You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Practicing, Herbie, Peter's jazz origins and more - Highlights of 2021

Episode Date: December 31, 2021

A few of the most popular moments from 2021.Share your musical journey: Leave us a SpeakPipeWoosh or No Woosh? Hit us up on Twitter and let us know which team you are onCheck out Open Studio Pro hereSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com 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.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

What's up, everyone. Adam Manus here. And just want to set up our New Year's Eve, Best of Compilation, best of the You'll Hear at podcast from some of our favorite moments of 2021. Thank you so much, everybody, for being on this journey with us this year. It's been so much fun. We've been doing this podcast for several years now. We've passed the 800 episode mark in 2021, which is absolutely insane for Peter and I. So thank you very much. We hope you enjoy some of our favorite moments here in this best-of compilation. We're going to start things off here with a question from a listener about how long should we practice and what are we practicing? So Musa says, how long do you practice? Or did you practice a day? How long a day? You know, it's one of those

questions that has varied as life has hit us in different stages, Musa. I think I can speak for Peter with that. Yes. When I was younger, and I know this is true. When I was. When I was was a young man. I really, some days, I didn't even put on pants. I just sat at the piano and played and played and played. Okay, let's visualize that. That's not. Let's not.

But you know what I'm saying? It's like when you're young, you don't have responsibilities. It's like you just play. I mean, I don't even count the hours. It was just play as much as possible. And then go play it at a club and then come home and play some more and then play, play, play, play, and listen, listen, listen, you know? Yep. And now that, you know, we're, Peter and I both have open studio and family.

and schools, kids in schools and all this stuff, right? It's not as much as certainly then, but I know we both try to keep a somewhat regular routine. When I sit down to practice, it's probably not going to be for anything less than an hour at this point. Ooh, I like it. Dogmatic. Well, yeah, just because, like, if I sit down at the piano, I have a little time.

You know what I mean? If I don't, it's probably because I have 15 minutes to, like, write a guy to practice session for the Open Studio Pro, right? Yeah. But if not, it's like I'm going to sit down for an hour. I'm going to get some good technical work in. I'm going to get some good transcribing in possibly and just work on some new ideas that I'll have. Yeah.

Well, and I think that, you know, part of the benefit with having a little bit more experience with practice with your instrument is that you can kind of generally optimize, you know, what it is and how you're practicing so that you really should be able to fit what used to take four hours into, say, an hour or two hours. So just in terms of like getting right to the stuff you need to work on and also being able to being able to Not necessarily skip over the more rudimentary things, but kind of review them a little bit more So you can be a little bit more targeted with your practice and I know for me I don't really do any of those I mean occasionally I'll do those like six or eight hour days or They're almost just like you're playing all day and you kind of lose yourself in it I think the times I do it is probably similar to you as like writing more like you're under the gun on on an arranging or a composition gig or whatever.

I still will stumble across an idea, right? Like a new idea to me that I'll want to just take through the paces. And if I have a good four, five, six hour block, I can get lost in that for sure. Just taking it through different situations and tunes I know and keys and all that stuff, you know. What I am noticing is that I've gotten a lot more, a lot better self-awareness in terms of like what my output can be

at different times of the day, you know, based on how I'm feeling, how did I rest and things like that. So I generally find now that I have like three to four hours a day of like very, very deep thinking or practicing or creating or just like getting something accomplished. And then there's the rest of the day. I can certainly do things. But like those hours and it does vary a little bit. It's been more regular because I've been on a more regular schedule.

But I find that if I can use those times at least two of those hours at the piano, I can get almost as much as my mind and physically I can get done. in a day. Whereas when I was younger, it was like I had to spend more time to kind of get that. So then if I do go beyond that three to four hours or if I use that all up at the piano, which is great, but I have to do something else in terms of like writing an email or making a phone call that's really I need to be very focused on. I don't always have. It's almost like I've used up that day's very highest level kind of thinking and creativity. So it can still do some other things. So I've started to look at not all the time as being equal either. So that's why it's not always just about the amount of time. It's like, can you,

take that. And look, some people maybe can do more than three to four hours. And there's some days that, like, I have two hours of that kind of level of thing. But once we start to get in better touch with that, I think we can look at really applying. And a lot of times people be like, I was really in a flow state. I was really super productive, Uber productive, whatever, hyperproductive. Like, there's all different ways to look at it. But that kind of next level creativity or productivity can, is, you can't guarantee that's going to be there all day long. Can we share? You want to share a little bit? I would love to share with you that some of the coolest stuff that I've been working on, like some stuff.

