You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Best Jazz Advice We Ever Got

Episode Date: May 16, 2019

Peter and Adam give the 7 best jazz advice tips, answering a SpeakPipe. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Check out the bottom of the page at http://www.openstudionetwork.com/podcast.The ending theme song for today's episode is "Velbeslaatt" by Aksel Fjaera. To get your music featured on You'll Hear It, send an MP3 recording of your music to [e-mail] & Adam's Best Jazz AdviceListen (of course)The audience's imagination fills in most of the music for youLearn solos by earPlay a second line snare drum solo in your head / only play 1/3 of the notesBe productiveA strong sense of time is more important than the notes you playThe Ultimate TipLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam. What? Remember that great advice I gave you? No. Oh, well, tune in today. I'm Adam Maness. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hearer podcast.

Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Coming at you today, we have some speak pipes. Thank you everybody for sending in your speak pipes. Yes. We have a lot going on. We put the call out. We did. And the call came back.

Call still out, by the way. Call still out. We're always taking more. We're getting so many. We've been getting some bad ones. It's true. At first, it was all only good. We're still a pretty good ratio.

We are at a really great ratio. We really appreciate it. You can go to you'll hear at dot com to leave us your speak pipe. I shouldn't say bad. It's not going to scare people off again. Not bad, just ones that, like, sometimes we get ones where we don't really know.

You know, like, we'll get a request for a solo analysis or talk about an artist that you and are both like, do you know what I think about them? I don't know. They're actually great questions. Yeah, they're great questions. Yeah. It's bad for us.

It's a podcast I'd like to listen to. That's right. Yeah. Anyway, today we have a speak pipe from friend of the show, open studio member Drew in California. Let's check it out. Hey, Peter, Adam. This is Drew from California.

I'm an open studio student, and you'll hear it listener. Love the podcast, 32-star form. My question is, what is some of the best advice you have received from your mentors, teachers, and peers? You guys are always sharing such great ideas and tips to focus on, and I would love to know what bits of advice have really stuck with you over time. Thanks. I mean, it's a good question. Most of this advice we've already shared on this podcast over the years. During the first week.

Yeah, exactly. When we first started, we kind of went through everything. No. But this is, yeah, I think a lot of, and I think we were pretty good about crediting. We try to as we go. A lot of the information that we pass along is certainly stuff that was bestowed upon us at critical times and things that we've talked about. And we realize sort of resonated with each of us individually. And then it's fun when you talk about it.

It's like, oh, cool, you sort of believe in that too. Then it just strengthens the ideas. But I know, I mean, I've been such a. beneficiary of so much great information. And Drew, Drew from Kelly, what's up? We're getting a lot of West Coast love lately.

Is the podcast released at a different time? Because is it different times over there? What's happening? It's not at all. I have no idea. Smart people are you just a lot of folks in California. That's true. But I love how you said different advice from mentors,

teachers, and peers. Because a lot of times we remember back to the mentors, to our teachers, our parents, things like that. But peers, absolutely.

Like that's, you know, I think there's so much to learn from each other. And what I love about jazz is like you always get that feeling that you're among your peers, even when you're not. You know, I remember like older jazz musicians that I got a chance we've talked about this, play with here in St. Louis.

And then when I went to New York and stuff, they make you feel like you're their peer, which gives you some confidence. You're not at all. Because they're way better than you. Yeah, it's so true. But there is that kind of welcoming thing and that artistic community thing, which is great.

Yeah. Yeah. And then it's kind of up to us as you get older to, to spread that love around, you know, be open. Yeah. Well, let's try to do that today. All right. Do you think we could do seven?

I think we have seven and an ultimate. Oh, that's right. We've been doing our ultimate tips. Number seven is the ultimate. All right. Our first one is obvious. Listen. Listen.

Always number one. And something that we preach here for a reason. It's because it's been, it's been preached in, in us, probably our whole musical careers. Yeah. That it's the most important thing. And a little pro tip here. This is actually the ultimate one. Yeah.

So you're welcome to sit. stick around and listen to the ultimate, but this is we're giving you number one is the ultimate. And I'm trying to think, like, I heard this from all my teachers, peers. You know, I think the way you hear this from peers as in terms of listen is this whole thing of like, man, have you heard that record, that Joe Henderson record, have you heard the new Robert Glasper? You know, that's really your peers teaching you and saying, listen, that's more like to explore different things. And I think that's a way that we can kind of do it in an ongoing fashion.

Yeah, we're going songs headphones, why not? Yeah, there's, of course, the listen to yourself, listen to the classic recordings, but make it an ongoing thing. That's the advice, you know, always be open, listen live.

