You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Pursuing a Unique Sound

Episode Date: April 23, 2019

We have another SpeakPipe today where Peter and Adam share their experiences developing their own unique sound. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Check out the bottom of the page at http://www.openstudionetwork.com/podcast.Today's episode is sponsored by the Oxford American. The Oxford American is a magazine dedicated to documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South. Its award-winning annual music issue comes with a CD sampler and digital download - a must-have for any serious music fan. Recent issues have featured Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk, John Cage, and John Cage. Visit https://www.oxfordamerican.org/yhi today for a special subscription discount!Let 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, man, what's up? Trying to get my sound unique. Oh, it's unique, all right. Very unique. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. Lou Donaldson.

And you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Coming at you. Today's episode of the You'll Hearer's podcast. Today's episode of the You'll try this one more time. Today's episode of the You'll Hear It podcast is brought to you by the Oxford American. Go to Oxford American. Go to Oxford American.org.

You'll hear it for some fantastic offers. It's just an incredible Southern literary magazine It has so much to do He's pop-locking over here If you can't see it Keep talking. It has so much to do with the things we talk about here every day. Music and the culture that birthed the music that we love, jazz.

I mean, there's been articles on John Coltrane and James Brown and Nina Simone, just to name a few. There's amazing poetry. I've just been really into the poetry in the magazine. It's been incredible. such a great history of writers in the South. Check it out.

Oxirman American.org slash YHI for our special deal. That's right. And if that is great narratives on the birthing of this music, prepare for today's episode, which is the afterbirth of jazz commentaries. Here we go. Let's cut the cord. We have a speak pipe.

All right. You know, we've been getting a lot of speak pipes because we've been asking for speak pipes. If you want to leave us a speakpipe, go to you'll hear it.com and leave us your question. If you have a question about anything, Ben had a question about. found. Hey Peter, hey Adam. Love the podcast. I was just wondering if you could share your experiences on how you found your unique sound as musicians. Was it something that happened naturally or did you ever specifically pursue a sound or style that you thought would set you apart from other musicians or even just put your unique stamp on the music you play? Thanks so much for the seven star podcast. Bye.

It's a great question. And I think it's a big question. Yes, but we're going to nail it, we're going to tackle it, and then we're even going to give an ultimate tip on developing your own unique sound at the end of the episode, right? Yeah, wait for the very end of the episode. It's going to be better than yesterday's. Yesterday's was funny. Was it good? I guess it was good.

It was great, man. It was good. Okay. All right. So the unique sound, there's a few ways you can tackle the unique sound. First of all, you know, I think everybody has naturally a unique sound. We all have, you know, a shape of our hand that's unique. We all have personal experiences that are.

unique. We practice things in a very unique way. Almost nobody I know practices the same way. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And almost nobody I know has the same personality. So that's all going to affect your sound. I think the key to a lot of this is letting that filter off, like turning that filter off, letting that wall down, letting as much as your personality come through as possible. But then there are some ways that you can cultivate the sound too. Absolutely. So I almost look at that, uh, that flow from, you know, who we are as individuals and we are unique. I mean, that's, you know, it's like we don't actually have to work at all at being individual. Sometimes we work at trying to be like somebody else, but we're still ourselves, you know, so that's something that actually just comes naturally. Now, how to develop the

technique and the tools and the ears and the confidence and all these things to be a great jazz player. That's something we have to work at. And so I almost see that like, you know, if you kind of keep your top level goal as being, I'm working on. on all this technique and ear training and all this, you know, developing my skills so that I will have a unique sound someday that'll be based on the individual that I am, that I actually don't have to work on that being an individual part.

That's sort of the, you know, the God-given thing that we all have. Yeah. But the other skills. So like, I guess, you know, we all go through, you know, identity crisis, midlife crime. I mean, there's always crises we can go, that are like based upon our self-awareness,

the level of self-awareness that we have. But the interesting thing about that is like we always have something. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's kind of like talent. Like a lot of people worried about I want to develop my talent. And it's like, well, I mean, develop your talent's fine. I want to gain more talent. You can't really do that.

