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

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

It's another live edition of You'll Hear It where Peter and Adam take your questions. On today's episode, Peter and Adam take a question on what advanced players practice, or if they feel inspired at all.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.Monday's Open Studio Live Events (All Times EST):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.

Um, I'm really bad about putting up questions at the bottom, which like rewards bad behavior and, and doesn't reward patience. So my apologies. But, uh, lovers you're going to love. That's good. Um, how familiar are you with Nari Soul? I feel you three would have a wonderful piano. Yes. She's on my list of folks that I want to reach out to. And I was going to mention that to you, Adam. Um, because I just watched a video of hers. Uh, I've been subscribing and watching her channel for a while now. And, uh, I think she has some great stuff. But she has a really good video about how to record grand piano. And, you know, I'm thinking about, we're always talking about redoing how we're making stuff here with the pianos and things like that. And she did some really good kind of in pandemic, private, like we're dealing with an engineer that was in another place via Zoom, which you wouldn't think would work, but some nice tests on a great fazioli that she has access to for a while. So step one, get a fazzioli.

Step one, get a fascioli. But her stuff is good. Have you watched her channel at all, Adam? Yeah. I love Nari Sol. Yeah, we should do, we should bring her on. That'd be great. Yeah, she's great. I love her piano technique. Her hand technique is really, really advanced. Um, really cool question. How do you guys, oh, oh, sorry. The overlapped here. Go back to your, sorry. So Pat says, how do you guys stay inspired and continue to learn considering the advanced skill level knowledge of theory and

experience you already have? It's a great question. Like, how do you stay in it, right? Like, how do you, I mean, I, I was just talking to someone about this the other day. Like, The thing is, is like, you know, if like, you know, the players you look up to, right? Like, I listen to Jeffrey Kieser and I think, like, wouldn't it be great if I could do that? But I doubt if Jeffrey listens to himself and says the same thing. Like, oh, that's it for me. I'm settled. This is what I can do.

Like, for a lot of us, we'd be like, oh, man, if I could play my left hand could play like that or if I could swing that hard, oh, man, like, wouldn't that be a mate? Like, I'd be set. I would never ask for anything again, right? That's what we think about everything. If I could just have this money or that car or whatever. But we all know that that's just not how it is once we get virtually everything we want. You know what I mean?

It's like that all goes away so, so fast. So I think the thing is, is you're never, you know, like I still feel like I did when I was a teenager and striving, you know, for trying to be as good as I can be. And I can hear, I mean, I can hear myself lots of improvement that needs to be made. But the thing is, as much as, yeah, I would love to be able to, like, Peter to have your 16th note. You know what I mean? But I know that that's not like the end of it for you. It's not like, you have your 16th note and you're like, oh, I'm good. You know what I mean?

That's just not how you got that 16th note. So I think just kind of always being, first of all, being open to grow, but then also just being aware that's like, this is just what we do. It's just a lifelong pursuit of just getting a little bit better every day. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think that if you're not like, if we're not looking at, you know, improving in a way that our mindset and our openness to developing in new areas is just as expansive as, you know, our number of scales and technique and learning solos and all the more concrete things, if we're not being open in all ways, then, you know, you're going to miss.

the next advanced skill level. You know, like once you get to advanced skill level, there's advanced skill level B and then C and then D and then all the way to Z and then there's double A. like it's a never-ending thing. It's not as much, it's not as much based upon like nuts and bolts things that you could say, I need to plug this in.

But I really do believe in like a higher plane of understanding of music that you can get to that these things like, you know, that are purely technical become a lot less important. but the musical stuff, it's like once you get on the just purely musical level, and what I was talking about before, I really believe is what it's based on, is that once you're totally in service of the music,

then you start to like really start to open up to some advanced things because then you're willing to do whatever to go next level. And so for me, like, the better I get, the less advanced I feel, just honestly. And so you have to reconcile yourself at the beginning of that part of the journey that it's going to feel like you're going backwards if you don't look like if you think about yourself too much you're going to feel like you're going backwards um but that's a great thing and i love that and to me that gets into an area where

you can start to play things a little bit like less conscious um and maybe even a lot less conscious where you just kind of just trusting in the process and just trusting and like i'm just going to go crazy if that's what the moment i'm just going to play a damn try at if that's what the moment you know whatever it's for yeah just have more confidence in who you are and i don't you feel too like the older and more experienced you get, the less there is of that comparing yourself to to other people. Because the better you get, it's just like, you know, what am I going to, I'm going to get so good that I'm going to try to compare myself to like Beethoven. I'm going to lose that every time. You know what I mean? Like you, like you can compare yourself to Art Tatum.

