You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Listener Stories - Vol. 1

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

For the past few weeks, we put out a call to hear your stories. We were overwhelmed with meaningful responses. Sit with Peter and Adam as they share some of the stories from the YHI community.Don't be grumpy. Be part of the YHI & Open Studio family!Get your official Open Studio Practice Journal Ask Peter & Adam: Leave a SpeakpipeWatch Live: YHI LIVE Mondays at 4pm ET on YouTubeCheck out Open Studio Pro hereSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com 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.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Yo. It's a very special week. It is indeed. We have a couple of episodes that are chocked full of stories from our listeners. I know, listener's stories. We've been talking about this for a few weeks. This is going to be so fun.

Let's get right into it. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Music, advice, inspiration, and listener stories coming at you. Coming at you today, of course, sponsored by Open Studio. Oh, man, I'm so excited for today's session. How about you?

I'm absolutely excited. I've been looking forward to this. And we're going to be featuring your stories, not you, Adam. Your, as I look out into the podcast sphere. As I live and breathe. We are blessed. In fact, we are hashtag blessed with some amazing listeners, which we knew because we've always gotten great questions. We've gotten to meet some of them live.

Do you remember when we did, you'll hear it live down in New Orleans in another era in a room without windows and masks? That was very early in 2020, so we got to meet some folks there. But we love our listeners, and we put out a call a couple weeks ago, right, as we were entering 2022, as we were turning the corner, as the sun was going around, no, sun is going around us or we're going to, no, we're going around the sun again for another year. 2021. Scientist, Peter Martin. Biologist. That's not biology. That's astronomy.

But, yeah, I mean, as we turn the corner between 2021 and 2022, you guys that are. regular listener who's probably heard our request for your stories. And so many of you speak, pipe them in that we were just overwhelmed. And we've been listening to them and we've chosen some highlights. They're all highlights, you know, and we're going to get to many of them over the next couple of episodes. So, yeah, starting with today. Starting with today. And we'll start right to it. This is part one of our listener story episode. And right out of the gate here, we've got a great testimonial from Bruce. Here's Bruce. And this is Bruce from New York. First of all, I want to thank you guys for all the inspiration and enjoyment you've provided for me over the last few years listening to this podcast, listening to Peter's Shelter and Play series, and most notably listening to Peter at Village Vanguard recently in New York.

My sense is most of your listeners are a very capable, experienced musician. We've been playing for years, often starting when they were very young. That's not me. I never picked up an instrument, never knew how to play anything, and didn't know the difference between a harmony and a melody. until I was almost 50 years old when I won a charity auction and got some guitar lessons. Following that, my skills since then have advanced fairly slowly because I work full-time, commute to, you know, an hour each way. But as largely as a result of you guys and the inspiration you provided me, I was inspired to take jazz lessons. And through listening to you and to the jazz lessons that I've been taking, my knowledge and appreciation of music has gone through the roof.

And I can't thank you enough for the daily jazz inspiration you provide. When I first started listening to the podcast several years ago, I think I understood maybe about 25% of what you were saying. And I can proudly say now three or four years later, I pretty much understand everything you're saying, and now I'm trying to understand it at a deeper level. And it's really both made my playing experience much richer and my listening and appreciation of jazz and everything I'm hearing,

far for more enjoyable. Thank you so much. Keep up the great work. Amazing stuff, Bruce. That means so much to us. Yeah. I mean, Bruce said he started at 25% and he went up to 100% understanding.

I think even at the 25%, that's about what we started understanding of ourselves, right? I still feel like I'm about 15%. Honestly. We got to catch up with our listeners. That's right. Bruce, it was such a pleasure to meet him in New York in December at the Vanguard.

I cherish that connection there. And, you know, I think Bruce spoke to something that we've heard from a lot of listeners at different levels, actually. And, you know, beginners or folks that feel like they're beginners, late to life, whatever. We see this as like a safe place for everybody to kind of connect. Older folks, a lot of times act like younger folks because they feel fresh within the music, which is great. I mean, we always talk about the music keeping us young because we keep that sort of student mental. that childlike wonderment, which I love. So thanks for connecting with that, Bruce.

Who we got next? Next up, we've got Ryan. Let's check out Ryan. Hi, Peter and Adam. This is Ryan in Tampa, Florida. So my open studio and you'll hear it, Journey, began pretty early in 2018. I was living overseas in Stuttgart, Germany at the time. My family was changing a lot.

A bit of a sad story, though it's kind of common. My marriage was slowly falling apart. I had sort of fallen away from practice and from music and from jazz a bit. And I stumbled across you guys one day and you'll hear it. And then Open Studio that I joined soon after, both became my new BFFs. They really helped me get through that transition over the next couple of years as my family was changing. And it was exactly the community that I never felt. fully realized that I needed and that was lacking as a part of my musical development,

but I realized that right away as soon as I was a part of that community. So I look forward to new episodes all the time of the podcast. I couldn't get enough of it. And I started to get grumpy when there wasn't one dropped every day after a while there. I guess I was spoiled. But I was instantly drawn to and comforted by that sense of community. I didn't have a lot of friends over there in Germany for a bit. all of my closest friends were back here in Tampa where I had lived for many years.

So that really helped. And really the lessons and the daily bits in the podcast, they gave me a lot of tools for improving my musical development, but I found that they really crossed over into everyday life. And they helped me get after things that I was avoiding, you know, the lessons of tackling the hard things and getting after them as soon as possible. I applied that to my interpersonal relationships and trying to fix my family and marriage

and especially myself. The order and the routine that come with having a discipline to practice, got a lot of tips from you guys on that. The journaling aspect of practice I thought was fantastic and I was able to sort of segue that into doing that for myself, for personal development as well.

