You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Staying Inspired

Episode Date: April 10, 2019

Today, Peter and Adam try their best to be psychologists as they help out a listener who has trouble staying inspired.Today's episode is sponsored by the Oxford American. The Oxford American is a magazine dedicated to documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South. Its award-winning annual music issue comes with a CD sampler and digital download - a must-have for any serious music fan. Recent issues have featured Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk, John Cage, and John Cage. Visit https://www.oxfordamerican.org/yhi today for a special subscription discount!Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey, Adam. Where's your head at? Above the clouds, baby. Always. 24-7. All right. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hearer Podcast.

Daily Jazz advice coming at you, always evolving, always with new features, always innovating. We got an innovation? We do. You don't even know about this year. Were we hanging out down in the innovation lab downstairs? We were. We are going to start at something new. You guys are part of the process because Adam's hearing this for the first time.

Our producer Andrew's hearing this. for the first time, and that is we're going to have an ultimate tip at the very, very end of the episode today. So whatever, we're going to try to just do this every day if it works good. We might forget tomorrow and then it won't happen or it might be a flop and they will pretend like we never said it. You know how we do. Yeah, let's undersell over deliver.

From now until eternity. No, we're just going to give a little ultimate tip just at the very end to reward folks that listen to the end. Ultimate tip. All right. Well, we have an email here, and this is an email from Eddie from France. Nice. And he says, hello, a huge friend of the podcast made me go into that productive state of mind for practice.

How can you switch between I don't want to play to I want to play? There's a lot of time you just don't want to play, and I figured out that sometimes small details can get you into that productive state of mind. In fact, like I said, listening to your podcast helps a lot. Thank you, Eddie. Do you have any tips for getting in that productive state of mind? The second part is what is the balance between force yourself to play as a duty and a working routine to get better or let the things come to you more like an art and never force yourself to do anything?

I figured out when I went to the piano level where play was for fun but not enough to get better, I really have to work on it, but the change is really hard to do. I get to a point where I feel really guilty then don't want to play and I just don't know if I have to force myself to go into that routine. Then I think about it and feel guilty. Are you sure you're not a poet, Eddie? This feels more like... Is Eddie overthinking this?

It might be in your head a little bit. It's very, very frustrating to know that learning piano is the best thing in the world when you are in it, but when you don't want to play, you feel guilty. Okay. Well, Eddie is French. Didn't existentialism originate in France?

Yeah, I feel like I see him sitting on a park bench like looking over the city and he's just like, I don't know if I want to play. Right. Inspiration or art. Where art, thou? He says at one point. I probably need a psychologist for this one,

but I hope you guys can help me with it. And I'm sure there are. a lot of musicians stuck in this. You're playing gigs. I suppose that's helped for staying in, but for now I'm not playing gigs, so it's hard to define my goals, expect, going better. This is actually a very common thing, Eddie, and we're teasing you a little bit, but it's something that all of us go through at one point of the other. Most of us on the regular, as far as staying inspired, and as far as staying inspired to both get better and to just keep going, especially when it's not easy, you know, and it's never always easy.

And I love that you said inspired because I was just thinking, I mean, he's going a lot of different places with this long and rambling question but in a positive way. But I think inspiration is really what it's about, isn't it? Isn't that what this whole thing is? I think it is. It's how do you keep inspired to practice?

And I don't think that you need a psychologist for this. All jokes aside. I mean, it wouldn't hurt, I think, a little bit of self-reflection and going to a professional on a serious note, and having them help you to do that could certainly help you to focus in on that goal that you have of being inspired,

and help you to develop some inner tools to do that. But maybe we can kind of talk about some outwardly facing things that might be, that have maybe worked for us and others that we could recommend to Eddie. I think, yeah, for me, and we've talked about this on the podcast before, we've talked about this. We have a new piano course coming out called Jazz Piano Jump Start, which talks about this as one of its principles.

And that's patience. That is, Eddie, that if you're really in this music, if you really love playing the piano, which sounds like you do, Yeah. What's your hurry? Right. Love it or leave it. No, no, sorry, that's something else.

I think we get it in this mind that we have to be driving, driving, driving, all the time. And, I mean, we're all about trying to help you get as close to that as possible. Yeah. That's just not realistic for most people. So I would say that if you are really dedicated to this for your whole life, realize that you're going to be a part of this your whole life. You don't have to learn the entire vocabulary of jazz piano in two weeks, which I think a lot of us put that pressure on ourselves. Like, well, I have a gig coming up. And if I don't sound, you know, like McCoy Tyner by then, it's going to be a tragedy.

