You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Recent Reads: Peter & Adam's Book Club

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

Peter and Adam discuss some of the self-help books they've been diving into lately on this episode.Recent Reads:Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James ClearGrit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela DuckworthMake It Stick by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDanielPeak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success by Brad Stulberg and Steve MagnessTranscend: The New Science of Self-Actualization by Scott Barry KaufmanThe Lean Startup by Eric RiseLinks From This Episode:There's a new course coming to Open Studio - Your Sound Is Your Signature! Join jazz bass extraordinaire Christian McBride as he teaches you how to play ballads, odd time signatures, fast tempos, and more! Featuring our beloved Guided Practice Sessions to help refine the concepts of this course. For updates, just follow this link.Wednesday's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Edu Ribeiro Drum Conversations + Q&A on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkInterested 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 Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter, hey, can we finally talk about what we've been reading? I've been waiting so long. Yes, I just finished the Encyclopedia of the Blues. I'm Matt of Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Music advice and inspiration for life coming at you. I mean, you just do what you want.

You do you, man. It's your 50th birthday today. Peter, come on. It's still my birthday. It's been my birthday for a week. I know. It's like two weeks later on the podcast, but we're still recording this on your 50th birthday. It's amazing.

Man, I'm having fun, man. I appreciate you. I appreciate the listeners. I appreciate the whole Open Studio fam. The You'll Hear It family. I'm getting messages from fantastic musicians, but more importantly, fantastic people. Mark Whitfield sending me a message. Jeff Klapp, Elio Alves, Rubin Rogers, Christian McBride.

Happy birthday, my man, love you, Pedro. Okay. Excellent. Speaking of Christian McBride, is this, will the course be out when this is being heard? We don't know. I think it's out this week. Okay. It's coming soon.

Christian McBride. Your sound is your signature. Oh, I love that title. It's Christian McBride. Really breaking. down some amazing stuff on the bass. And, you know, he's joined by Carl Allen on drums. That's right.

The newest member of the Open Studio fam. This guy is so swinging. So swinging. Have you played a lot with Carl? I played a, yeah, I played it over the years quite a bit. And I just, he's one of my favorites. Actually, there's a certain kind of tune. There's several kinds of tunes that I would rather play with nobody else besides

him because he makes it so, feel so good at the same time as making you sound so good as a pianist. And I know Christian feels the same ways. That's why when we talked about, what about having a drummer if we can do the social distancing and figure it out? He was just like, see if Carl's available. And that was like a no-brainer. He's one of those musicians that makes everybody around him better. Yeah.

And if you ever get a chance to hang out with him as a person, it's the same thing. That's what I consider a great technique on your instrument when your personality comes out so well. So, you know, sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes it's a bad thing in Carl's case. Now, he's from Milwaukee. That's the only thing going against him. That is a drag. hometown of...

I love you, Milwaukee. Hometown of Liberace and Jeffrey Dahmer as well. Fun fact. Go Brewers! You're not selling it, and Carl Allen, more importantly. So yesterday we were the last episode,

we were supposed to do this recent reads, right, on all the nonfiction we've been reading, but we got sidetracked. Yes. With a listener's angry email, which we wanted to address, and I hope we did an okay job with that. But let's go back to Scott's question

and talk about what we've been reading because you and have been both reading a lot of what we'll talk about it, But Scott says, I've heard both Peter and Adam allude to some of the nonfiction they have been reading lately. After checking out atomic habits, following a recommendation from Adam, I have found myself enjoying other similar works such as Grit by Angela Duckworth and Peek by Anders Erickson and Robert Poole. I am wondering if you would consider producing an episode where you discuss some recent reads and how you use some of the information in your life and music making.

I think it's a great idea, Pete, for an episode. We were talking before we started recording about, like, you know, all the things were reading. In another era, there would be maybe like self-help, you know, in the New York Times self-help section or something. And they might even be on the same shelf space like by, you know, I say, El Ron Hubbard's works perhaps. Yeah, yeah. But now,

some controversial area. All the stuff we're reading has a, has a distinct techie vibe. Like a Silicon Valley. Tech bro, a little bit of a CEO of a fledgling online music company. Yeah, a little bit of a CD kind of like, you know, VC, you know, running off to the Cayman Islands during a pandemic, kind of a flare to them. Yeah. Take a, take a button down oxford shirt with a patagonia vest over it.

