You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The A.I. Practice Method?

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

Adam and Peter dive into the A.I. developed practice routine and find out if its really more efficient. 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 Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hello, Adam. Is this the end of an era? It's either the end or the beginning of a new area. Or, hold on, does not compute, does not compute. It might be the middle, what we call the messy middle. The worst AI ever. Hey, I'm Adam Addis.

Forget it. I'm Peter Martin. There we go. He's back. Man, is that the... Chat PM. It's just... Oh, this is music advice coming out.

You're welcome in. Yeah, for sure. Is that... I mean, this is, this show... I was born in 1970. Are you familiar with the 70s? I love the 70s. So, this is like

just such a typical Gen Xer approach to AI. I'm a robot because this is what we were programmed with the Flintstones. The Jetsons... Jetsons was my jam. Where's my flying car?

Shout out to George Jetson. Where's my flying car at? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. Also, big shout out to Hong Kong Foui. Hashtag Hong Kong food. Great show. But this is the thing.

Like, this is, we bring the perspective of kind of wherever we first encountered technology or perceived technological advances during our lifetime. Well, to the, for the rest of our lives. So here's where I'm going to, I'm going to pull my exenial card. Exxennial, which is the micro generation. Not a real generation, by the way. It is a real generation between, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, cross-generation between Gen X and millennial.

You have the bank account of a boomer, but the attitude of a millennial with the fortitude of a Gen Xer. That's right. Yeah. No, so we, you know, we had cell phones in high school. Yeah. Like, we didn't have smartphones. We had cell phones in high school.

We had baby internet in high school. Like, we had the beginnings of it. So we, when we were very young kids, it was still all analog and tape decks and eight tracks even. But then by the end of our sort of adolescent. since we had the beginnings of what would be, you know, similar to what we have now, just not sort of a full deal. So us exenials were a real, we're a real weird one, we're an interesting one, because

we're not quite, I don't really feel. So if my approach to AI is that, what is your, what is your perception? You're more scared, though. When we first talked about it, you were more like. Well, I see it potentially just destroying our entire existence. But yeah, that sounds pretty fearful. It's pretty horrible. Yeah.

I think it's, I'm ready to embrace it. By the way, we should mention two. So it's been mixed review. on the AI episodes. Yeah, this may be our last, leave us a comment in YouTube, because this may be our last episode. Not that we're going to do what everybody says. No, but just so you know, we might be pulling back from the AI episodes,

but we wanted to go out with a bang because we're going to come in with tinfoil hats and little things next time. Well, it's just so much fun. The chat GPT episodes are so much fun for us, just to type in random shit and see what it says. But a Redditor over on Our Jazz. So there's our... What is an our... Reditor?

A Reddit is a website, Peter, Jen, Jen, X. Yes. And it is, there's a... Our jazz piano is a great little subreddit over there. And a user over on our jazz piano. Oh, boy. Actually, the Reddit logo is a little robot. So it does kind of make sense.

It kind of looks like you're the tinfoil. It has a little antenna. Yeah. So this is from user PMMe, your Zigarot, which, yeah, throw it up there. Okay. I asked an AI to make a practice routine, a jazz piano practice routine, which I think is brilliant, by the way. So if you're seeing this. Now, how many episodes on practice routine have we done on this podcast? At least 20.

Yes. Yeah. But that's okay. If you don't want to listen to us, you want to go to. Maybe 50, man. We've done a thousand episodes. Surely we've done. If you'd rather go to Bing AI.

But yeah. So they could. Would you go to Bing and trust it for its search? I guess we trust it for AI. We trust it for AI. So it says, I asked an AI to make a practice routine. As the title implies, I asked Bing AI. Which I didn't even know Bing was still around.

