You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Survive a Horrible Performance (By You)

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

There's nothing worse than a lousy performance, but on today's episode, Peter shows you how to get through it and get past it.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.

Hey, Adam. Oh, you're still not back. All right. Tomorrow, that's not going to happen. I'm going to already have it in my mind that you're not going to be here. So there won't be the little corny introduction like today. I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Coming at you solo again today from the Podcave.

Excited to be here. I miss my boy, Adam. But he's on his way. He's actually probably arrived by now to Japan. And I think he's going to have a great tour. I think we're going to do some remote episodes, actually, some Japan, US joint episodes coming up. But for now, we're going solo. And we are talking about today how to survive a horrible performance by you.

And I'm pointing into the camera if you're looking at YouTube, not in an accusatory way. Okay, a little bit of an accusatory way. But I could also say, by you, point to myself, we've all been there, right? We've all had horrible performances. and it's going to happen to you. If it hasn't happened yet, it's coming soon. So we're going to talk today about how do we survive that? How do we move forward?

And possibly even, how do we use that as a springboard for improvement? Is that even possible? I'm going to say, yeah. I'm going to give you a little bit of a foreshadowing and say that, yes, that's possible. Okay? So today we are brought to you by Open Studio. Go to Open Studio Jazz. Check out all of our wonderful courses that will keep you from having that horrible performance.

or at least will minimize your horrible performances. But until then, let's talk about how to survive it. Now, what do we mean by a horrible performance? Well, this is something that we basically, like, what's the best way? Okay, think about it like this. You play the gig, you sit in on the jam session, and as soon as you're finished, you basically just want to cover your face with a paper bag,

get out of the venue as quickly as possible. That's a horrible performance. You feel shameful. You're mad at yourself. Maybe you're mad at the other musicians because they made you have a horrible performance. Maybe it was a horrible performance all around. Maybe it wasn't just you. But you were part of a horrible performance and you did your part to contribute to that.

And it's a horrible feeling. I got to tell you, I mean, we work hard on becoming better players. And it's not always about having the most incredible great performance. Sometimes it's just sort of a, eh, it was a good performance. But when it's horrible, I mean, when like nothing is going right, it's really a bad feeling because the whole point of playing this music, you know, it's not like we're keeping score, so it's more of a feeling that you have.

You know, it's not like, oh, I didn't do this. Yeah, you might be able to say, okay, I missed this note. I missed that note. But generally, we're improvising. So in theory, anything we could say, oh, that was great because that's what I wanted to say at that particular time. But we know inside of us, like, when things are not coming out the way that we want to,

when what we're playing does not sound good. but I want to first talk about before we get into the horribleness of it all how we're hearing our own performance is often not as accurate as the reality of how it sounds to the listener and what is most important is how it sounds to a listener okay so the first thing we want to do when we're evaluating and figuring out what we're going to do about a horrible or bad performance is is it really as horrible as we think it is because what we're What it sounds like to us doesn't matter. We're not buying tickets.

We're not playing for ourselves. Yes, we're a listener and a participant in what's going on. But ultimately, I believe we are playing this music to make an edifying and exciting and thrilling performance to the audience. That's what we do. We're entertainers, you know? So we want to first sort of find out that separation between how horrible it is for us and how horrible it is for the listener.

Now, that's a little bit difficult to do outside of like, I guess, sending a survey or standing outside of the venue and asking people, hi, how did you like the performance? But, you know, maybe you have a friend or a spouse or a mole in the audience that you could sort of talk to. But you've got to find someone that's going to give you an honest assessment. If you feel horrible about your performance and you say, hey, how was it tonight?

And they're like, they know that you feel really bad about the performance and you weren't happy. And they're your friend. They're probably going to be like, you know, oh no it sounded great or whatever so you got to always sort of take that with a grain of salt as well um i do think if you have experience with the audience or the venue you can sort of judge audience audience reaction to how horrible it is to them so like say you finish and you're like oh that was horrible but the audience is like smiling and clapping and kind of into it you may not have a

great feel for for the level of your performance or it might not be as dramatic as you think This happens often, especially as you get to a higher level of proficiency of playing jazz, it can feel like the ups and downs are so big, like, oh, my God, that was such an amazing thing I just played. And oh, my God, that was the worst ever. But the reality is probably somewhere more in the middle. And a lot of the things that you notice as a player that you're, quote, unquote, messing up are not that noticeable or not as noticeable or not noticeable at all to the audience, you know.

So that's kind of all a part of the evaluation. So, you know, sometimes it might be like, oh, this, you feel like you played so bad, but the audience is not going crazy, but they're like generally enjoying it, like the energy that you're getting. So that's probably an instance where it's actually not that horrible. Now, there are going to be other times where you feel horrible about your performance. The audience feels horrible about it. I guess worst case scenario would be them walking out while you're actually playing.

That would be a good signal or a bad signal, but it would be a signal that you're not playing great. perhaps throwing things at you, the proverbial rotten tomato or the actual rotten tomato being thrown or anything being hurled at you during a performance would generate, unless it's cash. Unless it's cash,

anything being thrown at you while you're playing would indicate a horrible performance. But if you think about it, it doesn't happen that much, you know? So that's kind of the first sort of level is just let's temper things and see how horrible it was.

Okay. So if you've evaluated and you're like, Okay, the audience didn't throw anything at me, but I still feel like it was a bad performance. And it was a real low for yourself. Let's get into some things that we can do and how we can react with that. Okay. So the first thing I'm going to say is, and this would cover from just the worst ever to maybe not as horrible as you think. But that is to get back on the horse when you've fallen off.

