You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How To Use YouTube To Improve Your Playing

Episode Date: November 26, 2020

Today Peter and Adam talk about one of the best resources out there for musicians looking to gain some skills: YouTube.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.YHI Recommended YouTube ChannelsOpen StudioAdam NeelyRick BeatoJazz at Lincoln CenterGlenn ZaleskiAimee NolteChad LBJeff SchneiderKent HewittThursday'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. Hey. What are you thankful for? Well, I'm so thankful that today's Thanksgiving, and we're not doing one of those corny, my seven albums I'm most thankful for. Oh, um, okay. Uh, no, no kind of blue today.

Okay. Sorry. Sorry. I'm Adam. Manis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Daily music advice and inspiration coming at you.

Coming at you. Happy Thanksgiving, Peter. Happy Thanksgiving, Adam. Happy Thanksgiving listeners. So everybody has their favorite. holiday. This is by far my favorite holiday. Is it? I didn't know that. I remember, no, I do remember you saying that now. You know how much I love a meal?

Yes. You know how much of a food person I am? You know, a foodie? Yeah, well, you know what I really like? I realized over the years? What? More than anything? I just like being around table with people that I like for hours on end. Well, you're going to hate this year's Thanksgiving, then, because that's not on the agenda.

Well, this is an ironic Thanksgiving, because Thanksgiving, if you don't, if you're not American, this is American Thanksgiving. It's our feast day. It's usually where we spend the day with family eating until we're sick and that's what we've been doing. And then watching football until we get sicker. Yeah, that's right. But that's what we've been doing during the whole pandemic is just staying with our family

eating too much. And so, yeah, this is a weird Thanksgiving, but I'm still looking forward to it. Yeah, no, it is. It's a nice time. I love tapping into the true meaning or whatever, whatever one's interpretation of giving thanks, you know, we know that there's a little bit of a sorted past. We don't want to get into that. I know I've gotten into that before of the origins of this.

But I think like, you know what, maybe the. Canadian Thanksgiving. I don't know much about that. I know it was either last weekend or this weekend. It's very soon around here. I bet it's a little nobler and more better origin. So maybe we could tap into that one. And that's just a Canadian stereotype. That's no more noble. Every is better in Canada. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did a taste test recently by accident of maple syrup from Wisconsin, which was very good. And then maple syrup from Canada, which was a little better. I don't know. It wasn't a representative sample, but I'm just saying it's just a little colder up there. It's a little colder. But, you know, yes, there is maybe a little bit. But, yes, there is maybe a

a little sore at beginning to this holiday. But I can't hate on a holiday that's all about eating and being with your family and being grateful. There's nothing wrong with that in general. It's great. And it's such a family time. So yeah, it's a little bittersweet. I know for a lot of folks this year,

I would just say that, you know, if you can't be with your loved ones and extended family, like we're not doing anything. I mean, it's usually a big group with us. And it's just going to be the same old four people I've been looking at every night for dinner for the last eight months. Are we going to eat this to Furkekekeke now? Are we all four going to? Are we going to tofu,

But no, it's always special. And I think, I remember when I was a kid, you remember you might be a little bit young for this. But like on holidays, you used to make long distance calls. Yeah. Yeah. So we were thinking about doing that this year. You're like, forget the Zoom. Everyone's over Zoom.

But we may make a few family phone calls. I remember very specifically after Thanksgiving dinner at my grandma Maness's house. She, like my aunts would be helping with the dishes. And she would be in the kitchen, you know, on her little table from the 70s. Yeah. And probably a lime green. Yeah. Or banana yellow.

With the yellow tope phone. Oh, dude, there's some hipsters here that are about to make it offer for all that furniture right now. Oh, it's in the Bevo neighborhood in St. Louis. They'd love all of that. And she'd be like on the phone to relatives in Florida. You know, it was like twice a year

that she would talk to those relatives in Florida or whatever, but it was long distance. That's so funny, man. I remember sometimes you'd call and like all the lines would be busy. Like you couldn't get through. I'd try later. Everybody's calling now. Everybody's reaching out to family.

And now, now that you're, you know what your uncle in Florida is really into politically. You don't want to talk to them anymore. You see them too much on Facebook anyway. You know what they're about to say. It's going to be about fraud. You don't want to get into that. You don't want to get into that.

But, yeah, so your loved ones, the ones you want to talk to, maybe reach out to them via landline, you know, if you're into that kind of thing. Landline. Hey, we got a landline. Hey, I know. Man, I think we, I think it's, you know what? The number of people we can call. I keep getting, I guess got a text from my sister a couple days ago, no joke.

in your landline? Yeah, it was crazy. No, she texted me on my cell phone and said, oh, FYI, it was like a group text to everyone in the family. Group, oh, FYI, we're shutting off our landline. Thanks. I'm sure none of you use it anyway. I was like, oh, I like it.

