You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Our Biggest Musical Challenges

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

Peter and Adam discuss their biggest roadblocks in playing, practicing, and performing, as well as what they do to overcome them.* Learn how to master the major scales - check out Adam's Major Scale Course* Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipe at https://link.youllhearit.com/speakpipe* Support the pod by spreading the word with the link openstudiojazz.link/yhi* Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested 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, Adam. What's up? What are some of the biggest hurdles in your life? Well, there's an actual hurdle on the track down the street at the middle school that I haven't been able to jump over since I moved to this dang house. Is that a hurdle or a berm? Well, let's find out. I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin.

And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast. Music advice coming at you. Coming at you today. Sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJaz.com for all of your jazz lessons. needs. Hey, Peter, you know, I have a new course out called the Major Scale course. It's been a big hit, man. People are really digging it. I'm so excited about it. It's a fantastic course, and I'm so glad that people are open to, you know, a little bit of a reimagined, reinvented

approach to the major scales. Because a lot of times people have eyes roll and say, oh, I know the major scales or I'm bored with the major scales or give me some cool voicing. Give me some 36251s, dude. But the great response to it has been really inspiring because this is getting back to basics, but getting back to basics in a little bit of a new way and really fundamental, foundational stuff that I think is needed. And it's a really fun course. Yeah, we practice scales not just linearly, but in thirds, in triads, in seventh chords with pivots, with approach notes. We practice with you in all 12 keys and multiple tempos. You are going to like this course. Check it out. That's the major scale course. Openstudiojazz.com

slash major scale course. And you know what's exciting about this is like to me, it's kind of like watching, if you were seen like before in NBA game. Well, Adam, you know, I think the last NBA game we went to, we were together in New Orleans, Chicago Bulls versus the Pelicans. And you see these great players, world-class players, warming up, doing the same drills that you or I may do if we were invited to a lower-level game of basketball, maybe at the YMCA. But, I mean, they're starting out. They put the fun in fundamentals.

They put the fun and fun. But it's not like they're doing, I mean, then they, of course, get to other drills, like dunking and different things that are beyond us. But, I mean, they are doing the same drills. But they do them, great players do them at a concentration level and a dedication level and almost like an automated way in that, like, this is just part of who I am as a basketball player. And so I think that major scale, it doesn't get any more fundamental than that. But it's the same thing. It's been really just fun to see it. I've been jumping back into the major scale practice and using them as those foundational drills that we build.

upon. All right. Today we are talking about our biggest challenges. We're talking about challenges in practice, challenges and performance. We're talking about just any stumbling box blocks that might come up in our musical lives. This is something we get asked about quite a bit because, you know, everybody, even the great Peter Martin here has to overcome challenges on the regular. It's like it's not going to stop for you just because you can play through giant steps at 300 to beets per minute. Right, right, right. Absolutely. And I think that I really wanted to talk about this because not only to help folks, and look, whenever we talk about things, it's as much about trading experiences and information and hopefully, you know, somebody will say something that

helps somebody. You're like, wow, I've never looked at it like that or I never thought that. But also in addition to the helping is to realize that stumbling blocks when they come, those are our biggest opportunities for growth. These are our biggest opportunities for development. So if you go into things thinking not, this is not about how do you avoid stumbling blocks. No, this is how do you deal with them? How do you grow for them? So if anybody's looking for like a way to make their life stumble free, their musical life,

and to not have any obstacles in their way, you can turn off right now. But if you're up for growth and up for the inevitable, knowing that those potholes, that those hurdles are going to come, then it can really become exciting because you're expecting them. So then when they come, it's like, oh, cool, what are the skills I'm going to bring? What are the ideas and just ways to navigate the inevitable, you know, potholes and hurdles in the road that I'm going to use and pull out in order to be able to develop even better and quicker as a player? That's great.

Well, I'll dive right in here because, you know, we were just talking earlier that I had my first kind of weekend of Jazz Club gigs here at St. Louis last weekend. And with any gig, there are always going to be stumbling blocks. There are always going to be challenges to overcome. And there were some on this one that I had honestly kind of forgot about because it fits so long since I performed. But the one that kept coming up all weekend, and it's been the one that I think will be the major challenge of my entire musical life, at least my entire performing and recording life and practicing life, And that is the challenge of where is my attention when I'm playing music? Where am I focusing my awareness as I'm playing?

Because, you know, I was so excited to be there. And there were so much cool stuff going on. There were so many people I hadn't seen in so long that it was just a distraction-rich environment. You know, and it was very easy for me to get in my head about like what I was doing or who was there. or what I wanted to play. You know, there was a lot of like, well, I should do this. Like maybe I could do this. But I've luckily been working really hard at being able to recognize when that's happening, you know,

and then trying to get through that and get back to what is important, which is the music that's at hand, right? The song that's being played, what is happening right now with me? You're so good at this. I mean, I know you're probably, it's not, probably not, like, automatic. Like, I think it looks from the outside because it never is with any. human being but to me like when you you came and sat in on this gig and just watching you I could just tell how present you were in the moment but to me the biggest challenge is always staying in the moment staying with the the performance and not getting caught up in any sort

of distraction about you know whether that's a you know criticizing my inner criticic about the music or or any other distraction not not being swept away from that really keeping my focus on the moment and the task at hand. Yeah. And look, I mean, what, how many, how many different possible ways on a live performance does a piano player or any instrument, but especially rhythm section players, you know, like how many different possible ways can we be distracted? It's, it's almost infinite, you know? Yeah, totally. So the, the, the, there's a, you know, there's a glass is empty, half empty and half full with that. The half empty is that there's so many ways to get distracted. This is impossible. Like there's no way to be focused and to play a useful and edifying

kind of performance because it's constant impossible distraction. But the glasses half full is like, well, wow, okay. So I'm working on some ways to mitigate and to, you know, kind of face head on these distractions. So I've got a lot of opportunities to try out these things in my tool belt. you know, to, in the, in the words of Orrin Evans, to pull, pull some things that I put into my backpack that I practiced on. So we've got a lot of different opportunities. You think about like a vocalist that sings ahead and maybe solos and then has to wait while the rhythm section is playing and maybe some horn players are soloing or maybe it's a big band. And whatever it is, they're working on, they don't get to, like, just the amount of time they have to put into practice the things that they're practicing to use the skills that they've trying to develop. they just have way less chance to do that.

