You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Sound Bad? You're Missing This!

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

Adam and Peter reveal one CRUCIAL tip for improving your playing today. Like.. TODAY today. Tune in and find out!Unlock your FREE Open Studio trial to become a better player today.Looking to drop a question? Want to listen to the audio pod? Look no furtherhttps://youllhearit.com/Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Hey Adam. Yo. Does this sound good or bad? That's not good. That's bad. Okay, well, what about this? That's good. That's good.

Well, let's talk about what was missing. All right. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Music. Explored. Explored.

Brought to you by Open Studio. Go to Open Studio. Jazz.com for, oh, your jazz lesson needs. I put a little trill on it today, Peter's feeling it. A little bit. And beyond just jazz. Rhythm, harmony. Oh, there's so much to talk.

about life, the podcast, nutrition. We can talk about bullet journals for hours. Bujos. A little problem with my don't like that.

Yeah. I'm just going to leave it at that, okay? See how you're, although you do have your phone, maybe that's, there we go. Problem solved.

Excellent. Okay, finally, we can do the podcast. Peter's bullet journalist flush with the table. Do you know the name of this title for this podcast today?

This will focus us. This will center us. This will give us our I know it starts with sound bad question mark. You're missing this. Okay, I like this title a lot. That's what I was trying to demonstrate. I don't know if I pulled it off, but in the intro.

You did, you did. It's so hard for you not to be super grooving, so I appreciate you and the effort that it took for you not to sound good. Yeah. You guys don't understand. The only thing I've ever seen Throw, Peter is when he is trying to sound bad. He can't do it. Stop, stop, tell more, tell more.

To the point where you sometimes refused to give an example of the wrong way to do something because you're like, I can't do it. It's such a humble brag here. Exactly. No, but I was trying to show the thing that's missing. And it's not, I mean, groove, that could be something missing. But what we're talking about today, specifically rhythm. Oh, yeah.

And we're going to give, we might even break this down as a seven, a list of seven ways to practice rhythm. Like really things that you can apply to your practice. because I think it's so important for us not to treat rhythm as this esoteric thing of like, I hate it when people like, do you have good rhythm or people like, I have bad rhythm because, you know, it's kind of like, you know, I'm a bad chef. It's like, well, have you actually like gotten a cookbook? Have you watched a YouTube video? Have you asked someone to, like, have you put in some sets and reps?

Because there are, you're not born bad chef. Everyone's born a bad chef because you don't have to do it. You're observed? I'm still a bad chef. Well, me too. but how much have you worked on it? Not very much in my defense. But rhythm, you have worked on and you know a little something about it.

I know a little something about it. And I think it's easy for people to be like, oh, well, that's, yeah, because you guys were born with it. But I can guarantee you I wasn't. Now, do people have certain advantages in that they're exposed to, you know, very, you know, very advanced but simply presented rhythmic kind of concepts to their music from a very young age? Do you have an advantage if you've been around that? And so there's sort of osmosis to knowing how something should sound, of course. But that's something that we can all get. And I think what we're going to talk about today, these are all very specific things that we put in our practice.

If you think about the way most people practice, and I've been at fault for this before, for some reason, rhythm is always like further down the list. So we might not even get to it. Like if you're talking about scales, how many people practice scales and say, I'm going to focus on my rhythm? Yeah, not many. Right. And this is, I think, fingering or sound or whatever. block that we run into and a lot of people run into

in teaching rhythm. And I just want to shout out one of our listeners, longtime listener, Pickinstone, Spaceman Alex, who has been leaving us lots of speak pipes about rhythm. He's got some great thoughts on rhythm. And Alex, is a little bit in response to what you've been talking about just in one episode as opposed to addressing each one of those individually.

Because we think about it a lot. And the issue with trying to teach someone, especially something like rhythmic vocabulary, is you can get lost in the weeds if you try to analyze it with Western notation or practice it as if it's devoid from the actual content of melody and harmony.

So it gets a little bit harder to do that on a melodic or harmonic instrument. It is harder to intellectualize rhythm. Rhythm is maybe the most physical element. Not even maybe. It is the most physical element of playing. It is a dance. It is something that you have to learn how to dance with.

You have to immerse yourself in the language of the rhythmic culture that you're trying to play. And there's no getting around those things, right? You can't just think about rhythm and have great rhythm. That's not how it works. You actually have to physically feel yourself and test yourself against others in rhythm and dance with people to get better. And I mean dance in like a metaphorically musical way. And could be specific. And a literal way as well.

