You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Improvisation Techniques Today!

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Run it BACK! This episode of "You'll Hear It" features clips about improving your Improvisation skills by changing your approach and mentality. How to improve your playing today! Check it out here. Advice we would tell our younger selves. Check it out here.How to Thematically Improvise. Check it out here. 7 ways to improve your soloing. Check it out here. Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

What's up? You'll Hear It Listeners. This is Caleb Kirby starting off the new run it back series for you'll hear it. All right. So what is the run it back series? Where is Adam and Peter? What am I doing here? What's the next move? I got the answers for you. So this next series is kind of like a best of, but without the best. This is a content curation. And with this, I'm hoping to highlight some amazing moments that we've had. in conversation with Adam and Peter all around the central theme. Today's theme is going to be improvisation and how to improve your improvisation.

Today. Exactly. So with these next clips, I hope that you can really find a way to kind of coalesce all the different podcasts and maybe go back to the podcast that you like to clip from. There's a lot of backlogs of different episodes and shows.

So if you hear one that you like, you want to hear more from it, I'm going to be giving you the dates of each one. This next one that's coming up is how to improve your improvisation today, like Adam and Peter just said. It came out in September 24th, 2020, and I hope you enjoy. Can I play only what I hear? Right. That's my goal for this solo.

Can I just play only what I hear? We're going to ignore the temptation to run our fingers over our hands, and we play just what's in our head. So this is so important. because what you hear is the most authentic music you're going to make, right? It's what is inside of you. It's what you've been listening to. It's how you're feeling. It's all of these things combined.

It's what's, ideally it's what's happening in the room if you're really paying attention. But this question can really change the game as far as your improv. I love it. I love it. And I think I want to caution everybody. Sometimes we think, oh, what I hear.

Like, you have to accept that. So that's what I was talking about. Like, that has to be just whatever you hear. And if that's maybe, do, be de-d-bop, that's what you hear, no problem.

Like, and I used to get caught up in this one because I was like, I have to be an innovative improviser today. I have to innovate something. No, you don't.

No, you don't. You just have to commit to playing what you hear. I think there will be a level of innovation at different times. At different levels, we don't all need to be the most creative,

innovative improvisers, and certainly not every day. But I mean, when you commit to hearing something, it just means that you're, if you're regurgitating something, it's what you're hearing. Yeah.

That's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So next I wanted to talk about, or I wanted to have Adam and Peter talk about, what you would tell yourself when you were a younger player, you know, back in the day, like, what would have really helped yourself out if you could somehow go back and pass? And Adam and Peter really find a good way to talk about this.

Okay. The first thing I would tell my younger self is absolutely to relax. This took me longer than it probably should have to learn that when I, you know, that when I want to increase the intensity when I'm playing, that I actually need to be more relaxed than I think I do. You know, we tend to tighten up, we shrug our shoulders, we forget to breathe, you know, we do everything we can to try to coax the music out in a way that we think is, is like, you know, I don't know, cool or soulful or something or whatever, but it just makes you tired. I think I heard that somewhere. Right. So I would definitely tell little 16-year-old Adam,

who wasn't actually very little at all, because I was a, large person even back then. I would say, yo, just chill out, just relax. Right, right. Okay, that's cool. So one thing I would definitely tell myself and even tell some interesting players that I know now,

probably tell their younger selves as well, is don't try to play everything you know in every solo or in any one solo, right? That's good. Yeah, I mean, we, you know, it's such a skill to be able to develop, but I'm like, why did it

take me so long to finally get to this point. There's going to be another tune. You know, it's very rare that you're only going to have a chance to play one solo for any particular audience, you know? And even if you do, if you try to shove too much in, they're never going to want to hear you play again anyway. They're like, oh, we caught everything that he knows how to do. So, you know, although we want to impress people and we want to put our best foot

forwards, we have to think about playing what the moment needs. And that's very rarely everything that you know, unless you don't know much, you know. That's category I thought of it. Well, you know, I mean, I think I didn't really know much younger, Peter, but I had a certain facility to play a bunch of stuff, even that I didn't know, and I felt the need to always put that into all my solo. So what I would do is tell myself, say, look, just take one thing that you know you can do well. One little nugget, maybe?

One little nugget of melodic information or whatever for your improv, and just develop that and concentrate on that and be confident to know that you can bring up all those other great ideas you may have in later years. I mean, it's so funny, but we do learn it as we get older, that confidence of just like, you know what? This is going to be good. Even if I don't play a lot right this second, it's going to be good. And that takes a little bit to understand, but try it.

On your next solo, try. Just having the confidence to say, like, you all are going to wait for me, and it's going to be very rewarding by the time we're... Great stuff. If you're looking for that episode, it came out February 20th, 2018. Next up.

So I wanted to bring in this topic that Adam and Peter do such a great job talking about called kind of working on your thematic improvisation. So that's kind of how to create themes and drama inside of your solo, how to take it to the next level, making sure that we're building instead of kind of flatlining. So this next clip is just great on that. So I wonder, Peter, if it wouldn't be easiest just to kind of demonstrate how to take a theme and tell your story with the theme. So there are certain things that we can do to actually practice thematic development. And one of the things is to identify the theme, first of all.

