You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Stretched too thin? Set some guard rails and focus.

Episode Date: December 29, 2021

Peter and Adam discuss a listeners' question on not stretching yourself too thin.Share your musical journey: Leave us a SpeakPipeWoosh or No Woosh? Hit us up on Twitter and let us know which team you are onCheck out Open Studio Pro hereSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com 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.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Yo. Are you team whoosh or team anti-wush? Well, you know, I wasn't sure. And so we put it out there to the people. And so it was like, I wanted to hear what the people said. And what do the people say? Well, it turns out that...

I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Music advice, inspiration. And yes, Team Woosh! Team Woosh! Team Woosh on the house. What do we mean by Team Woosh, man?

What are you talking about? I don't know. No, I really don't know. Oh, team wish. We talked about this before. Oh, that's right. We'll do the Woosh thing. Yeah, you got to show them.

Don't tell them. Yeah, team whoosh. Yeah, so we had a little... I don't know. No, I mean, it's just a little bit of a, a little bit of a sound moniker, a little sound design that we throw in there. And we didn't really think much of it. You might have been getting a little bit happy with your index finger because you're the one trigger. Yeah, you've got a lot of different options for little sound...

It gets chaotic. It gets a little chaotic. But no, but the, the whoosh was just to separate the different segments to let you know. it was a little bit of a Pavlov's dog. Time to listen. Yeah. But we had some pushback from, I believe, one person. That's true.

And so, you know, we're sensitive here at the YOLA podcast. If we have any falseness, that we are overly sensitive. And so we were thinking about getting rid of the whoosh due to the one. I mean, but then we remembered you can't please everybody. But we do want to try to please a preponderance of folks. So we put it out there to you guys, our dear listeners. Yes. In the words of Kim Jong-un, our dear leader, our dear leader.

our dear listener. He is not our dear leader. No, no, no. But he is not part of this podcast. We, no, we put it out there to you guys whether or not,

you liked it on Twitter. Yeah, because we have a tweeter. We are tweeters and we have a Twitter. What's that Twitter handle, by the way? You'll hear it. Go hit us up.

But a lot of people like the Wooosh, huh? Yeah. All right. So let's just, you know, Elkins says, Team Woosh. This,

I'm giving you this emoji. It's an emoji. They can't see your hands, Peter. Oh, they can't. Can you describe it? It's like he's got his, I love you hand? It's like three fingers, like, or devil horns? I don't know.

That's what this is. It's like, yeah, team whoosh. Okay, gotcha. Yeah. Thanks for sharing with us the amazing advices. Was that the only one? Oh, you know, here's another one from Martin. Loving the swoosh.

They can call it woosh. He's team swoosh. It's a thumbs up for me. That one you understand. Peter just put his thumbs up. And nobody else really cared. That was it. So two to one.

We win. Well, you know what? I have to say to that. I figured you. Thanks, everybody. That's great to know. Is it a wish something that might interest you? Would that be something you might be interested in?

Yes, it is. Indeed is. So, anyway, thank you guys for jumping in. And we're having fun over there. We're not there all the time, but we're having fun over at the, you'll hear at Twitter. I think it's a good way to be in touch with both of us. Hit us up on Twitter. Also hit us up on SpeakPipe, which is today's feature.

It's SpeakPipe Wednesday. This is a way that we can hear from you. And by the way, we want to invite you to leave this a speak pipe for another reason. Peter, can you tell them about that? Before we get into our speak pipe from our friend Matt, tell us about our project that we have coming up. So we are super excited about this. And when we say speakpipe,

you can just go to you'll hear it.com and you'll see a place which says, leave us a speakpipe, leave us a voice message. It's likely even a voicemail, but we don't have to give you our personal phone numbers because we're a little nervous about that, having our info out on the interwebs in the podscape sphere, as it were, in the metaverse. In the words of our dear brother, Mark Zuckerberg.

He's not our brother. Our dear leader, that might be happening soon. Not that either. Watch out. Be careful what you wish for. Anyway, what we're doing is we are asking, of course, you can always ask us a question like we're going to hear today. We love those, and that's what is featured here on SpeakPipe Wednesday.