So, and then you can maybe, I'd love to hear some breakthroughs that you've had during the pandemic about, like if there's any cool concepts or something that you've been practicing. Yeah. So I've been working on this thing. It's based on like some, some,

you know that Barry Harris? You know that thing, this little warm up? Sure. So this idea of approaching a diatonic tone from a diatonic tone above it or a half step below it, right? Those are your two options to approach it from either a half step below our target.

So if we have a C major scale, you can approach the C from a half step below or a diatonic tone above or a combination. And we've just been, we've been doing this at the daily got to practice session, but I've just been having so much fun working this through, like in triads, using this to like do different intervals, you know, like thirds and six and fifths. And just practice like what,

happens is you start to, when you spend enough time just working on these beautiful little melodic devices. Yeah. You, when I've been, I've played a couple of like trio gigs lately and my playing seems more melodic than ever. Like, even though I'm showing examples here where it seems very rigid and like I'm going through, like a robot, yeah, like a robot going through patterns. It's not at all how I'm working through it. And it comes out in your playing and it's very organic. I feel like I'm like Cole Porter live on the piano. Like I'm just writing melodies. It's amazing. It's amazing. Oh, that's great, great.

Yeah. Well, the only thing I'll throw out there, which is not as interesting and specific as that, that I have been coming back to, I haven't been practicing it constantly, but I keep coming back to it because it's sitting on my piano at home all the time is Scott Joplin Rags. Yeah. I've been like, especially ones that I don't know as well, or I haven't played in a while. It's been very interesting to me because it's such a great, it hits a number of different things. One, kind of nostalgia for me, because that was like the first,

jazz I played in a way. I had like the rag book and when I was playing piano when I was really young I tried to play it and could read music but it's just too difficult and then I kept coming back to it but that kind of first actually pulled me into jazz and then it's topical here because Scott Joplin lived at you know a couple blocks from here from open studio obviously before we were around but you know his his persona and his music his his aura about him is always I feel like kind of in this neighborhood and and rides high above St. Louis as just one of the masters they came out of this area. And also just great for sight reading.

And it's just fun stuff to play. And it's a great kind of space to be in between like New Orleans and St. Louis Blues and classical and opera and jazz. There's so much to learn in those too. Yeah. Yeah. And it's been fun. So I've been having some fun with that.

That's excellent. Next up we discuss how Herbie Hancock uses the melodic minor space. You know how nerdy I like to get on this stuff. Can I just bring, can we do a little sneak preview here? Nerd alert. Of something from Herbie solo. here to kind of sneak preview what we might be talking about on this. We don't have to get too deep on it.

So we're playing Eye of the Hurricane here, right? I of the Hurricane here is Ed McMahon. So a lot of, we get asked a lot, what, you know, what scam shall I use on a F minor blues or on a minor blues? Stop making fun of the way I talk, man. Come on. So one thing that I'm noticing here as we break down what Herbie Hancock is playing here, Did you know that Herbie is using like the classical melodic minor on a lot of this tonic on an F minor blues? So in other words, he's playing an F minor blues, right?

And F said, oh, check that out. Right? F minor seven. He's doing a lot of like strict F minor seven voicings. Yes. Right? With a dominant seven. But he's really doing in his right hand, there's a lot of this.

And then this. There's E naturals. There's E flats. There's D naturals. There's D flats. Depending on which way he's moving. I mean, he's like a classical composer with this scale, the way he's using it. You can tell that he's steeped in all sorts of musical traditions when he's going through this minor.

It's amazing. Yeah. Well, that's going to be great to, you know, kind of highlight these things that, you know, a lot of times, there's nothing wrong with knowing them just as kind of from a conceptual standpoint of how they sound and how they transition to actually outline the drama of a great solo like this. that's almost kind of on that macro level. Yeah. Stepping back and like,

how do you get from here to here? But then to look at these very specific techniques that he revisits. And, you know, look, both of us know that particular, all these souls, we've known these well. These are favorites of ours.

