You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Should I Focus on Sh$t I Know, or Sh$t I Don't Know?

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

Peter and Adam answer a commonly asked question - should I develop what I already know or learn something brand new?Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipe: link.youllhearit.com/speakpipeSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested 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

Hey, Peter. Yo. Are you in the moment or are you in the past? Dude, I'm in the future playing five-dimensional chess. That's what I thought. I'm Adam Anas. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to The You'll Hear Podcast.

Music advice, inspiration, and dope new content. I'm still trying that out. He's really fallen in love with dope lately. I'm only 14 years late on that dope-ass phrase. Yeah. So today, we are asking ourselves a question. Should I focus on shit I know or should I don't know? Oh, watch your potty mouth there, buddy.

We're all grown adults here. This is a speak pipe that we got from Bruce. It's all about practicing. Listen, we're talking about practice. It is AI. We're talking about practice today. And practicing things I don't know or working on things I don't quite know yet. Before we get there, though, we got another speak pipe that this is really just for us, Peter.

This is from Scott. Check this out. I think you're going to really like this one. Hey, guys. My name is Scott. I'm calling from New York City. And I'm just calling to say I'm enjoying your podcast. I've been listening for a couple weeks.

And I thought I didn't like conversational podcasts until I found yours. It's just great to hear musicians talking to each other authentically, genuinely about music. And I'm really digging it. So thank you. Would that be something you might be interested in? Yeah, Peter. That was just for you, buddy. That's great.

Well, it's obviously we are something that Scott's interested in hearing. Thank you, Scott, too, and welcome in. much love to the fam here on the pod new listener that's exciting yeah now peter how would someone be able to leave us a voicemail like that well you can go to our all new redesigned slightly redesigned website qualifies well i mean it's yeah you'll hear it dot com where you can do things like leave a speak pipe which we love because we are here to serve that's right you know but you can also like you know see some new things we're doing learn about the um lives that we do on mondays and all that kind of thing but yeah go to you'll hear at if you want to leave us a speak pipe.

Which is what Bruce did here, and Bruce asked us a very, I thought, poignant question. Let's hear from Bruce. Hi, Pia, I'm here, it's Bruce from New York. I came to music or playing an instrument quite late, starting in my late 40s, and I've been playing now for a few years. And my learning tends to be very slow. So as I've been learning songs, it usually takes me a month or two to learn a song where I'm feeling comfortable with it.

And then I struggle with whether to keep onto a new song. song or whether to really sort of dig in and start it now improvise on songs that I've learned. And I'm curious whether you think time's better spent on constantly learning new material or learning to improvise and arrange the material that you've already learned. Thanks a lot. Peter, we get to ask this question more than you, I think. Right. You get asked a lot.

And it just seems like yesterday I was asking the same question. So it's definitely, you know, I think this is going to always be a question. and it's an important thing to think about. And I'll just sort of jump in and say that my thinking on this is kind of evolved over time. But I think if we think about it like seasons, you know, like there's a season to be learning something new. And this is not like as long as actual winter, fall, that kind of thing. It could be just a couple days. It could even be a different type of time of the same day even.

But you want to think about, you know, a season, a kind of space that you're in when that, is the kind of developmental, you know, practice and learning that you need to be, that you can be happiest and kind of most productive at that time. So there's that, so there's not really a right or wrong answer to this, like, which one do you do? You need to do both of those in terms of like taking something that you know, a tune that you've learned and then going through and kind of extracting all the pulp and juice out of it, all the goodness and like using that to develop where you're not

bringing in new tune or composition information during that time. But then there's also the process of like training your ears and like opening yourself up to new tune that you kind of have to be doing not constantly, but you don't want to be moving away from that for too long. So I think a nuanced approach to this. And you can do them both at the same time, actually. Absolutely. Not in every season though. And you have to be very engaged and to do that. So part of it, I think, is just getting to know yourself and when you're the most productive.