No, it's not. You're going to sound like you. Be patient, slow and steady wins the race. It's a marathon, not a sprint. It is a marathon, not a sprint. Do the little things every day that are going to get you into the practice room. Yeah. Even if that means like, you know what, this week, I'm not feeling it.

I'm going to practice for 10 minutes a day. I'm literally going to sit down, play exactly what I want for 10 minutes a day, but I'm going to have this connection with the instrument. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then some ways, you know what I mean? weeks you're going to feel super inspired. You're going to be like, all right, I'm going to do, I can and want to do an hour scales, two hours of voicing practice, you know, all these tunes. Those weeks are naturally going to

happen in the cycles of our emotions. The thing is to try to keep it as level as possible so that you're always kind of in connecting, being connected with the instrument, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that in terms of maintaining your inspiration level, it's almost like, you know, your blood sugar level or something like where, depending on what you're eating, you know, what you're feeding into yourself, affects that. You're going to spike or crash. Yeah, your caffeine, your brain, you know, all these things that we do to control kind of our minds and bodies in terms of musical inspiration. What we feed into ourselves affects that.

Yep. And so we're thinking about, you know, the obvious things like what you're listening to, that can be so inspirational. Yep. But then it can also be like when you are practicing a lot or even practicing a little bit, when you're playing the instrument and you're not, your ears are starting to outpace what you can play, that's a good thing. Yeah. But it can be a very uninspiring thing in a way. I remember Wint Marcellus taught me about this years ago when I was a teenager in a very eloquent way where he basically said the big, the hardest thing about practice is not the discipline. It's the having to face, you know, is as your ears get better, having to face that your playing has so much time.

And this ties into what you said about patients to be able to catch up with your ears. So you still sound like crap, but you recognize what's something, how it's supposed to sound. Yeah. And then you can lose inspiration and get depressed because you're, see how far away you are. And so, like, even if you have the discipline to execute on a great practice routine and know the right things to do, you're listening to yourself a lot. Yeah. Because you're inspired in terms of I want to get better. So you're spending all this time listening to yourself, and it's not as good as listening to McCoy-Tiner.

Yeah. Rarely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I was cocky. Rarely. Occasionally. I surpass him. No, never.

We do the world's most interesting pianists. Never, never, ever. But you know what? I think an inspiring thing about this is, Eddie, you're usually closer than you think you are. Yes. You know, it's actually very small degrees that I'm going to get you to where you're hearing yourself more like you hear the people that you love to listen to. It just takes a little bit of patience. You just have to keep at it, keep humble, keep your ears open and open to this sort of discipline of staying connected with music of staying connected with piano.

Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that he mentioned first was this great productive state of mind in the first part of the question. Yeah, yeah. And I think for that, if that is, and it should be, you know, one of our most important things. It's not the only thing. But I think it needs to be part of everything that we're doing. Like there's the more esoteric inspirational side of like I'm waiting for something amuse or something to strike me. And then I'm going to write this incredible composition.

That's all fine and good. But like, what are you doing today to improve your. playing to improve your composing to improve or are you just waiting like is it an excuse for not being productive yeah i remember my dad taught me when i was young like with music it's like as you start to get better and stuff it's it's easy to get in this thing of like oh i'm super productive i'm getting better i'm inspired and so they all work together yeah it's easy to be productive and and excited when you're getting better and you're having breakthroughs and all this what do you do when you're not having those are you still willing to commit to be productive to grind it

i mean that's the grind part well that's when you're on the run and like the beginning everyone's then all of a sudden you're by yourself and you know an old dude runs by you are you willing to just keep your pace and just keep keep the party going yeah when it's only you out there there's no money or glory or whatever but if you focus in on that productive productiveness and he's right you do have to have a productive state of mind and i think you know one of the easiest ways to get that especially when your energy is low or whatever is surround yourself with people that have a productive state of mind a growth mindset because you're going to be affected even more you know even if you're an introvert, you're going to be affected more at times when you're kind of down from the

energy around you be that music you're listening to, people you're listening to, books that you're reading, podcasts that you're listening to. Hello. You know, and I mean, it means a lot to me when people do say they take inspiration sometimes from when we're joking on here and stuff, but we take it very seriously that we want to level up people's jazz lives. Totally. You know what I mean? We're here to entertain, but any kind of like information we give out, we really wanted to be like to try to get you more into that productive state of mind to share some tips tactics and tricks to do that you know well and to follow up on your your dad's point which is i think such a great point and and we have these ebbs and flows where sometimes you feel like rembrandt like you can paint anything and you're growing

