You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Practice Ideas: Weekly Concepts

Episode Date: December 30, 2019

It's Adam's birthday, and he got the best present ever: a SpeakPipe on some fresh practice tips. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? For the next two days, non-Premium members can leave voice messages for Peter and Adam. Go to http://youllhearit.com/podcast/ to leave yours. But hurry - the SpeakPipe hotline goes back to Premium members only in 2020.Are you going to the JEN Conference? If so, stop by and say hi to us! From January 7 - 10, Peter and Adam will be doing special live You'll Hear It's, giving away special prizes, and answering any jazz or music questions you want to ask them. Just look for the Open Studio booth (Booth 718) and get your daily jazz advice in person.Support the You'll Hear It podcast by signing up for You'll Hear It Premium! You'll get access to exclusive bonus episodes, the YHI archive of past episodes, giveaways, and much more! Go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/yhi for more info.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.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, Peter. Hey, do you know Jen? Yeah, I love Jen. That's my girl. No, I'm talking about the Jazz Education Network. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I'm Adamannis. 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. Hey, you know, we usually direct you to Open Studiojazz.com and check out all of our amazing courses. But today, we're going to talk a little bit about Open Studios presence at the Jen conference, the Jazz Education Network Conference this year in New Orleans. Yeah.

The conference is the 7th through the 10th, I believe. And we have two really awesome... Of January. Of January. Yes. This is next week, by the way. Next Tuesday. It's through the 12th.

Through the 12th, all the way through the 12th. Yeah, January 12th. Well, we're only there through the 9th, so we don't care about it. No, no, we're there through Saturday. Oh, we are? Because, yeah, we have a booth. We have booth 718. If you're at the conference in New Orleans, come by booth 718.

You might see me, you might see Peter. You'll definitely see Rachel Morgan. Yes. and say hi and get some swag and check out. You might see Duke Ellington. We can't guarantee, but we can't confirm or deny any individual's presence at our booth. And then, Peter, you're doing a TED-style keynote

called How Being a Jazz Musician taught me to be a startup founder. That's Tuesday, January 7th at 3 p.m. at the Foster 2 room. Ooh, Foster 2! Is that the Frank Foster Room? I think it's just a little bit better than Foster 1. No, but we'd like to invite,

I would like to personally invite anybody. there to come to my talk so that I'm not talking at a bunch of empty chairs. It's super awkward. Talking to me and some other dude. You already know this talk. Yeah. No, but come out to there, come to the booth, and then come to, we have a You'll Hear It event that might be of interest. The very exciting

thing is we have a live You'll Hear It recording. Come be in the audience of You'll Hear It. Again, more, you'll hear it swag, open studio swag. That's Thursday, January 9th at 330 at Strand 3 Room. I don't know why there's numbers behind these, but Strand 3 Room. Me, you, a couple

a music, a studio audience, and And we're going to do it live? We're going to do it live. Wow. That's going to be awesome. You know what's cool? Maybe we'll bring some T-shirts. Yep. Can we do that? Oh, yeah. And then maybe we could do, you've ever seen like at the basketball games when they have the T-shirt Canon? The T-shirt Canon? For sure. Nice. Yeah, baseball stadiums. It's the canon because they're so huge.

Yeah, you know. You got to go far. I'm thinking for Strand 3, we might just need like a T-shirt toothpick sling. But we'll see. So that's the Jazz Education Network Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, this year. That's January 7th through the 12th. Come up soon, like kind of next week or. It is next week. Yeah, today's Monday the 30th. Yes.

And this is Tuesday the 7th. And I don't know if you heard about our new sponsor. We have a brand new sponsor only today. Uh-huh. And that's Adam's birthday is sponsoring us today. I want to say big happy birthday to Adam Manis. Wait, my 41st birthday is sponsoring this podcast. Yeah, or you know what the podcast is sponsoring your birthday?

How about we do it like that? Oh, that's cool. Is there cake? No, I want to say, yeah, there's a podcast. There's cake. There's cake available. Good. You've got to project yourself as usual into the future. It's a non-kito cake.

And no, we want to say happy birthday. I want to say happy birthday. I think all of your fans out there want to say happy birthday now that they know it's your birthday, right? Thanks, Mom. Yeah. Big shout out to Mom's. My fan.

Anyway, we hope you have a great day and many happy more. Thank you. Yeah, many more happy. You know what I'm saying. Hopefully. Yeah. So today, we are talking about weekly practice concepts. Yes.

This is an idea for kind of structuring your practice around one thing. We got a really interesting speak pipe from Greg. Let's check it out. Go ahead. You're going to say something. No, I was just going to say, because we're almost at the end of you, you had promised folks the speak pipe will be on. But tomorrow's the last day it's on. Yeah.

Speak pipe is going off. Get your speak pipe in as soon as you hear this because we're taking it down soon. Yeah, if you have a good question. Yeah. Don't just make something well. Yeah. Well, Greg has a good tip. and we'll expound on him a little bit.

