You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Playing and Accepting

Episode Date: August 23, 2019

Peter and Adam answer a listener's email on this episode about how to listen to your own playing.See the Christian McBride video mentioned by Adam in this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpUyTXs65wMStarting next week, we're trying to help Peter remember when Hump Day is by launching Peter's Hump Day Special. Listen to Wednesday's episode to hear a limited time, 24-hour offer exclusive to You'll Hear It listeners.Make sure to tune in on Monday, where we'll have some special guests: Kevin & Chase from Jazz Memes! Learn about the internet's #1 resource for jazz related memes, as well as the best ways to build an online audience.Like those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam. Yes. Today's Friday. It is. Got any big weekend plans? Just going to celebrate hump day. Early. I'm Adam Anas.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Daily jazz advice coming at you. Coming at you today is Friday, but I brought up hump day for a reason. Yeah. I was surprised because I usually bring it up. Yeah. And I finally got my calendar right.

I thought, but maybe not. Usually bring it up on like a Friday. It feels like hump day today. It's not. Humpty. It's Friday. But it's like we're connecting the week with the weekend. So in an attempt to actually get you to remember that hump day is Wednesday,

we're going to start doing every Wednesday a special offer for our you'll hear at listeners. So listen in this Wednesday, this next hump day for Pete's hump day special. Pete's hump day special. I like it. Okay. All right. Is it going to be special? We'll see.

Yeah. All right, cool. Yeah. And also, we have something really fun coming up Monday. I'm looking forward to this. What's that? Are you going to be here Monday? I'll be here.

Okay, good. We're talking to the jazz memes guys. Ooh, I like a meme. Yeah, you like a, you've been meme. I've been memed once or twice. Maybe we'll meme them. We should meme them. That's me, you know what's funny?

Because I kind of know the guys a lot. I've talked to them on the phone. I've never seen them in real life. Yeah, yeah. And they're allegedly brothers. Well, we're going to get into all that on. Have you ever talked to him? No, but is this a battle we want to get involved in with the professional

memeers? Do we want to get weighed in those waters? Well, you mean, meamer versus memeer? I mean, I'm not a memer at all. I'm a screamer. No, no, no. We're a little bit, we're satirists as they are. Right.

We dip our toe into it. We're accidental satirists. Yeah, yeah. Well, anyway, check that on a Monday's episode. I think it's going to be fun. And if you want to do a little homework over the weekend, check out some, just go on to Instagram or Twitter or anything and look for jazz memes. They've got funny stuff.

You've probably seen their thing. Yeah, sure. What are we talking about today, though? Well, today we got an email from Rick. And Rick is our friend, Rick, or Rick from St. Louis? No, I don't think it's Rick from saying. I don't think so. I don't know.

I didn't catch his last name. But yeah, Rick writes, Hi, all, thanks for the great podcast. I have a question. When listening to yourself, how do you separate your own personal anxiety from the objective quality of the playing? For me, it's always like experiencing hearing your voice, mortifying.

But occasionally, upon multiple listens, I can get past that and hear the good bits. The dilemma is, do you just grow used to the things you don't like and stop hearing them? like time and feel, for example, or do you just genuinely shed some ego or is it a mix of both?

How do you judge your own playing objectively? Wow, Rick. Well, that's a big question. That's a multi-part big, I mean, important, you're asking the right questions. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if we got the right answers, but you're definitely asking the right questions.

Possibly, we'll have to break this down because there possibly might be a little bit of overthinking with this. Because you can definitely get into that, psych yourself out, we used to say back in the 80s. But I think that you're definitely thinking of the right things. One thing that jumped out to me, for me, it's always like experiencing hearing your voice mortifying.

If you're playing for people, and that could be from your friend, one person to 10,000 people in a stadium or anything in between, maybe think about, do they look mortified? Because then you might have a problem if you're feeling that. But sometimes, like, we're mortified by we're playing, but you look out and people are actually edified and enjoying what you're playing more than you think. So that's the first thing. And that really could be anybody if you're on a gig or not on a gig. Just like play something and see if people, like, put their fingers in the ears and run out of the room. If they do, you've got a problem, Houston.

We have a problem. But I don't know. Is that valid, do you think? It's definitely valid. Yeah. I mean, chances are you're harder on yourself than anybody else listening to you. For sure. Which is good from the sense of, like, from a practice routine and stuff.

but can be debilitated for the performance. You don't want it to cripple you at all. You have to be able to have to have the confidence to say, okay, I don't like what I hear when I hear this. Yeah. And then the ability to recognize that, you know, tick that box, okay, I found something. Write it down.

