You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Staying On Your Grind (Tips For Hustling) - #161

Episode Date: July 20, 2018

In this episode, the guys discuss some strategies for getting your hustle on. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manis. And I'm Peter Martin. And this is the You'll Hear a podcast. Coming at you with some daily jazz advice. We're back at it, man. It feels good. We're back in the saddle. Yeah, I know.

I mean, what's your name again? Adam. Oh, hey, Adam. We don't ever let too much time go by before we're like, reward these again. We can't stay away. It's an everyday thing. We love the people. That's right.

The people love us, so we love the people. What are we talking about today? Today we're talking about staying on your grind. Oh, yeah. Staying motivated, keeping on your hustle, maybe some tips on how to spark some hustle or some things to do. Every day I'm hustling. That's the idea. Every day I'm hustling. No, you know what? So one of the big challenges I think of, of hustling is the consistency of it, right? Right. You know, it fits and starts, and you can slump and you can feel unmotivated. You can feel like

it's not working or whatever. So this is really, it's kind of a motivational episode. Got it. I like, you got a little bit more erect there as you were standing up. I think this could be tip number one. Poster. Poster. Body language. No. Well, I think, you know, I don't want to be braggy. But, I mean, considering we have a daily podcast, this is a subject we can talk about. Get your grind on. To be honest, that's what sparks the title of the episode, is how do you stay motivated? How do you, when you have to do something every day, like a daily podcast or practicing the piano or, you know, you have some gigs.

Or maybe you don't have some gigs. Like, how do you stay motivated? Well, I think, you know, maybe we could talk about first is just this daily aspect of it. Because whenever I look back at the times, and I know we've got grind in the title. So that kind of implies that it's like, ugh, but it doesn't always have to be. There's always going to be a grind portion. It's like, you know, I'm starting to be because I've been doing a lot of running. I relate everything to like a long run.

Yeah. You start out, it's like, wow, it's feeling good. And then, you know, 30 seconds in, you're like, oh, crap, I'm tired already. Right. How am I going to make it through an hour and a half? Yeah, the running thing, for sure. And then you're feeling good. You get into a thing, but you know there's going to be a grind.

So to me, you know, as a musician in terms of our practice and this is each day, this is each month as they go by each year as it goes by, be ready for the grind. That's right. Like be ready because it's coming. And if you can find a way to kind of luxuriate in the grind, if that's even possible. But at least like, because that's when you're really progressing, I think. Like the grind part of it is when like, I mean, first of all, that's when most people fall off. So that's going to be your chance to get ahead. When it's no fun, a lot of people.

just quit. Yeah, yeah. I mean, jazz is great when you're like listening and like, I'm going to learn a solo and then you get into the first phrase, I got it, and then you get into the first problem part, you know, the first difficulty. You can't figure out, yeah. So you got to kind of grind your way through that. And then you're like, I'll just do the wedding band gigs. It's fine. Right, right. But yeah, that's a great, it's a great motivational thing to think about. This is your time to kind of get ahead. And not even so much, I think for music or really any endeavor, I don't like to think about it necessarily to get ahead of anybody else. You're really getting ahead of yourself and where you would have been had you not continue. Yeah, I think that's great advice.

And for the daily thing, too, you know, some little psychological things you can do that I do to help with my daily practice routine is, is don't judge the results in the practice routine. Do you know what I mean? Like if you have a crappy day practicing, don't beat yourself up about it. The point is that you practice that day. That's right. You know what I mean? So I actually like to reward myself with a little iced coffee in the summer, no matter. No matter. what kind of day I had because the point isn't that you, you know, you

sounded good while you were practicing. The point is that you actually put in some work. Yeah. You actually did it. And even if it wasn't great, even if you weren't that focused in your practice routine, reward yourself that you did it. Yeah. That you stayed on your grind. Yeah, because the ultimate reward that comes out in your playing, it's always a cumulative,

cumulative, cumulative. Cumulative. Cumulative. Cumulative. Cumulative. Like a cumulist cloud. That's right. It's a cumulative effect on your playing, no matter what. Even if you're like the greatest practice day after day, it's never like one day. No.

You know, yeah, you might have a breakthrough here or there, but even those breakthroughs are not based upon what you practice that day. It's based upon everything that you did leading up to it. It's a continuum. And so like the grind part is just that commitment to yourself. And so I think in terms of like the question of how do you stay on your grind, the biggest part about it before we even or even in spite of talking about what we're doing is every day, Every day.

Every day I'm hustling. That's right. And like, so if you're a pianist, you're at the piano every day. I know for myself sometimes I kind of like separated out when I'm on the road. Because even when I'm on the road, I'm almost always playing some, but I'm almost never practicing, like real practice. But when I'm at home, if I haven't touched the piano or I haven't touched it much and like I can't even go to sleep. Like I'll go downstairs and just like play a little bit. Me too, man.

Because I just feel it's like a personal guilt, you know. Totally. Yeah. But that does keep you connected with the instrument. It keeps, it's also a reminder. or it's like, okay, well, I didn't get much done, but I got a little something. So tomorrow, like, get back to the grind. Get back to the grind.

That's the thing. I think people think they have to practice for six hours every day. And, I mean, if you're 18 years old and you have time to do that, by all means, go ahead. But if you're 35 and you have a full-time job and you don't, man, don't feel guilty about just hitting for 10, 15, 30 minutes, you know, and doing what you can. Some days you're going to have an hour. Some days you're going to have 20 minutes. Like, just take what you can get.