and you're doing all this amazing art yeah and then other times you feel like uh well i'm just an assembly line worker at a factory just keeping it together yeah but that's okay that's all right i think the key to this is a routine. If you can keep some kind of routine, you know, honestly, if I'm being open about like this week, I have like a gig I want to sound good on later this week. And I'm not really super inspired feeling this week with my own stuff, but I went in this morning. I went in for half an hour. I played. I touched the piano. I have that routine every morning where I just, you know, sometimes I'm there for an hour, sometimes I'm there for longer, sometimes I'm there for 10 minutes. I just need to get there at the piano, see where I'm at. And I know that my chops will be

up, I'll feel good, hopefully by the weekend. Connected. You're connected. Exactly. And I think that's the important part. You've talked about this too before. How about sometimes you can't go to bed unless you've practiced to be in a little. Yeah. And that productive mindset is really something that, you know, what you surround yourself with will help you with that. So, I mean, in terms of like we all know people. And they sometimes they're very charismatic, interesting people that we want to be around, but they're kind of like the dreamers, you know, and they're like, man, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this project.

I'm going to open this club and it's going to be a wine bar and a yoga studio and it's going to have low-income housing. That sounds great. Yeah, no, it does. And then it's so close. Let's go get some drinks and talk about. Yeah, man. You know, we know those people that do that. And then you look, a year goes by two years, a month, whatever.

And they haven't done that. And that's okay. I mean, we all want to dream. But, I mean, are you doing something else? Can you maybe just do something today? Like, can you write a paragraph about what that would be or something beyond just like I'm waiting for the whole thing to come together? like, what are you doing to push the needle today? Yeah.

Because you'll get those breakthroughs, but if you're not in the habit of being productive, you know. And what we do is positive. So, like, don't think like, well, this isn't good. Should I be doing that? Do something. Do something. And you're right.

The routine of productivity is the key, right? Just getting in a routine of, I don't know if there's such a thing as a productive state of mind. There's an, I think there's an inspired state of mind. Yeah. But if you can form a routine in your life around the productive activities that you deem necessary for your art, you will be inspired. Right, right.

You're not going to stay down the whole time. No, and we're so blessed and lucky and honored to be part of this, you know, to be able to tap into this art form of jazz, music, and the greater art and, you know, music and everything, because anything we do is going to be pretty much positive. Yeah. I mean, if we were like war mongers or like, you know, presidents of some country, we were like, man, and we're our big dreamy.

Some days we're going to overtake and kill everybody and rape and pillage to that country. But we never did it. It's like, good. Don't be productive, you know. Or like, every day I'm, I'm, taking a couple more miles of their land, you know, then we would be in trouble. But what we're doing is we're applying this to a positive situation. Oh, you like that one.

Adam, big guys laughing. Big guys laughing. Oh, big guys back. Great. Big as in a powerful jovial guy. Don't mix the metaphors here, my man. I'm not down. But yeah, but this is cool.

This was fun. Thank you, Eddie, for that question. And it's, you know, definitely some fun stuff. And folks, please leave some comments. If you have some tips on this, we can help each other and share. ideas on this because this is what it's about, you know, staying productive, staying inspired and moving the needle forward every day. You can comment in the YouTube comments. That's right. And we have our ultimate tip coming up. But before that, please go to oxfordamerican.org

slash yHI. You can get a year subscription for 25 bucks with our, you'll hear it, offer. That's a good place to get inspired. It really is. I actually do that a lot just in terms of going to other things like the art will go into an art museum read some great poetry like you know if you're sick of hearing yourself play the piano and that depresses you or uninspiring you there's you know but you don't want to you know sometimes it's like we'll go listen to micawaitana then you can get even more depressed like i'll never be that but there's all sorts of things in the world of art the oxford american is so great at highlighting those different things and making some

connections too that could be the inspiration for your next kind of cross-cultural So we ready for it? Peter and Adam's ultimate tip for staying inspired. Let's both do one. I'm going to call an audible. This will be Adam's ultimate tip for staying inspired. Keep your head in the clouds and your feet above the ground. That's good, but isn't it your feet on the ground?

No. Okay, so you're levitating. Yes. Okay. My ultimate tip for staying inspired is always tip 15% minimum. You'll hear it.