You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Love What You Play, Play What You Love - #46

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

In today's episode, Peter and Adam stress the importance of not only loving what you play, but playing what you love. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. What's up? Do you love everything you play? No, I love nothing that I play, actually. Do you love everything I play? Yeah. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin.

And you're listening to the You'll Here at Podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Now, I suckered you into that to saying that you love everything I play. But it's kind of the relevant topic of the day, because the name of this episode is Simplify, love what you play, play what you love. Do you have any idea about what that can mean? Where am I? What's going on?

I'm a little out of it today. You just got off a plane from Kenya, so you're not actually in the podcast. Have we started the podcast? Yes, we have. Everything looks different. Is this new? It is different. It is different.

New mics, new table. If you're watching this on YouTube, we have a whole new setup. Got a big upgrade. We have chairs that actually... Swivel. They're not 1972 St. Louis Public School counselor chairs. They're like 1981. St. Louis County Public Schools.

IKEA. Oh, this is great, man. Yeah, yeah. Feeling good. Yep. The Kranik and Bach is still in effect here? Oh, yeah. I mean, that's...

Kranick and Bach is a major feature of the pod cave. The pod cave for new listeners is where we record this. This is where the mustiness emanates into the pod cave. It gets trapped in here. It's like three quarters Kranik and Bach, like about five, sixth, Andrew. Oh, you get some fancy math. And the rest for me and you. Right.

Okay, so today we're talking about simplifying. So love what you play and play what you love. Now, I added this topic because this is something that I kind of ran into recently. You know, as we've been talking about, as I've been telling you over the past few weeks, I've been really hitting it hard in the practice room, trying to, like, up my game, really trying to go through a period of growth, which we do. And then there'll be three or four months where I won't do much of anything. We call that the regression period.

But right now I'm just super focused. I'm really, I'm laser. But, you know, you go through this thing where, on the gig, you start playing maybe a little too much. You start trying to incorporate some of these new ideas. And I thought we could just talk a little bit about maybe some head techniques to simplify what we play. And this isn't even when you're just learning a bunch of new stuff.

I think this is good for anybody at any stage to always think about playing less to simplify. And what I've been thinking about recently is to only play music that I love. In other words, really try to cut out. any filler or any chatter in my playing. And so that I will, you know, if I love what I play, I play what I love.

So you're talking about like in terms of improvising or even like repertoire choices. Yeah, both. Really, yeah. I'm trying to cut out things that I have in my improvising and my repertoire that are just there because I used to like them or I thought I would like them

and I've just been lazy about not trimming the fat. So no more George Michael's, George Michael covers and little reference. in your improv? Oh, no, I still play things I love. Oh, got it, got it, got it. No, I love this. I mean, I love the concept of, you know, simplification in general in art. I mean, how many wonderful, simple things have stood the test of time in the world of culture and art and food, you know, just something

simply, quality, quality being the focus and then simplicity around this. So many great applications for us with playing music and I'm just wondering if what you were saying about you know feeling like you're in a really fertile period of of your development in terms of practice and stuff and expanding things maybe it even becomes a little bit more of a challenge during those times to not just try to get on the gig and feel so confident and your tech your chops are up and you go crazy and maybe it can be a challenge to play simple to to play a simple theme and let that stand on its own yeah I think that is the challenge and that's that's definitely what I'm going through but I even think you know

when you're not in these fertile periods, it really helps every so often to kind of go through and be like, now do I really want to be playing this? Like, is this voicing something that really should be in my... Does the world need this? The world, do I need this?

Did you ever go through that? Yeah, you know what I mean? Well, I think, actually, I mean, we're joking, does the world need this? But it's kind of like, does the room need this? Does the two need this? These are things that we should be asking ourselves or trying to get into that

that mental state where our flow of improvisation kind of answers that question as we go, you know, like we're not necessarily consciously think about it, but we're playing in it. What do they call it now? A mind, not a mindful. A flow state kind of thing? Well, flow state, but I mean like where everything that you do, yeah, kind of. Mindfulness. Yeah, mindfulness. Yeah, mindfulness and intentional. Intentional. In terms of not pre-planned, but intentional, simplified and really minimalistic even, maybe a little bit. Yeah, I think so. Do we need to put some black sweater vests on now? Well, I think the thing to keep in

