get it now Wednesday because it's halfway through the week. Right. And you get it because we do our hump day special.

You know what? Let me just give you a quick explanation. We are going to do a hump day special. We're not going to say that until the end of the day. This was actually better than last week. Last week's was good. We had a lot of love for last week. We're going to say at the end of the episode, though, right?

Yeah. The reason I was confused on humpday, I finally. figured it out, and I think I'm straight now, is because I look at the week as seven days, okay? You know why? Why? Because there's seven days in the week. I don't know why people think Monday, I mean, I know, they're working Monday through Friday. I'm working

every day, baby. You're a traveling jazz pianist who doesn't, who's never had a weekday in and out kind of job, so yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I feel like I have one now, but no, but I think I don't look at even the days I'm working, if I'm working on the weekend or tonight, I know you have a gig tonight or whatever, I don't look at that as work.

I look at that. I mean, yeah, it's work, but anyway, I tag more work than others. That's right. Hey, but before we get into our episode here, which is, by the way, fantastically click-baity title on this episode, how to supercharge your practice routine. But actually, what we have here is pretty cool. I mean, it's click-bitty, but it's accurate. It is accurate. If you came here for that, that's what we're going to give you. Stay tuned for that. But big announcement.

Yes. You know what Open Studio is doing in January? I've heard a few things about this. I'm excited because it's involved. New Orleans, Louisiana. Yeah, that's right. Same thing we did last January. Yes. Is we went to the Gen Conference.

Right. Last year was in Reno, which was very, very fun. And we had a booth, and we ran into a bunch of, you'll hear, listeners. Yes. Thank you for stopping by the booth. Yeah. And that was early on, and you'll hear it, pedigree of programs. Yeah, we were about almost a year in at that point.

But it was just me and Brian Fielding. Yes. Business Silver Fox. The Silver Fox. That's right. Who were manning that booth, and we appreciate everybody for stopping. But this January, between January 7th through the 10th, we're going to be at Jen again. And there's going to be a You'll Hear It Live broadcast down there at the conference.

Come by, you can get some, you'll hear it swag. Do we have a date and time on that yet, or is it still TBD, as we say? We will have a date and time on it next week, and I'll update everybody as we go. And we'll honestly, we'll be promoting it because we want you guys to come to Jen. First of all, Jen is like the Jazz Education Network Conference. there's a ton of cool stuff happening. There's great performances, clinics, all these... Equipment stuff, too, right?

Tons of gear. And, like, good performances, like a really good player. Well, Sean Jones runs the organization now. He's going to be the incoming... It's going to be correct, you know. President. And you're in New Orleans. And this, yeah, this next year is going to be in New Orleans.

It's going to be absolutely nuts. So come join us at Jen, January 7th through the 10th. Come join us at a live you here. It's probably going to be either the Thursday or the Friday, either the 9th of the 10th. We're going to be having a live recording. We'll probably record three episodes of you'll hear it. Come be a part of it.

Wow. We're going to do a lot of fun stuff. We've got to have Andrew there. Are you available? Andrew, can you come to New Orleans? Does your, Pat, does your Iowa passport allow interstate travel? Yes, I think it does. Okay, good. Yeah, it's going to be awesome.

And shout out to the Jen folks for making it happen. Yeah. I think I may be doing a little nerdy business talk as well. On the seventh, you are doing a nerdy business talk about, I don't even care. I don't care either. It's going to be free. Well, I don't know. Is it free?

actually to go. You have to sign up for the conference, but everything is free, including all the awesome performances. So check it out. But I do want to give a shout out to everybody over at Jen, particularly Sharon for helping us work this out. Like she literally emailed us like, because we applied for this and she said, hey, we don't have a category for this, but we want, we love the podcast. We want to make this happen. We want, you'll hear it at Jen. So they kind of like squeezed us in. So we're super stoked. We are category defining. This is a category defining podcast. Daily Jazz advice.

Nobody has a category for this. No. Although we are up for a potty. Oh, that's true. That's right. That's true. The podcast awards. We'll have a link to that below,

even though I don't think you can vote yet, but we did get nominated for a podcast award. These people aren't here to talk about any conferences or any awards. They're here to talk about practice. That's right. Let's talk about some practice in the words of Alan Iverson. How to supercharge your practice routine. I mean, this is hashtag.

Seventy-seventy-seventy-sevent. Yeah, yeah. But you know what we're going to deliver on this. So let's start right with number one. Can I jump in with number one? You got it. Because I like this one. And I don't even know if I'm using this term right, but I'm going to explain it.

Timebox. What is that? I don't know. I mean, it's a buzzword I've heard, but this is the way I use it. This is like you say, okay, I'm going to practice this specific thing for this amount of time no matter what. Oh, that's good. And like what I'll usually use is either 25 minutes or 55 minutes. That's right.