I was like saying, it's back now. I asked Jeeves AI to develop a developer. I love to ask jeez. That was AI. I asked being an AI to develop a practice routine for someone looking to get started or restarted learning jazz piano. I'm curious to hear from experts here how close this is to something reasonable. For context, I prompted the bot with a situation, which more or less sums up my own. Busy adult with very limited practice time, but some rusty background knowledge from piano lessons when I was young and playing in jazz band in high school,

mostly just looking to practice for fun and to be a slightly more competent amateur musician. That's a pretty thoughtful self-assessment and then prompt, I think, for any kind of AI. You should be able to get about as good results as possible with that kind of a prompt. So here's its creepy-ass reply. Hello, I'm happy to be your jazz piano instructor. I understand that you have limited time for practice, but you also have some previous knowledge of how to play piano and basic music theory. That's great. Okay, the creepy part of this is, hello, I'm happy to be your jazz piano.

Nobody asked you to be the instructor. We just ask for some info. You don't need to personalize this stuff. All right. So a structured routine for your short practice sessions would include the following elements. Theory, chord progressions and chord voicings and progressions. Well, this is, you know what? This is perfect.

Because what do we always say? What's always number one for us? Not theory. Listen, damn it. You should learn how to construct and play jazz piano chord voicing such as shell voicings, rootless voicings, quartile voicings, and altered voicing. Okay, let me just interject a little bit. hell that is.

Okay, I didn't even know the word corto what it meant until about six months ago, to be honest. Yeah. So I'm not sure if that's necessary. You should also practice common jazz percussion,

core progressions, such as 251s, turnarounds, blues, and rhythm changes. That we do, that's something that we do here in the studio for sure. You can use a book, like the jazz piano book

by Mark Levine or jazz keyboard harmony by Phil de Greg for reference 12. So those are fine. Those are the... Those are very well regarded. I'm not, I'm not a fan of...

I'm not a fan of... Some of these theory books. Learning new tunes, you should learn to play jazz standards from a lead sheet. Yes. Do you not learn it by ear? Never learn it by ear. Stay with that. Just stay with the real book.

No, that's obviously... No, it's going to say that. Don't worry. Which is a simplified notation of the melody in chords from a song. You should memorize the melody and the chord changes. And practice playing them in different keys and styles. You can use a book like the real book or a new real book for a collection of jazz tunes. So that is definitely something that we...

Pooh, as we might say. you want to learn tunes by ear, by the way, if you can. Although, I mean, is that, maybe that's too much too soon. But I think given the prompts and the background, there could be some of it. Let's get back here on the screen. So let's talk about this because we have a lot of pushback from this,

about lead sheets, about learning from real books. A lot of people still love their real books and their lead sheets. And we cannot convince, even hardcore Open Studio Pro members, it's hard for me to convince them that they, should not be doing that as much as they are. And I think it's because it's challenging. But what they, what you might not realize is it's that challenge that makes you good. Right. It makes you good. That what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Right. Do you agree? I totally agree. I just,

after preaching that for so long and not even like, we don't even get pushback. We just sort of get like, like, oh yeah, yeah. It's more ignoring that I do wonder how realistic it is. It is realistic because that's how you get good. I know, but is it the type of thing? Okay, so I'll give you something. I always like to think about myself as a student. I mean, certainly have music, but even more like I try to put our students in, I try to put myself in their position. So I think about like, what am I kind of at the level and the passion level in something else?

And so for me, you know, I've been doing this marathon training. I put myself in that situation. I'm not a great runner, but I can. run. Yeah. I'm very passionate. I have a goal. I'm very curious and I'm very open to improvement and to learning, right? And so that's what I make a connection with our students being in the same position with jazz piano. And so one of the biggest concepts that I would connect with this of what we're saying in terms of like learn something by ear is to train slower than you think you need to. Right. It's like a big thing that makes sense. People just ignore that. And can be ignored.

but it actually has benefits that are counterintuitive. Although I guess learning something about ears, that should be intuitive. But I think people think that like, oh, yeah, well, that's good, but I'm not, that's not really for me. That's more aspirational, or that's more like,

that's just to control some people that don't know how to balance the different parts of their musicianship that they need to work on. I wonder if they think, too, that they're afraid of learning something wrong because their ears not developed, but there's no way to develop your ear

without doing this step. And so the best musicians have spent lots of time doing this kind of thing. Not every great musician, but most great musicians. So I just find it curious when you have so many experts telling you the same thing. I guess it's too. And then you still ignore it. Right. But that's what I'm saying.

