You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Managing a Band

Episode Date: November 7, 2019

In this intercontinental episode of You'll Hear It, Peter and Adam answer a listener's question on how to handle finding gigs for large ensembles.For more lessons at the piano with Peter and Adam, check out our brand new course: Jazz Piano Technique. In Volume 1 of this series, you'll get a 4-week bootcamp entirely focused on improving your ability to play pentatonic scales. For more info, go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/jazz-piano-techniqueLike those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey. Where are you again? I'm in Brasislava, Slovakia. Oh, well, you're never coming home from there. Actually, I'll be home tomorrow. I'm Adam Ennis. And I'm Peter Martin.

You're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Remote daily jazz advice coming at you from a couple of different corners of the world. That's how we roll. Yeah, the advice isn't remote, but the hosts are. Well, the value, there's a remote chance that there's any value. I put it that way. How about that? That's true.

This is awesome. We're not doing video today. I'm able to kind of roam around my hotel room here freely. Oh, nice. No, I'm still stuck in the musty pod cave. In a pod cave. I am sitting in your chair, so it is a nice change of pace. Andrew, get him out of my chair.

And Andrew's back in the producer's chair. He's let the interns have a little time off, I heard. Yeah, Ryan's not working this session. We got classic Andrew. Oh, man. You don't know. I might even jump in there and engineer a session, just like the old days. Oh, we might have to call that a sish. I might have to call that a sech. So today we are talking about a question that was sent in from one of our lovely you'll hear it listeners. Yeah, this is from Paul. Hi, Peter Nand. My name is Paul. I'm a saxophonist from Mannheim, Germany.

I'm a great fan of your podcast. Monheim. Monheim, Germany. Correct you there. I am a great fan of your podcast. It makes me laugh, think, and learn a lot. And it's kind of become a morning routine to listen to the latest episode almost every morning. I have a question regarding managing your own band.

Specifically, I'm interested in how to find and what kind of gigs to look out for for large bands, meaning bands consisting of many musicians. In my case, a no net featuring four string players. Which sounds really cool, by the way. I am having difficulties finding places to play in because most jazz clubs don't have the budget to pay that many people. It would be great to hear your thoughts on that one. Keep up the great work. Looking forward to the coming episodes. What a great question. That is a great, oddly specific. Yeah. Great question. But I feel like we're oddly qualified

to answer this question. We are. We are. Have we if I think one, if not both of us, has possibly tried to book a non-eth into a jazz club before. Of course. Yeah. I mean, you can only go so far. You can only go so far in this business without eventually forming your own nonette. That's right. No, no, no, no, nonette. No, no, no. But it can be difficult. I mean, as you know, I know you've worked in larger ensembles. And have you, I don't know, have you led a large ensemble as big as that? Actually, not well on some recording sessions, never really on like an ongoing sort of gig situation. Yeah, yeah. But I've done some recordings with slightly, you know, yeah, something like that size or maybe even a little bigger. But I think, you know, I don't know, one thing that pops to mind here is that you might have to kind of get your foot in the door type of thing, which means basically pay the rhythm section and the string players don't get paid at all. They should just be happy to even be in a jazz club.

That's one approach. Now, your parents would not agree with that at all. I know, exactly. No, I think you might have to come out of your own pocket sometimes on these kind of projects. That happens all the way from the entry level to the highest most professional level when you want to do something a little bit more ambitious in terms of personnel, either the number, the size of the group, or maybe you want to really hire some superstar to be on a gig. But the venue's like, well, I don't care who you have, whatever. This is what the gig pays. So if it's important to you, I think you might have to come out of your pocket, unless you got a sugar daddy or something.

Well, I was... You could call that one out. I was going to say the first thing I thought of was some kind of subsidization, where you can find some kind of underwriter for this. Yeah. You know, I don't know what it's like in Germany in Monheim, but here in America, you can... There's nothing available here. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but you can, in America here, you can, like, become some kind of non-profit arts organization, especially if you have a large organization like this where you're not, looking to make a million dollars with a jazz non-net. You know what I'm saying? Right. So you can actually raise money because there are people who want to see this kind of music made. There's just not a lot of larger ensembles anymore. And so there are a ton of bigger ensembles that sort of find wealthy backers that want to hear interesting things. And so you could, Paul, try that road. I don't know if it's Germany if there's even like

grants available or something from the government. Some cases there are. for these kind of special projects especially. So it's something to consider, like, who do you know that would want to support this that's not a club? That's, you know, individuals or some kind of organization or even corporation that might want to fund an interesting project like this? Yeah, yeah. No, I think that that's great. And I think that there's always something available if you're resourceful, you know, from an individual, from an organization. You just got to get out there and kind of beat the pavement.

I would also say that as you're getting it going, you can look at alternative, like, I don't know, say you were putting a tour together with a non-ed. You know, it's like there's a little bit of a liability that you have to pay more people on your travel expenses or more. But you've also got more people available so you could do like some workshops. You could do some outreach things and take advantage of having more people and send them to a couple different places at the same time. So don't always look at more people as a bad thing. You've got more resources, you know. You've got more folks available, which is nice. And the nice thing about what you're describing here is there are strings.

And, you know, this case of patronage that I was just talking about, about having someone underwrite your shows is super commonplace in the classical world. So, oh, my God. It's like the world's been built upon that. That's the only way it exists. So you might actually, Paul, go that route, you know, say like this is some kind of classical crossover or situation. where you find people who are interested in that world to help you out. See, normally we say, hey, buddy, don't patronize me. But in this case, we're like, hey, buddy, patronize me.