Here's Greg. Hey, Peter and Adam. This is Greg in California in the Bay Area, and I just listened to your New Year's resolution episode, and you mentioned one of the things you mentioned was playing in all 12 keys, and I think we've all had this resolution at one time or another, and it's something that most of us have failed at,

but I wanted to share what finally worked for me, and that is that at any given time, I always have a key of the week that I concentrate on, so all my warm-ups and scales and stuff are in that key, and any tunes I'm transposing, I try them in the key of the week. And I still do take things through all 12 keys, but it tends to be small things, like a voicing or a lick. And when I do that, I always start an end in the key of the week. And after 12 weeks, you've been through all 12 keys, so you have met that goal.

And I have to say that each time an unfamiliar key comes back around, like B, for example, it's a little less daunting. So I just wanted to share that tip. That's what's worked for me. I love the podcast, love everything you guys do. Thanks so much. Bye. Cool. Thanks, Greg.

Yeah, thanks, Greg. I think Greg might be in a helicopter in the Bay Area. Is that possible? I don't know why, but whenever someone says they're from the Bay Area, I assume that they're just, they have like the most latest, flashiest tech. Yeah. And then sometimes we get a call and it's like the phone is shaking or something. But Greg, thanks for the call anyway.

Thanks for the speak pipe. And I think this is a brilliant idea. Yes. And I've done this myself with keys. And I've also done it with other things, which is why I didn't title this, this episode, you know, weekly key. Because you can actually do this with any kind of concept and just filter your practice routine through the concept. Yes. I think I know what you're going to say.

I don't know. Because I said filter. Yeah, filter it. I like that. No. No filter fish. That's not funny. We did that last year.

Sorry. Come on. Get with the current decade, man. Come on, man. Sorry. No, so this idea of you have a key of the week, and no matter what you're practicing, whether that's voicings or, you know, some kind of melodic concept or tunes or a rhythmic concept, you're practicing it in that key, I think it's just a brilliant idea because you're going to have spent, you know, five to seven days with the harder keys. Yes. And then just, as he said, when they come back around again in the cycle, it really, it really seems more familiar.

You could even do this as a key of the day and with each session, you know, if you wanted to kind of shorten that time span and get back to it sooner. Yes. And I think, you know, anytime we think about, you know, connecting any pattern in music. So here we're talking about the 12 different keys of the chromatic scale. So all 12 keys where you're connecting it with time in your practice, I think is really good because it forces us in whatever way we're doing it to spend a relatively easy. equal amount of time on all the different keys. So when we talk about cycling through over, you know, one key per week with whatever is you're practicing, then you're kind of out of necessity practicing the so-called hard keys just as much as the easy keys. And a lot of times we say, okay, concentrate on the things that you don't know. Yeah. But also you have to have

some kind of mechanism, some sort of a framework to do that. And there's all different ways, you know, I think to approach it. But having a systematic thing in terms of just, look, this is not going to, having this idea and this concept is great, but that doesn't get the work done. Right. But it gives you, it like takes, it's kind of like, what do you wear today? If you wear the same thing like Steve Jobs every day, you still got to get dressed, but you've taken out the decision about like, what am I, what color am I going to wear or whatever.

And so this not only takes, gets you onto that next step, which is the actual doing. It means you're going to be able to execute on your practicing with less effort, actually. I've done the same concept with, uh, or the same structure. with a different concept. When I wanted to kind of get better at the left hand and right hand improvising together or just playing together in octaves and double octaves, I did that where every day I just filtered all of my practice, scales, arpeggios, playing tunes, you know, improvising, whatever I was working on, bebop lines, whatever I was working on, pentatonic's. I made sure that it was only two hands together. You know what I mean? And by the end of the week, it felt way more

comfortable than not. And then, you know, you can come back to that later and change it up or just do left hand the next week, whatever you want to do. Yeah. But having this idea, you could do it with a voicing concept. You can do it with like, say, a particular scale. Like, I want to work on my pentatonics, you know, you can say, okay, no matter what I'm practicing, if I'm practicing, you know, round midnight, I'm going to play like a pentatonic based line so that I can kind of feel my way through different kinds of tunes, or even if I'm practicing a rhythmic concept, I'm going to use pentatonic to practice that rhythmic concept. You know, whatever you pick, whether it's a key or some kind of concept, you can use that

as your structure for the week or the day or even the month. Yeah, and I think it's always great to take something like this is putting, you know, a definite structure on your practice, so it seems like it's, it can make, you know, the creativity stifled. But I think it actually does the opposite because whether it's a key of the week, the concept of the week or whatever, it actually will spur some creativity, like your instance with the pentatonic,

it'll get you thinking and hearing and just sort of in the habit of playing that concept or that key so much that all of a sudden you're going to use it in situations that you normally wouldn't have. Without thinking about it. Without thinking about it. So it's not just about the scales

or taking the phrases through, yeah, you do that. But then you're so kind of obsessed with, and that might not happen on the first day, but like the third or fourth day, it'll start to happen because your comfort level and really your ears start to acclimate it I think as much as your hands You just hear it so much

You hear it yeah And I really believe that like with keys The more experience I get Over the years with the different keys The more Differences and uniqueness As I hear in each of the keys Yeah there are way different

And stuff we can apply to composition And arranging and stuff like Okay how do I I never used to understand I was like what does it matter Like if you learn to play in all keys You can use them interchangeably But they really do have a different sound

For sure Each one has a different texture. Yeah, for sure. Another thing to think about with this is just in an overall concept, right? It's that however we're practicing, there's no right way or wrong way to practice. Like this is one way to practice, and this is something that you can apply over the course like Greg does over these 12-week cycles. Or you could just do it once and then try whatever is keeping you practicing. Yes.

