You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Peter and Adam's Practice Check-In

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

It's another live edition of You'll Hear It where Peter and Adam take your questions - we start the week off with an update of what Peter and Adam have been working on lately.Interested 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.Monday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)4:00 PM - You'll Hear It Live on YouTube6:00 PM - Bass Guided Practice Session on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Daily Music Advice coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. We are live on YouTube right now answering your questions. If you're listening to this in the podcast, please join us over at the Open Studio YouTube channel every Monday at 4 p.m. Eastern. We answer your questions.

And today we're trying something new. We're trying a lot of new. If you can imagine what just happened, you missed it. We don't know which screen's going where. Yeah, we did a bunch of new stuff. What? What is going on? I'm sorry, I cut you off there.

You were saying some important administrative information. No, you know, we thought we would start this recording with a little, with some segments, some catch-up segments, right? So we'll start with some check-ins, a couple of check-ins, and then we'll move on to a Q&A. How does that sound? That's right. And if this proves as popular as we think it's going to. Oh, it's going to be popular.

And, you know, you can always let us know by smashing that like button. Literally dozens of people. Now, if you don't, this is the way this works. If you like the segments, if you like the show in general, if you like ads, I'm if you like me, if you like anything, if you like these beautiful blue lights, you're going to smash the like button, which is the thumbs up. If you don't like it, you're going to do nothing, okay? We're not actually smashing the, because the down button means like that has repercussions

on us, right? Yeah, give us some likes. We've only got a few right now. Just hit that like button. And that way everybody can hear it and see it. And you'll, wait, you'll like it. Wait. You'll like it.

Let's get to the check-in. I like this idea, man. So we're just going to start with a practice check-in. Is that right? Yes, we're going to do a practice check-in. I thought this would be a good chance. for us to be like, how was you practiced during the last week? Because this is a weekly kind of situation here.

Yeah. And we were talking about how we were kind of accountability partners. And we had the check-in for a while, which proved successful with the, what did you say no to until the whole world said no to everything. And then we had to say no to everything. So that we didn't need anymore. But we've both been doing some interesting practice and talking about it. So I thought it would be good kind of accountability and maybe illuminate the folks and

eventually they can even be checking in with us. Right on, right on. So, man, since last week, so I bought that book that you recommended to me called Peak Performance. And I'm about halfway through it. And it's great. Actually, we talked about it a little bit today on the daily guide of practice session earlier. But I've been really into the stress and rest thing. Like I've been really tweaking how stressed am I making myself during my practice sessions,

really trying to get into that sweet spot. There was a great analogy in the book of you want to. The idea is that you will stress yourself with your practice and then you take some rest. And I think thinking about it like working a muscle is, First of all, it's something that I've done plenty of in the past, and as you could probably tell. No, I like working out, but, you know, like if you consider it like a bicep, right? Or any muscle that you would lift weights, do some strength training with.

You know, there's that sweet spot between I can't lift this damn weight more than once and I'm going to hurt myself and I can do this all day. It's not really doing me any good, right? So you want to find that sweet spot of stress. Right. And that's what I've been kind of working on this week. But I've also been, so that's part of it. And then trying to, as you were kind of mentioning to me last week, like putting in some targeted rest in there.

Intentional rest, though. It's been great, man. Yeah. Because also what's great about doing targeted rest as part of your practice is it kind of lets you off the hook. Like before I'm resting and I'm thinking like, oh, man, this is like, I should be working. It's not cool to take this 20 minutes right now. I should just keep going eight hours straight until I collapse onto a pile of Wayne Shorter CDs, you know? Ouch!

Ouch! And now it's like that 20 minutes that I'll take after like a nine. 90 minute workout or practice session or 60 minute practice session, I consider part of the session. And I, like, really am allowing myself to unplug. I'm giving myself permission to just get out of the workspace, right? And just really take a walk or go outside or, you know, have a drink of water, checking with the kids or whatever it is, you know. So that's been a game changer. And then one nuts and bolts thing that I was practicing today that I want to share with everybody, which I thought was super cool, was inspired by the Fred Hirsch master class that we

last week on Open Studio, which I'm sure we'll talk about more. Good stuff. Good stuff. But I've been working on these, and what do you know about these? These four note voicings where I try to come up with interesting ways to play. Very basic, like a 251. So here would be like your 251 and C. Right?