That's why I take it similar to like to the slowing down when you're doing marathon training. You know what else it is? I think people don't have enough confidence in themselves as jazz pianists. We say this all the time. We're like, look, we're all jazz pianists here. It doesn't matter what level you're at. There is no threshold that you have to pass to become a professional jazz pianist. Whatever the hell that means.

And so once you see yourself, and that is very similar to runners, people are like, I'm not a real runner. Oh, no, I just, you know. It's like, no, if you're lacing up the shoes and going, you don't have to have a certain type of shoe to be considered a runner or hit a certain time or a certain thing. you just have to put one foot in front of the other. And so I think that's why people ignore this. They're like, oh, yeah, well, this very specialized training of slowing down for 80% of your training, I'm not good enough for that.

I'm not ready for that. Even if I'm hearing that, because I'm not a real runner. And I think that that's the thing with this. It's like I'm not a real pianist. I haven't gotten to the level where I can just learn things. There might be an ego here thing at play with both these things as well, just as you maybe wouldn't want to be seen running slow. And you might not want to be seen struggling to learn.

how to play the song or getting it wrong and you want to be seen getting it wrong. Even though that's an important part of growing is getting it wrong. Right. Or going slowly. And this is not even necessarily to someone else. This is to yourself. So like you're practicing and it's going to be quicker to kind of get the tune by looking at the chart. You want to sound good.

You want to sound good. You want to hear good. You want to hear yourself sounding good. You want to hear nice things. You got to hear yourself sounding bad. We should get a t-shirt with that on it. You have to keep sounding bad until you sound good. Right, right.

And when you're proud, you're. practicing, the more sounding bad, the more struggling, the more progress. And, you know, it's just the same thing. Like, the more slowing down, people are going to be passing you by as your training. But you're waiting for that race day. Race day is like performance day. Like, what are you going to do to put yourself in the position to be able to do that? And I think this, you know, theory is great.

We talk about theory all the time. I love theory. It should be way down the list. Way down the list. Exactly. Okay, let's get back to this. I like to learning new tunes as a, I let me put it back. So the next one we have here is ear training.

transcription and improvisation. So number three, listen. Yeah. You should develop your ear skills by listening to jazz recordings and trying to identify the notes, chords, rhythms, and melodies by ear. Okay, great. That's perfect. Should be number one. Should be number one. You should also transcribe solos and phrases from your favorite jazz pianist and learn to play them on your instrument. Also true. Yeah. This will help you improve your vocabulary and style. True. You should also practice improvising over tunes and chord progressions that you have learned using the language that you've transcribed or learned from books. Also true. Yeah. You can use software like transcribe or amazing slowdowner to help with your transcription.

All good advice. Yes. You can allocate your time according to your goals and interests, but a general guideline would be to spend about 10 minutes on each element per day. For example, 10 minutes on theory drills, 10 minutes on learning a new tune, 10 minutes on ear training transcription and improvisation. So it's not bad. Well, I like the breaking down.

I like the fact that it kind of gives some structure. Yeah, we've talked about similar things. You asked for 30 minutes, right? I don't know if that's the right one. This would give you a total of 30 minutes of practice per day, which is manageable for most busy people. Of course, you can adjust the time and frequency according to your schedule and availability. I hope this helps. You get started with your jazz piano practice routine.

If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know. I'm looking forward to hearing your progress. See, that's creepy too. Just the facts, ma'am, right? Just give me the information. I don't want to become friends with the computer. So what do you think about this 30-minute practice, not including any, So it's 10 minutes of theory drills, 10 minutes of learning a new tune, 10 minutes of ear train transcribe.