Oh, God. Is there anything worse than that? Tech bro. Tech bro. So that's, but we've been reading a lot of them. And I have actually some really, really good recommendations. Yeah. And so, Scott, you mentioned atomic habits, which is by, what's not going to name?

James Clear. James Clear. James Clear. Fantastic. Which is really, it's really terrific about just really, really. the thing that I think I got the most, you've read Atomic Heavis as well too. The thing that really stuck out with me for that,

I mean, we were talking about this too, that it's like, you don't actually have to read the entirety of all of these books. In fact, most of them fizzle out after about chapter eight or nine. That's right.

They get to their... It's just filling up the space. It's true. Like, then they get into the research and blah, blah, blah, blah. It is reinforcement. But you can actually get a great deal

of the inside of the book from the first 10, or from like an eight-minute YouTube, like, Splainer, video. Certainly possible.

I was not even talk about that. But Atomic Habics for me was a huge thing because one of the things that I still think about with this is to, first of all, it's the hierarchy of our identity,

our behavior, and our habits, right? So like, really, if we want to change our circumstances, we actually have to change who we are. And to do that,

we have to change how we think and our behavior. And that concept to me is something that's, I mean, it seems like innately obvious, but after kind of implementing it for the last few months, it really is true. Like if you can if you can actually kind of come up with your grand goal of the kind of life you want to live, right? Like of where you see yourself, not the things that you have or the money or anything like that, but actually how you see yourself living your day to day life? Yep. In the not too distant future, what is, what's the what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the. between that person who you, the life you want to live, like actually live, not just have, but live, and where you are now. And it's really just a matter of a few small mental shifts and changing a few habits every day, like really focusing on some things. And two of the things that stuck out, techniques that stuck out for me that I think about every day is make it easy

and make it obvious. So if there's something that I want to be doing to make my life better, like I know that exercising every day makes me feel better. It makes me more productive. It makes me in a better mood. I'm better at working here at Open Studio. I come up with more ideas for music. I'm sweeter to my wife and family. More energy. Yeah, I've got more energy. So I know that this is a good thing.

Now, I'm traditionally not been an exerciser per se. In the traditional sense of the word, meaning you go out to exercise. In the traditional thing. But two things from atomic habits has changed my life of this, and I've exercised every day for the last six months. I make it easy, I make it obvious.

So I make it easy, meaning that I have a tendency, I don't know about you, but I have a tendency if I'm going to go exercise, well, I've got to run a half marathon. Or I've got to run three miles. Or I've got to run. No pain, no gain. No pain, no gain. I've got to push myself beyond my limits every time. And I cut that out.

So now it's like I have to do something for 30 minutes. I could go for a walk around my neighborhood as easy as I like. It doesn't matter. Right. And some days I do that. If I don't feel like working out, I'll just, at least I go for a walk around. walk. Yeah. And I get that exercise, you know. And some days, I run for five miles and I try to push my time, you know, and those days feel great. And then I make it obvious. I keep my running shoes right

next to the front door. Right. And I'm always ready to go. I always make sure that I have running clothes and things to go outside ready to go. That's it. No, it's great stuff. And I'm just remembering as I read it not long ago, but a couple of years ago. And the atomic habits, what's great, what's great about that, it gives you, well, you alluded to at the beginning of your description, it's like we are who we're a combination of the habits that like that's actually the essence of who we are right like he doesn't necessarily he talks about that and he tells some great stories and I love his you know where he he weaves different things from his own life and other people but it's also like it's a very grounded book in terms of telling you specific techniques and even little little

hacks like keep your shoes you know make it obvious keep your floss by that I think I remember he talked about that or whatever but it all adds up to it he's never that far away from that description of the concept of that we are a combination of the actions that we take. We aren't what we say we are. We're what we say and actually do. Like that's what makes up who we are.

And I always saw great, you know, correlation to becoming a better musician, like the habits that we have to do to work on music to get better as a pianist, to get better on your instrument, to get better with your ear training, these specific things. Like that's a culmination so much more

of like what we actually. actually do and who we are. Like that becomes who we are. Like we're a practicing. Just like with your daily guided practicing people, you can see those folks that are there. Like maybe they were before, maybe they weren't.

