You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Peter VS Adam: the Showdown - #12

Episode Date: September 11, 2018

Peter and Adam list each other's strengths and weaknesses. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Anas and I'm Peter Martin and you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast daily jazz advice coming at you brought to you by Open Studio that's right that's right happy Tuesday to you man that's right I love Tuesdays I do I like Tuesdays too it's kind of a chill day kind of chill yeah so today we're gonna answer a question I know this is kind of an aggressive title that we have in there I gotta say I got this is nothing I can win this question this is like it's probably a bad career move no we're gonna turn this into a beautiful love fest if possible but this is Peter Verac versus Adam, the showdown. And this is only because we were asked from Glenn, one of our listeners. Killing me, Glenn, you're killing me, Glenn. Hey, guys, I'm curious if Peter and Adam would do a podcast about each of your strengths and weaknesses, i.e., who is better, more accurate, faster at transcribing, who's better at composing? I haven't quite fleshed it out yet, and I'm not trying to start a competition. Well, clearly this sounds like here is.

Just wondering if it's a topic you've ever discussed and are willing to explore, share or with us. It's a topic I don't really want to talk about, Glenn. I'll be honest. I mean, we've never really talked about this, but what we have talked about, and I think we've gotten into this a little bit on the podcast and how I'd like to kind of maybe turn this into a little, it's kind of a negative into a positive, I think, is sort of self-awareness, and how important that is for our development as musicians, for our ongoing development, especially, I think, as you get into the more, shall we say mature years of your development, which both of us are. So if you want to, now look, some people with their playing are not really interested in

continuing to develop, which is fine. But most musicians want to keep developing, which is great because this is something that we love to do. Yeah. So it's like cooking or something or, I don't know, like beer, home brewing or something that you're passionate about. You're usually not just like, let me just go with the status quo. I want to keep getting better.

And I think having self-awareness and about what your skills are. strengths, your weaknesses can be one of the most effective ways to map out how you're going to improve. Yeah, I think being able to recognize your weaknesses is a key indicator of how much you're going to be able to improve. Being able to really focus in on those. But then I was thinking about this too after reading this question. It's like trying to recognize your own strengths can be valuable. You can really make some good artistic choices if you know what you are great at and how you can reach people. Right. But that's almost more. difficult than being able to recognize your weaknesses, if you're honest. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah,

I mean, I think the weakness is that in terms of the self-awareness always comes a little bit easier. But recognizing the strengths when you do that, the important thing about it is not to just say, okay, I'm good at this. Let me just work on my weaknesses. Because a lot of times we want, and it's natural, I think, for especially the creative side and the artistic side, that it reflect really what our strengths are and that we want to continue to develop them. continue the maintenance of them and not just be like, oh, I've got that part of my playing together. I've got good ears so I can ignore it. Yeah, of course you don't have to spend as much time maybe in your practice routine on that, but don't ever just sort of take it for granted for sure

and always kind of understand, you know, less so more, I think, you know, as we get older, the way I feel about it, it's less about comparing yourself to others as comparing yourself to where you are and where you want to be and are you moving in that. And I would even say that as you get older and you get more experienced at this kind of stuff, it starts to pull back even further where like I don't consider, you know, things that I'm not good at yet, a weakness. I mean, I recognize that I have to work on those. But really the weakness that I'm working on is what is it about, you know, what kind of personality change can I make to be able to get to those things in my lifestyle right night?

Like what, like one of your strengths is not, obviously it's a bunch of piano stuff. But the reason why you have that piano stuff is because you're incredibly meticulous and you're incredibly detail-oriented and you work super hard at it. You know what I mean? And you've developed the personality where you can work those things out. That's the real strength. Like your eighth note lines are a strength, but that's not like the reason you got there is because of a personality strength. And I think the older you get, you realize like those are the strengths and weaknesses that matter most. It's like getting, you know, those personality traits stronger that help you.

to develop as a musician and as a person. Yeah. I agree with that. And I would say, too, that those personality traits, be they strengths, weaknesses, or oftentimes we're somewhere in the middle, that we can affect change on ourselves when we get that self-awareness. And it's important to not to be like, you know, I'm a disorganized person or I don't have good ears or I don't. Like if you tell yourself that enough or if you're told that enough when you're young,

you kind of accept that as who you are. but we can all change ourselves. Now, we could, like, you know, there's certain things that are harder to change than others and we don't want to spend as much energy. I'm a short man. I'm really going to work this next year on becoming taller. That's going to be tough in my age, you know. But that's actually not as much of a personality thing.