But you have to learn how your body works in space and how it works on your. your instrument, you have to learn how your instrument mechanically works. This is a lot of technique is about being able to control your rhythm. And so... Show me how your body moves. But there is... Peter, if you were to play a pentatonic scale, right? And if I were to say, play it in a classical way, you're not changing the notes of the scale, but you are going to change the rhythmic phrasing of what you're doing most likely, right? If I were to say to play it in a modern jazz context, And I don't mean just you're running a pentatonic sound. I mean with a pentatonic sound, right?

If you were to do it, do something in like a classical or like orchestral feel. It's going to be very debutsy. Do it in maybe like a bluegrass kind of thing. You know what I mean if you have that dear. The rhythm can be a little bit different, right? You're already paraphrasing some sort of bluegrass phrasing. And that's the same set of notes that you're using. Sorry for the ugly caricatures of three different styles of music.

Well, you are. You are a deep expert in one and a semi-fan of the others. So it's going to be that vibe. But that's exactly what I'm talking about, though. You are steeped in the language and culture of Black American music and jazz in particular. And you are not so much in classical or bluegrass. And the rhythm is really the hardest part too, or maybe not the hardest part, but it's the part that requires the most immersion in the cultural context, in the repertoire. And so we're going to start today with our number one way to practice.

rhythm is, and this is a common number one here, you'll hear it. Dance. No. No. Oh, sorry. Listen. Listen. Listen.

It's just totally blue that. It's listen. And listen specifically, I'm going to give you an assignment. Yeah. To listen to one person in particular to start your journey. And this might not be, I'm not saying only listen to this for the rest of your life. But if you haven't checked out the music of Thelonious Monk, this is to me the blueprint for modern jazz rhythmic vocabulary.

And we'll start with Thelonious. from the genius of modern music. This is the track, Philonius. It's a drum he's playing here. The piano has a drum. Even the rhythm. The whole tone, the rhythm of that. So this is modern syncopation at its best.

This is what syncopation is all about. Syncopation is just not all upbeats. It is this incredible combination, this interplay of downbeats and upbeats in surprising ways that makes you bob. Yeah. It makes your body want to move in place. It's not like a,

m-gat-gat-g-g-g-g-g-g-g. That's not syncopation. That's like level 0.01. Yeah, I mean, level one would be like, mm-gat-g-g-gat-up-beats. Right. Yeah, it's because he's got levels of, like, dynamics and, you know, that, like, there's gradations

to how he's attacking the syncopation. You can hear it. Can you just play that, just that first line? Like, you could study this, play along with this sing-this, everything that's accent, everything that's ghosted. Like lyric how he hits that, how it's accent, how it lays. There's precision, obviously, but it's beyond that. But I love this idea of like listening to it.

And you talk about dance and how you're feeling the music. Like there's so many entry points. Like this is always there, right? but how is it very master of a bridge and when you're listening sometimes you think about like yes this is there

but what's maybe even more important is and later on when he puts the triple sunderndkong king you don't even have to learn his solos right you don't have to learn his it would be the next level if you learned his improvised solos yeah just learning if you could learn

five to 10 Thelonious Monk songs put them in your repertoire really listen to them learn how to play them there's a fantastic even if you want to cheat and use the there's a fantastic

monk real book from I think it's from Melbae that is unbelievably accurate for some of these recordings and really well done it's like the red cover

yeah but wouldn't you say for the purposes of this specific for rhythm the listening of this the listening and repeating and like mimicking what he's doing

is the way to go right so certainly could be playing it could be singing it could be clapping along with it we're going to get into a little bit later singing is a

some of these. So like, blah do babes, with the record. Like, sing with the record. Yeah, make it like you're holding on.

Like you're on the roller coaster, you're holding on. You're not falling off. You're not trying to drive it. That's right. You're just riding along with it and let that kind of bathe over you. That rhythmic,

because it's a feel, right? It's pulse and it's time. Yeah, but it's also feel. And speaking of feel, our number two tip for practicing rhythm and getting rhythm into your musical life, right? this isn't just something that you do for a certain amount of time. This is part of your rhythmic musical life

is to practice like a drummer. So oftentimes we get so obsessed with the right scale or the right lick or the right chord that we forget that rhythm and how we play it is the most important part to connecting with our audience and to sounding good. And you demonstrated that in your intro. You played pretty much the same chords,

but one was kind of like wonky time and not a solid, confident feel. Sorry, I'm trying to demonstrate something, buddy. He can't even admit that he did it. And the other was classic Peter Martin, incredible, unbelievable, like, world-class sense of time and groove. And that proves the point of how important being accurate and being, like, in a good place with your rhythm is.