Write down what you hear. If it's your feel, get as specific as you can, okay, when I play off the beat, I throw up. It rushes or it drags or I don't like the way it feels. What is that? And try to ask questions, as deep as you can with what you're hearing

that you don't like. If you hear something that you're like, kind of like, ask yourself, is this part of my voice? Do I want to be playing this or am I just playing this? Because that guy showed me that one time. It's kind of like, you know, if you're having problems in your marriage and you say your spouse, like, you know, kind of break, you could do the same exercise and be like, okay, well, honey, when you berate me and insult me, it makes me feel small.

But you are identifying the problem. And that's step number one. Now you have to do it without ego. You have to, either way. You can't think of yourself as too good. You can't think of yourself as terrible. No, because then you get into a false, you know, it's good that he kind of mentioned that later on shed some ego. That implies that you're having to, like, boost up your ego or confidence or feeling about your playing to an unrealistic place.

You don't want to do that. But he did say at the beginning, how do you separate your own personal anxiety from the objective quality of the playing? So I think that he's identifying something very important personal anxiety that we, everybody has that. You know, I mean, from just the tiniest, but no, you never totally get rid of that. But when there's too much anxiety, just like doing anything, it's impossible to hear the objective quality of your playing. Yeah, I mean, the thing to remember with this, and this is, this is, we talk about things that are easier said than done. Yeah. This is to realize that you are not your playing, that you are enough without being a monster jazz musician.

Exactly. And that's harder to put into practice. Because that kind of pushes the ego down a little bit. It does, but you are, that's not you. Yeah. you have value outside of how great you could play over giant steps. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So you have to work on, if that's like a real problem, like you're actually getting anxiety from the way you play because you don't think it's good enough and you don't think that like, you know, no one's ever going to love you because you can't play over a countdown, then you need to like tackle that. Right, right. Right. Well, and it's good, too, that you start to understand that because when you get to a certain

level, you're going to start having people tell you that you're great. Yeah. You know, and that, you know, you think, oh, that's such a great thing. And even if somebody that's like a jazz lover or whatever, but then if you don't have a good, like, if you're not used to the ups and the downs, then the next day you'll be like in the airport. And so we're like, what do you do? Play out of a jazz musician. Really? Oh, is that a real job?

I mean, like, you'll get knocked down right away. For sure. Or what if a musician you respect doesn't think you're as great? Yeah. Well, you get fired from a gig by a musician you respect. Yeah. Do you have no value all of a sudden? No.

You can't let that dictate, like, your personal anxiety. You've got to detach from, you're playing from yourself. You've got to detach from reality for this world at this point. But then other than that, man, it's all about picking out your weaknesses, being honest about it, being objective about it, and working on them. And you know what? This is a skill that builds on itself. Once you start doing this, it gets easier to do every time.

Because you just are, and actually, then when you perform and you hear weaknesses, you're like, no, I can fix that. Exactly. I know what I'm doing. Because it's not, like, and you hit on this so well, you're fixing this specific part of you're playing, your time, your intonation, whatever. It's not, you're not fixing you. There's nothing wrong with you.

You're the same person and you still have something to say. You know, and that's the thing. Everybody has something unique to say. Yeah, not everybody is going to be Chek Korea, but the more that you do get in touch with yourself and get that anxiety, it's just being comfortable in your skin and then being able to translate that to your instrument. Same thing as being a person. I mean, we, when you come up to somebody and meet somebody that has a lot of anxiety over anything, like public spaces or meeting somebody or just their own, they're not comfortable, you know, and that anxiety is. That anxiety is an energy that can almost transmit over to you if you're not careful. And with music, you're talking about power, but music is powerful.

So when we start to latch on to that and we have anxiety and latch onto it, you've got some negative things that start to flow into a positive thing. It's like a magnet hitting against each other. And things can really get out of whack. But I will say, you know, I'm sorry, I'm getting a little esoteric. You have some great practical advice. One other thing is he says from the objective quality of your playing, person anxiety separating that from the objective.

The easiest, practical way to hear the objective quality of your playing is to record yourself. For sure. Because it's going to be different. Just like you talked about, Rick talked about hearing his voice, hearing it recorded back versus in real time is going to be different and you're going to get a more realistic view.

