You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Overcoming Adversity

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

Peter and Adam discuss what it's like learning music, amongst other things, while managing physical/mental health.Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hey. We got a speak pipe today. Do we? We do. And this is the intro to the episode. I'm Adam Anus. And I'm Peter Martin.

And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Music advice coming at you. Coming at you. Today, you know, some days, Peter, it's 1057 and I'm spent already. How is that possible? My bad. My bad. What do you mean?

But you look a little, I see the slightest bit of agitation in your brow. I'm agitated. You know what it is? Let me be honest here. I've switched my schedule this week. so I've got a lot of writing to do. So I started waking up at about 545, 530 so that I can be writing by about 637. And then I work out at 8.

And then I come into here to record the You'll Hear a podcast. So I'm already like, listen to me. I can't even talk. You know what I'm saying? I'm already kind of burnt. I'm already spent. This is a real problem. Well, I would say that it brings up an interesting issue because I think, you know,

creativity and like when we can go into a flow state. Like we're at a time now where we have more information. about how to structure our day, you know, what is the morning routine? Ever look at those little videos? You've seen these optimization bros who are up at 2.30 in the morning? You know what I'm talking about? Well, you just kind of sounded like, what, a second ago would you describe you? Well, that's what I'm inspired, but also, geez, Louise, how do you do anything past 11 a.m.?

I'm pretty spent. I mean, there's a fine line between an optimization bro schedule and my parents who are, they would not be embarrassed for me to say they are senior citizens. The senior citizen schedule. Yeah. Very close to an optimization bro schedule. Should we do a tightrope box? Should we do a little bit?

Should we just see? We tried a couple of times in the intro to play, and I couldn't hack it. Right. I can barely talk. I can barely talk for them. Let's just, let's do a medley of what we were playing. Ah, that's where we started. I'm hoping with the red light on.

All right, see, that's so much better. I was a lot better. See, I knew that if I just had a little bit of blood flowing. When they talked about music is healing? Music is healing? Right. Or destructive. It either brought us up or it destroyed my confidence.

I think it's one of the other, but I'll let you know how it goes the rest of the afternoon. But you know what? This is the thing that makes jazz music so enticing. You know what I mean? That it's hard AF? Well, that it's hard, like that you're out on the tightrope, right? You are. And sometimes you're going to slip and fall.

And if you slip in the wrong way, that can hurt in certain places. It can hurt in certain places. But it's like, what do we, like, we get so much into the like, what is the scale for this? and what voicing? Am I slowing down and am I speeding up? And these are all such important issues when we're practicing, when we're thinking about music,

when we're talking about it. But then there's the game, right? There's the performance. And I think what we, you know, and in here, we're always like sort of, you know, blurring the lines between those because we're trying to sort of demonstrate things. But that's one of the hardest things to do

to go from like theorizing and talking about music and planning it to, to just play. You know what I mean? And so I think it's a good lesson for us and for the listeners, like always think about when you do structure your practice. And I know like a lot of times I'll say,

and I still firmly believe in this, the idea of practicing performing. I never want to make that sound easy because I know it's not always easy for me, but it's important, right? And so the way we do it here is probably the hardest way to do that where you're just sort of throwing it in there.

So hard. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, we start thinking about like, you know, people are going to be watching this and I've played some stuff on like the intro and on the pod where I'm like, oh, why? And then people like, oh, my God, that was so cool. So, like, you never know how it actually comes across.

But it's just to say that, like, during our practice, if we do that at the end of the practice where we have a little bit, maybe you even taking a break, take a breath, used to be say, go out and have a cigarette. We don't recommend that anymore due to death. But, no, but I'm saying, like, have a little bit of separation, but not too much so that you're still connected with that sort of musical growth mentality and trajectory that you get in your practice. that when you go do practice perform,

which is all we're doing here. Yeah. You know, we're just like, the lights on, like let's play something. That's right. But to have that as part of your daily routine is,

I think can be super inspiring. It can be super depressing at times, but it's all in how we frame it, you know, in order to go for those higher mountains, those peaks and valleys, how do we get in there? And also like,

you know, there's nothing wrong with, and, you know, like, everybody does this to a degree, but the really, I think great players and smart players

really leverage this. It's like, have your go-to stuff. I mean, there's a reason that that's the Herbie thing. Now, he wasn't the first one to do it, but he's, you know, everybody else is sort of imitating him in a way,

even though he was imitating somebody, but it's like, how do you use that? When do you use that? When do you pull out your go-to things, again, in service of the music? Yeah. So that if you're like, oh, I'm kind of,

I'm feeling like a little bit lost. It's okay for us, I think, to go to our go-to stuff. Agreed. Yeah, that's what I was trying to do. It's trying to do it. Trying to do it. Well, this actually is leading us into our speak pipe today. Nobody heard all the awful stuff we played. You're forgetting.

Oh, they're going to point it out. We have a speak pipe from... I mean, before we started recording. Caleb heard. Caleb heard. Caleb's still smiling. Producer Caleb is smiling. We have an anonymous... It's going to the archive. We have an anonymous speak pipe.