But what we're going to do at the beginning of the new year, which is fast coming upon us, we're asking for you to share your stories, the listener stories, the listener musical journeys. Anything that you're working on or perhaps something that this podcast might have opened a little bit of a window for you or a door, maybe got you reinvigorated in a part of your jazz or music journey, some advice or inspiration perhaps that we talked about here or some of our guests or some of the music that we played that inspired you. We just want to hear your story, you know, maybe what you've been practicing on and how your journey has been affected by the intersection with us here at the pod because we're going to put together a whole episode, possibly

even two if we have enough user stories about you guys because we're on here talking all the time, but we're always thinking about you guys. We make this for you guys. We couldn't do it without you. That's right. And you guys are the reason for the season, as we say. That's right. And the season is always upon us.

So let us know, you know, how you've interacted with the podcast, what you've learned, what you've unlearned. What you like about it? What you don't like about it. Yeah, we just want to hear your story in relation to this podcast. We want to make it about our dear listener. for once. That's right. Jeez.

And so don't feel like you have to rehearse it. I mean, if you want to write something and then read it. No, no, no. Rehearse it, please. Oh, they should rehearse it. Okay. No, no, no. We're not going to probably be able to get everybody's on there.

We're going to try to do the selected. I mean, the story. You know what I mean? Because that's, you know, of course you can do a question separately, no problem, but make it your story. And, you know, a lot of times we think like our story and our journey isn't interesting or isn't important. But I got to tell you, it is.

I mean, we hear from you guys, you know, on the, Twitter by email, even meeting some of you in person. I got to meet some of our listeners in New York a couple of weeks ago and out on the road, being back on the road. We met some in New Orleans when we were there at the beginning. That was really fun. Yeah. And so we love hearing your guys' stories.

Don't feel like, oh, my thing isn't interesting. It's just like when we play music. We have something to say out here. All of us. And so let's say it. And we want to hear from you guys. We'll put it together. And when you do leave that, don't feel like if this is your first time using our advanced proprietary,

you'll speak pipe technology trademark open studio. No, we actually just pay five bucks a month to license it. But if you're so first time using it's very exciting because you can rehearse what you're doing. Like once you press record, it's not your last chance. You have a chance to listen back and approve it. So don't be nervous. You can try it as many times as you want and we look forward to hearing from me. And we're not going to put on anything.

But just a bit of advice. No more than three takes. You'll be here all day. The law of diminishing returns does happen. So we do have a. a speak pipe from Matt. Let's hear Matt's voicemail to us here. Hi guys, this is Matt from Montreal.

As a companion to the recent speakpipe where you guys talked about being curious and having diverse interests, I was wondering if you could talk a bit about how to keep from stretching yourself too thin. I often feel that I'm super interested in a lot of things that play too many instruments to devote myself to really digging into one or two things. My playing and knowledge of specific topics kind of

suffers. Thanks. Yeah, it's a Jack of All Traits, Matt, of Nunn scenario that Matt is presenting, but I actually don't buy into that as much. You know why? Why? Because you're Renaissance, man. I'm a bit of a jack of all trades. And that served me well. Do I have the same kind of career as someone who is a master of one thing? No, it's different, but I get to do a bunch of different things, like all the time. Yeah. And there's a whole community of people out there that have

careers like that, Matt. So there's like a million different ways to be a musician. Yeah. And so you can either be, you know, a really, very, very good. very genre-based, specific. I do this one thing and that's all I do, and I do it very well, and I don't do anything else. Or you could be a bit of a musician who has their hands in a lot of different projects and maybe has a bunch of different talents. You know what I mean?

Like, I think for me, man, I'm feeling you, Matt, because one of my, I think one of my strengths is that I can easily sort of go between a bunch of different thing. I can do, I can, I'm comfortable being out of my comfort zone. I'm comfortable doing. different projects and playing different instruments and having different roles in different projects and talking about things. And like these are all, I think, as you get older, you sort of realize like, oh, like my weaknesses that I can't be focused on just one. I'm just like 1930s stride piano.

Why can't I just be focused on that? And then you start to realize like, oh, wait, one of my strengths is I have a really broad interest spectrum. Yeah. And I can sort of like do a bunch of things and I can oversee projects and I can bring people together who are good at the specific things. And I leverage other towns. Totally. It's like it's, I mean, if you want to be a very specific musician, then you might think about pairing that down. But I would encourage you to just look within yourself.