Absolutely. But there are also things that we've studied and revisited, visited, revisited, looked at with different lenses over the years. And really diving and even deeper in preparation for this course. How many more things did we find like that? I mean,

it's almost like an endless well. It's crazy. It would be to do like a, full harmonic or melodic analysis on this would on every single track of these five. I mean, it would be like a two years cement, like two years of college coursework. So it's, these are such geniuses, all five people that we're discovering. So it's fun to pick out our favorite moments here. And we hope our audience, that checks out the chorus enjoys it.

I'm just blown away. And he even does some Dorian stuff in here too. So he's using this melodic minor both ways. So for those of you. Don't give a word of course. Don't give a word of course. I'm just saying, so if you're confused about what I'm talking about with the melodic minor. So in jazz, a lot of times when people say melodic minor, they just mean this.

Yeah. Ascending. What I would say. Yeah, the ascending. Classical nerd in me says ascending classical. But classical musicians learn the melodic minor like this. Ascending that way, descending this way. Yeah.

Because this leads weight to the fifth. Yeah. This leads weight to the tonic. Yeah. That's a good exercise there, actually. Well, and chocolate chip cookies lead to, vegan chocolate chip cookies lead to weight of the tummy instead of the tonic. They lead to weight right in the middle.

I've been discovering that the last few days. This next clip is a little sample of Peter Martin's Jazz Piano Origins story. And so the first song I was going to play first tune, and really this is my earliest recollection of jazz. And what really first attracted me to playing jazz. I don't know that I knew that it was jazz. I wasn't, you know, the cool thing about it when you're really young, and you like music and you hear it, especially in the kind of pre-internet, I wouldn't say pre-television

stage, because I was watching TV a lot, but my parents were pretty, I don't know, I would definitely watch a lot of TV, but I was never one of those, like, sit down in front of the TV for hours. Partly, we had a black and white TV until I was in high school, which was crazy. So, like, black and white TV is not that interest, and it was small, and it had rabbit ears because it didn't attach to cable or anything. So I definitely remember liking music and just going out and playing or whatever. But this was the first song that I really connected with, I think. It really was the impetus for my original love of jazz.

So here you go. Ever heard of it, Adam? Once or twice? And there was a movie they came out, I think, called The Entertainer, when I was maybe... The Sting, wasn't it? Oh, The Sting, exactly. And I don't even think I saw it because it was probably, I was too young to see it. I've never seen it either, but all of my aunts would always say, play the Sting.

And they met The Entertainer. Yeah, yeah. But I heard that. I remember my mom had a 1975 Dotson Blue Wagon and with an eight-track player in it. She bought it brand new. And it came with like hits of years gone by or something. It was just random songs. But the entertainer was on there because that was big from the movie, I guess that year or whatever.

So I don't know. I was hearing that and I was like, wow, I love the way that sounds. This recording I just played is actually from a piano role that of Scott Joplin actually playing. A lot of people don't know that that exists he recorded on the role. Of course, there's no dynamics or anything, but the time and everything is the way that he played it. That's awesome. So next up, any questions so far?

No, I mean, I feel like that is very common to my story, too. In fact, I'm putting my playlist together here of my origin story, which will be part two. Yes. There's also some Scott John. Well, you're doing that while we're doing this? No, no, no, no. I'm saying, you're multitasking. Well, yeah, yeah.

No, but I think it's a very common thing, especially for pianists, especially if you've gotten into jazz. It's almost important. possible to ignore how important ragtime is to the development of our instrument, not just for jazz, but for any pianists. Absolutely. I mean, the branches that came off of what that genius did is incredible. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, so the next thing that I remember kind of consciously hearing and being like, oh, wow, I want to do that. I want to hear that. I love that. You know, it's like you take a bite of peanut butter and jelly or something like, okay, I like this. You're a kid, but you just, you attach in a very visceral way. was a record that my dad had but this cut for some reason just really did it for me