Which is a little bit arbitrary, but the idea is that then you take five minutes of break, which is more like just to kind of clear your hair. head and also with the idea of if you're going to go that intensely for that time you're already kind of planning that that's when it lets go and so you can even do and I'm probably misusing this term too are you familiar with the Pomodoro technique is that like the hairstyle where goes whoop well and then slick back a little bit that's a pompador I think that's a pompadour I think that's a pomperador which is pomodoro is actually tomato no but this is the idea of that like you work for 25 minutes and then you take five minutes break you work intensely the thing is deep work

kind of thing. But time boxing and I was also thinking of bird boxing because I didn't see the movie so I don't know how that works. Did you see bird box? No, I assume that's some sort of martial art. No, it was the one where everybody was, I did a bird box video. Oh, they couldn't see anything? Yeah, it was like a

horror movie. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't see it. But anyway, time boxing, so like you're really just being very specific with the amount of time and what you're going to do. And so how this can supercharge your practice routine is that if you pick the right thing

and you're like at a very focused time you can make rapid progress with this so I like doing this with technical exercises specific classical things transcription so you might say I'm going to spend 55 minutes transcribing this solo and you know my goal is to get X number of bars so you're not like

oh let me check out the vibe on this or whatever drifting around this is like specific tactical like I'm getting beep done what's so good about this is it takes away this idea of like oh well I have to have to have to reach my goal of being able to play this perfectly by the end of my practice routine. That's a horrible cycle to get into.

Really, it's just about putting in the time, putting in the reps, you know, and you don't have to achieve anything except for I achieve that I reach that time goal. That's perfect, man. I love that. And it's a little bit, I mean, I think another way to look at it, maybe slightly negative is like the grind part of your practice. You know, this is just like you're keeping going. You're not like, oh, I'm not quite feeling it.

So you do have to time this out in your practice. You know, for me, this is more like the middle of the practice time. Although, like, I'll sort of be flexible and just see when I get into it. But if you liken it to maybe sort of, you know, if you do like a half marathon or a 10K or something, like, oh, I'm feeling great at the beginning. Everyone, the energy is there. At a certain point, it's like, now you just got to run. But, like, you got to put the work in.

And so you want to have the task, the amount of time and the mindset all in line. You can really get something accomplished. I love it. Yeah. All right. So number two is practice like you have a deadline even if you don't. Now, this is something I use all the time because... Well, you have a lot of deadlines, so it's easy for you.

I have nothing but deadlines. If you look at my calendar, it's silly. Yeah. But deadlines make you just do stuff. I mean, even if it's not... Productivity goes up. You just have to get it done. Because if you don't have a deadline, oftentimes there's the procrastination monster settling in.

Right. Because it doesn't really matter. So set a deadline for yourself. I mean, I will set a fire deadline. Like I will be like, I will give, I will box myself into a corner. I will bird box into a corner. Time box and bird box. Time and bird box the pompadour technique.

No, into a corner and to the point where it's like, okay, well, if I don't get this done, you know, like, you know, I'm going to get a divorce and my bank account's going to be empty. Like, I will really, because then I'll definitely do not only will I get it done, but it'll probably be pretty good. Yeah. To be honest. Yeah. Like, it's weird how that works, but. Well, and I mean, both, both of us over the past few years. years, you know, working together, we both have separate projects and some together where we've

had this on us and it's actually been a good thing. Yeah. So what I was thinking with this is like you can sort of self-imposed, it's harder to self-impose this on you because you know in the back of your mind, I don't really have to get it done. But if you, once you kind of understand that you can do good work, even under pressure, if you can apply that even somewhat successfully to other things that you want to get done, even if there is an external, because usually deadlines, that's about external things. why can't we give ourselves a deadline? You know what I mean? Yeah.

Why can't we do it? It's just harder because then you forgive yourself. So some tips on this. Like, you know, if you're working on your solo piano stuff, book yourself a solo piano gig. Yeah. Like, you know, two months down the road or whatever. Like a concert, whatever you can do. I've done this with like, you know, recording sessions.

It's like, all right, I want to make a record. Well, you know. Schedule it. Yeah, the studio I know would let me just come in probably whenever I wanted. But, like, I've got to put a date on it so that I just get the work done. That's right. That's right. Okay, what's number three?

Number three is boom, boom, boom. Reward yourself. Free play. Okay, so this is an idea of you can combine it with either one of these, the deadline or the kind of time boxing. But, you know, once you kind of have the goals and the grind part of your practice, give yourself before you get to the end of those sections some kind of reward so that you have something to look forward to. I love it. So that it's not just the grind. So you want to give kind of a form to your practice.

So once you get into grind mode, and again, I guess there's different ways to do this. I normally just sort of set it up pretty simply in that like you've got kind of a warm up, get into the vibe part of your practice. You've got the grind portion where you're really trying to get stuff accomplished, but it's not necessarily fun things to practice, but that you have something fun at the end there. And I mean, you want to kind of keep this with the music. It's not about like, I mean, I guess you could kind of reward yourself with some ice cream or whatever, but this is more something musical.