This dude, you're the only dude I know with an electric car and a landline. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Yeah, I'm covering all the bases. More phone. You got more phone on your watch than you do in your phone. You know what? You have FOMO for my landline.

I do kind of have FOMO. Well, so. we have this episode today of how to get the most out of YouTube. Is that what it's called? What the hell is this episode called? And look, I can tell you how to get there. YouTube.com. You want to go to your browser and put that in.

Yeah, just Google YouTube. How to use YouTube to improve your playing. I think this is really good. So we actually have a YouTube channel, by the way. We'll put a link to that YouTube channel. Andrew put a link to that YouTube channel here. And you can go check out that YouTube channel. There's...

You can just search Open Studio on YouTube to I bet we will come up. So, you know, our whole business here with Open Studio is based off of really helping people that they don't have to navigate YouTube. So I'm not really sure what we're doing here with this episode. Well, no, no, I think this is going to be a good time because, you know, we have content there. There's great content there. And we can talk about, how about if there's like kind of two avenues or two venues of YouTube we could talk about sort of obviously within the jazz, within the music realm, as we do here, but both for education and for enjoyment. That's right.

You know, there's a couple things maybe to stay away from. Okay. On YouTube realms. Oh, there's plenty. Plenty. So like, British accents. British accents.

If they're associated with jazz. If someone says jazz piano. Piano? Piano. That's probably not a good sign. Now, this is funny. British accents and jazz piano stay away from Australian accents and jazz piano run quickly to them.

Not bad, right? Yeah. Not bad. Well, actually not all British accents because, you know, there's some Jacob Collier with Herbie Hancock. That's a educational thing. That's good.

He's got a thick British accent as being he's from London. Yeah. I will say to avoid the sponsored ads when you search for things. Like if you search jazz piano chords, yes. I don't think we, I'm just, we don't have any sponsors ads,

do we? I don't know, we may. No, no, we're like, we kind of owned, I mean,

we come up very high. I don't know about on YouTube. I'll do that as we're talking about the sponsored plate placements, you know what I mean? You know what's funny about this? And this would be my first tip on getting out, getting more out of YouTube, I would just say.

And maybe you don't know about this. YouTube premium. Now, I'm not a sponsor. I'm not being paid by YouTube. It makes it a better experience. It really does. I'm spoiled and I think I'm grandfathered in.

I want to say we don't pay more than 10 bucks a month for it for the whole family plan. And that comes with like the Google music and all that kind of stuff. But we mainly use it for the YouTube premium. So I don't see the ads actually. I see no ads. It's crazy. Another thing that might be a pitfall if there are more than two keyboards on screen at a given time. We affectionately call that the dopeo.

The dopio. Even the dopio. Emphasis on dope. If you see two on screen two on screen, keyboards, there could be good stuff and there could be really bad stuff. That's right. It's not necessarily, I would say when you get into more the soul, neosol gospel stuff, don't be as afraid of the, there's some really good YouTubers out there.

With Adopio. Even the trifecta we've seen on occasion. I don't know why that would be. If you click on something that says, want to be a better blues pianist and it has a trippio, it has the triple, triple keyboards? The trifecta. The trifecta. The trifecta.

The trifecta It's just steer clear That's clear Yeah That's right Okay so look Let's talk first about Sort of in the realm

These are some things to stay away from You know joking But not joking So let's talk about the education side first That's kind of our special And then we'll touch a little On the entertainment side Because that's a fun thing with YouTube

Yeah yeah for sure And let me just throw in one more disclaimer Or one more kind of what to avoid YouTube is a It's a babbling brook of of of that looks like a beautiful infinity pool and then once you get to it it is filled with quicksand it's a cesspool it's a cesspool it's a cesspool

that sucks you in like quicksand in in front of Yoda's layer but like quicksand with human escrimet that's right so you've got to be uber tactical about your usage of YouTube for yeah unless you're independently wealthy or have a sugar daddy or sugar mommy and you're just like want to get lost on YouTube all day

but if you want to use it for education you have to go in with it tactically And so that's one thing that YouTube premium helps. There's no distractions of ads, although you've already said don't click those anyway unless they're open studios. I don't think we have to. But yeah, so this is the thing. You want to go in and you have to go in with a very clear idea of what you're trying to get out of it. So if you're and you also like full screen, full screen is your friend because then you're not getting distracted by all the other things on the side.

