You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Practice: Quality or Quantity?

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

It's another live edition of You'll Hear It where Peter and Adam take your questions - today's topics include whether the amount you practice or what you practice is more important, how to stay motivated as an aspiring musician, and more.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.Wednesday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Edu Ribeiro + Horacio Hernandez Drum Conversations and Q&A 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.

All right, we've got Noriko who's asking, when you have confidence of your solo, is that a matter of quantity or quality of the practice? Oh, that's a good question. This is a great question because I think that this is sort of a very important and nuanced balance that we always have to think about the qualitative versus the quantitative aspect of our practicing. And so it's sort of what I was alluding to earlier in that I'm starting to really. realize, and this has been kind of gradual over time, but that like 90 minutes of the right quality practice at the right time of day, for me, is more valuable. Well, I don't know. 10 hours would be really good.

I mean, I've spent 10 hours probably in a day on like some last minute arrangement or something. No, not even. But that's the thing. I have. I mean, most people that actually spend 10 hours practicing, I bet there's no more than two hours of really high quality practice. I completely agree.

Yeah. And that's weird because I was. I used to always be like practice as much as you can. But now I realize it's like play your instrument as much as you can. But really focus your time. So like I would say that in terms of your question, the confidence of your solo, when you feel like you're progressing, your confidence, like you have to fake it until you make it for longer than you think.

I listen back to things I played like on records in my early 20s. And in some regards, I'm like, I was so unconfident at that time. I remember it. I was like, ugh, I don't like this. I don't know. I mean, now I'm just like everything I play. Yeah, whatever. Not whatever.

But I'm like, you're accepting. I'm accepting. But I don't really play that differently now than I did then. So I mean. None of us do. Yeah, yeah. It's a weird thing. You ever listen to yourself?

You're like, really? I don't. I haven't got better. Why did I'm other practicing all these years? But the idea of being that there's always going to be an element that you fake it until you make it. And there's never that time when you think that you're there. So there's nothing wrong with giving, giving yourself permission to have some

fake what's going to feel like to you as fake cognitive what this does and it goes back to the first principles of why the hell we're doing this we're trying to play something that sounds good we're trying to put something out in the world i mean it's just like think about if everybody in the world that opened up their mouth and said something not that we would ever open up our mouths and start blabbering on that on and putting that into the world like we're doing right now but if everybody in the world thought about what they were saying before they spoke like the world would be such a more beautiful place so and the idea of like let me put something out there that's edifying to somebody that's pleasant to listen to.

It's not just drivel and just garbage. So when we're playing, everything has to be about that. So having a little bit of exuding some premature confidence, we could call it, there's nothing wrong with that because that's going to make your playing sound better. So do the quality practice, do the quantity of the practice.

You know, I would say focus more on the quality of the practice. And then when you solo, forget about all that and just say, I am somebody, I've got something to say, let me put myself in the best mindset to just go ahead and say it. And it's confident manner as I can. That's great, man. Lawrence has a great question. Any tips for staying motivated to practice? I'm a high school student with a passion for music, but I always feel like

I'm not good enough and won't be able to make a living. So we just answered this. Yeah, no, no, no, we touched on some of this, but I'll just kind of like tell you Lawrence that first of all, if you realize from the young age that you are that to compare yourself with anybody, including peers or people that you admire and your sort of timeline on things, you will always be disappointed by someone, right? Someone was always Clifford Brown by Clifford Brown's time, right? Right. So, and there's always Jacob Colliers and there's always, yeah, you know, there's always Joey Alexander's. So just starting that comparing game is not fair to yourself. So the kind of quicker you can get out of that, the better. And then I'll also say that, that again, with the theme of

comparing, you know, you have to realize, too, that there are many paths to not just making a living, but making music and becoming the musician that maybe you don't even know you're going to be yet. You know what I mean? Like, you know, Peter and I, we have very different paths towards music. Like, you started Peter very young playing with Betty Carter and all these great musicians and touring and doing all this amazing stuff and you were such a phenom. And like, my thing has been a very slow burn. I've always been able to make a living.

but I started writing more and getting into like that kind of thing. Hence why like now at a certain point, I think right now we're kind of, I'm like, I peaked early. No, no, no, no. You didn't peeked early. You're still, no, it's just too. But it's good we have this time to meet in the middle a little bit. No, but you know what I'm saying.

It's just different paths and it's not even like at the same place. It's just there's different spaces for different skill sets and people. And what you do is different than what I do and that's okay. Like it doesn't, there's no, there's no like one way to do anything. And there's no one measuring stick for you. And actually, when you kind of get out of high school and you start discovering the big wide world, you're going to discover just a lot of possibilities.