Right. Yeah. No, but you know what I mean? It's like there's no ending to this. Like you'll never, you'll never live up to Keith Jarrett's reputation ever. You know what I mean? Like, so why, the older and more experience you get, the more that goes away and you just are constantly trying to get clearer about serving the music, which is great. Yeah, and so that's interesting.

So I do want to connect it with what Pat's asking and not get too esoteric and that is like knowledge of theory, advanced skill level. Those areas are things that you can feel like, okay, I've learned every single kind of theory that there is.

It's possible to actually do that. Or like, my ear training has got to the point where it's like I can identify, you know, every interval, every type of chord. and, you know, my technical skills have hit a certain advanced level. So to me, that's when it starts getting interested because that's like as you're getting, it's not like you're zero percent and then all of a sudden you hit 100 percent one day.

It's that journey to get there. So once you start getting to 70, 80, 90 percent, who knows what, like you know you're getting close to like not mastery of music, but like something approaching a mastery of the instrument, at least within kind of what your realm is, maybe not in our Tatum land, you know, or Beethoven land. But like you feel like, okay, I'm a player now. So that's when you can really start, and you should be doing this all along the way. But again, because it's not just an all or nothing thing. It's a continuum.

But that's when you're getting into that service mentality. Now it's like, okay, how do I take this theoretical understanding? How do I not take it for granted? And like I wake up every day and at some point I always think about like, I remember when I couldn't identify chords as easy as I can now. I'm like, you know, and I always try to let people know that when they're like, oh, well, it's easy for you because you can just hear everything. I'm like, first of all, I can't hear everything. I mean, I might be able to hear more than you, somebody asking me a question, but I'm going to be talking to somebody else they can hear more than me. And I'm not even thinking about that anyway.

I'm just trying to figure out, how can I hear a whole bunch of stuff so that I can play something that'll be of interesting to somebody listening so that I can make their day a little better if they get a chance to hear me play. So once you start accumulating these skills, that's just the beginning. Then it starts to get really fun if you put yourself in that mentality. If you're so much based upon like I'm just acquiring these skills to be able to say I have these skills, then it's kind of sad because you're done then. It's like, oh, but it's just like, you know, Alan Iverson, it's like he wants to get to the game. He wants to get to the game. He's acquired these skills so I can see why there's a frustration with the practice, why you ask me about practice. And so it's very much like it becomes to me more of a maintenance thing.

It's like I get worried if I can't maintain a certain technical level or a certain, you know, harmonic understanding. or theoretical knowledge. So a lot of the practice, and you'll hear me say this as we go through our practice check-in, becomes about maintenance stuff and, like, review and making sure you've got these skills and you've got the mindset and the chops that you can maintain that. And yeah, extend it as you can, of course,

but mainly maintain and just get your clarity of being able to use those tools to be able to put something beautiful out of the world to develop that part of it. You know, what's interesting, too, about this idea of advancing your knowledge of theory is that, and I know you probably will agree with this, Peter, but the more, like, advanced you get with that,

the more compelled I get to actually, like, well, wait a minute, what can I do with triads? You know what I mean? Like, how deep can I get into a major scale? Like, how, you know, once you start really learning how to play out and take the changes out, you're like, okay, yes, but what is that one player doing that makes them sound so good when they just play a pentatonic scale in?

You know what I mean? Like, what are those simple things? Like you tend to go to go even more simpler with your theory because you realize like the promised land is not in more advanced music theory. That's not what the promised land is. The promise land is being able to be with what you want, be with where you are when, you know, you're just here with what you have and be the best you can be at it. Speaking of theory. Oh, bam. Hakan.