But like now they're practitioners. Like that's what they do. But they embody that because they do it. You know, and it's not that you hit a certain level and you get a certificate from Adam saying, no, you're showing up every day.

And if you miss a day, you're not missing two days. You know, like you're the process is in place. You're in the habit of practicing. You are a practiser. Just like you're in the habit of exercise. You're an exerciser.

You're a runner because you go out and run, not because you know that it's good. It's beyond just the intellectual or emotional attachment to it. It's the manifestation of who you are based on what you're doing. He's got so many great techniques on how you get there. That's right. The shifting of your identity was a big one to me. You have to convince your subconscious mind that this is who you are.

If this is actually who you think you are. And go through and do a little checklist of like, do I actually think it's true that I'm a musician? Do I believe that I can be, you know, playing music? for the rest of my life at a high level. Yeah. I need to examine that. Examine it and you're gonna find probably

that it is true and possible. And then once your subconscious is convinced, you don't have to use willpower to practice. Just make it easy, make it obvious, and you are already convinced. That's as easy as it is get. Another example is I was struggling with listening to music for recreation,

as weird as that sounds, because we do so much around here at Opensubia as far as making courses, and I do so much playing and writing, that sometimes like a break from music is my is my you know I'm off I clock out of work you know and I like don't want to listen to music but I really missed listening to music for fun

and so I had this elaborate Bluetooth setup on my stereo and I had to like unplug stuff to put my my record player in and I just it was hard. It wasn't easy right so I just completely read it in my system and now it's one button everything's on I can one button I can change between my record player CD player Bluetooth for my phone like and I listen to something

every day now yeah I just I can just turn it on. Well, remember when we first got the little Google thing here, and it was like, hey, Google, play Horace Silver. Yeah. And then, you know, it wasn't the best sound quality, but hey, we're listening to music. Yeah.

What I love to in the, yeah, oh, and one other thing I'll say about atomic habits and James Clear, if you want to get a taste, if you want to sort of get a taste for James's concepts and stuff and aren't ready to jump into reading at least the first eight chapters of the book, as Adam advises. Check out James Clear his newsletter.

Yep. Which is excellent. It comes out on Thursday's, I believe. I've been reading that before I even got the book. But you can sign up at James Clear.com. And it's a really, I know everybody's inundated with newsletters,

but this is one that I always find myself like saving or coming back to or paying attention to us. It's one that's a nice delight in the inbox, as we shall say. Awesome. So the other one that was mentioned in the question, I realized I read this years ago, but I'm trying to think how long, which is Angela Duckworth's grit.

I had to because my kids were young. And at their school, the head of the school, Tom was like, he did such a great thing in that he read this book and got so excited about it and really actually infused the elementary school, great place called New City School in St. Louis. He infused the curriculum with, he actually made all the teachers read it one summer and like really got the concept going and invited parents to read it. It wasn't like the kids reading it. But the concepts for teaching the kids really came out of that. and grit that you i was trying to remember the the subtitle the power and passion of perseverance it's such a wonderful just just i love that i want to go back and reread that now here i tell you a true story about grit i've read it but i've read it about two years after i bought it uh-huh and i read the first

10 pages the day i bought it and then i was just like yeah and i couldn't get back to it i couldn't persevere you didn't have the grit you didn't have the grit you didn't have the grit just sat getting dusty on my bookshelf for years then i finally read it it's great yeah it's a great book man And one that we've been using here at Open Studio is a book by two psychologists from right here at Washington University in St. Louis called Make It Stick. It's all about the science of successful learning. It's by, well, I got it right here. I got it right here. It's by Peter C. Brown and Henry Rodinger. It is amazing for really laying out in a clear, easy to understand way.

a lot of the latest research on how our minds work for learning things. And some of the conventional wisdom about learning things is not the optimal way for learning and actually making things stick. It is unbelievable. For instance, we tend to lean on mass practice, right, which is where we practice the same thing over and over and over and over again. This actually just stores that information in our short-term memory. A much more effective way is what's called interleaved practice. where you practice something for a little bit, then you practice another thing for a little bit, then you practice another thing for a little bit, and then you practice another thing for a little bit,

maybe, and then you go back to the first thing, and then you go back to the second thing. And you kind of like are shuffling through all of these different ideas. Forgetting the information a little bit and having to recall it, that's actually what makes things stick, it turns out. And so he's got these guys have these great statistics and studies in the last 20 years, 15, 20 years, This all has kind of come to light about ways to make things stick that are kind of untraditional. Also, varied practice. So, you know, we play our C major scale.