It might not even involve jazz or whatever instrument you play. It might even know of music and you find some kind of thing that you want to be. I mean, you and I are sitting here in a pot suite for crying out loud, having the time of our lives. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's not something I would have seen myself doing at age. Well, first of all, there were no podcast when I was... Yeah, at age 38, you probably wouldn't have seen yourself doing this.

You know what I'm saying. Yeah. There's many different paths. to get to that fulfillment of doing what you love to do, really, which is what we're talking about. Yeah, and, you know, this is the thing, you're in high school. You've got, like, here's some motivation for you. You're not peaking now, and if you are, you don't want to be.

You know, look around you, like the guys and gals that are peaking in high school, that becomes a sad story later on. And often, well, I don't even want to talk about what it leads to, you know. But it's like, if you live in, Missouri, it may lead to math. That is true. But the idea is that, like, you want to do the slow burn. And, yeah, I did do some things young, but they wasn't in high school or whatever.

I mean, I was, we were both playing. And that was the thing. I think what we had in common as we've gotten to know each other, Adam, and a lot of other musicians that we know that have had success later on in their careers. And by success, I mean joy in music. Like, that's the ultimate success. Yeah, we'll have our resume and whatever. And there's always going to be somebody else that has a deeper resume or did something

younger or had a higher test score or whatever. For sure. As you get older, those things don't matter as much because you're not measuring yourself with that. Right. It's like we start to measure ourselves. And this gradually happens, but you start measuring yourself by the amount of joy you can harbor in this music.

And even more importantly, I think now for me, it's like how much joy can I help others bring it? It's like, how do I give back some of the things that I was given to others? That's what makes me happy. So once you start not only. thinking like that, but knowing that that's going to happen at some point, it becomes so much easier and so much more fun. And since you're in high school, the great thing is like you've got so much time ahead of

you. So stay motivated because, like, you know, if you can even play your instrument now, you've got a great future ahead of you. What's happened is we've gotten into this achievement-oriented society in which, like, you have to specialize and be able to do, you know, be, you know, Roy Hargrove if you play trumpet by the time you're 18 or Herbie Hancock playing with the Chicago Symphony at 16. It's even deeper than that. You've got to score this on the SATs and get National Merit Scholar and you have to like, you know, fix mosquitoes wings, disabled mosquitoes in Central America over the summer, on a volunteer basis.

I mean, it's like you've got to be doing everything. Yeah, that'd be a weird thing. But hey. So if we can just take a breath and relax, especially with music because it's going to come. It's going to come with music. This is an artistic endeavor. Relax. Get your basics.

Like start putting money in the. the bank. You don't have to put a million dollars in. We always talk about like, that's what I tell young folks. It's like, now is the time when you're in high school and in college and 20s. Oh my God. Could you imagine if you would have started saving? Dude, let's go back in time. Let's let's, let's turn this pod suite into like a time travel. Like with everything we know now, if we went back into high school, man. And people, I know people told me that. And I just, you just don't. Just don't get it. Yeah. Let's do three more questions because there's, there's one here. This might be the quickest answer we've ever given.

Clem says, can you explain the plague will cadence? Sure. There you go. And then... Asked an answer. Hycon says, in your opinion, what is the hippest voicing ever? Oh, yeah. Why is it from bottom to top?

Yeah. G, A flat. That's a very... That's a very... So first of all, I would take that E out on the bottom. Yeah, just a. I mean, it's kind of chunky down there, actually. I don't know.

How are you going to come up with one? But I can't explain why this is super... hip, actually. There's a good combination of crunch. You got that D-flap minor triad in effect. There's a triad. I got a D-flap major triad, too. There's D-flap minor and major triad. A little duality. A little duality of purpose.

There's an E-minor triad. There's an E-major triad. Okay. So you got, and there's just so much hipness in this voice again. I mean, I was going to make fun of of Hakon, Hakan, about this question. But he's, it's kind of a, he's, like,

she is completely correct. This is the hippest voicing ever. I mean, yeah, I was going to say like one of these like Stravinsky kind of situations,

E flat versus E. But actually, um, I love this because I was like a Ellis Marsals and I love him and miss him. So yeah, the tune called 12 is it. It's all just simple hip voicing.

And then the same one up, a minor third. Nothing wrong with that. You know, but it is too, though, this before hip hip voicing to me you can never look at one even this I'm like this is hip because of the next voice where it goes to you know and this one's somewhat of a standard kind of a

thing but I'd say to me it's more about like what's the hip is progression so this leads right in wait if you're Keith Jarrett the hip is voicing ever try it try it I was going to say actually it's hard to argue that that's not the hip is voicing ever there's a lot of churches well this is going to lead into our very last question for... Oh, here we go. We want to thank everybody for being here, first of all. Oh, yeah.