YouTube wants you to stay there forever, which is great if you're looking at stuff that's really good. But if you find one great educational YouTube video, that's enough probably for you to practice for a week or something. So what you don't want to do is find something great. Watch it and then be like, oh, look at this related video. Oh, and then you're down a rabbit hole of other good things perhaps. Yeah. But they're not necessarily, like you've missed that first initial spark

and that opportunity to really learn. So you've got to go in with discipline and with a scalpel, not with a sled hammer. I don't know what that means. Let's talk our favorite YouTube channels and artist for educational purposes. Yes. So I think number one for me, as far as that mixes a good mix of entertainment and education, where I actually learn stuff all the time, is Adam Neely.

I think he's great. Adam Neely is very good. I think he's really smart. Yeah. And he's very entertaining the way he presents stuff. He's a great filmmaker, too. He's a great storyteller. He's a great storyteller.

Yeah. And then our friend Rick Beato. Rick Beato. The show. Yeah. And these are really kind of, I would almost put them in the same category of, they're not jazz channels. They do hit on jazz. I know someone was, we haven't even.

seen it yet. Adam Neely did something about the Thelonious Monk 25. Advices and Rick has done some great stuff on jazz but they're really just sort of general music kind of nerd insider but stuff that you can learn. What I like about both those channels and especially I would say Rick's channels you can learn a lot as a

as a serious hardcore music lover without being like whereas our content on open studio we invite anyone to come over there but if you're not a player or a player then you may not get Although we've talked about possibly getting into some things that would be more on the edutainment side. We do some edutainment. We do a little edgitainment.

I mean, what's what this podcast is all about. That's true. That's true. That's true. But I would say like Rick, you know, hits, Rick Biotto hits some very interesting areas, gets into some legal aspects of music. Also a great storyteller. Great storyteller. Yeah, for sure.

And very good filmmaker and just a great, you know, kind of understanding of the story that lies within music. On his, if you haven't seen it, and we can link to these and his channel would be, you know, super-sternation. going through the stems on superstition, which was within the last, I don't know, six, nine months. Stevie Wonder, of course. The Olios solo from Black Hawk of Miles Davis. I think it's called like the Picasso of music or something. Is it a title of that?

Good stuff, yeah. So next on the list, I think Open Studio deserves a spot on there. Our YouTube channel is popping. There's a lot of good stuff from all of our artists and you and I do a lot on there. So we'll just do an honorable mention and a little shameless self-plug there. But also, do not sleep on.

jazz at Lincoln Center's YouTube channel. Again, it's kind of like Open Studio where there's a lot of... It kind of makes me sleep sometime, to be honest. I don't see, Peter's not all about it. No, no, they got some good stuff. It's just, it's a little bit, um... Go ahead. I say what the advantage of it is is there's like, there's stuff from, you know, bass players,

drummers. Yeah. How to play, you know, like New Orleans style. Like, there's a whole bunch of different kinds of stuff. So if you want like a broad range of stuff, it's not specific. Right. I would say, and I think that. that that's maybe, and it's perhaps it's, you know, a knock on ours as well, open studios.

Maybe it's not specific enough sometimes because I feel like what they do really well. I mean, all their stuff is done, jazz and the Lincoln Center very well, very good quality. Of course, great players. But I feel like their concert footage from like their Pell Room and from, you know, Disney's and stuff is some of their best things. Like they're such a great presenter of music that sometimes when they, you know, go over to the other side of education and stuff. Like I would almost, and forgive me, I haven't checked out of close enough, maybe they do this, but almost getting into more. more of the kinds of thing of like as a listener of the music as opposed to you're trying to play like how to listen not you know music appreciation stuff almost like Rick Biotto stuff but

specifically with jazz I feel like they could do really good things in that area yeah and they probably do uh another couple of maybe under the radar ones uh I'm going to put our friend glens Zaleski who's done a guest vlog for our YouTube channel but has his very own excellent very specific jazz piano YouTube channel if you don't know Glenn's playing either it's great, but he has a very engaging and very thoughtful jazz piano YouTube channel with instruction. And then I'll also put in both Amy Nolte and Chad L.B. What do you know about those two?

Yeah, Chad's stuff is great, and Amy's stuff is fantastic, great singer and pianist and very engaging and very interesting the way she puts her videos together, great stories, and you know who I'm going to throw in there? And like, look, guys, we apologize. We're going to leave out some people that are really good that we actually like just because we didn't. Sure. This is very spontaneous.

So apologies, if we don't mention you, does not mean that we hate you. We're going to make a list of people we hate. That's going to be at the end of the show. So make sure you stick around for that. Blues piano. But Jeff Schneider, are you hip to him?

Do you have a cricket sound over there? Oh, that's not the cricket. I like Jeff Schneider's stuff, man. I don't know Jeff's stuff. Oh, okay. I like his stuff. You know what I like he does? I mean, a lot of it would be,

too basic for you, like, you know, how to learn jazz piano. No, but he does some cool, like, explanations of neal soul chords and stuff like that. Oh, I know who you talk about. Yeah, oh, he's great. Yeah, he's, yeah, he's killing. I was like, damn, this dude. Sorry. Yeah, sorry, Jeff.