Okay, I see a big hole here. And that's some kind of technical practice. There's no technical practice. Right. That's a problem, I think. Because I would say 30 minutes, I'll put 10 minutes. And it's not that like, oh, it's as important for developing your jazz vocabulary and stuff. But it's so foundational.

And it's such a important part. Like not everything that you're doing in your practice can or should. be for exact results that you're looking for. 100%. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. In fact, you're going to be out of balance if that's what you're going for. Yeah, and you need actually time to play.

And I don't mean play, like just play the piano. I mean, you need some play time. That's not in here either. You know, you need some time that has no, where there's no results that are going to be gained. It's just for you to explore and experiment and play. That has to be a part of it. Right.

It's an important part of our process. Absolutely. And I mean, maybe with, 30 minutes a day. Maybe that's not every day. I would love for that to be because I feel like that can be three, four minutes at the end of your practice. I mean, I hate getting into like 30 minutes of practice. Here's your four minutes segment and your three minutes. But just to say that it's not it can be a small part at the end. I always recommend that. I mean, we talk about this for years. Yeah. It's like play the whole session. You can do whole sessions 30 minutes on each of these things. You know, right. Because if you practice 10 minutes on learning new tune. I love that. And then your training. Yeah, great theory. I would say instead of theory drills technique. technique, scales. There's a big movement going on in some arts communities of just like getting out of this

specialization of some of this stuff. Yeah. And really just incorporating whatever art that you're passionate about or any art actually, just into your life in general. The way they're supposed to be. You know, like our hunter-gatherer ancestors

used, they didn't practice anything. It was just like you play the drums to communicate and to have rituals to celebrate things. Like call to prayer. To get yourself amped up for a hunt, whatever it is.

Like all of this stuff has been practical. We've sort of like taken it out of that sense into this very specialized craftsman style where you're talking about 10 minutes on theory,

10 minutes on learning, it's all fine. Like I said, it's a productivity hack, but you know, that doesn't always equate to freedom as a musician. This isn't even making sense,

actually now that I see it, 10 minutes, 10 minutes on theory drills. What would you do? What is a theory drill? Well, lot of harmonic warmups for you, Peter, if you want one. Look at that.

Ten minutes. Here, I'm going to highlight this. Ten minutes on theory drill. Tell me a theory drill. Well, you could do... What kind of chord is this, Adam? That's an ear training drill. Okay, yeah.

So, what is a theory drill? Well, I could do... I'm actually developing some theory A-tunes and warm-ups, which you could do, but I don't know how they would know what this would be. But, yeah, I don't know what a theory drill... inside your brain, Adam. Yeah, exactly. No, but taking things through, like, the diatonic things

and the different ways you can approach it, but that's not something that you would spend 10 minutes doing every day. I wouldn't, if somebody told me to practice theory drills for time, I wouldn't know what to do. Especially most people that are asking that would ask this question, how to make a 30-minute practice routine when you're busy, you know, 15 minutes of that could be technique because there's likely a lot of proficiency, deficiency.

And, you know, I just saw an interesting YouTube video about, like, our major. your scales needed and I didn't watch the whole thing yet I'm hoping it's not like they're not but the kind of premise of it was like you never play scales in almost any kind of music well first of all isn't true you're playing fragments of them all we just had Helen sung on talking about how important it is I know I know but it's like practicing when we talk about practicing technique practicing scales that is so much bigger than just the tech technical side of it like there's

such a like the shape the understandings of the different keys. The nuts and bolts of music. Not some of the music. But also, you know, foundational, fundamental. Hearing Helen talk about the sort of string of pearls of the technical practice,

but you have such a beautiful scale, Peter, that has no breaks in it and it's perfectly even. Developing that up to a point would do more for you than any sort of theory exercise. Yeah, theory drills. I don't know what that would be. That kind of irks us. I like that.

