You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Optimizing The Shed

Episode Date: August 17, 2022

Peter and Adam talk about how to optimize that shed time in order to get ready for gigs.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

Hey Peter. Hey. You remember Speak Pipe Wednesday? I love that. I love Speak Pipe Wednesday. I participated in Speak Pipe Wednesday. I don't remember a single speak pipe that you left. That's interesting.

Well, it's a thing. You know, I love things. Yeah, obviously you love this thing so much that we haven't done it in four months. Okay. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you listen to the You'll Hear podcast. Music Advice coming at you.

Coming at you today. We are sponsored by Open Studio. Did you hear I changed that up? Because it's Wednesday. What did you say? I said music advice. coming at you. Music advice.

Coming at you. It's jazz. Explain. You know, it's been so long since we've been doing these live together that I completely forgot the gorgeous jazz

explained tagline that you've been doing and then naturally you decided to change it. Well, no, I just wanted to revert because we're reverting back to speak by Wednesday. And also, I have a premonition. Also known as a primo-nition.

Oh, boy. Which is that we're going to drop some music advice today. We are going to... We're not just going to explain jazz. Of course we're going to do that. That's who we're are. That's the blood that goes through our veins. But we are going to actually drop some music

advice bombs. Now, I'm going out on a limb by saying this because I have not heard this speak pipe that we're about to hear. Well, yeah, I think it's going to be more practice advice. Okay. Then, I mean, it is music advice. Practice advice is music advice. We got a great speak pipe by Eric and who has some problems with some gigs. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, he's on stage a lot. You know what I mean? We're on stage, man. Do you like that? I love that.

Caleb loaded a bunch of new McBride things here. Just a couple of, wow. So let me paint a picture for those. This is bad. That's our friend of Christian McBride. These are buttons that only Adam has available to him to press to trigger an audio annotation, as it were, from the great Christian McBride. But, yeah, we got some good. We have the bad one.

Go ahead and play. We can make this a little segment. Basel. BASO That's all it is He leaves the stage Wait Basel

He leaves the stage Wow, it's got a little laughter too A little organic laughter So that's one Yeah Yeah okay That's a good one

That's good I've heard McPryd say that Oh he says it all the time Yeah okay Then there's some cursing in here I might leave out at this point Oh wow This is bad

Yeah it is bad That's a good one We'll see No know where he's getting me from But it's so good You know, Christian McBride has that voice. Oh, it's the, it's a radio voice. Yeah, the V-O-G, as they say.

Yes. God, you know, it comes down from heavens. Absolutely. Well, we've got a great speak pipe here from Eric. Man, we've got a lot of speak pipes on deck. Apologies to everybody, we're trying to get to you all, but we just, we don't, there's not enough. We've been a part for a while, too.

We have. I did like three super nerdy episodes while you were gone. We did a best of or two. So it's good to be back. It is good to be back. You know, and we're fast, vastly and vastly and vastly approaching a thousand episodes. Did you know that?

What are we on? Like 950 something? 900 and something. Oh my gosh. So can you imagine? No, I'm the same. We get these voicemails. We get emails of people like, I just discover your podcast.

I'm going through all of them. I'm like, how are you? No, I don't know if all thousands are available. I think that there's a limit on the Spotify and Apple music systems. That first season, man, when we're in the echo chamber. It was awesome. And we're like. We were young and we were like 16 and 19 years old.

And I'm. Adam Manis. I am a jazz robot. We are here to talk about jazz piano. We're going to make it sound as nerdy and uninteresting as possible. Hey, Peter, do you love jazz piano? Piano. So I'm also inspired today.

I want to say a big shout out to our friend, friend of the pod, Mr. Bob Dubu, who I can hear his supple tones from the studio adjacent to us. Well, this is an exciting day, actually, because we're recording this podcast, and in the next room, Bob is recording a new open studio bass course called the bass triad system. And it's the first time that we've been able to do two recordings simultaneously. We're recording here, he's recording there.

