You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Smoking It up at the Instrument

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

Peter and Adam take a listener's question today on "playing altered chords" and whether or not it's something you should do.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.Links From This Episode:For a comprehensive collection of piano lessons, save money by purchasing the Piano Access Pass - every piano course past, present, and future from Open Studio.Monday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)4:00 PM - You'll Hear It Live on YouTube6:00 PM - Bass Guided Practice Session with Bob DeBoo on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkLet 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, yo. You on that devil's lettuce? You on that wacky tobacco? Ah, no, bro. You didn't smoke a little bit left-handed cigarettes? No, no, no. I only play Green Dolphin Street in the original key, not in the altered keys. I'm Adam Manus.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Daily music advice coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open Studio Jazz for all of your jazz lesson needs. who've got some great piano courses, and we have a piano access pass. That's highly recommended.

If you like, if you have one or two piano courses, Peter, just get the piano access pass. There's more common. Every month we have one coming out. It makes more sense to say we don't recommend it if you do not like, how can we make this double-like? So many negatives going on.

I don't know what's happening. We don't. Some people don't respond to the positive, so we're going to go negative. If you hate having access to all of our wonderful courses, then we don't recommend. Does that work? It does work.

It does work. Yeah. But we also recommend it if you want all that. So it's all good. So today we are answering an email from Garen. Garen says, hey, Peter and Adam, huge fan of the show. Thank you, Garen. I enjoyed hearing your comments on consuming coffee and alcohol at the piano and your

perspectives on that, which we did on a live taping of the You'll Hear podcast. That's right. Cannabis and other drugs are also inseparable from the lives of many famous jazz musicians and the history of jazz as a whole. We take offense to that statement, but go ahead. Prohibition has also been responsible for putting many brilliant artists beyond bars, which is true. As more states, legalize and stigma decreases, what are your thoughts on the relationship between weed and practice? Any personal anecdotes would be great to hear.

You know what? I don't partake in the funny cigarettes, and I definitely don't around practice time, so I can't really give you any personal anecdotes. And, you know, to tell you the truth, I've never heard anybody that's like a great, practiser or in any kind of music or any kind of you know endeavor that involves deep shedding you know deep practice deep thought that now it's not to say that there are people that have that are amazing players that have practiced when they're high that's fine i'm sure it's happened but i'm just saying i've never heard anyone that's like wow i was practicing when i got high and i practiced so much better or sorry i've been drinking a lot of the spin drift here yeah i'm a little bit high on spats right now

I wonder if, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, so to me, it's kind of a, I don't see like a big connection. It's a little bit of a false connection, even if, you know, it's kind of like if somebody says, you know, I went and did this gig and I played so good. And when I thought back to it, I never played that good. And right before the gig, I ate Thai food. So the secret to playing jazz must be eating Thai food. Probably not. It was probably coincidental.

Now, I'm saying Thai food helps. Maybe it doesn't, it's probably just not connected at all. Yeah. So, but, you know, like I say, I don't really do that so I could be wrong. I don't have any experience with it. I don't have any experience actually using anything, any substances to help with making music or getting better at it. Yeah.

But I do, like, you know, I've enjoyed frequently using anything to when I'm listening to music. That's my, you know, definitely, I think that is something that for me has been regular, whether that's like a glass of wine, you know, as I'm seeing live music or beer. Or a mock. Or a mock tail as we do nowadays. Yeah, currently now a mock tail and a lot of mindfulness. Yeah.

Or, you know, smoking weed or anything else. There's some other stuff I just recommend that I would not recommend anybody get into because it'll ruin your life. But other than those kind of things, like I think, especially marijuana, which is definitely, you know, more, in my opinion, more mild than even alcohol as far as the negative effects. The mind altering. Yeah, and just the dangers of it is are now, I think, pretty universal. recognized to be just very, very mild.

Yeah. But still, with that all said, I've never, to your point, Peter, I've never been in a situation where someone has been high out of their mind, and they sound better than when they... In fact, if I notice that you're high, it's bad. It's because it's bad. It's because you're too high to play this gig. You know what I mean?

