You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Practicing While Others Are Around

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

Today, Peter and Adam answer a SpeakPipe on how to get your practice time in without annoying your friends and family. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Sign up for You'll Hear It Premium to access our SpeakPipe hotline! Go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/yhi for more info.The ending theme song for today's episode is "In the Meantime" by Harrison Richter, which was recorded live at The 1905. To get your music featured on You'll Hear It, send an MP3 recording of your music to [e-mail] Martin and Romero Lubambo have a new album! Buy Rio Meets New Orleans - Live from Tokyo right here: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/romerolubambopetermartinLike 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, Peter. Hey, Adam. If the pianist plays a G minor 13 alone in the woods with no one around to hear it, does the singer still come in in the wrong key? Ooh, be careful, be careful. And I'm Peter Martin. He's Adam Manus. I'm Peter Martin.

And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Coming at you. We got to be careful because it's starting to trend anti-singer around here. Well, we have our friends at Jazz Mimi's, also known as Jazz Meemis. Yeah, to blame for that. They got us going on. funny guys and we did the interview a couple weeks

ago, they baited us, I would have to say, to be honest. Didn't they bait us into some anti-singer jokes? Yeah, and you know what? We bait them. Yeah, that joke that I just did, it started off, it was going to be anti-gaturist, and then it was going to be anti-drama, and I just, it was too easy of a target. Well, fun fact about, you know, one of the famous guitar jokes

is always about the Berkeley guitarist. Yeah. You know, remember that guy? I didn't, I was up in Boston yesterday. Yeah, yeah. I said about the The guitarist, remember, long hair, plays too loud, can't read music, you know. Oh, who? Well, that's the joke. It could be many people.

But on a serious note about guitarist, as of this year, I have a nephew who just started at Berkeley. He's a freshman drummer, great drummer, and he said that they announced that the orientation that for the first time ever, the most number of instruments, the instrument that is not the most represented in the freshman class is not guitar. What is it? piano. No way. Yes, for the first time ever. But we found out later there's a little bit of trickery, a little bit of Berkeley trickery with the numbers. They've been known to be tricky

with those numbers. Okay. They, you know, they've acquired Boston Conservatory a couple years ago and this is the first year they're officially counting the enrollment. And so, you know, in the conservatory, there's not a lot of guitars, probably hardly any, but there's a lot of pianists. So I think that's, but officially at Berkeley now, there's more pianists than anything. It's pretty awesome. It is awesome. All right, well, we have, we love you guitars. We do love you guitars. And vocalists. Yeah. We have a voice message here, otherwise known as a speak pipe. Oh, this must be from a premium member.

From a premium. We only allow them from premium members. This is from Michael. Check it out. Hey, guys. It's Michael from Chicago. I wanted to ask you about how you practice with other people around. I know both you guys have families and probably have to deal with this at home a little bit. For me, it's kind of twofold in the sense that when other people are around, it may feel almost like a performance.

Or I may just play differently than what I'd be. play if I was alone or restrict my practice. And secondly, just the practicalities of maybe somebody's sleeping or they don't want to hear that attempt at the bebop line being transcribed for the 50th time. I guess not to just take, but to maybe offer my own input, I've found that if I have to play quietly, then I kind of look at it as an opportunity to practice quietly. But there's really only so much I can work on my pianissimo or use the mute pedal to lose all the tone and articulation that comes along with it. So I'd love to hear techniques you guys have for practicing quietly, maybe.

So yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Lastly, amazing podcast. I've learned so much over the past year or so listening to you guys. Peter, I caught you up with Nick Payton on New Year's Eve. It was absolutely killing. Adam, you got to make it up here sometime soon in Chicago. I love to see you guys. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Michael, for the kind words. Yeah, that's, so a lot of people may not know unless you're from Chicago or St. Louis there. Actually, it's only people in St. Louis. You said, as he was saying, you were like, come down here. People in Chicago don't come down to St. Louis, not unless they have to. Because they got it all happening up there, you know. But, yeah, thanks for the question. It's a good question.