And if you're naturally inclined towards a bunch of different things, don't be scared of that. Embrace it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's just a matter of like there do need to be some guardrails, but they don't have to be what society or a teacher or even your parents or your spouse or your friends or us tells you. Like you have to figure those out for yourself.

So I think that, you know, you can play multiple instruments. Some people can do that and really prosper. Even if you're not at that, like, genius level. Like, there's certain musicians, I think we know that it's like they can play four or five instruments at a very high level. That's almost impossible for most humans. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like there's a small subset.

I would never say anything is impossible. But it's so difficult for some people that you'd have to exclude like, you know, family and self-care probably. and a lot of other things. But I think that the more, like, if you can leverage different talents, like you mentioned, you know, being able to lead and bring people together, that could be ensemble playing.

I think you're probably thinking of, like, arranging and then, like, bringing something to life that you have a vision for the project, but you don't have enough hands or ability to play enough instruments, or maybe you could even play most of the instruments. You can't do it at the same time, but, like, the sum of the parts being greater than the whole,

but somebody's got to have a vision for that, right? I think that we can do a certain amount of that as well for ourselves. Like, so we can kind of self-regulate and curate the different talents that we have at different times. But that does take, I think some guard rolls, the most important of which is focus. So it's like if you want to be able to do a lot of things, like, if you just want to be a 1930 stride pianist and like really excel at that, you're putting all your eggs in

one basket, which is fine. But if that's what you want to do and that's kind of the only thing you're interested, just in doing, you're going to, and you're passionate about it. You're going to be very focused. Like the focus is not going to be that hard because you're doing one thing. It doesn't get any simpler than that. And that's great. And for some people, that's the way to go.

You have very narrow guard rails. Very narrow guard rails that are sort of self-defined by the genre and the instrument and whatever. But that's not for most of us, right? So as, you know, if you're inquisitive and curious and thinking about other things, like you can't do everything and do it well, not even the most talented multi-instrumentalist. So it's like, how are you going to put the guard wheels? And I would say that you have to be able to focus even better as you're going through these different things.

So like, let's say you want to play piano and you want to play guitar at a high level. And you want to compose and you want to arrange. And then you also want to play classical music, but you want to do jazz. And like this sounds like a lot, but there's, this is very much in the realm of what I think a lot of people could do. You're describing Quincy Jones essentially. Right. And you want to produce, you know, 100 million record things. But I think that you take somebody like Quincy Jones and I've gotten the chance to not

work with him, but to be around him a little bit and see him work. Like, he is Uber focused. Totally. Like, he is very, and so that's the guard wheels he has. And I would recommend that for everybody. You have to be disciplined. Yep. You've got to be able to execute.

You got to be curious. You've got to be curious and confident and humble. Yeah. Like at the same time. And so. You're going to be wrong a lot. Yes. As you're learning a bunch of new stuff.

But yeah, man, I think it's, I think, Matt, what you want to do is really get to know yourself with this. Because there are a lot of musicians who are, I think, are not like me, who are very specific. And I think they're great. It's just their personality. Yeah. And I had to, you know, grow up a little bit to realize, like, I don't have to be just like them.

I can be myself with this. And whatever that looks like for you is the answer. Now, you want to be honest, too, with yourself. That's when people talk about honesty in general and as a musician, as an artist, as a person, you know, a lot of times we're interacting with that concept in terms of other people. Don't lie to people. Be honest with your spouse and all this. And of course, that's important.

And a little bit outside of the scope of this podcast, perhaps. But I think it's the most important thing is to be honest with yourself. Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, like you don't, and how that would, I think, intersect with what we're talking about today is you don't want to jump around because something is difficult for you. Or because you're having trouble breaking through, you know, like there's these different little, like you're walking up the mountain. You're like, wow, okay, I'm learning this instrument or this genre or this piece or this solo, whatever level. And everything's going good. Yeah, I'm going up the mountain and my legs are hurting, but I can do this.

And all of a sudden, you're having to, like, crawl your way up. And you're doing some technical climbing all of a say, it's not so easy anymore. That's the time when most people fall down. Or they go backwards. But sometimes we can fool ourselves. Which is natural, by the way. It's totally natural to face that.

