You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Best Of "You'll Hear It" - Practice

Episode Date: August 20, 2018

Today we hear a sample of "You'll Hear It" episodes about practice. Taken from episodes 1, 4, 7, and 14. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, what's up everybody? Adam Anis here. And this week on The You'll Hear at podcast, we're going to do something a little bit different. We've been going pretty hard now since January, and we're going to take a week break here and air some best of episodes. We have a ton of episodes now, so there's a lot to choose from and some really good stuff. And we're going to do themes every day. So today's theme is practice. We pick some content from some past episodes about practice, and we put together some interesting conversations about practice. So hope you dig this one. And we're back next. week, so don't fret with all new content. But yeah, enjoy the best of practice. Separate your conscious from your unconscious practice. So what I mean by that is, I think 70 to 80% of our practice should be very conscious practice, very focused, where we're thinking about specifically what we're doing. So if we're working on improvisation, we're thinking about specific scales, we're thinking about specific patterns, specific solos, we're practicing in a way and thinking in a way that we wouldn't do when we're, performing. But then you always want to have that unconscious kind of practice where we're just

playing and letting loose. And to your point of number three, of waiting until the end of your practice routine, that's when you're going to want to do your more unconscious playing. So maybe you're waiting until then to just play through the piece and not think about all the stuff that you worked on. Give yourself a chance to have all that come out unconsciously. Or maybe it's subconsciously. I don't even know the difference. But they're both important, right? And so that brings us the number four. Don't practice stuff you already can do. This is something that our silly human brains trick us into doing all the time.

Our egos want us to sound good, even when it's just for us, especially when it's just for us sometimes. But don't fall into that trap. You will never improve just playing the same tunes in the same way, doing the same licks, and the same keys that you can already play great. So make a decision at the start of your practice routine to work on things that you can't do. That's the time to do it. You don't want to be doing it on the gig or at the jam session. You want to be doing it in the privacy of your own home where you can really focus and hone in on the skills that'll bring your entire level of playing up, not just the stuff you're already

good at. So number one is going to seem a little boring, but it's super important, and that is practice slowly. Now, you might say you did that when you first learned scales. Well, good. Then you haven't done it in a while. But it's actually a very creative way to practice because it forces you to really pay attention to those basic parts of your technique that are so important. So if I'm practicing just a C major scale, see, look, I messed up already. You hear I miffed that note in the left hand? Piano's fault. And I mean slowly, I mean really slowly.

But I'm listening for evenness of tone, articulation, you know, really, you know, for whatever your instrument is. In this case, the piano, making sure my technique is perfect, my wrists are perfectly straight. guys can't see me, but it's amazing, isn't it? It's incredible. It's really beautiful. But basically, just practice whatever you're doing slowly. It's going to be way slower than you need to, but you're going to be able to listen in a way that you just can't do at that medium or fast tempo. Yeah, I love that.

Practicing slowly exposes so much not only physically of your touch and your sound, but also your concentration, your mental stamina and keeping with that slow, steady, good sound all the way up. I love that. We're going to jump right into giving you some secrets. of how you can get through the transcribing process a little bit easier because it's a very arduous task at times. It's very difficult. It can take a lot of bit of time, but we think we can help you a little bit.

Yeah, like all things good, it can be a little daunting, but it's worth it. It's worth your time for sure. Absolutely. Okay. So number one is the simplest, but it's the most overlooked, and that is to pick a solo you already know. I can't stress this enough how important it is and how many times I've seen people screw this up. screw this up and trying to learn a solo that you've just heard and that you're so excited about, but you don't really know it. So what you're going to want to do is only pick solos to transcribe

or to learn that you already know. Now, what do I mean by already know? That means you can sing along pretty much with the whole solo. You know it. You've heard it. You've listened to it. You love it. You're passionate about it. I mean, it's very hard to learn something as difficult as somebody else's improvisational solo if you don't like it and really know it. It's just hard to do. So, I mean, why try it? I mean, there's so many great solos out there. Find something that you love and that you've already listened to most likely over and over again because you like it. I mean, it's like trying to learn to cook something that you don't like.

That's going to be hard to do. You can follow the recipe. But if it's something that you've eaten many times and you already know how it's supposed to taste, as you learn to cook it, I think that you'll be able to do it. So it's as simple as that. Pick a soul you already know. Yeah, and that seems like an obvious concept, that if you don't like it, you're probably not going to put in the energy and the love into it that needs to go into it. So as you start to learn this solo that you already know and you've already heard a bunch, learn it by ear first.

You don't want to get pen to paper until much later on in this process. First start out by, actually a lot of people say first start out by singing it, be able to sing it along with the record. I like that. Before you even sit down at the piano or get a horn to your mouth, be able to sing it out loud and sing all the little intricacies that your vocal technique will allow you to do for some. It doesn't have to sound great. No.

This is just for you. Just for you. And for most of us, pianists, it's not going to sound great. Exactly. Learn it by ear, be able to sing it. And then once you can sing that whole solo all the way through from memory with the recording, transcribe it later if necessary. If you want to analyze it, transcribe it at that point.