Come on. That's how we do it. Could you suggest practicing counterpoint in order to improvise a la Bach, for example, for independent voicing? So this is kind of kind of lead into what you were just talking about, about. It's not just this voicing as a singularity, but it's where it's going. And one way that you can start with this, first of all, get your hymnal game strong, right? Come on.

Come on. What you talk about? The Methodist. Methodist. Methodist hymnal. It's pretty close to the vest. Closer than you might want, but it's a good way. Lutheran hymnal.

is also good for this. Oh, that's really close too, though, isn't it? But one thing you can do, Pasquale, is just use some four-note, right? Just some, like, seventh chords, some open or close seventh chords, over some core changes. I mean, I always like to start with all the things you are, because it's just so easy to do. Yeah. And just practice doing things like minimal movement to the next voicing. And then practice moving one voice at a time to a neighboring,

note or from a neighboring note, this kind of work, right? Yeah. And then you can do two, right? And actually, Russ Fronte has a great. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's got a great thing on this. Yeah. We got to pull that into the open studio world.

Before we go on and we got a special message before we end here, you don't even know about this. We want to see if we can, oh, I don't know if this is going to work. Well, you know, we're going to try this. I wanted to see if we could get 100 likes while we're live on this video. Oh, buddy, we are not going to get 100. Okay, why is so pessimistic? I'm not pessimistic.

Can you guys press the light button? Please. There's no way it's going to happen. Okay, we've got 20. We've got 20 so far. And we've got over, we've got 86 people on here or something. So.

You wish. No, we do. That says, oh, 81. Okay, so can you guys press the like button or you can press the dislike button. That'd be the thumbs up or the thumbs down. Don't do the thumbs down. Don't do the thumbs down.

No, but the like button, I can't remember why, but I was watching a YouTuber. I just pressed it. How? Oh, can we press it ourselves? Yeah, I mean, I did. If you like the video, if we're providing a little bit of fun or by how you press a like button because what happens is then it gets, oh, look, it's moving. Shoot.

It's moving up. You know what? No, I can't believe this is working. I was at my dentist the other day. No, I wasn't. But if I was, they have a poster that they would say you don't get all of the things that you never ask for or something like that with a picture of a mountain with the sunset, you know. You got to ask. Okay.

Thank you guys for doing that. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Exactly. That's what I was thinking of it. And then like, you know, just like a, like it's like a basketball hoop sitting by. mountain and just like forlorn like with a ball sitting on the ground nobody's shooting it Wayne Gretzky Michael Scott look at 46 okay this is fun this like a slop machine but um it's insane it's more than double since you that's what I'm saying that's all we got to do is ask

and look I'm bad about this too I watch I'm a you know I like you too I'm a premium member are you a premium member no man that's why I always have to log in under you so I hijack your accounts so I don't have to watch the commercials right right right hope you like I hope you like Minecraft and Pokemon videos, buddy, because that's what my kids are watching on your account. Good. Good stuff. So we thank everybody for being here.

Please check out the podcast. We're here every Monday on YouTube doing this, which is the, you'll hear at Live Monday's 3 o'clock Eastern for one hour. But every day you can check us out. You can take us in your car. You can take us on your walk. Where do you typically listen to podcasts? Not necessarily this one.

No, definitely on my walk and definitely on my commute, which right now my commute is every Monday into here. and that's pretty much it. But, no, I do, you know, I do a nice long daily walk. Yeah. Usually either before or after dinner, a little, what they call a constitutional. Constitutional, right. Got it.

You know what I would do? And folks, if you want to do it, wow, 54 likes. I'm just going to keep talking until we get to 100. Okay. So, hey, Vladimir actually has a very relevant question. Please, Adam, how can I join the DGPS? They ask me for some meeting passcode. Oh.

Important for DGPSers who maybe weren't there today. so we kind of had to redo our Zoom account. And so there is a passcode. Look for the new link in your email. If you're not a member of the Daily Guy of Practice session, that's where we practice every single day at 1 p.m. Eastern with live. And there's an app and it's also on OpenStadioJazz.com. It's up there now.

We did number 151 of the Daily Got a practice session today, which is awesome. And we're practicing bebop all month. We're going to switch to something a little bit challenging next month. we'll keep that as a secret. But yes, Vladimir, check your email for the new link

to the Zoom meeting. Great group in Zoom. A lot of DGPSers in here. Noriko, Amy. Well, thank you guys for liking. We got up to 55, so that's pretty good.

56, man. Your computer is better than mine. And I think I've got, if you vamp for a second for me, Adam, I think I can get our little outro going here. But I'm not sure.

Should we try it? Give a shot.