I'm going to see if I can. That's Middle C right. No, that's, this is Mill C. Okay. So let's see. I think he was, I think, is that correct? Yep. Well, look, it's telling you right there.

You can see that, right, Adam? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But I'm saying, because I remember Hakanne asked us very specifically, what's the best sounding voicing ever. I think this is what Haccon was playing. Just let me know if this is correct. That's great. Good one.

This is a good one. This is a couple months ago. Yeah. And so you've. got, look at that, you've got... Oh, let me... I guess I should throw something. Oh, missing one note. What am I missing? Oh. G13, flat 9, sharp 11. That's all there.

No, but he's talking on a very specific voicing. Oh. That was actually very beautiful. Was there, uh... Was it D? No. Maybe you had some... No, that's not as strong. One more E under the F. for that extra crunch, that's right.

Oh, that is nice. That's awesome. Beautiful. You all know I love some extra crunch. That's right. Check this out, Mr. Manus. You're going to be amazed at me. I don't know if I can find it again, though.

Boom, boom. Mika says, glad you cats like Rick Beato. Not only do we like him. Bam. We came out with him. That was a fun day. where that was. Yeah, it was in New Orleans. Yeah, yeah. In Nolens. How do we get up there with the thing? We can't, can we? Oh, that's okay. Yeah, that was in, was that this year? Jeez.

It was January. Is that January? Who's that guy with the hair and the beard? That's me. Yeah. Yeah, we had a fun time. We actually spoke at the, oh, did I have to go on right? No, I think I went on right before him. That would have been bad going on after him. At the, uh, we did some, um, we did some, um, we did some, speaking little whatever you call it, keynotes or something at the Jen conference, Jazz Education Network. Remember? And I did my little whatever it was. And then I was like, wow, this is my first time speaking at Jen. Look at the hundreds of people in the audience. This is all. Remember we just got down there. And then it turned out they were, I think it was a lot of those folks were there to see Rick right after me. So they were already

and I came to the room to get a good spot. But I pretend it like it was me. But it was cool. He spoke about obviously YouTube and that kind of thing. Wait to see on YouTube. I think he's on YouTube. He just hit 2 million subscribers. Good old Rick. Good old Rick. But yeah, he was jamming out to train.

Man, he put on Blue Trade and was talking about how great the solo is. I was like, cool. I was like, everybody knows this is a great soul. But this is cool that he's doing that. Because, you know, he has a lot of like kind of not necessarily jazz enthusiasts watching him. They know he's into jazz, but that's definitely not the focus of what he is. Does. But then, like, it got to train solo.

And like Rick is singing along. I was like, oh, that's cool. knows the beginning of the solo. But then train went in the double time and Rick is like still singing along with like every phrase. I was like, okay, he knows that record. So that was pretty cool. Yeah. Do I need to pull that up? One more question here from Gerald. This is a great question. We study so much of the history of this music. Do you practice anything specifically toward development of your own personal style or does that just evolve naturally? That's a great question, Gerald. Yes. So I think it's both. I mean, it's, it's, I mean, it's,

In order for it to evolve naturally, you have to kind of do the watering and the fertilizer to enable that to happen. But like anything that evolves and grows naturally, you can't force it, right? So I think that, you know, first of all, you don't need to worry about, oh, am I learning too many solos, historical solos or styles? Is that going to choke out my own personal style? I've never seen a problem with that with anybody. I mean, to me, to the contrary, like the more you learn, the more you connect yourself with the history of the music through the music. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean, you got to go read every biography and know the date,

you know, the address on Rampart Street that Lewis Armstrong was born. I mean, that's interesting, but that's not going to necessarily help you. You probably know that, don't you? You probably know that, don't you. I don't know the building. I mean, I know it's a parking lot, unfortunately now. Oh, yeah, yeah. But, you know, I think that it's just like a lot of this stuff.