So they're quote unquote root position in that they're very low, but using different roots, like different inversions. So this is D minor is over A. Yeah. Right? And the G. is over B and then just going to a root position C. Or you could do it starting on the third of D minor.

Now on that the D minor over A. So I'm doing 5, 3, 11, 7, right? So I have my shell and my A is, we'll call it the root. And then I have a little pretty note in here. It's interesting you think about that is D minor over A. Because I hear that it's like, I mean, it doesn't matter because it's F over A. F2 over A, right?

But if there's a, you know, if there's a, if there's a D down there. And then moving up to B, F, G, and D, and then finally landing on whatever C, you want. And you could do this over, like, I've been practicing this over any, over any note of the chord tone. So again, like, if you wanted to do it on the third, that's a D minor, right? F, C, D, G7, flat 9, F, B, D, A, flat 2. It's a little low. But that's that great thing of being able to hear as you practice. Like what you just said, a little low, people always talking about, like, how do I?

You got to play it. You got to play it. That's what practice is all about. And then so what my decision there, I hear that. And I think that's a little low. So I take out the B, just making three notes. Sounds great. You're doing a little stargazing there as you were trying to feed.

Yeah, not even shoegazing stuff. So this all came out of Fred Hirsch, just really kind of talking about voice leading and our choices and voicing. and I was like, am I being lazy? I'm being a little lazy. I could work on this a little more and get this more fluid as far as. And then knowing that we have a two piano concert coming up and I want to have more low options to give you, to support you, and be just free with it, you know.

So just trying to tell you how much I hate low stuff lately. I should have mentioned that earlier. No, that's great, great, great, great stuff. So, okay, so for me on the practice check-in, I kind of got back into some technical stuff this week and you know it's interesting like I'm very in some ways kind of random to how I start practicing

but oftentimes it will lead to good things like I'm very responsive to the instrument I was having some tuning issues as you know with the instrument here before we could the weather's changing so the you know the humidity in here is going crazy I mean it's getting dry basically but there was just a part of the piano in there that I really was not wanting to play a lot

because the unisons were so whack, and unlike you, I'm not an accomplished, or a semi-accomplished tuner with tools. No, I'm the tuner that when the real tuners see coming, they're like, no, don't ruin this piano. Yeah, but you would have been able to, I almost called you to get these unisons, but I kind of just got into a thing

while I was practicing at the bottom of the piano, mostly. And so that was sort of, I love restricted practice, you know. And it can be, and the reason I said I kind of get into some random things. Sometimes it's as much based upon that, like the part of the instrument that I want to hear but it's such a, what a great instrument.

Not necessarily, the hammer 88's okay. But I mean, an acoustic piano is like just the keyboard in general. Yeah. That you can just restrict yourself to one. So I did that for a couple of days. I was just like playing down only, you know, kind of, I was going up to maybe like G above middle C only. That's it.

Yeah. Oh, man. And, you know, so that kind of became the theme. And it was just based upon a little bit of a random, kind of a random situation. That's really fun. So whatever you were practicing was down there. Nice.

Yeah. And so I ended up doing a lot of technical stuff that I could just do down there. But I practiced some tunes and I was working on some of the Brazilian stuff that I had to learn. I would just kind of – I mean, I go up a little bit. I'm practicing a lot in 7-8-2, specifically some – Oh, that's my jam. Are we going to play that? We might. Okay.

We'll play it on the two piano thing. That's what I'm working on because I know it's going to come up, right? So what is the day to that? That's coming up soon, right? Should we tell the people? Yeah, it's a week from Wednesday. it's, what is that? That's Wednesday the...

12th? 14th, maybe? Seven. Yeah, Wednesday the 14th. We're going to be doing a live stream. That is at 8 p.m. Eastern, PMAM Piano Duo Concert. Yes, that's going to be fun. You're on the Bozzy.

I'm on the Steinway. Well, we may switch around a little bit. I hadn't told you about that. Hammer 88s? Well, no, we're not necessarily switching to here. Well, we may, but I'm thinking it would be fun if we switch between the two pianos. Okay. You know, if the setup allows.

I like it. And yeah, I put up a comment a second ago. We've got to figure up for you because you can't see when I put up the comments, but the folks can see it from Coach Ian here. Someone super cool must have given that book to Peter because he's clowning me because that's who gave me peak performance. So I got to give out props to Ian who did give that to me. He's my running and mindfulness coach.

