You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - That's the Gig, Man!

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

Speakpipe Wednesday! Today Adam and Peter breakdown how to get ideas from your mind to your hands and talk about what's up with practicing independence! Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hey, what's up? It is our last recording session in the pod suite. Are you going to cry, buddy, you can cry? This is a tear of joy and a tear of sadness. We call that bittersweet. It's an emotional day here. It is.

I hope our new place has dropped ceilings. Drop two ceilings. I'm Adamanis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Music. Jazz. Explain.

Oh, Peter. I added in music. I love it. Because I'm all about to screw up, to be honest. I love the tagline. So it is Wednesday today today. and I know that we've been kind of sleeping on this feature in the last few weeks,

but we do have a speak pipe, by the way. We have... Is this dueling duets? No, that was something else. We're not doing that anymore. We're not going to do that anymore, but we do have a voice message from Yaw. Dueling dope tracks.

That's what it was called. The dueling tracks of dopeness. Dueling. You know what's interesting about that? Okay. The reason we forgot about that is... So sorry, Y'all. No, it's because we put it out there

and then we stopped doing it. Because we didn't understand it. But you know what? We didn't get, like, any kind of like, feedback and oh what happening to no nothing not a single email not a note they didn't say they hated it but they didn't say they loved it they didn't say anything it was that's actually the

worst that's the worst is what it's just totally unnoticed that it was there and unnoticed that it was gone and we're gonna bring back dual a I'd start to figure out what what the heck it is do we were so excited about there was like a theme involved we should try to go find that episode what was it called dueling tracks of dopeness no that's not what it was called it was exactly that's clunky a F yeah I know

dueling tracks of dopenness so in other words we're happy to be back on speak Wednesday. That's something we can wrap our heads around. If you want to leave us a voice message, go to you'll hear it.com. No apostrophe. You'll hear it.com. And leave us your speak pipe. How would you ever put an apostrophe in a URL? That's exactly. Some people have tried. You don't have to tell people that. Well, I just did. We have a very smart audience. I have faith in. It is something you might be interested in. It is. I'm going to fix that for you. Thank you, Harry. Please fix that. So we've got a really great question here from yaw. Hello, Adam and Peter. I have hopefully what is a quick question. I think I have a decent ear, understanding of harmony. I can improvise super basic. I know scales and all the technical stuff. That's just how my brain works.

But what I am kind of struggling with now is just basic technique and specifically hand independent. So like playing a baseline in the left hand and then improvising with the right or, you know, spreading a chord out between the two hands and then improvising with, you know, the three little fingers on the right hand. Just elevating my technique to kind of catch up with the, you know, the theory and stuff that I know. I'm just looking for help with just translating what's in my head to my fingers. So if you have any suggestions, I'd appreciate it. Thanks. It's a great question, y'all.

And it's one that we get asked a lot. Yes, I've asked it quite a bit in my life. How do you get better hand independence and technique with that kind of stuff? Yeah. And especially the last thing he said is like, how do you get the ideas from your mind? Yeah. You know, like actually, that is the gig. And so it's like the technique.

I think I love kind of having a all inclusive definition of technique in that being everything that we need to do as musicians to get our story out in musical form to the world. Yeah, people think it's just playing fast. Right. People think it's just playing fast. And that's, you know, just like a story, if you're only telling fast stories, that's going to get boring quickly. It's like how's your technique on balance? How's your training is part of technique. Totally. It's totally because that is part of the process of getting the ideas out.

And so I love that. I'm sorry, what is this gentleman's name? Y.A.W. Y'all. Yeah. Maybe he was saying this question is for y'all. I don't know. Yao.

Okay. That's an interesting technique. You just utilized. That could be his, he didn't say that, though. That could be his initials. It could, well, no. Yawne, yeah, could be. John Allen Winchester would be a yow.

It looks like a name that he put it. And that's what we're going to go with. We're going to go with that. But I like that the last thing that he said, the Yao said, was really the key to it. And so it's not to be overwhelmed by all these different things. But to know, because I think that even if you think about what is technique and you dedicate time to practice, if you're more inclusive of it, like I say, ear training is part of technique. then you don't have to get just caught up on your hands because, yeah, of course, we're pianists,

so our hands are important. If you're a trumpet player, then your ambivalry, your mouth is important and your right hand's important. I guess your left hand's not really, because, well, it kicks the slide out to play in. That's important. But yeah, but it's, I'm saying,

you're not worried about independence of the hands if you're a trumpet player. That's not a big part of your thing. But if you're a drummer, you're worried about independence of the hands and the feet. Hello. A little bit on the piano too with pedals.

