You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Jazz Improv Tips We Would Give Our Younger Selves - #21

Episode Date: February 20, 2018

Peter and Adam discuss tips and techniques they would give their younger selves - and time travel. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Peter Martin. And I'm Adam Anus. Welcome to the You'll Hear It podcast. Today we're going to talk about jazz improvisational tips we would give our younger selves. Wait, are we going to build a time machine and go back in time or something? We are going to go back into time. We're going to go see Little Adam and Little Peter back in the day. So we're going to build a time machine and this is what we're going to do with it.

We're going to give ourselves tips on jazz. Come on, man. Yeah, that's like the most worthless thing for building the time machine. No, so we're just going to, you know, hopefully these will be things if some of you are at this juncture in your improv and musical development, maybe some pitfalls or some knowledge that we've accumulated over the years that can help you in your stage of development. I love it. Well, I'll kick it off. 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 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 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, 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 the category I found out 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 home.

That brings us to our next point, which is to fit into the overall shape and arc of the performance. Now, we've all seen the drummer at the little club or the little restaurant who is playing like he's in Wembley Stadium, and it just makes no sense. whatsoever. Don't be that drummer in that little club or restaurant or that piano player or that bass player or that saxophone player. You know, if... And drummers usually. Let's be honest. This one is straight up to drummers. No, no, it can be to anybody. We've all been sort of guilty. I know I was guilty of it when I was younger of like, you know what, I'm working on my stuff and that's what you're going to get tonight. You're going

to get my stuff that I'm working on and it doesn't matter. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Exactly. No, I don't care that this is a Dixieland King. You're going to get some. Herbie Hancock clicks up in here. No, play to the gig. Play to the performance. You are there to serve the music. And if the music calls for you to play sort of Cecil Taylor-style out piano,

then play that. But if it doesn't, maybe try to fit into the spectrum of the music that the other musicians you're playing with are playing. Right, no, absolutely. The next thing I would say would be, this is kind of more practice-oriented. I would say to my younger self

is that once you learn something, even if you're excited, don't jump too quickly onto the next thing you're studying. So I'm thinking in particular, like learning solos. I went through a period when I was young of doing a lot of transcribing, a lot of learning of solos, which I'm really glad I did

because I developed a lot of my ear training through doing that, a lot of my kind of stylistic understanding of this music, a lot of my improv ideas. I mean, all the things that we kind of preach about, you know, it being so developmentally sound for you to study, and learn solos, how many different parts of your jazz musician persona can be developed

through that one technique. I mean, I really got a lot of that, and I'm glad. But I think that I had the tendency to be overexcited and then move right onto the next solo after I learned it. And I think that later on I learned that once you learn a solo, in terms of what you get out of that, it's actually months and weeks and years of further development. You can get from that one solo. So, for instance, you learn it.

Maybe you write it out. maybe you don't, but you know it, then just playing along with the recording, that solo, you get so much because then you kind of refine all the things that you maybe missed or didn't put together kind of big picture as you're learning it phrase by phrase. You know, you get to really put it together and kind of have some insight into the concept of the solo, the theory of the solo, the structure of the soul, you know, kind of taking a breath. And I would even say sometimes you might take a day or two off after you learn it before you do this. But also before you jump onto another one, I would just tell younger Peter,

is like go back and make sure you're really getting everything out of that solo because there's a lot more there. That's great. And you have more time to develop than you think you do. When you're younger, you think like, I got to sound like, you know, Chick-Cario at the time I'm 24, it's total failure. But that's just not the case. You know, take your own time. Make sure that you thoroughly understand things. I mean, this music is deep and it's wide. So that means you've got to be deep and wide in your approach to it and your education of it. That's so true. And that kind of brings us to our final point here. And this is a very specific thing and kind of something that you've probably heard a bunch. But this would absolutely be the first thing I would tell younger Adam, and that is to practice everything that you learn in 12 keys and because I'm a piano player in both hands.

Oh, yeah. You know, those were the biggest holes I had developing when I got older because I didn't work on them as I should have when I was a younger piano player. You do, you know, you tend to, your ego wants to go to the flashy stuff, like just, you know, fast burning even lines or whatever. but I wish I would have done those in the keys of E and D flat and G flat and B. I wish I would have learned every B-Bopp lick I learned in my right hand and my left hand. I would be such a monster now if I had all that stuff there from the beginning.

You know, I've since learned that it's so important that I've, you know, for years now, I've incorporated it in. But I really wish that from the start, someone would have sat me down and said, you need to do this in all 12 keys and both hands all the time. Absolutely. All right, so this is fun since we were able to reminisce about all these ideas. Maybe we should build that time machine after all. And we are going to go back and give jazz tips to our younger selves with a time machine. We're not going to go kill Hitler.

Yeah, we're going to do something even more productive. All right, man. I mean, I know it's going to be good for us. That's it for today's episode of the You'll Hear It Podcast. For more information or to hear more of these podcasts, go to openstudio network.com slash podcast.