Nice. And so if anybody wants to check it out. Well, what do you call that when you pass it on? I actually didn't pass on the thing. I just recommended it to you. That's called not spreading the love. That's something different. you know pay it forward pay it forward pay it forward you're paying it forward i'm painted forward

spreading the love pain it's all good it's what's what's going on cool so should we get to some of these questions here oh wait no we still have our other check in oh we have our fitness and diet check in yeah not diet well yeah can't bring up ian and not talk about fitness and diet okay fitness checker why don't you go in first well how's your fitness routine going you're looking fit oh thank you but you got dark colors also i'm not sure no no no i'm feeling very fit so uh i'm so meatless Monday today. Ah, meatless Monday. Meatless Monday is what we're doing.

Now, is this one of those kind of meatless Mondays where it's meat substitute Monday or is it actual, is it like vestible for plant-based? Plant-based. Got it. So we did have some, we made some meatless sausage this morning with the kids and everybody took one bite and it was not for us. Wait, which one did you have? I don't know.

I either got it from, yeah, I don't know. You can't just go out randomly grab it. I know, I know. Meat substitutes. You can get burned that way. But I just, yeah, it was not good. So we're doing that. You guys are still too close to the original.

Like, see, if you're going Monday. We literally had sausage biscuits and gravy on Sunday. Oh, yeah. Realist. No, no, no. That's not, you got to go like a year without it. And then when you come to it, it's not like you don't remember it, but you're just so desperate for anything. Yeah, you're like, wow, this is pretty good.

That's not bad. No, man. So we've been doing meatless Mondays. And then also, I've been really into, so the book I read before peak performance was a book by Yuval Harari called Sapiens, the history of humans. and which is really great and he talks a lot about he's obviously not a fan or as big of a fan

as the agricultural revolution as we all are and I really the last ag big ag the last month or so I've been really trying to eat more like a hunter-gatherer

so just not any processed foods I completely cut out dairy this whole month and haven't been eating any bread which I haven't I wasn't really eat anyway but anything that was like post-agricultural

revolution bacon like anything like that I've been really keeping away from and it makes you feel amazing like you it's a lot of nuts and seeds and I do eat still some meat throughout the week but a lot of just plants

it's just a lot of plants and it's like whole food plants too it's not any of this like fake sausage that tastes like cardboard is none of that stuff it's really really good so that's what I've been doing and then just that and daily walks and daily yoga that's it

nice nice well I actually I think that you know for me one thing that we've been doing in our household is very similar to what you just brought up. And I think it's an important thing that I've learned as on my meatless journey is, you know, whole food plant base. Like that's a proven, it hasn't even been studied enough yet because of some political reasons and kind of entrenched interests in this country in many Western countries that are, you know, very pro big ag, that are keeping this information from out there.

But I think we're going to look back in really even just like 10 years, certainly 20, years and be like wow why do we believe it's going to be like i really believe it's going to be like smoking it actually has some health benefits it's not for everybody but it's fine it's a part of a balanced diet but the idea of whole food plant base as opposed to vegan although they're very it's a very misunderstood thing so i've been kelly's been teaching me about that and the fact that you know from a diet standpoint not diet as in i'm restricting but like what do you like what kinds of foods do you eat the whole food plant base is a very very proven healthy way of eating.

Vegan can be, and I mean, a whole food plant base is generally a vegan diet, but a vegan goes beyond that into lifestyle choices and things like that, political choices and very good stuff. But as we always say, you can eat Oreos and French fries and be a vegan, but you're not whole food plant based. So I've been trying to get deeper into the whole foods,

the plant based, and less of the vegan junk foods, of which there's a lot now because it's become such a popular way to eat, no meat. And so they've got all these, you know, like the fake sausage. You know, they're good. Some of them are good. Yeah. But.

And if for those of you who might be wondering why a couple of jazz pianists are talking so much about their diet, we actually talk about this quite a bit just on our own when we're conversing as friends. Yeah. And I think the older you get, the more you realize how much this actually affects your performance in everything. Not just your day to day, but certainly my practice. Yep. When I'm eating a ton of sugar and drinking a lot, I'm not practicing to my fullest. Like talk about not peak performance.

I mean, just you feel like crap. You know, you practice in a shitty way. And then it's just, you know, it's not as good. So you and I are constantly trying to tweak our diets and our exercise routine. Really as musicians to try to make us better, more effective artists. Right, right. So I just put up a question from Nick, because I know we're still in the checking segment of this situation. But this kind of ties in.