So I would just be careful of... Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's the worst. And it's the worst, too, because when people are too high and they're playing the gig, They think that they're playing all this amazing stuff and generally they're not. Sorry. That's a great song.

That's a great song. But also think about this. So do you want to be high when you're playing all these gigs, right? Do you want to be smoked out when you're playing an important concert? Because we often preach this around here. Practice how you perform. Right. So if you...

Practice how you perform and practice what you preach. That's right. No, I mean, if you... Like, I know people who will just smoke a ton before they go to record, but they didn't do so at rehearsal and they didn't do it when they were practicing the stuff. everything they think again they think they're being really creative and sometimes they are I mean but I think to your point I think these people would be creative without that too right and it's like we've kind of lost whatever momentum we had from rehearsal because their entire

their entire vibe is changed again it's not like the end of the world for me but just for me personally I'm I'm I feel like if I were like I don't smoke anymore anyway so it doesn't matter but you know if I were to have a drink or two before I I were to play a big concert, I would kind of be mad at myself because I would never practice drinking, as we mentioned. You know what I mean?

Now, like, if it's the last set of a long night or whatever and you're at the bar and you have a whiskey to end the night, that's one thing. But like, anything that you're going to be altered that much, you know, unless it's cocaine, that's totally fine.

Yeah, because it gets you hyped up, man. You're, da-da-da-da-da-da-b-b-b-ha-ha-ha. No, that was joke, kids. That was a joke kid. Kids. That was a joke kid. Well, and I would just say that it's interesting, you mentioned about alcohol, there's been

you know, several, you know, many occasions where I've had a drink before a gig. I haven't done it, well, I haven't done a gig a whole lot of, I'm gonna say. I mean, I've done, you know, sold piano stuff. I never drink before, but if I did, I think maybe I have some, it's not like a big deal. I think, you know, it's the same way you would relax into a certain situation. Sometimes if you feel, like,

you never want to feel like you need it. No. I can have one. Because what are you going to do when you don't have bit. You know what I mean? You never, that's how you become dependent on something, even if you aren't physically, if it's mentally. You know, however you're, you're dependent upon it. You want to really, I think, experience your practice, your performance. And I love the connection you made between practicing and being in the same state of mind, having as many things as similar to the performance situation so that you're prepared for that, if nothing else, mentally. Because things are going to be different. Like there's going to be things that are unexpected,

whatever, so you're going to have to deal with that. So I think that if you get into the habit In order for you to feel creative Even if it's just in your mind and it's not the reality There's nothing wrong with that where you It could even be the placebo effect of You know if I take a little puff of weed I really feel like I've heard people say that

Although the people that musicians that say that are not that Creative if you know what I mean I mean they're usually kind of more posers I've noticed but I know but some you know my that there's nothing wrong with that But you've got to be good enough that What if you're in a situation you have to perform Like you don't want to have to be like oh I'm going to get

all this stuff. Like a world-class runner, a marathoner, is going to have access to the best nutrition. The best weed. You know, the best weed before, you know, but they're going to have, you know, all the, the really the right glyczygons. What is it? Glycicons. I think you're making up words now. You know, like the stuff that you need to be having at mile nine, like, like they have scientists and doctors. And I'm not talking about the illegal stuff. I'm the performance enhancing stuff. I'm just talking about actual optimal nutrition. Yeah, yeah. But like in a way, they needed the least. They needed the best to like go to have that just little bit of 1% improvement. But for your average, but for them, like their average person would actually get much more

improvement from having that. But for them, they also, I don't think that they're in the, you know, Elliott Kipchogi World Cloud, the fastest marathon or ever, I think even if he didn't have all that, yeah, maybe he'd lose a couple of seconds, but he's not going to be going in with a mindset of like, oh my God, I don't have the person handing me the perfect drink. If he's got to go out and run a marathon, he's still going to be able to run it faster than anybody else. Perfect conditions or not. So I think that we have to go in through it with the mindset of like just us in the instrument. That really needs to be our mindset.