And I find that sometimes the more you can start to learn what your instincts are on these things and trust your instincts as terms of. of like what do you want to be doing now you have to be careful because you can't just you can't use what do I want to be doing as in what will be easiest for me or what do I feel like not doing but I think that once you know it's kind of like once you start to learn to listen to your body in terms of foods that you need like nutrition like there's a lot of connection between that it's the same thing with like practice that's nourishment for our development so the more you can kind of listen to yourself and be like you know what let me just be quiet and sort of listen to myself Is it time to learn a new tune now?

Or do I need to, like, get something more out of this tune? And trust yourself with that. You're a runner, yeah? Yes. So let me ask you a question. If you did the same cadence, the same stride, the same pace every day, every day, every day, every day. Every day all the time, the things you already know, would you get better?

No, I would not. If you only did new strides, a new shoe every day, a new... Might get injured. You might get injured. Right. But there is a balance to this, right? Where you are doing something that's very familiar. that you know really well that you can kind of hone in on.

And then there's a natural boredom that plays out. And I think to your point, Peter, the acceptance that it's going to change, right? There's going to be times where it's going to seem really appropriate to work on only things you already know. Or it's going to seem really appropriate to be super curious about new music and to really want to get in there and learn new tunes and learn different versions of tunes. And both of those times are okay. And then there's going to be times where it's all in between where you're kind of doing the same. you're doing both at the same time, as you said. All of it is good.

All of it is okay. You just have to accept, and like you said, listen to where you're at. So if I sit down and I was like, okay, this is why sometimes expectations aren't great. If you sit down, you're like, okay, I should learn a new tune. Right. I should learn a new tune. I don't really want to learn a new tune. You know, in that case, like, and to the point where you're like, maybe I'll just go play a video game.

Or maybe I'll do, you know what I mean? I'll just go for a run instead. Like, that's not good. Right. So maybe you're abandoning any possibility of musical development. Totally. By saying there's one thing that you don't want to do or don't feel like you can do, you're throwing everything out at the same time.

And you have to trust that there's going to be a time probably soon where you're going to like, oh, I really want to, I actually do really want to learn a new tune. I heard this new tune. I really want to learn it. I've got a gig coming up. I want to be prepared for that. So you have to trust that things are always going to change. Like that feeling is going to change.

and that it's just, like you said, it's part of it all the time. Some days we feel like it. Some days we don't, you know, you have to be able to accept that moment when you sit down to work that you're working on something productive no matter what it is. Yes. And I think that, you know, the more we can sort of get in tune with and get acclimated to the different buckets, different types of practice. So we might think about learning tunes, so repertoire. Yeah. learning solos.

These are all kind of buckets of different activities that can go into each one. And then technical practice, which could be a lot of different kind of things, but more technique focused specific to your instrument, then ear training. And then working on tunes that you know, so not developing new repertoire, but really solidifying and extracting stuff out of that. So once you have to,

and then composition, you know, working on improvisation. So once you start to understand these buckets, you can, if you're getting frustrated, one time being like, I just don't feel like learning a tune. It's not clicking for me.

It's too hard. And you kind of know, know thyself, right? So if you know it's just not happening today, you know, so maybe the track workout that your coach told you to do, you're just not feeling it. Don't just not do anything. Maybe a nice, slow, easy long run is the way to go. Totally. With a podcast on or whatever.

So, but until you really understand these different facets of practice and what they feel like. Now, you don't want to fall into a trap where every day it's like, ah, I feel like, I feel going on an easy run. I feel like practicing something that I know really well, because then you're never going to develop. But don't you feel like for me if I'm like, I'm bored of the same old shit every day? That's when I know like, oh, it's time to learn something new.

It's time to go for a new tune or a new skill. But that's listening to yourself. Absolutely. See, if you don't get to that point where you can kind of get in tune with like, you know, because it's not always going to be just the easiest way out. Sometimes it's, you're going to want, be in more of a space and have the kind of energy to be able to really embrace like some serious like repertoire productivity. Yeah.