It's a mindset and it's a framework for how you listen. And when we talk about you'll hear it, it's the difference between somebody, musicians talking about like a great Louis Armstrong recording just like somebody that's not even a musician, but just loves the recording. You're all talking the same language. It's like, wow, that was so amazing what he played. It's not like that B-flat 7, how he went to the raise fifth. I mean, that's an interesting thing maybe to analyze and to bring into your playing.

but to really connect with the history that connects all these different eras. That's the key. And that's how you can start to use that to enhance and to edify your personal style. So as long as you don't get too caught up in the technicalities of it, then I think it can always help you evolve naturally with your own style. But it's going to take time. Like anything great, for your style, like you've already got a style. We all have a style.

We're born with a style. We develop that as people. to be able to translate that to an instrument takes a number of different things kind of coming together at the same time. So the things that you do is really develop your technique, develop your ears, develop your sense of historical context for the music, play with other people,

play with audiences. All these different things will kind of come together eventually towards your personal style. Like you'll see the little flowers start to come out. Just don't stamp on it. Don't trample it. Let the little thing grow. But that's your style.

and nurture that and realize that it's there and let that flower and eventually it'll become a big tree that's strong and then people are going to be studying you. Love it. They ain't going to be knowing about Louis Armstrong. They're going to be studying you. I was going to talk about a bunch of smack,

but man. You were going to say, talk about the B flat 7, sharp 9, right? What? I want to go back to your core, make sure I got it right. Is that right? No, you got to add that low E.

Oh, right. And then still the top E2? Yeah. Double E? Double E. Oh, it is. It's quite different. It's very crunchy.

That top E, B, I would see, I would have kind of naturally said, well, you're going to have it down there. But you know what I think that is? You've got like that G. Because we're always thinking about like the tritone triad above a dominant, giving it. So that would be like a D flat, major triad over the G7, which gives you the flat 9 sharp 11. But by having that E, it's a D flat minor. Oh, let me get my hand up there so you can see how specific I'm being. Or I could even go over here.

No, I could go over here. So you got the D flat minor triad. That's a great thing. And then you've got all these other little superimposed trias. E triad as well, right? There's a lot going on. Yep. So many places to resolve.

Great stuff. Thanks, Hakan. Thanks, Gerald, for that great question. What are our thoughts on Dan Tepfer? Tepfner, I think. Somehow I admit until recently, I mean, like within the last six months, I totally did not know who that was. I don't know. He's badass though, right? He really is. Yeah, he's great, great, great, great player, classical player, jazz player. That's all I've heard him do. I heard him do some like open improvisation stuff. I heard him do this duo with Christian McBride. that was really good. He's a, he's a technologist a little bit. He's kind of a master of the Jack Trip. And he did like a duo. I saw him doing the other day, a duo with this percussionist in Stockholm.

He's in Stockholm doing something. And he met this guy through a friend that afternoon. He was like, let's do this thing. You know, but his thing with Jack Trip is like, in order, according to what I've seen with him, in order for it to work, you've got to be within a couple hundred miles of each other. And so he did it.

He's usually doing it kind of with local stuff in New York. If he's there or wherever he's traveling now. But yeah, he's good. Awesome. Well, thanks, everybody. These are so much fun. We'll be back next week, probably in the same space, just so that. Thank you, Micah.

Thanks, Micah. Super sticker. We never got, have we ever gotten a super sticker on here? Very few. Really? It's no reflection on us. Hey, you know what? Don't worry about a super sticker.

We can't all be Micah. I mean, if you want to be Micah level, go super sticker. But, or is it Mika? Micah or Mika. I guess it's Mika. Either way. Apologies, either way. But don't worry about that.

If you're not feeling that, but we can all be generous with a like of this video, can't we? Yes. If this is the kind of content that you're looking for, go ahead and smash that like button.

If you love Peter Martin and Adam, man, a slight smash that. Okay, if you moderately like us, if you just got a little bit of entertainment and information, smash that. Because that helps the channel grow,

it helps other people discover us, and it helps our egos, frankly. We've been a little bit down and out about, you know, you were very down and out. Look, you're looking better already. Oh, I wasn't. I mean, I was, I was just mildly frustrated. It's just annoying.