So you want to go opposite what the grind. was. So if you're like doing a whole bunch of technical stuff, very cerebral, very like analytical or whatever, do something that's just totally free. And so we're always talking about practicing performing. You can knock out two bird boxes with one stone at this point, right? So you can go kind of like just play something that literally is like the most fun thing for you to play. Like anything, like your favorite tune or whatever. And you're not thinking about what am I trying to accomplish. You're just you're rewarding yourself connecting with the music, connecting with the instrument, having a good time. Love it. Yeah. All right. Number four, write it down. We've talked about this before, but it's super important. If you really want to supercharge your practice routine,

that's true. Write down what you're going to do before you do it, before you start your routine. And then write down what you did when you're done with it. That's right. Spoiler alert, we are going to be coming up here pretty soon with our own custom practice journal, which will have things like how to keep track of keys and tunes and all this stuff. We might call that Open Studio Accountability BuJo. Oh, my gosh.

We could do that. I can't wait for it just for my own routine. Like, I designed it with, like, how I want to practice in mind. So it's going to be killing. But we've been doing this on our own for years now. We write down your goals. You write down how you think your session is going to go. It makes a huge difference.

It keeps you accountable. And then write down what you did. Yeah. And with this, I like to really do, you know, I'm very, you know, digital, whatever. I'll put a lot of lists here. But when I'm practicing, I'll often go to, I know there's something about writing something with a pen or pencil

that makes it more real. I mean, it's certainly just like putting a note down, you know, digitally, but I love to kind of go next levels, the way it feels to me. So you find whatever works to you. Maybe if you're always doing pen and pencil in your job or whatever, then going digital is the time. But do something separate where you write down what you, as you said, what you want to accomplish. And I like to think about it as two or three things. Like, these are what I'm going to get accomplished. Like you, the difficulty is like you think, oh, if I'm supercharging, I want to get 20 things done.

Well, if you do this right, you will get a lot of things done. done over the course of your practice. But if you write down the two or three main things that you want to accomplish and then you really focus on that, the other things will come, I think. So true. Is the practice journal going to account for that? We might need to. Are we still editing it? No, it's done. Oh, it's done. It has all that. Good. All right. So number five, and our final one is record your practice session. I can't tell you how much this is going to change your life if you haven't done this yet. So to get better at anything, you need feedback. You need expert feedback, but Even self-feedback can be...

And a feedback loop. Oh, no, no. That's bad. No, you need self-feedback to really get you to where you want to be. Because you can record yourself, how you're practicing something, observe where you need work, and then address it in your next session. I'm telling you what, man. Bird lives.

Sorry. Go ahead. It is a game changer. Yeah. So let's just go over this checklist again because I feel like it's really important. You feel like I didn't listen, right? I was listening. I'm not even listening to you now.

How to supercharge your practice routine. one, a time box. Yeah. Or a Pomadora technique. That's 25 minutes on. Or pompadour technique. Five minutes off. Or 55 minutes on, five minutes off. Unless you use the metric system. We're not going to calculate that.

That's time. Okay. Number two, practice like you have a deadline even if you don't. Number three, reward yourself with free play. Number four, write down your practice routine before and after. And number five, record yourself. Yeah, that's great. These are good, man.

I love it when we go old school. Because remember when we started, we were like all about like, we were so desperate. We're like, we got to give them the tactics and like exactly. But I love when we go back. We go back in the grind. I'm down. The grind is where it's at, man. It's where the good stuff happens.

Erad day. All right. So we promised a hump day special. What do we got? Is it still hump day? It's still hump day? I feel like we've been here so long. We've been talking about.

We, okay. Did we agree on this or are we still going to free ball this? No, we agreed. Okay. Because this was sitting here because we have so much interest in these. People are like, where can I get them? and what we're doing is we're offering this an Open Studio T-shirt.

We have You'll Hear a T-shirts. Should we do one of those? You'll hear a T-shirts? Yeah, or should it be their choice? Those are a little rarer, aren't they? I think that should only be for the You'll Hear Premium people. Okay, I agree, okay. So this is a good.

I mean, this is a high-quality show. Preparation is amazing. Andrew Kitchen, producer, has been known to wear these. We all wear them. Yeah, we do all wear them. That's true. So Open Studio T-shirt, you pick the size, you pick the color, and you get it for free with free shipping when you buy

Jazz Piano Jumpstart. Jazz Piano Jumpstart, which just happens to be one of our newest and least expensive courses anyway. It's also been popping off this summer. It's been popping off, so we want to reward folks

to come in, you're going to get this. Yeah, so if you go to buy... If you go buy Jazz Piano Jumpstart, we'll put a link here in the description, put in the offer code hump day shirt. Is that right? Hump Day shirt.

Hump Day shirt. One word. Is that one word? James. Yeah, one word. Humpty's shirt, offer code in the offer code field, and you'll get a free open studio. Is that correct? Do they get to pick the color?

Oh, they didn't, you do not? Really? But all our colors are good, though. All our colors are good. So, but they get to pick the size. You get a nice, neutral blue or gray. Are we doing free shipping? Free shipping.

Bam. Look at that. Whoa. Oops. All right. Well, until tomorrow. You'll hear it.