Please patronize us. Yeah, it's a different kind of patronization. I was talking to someone about this the other day about patronizing. And this really is very common in the classical world. And I feel like jazz musicians don't take advantage of it enough. It's starting to happen a little bit more. but it's still not nearly as much as it is if you think about like chamber groups

or new music or things like that or modern composers. You know, they're all living off of someone else's dime so that they can make their art. But jazz musicians are still like playing Sunday brunch gigs, you know, trying to like 50 bucks, trying to like make it work. But like, you know, go schmooze, go shoulder to shoulder with some folks who like what you do.

Well, actually, I just realized I screwed that patronize. That's patronize. That's actually a different thing. Maybe that's why a jazz musician like me doesn't even understand the difference. You've been out of America for three weeks. You already forgot how to speak English. patronized, patronized. There's a fine line between the two, but they are different.

They are different. Cool, man. Well, that's a great question, Paul. Thanks for sending that in. Hey, Peter, if someone wanted to leave us a rating and review, where would they go? Where would they go? They would go to wherever they're listening to this podcast right now. And we're doing a little bit, we're getting a little more, I don't know if you know about this, we're getting a little more selective with our video output.

So this one is available only for listening. We're going to go back to our OG routes for a lot of these. So you really would go to Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, wherever you are finding and consuming this podcast, you can go there and just leave a rating review. And the beautiful thing about that is what? Is that when it's audio only, we don't have to wear pants when we record? No, no, about the rating when they give us the rating or review. Oh, the rating and review. Yeah. Wow. Okay. TMI.

I don't know. What are you alluding to? Well, I was going to say it spreads, it helps to spread the word and get this podcast in front of people that it may be beneficial. We're doing this to help, you know, to spread some daily jazz advice, a little bit of humor. We don't guarantee that part. But we, you know, we like to talk jazz, build up a little community. And so when you leave a rating review, it seems like it's just for Adam and Peter's ego. And to tell you the truth, it mainly is. That is a big part. But it's not the only part.

There's also the outreach side. And the way these things work is when we get ratings or reviews. Somehow these algorithms get this podcast in front of more people. And that's kind of how we spread the word, as it were. And on this trip, I've met so many folks, I forgot that you can tell you about this. So it's good. We're having a chance to talk and catch up. But I've been meeting a bunch of folks that are like, love the podcast.

You'll hear it. You know, almost every day traveling around in France, Germany for sure. Actually, Slovakia, I just got here today, so I'm not sure. I'm actually leaving tomorrow. So I hadn't heard, but I think we might have some listeners here to Italy, Italy. So that's, it's really been fun to kind of connect with people. So yeah, if you get a chance, leave us a rating and or review. We'd appreciate it.

That's so cool. You know, I'm about to go to Japan, November 11 through 18th. So if you got to eat the listeners over there, hit me up. Let's hang. That's right. That's right. For sure. And actually there was just something I saw.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to pull it up right now, but I think we've cracked the top 20 for music commentary podcast on the Apple's list. I don't know if you knew about that. I heard about that. Yeah, Andrew's been, he put a poster of it above his desk. Oh, really? Super proud of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, cool. Yeah, I'm just looking if I can see. But I want to say it's definitely like in the number 14. What? Actually, we peaked at 11. Yeah, we were 11 for the United States of America music commentary. Apple podcast ranking. That's awesome.

So I don't know if that means we're going down now. But, you know, it shifts every week. So anyway, we're currently at 14. So we're very excited and proud of that. Cool. What else we got? We're sponsored by Open StudioJazz.com. Did you know that?

I did know that. I'm here right now. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you are there. So we are coming upon the holiday season. So we'd like to invite you to peruse our catalog. And just to put a little bit of a bug, We're going to have some very special holiday stuff, some like incredible specials.

Everything's going to be different than last year, first of all. For those of you that were around, we're going to have contests, we're going to have freebies. We're giving away a free Tesla with every purchase of the, okay, am I taking it too far now? Yes, I think you're definitely taking it too far. Okay, but we're going to have some good stuff. So I don't want to oversell it. But yeah, we're going to have some really good stuff. So tune into that and especially check out our latest course, which is the jazz piano technique,

a little thing that you and I collaborated on and we've been getting some really good feedback. We're actually, would you say we're getting a little bit too much good feedback with asking for more fingerings your mention about that? Yeah, you know, we're getting a ton of fingering requests for that course. So we're going to, we might put some more on there for you all. We tried, we thought it was like, okay, we're not going to give them everything. We're going to make them do a little bit of the groundwork. But newsflash, people want to be spoon fed.

So that's what we're going to do. Well, I mean, remember we talked about like we felt like we put so many fingerings in and we went to, you know, I think four, six keys or whatever. Remember, we were like, we need to stop because we're going to overwhelm people and they're going to feel like they have to go through all this. And it was a four-week. It's a four-week program. It's a boot camp.

Yeah, yeah. 20 days. So there's only, and we didn't want this to take over to people's practice. But we have all these guided practice sessions, as we call them, which is your compass to jazz improvement. And, you know, it's all about improve your dexterity and your control and your technique and all that. So check that out when you get a chance. Jazz Piano Technique, Volume 1, Pentatonics.

That's awesome. Right? That's right. And until tomorrow, you'll hear it.