How much coffee do you guys drink? Oh, where is this? Today's espresso speaking of it. Oh, you know, we have it after this before we do the audios usually. All right. Yeah, I give Adam a little. This is part of the benefits of working at Open Studio, even when you're 99% remote. We have an espresso that I provide for anybody.

We have an espresso. Yeah, so coffee. I mean, I do drink coffee every day. And I actually believe in a lot of the kind of mental and physical and even health benefits to it. I know that there's some conflicting stuff and I'm no expert. Oh, should we tell them, should this be the obligatory? We're not doctor? Yeah, we're doctors of jazz, of course.

Jazz doctors. We gave each other honorary degrees. We're jazz doctors, baby. But, you know, I generally drink one to two cups of coffee a day, occasionally three. And this is a big change because, you know, when we were in here working together all the time, I mean, what, we were just constantly brewing coffee and it was like limitless. So you're at three cups a day? At the most. Usually two.

And often one. Like yesterday, I only had one. Today I've had one and a half. and I'll probably have an espresso, so this will probably end up being two and a half, but never over three. Man. Yeah. What about you? I'm at minimum four or five.

Okay. I'm still drinking a lot of coffee. Yeah. Now, even though, even as you, have you seen it affect you differently as you slim down a lot? Is it still the same? No, it's still the same. It doesn't mess with my stomach coffee at all, luckily. Like, Heather can only drink one or two cups before it starts messing with your stomach.

But for me, I drink, and I drink a lot when I practice in the morning. I usually practice a little bit in the morning, something. Yep. And I drink straight on through. I mean, I find that the mental, you know, I don't really do any other kind of stimulants or drugs or anything. So it's, it's not that I'm saying you should choose one of the other. Either do you hard drugs or coffee, but don't do both. No.

But I feel like, you know, and actually, you know, oh, here we go. See, look at that. Lucas said, oh, see, there's some. I thought that we were going to have more like shut up and talk about jazz, you know. But it's not. Lucas says plant-based jazz right on. like that hashtag we're going to start doing that and uh coach says sourpatch kids are vegan and delicious that is true um yeah coffee is plant based you're good yeah i think it's you know it's like

one of these things that in moderation you you got to just really nice thing about getting older is is you get more in tune with your body and kind of how you how it affects your mind like one thing that and this kind of ties in with the with the exercise and health checking in general that i was been thinking about is for my because I've gotten a lot more I'm just mindful about how I'm running and like because I'm getting really good instruction and coaching in that now and so I realized like I before just I go out and run or whatever and I still like the freedom of just doing that and the health benefits and getting out in nature but like this morning I was out running I really tried to pay attention to all the benefits because I know it's not like you can just run

all day so I basically had an hour that was sort of my assignment was what ended up being about an hour of running in Forest Park but I really tried to not just get into like all the I've got to get these miles in and it was an easy run. It wasn't like I had to hit times. It wasn't a workout. It was an easy run day. So I was trying to really just take everything in and I realize there's a part of Forest Park that I go through that's like as close as you're going to be to be in a forest in the middle of a city, which is just amazing. And so I was so appreciative of that.

And I was reminded of the health benefits that we get. We're talking about diet and exercise, which of course are important. But being in nature, especially as we're going into winter now where we're going to be inside more. For sure. And so that was just a, you know, fleeting 45 seconds running through the forest. But I was, I really tried to, I was very appreciative of it. It's a little fleeting 45 seconds running through the forest. I was like a little fairy prancing through the forest.

Yeah, this is going to become the Mr. Rogers show. The neighborhood. No, but it's just, it's really important to get that because that's the kind of inspiration that we can take to our music, that we can take to our creativity. And it also reminded me that, you know, for our practice and stuff, like we have, we might only have like, if we're lucky, say, 90 minutes of like peak performance type practice in a day, actually. Even if you have all day just to practice, and who has that, you know? But even that, like, you might only have 90 minutes where you're really able to do something. So it's like you've got to get your mind right.