And this is all, yeah, it's patting our head and rumbing our tummy. In our brand new studio, we're in our brand new studio space and just shout out to the new studio space. Shout out to our studio manager, Caleb, for making sure that we're comfy and ready to go here. And yeah, shout out to Bob. This course is amazing, man.

I mean, I'm hearing it now as it's unfolding. The triadic development of the upper extensions of the base situation. Yeah, if you're a bass player, check out this in a couple of weeks. This course will probably drop here, maybe three weeks. And I want to say a big shout out to Bob Debu and Ruben Rogers, another friend of the pods. Ongoing podcast, complimentary to this one, Upright Citizens.

Upright Citizens. That's a good podcast. It's a good podcast. It might be better than this one. Shut your mouth, boy. We're going to link to that below in case you haven't had a chance to check that out. But they've been doing some great kind of, I was just listening to it, guitar, favorite guitarist and how it works with the bass. But it really goes, and don't be scared of it because it's just base stuff.

Yeah. It's base-centric. No, you know, next Tuesday, they've got Bill Fervel on. Yeah. What's you call him? Bill Frazell. Sorry, I tripped up on my. Frithel.

Bill Frithel. Nothing wrong with the Liff. Bill Frizzell is going to be on. Yeah. Which I'm like, why can't we get Bill Fibald? Why are they talking about it? This is such a mature podcast. We don't need guests.

We are the guests. Well, we do have a kind of a guest today. It's Eric, and he's in San Francisco, and he's got a question. Let's hear it. You know what San Francisco is. What? Oh, you're welcome San Francisco for that. Here we go.

This is Eric from Oakland. Double dipping. You guys are kind of to answer. Hold on. Sorry, Eric. I was the same. I was going to say same thing. I'm going to get myself in trouble.

Bay Area. Let's just say Bay Area. East Bay in the house. East Bay. A lot of love for East Bay. Hi, this is Eric from Oakland. Double dipping. You guys were kind enough to answer.

It's a question I had a month or so ago. I've been fortunate enough to be gigging a fair amount with a Brazilian band. And we're not just doing head charts. We're doing really demanding charts with, you know, multi-page arrangements and lots of lines to learn. And, you know, I suspect you guys have that too, where you're spending a lot of your time preparing for gigs.

So how do you think about that with regard to shedding? You know, if I have an hour or two a day, I'm just trying to get my parts together for the gig. And, you know, we're getting a couple times a week nowadays. So I wonder how you think about that in terms of shedding and whether you just sort of say, well, I'm not going to shed for a while. I'm just going to do these parts. And that helps my musicianship. Anyway, let me know with your thoughts. I really appreciate it. Thanks. That's a great question. That's a pro-level question right there. So, yeah, my first thought

is, is that what you're doing is shedding, that preparing for the gig is the most important practice that you can do a lot of times. And it's something that you don't need to feel like you're missing out. We have this feeling, because we talked about a little bit about this on our live yesterday about there's all this stuff to do, right? And there's a mountain of things to do. And if I'm just shedding on the tunes and I'm just learning the lines from my Brazilian gig, am I doing enough? The answer is yes. In fact, you're doing what you should be doing, which is working on the music you're performing most often. And then there's going to be times, Eric, where you're not going to have a lot to do. And that's the time to go back and work on your Phillips exercises or, you know,

get your cold train changes together. You can do that while you do this as well. But I'm reminded that actually, Peter, of like, you know, the thing when you're learning music like this, and especially if it's music that you're going to play a lot, this is an opportunity, Eric, to really go deep into it. Like, can you memorize all of it? Can you learn it in different keys? You were telling me about your experience at the Betty Carter Festival with a bassist there who was blind and he was learning everything by ear and was also the most killing musician on stage because