Reward yourself, like I said, some kind of. reward that you're you're uh you actually stayed on your grind i think that's a super important maybe my reward coming up could be some of your ice coffee because you're always coming into these recording sessions with that beautiful look at that's like a golden hue to that uh is is that the adams blend there this is the squatters blend it sounds gross but that's good stuff actually great yeah man yeah no stay away from my ice coffee it's mine you have your own today what are you talking about i mean this looks that looks really sad this looks horrible i mean i just took the remnants of the pot of coffee from yesterday, which was actually was really good.

I should have got you nice coffee. I'm so sorry. And I have no ice. Did you practice this morning? I didn't. No ice coffee for you. Yeah, exactly. Well, I think that's good.

And then should we talk a little bit just about maybe the staying on your grind professionally in terms of gigs and getting out there? I think that's an important part of it too. Because if we're in the practice room every day, minimum of what can we say, one minute. Yeah, one minute. Honestly. Yeah, but maybe a little more would be good. But I mean, like, if you get to that kind of commitment, you know, you'll start to be connected with the music in a way and connected with the instrument in a way that you really need to be.

But then you need to professionally put yourself out there. Yeah. And it's not always like, okay, I'm going to go to a jam session or I'm going to go to a network event and everyone's going to love me and I'm going to start getting gigs and it's just going to happen. That's not always the way it happens. You've got to grind your way through either no gigs or bad gigs or jam sessions or sessions, how do you. Do people still do those houses? We used to do house sessions. Of course, yeah.

Those are great, but you have to do that. And sometimes that's a drag. Sometimes you're going to be traveling far to go to a sad session, but better that you put yourself out there, you know. If you go to 10 different events and one of them succeeds and nine is a fail, that's okay. That one might lead to the promised land. Yeah, hey, listen, we're not making electronic music on computers.

We're making music with real instruments, with real people. That's what jazz is all about usually. And, oh, I like it when you get all purists. Sorry, man. But it's true. This is a social thing. So, yeah. And it's really, it's kind of a fun part of it.

And also, by the way, if you go out and you are involved in your community of jazz musicians, if you get involved in the, you know, maybe you're in a place where you get a nice touring community of musicians come through. If you go see that stuff, you're going to be inspired to stay on your grind in the practice room too. Exactly. It all works together. It all works together. That's why there's a community is so that we can all kind of lift each other up and help each other stay motivated and do this. Yeah, and I think maybe just a parting

on your grind, let's remember, it never really, like, let's keep everything in perspective here, okay? We, the grind of practice, the grind of doing gigs and everything, we are still immersed on some level with this wonderful music that we love so much and we have a passion for it.

That's why we're here. Yeah. You know, and so it's really never that bad. Digging ditches is a real grind. Digging ditches is a grind. Is that still a gig? Yeah, but yeah, I mean, sometimes it's a good gig, but yeah, but playing piano or playing jazz, that should be fun.

Yeah, if it's a drag and a grind, you might want to find something else. Go dig ditches. You might enjoy that more. Well, I hope you're motivated after this. I feel motivated. I'm going back to the practice room. My piano's still over there. I'm going maybe get a second ice coffee for the next round here.

That's right. So we would like to encourage you guys to reach out to us, speaking of the grind, at the You'll Hear at Podcast and say hello. You can go to you'll hear it.com. We are at this second. You're looking at me funny. What's up? I'm just, go ahead. Okay, sorry.

Am I doing something out of order? No, you're not. You're not. So you can go to you'll hearate.com. Leave us a voice memo. We have gotten some of those recently, and I think we're awaiting, we're eagerly awaiting some new ones.

Yeah, absolutely. Speak pipes. Speak pipes. I have a surprise for you, but we're going to wait until tomorrow because I want to build up the anticipation. There's a surprise tomorrow? It's a tomorrow.

It's a tomorrow. You have to tune in tomorrow because You know, that's what it's happening. Okay. But we are reinstituting our Open Studio special and our sponsorship here. That's right. We had so much great engagement on this little offer that we were throwing out here for our loyal open, for our loyal. You'll hear at listeners.

So if you go to openstudio network.com, we have all these great online jazz courses. That's what we actually do here is make these courses Chris McBride. Peter Martin has three courses. Jeffrey Keiser, a ton of great stuff. And we have this thing called the all-access pass, which lets you have all the videos. So by all-axis, what do you mean? I mean you get everything. Okay, all.

So this is actually one of those all-axis. Yeah, and for R. You'll hear it listeners only. We're going to offer this 10% off a yearly all-access pass. So you get everything Open Studio makes and will make this whole year for the next year. 10% off. Just enter. You'll hear it 10 in the offer code field when you check out with an annual all-access pass. No apostrophe.

No apostrophe. No-apost. Just incorrectly written. You'll hear it. Y-O-U-L-H-E-A-R-I-T. No spaces, no underscores. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I mean, some folks that did this when we had it a couple months back,

we just got a nice message from, I think, a couple of those folks saying how much they were enjoying it and how overwhelmed, not overwhelmed. Well, yeah, a little bit overwhelmed with the amount of content. That's why we said it's good to go with the annual plan. Yeah. Because then you can kind of relax and just, you know, you know, take your time. You don't feel like you've got to rush through anything. I mean, honestly, there are years. There's years of things that you can study in this.

I think so many great lessons. You've done over 300 lessons now at this point. So there's a lot of awesome stuff. The new Diane Reeves course is included. The new Diane Reeves course, Sean Jones on the trumpet, a ton of stuff. I mean, I would say even if you're just, you know, we've had some folks that have signed up for the Diane Reese course that I was surprised. They're not even vocalists or musicians. They're just fans of Diane's and her beautiful voice.

And she's got these great performances. You know, I transcribed a little bit of that. And I was super into it. She has amazing chops for improvising. I mean, I learned some lines that I was like, that is really sick. And just how to phrase and stuff was good. Yep. It's good stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, I guess we're going to see everyone tomorrow when you'll hear it.