And it's almost like find your little 45 seconds of the forest in your practice. Appreciate that. Yeah. And when we talk about falling in love with the process, it's like start to be able to identify that once you're getting there. because that can be the most impactful part of your music, you know, of the day. And so I think as we go through health and wellness and all this, that's the important way to tie that back in to music and to practice so that you, when you do get in front of your instrument,

you're not just like, oh, I got to go through all this stuff. So leave us your questions in the chat. We're going to get to the Q in in a second. But I want to go back really quick. Yes. Because if there was something I wanted to talk about that, I forgot about the peak performance book. So let's go back to our practice check-in.

Yes, back. Okay. One of the things they talked about that I, you know, I know intellectually, and I've used before, but I've kind of let go of, and I've been using the last week or so, which has been really, really helpful. Actually, both in practice and in the diet kind of thing, is they have this whole section where they say, I think it was violinists, where they broke down a violinist at a conservatories practice schedule.

In Berlin. Right? And everybody practices about the same amount of time, which you just have to, at a certain level, everybody's practicing, right? So it becomes a matter of what are you practicing? What are the best students practicing that the not best students aren't? And the best students had a very direct, very clear goal in weeks and months that they were working on. Like this week, I'm going to accomplish this. Right.

And that was their goal. And they would work at that goal in a very focused way. And that's something that I had fallen off on. And I was just like, well, I'm going to be working on this month, right? This is what I'm working on. Instead of by the end of this week, I want to be able to accomplish this, right? Like, I want to be able to do this. And so I have to do the steps necessary to be able to work on, to be able to play this by the end of the week.

And it has to be doable, but you want to stretch yourself a little bit. I hadn't been doing that in a while. And I've been doing that this week. And, man, does that work? That works so well to have focused practice to really put a goal of this week, I'm accomplishing these two things. I mean, make it simple, two or three things, right? I'm accomplishing these three things. here's what I need to do every day to make that happen.

And then do that until it happens. Do your stress and rest, right? Make sure you're stressing yourself so that you get there. Yeah. Man, that is a game changer. Well, and you might want to, are you familiar with the B-Hag concept? Hey. My mom might be watching this.

Whoa, whoa. No, come on, man. Whoa, whoa, whoa. We need a commercial breaker. No, B-H-H-A-G. You know I'm all about the acronyms here. B-H-A-B-H-H-H-H-H-H- Gee, what could that possibly be?

But this is like, this is, B hags are like the two things that you just were talking about. Okay. For the week. For the week. Big, hairy, audacious goals. Right. Okay. Right.

Be hagg. Sounds like you. You got to be a hag. But yeah, I love that. I love when we, you know, it's like the, what's that concept when you have the jar? You know, you've got a jar, a glass jar. And you've got to put a bunch of. Wait, wait.

Tell me more about the jar. You know what a jar. It's a mason jar. So you've got a bunch of big rocks and then a bunch of like little pebbles that you got to put into them. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's like if you put all the pebbles in first and then you put the big ones in. And the big ones are really the bee hags. Let's be honest here, right?

Let's be clear. So, but if you put the be hags in, the big rocks in first, then the little things you can just sort of, they'll fill in all around there. They're going to be carried along with it, right? And when you're talking about practicing and writing down those two big things, that's your great example of that, those big rocks. What's our natural tendency? What do most people want to do? They want to get 100 things done. And then they have their checklist. And then they start with the easiest ones because they want to feel good about checking off. That's not going to lead you to peak performance. That's just going to lead you to getting some little things done. Whereas now the thing about the 90 minutes or however much a day, like say you accomplish one big thing. Oh, man, then you're golden. Don't try to then you've got the whole week to put your other big thing in that same. Then fit in a few of those little rocks. You know what I mean? Kind of chill out, put some little things, have some fun or whatever.

But falling in love with the process is about getting these things organized in a way that your practice routine becomes, the only challenge is like how close are you going to get for yourself to really optimizing it with your coffee, your time of day, how you're feeling all these different types of things. But you know you've got those two big things to do during the week. That might be Saturday and Sunday and the whole week. You're just getting your mind right to get to that point. right? I think, yes.

Sorry, you don't realize this. I just cut to you. Whatever I cuts to you, that means something intelligent has to be said. I had just a couple medium-sized pebbles in my jar that I was... No, let's get to the Q&A. So we could talk a lot more about this. I'm still in my first week of all this from the peak performance, so I'm still absorbing it.

Yeah. But man, just having, to your point, just having those one or two things is... It just takes all the guess work out. It's like, this is what I need to be working on this week. It's great, man. It's really, really great.