But in theory, you can do that any day. And you could. I mean, I think that even if you're not feeling it, you could learn something. But that hour or two, you spend learning a tune when you're in the mindset and you've got the kind of energy for that is going to be so much more pleasant and you're going to get so much more out of it. Absolutely. And because we have all these different buckets.

There's always something to practice. There's always something. And sometimes like to me, the lowest common denominator is just kind of sitting and playing something that I love to play at the piano. Like that's the bare minimum. I'm connecting with the instrument. I'm not necessarily developing in terms of like, I learn this and I can do this and I can do this. But I'm still

maintaining that connection. Now if you only do that every day, you're never going to get better. One thing to think about this too, Bruce, instead of like learning a new tune, just think about it as maintaining your skills and then being curious about new skills. Because that's really what you're talking about here. So like it might not be a new tune. Maybe it's a new, you know,

maybe it's stride piano or maybe it's playing a tune that you already know in a different key, or maybe it's a bit of language that you learn from Bud Powell over the weekend or a phrase, something like that, or a chord change that you heard on the radio and you're like, oh, that's really great. Do people listen to radio? Yeah. I don't think they do. Serious. Serious. But no, you can really get a lot of just following your curiosity, like not forcing yourself into, I've got to learn a new tune every month because that's what Ethan Iverson said in his blog, or he would never say that, by the way, but it's very thoughtful blog.

But just follow your own curiosity. Like be accepting of yourself from where you are. Yeah. And like I think we mentioned earlier, this is a very kind of top level, top shelf nuanced approach to practice. So don't, like, you have to kind of build to this.

And I think it's good to think about this and work on it and know that like there's a learning curve to this. Because if you just follow, if you're like, okay, cool, I'm just going to do whatever feels good. And I'm just going to follow my curiosity. You're going to end up just like watching

YouTube video. all day, which will be fun. And you can be like, well, Peter and Adam said, do whatever feels good. You know. And here I am on TikTok. Great. Look at my dance moves. But I mean, I do think that, you know, temper with a little bit of like just

realistic approach to what you can get done at any particular day. This kind of approach can be really beneficial. And, you know, but you have to be of the mindset of like, I'm here to work. That's the other thing. Like some people go into this just like, like, what is the easiest, for me to become a master jazz pianist. I feel like you're, you're asking the wrong, you're framing the question wrong if you ask it like that.

It's okay to say like what's a really fun way, what's a really fulfilling way, how can I like serve the greater music community by developing as a, as on my instrument so that I can really bring joy into the world. There's all different ways to look at it. But if it's just like what's the path of least resistance? Like what,

that's not a great way to develop anything because this is hard. Like, I mean, we can't sugarcoat that. And there's going to be days when you're banging your head against the wall and you feel like you're getting worse. Yep. But that sets up that next day when you're going to have, you know, accelerated, um, development.

So it all kind of works together. It's not going to be all, you know, fairies and unicorns prancing through flushing gardens and queens. It's not going to ever be fairies and unicorns. I'm kind of looking. Through flushing. What is it the plot of the nanny? It's, it's a great Simpson episode.

Oh, okay. Google it. Well, thank you, Bruce for the question. I don't know what Peter's talking about. Faries and unicorns, but, Okay, Homer Simpson has a dream, like his kind of unicorn, you know, dancing through. And he's like, well, I'm in Flushing Meadows. And there's a bunch of toilets.

It's kind of funny because there's a neighborhood in Queens called Flushing Meadows. And he's thinking of it as this wonderful place. That's good stuff. Yeah. Thanks, Bruce. Again, if you want to leave a speakpipe, go to you'll hear it.com and leave us your voicemail. Ask us a question. We're always interested in the questions.

Thank you so much, everybody. Peter, thank you. Until to next episode. You'll hear it.