Willow Eid for me? Willow Eid for me? Art Tatum, yeah. Art Tatum, live. Piano starts here. And the whole record's great. I mean, but I remember being like, I wasn't thinking about improv, I was playing I was playing piano a lot like classical stuff. But I remember

when he goes into the bridge here in a second. That was my first kind of like, whoa, swing. He's already swinging here. Yeah, but I think that was just like the first of my really it's funny because it's not so much the incredible technique and everything which is amazing on here but this is not

like the flashiest Art Tatum by far of many different things but I think it was just that groove and that feel and I love the way he played the instrument and I was just like wow it's an amazing arrangement yeah it's amazing arrangement that's great man well I mean to have art tandem as an early influence must be so how old were you when you're listening to that around the house

I mean I was my dad listened that record a lot he loved that record so but I was probably like 11 or 12 when I really was like, wait, I want to maybe listen to it, you know. Yeah. And now a bit of my jazz piano origins. And so the first records I got were actually Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans' verve jazz masters. Yes.

Do you remember these compilations from the 90s? With that horrible logo. I mean, I got it queued up right here. But it introduced me to this. I know, man. So, you know, at this point, like, I'm, again, this was all happening a little bit. further down the line than I think it might have been for you. But I was probably 14 or 15 when I first got these records.

And again, I heard this and I was like, I want to feel like that for the rest of my life. And then this next one I heard and I thought, well, how does this work? Like I'll never, this is Bill Evans, Israel. And again, this is from explorations, but I just had it on a compilation of Verve Jazz Man's just company. And I remember having the CD going in my dad's car.

and asking him like, what is happening? What is the drummer doing? Why are they doing that? Because everything else is like, he was like, I don't know, put black cow back on. It was funny because he didn't really, he didn't know. And really, I was like, what is the bass player doing? Are they reading this?

Is the piano improvising? I had so many questions. And he, and there was no internet for him to be like, how does jazz work? There was no open studio. My son wants to say, right. So he was like, I think. He's like, I think they're all improvising. And I was like, no.

And he's like, yeah, I think they're all in. He's like, I think he was actually pretty spot on. He's like, I think there's a structure. Yeah. And there's a, there's a tune. And then each player is improvising their own thing to it, right? And I was like, that's amazing. Yeah.

I was just mind blown. And like, lo and behold, Lester Manis there. Shout out to, shout out to dads, too. That's right. You know, mom and dads for, for helping along the way. So that was really when I first got into, like that was. Well, shout out to moms for doing everything else except what we're talking about. We're like, yeah, our dads, our moms are listening right now, seething.

They're like, oh, we literally, this was one percent of your upbringing. I drove him to those piano lessons every damn day. Right. I drove up to Union, Missouri. That's right. The dads were, like, our dads were passed out drinking beer while the moms did everything. And he's like, I think they're just making it up as they go along. Every two and a half years, they would, like, drive us somewhere and, like, play a track.

That's our memories of our dad. But I'll never forget. So that was kind of like the music that was like, you should listen. to this like a lot of shoulds when you're that age but i'll never forget the first thing i i heard and then i went out and got on my own of can i just i just want to ask you one thing about their bill evans because hearing that again you know i wonder for you and for the ones i pick for a lot of people if the like the way that track starts i mean there's so many we could list a hundred bill evans tracks that of his albums and what things that he played on where he did

amazing i mean like he was very consistent like playing at a high level absolutely explore. I mean, but this record, the way that track starts, like, and the sound of it and all the instrument, it is so compelling. It really, yeah. You know, I mean, it's, it's like, it's a resting. I mean, it's just like, whoa. And like, to your point of, like, I want to figure out how to do that, what's going on? How are they doing that? I think these certain tracks, there are certain ones that that pull you in even more and become part of that sort of legendary origin story. Well, and I think it's, thank God that I got, you know, the first track on the one compilation is Night Train, The first track on the other is Israel because, like, they both have such heavy vibes.