they were learning it by ear and learning it, memorizing it, as opposed to reading it all the This is your opportunity, Eric, to really understand the ends and outs of this music that you're playing. And that's going to make you grow more than almost anything, I would think. Yeah, yeah. I agree with all that. And I think, you know, maybe the way to frame this, we always need some kind of like reference point or like a framework, I think, for these kinds of issues because they're not cut and dry. It's not like, especially as you start to have the privilege of having more professional. situations available to you that even up to the point of something we were just discussing off

air before we started in terms of like how do you say no to different things when you have too many different interesting professional you know be it writing us you know writing opportunities or playing or touring or teaching um getting that right balance but i think that if we look at sort of a framework of seasonality yeah to our practice to our development so it's you know there's a time and there's a season for like, okay, on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I'm hitting these scales hard on Tuesday, Thursday, Thursday, Saturday. I'm hitting these on Sundays. I'm really doing this where you're very regimented where you've got that time. Yep. Where you don't have as many external professional obligations on you.

But then there's these times when we've got a lot of external things coming on us that kind of define what our time, even to the point of like our possible interaction with the instrument. Like how do we keep a connection with the piano while we can. can barely keep up with our professional obligations of writing or like learning a tune for a gig. You know, the things that are very tactical to the specific gigs that you have coming up. And I think that, you know, the eventual solution is to have kind of a perfect balance of like what you're taking on and what you're not. But that's not always going to be the case. And everybody's going to get out of balance.

So the framework becomes like, how do you stay in balance while you're still able to do these things? How do you get to that kind of, you know, steady and stoic position in terms of, like, I don't think we can look at, I have to go head first into this. I'm going to let all my technical stuff go. I'm going to let all my connection with the instrument. I'm going to let my ear training go. You have to find ways to be hitting that at the same time to being having that same kind of like, you know, awareness and intentionality of how you're interacting with the instrument as you're doing other things where you're checking a couple of boxes, you know, multitask. I hate to even say it like that. No, no, it's not even multitasking.

but if you look at it as, I'm not going to fight this current, right? So if you look at it, I'm going to go deep on the music that's presented here, right? This is an opportunity. So he was mentioning like learning lines of the tune, right?

So if you want to really get inside the line, can you do it with both hands? Can you do it super fast? Can you do it super slow? Can you do it in drop two? Can you do it in like an accortal way, right? Can you do it in the key of E? Can you do it in the key of A?

Like, that's really going deep into this kind of stuff. And can you memorize all of the changes? Can you play it in several key? Right. And with that work, Eric, you will be doing all of the things that you're kind of mentioning here, but you'll also be learning the music that you're performing in a very deep way, and you're going to find that it's going to create a lot of freedom for you on the gig. Yeah, you know, that just brings to mind, you know, if you think about, if you've ever had the opportunity to be in a really high-level commercial kitchen restaurant, you know, the back end of a kitchen, you'll see a great chef and a great team that's finely tuned, that's finally tuned, that's a good. And it's able to, you know, create these beautiful artistic and, and tasty dishes, but they're always, like, cleaning up as they go. Yeah. You know, even if they're super busy or whatever. And I think that the, you know, what we can get from that, it's like there's one way of doing it where you just create,

like if you only have to create one dish for one person, you can just kind of, you know, push your way through the kitchen and have everybody doing that and then clean up at the end of the night. Yeah. But if you're having to do it and then do it again, you know, you have to have that ability to do things that don't seem to be part of the actual job at hand, but they're going to make the next job at hand. So I think that's what I meant by multitasking, where like you've got your main mission of creating this dish, but you're also, you know, doing some maintenance stuff as you go. Absolutely. That's kind of, that's sort of some pro level type stuff. Well, yeah, I mean, if you're working on a specific dish that has like a rue involves with it, right? You can work on that rue

separately as like your foundation. Yeah. And that doesn't take away from the dish. That helps the And you might even be thinking of other things, other courses that you're going to use that for or something. Totally. So if you, like, if you, Eric, if you wanted to work on your time, you can work on in context of what you're playing with this Brazilian band. And it's going to help the band. Yeah. Yeah. Everything. And you're right that, I mean, for me, Peter, I don't know about for you, but like pretty much everything in my adult musician life has been, had to be done almost always through a filter of some project that I'm working on, right? Yeah. Because you just wouldn't have time to do anything else. So, but I've, you know, I do a lot of teaching here. Well, if you have a sugar daddy or