Yeah. We don't talk enough about pedal technique. But these are all parts of techniques. So I think that, you know, how do you get your, you know, if Yao feels like his technique is not to the level of his theoretical understanding, the most basic thing to do is to spend more time on improving your technique and probably less time on your theoretical and analysis, you know, not to say that you abandon that and depend, you know, sometimes we have an, a misunderstanding of what our actual levels are.

It's very hard to be objective about oneself. Yeah. So without it like a full evaluation, it's hard for me to tell. But I do think we can have a, if you're a, if you're a, self-aware as a musician, you can have a feeling for that. But what I'm so surprised when I meet a lot of musicians that are very self-aware of kind of their strengths and weaknesses, but then when I ask them, you know, tell me about your typical practice routine. And so somebody that's like, well, you know, I feel like I'm really good on my theory, but my ears

aren't any good. And I'm like, tell me your practice training. And everything they're doing is like theory and analysis. I was like, well, how much did you work on ear training today? Well, I didn't really know what to do. Well, that's what you got to find out. Yeah. But you've got to like go after it like a dog to a bone and be like, I'm going to spend the time. I'm not going to spend the time practicing. stuff I feel good about. I'm going to really be disciplined and spend the time on, in this case, technique. Yeah. Yeah, there's no secret to this. There's no shortcut when asked about... Wait, that's kind of a shortcut. Will you listen to me, man? That's not a shortcut. What? To spend

time doing what you're wanting to get better at? But that's not a hack, though. But to replace what you are, you know, replace the time. Look, everybody has, what's the most you can practice in one day? 24 hours. 24 hours, right? And most people have to sleep and eat and do other things. So whatever time you have, you're stealing time from the thing you need to be working on anytime you're practicing it on. I'm spending time practicing things that you already know. But some people need to hear this, though, Peter, that like you don't get better at things that you don't work on. Our brains need you to put a spotlight on it for them to for our brains to process it in a unconscious and subconscious way so that you're not thinking about it, right? So anything that you're having problems with, like I'm always, I always go back to when we've done live streams with Jeffrey Keiser, who's notoriously a two-handed PM. Anything he can do with his right hand, he could do with his left hand in almost an annoying fashion. Right.

Because he's so, separate together, independent or not independent? And so he gets asked all the time, hey, how do you have such evenness between your left and right hands? And he always says, very earnestly, I just practice whatever I do in my right hand in my left hand. So simple, right? And then people ask the next question. How can I do it easier? Yeah. How can I?

Is it, what is there? A trick to that or something? No, you literally just have to do it. So, like, if you are having problems with hand independence, you're having problems. comping underneath your right hand, you have to spend time working on your left hand comping. And you can literally just start with just your left hand with a metronome or with a backing track, just left hand alone, comping for what would be an imaginary right hand line. Yeah. And then you can practice putting together, right, until you can get more and more

complicated. Same thing with the other, if you want to lay down a chord and then do things with, you know, a la Fred Hirsch ever heard of it in the upper part of your right hand you can practice that by you have to spend time whatever it is your brain needs the spotlight on it

for as many hours as you can devote to it as Peter was saying and that's the only way you're going to do it I'm telling you it's not a hack Peter it's not a hack no no but I'm just saying

yeah okay so maybe let's assume Yao is already spending time or willing but the question is more about like these specific things so let's give a few more specific things say for hand in that are fruitful in our experience to practice.

I would say there's some classical pieces, very simple pieces I always like to recommend because it's easy to find. It's at the beginning of the book. Bach invention, two-part invention number one. Is that a, no. No, that's a good one too, though. What is that? Mozart.

Isn't it? It's F, yeah. Well, that was A. Oh. I actually don't know. It's not F. Is it A? I think it's A.

That sounds right. Sounds very Viennese. Viennese. It's a sausage, I don't know what that is. Vienna sausage. Viener Schnitzel. Look out. What were we just talking about?

Oh, yeah. So the Bach invention number one. Fantastic. I mean, just play the right note. Exactly, exactly. And these are great. If that's easy for you, then you've already got some pretty good

in the pants of the hands. Go on to the next one. Yeah. Excuse me. The three-part inventions. There's, like, basically, it's kind of hard. Sorry about that. It's kind of hard to practice, like, true independence of the hands at jazz.