Yeah. I actually saw, I think it was Antonio Sanchez talking about how he builds themes in his drum solo. So how he tells the story with his drum solo. And he said the first chorus through drum solo. he's literally not thinking at all. He's just letting whatever happens happens. And he's noticing what happens. And then he will pick out something from that first chorus that just happened without him thinking.

So he's just playing. He's just reacting. He's letting things happen. And then he's got something. Right? So something is happy. A little kernel of that. A little kernel, right?

So he played something. And then he can now, now he's like, now you have to do the most difficult thing, which is think and plan as you're playing. And you take that and you start to weave that around. So I wonder if maybe we could just play a little blues here for Bruce. And, yeah, I wonder if that, if we could think about in the story, storyboard kind of storytelling format, if that first chorus is almost like the introduction of the characters.

Totally. You know what I mean? It's like you're meeting the different characters. There's going to be a protagonist that's probably going to evolve. Maybe that's the kind of kernel of the thing that's going to be improvised along. But there's some kind of introductory phase. And we're not talking about the intro to the tune. We're really talking about the beginning of the solo.

The beginning of the solo. What I love, though, about his idea of not thinking in this first course and just letting whatever happens and reacting is that then you're setting up your characters with whatever it is here in the moment, with whatever is happening in the room with the other players with you right now. Now you're setting it up, so it's very relevant, and that's where you can take an idea. So maybe if you want to try this, Peter, I'll accompany you a little E-flat blues maybe. Okay, cool. Get in Kia E-flat. Cool. And maybe you can try this technique of not thinking.

I'm great at that. Yeah, me too. I was born to do that. Letting whatever happens happens, you can then pick something out of what happens and then start to develop that. And Bruce, listen to how Peter will take something and really explore it, like poke it around.

Like he's a cat with a ball and he's batting it back and forth. He's looking at it from all sides. I might even become a squirrel where I get sidetracked. Very easy. You know, you never know. We'll see. That's right. One, two.

One, two, three. Yeah. So obviously we heard, that's what you pulled out of that first chorus and then you could see Bruce I mean was there a thinking process as you were spinning that around or were you just kind of letting whatever

was you were hearing happen well definitely you know as per your idea and the story about Antonio Sanchez I was trying to not think at all on the first chorus which is actually that's something that I do a lot I think I actually do a lot of not thinking when I'm soloed it's the best way to go actually

you cannot think it's best I think in these situations where we're trying to present something, it's very hard not to think more than one normally would over this tune. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I really tried to, well, one thing I did was as soon as we started, I didn't start playing. I don't know if you noticed. I didn't have a big break, but I listened. Yeah, number one, listen. And so that's part of the like not thinking doesn't mean you're not listening. It actually means that you're putting more energy into listening. And that's listening to what you're playing, listen to what's being played around you if you're playing with other people. Being present.

being present and like being open so that's almost part of that kind of intro type of situation so I just like because I was sort of like wow E flat blues and I was thinking maybe we should play it like right as you're counting it off I was like maybe we should play ahead because normally you don't just but I was like you know what let's just see where this goes yeah so what you

played and how you played it not just how you counted it off but how you started the baseline was going to affect what I'm playing so how can I just start playing I don't know what the vibe well so it's so funny that that's because what I played I think at first was like I think I went down.

Oh, we got a piano tuning happening. That's okay. So you can kind of be in here. You might hear a little piano tuning in the background because we're serious about our pianos. We are serious. So what I played here was E flat to G. And that ended up being somewhat of a reversal of your...

Yeah. Right, this G to E flat thing, which is interesting. So maybe that kind of... Yeah. Put it in there a little bit. Yeah. That little nugget was from September 20th, 2021. All right.

So finally, this last one. I wanted to bring up. It's from the episode that came out, 2019, October 1st, and it's seven ways to improve your improvisation. I just chose the seventh way, you know, let's cut right to the point, why not? And you'll find a really fun and interesting,

helpful fact that Peter goes into in this next clip. And then number seven, our final idea of something to do when you're running out. Psychedelic drugs? Well, that's, you know, desperate times, as we say. Yeah, no, for when you're running out of those improv ideas, I'm going to circle all the way back to the beginning, and that is going to be to trust yourself, go back to the source,

and your most organic improv. So you're not going to, you're going to, as much as you can, just remove from your brain, oh, I'm running out of ideas, and you're going to play whatever is the most natural, whatever is the most organic statement you can make on that moment. And you can do this when you practice. This is a form of restrictive practicing where you would just go through and play a number of courses or a number of solos even, like however many courses they need to be to be a complete solo. Do that a number of times where you say, I'm not going to worry about incorporating anything from a new key or a different instrument solo that I learned.

None of that stuff where you're just going to play what you hear. I mean, in this whole podcast as you'll hear it. And so you're really just going to do that. And yeah, you may start to feel like you're regurgitating some things. But after going through some of these other techniques, I think you'll start to see that you actually have more creative improv ideas and new ideas, and you might be further out of that rut than you think you are. You'll least be able to find some things in your practice that you can apply and say,

wow, actually, I have some fresh ideas. All right, you'll hear it listeners. I hope you enjoyed today's Run It Back series. Again, my name is Caleb Kirby. If you liked what you heard today, remember that you can always go to openstudiojazz.com and find a lot more materials on music education and courses about how to improve your playing. This is a podcast sponsored by that website, and we hope to see you again. Happy practicing.