Everybody, you should face it. Otherwise, you're not picking a mountain big enough. Absolutely. But the question then is, like, you don't want to use, oh, maybe I should try something else. I'm a Renaissance woman. I'm a this. So this is why I'm going to go into, you know, those things are separate. Like you have to make sure that you're still focusing on getting to that mountain top, not giving up.

And then if you have time to go to these other things, you might not have time at the same time, which is fine. Yeah. That's going to give you some focus. Or, but you don't want to just be jack of all trades because you don't really ever want to get too high up on a difficult mountain. Yeah, but if it's, I would say the caveat to that is you can also follow where your curiosity leads you. Like follow where you're, if you get super stoked on the mandolin, by all means. Right. Go learn the mandolin.

The mandolin, at least the fundamentals, and then see if that's like something that is going to interest you later. You know what I mean? Well, but I'm going to push back a little here because I want to get your take on this. I don't think we've talked about this much. Do you feel, though, that there's maybe with the younger generation now, there's a little bit too much like, oh, I'm going to follow my curiosity in terms of learning an instrument before traditionally was sort of expected to not master an instrument, but to get really good. Even like at a relatively young age.

Like when we were coming up, I felt like, you know, you had to be able to, even to play like in a good high school band and certainly to go to conservatory. Like you couldn't go to a good conservatory being like pretty good on three different instruments. Like you had to be really good on one. And it was more like a bonus if you had the others. But it feels like there's people that are like, oh, I love that. Like there's almost like a collective meandering because there's so much information. And like, like I didn't really hear the mandolin until I heard it live.

or something because I wasn't watching YouTube and following a rabbit hole that would distract me, you know. And I feel like younger folks through no fault of their own because they're coming up at such a potentially interesting and distracted time in terms of the wonderful media that's available to them, the teaching, hearing things. I mean, you can hear everything. And especially like, you know, during a pandemic and lockdown time, it's like, yeah, you can't go hear live music. But I think a lot of people that were curious, we're hearing almost more. It can be harder to focus and to really master.

Like, how do you master something, at least at the level you're at? And I feel like that's being lost a little bit sometimes. I don't know. I'll push back against. I'll push back against your pushback. You guys on fight, no. I think, I hear what you're saying. But this is the thing.

It's like you want to get really good at one specific thing. What does mastery mean? You know, can you master just general musicianship? And maybe that includes having one primary instrument. Oh, you mean, being a pianist. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, if your primary instrument is, piano, then yes, you're going to need to spend some time to get to a certain level.

But I don't know. I would shy away from ignoring something that you might have genuine curiosity and a genuine interest in with the effort of like, well, I should stay focused on just this one. Okay, I agree. Not to ignore, but I would say to give it equal providence in your journey. Like that's what I hear sometimes where people like, oh, I was playing the guitar, but I kind of was like, when I heard the manual, I was like, no, that's what I'm. want to do. So I started doing that.

Yeah, that's a different vibe, though. And they kind of abandoned it for a while. Like, they don't, I feel like you have to have one instrument. Call me old school. Call me an old fuddy-duddy. Call me many things. But I feel like, and by master, of course, I don't mean, we never master, but I mean, really gets solid where you're confident, where you can express yourself, where you know, that's your home base. You know what I mean? That's true. But I, I also, I've, I'm not known anyone who has genuinely backslid from learning a little bit about another instrument. You know, like,

see where it goes. Like, for me, every time I... But you're talking about, but still continue on, you're talking as an additive thing. I mean, I'm speaking from personal experience. Yeah, I'm talking about,

yeah, but you were like very serious, like you had hit a certain level, you know, at a relatively young age where it's like, you can become an additive thing, you know? That's true.

I feel like that may, not always, obviously not. I mean, there's probably more great young, certainly jazz players now that any time I can remember. But I think it's,

I think it also, it depends on how you grew up with it, too. Like, I grew up playing drums as well as piano in like marching band and jazz band and stuff like that. You know, I played saxophone in the concert band in middle school and stuff like that. So I was just used to like played guitar with my dad sometimes.