Oh, it's a great question. I think the first thing I thought about when you said, you know, there's people around, it feels like a performance. I use that sometimes, like, to practice performance. You know what I mean? Like, okay, people will list. I mean, I do that here in Open Studio. We have this big,

beautiful studio that has no walls. Yeah. And so sometimes I need to practice something or go over something, and, you know, you're there. We have other musicians working here, and it's a situation that could be like in the back of your brain or whatever, but you've got to get over that.

That's right. And you just got to be ready to fail in front of people. And I mean, that's a very powerful tool, you know. Yeah. And, you know, as pianist, this is always a challenge because we can't easily, you know, if you're a trumpet player, you can, well, trumpet's kind of hard to go outside. Yeah, you could. You can go outside.

You can go to another room. You can move your instrument. But we're kind of restricted to where the piano is. That's right. And it's a powerful instrument. So it can sort of take over. I loved Michael's idea about taking, you know, making lemons, lemonade out of the of lemons or lime ate out of limes.

For sure. And practicing on your pianissimo, you know. But he's right. Yeah, you can only do that for so long. I'm trying to think of the things. I've been in a lot of situations. I mean, look, the thing is practice is not, you know, a lot of people, spouses or like girlfriends, boyfriends of pianists or like, or guitars are like,

oh, it's so cool because they're playing this beautiful music at home. I know people always tell my wife, it must be amazing. You know, Peter's playing all this great stuff at home. And she's sort of like, yeah, is her. outward official response, but she's like, you know, listening to scales and, like, go over the same passage. Yeah. As Michael said, the bebop line over and over again. It's not that beautiful to listen to.

Practice doesn't sound great. Heather says the same thing all the time. She's like, you think it would be like, are the house is just filled with this lovely music. He's like, he's not performing there. Yeah, yeah. He's making sure that he can perform when he goes outside of here. So it sounds terrible in here all the time. Whenever Kelly comes to a gig, she's always, there's always a little bit of a surprise.

She's like, wow, you're really good. I know. Heather says the same thing. And she's like, oh, it's really neat to see you play. And I'm like, I play all the time in front of you. I know. Yeah. So that, we do have to be sensitive about that.

And I mean, the obvious thing is just do it when people aren't around. That's the only way around it. But, yeah, when you can't, I think you're practicing quiet. Now, I am hearing about, I have stuff to try it out that, that Yamaha silent piano. The hybrid piano. Yeah, the hybrid piano. But, I mean, man, it's still, it's not the piano. Yeah, yeah, I know.

It's nothing like. But, I mean, you could certainly get something done on that, right? I like the idea. And you can put, I mean, you know, all. So you could have a keyboard and at least work on some conceptual things. A key station? I wouldn't get a key station. No offense, I'm audio.

It's not the greatest. Well, we got like their bottom of the line. I'm sure they have something better. But definitely something with headphones and maybe some weighted keys or whatever. Just so you could at least maybe like, all right, I'm going to work on these shapes. You know, you can get those in your fingers. It's not going to be the same as working it out on a piano. Yeah, because it's not, I mean, look, this is important what we do,

but it's not worth messing up domestic bliss over practicing the bebop lines. I mean, what you have to do is practice it maybe a little less than you'd like to when no one's around. And then when you have to practice when people around, go to the headphones, listen, work on a solo on a keyboard, I think is fine. For sure. Like that kind of thing, you don't. Transcribing, you can be on anything. So kind of think about those sort of things to do, I think is good. He asked about listening too.

Let's not sleep on listening, like you said. Active listening. Totally. Deep active listening can be amazing. And if you want to practice like learning a solo and singing along kind of working on ear training, you can go walk around, get your headphones on, go. for a walk. For sure. You can do that anywhere.