Okay. And that means to get back out there and do a gig. Get back out there into that same jam session. Look forwards. Don't look backwards. Okay. and this is so important because we're not going to be able to improve and even get the benefits of the failure of our horrible performance. And we'll get into that in a minute.

But we're not going to be able to do that unless you get back out there and perform again. You can't go into your little tortoise shell and expect, you know, to make improvements. You've got to do that difficult thing, which is get right back out there. So I would say, don't cancel gigs and be like, oh, I've got to practice. I'm so bad. I did such a bad gig that I can't be seen in public. You got to get over that shame. You got to get back out there.

It's not easy, but you just got to do it. I mean, that's the way great players react to adverse situations like this. So we're always looking forward. We're not looking backwards. We're predicting our next great performance as opposed to wallowing in that horrible performance that we just did. Okay. So the next thing, as you're looking forward, though, we're not ignoring what happened because we want to make improvements and we want to make sure that that doesn't happen again. We don't want to have another horrible performance.

performance. So we want to have a real honest and, you know, non-emotional analysis of what the failings were. So if you have a recording of the gig, it's going to be painful to listen to it, but you're going to have to do some of that just for some technical analysis to find out what went wrong. And then you want to look at really what the source of those failings was. Was it, you know, like a lack of preparation? Did you not really know the music? Were you not practicing correctly? Were you dealing with material that was too difficult? There's a number of different things that you might be able to figure out. Were you tired on the gig?

You know, there's so many different things that can happen. Some of them are correctable. Like lack of preparation is the easiest thing to correct. And when you get back on that horse and get back in there the next time, you know, it's really as easy as just preparing this time. Now, that's not going to ensure that you have an incredible performance, but it's probably going to keep you from another horrible performance. Okay.

So, but you got to have that honest, that really non-emotional, non-judgmental. analysis of what you did that caused the failure. Okay. So after you've done that and you figured out what you failed at, or at least, you know, the steps that you failed to do that led to that bad performance, you've got to rejoice in those failings, not wallow in failings, not wallow in self-pity. No, you've got to be like, wow. Okay, I failed on these things. This is actually a good thing because now I have a chance to improve. Now I know what I need to work on. Now I know. Now I need to work on. know what I need to correct to be able to get to a great performance. Things should become a lot simpler for you now.

Your pathway forward is based upon fixing these specific things. So that's really your next step. But you've got to rejoice and you've got to, you know, be excited and take on a mindset of wanting to correct those failures. Okay. You can't ignore them, but you can't wallow in them either. Okay? And so you're going to want to take those steps and really double down next on your

practice routine. Okay. you got to say, all right, well, I failed in this specific area. I wasn't prepared or I thought I was prepared, but it turns out I wasn't. So now I know I got to practice twice as hard in that specific area so that I have a great performance next time. And you want to be happy that you know what it is that you need to practice, but now you've got to do the work. So what I hate to see is when people like, oh, I know why what led to this bad performance, but then they don't take that step to practice the things that will keep them from being there again.

That doesn't make any sense. To me, that's like an illogical way sort of move. So you've got to put the work in now, double the work, triple the work, whatever it's going to take, you know, to keep you from failing in that same area. Okay. And then next, you've got to really face your fears because you're going to have to go back into that same situation that you failed before and try to find some success. Okay. And that's hard because once you get in that situation and that just might mean, let's say you go to a jam session and you just have a horrible performance. on a tune. And then the next week, you know, for the next week, you really work on fixing the things

that led to that failure and you feel good about it, but then all of a sudden you go back to the same jam session, you're like, I'm going to play the same tune, but this time I'm going to nail it, I'm going to knock it out of the park. But all of a sudden, you're fearful because everything's coming back from the previous week once you get up there. You're not thinking about all the things that you practiced on. You're thinking about what happened that last week when you sounded horrible. So you've got to face those fears. You've got to know that that's coming. and know that you can talk to yourself and say, you know what, it's different now, though,

because this time I'm prepared. This time I really learned this. This time I've got the mindset correct. Whatever it is that you've fixed, you've got to keep telling yourself that. And then you've just got to face your fears, you know, but know that you're going into it with a different kind of mindset,

a different kind of preparation so that you're going to have, and be confident that you're going to have a different result this time. Okay? So, yeah, hopefully you put all those things together. And that's how we grow, you know. We fail. We get knocked back a peg, but then we jump two pegs forwards. But you've got to face those fears. You've got to

put yourself back in those difficult situations. And I think if you think about it like this and know that everyone, everyone who's ever attempted to play this music of jazz has had multiple horrible performances. I'm talking about Charlie Parker, John Coltrane,

Herbie Hancock, Brad Meldow, Winston Marsalis. I mean, whoever your hero is know that they've had a horrible performance. Just because you haven't heard it doesn't mean that they haven't. But talk to them if you ever get a chance to. Research, learn, read about him. You'll hear about some bad performances.

Miles Davis, he went to New York and had multiple bad performances. But I think he followed these steps as far as going back and preparing better, coming back, facing his fears and all that kind of thing. So if you want to, and look, you don't have to be as great as Miles Davis without being. There's a big space between being a failure as a, you know, jazz musician and being a Miles Davis. There's a lot of wonderful space in there for all of us to go, okay? But you've got to know that you're going to get better if you face your failures and face your fears

and use them to spur really some great growth in your playing. Okay? So that's how you survive and a horrible performance and even thrive if you go next level with it. So I hope that helped you today. We are brought to you by OpenStudio. OpenStiojazz.com. to check out the finest jazz lessons from jazz legends. And I would ask that you give us a rating review wherever you're listening or watching this podcast.

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