You know what I mean? So it's like while jazz piano was certainly my like primary focus from a very young age, like I was still kind of had my hands on all these different pots. And I think it helps. I don't know. I mean, but the thing is it really is we can't be blind to big. It's like because we live in this current age that we're in and we've a

adapted to it. We came up at a different time in terms of like what was available to us. Things that were built into the world that kind of forced us to focus. Like I remember going in like to the piano and it's still at my parents' house in the same room. Every time I go in there, it's like a magical place. It's really cold because it's like the side room. It's very uncomfortable room.

And the piano is like kind of old. But I just remember it was such a happy, like it was like my den and like that was the coolest thing in our house. It was better than the TV most of the time because we only had like four channels. and it was black and white, you know, and I know it makes me sound really old. There was color TV had been invented. We just didn't have one.

We had black and white TVs for sure. Yeah. I bought a black and white TV in the 90s. Right. Right. They were cheap. But I mean, we even had like,

you know, I had like a Commodore 64 computer really early on. So we had a rich kid over here. Yeah, but I wasn't watching like, you know, meedlux Lewis on there. That wasn't that good, you know.

Yeah. But, no, but the piano was like a computer to me. Like, it was so interesting. Totally. And I played violin.

I mean, I mean, I'm not. I was going to say, didn't you play violent too good. I'm not against Molten. No, no, not at all.

But it's like, you know, there's something about like once you find your favorite thing. Yeah. You know, and you're just like so like just all in on it. Like it's hard. It was,

we had an advantage because like, though, like there was a focus. Just like when you got really into like a one sport. It was just like you, that's all you want to do. It didn't mean that you didn't play other sports. But you know,

they say it's healthier for the kids to play multiple sports. We weren't cared about, where our parents reading it. They didn't even know what we were doing. I mean, it's a different age now. And, you know, but that's because it's like they're pushing and all these things. I don't know. I just think that we have to be cognizant of the way the world is and help young people make that adjustment.

Yeah, you can play multiple instruments. But it's like just knowing that they don't have the built-in guardrails of focus that we might have had. I agree with that. I agree with that. You said earlier, we're men of a certain age. You did say that. No, it's true. No, guardrails are important and focus is important.

But I will just to get the last word in. I just want to say, focusing on what I'm saying. No, Matt, you know, your answer here is really to kind of get to know yourself. Know thyself. No, seriously. Like, is it important to you that you're just a master of one very specific thing?

Or do you love being able to do and spend your time doing many different things and have broader interests? There's no wrong answer to that question. Can it be both? It's what's going to make you content and happy with your daily life. Like, think about yourself in 10 years. And don't just think about, like, where you are, I'm the best version of you and you're rich and famous in 10 years.

Right. Think about what your day looks like when you wake up in 10 years or now. What do you want your day to look like from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed? You want to be playing eight instruments crappy each one of them equally? Or do you want to? That's ridiculous. No, no. But that's discouraging.

That is discouraging. But it is fun to do stuff good. That we know. And like you can take the confidence. It doesn't have to be these concepts. And I feel like, Like we're a little bit more, like I think the concepts that we're putting forth are more complimenter than we realize. Like you can port mastery or just, you know, not mastery, but being able to do something well where you're confident like, wow, not just because of what you can do on that instrument,

because of the skills that you acquired by getting to that point, you can then take that and apply that to a number of different situations, other instruments, other genres, other styles, you know, even other artistic. I mean, look at Miles Davis when he went to paint. I don't know if he'd been doing that before. I mean, like, his stuff is amazing. We got one of his books. And I mean, it's like, and he didn't have like, but that was from like a limitless kind of thing. But he also didn't go in and just like throw some paint on and be like, well, I'm Miles Davis. I know he was going to pay for it.

I think he was hanging with Picasso, too, at a certain point. But see, if he hadn't been as good as he was on the trumpet, he wouldn't have the opportunity to hit the big time, you know. Well, Matt, hope he confused you even more. No, follow your heart. I will meet you out in the parking. Follow your heart, Matt. I got to go roll up my sleeves here in a second. Thanks, Peter.

And hey, don't forget to leave us a speak pipe of your own, whether you have a question for us or if you want to be part of our big project, telling your story to us about your relationship. Tell your story. That's right. Sing your song. I love you.

Until next time, you'll hear it.