mind. I remember, who was? It was like Jeff Ballard. I was hanging with him randomly some night. And he was talking, he was, I don't know if you ever hung with Jeff, but he can like hold the court for a while. He's funny dude and he's, he's really fun to hang out with. But he was saying like, the audience, their imagination plays 90% of, of the night. Like, you don't have to play nearly what you think you have to play on the gig. And he was just talking about that at length. And that's what I've been. been thinking about and what I think is so relevant to this is just like, you know, if we're doing this right, if we're, if we're marking forms right, if we're playing the tune, right, if we're building tension and stuff, we actually don't have to do that much. Right. And the audience will do the rest of the work in their head. And so I think we get on these kicks of like, I've got to play three times the notes that Chris Potter plays on every cell. You know what I mean? It's just like not going to happen. Well, yeah, A, it's not going to happen. Yeah. But B, no one wants to hear it. No. But B, it's.

It's like it's not, it's totally not necessary. Yeah. You know what I'm thinking about now is like, think about an art museum, wonderful museum where there's beautiful pieces of art on the wall laid out, positioned. They're not all crammed up against each other. No. And they're not like there's a lineage going on as you move from room.

Like there's an art to hanging art actually. It's not just about, and if you think about the phrases that we play, the melodies that we introduce, the themes that we, we use to generate our story as we improvise. It's not that different in that we're just taking notes and then making sentences out of them, making phrases out of them, but how they are laid out with space in between for the audience. I mean, just think if the paintings are shoved up against each other, you don't have time to concentrate and appreciate one before you move on to the next one.

And so to your point of the audience's imagination, you got to give them time. You know, so I mean, we're always talking about space and souls and we never listen to our souls or someone else is like, ah, too much space. Miles Davis was good, but left too much space between his phrase. That never happens. It's always you need more space. You want to be able to breathe. It needs to be appropriate to the flow.

There has to be negative space. There's got to be negative space. Even within those paintings, you know, even if you take what would be considered like a busy Jackson Pollock style painting, there is negative space in that composition there. And it has to be the same way in the solo. And, I mean, too, you know, something I think about when I'm fortunate enough to play with great musicians in terms of a rhythm section or, or, or, or, you know, any instruments is when you start to solo, when you leave space, and for a piano, pianists,

for us, we consider comping still, you know, leaving space, you know. But I'm talking about not playing anything. Like you're a trumpet player. You've taken the horn away from your head. Step out. Yeah. Like that. Like when you just totally lay out, if you have a great band playing behind you, playing with you,

all of a sudden, you have a chance to sound great without doing anything. You know, think about that. Just let that listen, you know, number one, listen. And, and I mean, you know, of course, work. that into your soul. Use that to your advantage. So to the point you were just saying about the imagination of the listener, it's not just when there's no sound. It could be the rhythm section. Then when you come in, and I always think about this, and I try to really take advantage of this, and I forget sometimes, hopefully it becomes automatic, but when we play something

profound, when we play something, you know, important, and that could be at like the peak of a phrase, it could be the peak of sort of the solo, whatever, something that we really feel is important because of the structure of the improvisation. important to leave some space after that, because that's that time for that audience to, like, ponder that. And it's just like when you're a great speaker who says that speech, and then they hit that really important, like, thing that makes you go, wow. Like, don't just move on to the next thing. Now, you know, you're not giving them any imagination, no time for them to absorb it. Yeah, when you're playing stuff that is easier absorption, you can kind of absorption, you can kind of

move along. But it's all part of the flow. Hey, Pete. What up, Adam? You know we got this open studio thing? Yeah, dog. What am I doing here? Well, you're the creative director. What does that mean? Well, the whole thing of Open Studio is about creativity. So it's kind of an important position. You should know. I guess you're asking me rhetorically, though, right?