But always get it by ear first. But, you know, a lot of times I'll hear musicians say, man, I just don't have time to practice. I don't have access to a good piano. I don't have my trumpet with me, whatever. We want to give you some ideas today that are going to take you out of any of those excuses because developing as a musician, especially as a jazz musician, in improvising creative musician, is not just about what you're doing at your instrument. And there's a myriad of ways that we can be attentive to our musical development, even

away from the instrument. And I would just say that as pianists, I don't know if you agree with this, Adam, but I always feel like pianists have to even be more attentive to this because we can't, if we're traveling on the road, you know, in the hotel, very rare we have much access to an instrument. And I always want to feel like I'm developing some. So sometimes pianos will have the best concept. If you play the piccolo, you don't have any, you could probably sneak a piccolo into prison even, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you might not last very long. That's right. But I mean, it's like the opposite of a piano, I guess. So let's jump right,

let's jump right in. And I'm just thinking, you know, the first thing that you can do to keep developing away from the instrument is to practice more before and after you're going to have that break. So, of course, this is when you know you're going to be away from the instrument. So you can put in some extra time in those days before you go on that road trip or that vacation or whatever. And what I find when I do that is I've got more stuff sort of percolating and floating around in my brain, sort of ideas and things that then I can go on to develop away from the instrument. But if you don't put that time and that kind of homework in, that little bit of extra time, you're not going to have those ideas, and you're not going to have access to an instrument maybe to develop

them. Yeah, that's a great point. And it's just a great idea that if you know you're going to have a long stretch without it, to really hone in before that happens, and then after, of course, you're probably going to be, probably going to be, you know, itching to get back to the piano, hopefully. Yeah. Our second point is to listen, attentive listening. What do I mean by this? Well, when I was first developing as a musician as a kid, and I discovered things like chord changes and melodies, and I discovered I could hear them, I couldn't listen to any music without trying to figure out

what the chord change was, what the melody was. And that continues to this day, and that's a great way. You can be in a van, in the middle of nowhere, on the way to a weird gig, and if the radio's on, you can practice your ear training. You can practice like, what are the chord changes? Even if you don't have perfect pitch, you could just say, oh, I'll just say this is an A-flat. And in the key of A-flat, even if that's not correct, if it's an A-flat to you, or you can use the Roman numeral system.

This is the one, here's the flat three, the melody is the fifth. It's a great way to develop and to keep your brain sharp and your ears sharp even when you're not around your instrument. Same thing with rhythm. You know, if you hear a rhythm around you, either in music that you're listening to, purposefully or even like if you're in a restaurant and you hear something, try to break down that rhythm, try to transcribe it in your head. It's a great way to keep sharp. Great. Yeah, I really like that. I think you can also extend that, you know, Beyonce, the chord changes and the melody and the rhythm, even into the forms of tunes.

Totally. You know, especially when you get into more complex forms, but even on the simpler ones, making sure you really kind of understand the flow of that and a lot of potential development there for sure. The next thing that I think of, for developing, you know, away from the instrument is just thinking about music. This is kind of a funny thing because usually we're talking about hearing music and listening. But I find that I enjoy just thinking about music almost in a sort of meditative way. And so that sometimes is going through a particular tune. And a lot of times I'll do this over tunes that I've written because they're very like kind of organic to the way that I hear music.

and I'll actually just go through in real time like a solo. Like I'm improvising a solo and kind of hearing it. So I'm saying thinking, but yeah, it is hearing it too. But I'm not singing or anything. I'm not thinking about it on the piano per se. I'm just kind of imagining the music and what the flow of it is. Sometimes it's like the last thing that I was practicing

or the last tune that I was transcribing or a solo. I just sort of go through in real time and just imagine it. Almost like you'd imagine an experience or imagine a piece of artwork. But I find that you can really, get inside of the music in a way that being at your instrument, there's always a physical and technical barrier between you and the actual music. And so this is your opportunity.

Let's not look at it as like, oh, I can't get anything accomplished. Let's see if we can even go a little bit deeper on music. And I mean, especially for, I was going to say, for the young folks, but it's really for everybody nowadays. We're spending so much time, like, plugged in and listening. We have access to listen to music and looking at it on YouTube and being at our instrument. and we're productive all the time, that we kind of lose that, just clear your head and just imagine some music.

When I was a kid, back in the 1780s, man, it's been a while. The 1980s, like, I spent a lot of time bored. In fact, that was part of my thing. Like, I would go over to the piano or the violin because I was bored. I'm bored. And there wasn't a lot else to do. And I also got interested in them. But there was definitely some time of, like, just sitting on the school bus, just, like, walking

home. And it was just, you know, I didn't have headphones in. I didn't have Walkman. I didn't have an iPhone or whatever. So I was forced to kind of just imagine music. And I think it's a healthy endeavor to partake it. I think that's great. Well, there it is, folks.

The best of practice. Most of those are from the very early episodes of You'll Hear It, so you're getting a little glimpse back into the archive. I hope you enjoyed that. We'll be back tomorrow with a new episode all about gigs. And then, like I mentioned before, we will be back next week with all new episodes of the You'll Hear It podcast. Peter's traveling a little bit right now and thought it was a great time to take a little break.

But yeah, we still want to hear from you. You know, you can go to you'll hearat.com and leave us a message and give us some suggestions for episodes you'd like to hear. You know, we love the ratings and reviews. That doesn't stop just because we're on vacation. So please, only seven to ten stars, if you can, on iTunes, Google Podcast, Stitcher, I think, officially. And yeah, until tomorrow, you'll hear it.