We can't get mad at anything. We're just getting mad at the algorithm, which is just a reflection of us as humans. Yeah, I don't know where it gets all this, this, but this is just a lot of bad information on the internet. So we're going to say... Last chat, J-B-T-V-T, Peter? Well, this is...

Yeah, this may be... I mean, look, like a lot of this stuff I'm hearing in other fields to... Let's make a gentleman's agreement. 70%... Yeah, Ratu. 70% of this is right, though, wouldn't you say? I would say so. I would say so...

He's not bad. It's pretty good. You get what you pay for. I got invited to Bard, B-A-R-D-B-R-D-Bard. Which is the new Google AI. Oh. And I asked it... I love how he's thrown that around.

I got invited to you. got invited like it's some secret. Bill Gates sent over an invite. Oh, man, I got invited to a blue check on Instagram the other day. It turns out it's just a subscription service they're offering now. And I was like, damn it. What is an efficient jazz piano practice routine is what I asked. And they had a more succinct answer.

Here is a possible efficient jazz piano practice. A little humility, I like that it wasn't like, hi, well, I'm your new teacher. I'm Bing, you're being your piano teacher. Bada Bing, Bada Bing! You were going to practice some theory drills. So this is actually a little bit better. Warm up. Play some scales in arpeggios to get your fingers warmed up.

That's actually pretty good advice. Practice chords. Learn new chords and practice playing them in different inversions. It's vague but not bad. Improvisation. Practice improvising over a simple chord progression. Again, this is all very general. Learn a new tune.

Learn a new jazz tune by ear or by reading sheet music. That's nice. Like learn it by ear or by reading sheet music. Yeah, little options. Listen to jazz. Listen to jazz recordings and transcribe the solos you like. said listen to the You'll Hear a podcast. That would be great.

Practice with a metronome. Practice playing scales, arpeggios, and chords to a metronome. Practice with a band. Practice playing with a band or other musicians. I'm a fox. I'm a fox and socks. I have a hat. I'm a cat in a hat.

This is just a general guideline. And you can adjust it to fit your own needs and goals. The most important thing is to be consistent with your practice and always be learning new things. ABL. ABL. Don't be stealing for me. Bill Gates.

No, it's Bill Gates. Google. No, he's Microsoft. He's Bing. That's our tech CEO. Here are some additional tips for practicing jazz piano efficiently. Set realistic goals. Don't try to learn everything at once.

Set realistic goals for yourself and focus on one thing at a time. Be patient. Learning jazz piano takes time and practice. Don't get discouraged if you don't see results immediately. Just keep practicing and you will eventually see improvement. I like all this actually. That's good. Have fun.

Jazz piano is fun and rewarding. Is a fun and rewarding instrument to play. Enjoy the process of learning. It says jazz is a fun and interesting instrument to play. I just don't. I think Bard hasn't put enough jazz. That's probably. But I think this is actually a little bit, because it is, it's saying, like, straight up, this is just general.

But the generality of it is better and more accurate than the Bing. So once again, Google beats Bing. Well, again. I guess so. Speaking of that, Bing Yahoo? No, Bing is Microsoft, my friend. That's Bill Gates. That's formerly Bill Gates.

That brings us to the gentlemen and ladies agreement. This is very important. If you've heard this and you've done it, you can sign off now, you know. But if not, please adhere to the gentlemen's and ladies agreement. And this is based upon really just you consuming this podcast on a regular basis. We provide the podcast. You provide a little something to help spread the love. It's a simple proposition.

It doesn't have to be a creepy proposition, though, does it? We ask that you go to YouTube.com. www. That's a worldwide web. and enter just search for you'll hear it and you will see our beautiful podcast in video form and we ask that you subscribe and maybe like a video maybe even comment and if you want to go the extra mile we ask that you give us a rating review wherever you're consuming this podcast in the audio form that's a lot so just go to the youtube go and do it that's the gentleman's

agreement and we're agreeing because you're not going to get great things like the moo cord anywhere else. Nowhere else. You're going to get quality jazz education. That's right. And until next time, you will hear it.