And this is actually a really thoughtful question that has a lot to do with what you were just talking about. Oh, good. Let's check it out. Hi, Peter and Adam. I love improvising, but I also have ADHD. and that sort of presents itself in two sort of like big, big issues in my improvising. And one is forgetfulness and other is impulsivity. And they both lead to sort of like bigger picture kind of structural issues in what I'm trying

to do. And so my question is really, how do you practice structure? and how do you, or how do you practice improvising structure? And then I guess more specifically, how do you practice a kind of running it straight, so to speak, and like remembering where you're going and like what you're trying to achieve with a particular solo or, you know, improvisation or whatever? and then how do you kind of stop yourself in the moment from going on what might be considered like too much of a tangent or like what you might consider it too much of a tangent if that makes any sense anyways thanks love the podcast well thank you anonymous appreciate that and

this is great stuff very thoughtful questions yes and yeah i mean i'm i'm i'm I'm sort of, I'm certainly not comparing my situation this morning as I'm just tired and a little bit burnt as someone who's having to struggle with ADHD, which is a whole other thing. But I will remind our listeners, we are both medical doctors. No, we are definitely not. Oh, no, we are not. No, I knew it was one of those. That is a huge hurdle to overcome and certainly not anything I'm dealing with this morning. But I do think everybody has moments where they struggle with things like men.

memory concentration and things like what he's talking about with structure. And so this could be helpful for many people, even if you aren't diagnosed with ADHD and have that kind of issues, these are certainly issues that everybody can help could help with everybody's playing and things that we can work on. And the one thing that I will say just add on in your comment there is sort of baked into your comment about what you're doing are all. a lot of shoulds, a lot of judgment about what you're doing and what you should be playing.

And should I go on this tangent? And should I structure this and should I, you know, and so if I were you, I might start by examining those shoulds. Like, why wouldn't you go on a tangent? Why would you want to have a preconceived structure to your solo? We all do it. It's not like you can get away from that. But it's always something that I like to think about is like, you know, why do I have this assumption that I want to start out like jabbing right we always talk about that oh that's a good way to start so why am I why why do I want to structure it like that and should I like like those should start coming up and those are something that we want to explore in our own personal philosophies with music I would start there with the bigger pictures like why do you have so many

shoulds and what are those shoulds mean to you and are they even important because what you might have is a gift of being able to you know shed all of those expect once you start examining them, the gift is to sort of like examine them, shed them or use them at appropriate time. You mean practice them or shed them from your... I mean shed them like you shed your skin. Okay, got it. All of your expectations.

Of course, you can practice any... You could practice any... You could shed shedding. You could shed shedding, for sure. But to just relieve yourself of any expectations of what your solo should be is a great exercise. We never get fully there, of course, but it's a great thing to think about. Just from a high level perspective.

Yeah. From way up there. That's, and that's the, I think, a great place to start whenever we're feeling, you know, whatever the myriad of ways that we all feel unfocused or lost at different times, you know, the spectrum of that feeling is to start at that highest level and kind of, and think about, you know, kind of the lowest level is like, or the more precise level of like, do I start with jabbing or not? Should I?

But I'm wondering about this idea of should. I agree that's possibly a real limiting kind of thing. But we talk about something, you know, a concept of turning a bug into a feature. I wonder if we could take that even. Because it is a natural thing as much. It's a hard thing when we tell people, don't worry. Don't be judgmental and don't say I should be doing this. But it's a natural thing.

Like we want to know like that's why I like restricted practice because it tells you what you should, what you have to practice. You establish the guard. rails from the beginning and then there are no decisions to make. Right. That's what's so good about it. Right. But performance is actually kind of the opposite of that. So a lot of times people think, but that's that limiting thing of like, wait, which way am I

thinking? You got to think about both. Yep. You know, you have to, and they work together. They work together. Yeah. Turning the should bug into a feature might be like, for instance, with the jabbing. Should I start my solo with the jabbing?

Well, what you should do perhaps is have various different options that you can practice of how to start. So jabbing is a great way. you should have that as part of your repertoire. So you kind of make it a positive thing and make it more of a could. You know, make it more of a spectrum of options.

And then that can be coming a little bit of a limiting or restricted practice in terms of like, well, I'm really good at jabbing. So let me practice starting some solos doing something else. Like what are the other kind of things that I should be doing or could be doing? Yeah.

Yeah. But I think that, you know, like the idea of, am I going off on too much of a tangent? Like, how do we even take that out of the equation of the things we're thinking about. And now I take it out in terms of being like, well, that's easier said than done because I keep coming back to that.

That's okay. But like how do you work on like not worrying about that as much? Nobody, even if you believe everything that we tell you and say, look, don't think about restrictions. Don't think about tangent or not. Be like Herbie Hancock. Be like Buddha in your meditation. Well, that's not going to happen tomorrow,

but that's okay. What does the journey look like towards going towards that mountain top in terms of your approach to playing? And then every little time when you're able to like shun that thought or shed that kind of like worrying about a tangent or whatever, because it's only a bug if we let it be a bug. That's right. If we define it as that, you know, especially in terms of like practice and stuff when we do have a little bit more control over what we can be doing. Yeah. And think about this too, Peter.