Yeah. Where the vibe is very approachable, actually. Like, even though for a 14-year-old, this seems heavy, it has that teenage angst about it a little bit. Like, you're like, he seems sad. That was like Soundgarden, 1959. It is a little sound, like, but it has that sort of, like, vibe. And when you're, when I was at the time in the process of, like, I'm just reading, you know, my jazz band's charts and, and trying to figure this out, when you're to figure out the music just by listening to it and you're like okay that I don't I don't know what is happening and that is very exciting yeah you know what I mean because also I don't know about you at the time I'm way cockier than I should be oh yeah I feel like I'm the greatest gift to music that's ever been because I'm 14 I'm 15 I'm like damn right right also I have chops fairly young you know what I mean like like the chops like I spent time trying to play with some and pop music stuff you can kind of play you can crush it's like you're figuring out stuff on the radio and you're like hitting Brian everything I do like figuring it out on the

The girls are like, what? That's right. You know, it's great. But then this comes and I'm like, I have no idea what's happening here. In this episode, Peter and I discuss our practice routines. That's not what we're talking about today, is it? Are we here to talk about? We're here to talk about.

I mean, listen, we're talking about practice. Not a game. Not a game. Not a game. Not a game. Not a soup. We're talking about practice. Yeah, that's right.

So, yes, we're talking about a practice, specifically a practice routine and how to organize your practice routine. And this was actually a request. I just threw out a little thing on Twitter. You know about Twitter? Twitter. I know about Twitter, but I don't know about Twitter. Twitter.

Twitter is a new thing I've developed. The British Twitter? Yeah, British. Yeah. Brita. It's, um, no, I just said, you know, and look, hit me up. Twitter. Yeah.

Twitter. Twitter. I'm from Roxburgh. I don't know what I'm talking about. Oh, boy. Okay. Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire.

I'm from Worcestershire. Oh, many apologies to our UK list. I'm from Worcestershire where sauces are available. No, so this, I just threw it out on Twitter that, um, we're doing some podcasts today, as we do. And if you have any requests. Hey, when's that going to start? Right now. Well, they said, can you talk about, can you and Adam, because they were added me?

I'm at I am Peter Martin, if you want to hit me up on Twitter. I'm at nothing right now. Yeah, we're going to get you on Twitter, man. I was on Twitter. I didn't enjoy it. You're on all that other stuff, aren't you? Not really. Not really.

Not quite. Well, anyway, so somebody, and I apologize for forgetting who it was now, I got a couple of nice requests, but this one really jumped out to me, how to organize your practice routine. Because we love talking about practice. We do. And I think both of us probably not to speak for you, but I would just say for myself, I'm very routine oriented. And then over the last year and a half or so have become even more routine oriented being home more during the pandemic. Totally. But actually enjoying it and really been thinking about it.

we're talking about all the time amongst ourselves, like different routines and, you know, how we can use them to help our own development with music and other things, with our children, and with our students. And it's a really exciting thing for us because as we start to organize these things, I do think it's one of the most helpful areas we can, you know, impart upon our students and listeners. Totally. I find a routine to be crucial for my entire life, actually, for my whole day. I mean, what do we do on Monday? We do podcasting. That's right.

Every Monday. That's right. We wouldn't do it if we didn't have a routine. It would never get time. If we were just like, hey, let's text this week and maybe do a podcast. Right. It would never happen. And right now, we're like, we're sort of gliding over into dinner time, but we're a little bit late starting, but we're still doing this because we have a routine.

That's right. We put the rue, just like with a gumbo needs rue. And we put the root in the teen, okay? We put the rue and the team. Right. All right. So let's talk about this. to organize your practice routine okay yep can I throw a can I throw one idea out

first do it okay make it routine that seems obvious in the name it is but what does routine mean actually it means regular it means regular yeah but like a regular sequence of events it's like a pattern right it's like a thing a pattern is something that you get going and then it sounds it sounds or feels normal just like when in your playing if you start a pattern then you change it or whatever and so having a regular sequence of events that occur and I'm going to recommend specifically the beginning of your practice routine. Having that routine built in.

Yeah, yeah. It's so important because it gets you into it. It gets you over that hump of like, oh, what am I going to practice? Oh, I'm confused. Do I want to do this? Like, you know, decision making, indecision and, you know, confusion and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes a routine is just like that's what you do. And if you think about other parts of your life, like you said, if you come downstairs and your

routine is to make eggs or make a salad and especially if it's like a healthy routine, that's just sort of what you do. It's not difficult anymore because that's what your routine is. Totally. And you know what it does? It creates a bit of a psychological transition time, right? Where you can go from the stress and the lists of endless things that we have to do, things that are bothering us or people that are bothering us. And we can then just sit down and be with what we want to be with at that time, which is the music. For me, my practice routine, especially the last couple of months, starts with silence, stillness, actually. I'll sit down on the piano, and this has come from watching

Fred Hirsch's amazing course here on a studio thoughts and experiments. I'll sit down the piano and I'll position myself in a comfortable and solid way, my posture. And you'll start doing this? No, no noodling? No noodles, no. No, no. No, noodles, no. Okay, sorry. A little shoegaze noodles. Shoodles. Shoodles. No, what I'll do is...