So you can practice this. You can close your piano if you want, or if you have a little table or your lap. You can use your lap, but you can take a whole solo with just your rhythm. You can just, like, so Peter, maybe let's do, play any kind of medium swing tune, maybe a blues. Play here or play on here?

If you can, accompany me. I'm going to take a snare drum solo. Now, this is something that both Fred Hirsch and Aaron Parks have talked about in both their open studio courses. So this here is my right hand. You can't really see my feet, but my feet is going to be the rhythm of my left hand. This is something that they both learn from one of their classical piano teachers, actually.

But you can improvise a solo. Your hands here are your right hand. Your feet are your left hand doing the sort of like comping for yourself. So if you can give me maybe a blues accompaniment, I'm going to take a solo as a snare drummer, where the only thing that matters is that the rhythm is interesting. It's somewhat precise I'm going to be working on, really like staying in the pocket, playing with you. And I'm going to try to make it as like,

when you take pitch out of it, you have to make it rhythmically interesting. Right. There's some guardrails there that if you lean into when you practice, I think that's kind of the key to it. If you just do this, run eighth notes without any pitch. It's super boring, right?

And so if you're just doing that on your piano as well, super boring. So taking pitch out of it is a great one. Let's try. I'll take my solo. One, two, three, four. You do that for just a little bit. and take that same idea to the piano.

Let's try it again. I'm just going to be thinking along those same lines. And maybe I would do that for a little bit longer five minutes or so in my practice where I'm taking a snare drum solo, but I'm going to take that spirit of thinking about interesting rhythmic themes to the piano.

Let's try it again. What key are you in here? B flat. Love that key. All right. Classic. One, two, three, and... Okay, so notice what I didn't do

was like, like all of these flashy eighth note lines, but also notice I really liked that solo quite a bit. That was a really fun solo to play. I'm really just trying to think of a drummer. I wasn't really too concerned with even the notes. I mean, I was trying to sound somewhat in the changes. But the priority, like the top line, the headline,

was rhythm and rhythmic development in terms of solo. Can I stay in the pocket? I was kind of mimicking the snare drum solo I did a little bit, trying to remember some of the stuff I did. A little bit of munk and flung. as it would be. A little bit of Monk. From practicing with number one.

To Monk. But trying to think about interesting syncopation, downbeats, upbeats, and really taking the snare drums solo. So important to think like a drummer, to practice like a drummer. And if you can,

that leads us to our next one, which is to learn a new instrument, possibly the drums, if you can. Yes. Like learning how to play little drums if you don't play drums is an incredible tool for upping your rhythmic game.

Yeah, and that could be a hand drum. It could be some kungas that you play with your hand. It could be a set. be a snare drum with, I mean, it really can be any a certain. I'm thinking like guitar, if you happen to have a guitar around. Bass is great. Yeah, bass. And the idea is like, oh, but I don't know how to play that. Just learn one thing, say, on a bass. Like maybe it's just one note or two notes, you know, because we're restricting ourselves rhythmically anyway,

right? I mean, we're restricting ourselves to being driven by the rhythm. And then you're going to try to play something. What I find is when you play on an instrument, especially if you get a little bit of familiarity and then maybe you come back to it. And it's certainly an advantage for a percussion instrument of which the piano is one. So if piano is not your first instrument, there you go. But the idea is that you're going to, you come with, we come with a certain innocence, right, and a certain naivete when it's not our main instrument and a certain lack of sophistication and knowledge, which we can use to our advantage in our practice, because that can force us into the rhythmic, which maybe if we look at rhythm harmony, melody, rhythm can

actually be the most direct connection. It's the one that we get the most disconnected with, which goes back to a lot of different reasons in terms of dance. If you look at cultures where dance is learned, celebrated, shared from a community aspect from a young age, typically these are people that have a very highly attuned rhythmic sense, even if they're not musicians, and I think there's a big connection with that with the dance. It's not that they're naturally more rhythmic. It's that their culture naturally celebrates, shares, and relishes in dance and that connection with the rhythm. So it would be the expected outcome that we had. But I think when you go to these instruments that you don't, I mean, for me, it's like go to a