The way to practice this, there's only one way to get to get good at this kind of stuff. And that is to actually experience it again and again and again. You can't just think like, okay, well, I'm going to really focus now. I'm going to focus. I'm going to be in the moment. You can't think that once and then just do it. You actually have to practice this and make it part of your daily experience. Like see where the path, like get what the Buddhist call right direction, right?

And just point that way. Yeah. And then everything you do on the path should be towards that direction. Right. So obviously, you know, you and I are big on talking about meditation for this. To me, there's nothing better for focus and concentration. especially in my music, as I was just struggling here as we're starting this episode and I can't concentrate and I'm just fucking up left and right, to be honest, like really messing up what I'm,

there's no connection to my body. The thing that saves me when we started softly just now, when we started playing, was just focusing on my breath, using the tools that I've been practicing now for nearly five years very, very strictly and just getting there, like finding myself in my chair, my seat, my feet on the floor, feeling the things that I, but it's not like I just, okay, now I'm going to think about these things. Like I work on these almost every day for now for like I said, almost five years, right? And so I don't have to like, it's something that's so well known the feeling of it that I don't have to think about it. I can just kind of get in there when I'm struggling. And I'll, and I realize too, there is no finish line. I'll never

not have some sort of struggle. I'll never, I'll never like go too long where I have days like today where things feel disconnected and I'm not able to like get into it immediately. And that's why we practice things like concentration. And it doesn't have to be like a religious thing. Check out like John Cabotzin or Sam Harris or one of those folks that does sort of like the secular meditation, mindfulness meditation stuff. It's super, could be super useful no matter what you're doing, honestly. Yeah. And I wonder if we could even layer into that sort of what are the cues. that you use to get in that place. So it's like we acknowledge that like, you know,

you know you have certain skills and you've developed a way to be able to access those at different times. So we have those as musicians, as players, as teachers, as podcasters, right? But when we do, like, that's all great when, you know, unicorns are dancing around through a meadow and the world is beautiful

and the stock market is up and everything is perfect or whatever. It's like somebody that has like a really good, like, Zen approach to like their finances and they maybe have money in the market. Do you think they're looking every day to see where the market is on that day and taking their self-financial worth from what their number is? Yeah, you think they're super critical of every move that gets make now. That's not how that works. I mean, Warren Buffett on some days loses hundreds of millions of dollars, but you think he's even thinking about that?

Yeah. Well, and that's how I identify when I'm in sort of a kind of stuck place. Like this is, I mean, this couldn't be better because of just what happened at the beginning when we tried to. That's why I set up this whole morning to get us to this place. No, but I'm a little bit perturbed at my whole thing. physical situation because I'm tired, you know what I mean? Because I woke up a little earlier. My body's still adjusting to this. But what great training for gigs, for performances, for teaching?

That you're going to be, like, that's what I'm saying. When I say unicorns dancing around, that's the perfect. Like, I love hearing musicians in that situation, but I really love hearing great musicians when it's like the monitors go off. Like, I love seeing great players. How do they respond to some adversity? Because it's still going to be great. It might be in a different way.

And the trigger for me, when I know that I, I, I, I should probably sort of regroup, focus on my breath, hear everything in the room. That's an important thing, too. I know that that's the case that I'm going to want to use those tools when there's a very thick, loud inner monologue, usually self-critical. Like, what are you playing, dude? Like, you know, no one likes what you're doing that little kid. You're playing this shit in front of Peter Martin and Caleb.

Like, these guys think you suck. Like, these are the thoughts. Maybe. These are the thoughts going through my head. It gets irrational. It gets totally irrational. And I know that. But when I hear that voice getting louder, I know, okay, it's time to regroup and focus on the moment.

And I know also what it feels like to be in the zone, right? To be in flow state or whatever. And there's not a lot of intrusive thoughts happening. And if they come, they come and go very quickly. And I'm really hearing, again, everything in the room. I'm seeing everything in the room. My head is up and out. I'm seeing expressions on your face.

You lift your hands up and the keys keep being playing themselves. There's a physical thing where if I'm closed off, I'm not making eye contact. I'm being self-critical. I'm not really hearing anything other than my mistakes and I'm lingering on those mistakes. But when I'm out of it, I'm out of it. I'm looking at you. I'm looking around. I'm hearing everything.

I'm just letting the music flow out, not judging anything. It takes a lot of practice. Again, this is not something you can think about once and happens. You have to experience. it again and again and again and again. So I would say, Anonymous, make that part of your practice. Like what you were saying, Peter, make the performance part of your practice and practice getting in your head and getting out. And practice bringing your attention back if you can. Absolutely. And you're going to have a steeper hill to climb because of that ADHD diagnosis

for sure. Right. But I do believe that you can still work on the same things. And yeah, that's so well said. Yeah. But it's a great question. And I applaud you coming on and and asking that question. Yeah. Until next time, you'll hear it.