Oh, and we've done episodes, haven't we on how to practice away from the piano? I believe we have. We have, yeah. If not, that would be a brilliant episode. That was like an early episode. That was like number seven. OG, oh, guys. How the hell would you know that?

Because I used to produce this show. You really know that's number seven? No, I doubt it is. What if it is, though, Andrew? What if I was right? So, I mean, yeah, there's that. But then there's also what was, oh, yeah, he was asking about people sleeping. how do you do that now with spouse and stuff like they're usually sort of set in their ways

what i i did i used to do a lot of practice i still do sometimes if i'm working on a project at home i've got this other space here but like i'll practice in the middle of the night and i did it enough and i guess i sort of snuck it in early in my marriage and certainly my kids got used to that from a young age so they just kind of slept through it because they thought it was normal practice and they would be sleeping they would be sleeping i mean back in new orleans i used to do that all the time because that was my only space and it was like my only time to really be able to practice especially when the kids were little. And so they just sort of got used to it,

and they can kind of sleep through it, and it became a little bit of a soundtrack to their childhood, I might even say. That's amazing. Am I losing you, Adam? Hello? No, no, no. I know I'm not a shiny screen

attached to a computer, but I'll try to be more exciting. I'm trying to find that episode. That early episode. Oh, yeah, that's right. Oh, here it is. Number 14. I was just seven off.

Episode 14, How to Practice Away from Your Instrument. That's probably not the only one we've done for this, too. Is it like with the bad mics in the bad space and everything. Yeah, it's great. Well, if you're, you'll hear a premium member, that's the only way to hear it anyway. That's so true, actually.

Oh, that's good. Yeah, so if you want to hear that early episode, you'll hear it premium. And you know what? I'll give away a little business idea. I'm always having these brilliant ideas, but I don't have time to do them all. But one idea I had about this practicing,

I was like, okay, think about this. People need to practice during the day. Yeah. And then there's all these people that are at work with their piano sitting at an empty house. What if you had like an Airbnb for practicing where someone, you know, you had like a lockbox or someone could come in and practice during the day on your piano? In fact, most pianos aren't played anyway.

Yeah. Or you'd pay a certain amount per hour, a nominal fee or a nominal. And no, it could be like, whatever the market would bear. Maybe it's like 30 bucks an hour if it's a Steinway B or whatever. Yeah. That'd be awesome. And there's just sort of, you know, there's the need to be able to practice somewhere. And then you're somewhere where you're not deserving someone.

So that's another idea. I'm writing this down. Write that down. Torgensen, write it down. Cool. Well, thank you, Michael, for the question. It's a great question. I hope you figure out some kind of balance with that. But in general, you know, get the performance mindset going if people are around. And actually, you'll be surprised at the improvements you'll make to your actual performance.

Absolutely. Because there's no recreating that fully by yourself. You can imagine it and record yourself is what we always recommend. But when there's actually people in the room, it changes the air in the room. And then, you know, maybe time out your practice. I just remembered one more thing. Time out your practice when people are. round to do that.

What we talk about the performance practice. Yeah, there you go. Don't do your most tactical stuff. You know, if, I know it's hard to organize it like that

sometimes. And then, you know, people come and go. Tylon all PM for the kids and then practice the middle of the night. Or just leave your family and go single. Then you can do whatever you want. You'll hear it.

Whoa, whoa. Okay, sorry, sorry. Okay, so we have today on that note, and I'm kidding about that, of course. We have a listener tune. It's rearing its ugly head. I mean, it's the beauty of the listener tune is coming back.

Who is this? It's happening. It's in the means. time by Harrison Victor, but I haven't heard this. And neither of you. Have you heard this, Andrew? Can you vouch for this? Okay, we know it's good there. That dude's got high standards, remember. So this is going to kind of float us out.

After we tell you, and remind you, we are sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJadjazz.com to check out all of our courses. Hey, check out that episode earlier in the week. If you don't know what course is right for you, we break them all down. We break them all down. So until next week, you'll hear it.