Yeah. But it's not as important as you think because you've already got that. Whatever amount of talent and you do, everybody has some. Everybody has some. I mean, I hate it when people tell me like, I don't have any talent in music. You know, it's kind of like, I don't have any talent in breathing. Really? You're dead.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all have something. And that's never as important as like what we develop. So I think with the individuality, you know, there's things that we can do in terms of being self-aware and understanding where we exist in this world in that there's forces that come on us that want to stamp out. There's like economic and political forces that want to stamp out people's individuality. Totally true. And you see that in music a lot like where you get this thing of like there's a certain kind of sound that we perpetrate on people like from a very young age. Like you listen to this kind of pop sound and then you're going to identify and we're going to get certain triggers off for you based on emotions from music and everything and some of them are great. Some of them are whatever. But the whole thing is like what is your individual relationship with music. It starts out great as a little baby actually, I think. And then, you know, if it's nurtured, if it's nurtured and as opposed to nature is like what you're born with, that's where the magic can happen. And you can retain that individuality and then build a technique up to be able to take advantage of your unique you.

It's so true. And, you know, jazz is a tricky thing with your unique you, right? Because all the great players are celebrated for their uniqueness, for their individual sound. And yet, people get in this trap of trying to sound just like them. I remember I was on the road once, a really great drummer and a friend of mine, Chris Higginbottom based in London. And he, I was down, because I was listening to a lot of chick, and I like really wanted to get that. Chick Korea. I wanted to listen, I wanted to get that sound. I wanted to get that popping right-hand sound. And I just don't have that. It's just not. me, you know? And I was like, man, I don't have that time. And he was like, no, you have

Adam time. And it's your thing. And it's great. And just, and so that was kind of an eye-opening thing. I was, luckily, I was young enough that it stuck. And it's like accepting what you do have and accepting that your uniqueness is what can make you great. You know what I mean? That, that your, what you might even see is deficiencies are just part of your sound. You know, you wouldn't say that Thelonius Monk had technical deficiencies. He was so himself and so original. Yeah. That He achieved greatness in the art. So that's like something to definitely consider that taking that filter off being as much of yourself as you can be, being honest on stage is the- Yeah.

And I mean, isn't that really what we're talking about, self-awareness in general with your personality? It's like your musical talents and personality. It's like getting more and more self-aware, which is always easier as we get older. But there's ways we can accelerate that by, I mean, look, there's a lot of stuff way above our pay grade here at the You'll Hear podcast in terms of, of neurology and psychology that affects this. But I do believe that there's a mindset that we can adopt. It gets harder when you get more older and stuck in your ways. But I always think back to the great Nicholas Payton because I was around him a lot.

Well, recently too, but when he was young, I mean, younger than me, like teenager. And he always had like this kind of, he always had such a great self-awareness of like where his talents lie and was able to really exploit them in a way. Now, he has very big musical talents in a number of. way so some might say well that's easy because he's really talent well but but when he was a teenager did he know everything he knows now could he did he have the facility that he has now probably not no exactly but i mean he was he understood that like he had in an in he was an individual with an individual sound at an unusually young age and played in that way and i mean he would probably

be like oh i was copying freddie hubbard and went in and different people but not really not in the way that most like usually you get to that later on we hinted at this a couple weeks ago but i actually think this is the most important part about being a great player It's when you see young players who are obviously going to be great, you know, world-class musicians, they may not know all the theory that even you know. They might not have all the technique that some trumpet player you know has, but what they do have is that that strong sense of self, that strong sense of individuality, that strong confidence. And that makes them great. And that's like for me, that's one thing that you can really point to is proof that if you develop that part of your personality, it's not even a different personality. You don't have to change your personality.