If you're dabbling with some different things and it enhances that's fine. Maybe it's fine. Maybe it's not. But do not become dependent upon that. And for me, the easiest way not to be dependent upon it is not to partake in it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so much fun at a party.

You can tell. No, no. I used to smoke when I was a lot younger. And I do, I actually miss listening to music smoking because it was I just, you know, It's kind of one of the best ways to listen to music. But other than that, it's like I don't really think about it very much at all. And I never thought, actually, I never thought that smoking and playing made me a better player or more creative at all.

In fact, quite the opposite. For me, some people love it and use it, and I think that's great. But for me, it just doesn't work that way. So this is funny because he says he finishes up with, if you want to get into it as well, psychedelics and their therapeutic use are gaining steam in the common vernacular. I know Adam is a big mindfulness practice. practitioner and advocate, and I'm curious as to his thoughts here in relation to music. So I've never done psychedelics, like ever, any kind, no psilocybin, which are magic mushrooms

or anything else, really. So, you know, but I have been, I'll admit, Peter, I've been thinking about it. As I've been going down, like, the meditation, mindfulness journey, I've been thinking about, like, giving it a shot. So, I don't know. If you see me just naked running down the street here on Grand Avenue, just screaming out of my head, that the purple men are coming to Jasmine. Whoa.

If it leads to some kind of enlightenment, I'm all for it. I'm just, man, there's so many mushrooms of the dietary type that I've been exploring. Yeah, I've been getting into it. And this is a great area of the country. We live in a mushroom gold mine. That's right. And we live in such a crappy area for many other things that I love on the culinary side that it's really fun to explore.

And our good friend Rob, down the street here is a mushroom in Ozark. Sugar Rob is it. and Ozark cuisine specialist. But, yeah, I mean, I've been getting so many of those mushrooms. I wouldn't even know how to find time for the more magical varieties. Yeah. Well, if any of our listeners are into that stuff, let me know. Yeah.

As long as you're over 21. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's all, you know, not perfectly on the up and up. It is, he is right, though. That is coming. There's a, the government finally opened up some research into, like, the benefits of some of these psychedelic drugs, and which were being done in the 50s and 60s that were kind of like shut down

because, you know, hippies. Yeah. But, uh, on hippies. There is, there is like some really promising things for things like anxiety and depression and alcoholism that, um, you know,

a few like one peak psychedelic experience can can actually open people up quite a bit, um, from that stuff. So it's pretty, it's really an interesting time for that. Yep. Cool, y'all. Y'all.

Love it. I love these kind of like, uh, any questions. So yeah. Yeah. Uh, Peter, The questions coming.

Like, how, if folks wanted to ask us a question, what would they do? Oh, it's so easy. Would they attach it to a box of magic mushrooms and ship them here? Well, you could. Yeah. Please don't. Re-ad them. No, no, no, no.

You know what? You could just email us at Y-H-I at open studio jazz.com. Do you really have to read it? Are you that unfamiliar with our email address? Who is? You're just staring at the page, buddy. I wasn't reading it. I wasn't reading it.

That was pure memory. Are you high? What are you doing? You could also, you could also, yeah. You can also call us at Area Code 314-282-644-37. Now, have we checked the voicemail yet? No, but you know what? I'm calling that number right now.

I want to see if it works. Let's do this live on air. See what you got here. So I'll fan for a little bit. Tell them how they can reach us while I'm doing that. Well, so you could. I love the lack of confidence you have with each one of these channels. You could.

Well, you might be able. Well, because we give people literally a phone number and we've not yet. There's probably at least of one voice message. Hold up. Here we go. Here we go. We're going to go old school here. This is excellent.

This is great podcasting. I'm calling this number. This is 314-282-6-4-37. Rividing. Hello, jazz. No. It would be so funny if Kelly answered. You'll hear it podcast.

Can I help you? Kelly Martin's big. And you'll hear a podcast. Please ask you a question. us a message. And just so you know, we may use your question on the air. Wow. That sounds so professional.

Hey, what's up, Peter and Adam? Oh, my gosh. This is Peter and Adam. Oh, my gosh. We just wanted to know if this was real. Okay, so we left a message. What I don't know is where it goes. Well, I remember setting this up.