guitar and I can play just one simple voicing, but then I'm forced to really think about, like, what does it take to like make the, I know how to do it at the piano. I know how it should sound, but I have to work more. I have to be more intentional. That's right. And it's a great way to practice and really connect with the music, not connect with an instrument. Like, take that away from it. The same way we're doing this. Guitar is great. I actually practice some of the metronome techniques we're going to talk about a little bit later. I practice mostly on guitar with like eighth notes and triplets, just strumming because it's such a large physical movement. Right. It's almost like playing a drum. It feels really, really great. It gets you into dancing

in a little bit of a different way or using your body. Also, bass, electric base or upright bass, trying to just play a simple baseline. Like even if you're playing along with like the police and you're just trying to be like, do do do doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, and just be steady and in the pocket. Yes. You haven't done that. It's a great. great exercise for your time. It's incredible. And it might free you away from, you know, your main instrument and getting locked in to like, well, I can do this and whatever. Just to see if you can lock in with something that you don't have full mastery over. I like you know what I mean. Use your body. Yeah. Next up, Peter, is to let me see your body move. That's a little

your body move. Use your body. Is that Olivia Newton John? That is. That is. That's another episode. That is another episode. So we're going to talk a little, in a little bit about practicing with a metronome, but you don't always have to practice with a metronome to practice with a rhythmic reference. You can also practice with some masters that maybe don't have the perfect metronomic time of metronome, but they're going to have great time. They're going to have a great feel, which is almost more important than time. In fact, some of the greatest records of all time slow down or speed up slightly, right? They're not metronomic. They're not on a click track. So, You want to practice caravan?

See if you can lay in the pocket with Monk in his band. Practice your snare drum solo. That that is a swing feel you're not going to get on IREAL B. You know what I mean? Shout out Massimo. Practice your triplets, practice your A-dance. Just lay in the pocket with these guys, you know. There's like a very interesting, like almost meditative, hone it to the

kind of practice. Like, when you feel yourself getting a little out of alignment, just notice that and then like kind of come back in. You don't have to beat yourself up, just bring yourself back. And certainly with the metronomber, when you have the human element of musicians, even more so we use this as an opportunity for growth. Yeah. When you feel yourself just a little bit out of alignment,

which is such a, man, it's such an important thing because you're like, how do we connect with a groove? It's always, it's never, like, no matter how much you practice with a metronome, you're never going to get an opportunity to perform with a metronome, thank God. Right? So, like, how to, but it's also not the same as playing with live musicians when you don't know what it's going to happen

or playing with yourself solo piano where you're having to align with the hands and the zones and stuff. Because if you're playing with the record, this is likely something that you've heard. So you want to cycle through different things. You don't want to just learn how to play something and fit into the groove of one track

that you've practiced with a lot. You want to revisit it. I mean, luckily, there's a plethora of interesting different things to practice along with, but connecting with that human element, figuring out that give and the take, all these kinds of things, that most people think, oh, I can only do that if I have a trio to play

with. No, you can absolutely practice and should practice this stuff with records. It's such a great practice, and it's a great excuse to tweak your home setup, too. Make it you know, to our buddy James Clear, make it easy on yourself to play along with records. Make sure that your home setup, you have some kind of maybe tablet

or something you could put your phone into easily, to connect with a Bluetooth or have like an actual record player or computer that's devoted to just playing music and play along with records every day as part of your musical life. It's part of what we're doing is playing along with these masters. It beats playing with the metronome for so many things. Playing a metronome is still important. Playing with the metronome is really important. But this is should be as much I think a part of your rhythmic development. Because, you know, as I'm sitting there like trying to lay in the pocket with Monk playing my goofy snare drum solo stuff, I'm also hearing monk play.

Yes. And so I'm getting ideas. Exactly. I'm doing these little mini transcriptions where I'm like, did he just, like you said, like we were doing? Yeah. He just swiped up. Yeah, that's kind of cool.

And because we're framing this around rhythm and feel, we're not thinking about the whole tone. It's like, what is the rhythmic flow of what he just played. That's right. All right. Before we go on to five, six, and seven, which as great as one, two, three, four were, five, six and seven are going to go next level, as we say. A little word from our sponsor here. And you brought up a great thing, living a musical life. That's right.