You know, if you're lucky enough to be somewhere that has great music, and, you know, we struggle with this ourselves, there's almost too much great stuff happening in St. Louis now that we have time, but I mean, I know how inspired we've gotten in different situations when you hear some magical music

live, there's nothing like that. It's so true. I mean, it's always number one for reason because it always does the most for not just your playing, but for you as a person. You know what I mean? Like we're musicians because we love music. And so the more we listen to music and to each other as we play, the better everything is. Absolutely. My first one was something, I was hanging out at a jazz festival in Minnesota somewhere, northern Minnesota and a great trumpeter Abasai Chowen was playing

and in his band was Jeff Ballard and somehow there wasn't much to do so we ended up in a hang somewhere in a hotel room or something and I remember and I was pretty young and Jeff Ballard said something we were talking about the universe and music or whatever

and he said something about really the audience's imagination fills in most of the music for us as we are performing and that for some reason it was like more impactful than just like play less you know what I mean just imagining the audience listening to the music you make and sort of creating something for for their imagination to fill in always leads me in a great space when I perform and I still think about that probably I don't know

12 13 years later after that weird conversation with Jeff Ballard and also I just saw Jeff Ballard with Brad Meldow trio a couple weeks ago and my man plays a lot like he's always always always like switching things up or whatever so I'm like what is going on in that guy's head so did you yell out at the show hey we're filling it in we're filling it in I mean everything he does is so tasteful and like he's just a big texture machine you know and it's incredible and so you can you can hear him thinking like this that the audience fills in really specifics and he's he's I don't know he just lays this blanket of like imagination for his audience and it's always been really inspiring I don't know if

I've ever gotten I obviously haven't gotten towards you know his level of being able to do that. But I think about that. Some reason it's just more impactful than just like, play less. Right, right, right. Less is more, man. Yeah, yeah. That's great.

Love it. All right. Well, number three, I'm going to put out there some great advice that I got early on, which was learn solos by ear. And I think everybody knows, you know, transcribe solos. That's great. And we say transcribe, even when we mean learn them. But I remember I was told, and this really came from Wint and Marcellus.

I heard it from some other people, too. But when I met him, I was pretty young. and he was really good as far as like giving specific advice, you know, and he, and he told me he's like, check out Thelonis Monk's solo on Bags Groove. And he's like, learn that solo. He's like, don't even worry about transcribing. He's just like, learn it by ear. And so he said that. I was like, okay, I was like, well, this guy's good. And he's got a gig with the symphony. So I'll try it. Why not? And I had never even heard Tholone's Monk, but I got the recording. And I was like, let me try and see if I can do this. And I don't know. he probably really thought through is like well this is sophisticated enough yet simple enough that might actually be doable but just like getting in that mindset of let me try to play the music by ear let me not think about it from the standpoint of how it is on the page really put me now i was

sort of trained before that through the Suzuki method i didn't realize this at the time but to already be thinking about that and like that's great when you have these like the Suzuki method i think is amazing for young kids because before they can really intellectualize advice yeah it's just sort of put on them. Yeah. You know, and so I was prepped a little bit, but that has been some of the best advice.

And so I always gravitate. I teach that. Yeah. You know, we preach that here. We do. We give a lot of transcriptions because we've,

because we've been bent by the masses. But learn solos by ear, even if it's one phrase, if it's one course, whatever you can do, it just puts you in a whole other place in connection with that artist. You're just getting more out of it.

You're learning things you don't know. You know, it's so funny this weekend, my son is seven and he has, we have some, you know, Bastion piano books. he's about to start some classical lessons soon.

And he has just kind of picked stuff out on his own from reading the books. Yeah. And he was literally like, he was literally playing Mary Had a Little Lamb. And I was like, I know he knows the tune. So I closed the book. And I was like, can you just play it? Yeah. And he started to do that.

And you could just see things starting to pop off. Yeah. Of like, oh, I'm connected to music via, you know, this audible thing, not a book or whatever. So it is an important thing to start. Yeah. Yeah. I remember I do that with high school big men sometimes when I do a, coaching thing.

The kids are like buried in the page because they're like, I can't. And so I tell them, everybody turn your music stands around. Yeah. I was like, now play the same thing. And they're all like, no way we're able to do it. And then they play and realize that they're pretty much playing the same. Yeah. You know, and that they can do it.