314-282-6-4-37. May or may not happen, folks. No, no, I can get it right here. It says voicemail from Peter Martin. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Hey, what's up, Peter? Oh, it even gives a transcription. Oh, so we would have gotten something. Yes, let me see if anybody's called us. We had some missed calls. It's amazing. It's amazing. But yeah, so no, so it works. So, no, so it works. So let's make that our primary contact. Oh, I forgot about that. Did you like my little message? Hi, I'm Peter. You weren't here. I couldn't do it. Wow. So yeah, give us a call at if you're outside of the U.S., I don't know if this is worth. I don't know what it's going to cost. Probably not much. Oh, everybody stopped listening by now. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Plus one. 314-282-6-4-37.

That's 3-14-282-6-4-37. Leave us a voicemail, and maybe your question will appear on the podcast. And you can listen to this podcast. Well, they're already listening to it. We don't have to tell them where to listen to it. Why, you tell people to listen to it? Hit me up on Twitter, man.

I'm trying to get my Twitter game on. At I am Peter Martin. What's your Twitter hangar? I've deleted Twitter. I'm out. I'm out the game. I delete Facebook. I'm off of Facebook.

I don't have anything on my phone anymore at all, which is really awesome. but yeah fun fact we don't talk politics on here usually but did you know I have somehow avoided the president's Twitter thing

all this time until recently I saw something on the news I was like I got to see what he did he actually say I couldn't believe what I was reading so I went to his Twitter oh yeah

it's real Donald Trump is it real Donald Trump yeah what I thought was funny about that after I saw it I was like I want the real Donald Trump I want some other I want just Donald Trump

Yeah, yeah. Oh, he's the best. Oh, isn't he great? He's the worst and the best. He's the worst and the best. So leave us a rating review. Now, that's something you can do. Don't bother to go to random people's Twitter handles.

Leave us a rating review wherever you're listening to this. If you're listening to this on Stitcher, leave us a review. How do we check that? We don't know. Leave us a review if it's on Apple podcast. If you're on Google Play, where else? Spotify. Yeah.

We're climbing the charts on Spotify. You are climbing the charts. So leave us a rating review and we will feature you. Do we have any this week? because we feature everybody. Are you asking me? I know, I'm usually so into this. I mean, you know what?

I should have been bringing this up while you were. No, I got it. I got it right here. So also, big shout out to Jeff Goldblum, and we just want to put this into the air. We are trying to get Jeff Goldblum on the podcast. Yeah, that might actually happen, right? Well, we are asking our dear listeners

to help connect us in some ways. Maybe you could tweet at him. How about that? Let's get a little tweet, because he's a great tweeter. Tweet at Jeff Goldblum, help him come on the podcast. We just want to talk. talk about, we don't care about the movies, of course we care about the movies. We love the

movies, but we want to talk about his brilliant piano work, which I'm super impressed with. The movies are amazing. One of the better amateur slash pro players I've heard, certainly probably the best actors. It's actually very, it's very impressive. Now this one we may have said already, but can we say it again? Oh no, we didn't. Here we go. I'm all caught up. Seven stars. Today's the day. I started to binge listen to the show back in February of this crazy year and I finally caught up tonight at 9.37 p.m. West Coast time. Very specific. It's been game changer. My playing an approach to practice.

I really enjoy the bantering on jazz suggested listening repertoire. The fine nitty gritty of playing piano well and the life advice. It's around being a professional musician. It's been an incredible experience listening to these two talk. It's like hitting up the same coffee shop

every day with regulars who are just a couple of cool jazz nerds, sharing their experience and advice all from the comfort of my home. I feel it's exactly what I need. Yeah, we totally did this one before. Oh, we did? Yeah. Oh, okay.

Signed Adam Manus. Oh, thanks. That's from John. Oh, we did that before. We haven't got any since then. You know what? I think this has been our best show ever. Can I just say that?

Best show ever. I think this is probably the best episode you ever made. Well, tomorrow we're going to see if we can catch up. So until then. You'll hear it.