That's all. We got our pod suite like so hooked up and, I know, look a crispy looking sound. We got it just perfect. And now I got to be in my, at my dining room desk. I'm not hearing myself. You're looking crispy there too and you got the, got the Christmas thing in the back. Hey, look, everybody, we want to invite you to, is this show happening on Friday? Have we decided yet?

Can we tentatively invite folks? Yeah, we still got some hurdles to go over. We're doing a live show on this Friday, a holiday show. Adam and I, it's really, along with some other great musicians, Adam has a wonderful group called the 442s of which he's the music director, and it's really a manifestation of a lot of great ideas, and it's a collaborative effort, but a lot of it is beautiful composition and arrangements of Adam.

And we did a holiday CD together a few years ago, So we're going to probably reprise some of that music and do some improvisation. And we're just trying to figure out how to get everybody safely in the studio here Friday. So, but in some form, we're going to do it, even if something needs to be pre-recorded, but there's going to be certainly a heavy live element, if not everything, live, right? We got room to stretch out here, huh? We do. Yeah, yeah, we got room to stretch out.

We're a little worried about the violinist, let's be honest. And who else from a health step? We're not sure yet. We're going to see if we get some rapid tests in here. and then rapid theory tests. They're not going to be COVID tests. They're going to be like theory. We're just going to check everyone's theory understanding before we start, right?

That's right. But that's this Friday, 8 p.m. Eastern, right here on this channel, right? No, is it on the Peter Martin channel? We don't know what time. It's on the Peter Martin channel. Peter Martin YouTube channel. Love talking about myself in the third person. And it's going to be fun, you know, be about like an hour, a little more than an hour, do some holiday songs.

and, but some hip, hip holiday songs. We don't do corny holiday songs. Sorry, if you want corny songs, don't come. Don't come. You know what I think we might do, too, Peter? This will be for open studio folks. We're probably going to use that Rhodes that's behind you there. Oh, awesome.

So if you want to hear that suitcase roads for the first time ever, tune in. That'd be fun. And I don't know if you can see on there, Adam, but I think somebody actually ordered it. I found this thing and stuck it. If you see at the beginning of the chat today, there is, can you see on YouTube, Adam? Yeah. he said yeah maybe i can look too i don't know let me see if i can love this at the top of the chat if you go all the way up oops now i'm hearing myself talk again look at that face mask oh yeah emotion emotion

i want one of these can i how do i get one of these you don't have one i don't have one not i mean i've got like five of these no i've got the open the um emotion emotion i've got this one i've got that one no it's not happening you got to get a you got to get the one with all the notation on it. Okay, hold up. I'm going to do this here. Hold on a second here. Hold on it.

You talking about this one? Yeah, look at that. That's our theme, right? I'm going to do it without hearing myself again. Yeah, so that's awesome. Hey, Adam, I know you were probably wondering what to get me for Christmas. I'm just putting it out there. Get our own merch.

I'd be cool with that. But anyway, if you guys are interested in that, pick that up. That's kind of fun. And that's about it. Join us tomorrow for, you know about what's happening tomorrow? The Sesh tomorrow. Sesh tomorrow is... Christmas Time is here.

Christmas Time is here by Diane Reeves, which is a great record. I don't know if any of you guys have heard that record or if you have Adam. But I'm not being self-serving. I actually produced the record. But it's many years, yeah, about, I don't know, 15 years ago or so. I think it's one of my favorite Christmas records because I had a little bit of say in the repertoire. We did really hip Christmas tunes. We have some super hip arrangements.

And, I mean, it's Diane Reeves singing, so it's, you know, it doesn't get any better than that. Yeah, it's going to be fun. Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks, Adam. And thanks to all of our Peter is a Rhodes Scholar. That's pretty funny. Maybe we should go out on that joke.

Thanks, Peter. Thanks, everybody. Tune in tomorrow night for that Christmas time is here, Diane Reeves, listening ses. And we'll be back here next Monday at 4 p.m. Eastern. Yep. So until then, you know.