It's just a matter if you just have to, it's, you change your mindset. Sometimes you have to force somebody's mindset to change. Exactly. And then you have the realization. Good. All right. What do you got for number four? For number four, I have some really good practical advice that was given to me when I was

at the new school by a great teacher named Hal Galper, great pianist. And this always stuck with me. This is actually something I still teach people who are having a hard time getting like a good feel. And that's to play a second line snare drum solo in your head as you're soloing. You know, all those funky syncopations, whatever. And use those rhythms in your solo,

but only play a third of the notes that are happening in your head. Right. So just pick out like, that kind of rhythmic thing. And all of a sudden, now you're punching in the air. You know what I mean? Now you're creating these little phrases. It's all swinging.

It all feels like jazz. And so that's something that I still think about today. I don't really do it as much when I play, but I still tell my students if they're having problems with like, listen to some second line bands, like listen to that snare drum player, be able to kind of like take your solo on the snare drum and leave out most of the notes. That's awesome.

I mean, Hal Copper, he's like, he's like an OG hack for how to play syncopation. I like it. Cool. All right,

so that's four. Okay, number five, I have some great advice that I got from my father, Bill Martin, and that is to be productive. And by this,

you know, say. Yeah. It's like, you know, always have the mindset, especially in terms of like writing and arranging

and learning souls or whatever. is to be doing something within the music. You know, like, and what it, what it did was like he, and, you know, it really is part of a whole mindset of like, are you going to spend your time, like, theorizing about music and thinking about what is the best things that you could do or you can actually do something. Yeah. You know, and we think of like productivity sometimes as being the opposite of creativity.

And it really isn't. Like, we think about if you're a factory worker, old school, like you have to be productive. You have to make X number of widgets a day. but in terms of like music a lot of times we use this as as a barrier that we're going to go against that so we're going to wait for the perfect muse to come to us we're going to wait for the perfect idea we're going to wait until we have like that intersection of inspiration and desperation or whatever but in essence like great artists create stuff great musicians if you want to be great you got to do stuff you got to be productive and at first you're going to be producing crap but how are you ever going to get to the mountaintop if you don't you don't you don't just wait and wait and then get great training and then one day become Herbie Hancock. That's not how it works. Yep. 99% of great artists get up and just go to work every day. That's right. And that's what they do. And then hopefully, you know, one percent of what they create is good enough to make it to the public. You know what I mean? That's how it works. And especially if you have like highly,

you know, high aspirations and stuff, you want to really get to something great. And by great, I mean like your story. Yeah. Yeah. You got, I always think about that scene and have you seen Shawshank Redemption. I know this is one of your favorite movies. You know, the escape scene. Remember, he's like, you got to go through a lot of beep in order to get, and then you're working your way through all that sewage, and then you come out, and then you're there, you know. And so, but you have to do the work to get there. And so it's like, no one just sits around with a bottle of wine and a bunch of grapes and a that's waiting for the perfect solo to happen. That's right. I did try that one time.

Nothing happened. I mean, I tried every night. Oh, the wine and the grays, that's a little, that's a lot of grape. That's too great. Okay, my number six is actually, advice from you. You didn't give this to me directly, but I've seen this, I've seen you teach enough lessons to know. This is something that you talk about all the time. And it really is true. You know, the piece of advice is a strong sense of time is more important than the notes you play. That's paraphrasing, you know, several ideas that you've spewed about this concept. But it's true. You can play very simple harmony, very simple melodic content. And if your sense of groove, if your sense of time, if the rhythm is strong,

it's going to land so much stronger. I mean, it's really something to remind ourselves as we get caught up with, oh, like, what's the hippest scale I can do over this? I mean, what's the voicing? I mean, whatever. I love that voice, man. Come on, man.

Are we going to play jazz in here? We're going to play some jazz. What's going on? No, but you know what I mean? Like, play a triad, but play it so freaking groovy that nobody can help but feel great. Right. Keith Jarrett has sold several million solo piano records

based on that concept. Dude. But seriously. I know. Yeah. Well, and I have to say that that I really, look, all these ideas were always passing around, you know, I didn't come up with that. But it, I do believe in it, and I like to reiterate it because it's just so important

in terms of connecting with the audience, too. And I really became aware of this through doing some workshops where we were both teaching together with Christian McBride. And it's always fun because, you know, we don't really talk about music in a way that's so specific until you get into a situation where you're actually teaching people together. But, you know, he was just talking about how his certain type of music that you play as like a band leader or even just as part of a group in front of an audience, like are people tapping their toes? Like that's the bottom line. Like we can talk about scales and chords and all

that and that's an important part about it. Totally. But when you're playing in like a groove, either a backbeat or a shuffle or swing or really any kind of groove that has a strong groove element to it, any kind of time feel, then you better have some people tap in their toes. That's our responsibility to do that. Totally. And so, you know, it's not that we don't think about the nose. Of course, we do. But it's better to play, as you said, simple, but right in that group.