And keeping you focused. And I think 12 weeks, I would just say like that Greg is probably pretty disciplined to do this. For sure. So if you're not, if you feel like 12 weeks is too big of a, I actually think that's kind of a nice amount of time to me. But I don't know, some younger folks might be like, oh, I got 12 weeks is so long. Like if you're going to lose track of this or fall through the cracks, maybe think about splitting up, you know, making it six weeks and doing two, you know, three days, four days. Or like I said, do one a day. And you kind of cycle through them a little bit faster, but it's the same concept that you're switching up and every day is something different, you know.

Yeah. And then, you know, Greg's idea, I wholeheartedly agree with from a conceptual standpoint of taking. He mentioned taking small things like voicings. A couple weeks ago, you were talking about left-handed voicing, really having a goal of taking those and developing those in all keys, different registers of the instrument. But I love this idea of taking small things through a number of different places. And you talk about 12 keys.

You don't get any more than that. That's every key. So as opposed to like sometimes people, especially at the beginning of the year, it's like, oh, I want to take, you know, the hardest Chickeria solo ever. learn that the first week and then the next 12 weeks i'm going to play that in every key no you're not i mean if you are maybe if you have nothing else to do yeah but but you're kind of setting yourself up for failure and that's not even necessarily the best way to develop you know like your ears and your technique and stuff like you're you're forcing yourself into a corner from the beginning

yep so maybe i love this idea of taking something small and combining with something big yeah the big is the 12 keys the small is like a phrase a phrase exactly yeah whatever your level's at too You can kind of judge that. But the whole thing is like don't. It's kind of like, okay, if you're going to be lifting weights and you're really going to be pushing the amount of weight, go slowly and don't do a lot of reps. Don't do a lot of reps and a heavy weight.

You're going to hurt yourself. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think part of this too is as you're practicing, you need to develop the skill to be able to recognize what is helping you grow the most. Yes. You know, so really pay attention as you're setting up these systems and the structure to your practice routine. Is this working?

is this coming through? If not, I need to tweak something. If it's really working, I need to apply the same concept to other areas, that kind of thing. That's like pro-level stuff of self-regnition. Okay, this is working. Self-awareness. That needs to happen along with everything else.

Don't just wait for someone to tell you how to practice. Be creative and see what works. And really, too, you can't judge that after one day. Don't like it's the end of day and be like, oh, my ears can get any better. Or even one week, really. No. Even one lifetime is not enough.

Just kind of notice it over the course of, you know, a few weeks. You should be feeling like it, but not always on a daily basis. You got some peaks and valleys, especially when you get to that advanced level. For sure. You know, but you should also, you have to take responsibility. I think yourself with all these things for a mindset of growth in your practice, because ultimately there is no one secret best way to practice for everybody on any instrument or to develop as a musician.

It's always a combination of different ideas. It's always like a little bit of happenstance. a little bit of creativity and then, you know, maybe a big part of sort of regimented, tried and true practice. But you have to like keep your ears and eyes open and be for that serendipitous kind of idea. We might mention something. Somebody might mention something. But more importantly, you might stumble upon something in your practice, you know, that's like, wow, that works. But you can't be like, well, 12 weeks ago, I decided I was only going to do it this way.

But then on the other hand, see, it's going to be hard now. I'm going to give a little conflicting information. You can't get too fragmented in your practice too. because you want to be constantly developing. So take everything what we're saying with a grain of salt, but also blindly follow everything we're saying. Both together, right? Is that good?

I think that's good. Great tip, Greg, not question. Poor answer, but great question. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And please visit us at Booth 718 at the Gen Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. 718, that's the area code for Brooklyn and Queens. and Long Island No, I don't know about Long Island.

718. That was, no, you're right. You're right, 718. Come see us, booth 718, then come see us, come see Peter on Tuesday at 3 p.m. at the Foster 2 room for his keynote, how being a jazz musician taught me to be a startup founder.

And then come. Improvisation. I'll give you a little hint on what's going to mention in that little talk. Come be in the audience for a live taping of a couple of you'll hear it episodes. We'll do a few. queue as we're taking because we have a whole hour. Maybe we'll do a Q&A on one of them. We'll definitely do a Q&A on one of them.

Like where they have a mic and you come up to it? For sure, for sure. I ordered three mics. Wow. Yeah. Nice. But that takes place Thursday, January 9th at 3.30 p.m. As we say, locals say, Nalins. No one says that. No, they don't say that. Strand 3 room. Come check it out. Come say hi.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So until then. You'll hear it. Happy birthday to Adam, happy birthday to Adam, happy birthday to Adam, happy birthday to Adam, happy birthday to you, that's just what I want to epilogue.