So outside of the physical, you know, things, once we get into, you know, strengths or what we could perceive as weaknesses, we can turn a lot of those around, and we should. It's all about kind of balancing where we want to go as far as the promised land with what our art is. I think one interesting thing, and I was just thinking about this between you and I, I've learned a lot from, and I think that we can all learn and affect those kind of personality and that become musical traits from our friends or other people we admire. So like one thing from us working together the last few years, even pre you'll hear it, was that I saw that you had a great ability to, you know, tackle really interesting artistic projects and, like,

take them to completion in a very, like, disciplined way, you know, whereas, you know, and so I kind of adopted some of that. I didn't even necessarily think about it so much. It was just something that I saw and it was like, okay, let me try that. And then that worked. And as in before, it was more about like everything has to be perfect and so I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to finish it. And I saw you doing a lot of projects that. Definitely weren't perfect. Well, I mean, well, not only that, they didn't necessarily need to be, but going into it, if you thought, can I get this to the level that I want to, you would have maybe been. discouraged and not done it. You ended up getting it to the level that was more than acceptable.

It was really good. And so like I started, I mean, it's a little bit about like taking chances on different things and kind of diving into that. And that kind of inspired me. So I think, you know, there's all different things. Yeah, there's like, what is your technique on this? What I mean, Jeff Keiser was in here. We were both like, when he goes into his two-handed thing, it's like, it was ridiculous. It's amazing. Like, obviously he's way better than almost anybody alive at doing that. But there's also a bigger, I mean, that's like just one facet of him. He's not. He's not. a one-trick pony and you know your ability to write for a lot of different ensembles in a super interesting way where you are able to channel your your own voice in a very authentic way you know

is one of your big strengths that I see but it's not the only thing that you do and it also doesn't only manifest itself on those projects like I hear that in your playing as it just a straight jazz trio player too it's part of you yeah yeah yeah and it's something that makes your style so great and so interesting oh thanks man yeah yeah I agree that it's like those those those things that you can notice in other people. I mean, I always tell the story about you that, like, you know, the first time I went to your office when, like, you had this office upstairs here, and you had charts that were, like,

pretty well organized. And we had done a couple gigs where you had sat in with my band, the 442s. And you had those charts, like, filed away under the 442s. And I was like, oh, man, like, he's ready to go for the next gig. And that to me, like, spoke, like, it was an aha moment of like, oh, shit. Like, I got to get organized here. Of, like, you know, that's why Peter Martin is Peter Martin because he's that, that has that level of detail covered. It's because I got that count at the Office Depot.

That's what makes me me, man. But you had that, you had that level of organization that I didn't have and that now, like, the last couple of years, like, that's what I have been working towards is to, like, getting myself organized in, in all regards that it's not just random. that you have this level of quality, right? Well, and I think that that goes, yeah, that goes along with that self-awareness thing, because when we're younger, we can get away, not only can we get away with kind of just the brute strength of our talent and our energy and stuff, but we also don't actually know enough about ourselves yet. I mean, yeah, it's good to be organized when you're younger too, but we don't really have

that much to be organized. No, yeah. You know what I mean? It's true. Because we don't have all of our thoughts complete, and I think that you hit that stage, And, you know, I did too, really not that that long ago either. It wasn't, I mean, you might have seen that at, you know, at that time. But we start to get to the point where we're like, okay, life's ticking along here.

Like, what, like, what a change do we want to have on the world? Yeah. You know, from our little place behind the piano or whatever it is, like, how do we do that? And when you have, you know, some big ideas, not even, like, grandiose, I'm going to go to Mars or anything like that, but just, you know, the kind of things that we both are doing together and individually and just mainly, artistically in terms of our playing, like what we want to be able to get up and do on a gig, then it's like you start to reverse engineer and say, okay, how do I organize things? And so for me, it's like, I remember going through this period where I was like, okay,

I've got gigs, I can get gigs, but I want to do gigs with people that I want to play with. I'm confident and I have enough self-awareness to know what makes me happy musically and know that that's probably going to be good for my playing. Yeah. And certainly for my psyche and my spirit and everything. So it's like those people, I started organizing the music. I'm like, if the 442's call, I want to be ready to go, have the music, be able to, like, do that. I mean, believe me, there was a bunch of scattered music you didn't see from people that I wasn't interested.