As for the piano itself, it really, the community and the lessons and the knowledge that I was drawing from the community, really reinvigorated my love for the piano and helped me improve greatly over the next few years. It gave me a more disciplined approach. I learned a lot of new theory, songs and new methods and things I was avoiding for quite some time.

And it also validated for me a lot of the things I had sort of figured out on my own over the previous years as far as how talent and passions and hard work and commitment pay off for musicians over time, for those of us who've discovered a lot of that learning on our own over the years. So it was a lot of validation too. Some of my favorite concepts that I've really embraced over the past few years that I've really taken a heart from you guys is particularly it's a journey.

There is no destination and you have to embrace and love the process. You have to love the process of being uncomfortable, of uncovering new things. You have to love practice and embrace it, something that will never stop. So thank you guys so much. You guys have helped me a lot in my musical development and in my personal development. And that's my story. Hi, guys, Gordon here. Just want to say that thanks a lot.

Your show is during my work hour. So don't tell my boss what I'm doing at 4 o'clock when you're on. Anyway, sometimes when I'm lucky, I'm able to get in the car and drive for an hour home. And I can listen to your podcast. And if it's really a cool topic like I usually is, I might even pull over, make a few comments and listen for a while, and get back on the road. It's really a great show. It really inspires me. I just love your guys of banter and your great musical knowledge.

Thanks a lot for everything, guys. Happy New Year. Hi, guys. I just want to say how much I've thoroughly enjoyed the whole open studio experience. I discovered it just at the beginning of lockdown. I work as a frontline health worker in the north of England. And over the past two years, it's been pretty grim up here. So the wonderful podcasts, lighthearted banter,

the technical expertise, the free-flowing knowledge, the richness of the material, the positivity and the sheer nerdiness of it all has been fantastic, guys. You know, you'd be my source of inspiration and my happy place. my place I come back to and time and time again. So thanks so much. Hi, this is Tom Floyd. I watch you will hear it on YouTube as often as I can find it. And I really enjoy it. I enjoy the way Adam and Peter have fun with it. They joke around. I enjoy that. I love how they genuinely still love the music. I'm sure they've listened to it hundreds of times by now.

but when they pay a certain link and they still go, oh, love that. And thank you for the advice. Also, I'm a member of Open Studio Jazz. I've gotten a lot of knowledge from that, as well as that you'll hear it podcasts.

I would recommend both. Well, thank you to Tom, Jonathan, Gordon, Ryan, for all those really, really beautiful comments, man. That's so cool to you. I was a little self-confidence. because I had a little, my eyes were welling up a little tear, but then I looked over. I think you might have a little tear as well there, Adam.

Is it some cutting onions in here? What's going to? No, this, yeah, this is awesome. Thank you guys so much. The, the, it means the world to us to know that, first of all, the uploading process is working and that people are able to hear this on the other end because there's always that. Well, this is a, but then we're getting through, you know what I mean? This is as much a technical podcast. This is a musical one.

No, it's awesome. The first of that batch there from Ryan talking about how he's like, you know, journaling his practice and realizing that it's about the journey. I mean, you know, I think that's what the community, that I'm not even sure, Peter, if we had any intention behind this when we started the podcast or Open Studio, I don't know what you were thinking, but the community aspect of it is so big for people and for us. Well, I think it's, I think that was probably the only part we, we had not necessarily. planned out, but that you and I would always be talking about music. And so the idea was, let's just sort of talk about music in an informal way with each other. Yeah. We didn't realize, I mean, I guess we sort of hoped to after we went for a while that that would become this connect with a greater community, which this definitely has. But it's still just sort of been

us talking and then inviting you guys in. And so we love to hear this and to hear the feedback so that we know that we are all connecting and super excited that it's getting through. But you know that that connection and that community and that support that you can get. And just hearing other people talk about, I think, you know, one of the things that it took us a while to get to this place. Yeah. Is, you know, you realize like, oh, like we're doing a podcast about music. We're supposed to be the experts, right?

Like, we need to, well, this is how it's done. And look at all the success we can have with this. But I think there was a time probably pretty early, actually, in like the first season or the first year we were doing the podcast where it was. was like, we realized like, no, you know, that sort of facade is not helpful. You know what I mean? Like, what is helpful is knowing that like, you know, sometimes Adam has doubts about what he's working on or what he's doing. Sometimes Peter is self-conscious. It doesn't know the right term for what's going on. That's right. We don't know everything all the time. And we're doing our best,

but it's a journey. Like, it is a constant, you know, the one thing I think that you and I really share passionately is that we realize that the fun part of life is that growth. Like the fun part is seeing where you are and it's not you're on the beach and everything's over. No. It's getting to that beach. We're scared of that. I don't want to be there. That's the end of the line. But but the fun part is being like, okay, what can I work on today? Yeah. What is there to do? You know, that's beautiful. Absolutely. And I think if anything, hopefully we gave each other and ourselves and the listeners, the whole community, We need to support each other and give each other permission to enjoy that journey, to fall down sometimes, but mainly just to have fun. I mean, Tom puts it so well.

I think it was Tom that said, you know, that we're still excited about listening to stuff 100 times in and going, ooh, I know, we're thousands of times in. Oh, man. Thousands on some of these things. We were just doing it before we were on air. Exactly. It doesn't even have to have the red light on. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that that shared joy that, that, that, that Venn diagram of passion and yearning to, to, to, to, to.

to try to better your own playing and improve, but also to, as you say, to really enjoy the journey and just love the music as you go. That's, I think, what I'm most proud and excited that we've all connected. So thank you guys to listeners. Please tune in on Friday for more, believe it or not, more listener stories.

You excited about that? I am excited. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks, everybody. Thank you, Peter. Yep. Until Friday, you'll hear it.