You're going to be able to be more objective. Of course, you're never going to be as objective of someone else so you do want to get feedback from others. But getting that feedback from recording yourself as you practice, as you're playing on the gig, is very important. And usually it's like, Wow, no, that wasn't so bad, you know,

unless the anxiety just crippled you to the point where you can't play. Yeah, but don't let that happen. Yeah. Try not to let that anxiety. Just don't do it. You know, it's like what did Nancy Reagan you say about drugs? Just say no. Just don't do it.

Yeah. No, yeah, that's right. So I'm reminded of we were hanging here last night with Royce Martin, and we were kind of talking about that Christian McBride video that we have, yourself is your signature. And it's this, if you haven't seen it, it's just really awesome video where Christian McBride, like, talks. and plays at the same time.

And there's a point where he makes a little flub. Right, a boo-boo, as we say. Yeah, and he goes, whoops, like, just lets it roll off his bad. Is Christian McCluck? Well, he's like, whoops. Yeah, he goes, whoops. But, I mean, he acknowledged it. Yeah.

He then played some, you know, badass stuff after that and didn't. But, like, once you kind of get that, like, you can make mistakes and still be yourself. Yeah. You know what I mean? That we're always striving for excellence, but perfection is not possible. So perfection is not possible. Don't let a mistake trip you up. Don't let it cause like extreme anxiety

or keep you from having that confidence from having that courage to be yourself when you're playing. Makes the music human. Yeah, for sure. Even like, I mean, look, we can point to numerous Philly Joe Jones, Paul Chambers records where they rushed well, not uncontrollably.

Oh yeah. They rush. But you start from the beginning and then you go to the end and it's up. It's faster? Yeah, that's called rushing. But it feels great the entire. It feels great the whole way.

The ride through. It's great. The whole way. So does that mean you're supposed to rush? No. And if you try to do it, Are you going to sound like Philly Jones? No, you're not.

But it just means that he's human. Yeah. And that, you know, it's not perfect, but it's not about that. Like, when you nail 90% of the other stuff so well, you can let go of the gas on something else. Or in this case, press the acceleration, you know. Yeah. And I think that it's, it goes back to the original point that you made in terms of being, being comfortable with yourself and saying that's good enough, you know. Yeah.

But you have to be careful because it's not like when you go to practice where you're, like, I'm not good practice today because I'm good enough. No, no, no, no. It's not that. I am enough. I'm enough. Yeah. But this happens all the time.

I was actually, on the way in today, I was listening to Oscar Peterson Tintendayo. You're, you know, the recording that you hit me too. That's pretty awesome. There's a point in there where I'm pretty sure he trips up over his own finger. He does. And he then rips off the most incredible line after that. Yeah, he's like, I'm going to get back in there. I just feel like it's him being like, oh, there's, that's his, oops.

And then he's like, but I'm going to be me. And I'm not going to let this, you know, stop me from taking risk, stop me from being confident. So I would say, you know, practically record yourself, keep notes of what needs work and fix them. Yeah. And then forget about it on the gig. Have fun. Be yourself. Be confident. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just seeing if this, do you just grow used to, okay, yeah, do this part I want to make sure we address? Do you just grow used to the things you don't like and stop hearing them? No. That's one part I think we can definitively answer. Yeah. Because those, I think that's implying things that you really can actively work on and see improvement. That's not going to be a, oh, I'm here and I have to get to

there, and then you wake up one day and you're there. We're always talking about these things that are gradient. And, you know, the fun part is you're going to, even when you think you're there, you get to the top of the mountain and then, oh, no, that was just the first ridge. For sure. You should be excited by that and know that you're even more prepared because you've got used to altitude and all that, you know, and then you move on. There becomes a point, though, Rick, which gets really exciting is where when you're listening to things, you hear little things that you really like. And you're like, I want to do more of that.

Yeah. And then it gets to be like really fun because then you start can pick out more and more things in your playing that you're like, oh, if I could do this more in my maybe every key or with both hands or if I could kind of flush this out a little bit, flesh this out. Flush it out. Flush it out. Flush it out the bad things.

Flash out. No, but if you can get that going. Always be fleshing. Thanks for this email, Rick. Yeah, very thoughtful. Speaking of thoughtful, we are sponsored by. Open Studio, Love it.

Which is an organization that highlights thought leaders on their instrument. How about we mentioned Christian McBride? Oh, a little thinking music, right? Christian McBride, fundamentals of jazz bass. Diane Reeves define your voice. What? All for vocalists. Noah's for everybody.

Come check us out at open studio jazz.com, our new home. and I think you'll like what you see there. Boom, scuba do, bye. You'll hear it.