You can do it. One thing you mentioned was baseline. So that might be like, okay, I'm going to spend five minutes on C blues. Yep. So important, by the way. And notice, I'm not walking a baseline. If you can do that, that's fine. But most people need to start with, maybe even a whole note.

There's nothing wrong with it. And by the way, yeah. Because all you got to do is practice something that your hands are doing two different things. Exactly. And you have to do this practice if you want to get good at it. You can't just think about it. You can't just try to conceptualize it. You have to act on it and you have to put it in your routine.

Yeah. And I mean, the thing is like decide what way you're going to do, whatever you're going to do, make it simpler than you need to do. People always practice stuff that's too hard for them. And that's just not a great. It's very much, I think, I'm not a weightlifter, but I have a friend who's doing weights on all the time. And it's like they're not spending most of their time with the heaviest bench press. They'll do that once and put that on Instagram, of course, because they want.

But they're doing a lot of weights that are like below their pay grade. Right. That are easy for them, but a lot of different repetitions. And it's the same thing. If you want to be able to play with really good independence, you have to take something that's very simple for you to play and then slowly build it up. So it's like, but you want to do it in a discipline way. So I hear people doing like they're going to play half nose. Got to stick with it.

See, so they're already doing it. And then that might have said, well, no, that sounds. good, but I anticipated, which is showing that I'm linked up, I'm not playing independent. Your hands are dependent on each other. And so then you have to challenge yourself by doing a lot of anticipations with your right hand, maybe even talking while you're walking. Talking while you're walking is good. But one more thing on this kind of restrictive practice that you're talking about.

One of the reasons why this is important, you know, is because, and for anybody trying to work on hand in the pensions or something like this is sometimes like a lot of people ask us, like, what's the most efficient way to get to this, whatever? Like you actually don't want the most efficient way. You want the way that it's going to make you learn the deepest. And that takes problem solving. So you have music inside of you, yeah, that you're trying to get out, right? So that's your goal.

And you, like the act of you figuring it out. And sometimes in what could seem like an inefficient manner is actually really good for your growth. Like that, that problem solving that you have to do. Okay, like, what do I have to do to, okay, they say I have to do this. Right? Yeah. There's no like, oh, if I just do this. for this prescribed time and I efficiently get to here, then I'll get to the next step or whatever.

Like you having to figure it out, you having to like be in a little bit of uncertainty in the muck and decide which way you want to go, that's part of growing. That helps you to grow in all these other areas. So really embrace that dissonance. Yeah. And I think a fun thing about this too, like I say, the restrictive practicing does not need to be, it shouldn't be something that has you on edge that you're messing up that's really difficult. It should be simple, easy, not necessarily effortless.

You want to be engaged and you should need to be engaged. but it shouldn't be like, you know, so hard that your success rate is low. It's like going out for a run, but at, you know, your heart rate like is elevated, but you can still talk to something. It's an easy run. It's an easy run. So you want to engage. You don't want to be sloppy.

But it should be kind of fun practice, actually, because you're succeeding at it. If your success rate is like below 80, 90% on what you're trying to do with in your restrictive practicing, you need to make it easier, slow it down. Listen, we're talking about practice. We certainly are. Not a game. Not a game. Not a game.

Game is the time to play fast. We're talking about. Man, thank you so much for the question, y'all. It's a great question. And like I said, it's when we get all the time around here. Hey, Peter, you know what? If people... Wait, hold up.

See, I noticed you do this. You say, it's a great question, but we get it all the time around here. That's a little bit of a backhanded compliment. See, I see what you're doing there? What are you talking about? YouTube star? Sorry? What?

I don't get it. What are you saying? Well, you're saying it's a great question, which is like, that's a great, unique, solitary, like, we don't, you know, like, that stands on its own. But we get a lot. It's very common. Well, it is a common concern, but actually the way that... Dude, I'm messing with you.

Okay. I thought it was funny. I thought it was funny. Then I told my joke to you. I'm going to fix that for you right now. Please. Yeah. So, Peter, where would someone go if they wanted to leave us to speak pipe?

I think we already mentioned this. Speakpipe.com. Speakpipe.com. No, it doesn't seem like the place they would go. They would go to you'll hear it.com. No apostrophe. Oh, my God. What about underscore?

You'll underscore. And you don't have to capitalize anything. But you can. You don't even have to put it in most browsers www. But you should. No,

you should actually start with HTTP colon. And what is the... Backslaps, backslash, black splash. What's the name of the site,

Peter? You'll hear it.com. Oh, till tomorrow, you'll hear it.com. Smooth.