It's a new breakfast cereal from General Mills. Shoodles. Would that be something you might be interested in? Definitely. No, I'll sit down and you know what? So I'll do, I'll just do a brief like 10 seconds of silence. I'll take a couple like, I mean, it's like what you would do in a meditation practice too where just the first couple of breaths are nice and deep and long and force. Like it's intentional.

Yeah. Setting an intention for your practice a little bit. And just being still for a few moments, right? Just not doing something for just a couple of moments. And then. And that's the first, that's like the number. That's the first part of the reach. That's the first part of routine.

So great. And then I come out of that and maybe I'll start with some scale work or something technical. But I have that little buffer, right? Where I'm not doing anything. Yeah. And finally, Peter talks about making mistakes and how to deal with mistakes. I mean, to be honest, like I enjoy finding out, like solving the challenge of how I'm going to profit from my mistakes. Like how am I going to get better?

What am I going to learn from them? That does not mean that I try to make mistakes. it does not mean that I try to be ill-prepared so that I'm going to make mistakes so that I can grow. But it does mean that I lean into challenging myself and what I'm going to do,

be it in a solo or maybe to perform something that I'm not 100% under my, like I don't feel like I have to be 100% prepared. I do want to be like 97% prepared though. But like put myself into situations, I'm open to putting myself into situations where there's probably going to be some mistakes. Not catastrophic.

mistakes. But I really embrace this idea that as artists, being an artist is very different than being a neurosurgeon and that our mistakes like a small percentage mistake is not going to kill somebody. It's not going to

and so like, but the beautiful things that can happen when we are open to going for things that may cause some quote unquote mistakes, but also might cause some beauty or ultimately the ability for our story story. and our song to make it out into the world

and hopefully be pleasurable and edifying to some listeners, that that risk is worth taking. Now, you know, a neurosurgeon, you know, doing the most precise of brain surgery doesn't have that ability. So it's a very different mindset, but I feel like jazz musicians and just musicians in general, like we too many times take on this, that same kind of neurosurgeon mentality of like,

we have to be these precision machines and the closer that you get to that, the better. And really, you know, the great jazz musicians that I admire didn't play like that. And it's very easy to be like, John Coltrane didn't make mistakes. He was perfect. And from the standpoint of like,

I can't point to something and say like, oh, look at that horrible mistake, as in the mistake is that it sounded bad or it sounded ugly or he's playing a wrong note or whatever. Well, I can point out where he's playing a wrong note, you know. But it's not because he's coming from a place of like beauty and inclusion and really trying to make. it over that mountain top to that next mountain

and you know it's that spirit of adventure and all those different things that that mistake becomes this thing of beauty you know it's like looking in nature it's like there's some mistakes there's some three-legged sheep and some weird stuff out there but you know it's all beautiful and the creator

created it and all this kind of good stuff so I think the more we can kind of embrace that and so like that's you know my my approach to mistakes has evolved over the years more to try to embrace that Now, it's still hard. Like, you know, you're playing in a situation and if your mistakes makes you feel like you weren't able to put your best foot forward, like if they're debilitating to the point, that's hard to deal with.

And I think that's still the hardest thing for me. And that usually comes out of like the kind of mistakes that were due to lack of preparation or lack of adequate preparation. And I try to avoid being in those situations, but it's inevitable it's going to happen as a professional musician. Especially as you start to work more and have some more success, you're put in more high pressure situations, more situations that you may not have. have the optimal amount of time. Just due to life and family and all these things to be able to prepare. So you've got to try to, you know, just pull yourself up quickly when those mistakes come and get to the good stuff. Not to cover up the mistakes, but to mitigate them.