Okay, cool. Maybe we play it tomorrow, but instead of doing that, we play it starting on E. We vary how we do things each time. Wouldn't that be an E-Frigian scale? It could be, but you could think about it maybe in 10s. There we go. So the point, though, is we don't do. the same thing, the same way, so that we, basically learning things we need to make it hard

on ourselves. We need to make sure that we're above our comfort zone. We need to make sure that we're not just playing things out of our short-term memory, but having to recall some very complex systems and it makes it stick a lot harder. There's a lot of great stuff in this book for things that can actually change your life as far as getting the most out of your practice. Are you saying it's a game changer? It is a game changer. It's a life changer. So that's, I mean, that's kind of, you know, we love the creative scale practice, a that we use here at Open Studio a lot, that's sort of along those lines, right?

You could definitely use it in conjunction with as a way to practice the creative scale practice, for sure. So one that I just started reading was given to me by my running coach. It's called Peak Performance. Look at you with your running coach. No, you know what? We're going to have a whole other episode on that. Get a coach. Get an Adam Maness if you want.

Yeah, get a teacher. Don't feel like you have to be at a pro level or whatever. It's a game changer. I'm thinking about getting a chess coach. What do you think about that? Because that could be anywhere. Yeah. Dude, we have the best chess coaches in the world right here in St. Louis, Missouri.

That's right. This is the chess capital. It is. Yeah. So, yeah, peak performance. Elevate your game. Shut up to Moscow. Yeah.

Known as the number two, cats. That's right. That's because all the Russian good players are here now. I know. Yeah, yeah. So peak performance. Elevate your game, avoid burnout, and thrive with a new science of success. Now, this is by Steve Magnus and a guy named Brad Stolberg.

Steve Magnus is like a legend. running coach University of Houston and cross-country distance running and everything like he's he's just like he's like he's like the gregg popovich of running coaches but this book is and i'm only about a third of the way through so i don't want to get go too far into it um in case it changes like i'm like it's all about this oh you dummy only in the first third but one thing i've already gotten from this is huge and i've i've started thinking about how to apply it to music and realize i already was. And their concept for peak performance, and it's certainly, because Steve Magus, especially with running and the other guy talking about it in terms of athletics a lot, but they have a lot

of applications in just like intellectual pursuits and academia, political, business world, whatever. But the idea of like peak performance that you have to be operating and practicing at that top level at all times is actually not the case. And they single out, well, they talk about different athletes and like the level that you train at and this whole idea of like no pain, no gain. And you think about like an elite level marathon or they're out there putting in heavy miles at fast pace. That's actually not true. Like they kind of break things down and you look at like a lot of top runners. And you know, a lot of this stuff's kind of proprietary because a lot of them don't like to share how they're training. But now with social media and Strav and stuff,

you're actually seeing how a lot of them are training. And they're not hitting those like four minute mile times. They're doing that very little. They're doing a lot of training at like 70, 80% that effort. Nice. And then they're doing about, or I should say they're doing about 70 to 80% of their training at a much lower, I'm sorry, I mess that up, at a much lower pace and effort level. They're putting in the miles, but they're doing a lot slower for the running thing. And then about 20% of the time they're doing, they're really pushing VO2 maxes, you know,

thresholds, these kind of runs. But only about 20%, you know, typical thing. But if you think about the way an NBA player trains an MLB pitcher, they're not out there throwing 97 miles when they're practicing. I mean, think about it. They're only pitching every four or five days. Yeah. Yeah. Or if you're in the Cardinals now, you're only pitching every two weeks because they're playing. No, but you know, when they're warming up, like think about the number of throws,

the number of times a major league baseball player throws a ball in a week. It's probably a very small percentage at their top speed or with the curve and all that. So I was thinking about I'm already getting some great applications for music from this. Because if you think about how we practice and we talk about how do you learn how to play fast and stuff, you're spending very little time actually playing fast. You're doing everything in slow motion, building up your thing, and letting the adrenaline at the moment come. And that's how you avoid

bird out. That's how you avoid injury, you know. And even for playing the piano and playing different instruments, you can injure yourself if you are always going at maximum peak level. So I'm really intrigued by this book, more to come. That's amazing. Yeah. So a book that

I've read in the last couple months that has really opened my eyes to what it means to grow. and what it means to work towards growth in all areas of my life, music included, is a book by a psychologist named Scott Barry Kaufman called Transcend. And he's kind of like an Abraham Maslow expert, this guy.