And, you know, this is a. a concept that we've coined and has become such an important part of what we do at Open Studio, in particular the Open Studio Pro program that you found it, but four years ago in 2020, I believe it was. That just organically sprang forth

from a desire for you and for other members that we started to connect with in the world. I was bored. I admit it. It was the start of the pandemic. I had nothing to do. But you were, but no,

but you made a decision not to live, you didn't want to live a sourdough starter life. Or maybe you did. And that was a secondary desire. I had a whole sourdough section. Right. But the desire, which is such a human desire.

I mean, we talk about dance. We talk about rhythmic. We talk about meditation, breathing, like these primal basic, but what can become extremely interesting and nuanced parts of our lives. I think living a musical life, there's nothing that I'm more excited about that we're doing over at Open Studio than the Open Studio Pro program, which is really not only a blueprint, but it's an accountability. It's a community.

it's a way to be part of a lifestyle with other people with, yes, an instruction manual, but not just a one-way instruction, like actual live lessons and accountability. And as you said before, you know, a way where if you're not sure what to practice sometime, we'll just show up, we're going to make it easy. Are you willing to show up at the gym? Maybe you don't know what exercise to do. All you got to do is show up and there's going to be something that's going to be good for your body. I'm glad you mentioned that because this is the thing with Open Studio Pro is like it,

not only did we take the guesswork out of practicing, but you come and practice. every day, which is the biggest part. It's like when you take a personal training session, you're not going to go work out after that. That is the workout. And so when you take an Open Studio Pro class, you don't need to go practice after that. That is the practice. It's a guided practice session. You're practicing at the class. Yeah, very participatory, very, and you know, it's like the difference between getting a, you know, these services where it's like, we'll deliver a full meal to you. That's great sometimes. But sometimes you want to be delivered like a master chef to come in there and like, no, you're going to do some of the cooking, too.

You're going to learn. You're going to participate in the process. And you're living a culinary life. Well, you're going to be living a musical life. That's right. Go to open studio jazz.com slash pro. All right, Peter, so our next one is really fun. And that is to learn the music of Philly Joe Jones. So we talked about... Just Philly Joe. Well, really, any great drummer, but specifically...

Actually, I'm going to restrict it even more if that's okay. Okay. Just Philly Jojo's left hand. That's a great call. Can we do that? Yeah, let's listen to it a little bit. Philly Joe Jones. I'll plan and tell you what it is later.

That's Miles Davis, sir. That is Miles Davis. Oh. We could learn just from that snapping, right? Could learn from that. Red Garland is in the house. This is relaxing. It is.

1958's Relaxin. Miles Davis Quintet. So we want to really just pay attention to the fills that Philly Joe does on the stairwell. Yeah. Not there. Not there. We both thought of it. Sometimes it's what you don't play, as much as what you play.

Make me do, be, do. I love it. That's nice. That's not what we're here for, though. I mean, the whole track is bouncing, though. Do you like the audio sound of Pulse Chambers' bass on this? I'm not a fan. I'm playing.

All right. Check out what Philly Joe is playing at left hand on the snare drum. Look at Red Garland's playing, too, actually. Well, that conversation, rhythmically, super important. Like a lot of like, do-go-go. Yeah. Toom-to-do. Go-com.

Yeah. But-da. Well, so the point of this is that, you know, he's playing a very simple, like, walk-the-dog rhythm on the ride and, like, the high-hats on two and four. But between, really, the snare drum and the kick drum, he is comping, right? He is playing these rhythms that help propel the music and swing even harder. Yeah. And so, coupled with the, you know,

then walk the dog, walk the dog, walk the dog, walk the dog, walk the dog, walk the dog, walk the dog, walk the dog. There's such a, that's such a variety of different little things. It starts to sound like, oh, is he doing the same thing? But there's like this great diversity of those simple fields. And then, of course, it gets a little bit more complex as well. Yeah, I think transcribing, and by transcribing, I mean just like learning maybe this chorus, like Coltrane's first chorus here, and what Philly Joe is doing. doing on that in that comping rhythm.

Learning what that is and being able to sing along with it can be just enlightening for how you can comp as a pianist, right? But also just learning about the basics of what makes things like swung phrases, you know, syncopated phrases, great rhythmic phrases. And then if you want to go next level at this, another something else that's different that you can listen to, but same kind of transcriptions would be this.

I'm just kidding. That just happened to show up in my algorithm. The Monkeys. Thanks for rooting the show, Pete. Sorry. Thanks for Root. I love that song, actually. Is it a Shrek on?