rich auntie or rich uncle, that would be awesome. That would open things up, wouldn't it? Yeah, of course. But who's got that? So, you know, even doing teaching here at Open Studio, I remember just last year, like, being like, oh, like, a lot of the students are asking for me to, you know, teach more of this like Barry Harris's kind of concepts, especially is right around the time that Barry passed and it was heavy on our minds or whatever. And, and, and, you know, it was heavy on our minds or whatever and I really used that as an opportunity to get inside that and understand it more and it helped my own playing. So I started using it my own arrangements, my own performing so that I could teach it better and that helped my playing. But like everything that I do is part of something that is

hopefully going to be performed eventually or taught or part of my musical life. And it all matters. No, it all matters. And I mean, you're listening, you know, Eric, if you want to listen to more Brazilian music, that's part of making you sound better on the gig. Yeah, absolutely. And when we find these little ways to these techniques, and they will get more refined and should get more refined as you utilize them more, but these techniques of combining, not overly combining, not trying to be like, okay, I'm going to spend 30 minutes and I'm going to hit every aspect of my musicality and technique that I need to. Not like that, but the ones that organically can fit together, your ability to kind of check a few boxes, important boxes at the same time as you're

practicing as you're preparing as you're composing as you're arranging that becomes super um helpful i mean i know for for me every time i do arrangements especially composition i think is a little different but arranging i'm always learning a couple of different areas i'm learning um how to better orchestrate yeah and beyond just what's necessary for that particular job you know i'm thinking about the next one too so like even if there's not you know a bass clarinet but i'm writing for clarinet i'm still kind of kind of investigated, learn a little bit about bass clarinet, the range, the sound, or whatever. So that next time I do use base clarinet, I'm a little bit better prepared. It's had a time to marinate.

But also I've used this technique over the years to learn about technology. I mean, that's how I originally learned Sibelius, well, finale first and then Sibelius, was like having to learn it as I went. Dive in. Doing, you know, like a big band arrangement or whatever. So it's kind of like, oh, it would have been better if I'd just taken time to just learn the program. Isn't that how this podcast started? It was like, let's try a podcast.

Exactly. And we learned the technology of doing that. Well, you know, we didn't learn it the first day. Did you, McBride? Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. All right. So, Eric, great question.

I hope that helps a little bit. Yeah, keep on with it. We have a whole other page here. I just want to see. I got to go up to end the embarrassed by you, motherfucker. Whoa. That's hard. That's, you know, I mean, I'm going to slight somebody, see.

Thank you. Man, Caleb's putting some. I have no idea. That's hard. That's, you know, I mean, I'm going to slight somebody, see. We got this one. You're working with anybody. That's Miles, right?

I guess. You're working with anybody. That's creepy. You're making the record. You're making the record. Oh, you know what I have to get. You know what my famous one is Thelonius. That might be me.

We got to get the one where Thelonius monk is saying the Teo Miserro, the producer, is like, you take that one? And Tears like, no, I thought you were just practicing. And he's like, practicing. You practice every time you pick up your instrument. And then he said, he's like, you ought to know that T. You're a saxophone player. Oh, we got to get that way.

Geez, I don't know what to do. Oh, that's a good one. Who is that? I don't know. Geez, I don't know what to do. That might be you. It could be. I said, you're all of your goddamn mind.

Oh, boy. Boom. Caleb, you got to get a not suitable for work tag on some of these, man. Well, okay. Apologies for language. Do we got to put an explicit tag on this episode? No, no, we're good. We're good.

We're good. Well, thanks for all. for the GD. Our bad. Thanks for listening, y'all. Until next time. You'll hear it. Basel.

He leaves the stage. This is what I'm saying. We got to get... There we go. There we go. All right, you'll hear.