Just let your personality come through in your music. And everything that you focus on should be helping you to get that way. For me, every few months, like if I'm about to start a new practice thing, I will open up my practice journal. And I'll almost do like this, you know, practice bullet journal. Exactly. But I'll do like a free form, like word cloud, free association of sounds that I want to have, right? Of things that I like to hear and things that I might. want to emulate and really just sort of like list them out you know like the other like I have

glissando's you know my latest one and things that I don't really have that I think are a part of my personality and that way I can practice those this is one technique you can use is to sit down and write out what are your sounds yeah yeah how do you know if you don't think about that kind of stuff that's right well it's interesting you're saying to write it out and I don't I just want to do a little foreshadowing for our episode coming up tomorrow super excited about that but I'm to know, you don't have to answer this because the listeners haven't heard. We're not at tomorrow yet. But how you're able to write things with the two paws that you have,

I want to know how are you able to grip a pad? But we might learn tomorrow from the lovely Mrs. Manus exactly how you're able to do that. It's super hard, man. Yeah, a little foreshadowing. Yeah. I have no fine motor school skills outside of the piano. And even that sometimes is not great. Well, good.

Well, thank you, Ben, the Ben, right? It was Ben. Yeah, Ben. Thank you so much for the question. super insightful. We're excited about the speak pipes, but we're even more excited that they're like really just interesting subjects that are getting us thinking about stuff that we're passionate about and we hope you are too. Totally. So keep them up. Go to you'll hearat.com for all things podcast related and our new blog there. Leave us a rating review. That's always important. Yeah. Seven stars.

Seven and a half stars. We've been getting seven and a half stars. Really? I know. But I don't, you know what I don't like about that? Let's let's pull it back to seven. You never thought I'd say that. I didn't. Well, because the half makes it like, well, if it's going to be half, it could have just been eight then. It's just a little better than seven. I guess so.

I guess so. Yeah. Let's go seven. Before we get into our ultimate tip, have you signed up for the Oxford American's e-newsletter? I have. And I even put a little filter so that they don't go to my spam filter. I protected them because they're my friends.

Go to Oxfordamerican. org slash YHI for some awesome deals on one of the great literary magazines available today. Yeah, and actually, if you're not willing just to take our advice to go and subscribe, which is fine, I understand, skeptical consumers nowadays. This is a great way, a free way to kind of check out some of their content. First of all, you can just look at the site and use that portal slash YHI that'll get you right in there. But signing up for the newsletter, it's obviously they're totally legit. If you ever want to unsubscribe, you press one button and do that. But you can start to get some of their content over time kind of drip to you and see if you like it.

And then maybe you'll become a subscriber because that's really where the magic happens. The live, you know, the tactile. The physical. The physical magazine. And when you put this on your coffee table, if you don't have a coffee table, you can just put it in your living room or in your tent wherever you live.

Go to IKEA.com slash YHI. Keep building. IKEA. Love you. Keep putting all those stuff into those little packages with the teeny little ranch. Florgen.

Fiorgen. So, no, but when you put this, you know, did you instantly become smarter and more sophisticated? I feel that way. That's right. Yeah. Good.

What's our ultimate tip? So this is the thing on individuality. I think the ultimate tip is that, you know, you actually can practice this, at least how it manifests into your playing. I know we said you are an individual and that's already there. But how do we manifest that? And that is this practicing performing that we've talked about before. And I like to do this at the end of the practice period, but you really could do it at any time.

What's even better is if you come back later and do a little practice and you could just come in for like 15 minutes and just play. But the idea for this is going to be you're going to take a song or whatever it is you're working on and you're going to pretend like you're performing. But the joy of it is going to be that there's no audience there. So there's no reason to get nervous because nobody cares. But your only goal there is to play as much as possible you. So you've got the framework, which is the tune or the blues or whatever you're playing.

Or you could even do a free improvisation if you've got that in your wheelhouse. but you're going to actually practice playing as an individual. You're only going to play ideas that are like something that you heard. If that's stebidoo-d-da, stebidoo-d-da, stele-do-d-d-that's who you are. That's fine. Like whatever kind of comes to mind first. You're not going to judge yourself when you copy, which invariably you will, things that you're working on. But it's going to be like a mindfulness exercise in that other thoughts are going to come in, just relax, don't judge, push them out, and forge your head.

Remember that chick worksheet from Berkeley that Elias shared with us. Yes. Chick-Korea. Only play what, sorry. That's okay. Only play what you hear. Yes. And if you're not hearing anything, don't play it.

That exercise, when you practice performance like that, only being yourself and not playing anything that's not you, that gets you in that zone very quickly. That's right. There it is. Well, until tomorrow. You'll hear it.