So, you know, there's all different ways to look at this, but I always think it's good to lean into a challenging situation because if nothing else, you've got a lot of different opportunities to improve. You know, you just can't get inundated with the possible failure points because there's going to be many. Totally. Totally. Yeah. And if you can really use the opportunity, like, especially if you're still playing, you know, gigs where you're not always performing, right? Where you're kind of where you can be background music or it's a jam session or you're

just playing it with friends. Those are great opportunities to just notice where your thoughts go as you're playing and bring them back to the music, right? It's very much like a meditation practice of like, oh, now I'm thinking about like, oh, I should play this or why did I try that or what's the changes here as opposed to just being like, oh, this is happening right now. and I need to just be in the moment, not think about anything, really. Just let whatever happens happens, try to hear myself in the mix of the music and just enjoy the ride, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say that time when you're doing a jam session or just playing with your friends or like a background gig or whatever, a lower pressure situation, that's actually the time for us to concentrate even harder. That's not the time to be like, oh, this is easy. I can like, no. There's not that much to distract because that's when you have to actually develop the skills that when you get in the high pressure situation, you're able to execute on those meditative, you know, mindsets and practices. I mean, think about like, if you're meditating and saying, okay, I'm trying to kind of focus on something and not let other thoughts creep into my mind. And you're just doing that when you're sitting in the shower and there's nobody around. Or say you're sitting out in nature with everything's perfect.

like just beautiful sounds and no pressure and you can work on that. You better really concentrate on look to develop because what if you're sitting there with somebody's holding a gun to your head and say meditate? Now what are you going to do? It's like, oh, let me not let other thoughts creep into my head because there's a gun sitting right by my head.

Well, the classic meditators conundrum actually is a very equal parallel to what we go through as musicians. Like meditators talk about cocktail parties as the hardest thing to do to to notice what's happening because, you know, that is when, you know, our self-critic comes out and like, oh, why do I say that to this person or like, you know, I guess I got to be charming or whatever. I don't like that person looked at me or something.

You know, when we're faced with other humans looking at us, that can be hard. And that is the hardest part about playing music sometimes, as I was saying on this gig. It's like when you're faced with a roomful of a few hundred people looking at you and you have to, and listening to you, that's not the time to practice this. Like, the practice should have been done. earlier so that you have the skill set to come back to the music and really, you know, that like you said, those informal performances with other people, that's your opportunity to really hone that focus of coming back and being where you should be.

And that's why we talk about practicing performing. So, you know, whether it's a more informal performance like we're talking about, but even as part of your daily practice routine, like kind of use your imagination and place yourself in the performance setting. And I always like to say to do this at the end of your practice session, that works well for me, but it could be anytime. But the idea is that you're going to just really pretend like there's an audience there. And so you might be like, oh, I can't fool myself into there.

It's not going to really have the pressure of people being there. But you can set up the situation of like, say, playing a tune you're working on all the way through and like what you're committing to doing, even if you can't convince yourself there's an imaginary audience there, you can convince yourself that you have to to keep playing without dropping any beats or about going to fix something, which you typically would do as we play through something just for ourselves.

Because you know what it is? It's like, and I'll just say this, this is probably my biggest challenge playing music in my up to this point. And it's, I think it's just here forever. And I kind of lean into trying to improve on it, not to eliminate it. But that would be the challenge of a performance situation

feeling the same as it does in front of an audience or in front of a camera as it is when I'm just sitting the most relaxed playing through something from my own enjoyment. You know what I mean? I cannot get those two things the same. I can get them closer. But I like that ongoing challenge

to try to make that connection because to me that's kind of the promised land of where we want to be where I can be like, wow, all the stuff that I played, it comes back to that whole thing of like, oh, no, you might not like what I played today, but you should have heard when I was playing when I was by myself in the

practice room. No one cares. That was amazing. Nobody cares. Nobody believes you. First of all, it's like, we'll do it now, you know. Totally. Yeah. It's so true, man. Well, I'm glad that we kind of agree on this. This is by far the biggest. I think, I think it's, you know, there's, and it's not like, it's like, oh, this is a challenge that I always have to overcome. It's just one of these things that as a human being, you're always going to be working through. You're always going to be looking for different ways to get back to this. So don't, don't feel down on yourself like, oh, I'm in my head and I'm not focused. Like, it's okay. That's, it's totally natural. It's literally happens. Literally happens to everybody. So,

don't sweat it. Just realize that that needs to, that performance practice, it's not there just for you to show off for yourself. It's there to actually work on this thing, which is to stay focused. Notice where your thoughts go, how they get to be either critical or to inflating your ego a little bit or how they get distracted about like, oh, I'm hungry, or I got all. I got these things to do, you know, the list of things to do. And, you know, just, just learning how to let those things go and come back to the music. Peter, super fun, man. Yeah, yeah. Good stuff, good stuff, man. Until tomorrow. You'll hear it.