Kind of him. Yeah, no, I know what I do. No, I mean, you're doing so many wonderful things here, but I think one of the most important things is you're really overseeing the community aspect. And I'm so proud of what we've built here with our community of students from over 100 countries now, which is really amazing. But you've been instrumental to kind of pulling people into this online. situation, but really giving it a great feeling through the hang, which is our social network

and our Facebook groups and the lessons and the comments and the dialogue with customers, a real kind of in-person, as we might say, IRL experience online. It's one of the best parts I think about Open Studio, and one of the most incredible things is the engagement that we get to do with members, like you said, from all over the world. And, you know, you briefly mentioned the hang, but that is our own in-house social media network so that you don't have to be on Facebook and you can still enjoy. the free content that we upload almost every day now. I mean, it's getting to be the point where, like,

we are giving out, are we giving out too many secrets? I don't think so, but you know what? We're starting to learn, I'm learning so much from our students, which is a really fun thing. And then we have students learning from each other and connecting with each other. And I'm seeing as much as we give the tactical advice, how do you finger this scale? How do you sing this phrase?

And we've got Diane Reeves teaching you. So it's the best of the best. But we're also just trying to kind of empower folks, give them the confidence that these secrets now are available to everyone. We're not hoarding them over here. And so we're sharing them and we're getting the dialogue going. That's right. On the hang, our in-house social media network and on our private Facebook groups,

we have our own students who are dialoguing with each other. They're sharing transcriptions from famous recordings. They're sharing ideas and concepts like licks and voicings and all kinds of stuff. I'm on there every week helping to kind of guide the conversation and add some stuff. You're on there almost every week. adding some free content, and we have a really good thing going on with that community. Absolutely. Maybe we shouldn't be publicizing it. I don't know. Okay. All right, just cancel this whole thing then.

Open Studio, Jazz Lessons from Jazz Legends. Man, that is so true. I think about, when I think about that concept, I think a lot about, like, Keith Jarrett and some of those standards recordings, and he takes these long pauses, and then he'll make, like a, a... Yeah, like he's getting... Just kill the vibe. He's receiving a message from aliens about what to play next, you know, and it's this... profound thing, but that is so true. You know, the other part of this episode is love what you play and play what you love, and I think this is a

great way to simplify and to kind of cut down to what I've been doing, what I've found has worked and has really trim the fat in my improvisation is to just think about and maybe even write down the concepts that you want

to identify as. Like, it doesn't have to be a specific, like, oh, I'm going to play just these voicings. But maybe it's like, I want to be a player that plays, you know, that's able to play in like free time over, over time. Okay, well, that's like something that you can say, that's what I want to have in my playing. Yeah. And you can practice incorporating that. And you could, you could say, I'm a player that I don't want to play, you know, uh, uh, shering style voicing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, then you need to like consciously

trim that out. Yeah. If that's not who you want to be. I think that's cool to like start defining our identity a little bit. I mean, you always want to let it happen. Right. But there are certain cues you can take. Like if you're like, man, why do I keep playing that? You need to take that out. Well, yeah, and intentional practice leads to intentional improvisation for sure. Totally.

And not intentional as in pre-programmed or contrived. But I think the intentionality that you're just referring to is about playing, you're truly playing the things that you love and that you practice and then you work and then bam, then you're flowing in the improvisation. And it sounds organized. sounds like there's time for it to be absorbed by the listener. It sounds meaningful, which is what we're trying to do. Totally, man. Yeah. Well, this was fun. That was deep, man. It's always good to think about some of these, like, to pull back a little bit. Yeah. And think about it

from above. Right. Well, now that we have these new microphones, we can really think about it. We can go up, we can go down. Man, I like the telescoping arms. It's, I mean, where you didn't like having a mic just jammed by your cheek. Man, that thing was, it was all upon me. It was like a, it was like, you get on the airplane and, hey, how you do it? Every time you turn, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, right there. Well, let us know your thoughts on this. This is kind of like a pretty broad topic that I think I would love to hear how some people deal

with this, trimming the fat and you're playing, loving what you play. I don't know. We kind of covered it all, man. I think that's good enough. As usual. You can go to you'll hearat.com to leave us a question, pop and say hi. Leave us a voicemail. We haven't got a voicemail in like a week or two. Is the speak pipe system working? Andrew, test

the speak pipe. Come on. Something's going on. I think it still works. But yeah, maybe people are just getting so much out of it. Yeah, we love to hear from folks. Please. Is anybody out there? Hello. And when you go on there and you contact us, you'll hear it.