Well, no, now I know you better. There's this sheet music everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, but it is like, you know, you just, you want to start organizing your life. And I think, you know, we both have different routines, but we have some similarities in terms of what we work on in our practice. Because I think both of us don't feel like we have enough, you know, the optimal amount of time to practice is kind of all day. Yeah. Where you just play and then you kind of cheat.

chill and like look out the window and then come back and play and just kind of chill and like work on things in such an organic flow. It's funny how quickly you start taking for granted those those, remember those like six, eight hour sessions when you're a kid and you're just working and like, man, what I wouldn't give to have that. You know what I mean? And you just don't. Life happens and you just can't. But this is why I think it's important to, you know, why you've developed and then, you know,

me sort of following your lead of these systems, right, of like organization of your practice routine, your writing of your professional life, you know, of having the charts for the different gigs and being prepared as much as possible. I mean, that all starts adding up to, you know, a very, very world-class level of person and musician that, you know, we're always striving to be, I think, you know, this is part of it, man. Yeah, and I mean, I, you know, I've been around some people that I really admired and looked up to at the time and still do, and are, like, truly world-class. And, like, one that's just popping in my mind now is, Sir Simon Rattle, the great conductor,

formerly of the Berlin Philharmonic. Now I think he's back in the UK. He's got some great memes on YouTube of him just like, man, looking crazy, yeah. He's got like the Aurehonic. He's got the Aurehonic of conductors. He's cool, man. He's a great conductor.

He's a great conductor, great appreciator, and really very deep knowledge of the jazz world. But the one time that I worked with him, he came into the kind of talk through before the rehearsal, and he had our charts and one of them was an arrangement that I did like he had made little notes

this is just like what I would consider a hack arrangement you know I mean not if you go to a community orchestra or even like a mid-level orchestra is pretty good but this is the Berlin film art right this is Simon Rattle the fact that he's even having to spend time

like looking at my notes but he treated it like he had it in his folder he came in there and he knew it that's why he's like I had a point exactly but I'm like he could get away with like let me have my sister or really he could just show up at the rehearsal and just be

and it would be fine sure but I mean he's pro he's pro and so that those little things all started to add up where I was like let me get my beep together and really treat things of that I want to be part of and anything that I agree to do I'm going to treat it that way what I've gotten better at is if it's something I'm not interested I'm not going to go in and just have something just not going to do it yeah you know and so yeah in terms of okay we didn't quite answer the question I know I told just it's going to turn into a love test that's how it is as far as like specific things it's like I mean obviously, you know, Peter Martin is Peter Martin is like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to try to compete with the piano playing. And then like, you know, I think all the transcribing is,

that's like. Yeah, I think we're both pretty, we're both pretty good. I mean, you have really good ears. I mean, I think everybody, when you get to a certain level, has the same kind. Like, I don't know. I don't know how you could be really great at transcribing. We should get Mozart and Bach. Who's better? Who's better at composing? Yeah. And then, yeah. This is crap. Forget this. And you're not going to flesh it out today, Glenn. I would say one thing that's interesting,

and I don't know that we've ever talked about it, I'll just say this in terms of competition between pianists, because somebody that we both know, I won't call him out, just told me the other day at Boston. He's like, man, and this is a really good young pianist who used to always be like, Peter, you're the greatest piano player in the world,

and now he's up in Boston. And he described me, he's like, Peter, you're like the best piano player in the Midwest. Like, I'm going down fast. So the more he tries, once he gets to Chicago, he's going to be like, you're the best in Missouri. And then it's, you know. But I mean, I really think that, you know, one of the great things about us working together, and certainly you guys hear the report that we have on, you'll hear it is very indicative of our actual friendship