Exactly. You're gonna watch Shrek? Shrek. Okay, next up, Peter, we have our rhythmic metronome app. Now, all the metronome apps have this sort of rhythm trainer feature, where you can turn the metronome on for a bar, off for a bar, on for a bar, off for three bars. You can really do some fun training. And you can do some very simple stuff.

I've got 90 beats per minute. So I just want to lock into the groove here first. first and just maybe try playing quarter notes. If you're rushing or dragging, just note that, adjust. See if you can sync up to it. See how accurate you can get. Now the real cool thing is, do some eighth notes. Eighth notes are spot on.

How about some triplets? Triplets are dragging. Dragging. So just noting between those different rhythms, I did quarter notes, I did quarter notes, I did quarter note triplets, I did eighth notes, I did eighth note triplets. noticing, okay, the eighth notes were kind of spot on most of the time.

Yeah. The triplets. The eighth notes triplets were dragging. The corner of triplets rushed a little bit. But kind of going between those things. And then taking it and practicing it just to a tune, you can do it like super long distance, see how long you can go and have it come back in time. You can practice your scales with that and practice trying to keep your time. It's all about trying to keep your time steady, right?

There's so many different ways you could change this up every day. Oh, dude, you can do it. Like, you never have to do it the same way. Yeah, this is definitely like the most basic way. Can I try it? Yeah, you want to give a shot? I never done this. Can we, it's harder, slower?

Yeah, you want to try slower? I mean, I'd probably mess that one up too, but I'd be interested. 50 beats from a minute. Oh, boy, okay. So, wait, what I would. Oh. Spot on. On Peter Martin.

Oops. Well, I think I'd do better when it's not on. Oops So I'm starting to rush Perfect But I could definitely feel the difference When I got off And I was pushing

Okay Interesting Do eighth notes Rushing a little bit So this is where it comes really handy Peter's going to pull it back a little bit Too much I can feel it too

Nice eighth note triplets Rush I should have lost Let me do that one more time That can learn something on that So it often helps to just like take the first time through and just like find the group without playing anything. Let's do the eighth note. Three, four. So find that groove.

The mistress, try some 16th notes. Oh, that's not right. It's tough, man. The transition. So if you transition with it versus without it, that's a great. Yeah. Let me try that one more time. Okay.

And then by the way, you can do like 10 to 20 beats per minute and just drive yourself crazy. But this is the fact that you're sort of like missing and. figuring it out. That's what this is about. It's about recognizing tendencies. Oh, I do rush my triplets. Well, I rush everything. So that was easy.

No, no, no, but also what was good on like, what I noticed on the triplet eighth notes, like when I came back in and I had rushed, I had, I think I rushed so gradually throughout the entire time that I didn't notice until I got there. And then I was like, oh, I'm at a different tempo. Like, sometimes if you just,

there's a difference between rushing gradually and just changing tempo. That's right. You know what I mean? Yeah. And they're both, I mean, they're both going to happen, but I think being able to sort of figure out when, to be able to feel when you're doing one or other, which this can really help is great. Are what you trying again? 16.

Yeah. Because this should be easier. It should be. Yeah. It should be. It should be kind of the easiest you've done so far. So something like that could be helpful too, where you're kind of just changing it. Absolutely.

That's almost easier to me than I was having to do it straight out there. Anyway, well, that's good. And you can do a whole much. Some people, pro measure. Some people will put the mushroom on goofy stuff like the and the and the and, you know, of two. Right. You know what I mean?

And really like try to lock in that way too. Well, you know, it could be a good one. Could we get it going like kind of this temple but just on four? Like that's something I used to practice with just a regular old school metronom. So like... Like one, two, three, four. One, two, three. Yeah, but a little faster, maybe like one, twenty or...

One, two, three. Oh, it's off. One and think it's... One and think it's... Yeah, that's true. It could just be... Dang. Sorry, I got the rhythm.

rhythm trainers on rhythm trainer rhythm trainer activation rhythm trainer activation off one two three four on three yeah that could be interesting i think really interesting and then so we can do two three oh i was going to say like and three four one two three three four one two three four one two three four one two three and of two. Oh. And three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, one, two, three, one, one, two, one, can you keep up? So, as you can see, it's just relentless, you can really get into it. So, yeah, every metronome probably has that kind of rhythm training.