You're amazing, man. I'm just going to do a fun little thing here. I'm just going to pop in. And, I mean, maybe this is tracking me. Of course, I'm sure it is. Jazz piano tutorial and see what comes up. Getting dark on you. Yeah, some of these I've seen it are not.

You know what, though? It's hard. Like, I don't want to be too judgmental. because maybe I'm just not at the right place in my... Uh-oh, we're seeing some dopios. This is what I'm saying. Ken Hewitt has some interesting stuff. You wouldn't think his stuff is good.

Ken... Hewitt? Yeah, because of his name and the way stuff looks, but he has some really good stuff. Now, what do you think, Adam, about videos... We've talked about the dopio and even the trifecta. What do you think about videos that have the streaming... What do you call that?

The video game keyboard light up as they go. The synesthesia or whatever it is Synthesia Synthesia Synthesia Syntasia Anastasia aliagia Yeah

What do you think about those I don't think a lot about it I don't think a lot about it I mean we use it on some of our videos But only for the keyboard itself But we don't use the streaming Rainbow colored things That yeah I don't really think a lot about it

Yeah I mean some of our stuff that you know Not to tutor our own horn But there's this I mean we have some stuff That kind of went under the radar probably due to our, I don't know, for whatever. But there's two-minute jazz that Kieser did, Jeffrey Kieser, alternating between triplets and six neat and those. Like, this is one little piece of information in there.

Now, look, if you're not at the level that you can play like Jeffrey Kieser, welcome to the rest of the world. But to get his little insight, like, and this is what I'm talking about, if you take that one insight that you get from that two to three-minute video, and then that's like a week's worth of practice. So that kind of stuff, I think is so fun that you can just find. I mean, like, when would you have ever been able to get the insight in somebody that kind of access.

I know, man. You can really go deep. Also, one final thing here. Yeah. Don't sleep on old school Barry Harris videos that were recorded by some smoking, uh, cigarette smoking German person at a university in Hamburg. Right.

And are just, they sound like a, a public access, a television studio. Yeah. Hit record on the board. But they are amazing. Check out these old school Barry Harris videos.

They're the best stuff ever, really. And you know, Peter, it is... Actually, I would just say for Barry Harris, that's something that Jazz Lincoln Center did great. They did really good. On the Jazz Academy. That's good stuff. I think it's not on their main side.

It's on the Jazz Academy side. That's fantastic. But yeah, there's some incredible Barry Harris stuff. So it's Thanksgiving. And that means tomorrow is Black Friday. But you know, Peter, we are doing a little bit early Black Friday thing. We are. Starting right now.

Awesome. How do I get in on that? Well, you just follow the link here in the description. Follow the link in the description. Which would be... Open. Studio jazz.com. Yeah, and actually you can, yeah, you can just go there all that.

You don't need a code, I think, or anything. It's going to be very apparent what's happening. We don't even want to say it now because, oh, no, we can say it now. We can say it. Black Friday. Our biggest savings of the year. It is the biggest savings. This is like bananas.

This is bigger than our choose what you pay. It is better. And it's just going to be for today, tomorrow. Actually, technically, until tomorrow, but for our listeners. You can go a little early, yeah. I'm saying. I think you can jump on there today. We'll officially announce tomorrow, but yes.

You can go there today, open studio jazz.com. Follow the link here in the description. Yes. And this is going to be great. This is only available through Sunday. You know, like we did last year. It was so fun because we do these huge savings and it's really about welcoming in. I mean, anybody, whether you're coming back or not, it's available to everybody, of course.

But we always get a lot of new members and it's excited because then December is like everybody's like making plans for the next year. That's right. And so it's so fun. We had a lot of people come in last year more than we've ever had at the kind of Black Friday beginning of December time. and we were able to really engage with them in some interesting ways in December and then we did the famous piano boot camp that probably feels like a lifetime ago to you

because so much has happened this year do you remember our boot camp in January? I honestly don't. Really? Remember we did it together? I know. It was my January and February? Then it feel like a lot longer ago?

Oh my gosh. So we might pull that out. We probably won't do it exactly like that but we'll do something, these kind of things where we kind of bring the community together and so it's a fun way to come in and join the open studio at a small amount Because you know what?

We know money's tight and you're trying to buy gifts for every Joe, Schmoe, and Larry out there. Hey, no, I got any gags, Peter. No gigs, man. No gigs. That's right. All right.

We'll go to openstudiojadst.com. Thanks, everybody. We'll be back tomorrow for our Friday episode. That's right. Until then.