I always believe that. Totally true. Okay, well, before we get to our ultimate tip, let's just mention that today's episode of the You'll Hear It podcast is brought to you by Open Studio. It is. It is. You can go to OpenStudio Network.com. You can also go to just you'll hear it.com to check out our blog.

That's right. A lot of free stuff. The blog is its own entity now, floating out on the internet. There's a lot of good stuff on that blog, though. We've worked hard on it over the years. Oh, I know. Oh, you want to tell me, buddy. I agree.

I'm all in. Too much good stuff. I'm all in. I went back to my jazz boy. Too much. No, no, no, it is. It's a lot of fun there. Go there.

And, you know, we're going to start putting some different calls out so that people all understand what's happening in here. But if you like the blog, if you like this podcast, how about share with a friend? How about do that right now? In fact, don't even worry about the seven-star review. I mean, you can do that later. Buddy, let's make today share some love. I mean, if you want to do a seven-star.

Yeah, of course you can do it. But how about share it? Because you, our valued listener, are our best ambassadors. We don't advertise for this podcast, you know, because we don't know how to. And we wouldn't know where to, quite frankly. No, but if you like what you're hearing, maybe send an emails, you know, send a tweets, send a Facebook message. Yeah.

A WhatsApp. A WhatsApp. Is that what that's called? I don't think so. Okay, well, what's that, man. I have no idea what that is, actually. I have no idea. WhatsApp.

You don't do WhatsApp? I don't do what's app. Oh, you must not communicate with many Brazilian musicians. because they're all about the WhatsApp and French, too. I love it how certain countries latch on to these apps. You know what I mean? It's like, and you start getting messages from folks, and you're like, why has all my Belgian friends using this one?

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so this brings us to our ultimate tip. Which is? The ultimate advice. I mean, this is a lot, like, you know, to put on it because this is our life's advice. But this one is one that actually came to me, what was reminded to me,

from the Bill Murray documentary that I just saw, which is brilliant. Check that out on Netflix. Big shout out to Netflix. Keep on documenting. But they, you know, Bill Murray, I won't go through the whole thing with the movie, but basically he's this amazing, you know,

actor, of course, renowned Academy Award winning and all that. But he, the whole movie is about how he engages with people. And so the advice I just want to take from this is for jazz is engage with the jazz community. So what this means is like go sit in, go meet other musicians, put yourself out there, If you're a young person or any age and you want to do this as your profession, you're like, I want to be a jazz musician. Put yourself out there.

Don't like wait and sit in the practice room and just send emails to people and texting, whatever. Go out and actually talk to people. Go out and play with people. Put yourself out there on the line. And it's hard because, you know, it's scary because you're like, I suck and I don't want anyone to hear me. But this is really good advice, I think, for everybody. First of all, you're never as bad as you think you are. And nobody else is ever as good as you think that they are.

Totally. So without engaging with other musicians in the community, and I can say that this jazz community is very open and very open to engagement, and it's a very loving place. But you have to really put yourself out there. So whenever you're thinking, like, should I do this or not? Or let me think about, would this be a good opportunity? Yeah, do it. I mean, unless you're doing so many different gigs. And look, we always talk about this to be like, oh, you're going to go check out such and such.

I don't really. Yeah, let's do it. Like, we're always default to like, let's try to do it. Let's try to be a part of that. because that's how things happen. I mean, this stuff is not made in isolation. And that's what you're going to learn. It's so true.

You know, I always talk about these three most important things for learning anything. And especially music is good private instruction or mentorship. The first two are obvious. Like that's the first one. Private practice, like being able to practice yourself. Obviously, you need that to learn anything. But the third one that I think people sleep on is this one. Yeah.

Is to find a community of people to become a part. of, you know, those relationships you make, the things you can learn from peers, you know, are so important. Yeah, absolutely. So, well, there you go. Yeah. We do have a song, a listener tune on the way out. Send your, send your listener tune if you want to hear it at the closing credits to Andrew atopensudioenet.com.

Today's tune is Velbe Slat. That is not the correctly pronounced, but I can't tell you how it's supposed to be pronounced. Yeah, I was going to say, do you want to take a swing? V-E-L-B-E-S-L-L-A-T-T. Now, why two-A-A-A-T's. This is from Askel Fiarra. That's Norwegian for Prosperous

with all this lot. Thank you, Ascle. You'll hear it.