That's so much fun. So, Peter, the last thing that you can practice to mastering rhythm, I think this is a really important thing. And I want to do a little guinea pig thing with you here. And that's to sing everything you play. So a lot of times what I think we get stuck in, when we get stuck in a rut when we're improvising is we're planning too much or we're sort of pre-composing what we might do or We're using bits of language that maybe are a little too prescribed, and not that you wouldn't

use bits of language that you collect. Yeah. But I like to talk about this in the way that we speak. Like this sentence that I just started, I really have no idea where I'm going. I'm not thinking about what the words are I want to say beforehand. I'm just speaking English and communicating an idea to you that is conceptual in my mind, but it's coming out in English here as I talk. I didn't pre-write this, obviously.

It's not beautiful, right, what I'm saying. What the hell are you saying, by the way? It is masterful what I'm saying in that I have a mastery of the English language. Oh. No, at a conversational level, I can speak to you an idea. Excuse me, William Shakespeare. And you understand what I'm saying. But there's a very similar thing that I don't think a lot of people understand about improvisation.

Yeah. It's not that you collect language and then you like, and I'm going to put that here. Yeah. It's not like that. It's like speaking to someone, right? Like I don't know what I'm going to say exactly with the words that I'm putting. But I'm conveying you to you right now that I don't really know how I'm talking to you, but I am talking to you in a real time, right?

So we're going to play that C blues. It's a very similar thing. If you can vocalize, even if you're not a great singer, it doesn't matter. If you can vocalize what you're going to sing, you will have more confident rhythm. Just like I'm having more confident speech here because I'm vocalizing it. If I was thinking about what I wanted to say, I'm going to construct a sentence right now. Start with a noun. Then go with a verb.

See, I can't do it. It's so ridiculous. And it's not very natural, but it's genuine because I'm smart. Don't you think it's a little bit like because like the connection between speaking improvising, which is most of what we do unless we're reading a teleprompter or reading a speech, and playing improvising is without that calculation of noun and verb, which I would say the corollary to that is like, oh, I'm going to play Sharp 11 when I go up to this, or I'm going to play this lick that I know.

So like more of an unconscious flow to how we express ourselves is because it's not that we're checked out when we're like everything you just said. Yeah. But you were able to listen to what to, at a little bit more of a macro level to what you were saying. Like, in other words, the flow of what you're, like right now when I'm speaking, I'm kind of, I am thinking about how it's sounding, but I'm not thinking about it on a meta level of like verb noun and do I put an ass on the end of any of that. But I am listening as I go to calibrate like even now where I'm stretching things out, an important part or whatever, the same equivalent to what we're playing. the more we can get into that, and this will be a good place for us to finish on, because we're starting with listen, and we're ending with singing. It's like a big part of singing for this to help your rhythm is listening as you're going,

recalibrating constantly. Well, and here you're using sounds, words that you learn probably from your parents when you were a baby. Your pitch is all from the cultural around you. If you would have grown up in Northern England, you'd sound way different in the way that you're pitching words and the way that you're phrasing vowels. Better or worse? Just different. Different.

But you know what I mean? like, it's all the culmination of your entire life of absorbing music can happen here. And by the way, just because, you know,

we're speaking the music out and we don't know what we're going to do exactly, that doesn't mean that there's no, as I'm speaking here, that doesn't mean that there's no structure to what I'm saying. Or a pattern that's apparent to the listener.

I'm using English words for the most part. I'm using a sentence structure where you understand the context of everything I'm trying to say. It's the exact. same thing when we play music. So it's not just like random shit unless I want it to be random shit and that would be poetry. But you know what I'm saying is like that's the artistic side of things, but the actual execution is more like speech. And just like with music, you're not,

it's not just the speed. Like everything that you're doing, it's the hands. It's different for everyone with their styles. It's their body movements. Just like with dance and like all of that is connected when you're conveying ideas, patterns, emotions, stories and all that kind of thing. And just same thing with the music. All right, let's try to see blues. I'm going to sing everything I play. One, two, one, two, three. Right?

Comes from just trying to talk. Yeah. Just trying to talk and let it happen. Now, there's one thing we've been doing here at Open Studio Pro that I've been really loving. So oftentimes, when we're speaking to someone and when we're playing music, something might happen where I'm talking to you, but I'm also wondering how it's going. And I'm judging myself of like, is my shirt okay? What am I saying? Does Peter, is he responding right?