You know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And so he has all this great literature from the end of Maslow's life and where Maslow ended up on the hierarchy of needs and really was above, you know, becoming self-actualized, which is sort of the Maslow cliche, but really becoming a transcendent.

person. And it's super cool. Like this Scott Berrycoffin, the psychologist, just breaks it down in a very easy way and friendly way to understand. He's a great teacher, great writer. And he changed like the traditional Maslow pyramid of the hierarchy of needs. He says Maslow never actually wrote the hierarchy of needs as a pyramid shape. That was kind of done later by some marketing guys or whatever. But he's got this little sailboat for the hierarchy of needs. If you don't know about the hierarchy of needs. It's basically like we have base needs that need to be met before we can get to sort of the more transcendent self-actualized needs. So like it starts off the beginning like safety and security, right? We got to have like basic food and water and a shelter and not be worried about

dying. And that's like the first need that can be met. Then connection, right, actually like connecting with other people, right? That's got to be met. And then some self-esteem and some esteem, right, feeling good about ourselves, a little confidence. That, that he puts is like the base of the sailboat shape of the hierarchy of needs. That's like the just keeping us afloat as people, right? That once we have like our safety, our connection, our self-esteem, then we're like, we're floating. We're all good.

After that, then the sail, what really makes us grow are things like exploration, right? Love and purpose, and that's sort of all pointing towards transcendent. It sounds like a very wishy-washy thing. he's got so much great data to back all of this up. A lot of amazing studies, a lot of really cool. You know, this is the thing with these tech bro self-help books, man, is that they're all backed up by science. Oh, yeah, they better be.

You get bludgeoned in Palo Alto. Exactly. There's no feeling your way through this. There's a lot of great data on all this. So transcend is the name of the book. I can't recommend that enough. It's really just as far as, if you want to grow at anything, music or anything else, it's really amazing.

Great stuff. All right, well, I'm going to throw one more because I see it sitting over there and then we're going to get out of here. And that is probably the most influential book for me and kind of the Genesis. Well, around the time the Open Studio, we were starting it. And that's the Lean Startup by Eric Reese. Oh, right on. And I read that as you can get. Yeah, I know.

It's like, so this is like, this is more like manual for business building than self-help in a lot of ways. But I also think it's just a brilliant book. I think it's great for anybody that wants to build any kind of business. That could be your personal brand. That could be a nonprofit. That could be a billion dollar business. But it also has some great, you know, building a band and scaling that out and things like that. And like what you've done with your band.

Yeah, career. Like there's so many great applications. It's definitely a business book. But it's a great book too that really gets you into the mode of like, gets you out of the mode of thinking every single idea you have is so precious that it has to be like planned out and funded. and tested, double-blind, tested before it can go out to the world. It's just like, get something out there.

You know, stay lean and like, and really appreciate the time when you're small and, what's that? That might be obvious because of this podcast. Yeah, exactly. No, but I mean, that, you kind of led the things like this when we're like, okay, let's do a podcast. We're going to get it out tomorrow.

Yeah, just do it. Let's just see if it works enough. Just do it. Before we waste a bunch of time and nobody likes it, they're sending us angry blues-inspired letters. Can we have nice things? Can we have nice things?

Yeah. So, anyway, yeah, lean startup. OG. OG. Well, Scott sent this question in. Thank you, Scott. Great question. And, you know, we can come back to this every few months, man. Grid is great. I'm going to go back and reread that.

Grid is great. Yeah, I'll try to get past. And grits are great, too. Grits are also. Organic non-GMO. Big shout out to Monsanto and Bear. Thanks for messing up our crops. Until next time.

You'll hear it.