and musical relationship and kind of our views. But also part of the reason that I brought you into the Open Studio Fold in the beginning was that I really saw a nice sort of dove-te. tailing of our personalities and our skills that really go a lot deeper than just we're both pianists, so there's going to be a clash. You know, first and foremost, we're both musicians. And that's what really this is about. We both have that connection, of course, as pianist and, you know, composition and arranging,

a lot of the things that go together with pianists, but I'm a big believer in bringing together people that, you know, don't have the exact same musical vision, but kind of have the same philosophy about music, you know, a passion for music. It's almost better if you don't have the exact same vision because you fill in so many the gaps that I don't have and I feel in some of the gaps that you don't have. That's true. And so that as we've been working on the Open Studio project and stuff, I think that we really have a, and that was the whole reason for bringing in Jeff Keiser as well is like,

you know, I mean, in a lot of ways, I've been competing against him since I was a teenager. I remember hearing about him as, and we're about the same age. Right. We're both from the Midwest. And then I remember he got the Art Blake again. I was like, oh, that was supposed to be my gig. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, the Ray Brown gig, he got us like, ugh.

And then he left, and Ray Brown called me. I was like, ah. But then keys are deciding to come back and stole it back. Yeah, you know. But then as you get older, it's really not. But now who's cutting who checks, man. Yeah, right. That would be great.

But, I mean, you know, and now it's like we've played on so many of the same gigs at different times. I mean, I call him to sub for dying reason. He does amazing job. And, you know, we've both done a lot of gigs at different. We've even done some gigs at the same time. I was playing piano, he was playing like keyboard. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

And so it's really one love in terms of, especially in the piano world. It is. There's something about the, you know, we talked about the piano personality before. Yeah. I think it's just because it's like, there's so much responsibility. It's so hard. And there's, you know, to be like to cut someone who's, who you know is working towards the same musical goals as you. It doesn't make sense.

Right, right. So cool. Well, Glenn, sorry. It might not have got the answer you. We're hoping for. Well, we'll have a, we'll have a. spicy day someday probably or feel a little like we're feeling a little pissed off with each yeah exactly yeah all right so it's Tuesday and yesterday we were saying um you were asking about ratings

and reviews why don't you kind of tell the people how that process works while i look up and see what see what's been happening well the process works like this you go to it iTunes you go to the podcast step one you go to apple podcast yeah and then you find the you'll hear it podcast you give us a seven to ten and a half star rating oh i like that those are impossible but you'll see what happens when you do it Minimum seven, is what you're saying. Minimum seven star rating. So seven is like, meh. Yeah. Well, what you do is you give us, because you can only give five, technically, on the stars.

You get five. Are we sure about the, did we check? Remember, we sent an email to Apple asking them, could we break the system? Can we push it? And what do we receive? I received a letter from Steve Jobs' ghosts saying that's not how I designed it. Okay, got it. And no, no.

So, yeah, leave us five stars and then, like, additional stars in your review, which you write next to the stars. Got it, got it. Okay, and speaking of that, and then, so, yeah, the rating is kind of your entry point. We love you for that. Thank you. But then the review, you know, fleshing out a little review is even better because we get to, you know, get a little feedback. Positive or negative.

It's all good. Positive. We don't edit this. We don't control. So three days ago, we got a five-star review. This is from Al-Trucker, six, from the USA. Al-Trucker six. And the title is, great way to start the day.

exclamation point. I'm a recent subscriber, but listening every morning really sets my mind in a musical and creative direction for the day ahead. I really enjoy how you guys convey a lot of experience and useful info on a universally relatable level. If you could consider doing a pod on the different kinds of jazz scenes around the state's world, that'd be sweet. Keep up the great word. All right. Haven't we done something? I feel like we did an episode. We did something like clubs or venues or something. Maybe that was it. Maybe not the scene. That actually might be cool. That would be fun. I don't know how much we know. You know, scenes are, we'll do it later, but scenes are fun to talk about.

Yep, yeah. So that's one, and then maybe tomorrow I'll give you another one, because we had another one this week. Right on. So thank you guys, keep the questions, the ratings, and reviews up. You can go to you'll hear it.com to leave us a voice memo or comment there. And you can hit us up on Twitter. We've been getting some tweets.

Hey, open studio. Hey, at Hey, Hey, Open Studio. We'd love to see you and continue the conversation there. Yeah. And I guess until tomorrow, you'll hear it.