Right? I'm in my head. Yeah. Who just walked in to the gig? Like, who's playing? So an exercise we've been doing is sing everything you play, but any thought that comes in your head that's not the music that you're trying to hear, don't do anything. If you are like, ugh, I should do this.

Just stop. Just take your hands off the keyboard. Take the horn out of your mouth. Just let some space happen until you hear music again, until you can. have something to say, right, until you're ready to connect back to your voice. Yeah. So I'll show you what that looks like. I'll kind of try to give an inner monologue. We've done this before. It's really fun exercise. One, two, one, two, three.

I'm wondering, is anyone in a do this, right? Is this helpful? Am I in the flow? That's what I was just thinking. Am I in there? D.M. Martin, so much hipper than me. Gotta surprise him. You know? That was lame. Like, these are all things that are springing to mind. It's like jazz turrets.

But no, these are all things that... I'm trying to give examples, and I'm looking for these examples of, like, the self-doubting mind that comes in and see if you can just disconnect the keyboard from that self-doubting mind, right? And just connect to the music that you want to talk. Like, let it happen.

Don't try to block it out. But just like, let that be an opportunity for actual space to happen. It's such a cool thing. I wasn't aware of this exercise, but it's also got an element of like, name your fear. You know, then it's not so scary anymore. It's great. For yourself. I've been making so many videos of where I'm, you know, pretty vulnerable musically.

In the last several years, I have no fear of doing it. But that's a great, I mean, think about what a wonderful thing and for you to be sharing this now and for us to all learn for anybody at any level from this of like these can be breakthroughs in your playing. Like if you get, you know, and it's funny like how we're doing it. But I mean, like, don't, you know, take this seriously. Like, because it's very much like for me that kind of thing,

the thing that I would be afraid of is I'd be like, man, I'm hungry. I want to go like, you know. Like it would be so detat. Like sometimes I feel like there's, definitely an element to where I purposefully detach from like the specific things, especially if we're talking about something like rhythm and like upbeats and syncopation or chords or whatever, or I don't want to like make it so obvious. So then I'm like, let me think of something else.

But then I have so many other things to think of and I think we all do to different degrees. There's nobody that's just like, oh, I'm going to play music now. I'm going to put everything else out of my mind. And totally. And this is like a practice technique to help you. It's really a mindfulness technique. Right? This is if you are doing any kind of like, you know, Vapasana style meditation where you are focusing on the breath and then a thought comes along, you know, you don't try to block the thought out, but maybe you don't follow it. You just gently bring the attention back on your breath. You don't beat yourself up for having a thought.

You don't beat yourself up here for having these other thoughts in music or you just see if like, oh, I don't have to follow that. I'm going to go back to this. And the act, I think, of taking your hands off the keyboard, but not playing anything. When you're thinking about other stuff, of course, it's not practical. You're not going to do that all the time if you're a gigging musician or whatever. But this is a practice technique. It's a practice technique.

It's a practice technique. I'm just going to really focus my attention on the music that's trying to come out. And hopefully, what you're trying to do is gain a little bit more focus in your own playing so that you can easily get into the flow, right? You can feel the flow of playing music without a ton of intrusive thoughts coming in and, I mean, this is like, this may be my own neurotic system, but this is definitely something that I find very, very helpful. Folks responding to that well, I would imagine over at Open Studio Pro.

I think it's very helpful for a lot of people. I think a lot of people are in their heads when they're playing and they're judging themselves and they're worried about what others are thinking. I think it's totally natural. Yeah. And I think any kind of exercises we can do to help alleviate that is good. Absolutely. Good stuff.

Let's just review Peter what we did. So number one was listen to... Old school style. I like it. Listen to Thelonious Monk. Number two was to practice like a dress. drummer. Literally take a drum solo. Number three is to learn a new instrument. Any instrument will do, but a great rhythmic instrument... And don't feel like you have to learn it to this high level.

It's just like pick up another instrument. It's actually kind of important that you're not a master of it, right? Number four is to practice with records as well as with metronomes, but really practice your rhythmic feel with great records. Number five, gentlemen by the name of Philly Joe Jones, you know where he's from? Is he from Pittsburgh? Yeah, well, they kind of, same state. learn some of his comping, which is typically going to be with your left-hand synodrome

and the bass drum with your foot too as well, which will get into that dancing groove sort of vibe. Number six is to use the rhythm trainer on one of the myriad of metronome apps that are available so that you can train your time feel. And number seven, vocalize your rhythm. Sing, sing, sing along. Because if you do that...