You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The ONE "Right Way" To Learn Jazz - #154

Episode Date: July 11, 2018

Today, Peter and Adam discuss some problems with being dogmatic in your learning. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And this is the Yule here at podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming to you. Coming to you. You're getting like kind of sweeter and sweeter on that. It used to be like, Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Yeah, but I mean, you know, I love our listeners.

What can I say? I love our listeners. All right. What are we talking about today? That's a good question. I thought, oh, we were going to talk about, you tell them. Oh, the one right way to learn jazz. Yeah, we have one right way to learn jazz.

This has controversy written all over it. It's going to be good. So, Peter, what is the one right way to learn jazz? Well, listen. Of course. Yeah, that makes sense. I really think it is. I mean, if we were to boil it down to one, which we kind of boxed ourselves in with this title.

Yeah, yeah. Wait, didn't we just do an episode on, hey, you need to listen more? Yes. We are reiterating it. We talk about it because it's important. The folks need to hear it. We believe it. We're being honest about it and organic.

I mean, this is where it's at. That's the way to learn jazz. And I mean, everything else is kind of window dressing. It's interesting to talk about, to think about, to look at, scales, arpeggios, all this other kind of stuff. But there's always an element of listening, I think. So what do you think about these folks who get very dogmatic about, you know, one, like, you know, the Barry Harris method or, you know, the Berkeley. method or whatever to learn jazz or just go out of straight. Yeah, I mean, that's

those kind of one way to learn jazz. I don't believe there is one way to learn jazz. I mean, unless it's listen. But listen actually encapsulates all those different ways to learn. Right. So I don't think, I think that sometimes we want to make ourselves

feel better by saying, okay, I'm with this camp. Like in basketball, I run the triangle offense only. That's the only thing I do because that's the greatest offense ever. Well, if you have the, if you have Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippin and Steve Kerr in the right thing. It can be the greatest. So, you know,

if you're listening and you're watching, you're paying attention, then you can find out. I mean, those ones you're talking about, I don't even know, I mean, I kind of know the Barry Harris system now. I love Barry Harris, but I didn't learn the Barry Harris system as people talk about it now, but I still figured out how to play this music, the Berkeley

system. I didn't learn that. But I did listen to a lot of probably the same things that they would recommend you being able to play, or at least it would get you there. That's why when I hear people say like, oh, this is, you know, everybody's learning the wrong way or this is the wrong thing to learn. I'm like, well, why? You know, you know, music is still getting made somehow. Exactly.

You know what I mean? Good music is still getting made. People are figuring stuff out. I don't think there's one right way of anything. There's one, you know, maybe there's several schools of thought on things. But for sure, if you keep your ears open and you go with, I think the key is going with what hits you. Yeah. You know, don't do it because other people are like, oh, yeah, you.

you go to check out this, you know, one system of doing things. Do it if that sound reaches you, you know, and pulls you in. Yeah, and that's, look, that's going to be a moving target as it should be. Of course. Like, yeah, what you know, what you hear, but you have to go through that process of curating how you want to sound. And it's going to be different when you're 20 than when you're 40 and when you're 60. And it should be. But there should be also, if you are listening and paying attention and being true to yourself and all these things,

there will be a continuum of your style and your sound. So as you learn other things and can elevate that style, it's still you. You know, you've got to have something. You do have something to say. So it's all about what do we do, like the one way to learn jazz is do those things that can bring out that personality as quickly and as easily as possible and as authentically. Are you saying I still got to listen and practice in my 40s and 60s? Come on, man.

Kind of. Kind of. You're going to be there soon. Well, I think that, you know, the, I mean, wow, we've talked about so many different ways to practice and how to practice and how much. And we know the importance of that. And we've also certainly talked about listening. But I think that the process of listening and then learning like that really, I always say like, you know, don't listen to jazz. If you're a jazz musician or an aspiring jazz musician, we cannot listen to jazz like a jazz fan listens to it.

It doesn't mean we're not jazz fans. and it doesn't mean we can't sometimes relax and listen to it. But most of the time when we're listening, we need to be listening like we're in the business. You know what I mean? I mean, it's kind of like if you're in the ad agency or marketing business, you're not going to look at a Doritos commercial the same way we do. Like we're going to see that and be like, oh, it looks good. Dude, you want to come over and have some Doritos and beer, you know, whatever.

You often call me like that. Yeah, it's all the commercial. But an experienced ad person is going to see that and be thinking about like what's the length of the ad, what's the colors they're doing what are the, you know, what's the copy and all those kind of things because they're in the biz. Yeah, you know, it's funny. It reminds me of these things that you see comedians. Like when they, when a comedian hears a really great joke, they don't laugh at all, they just go,

hmm, it's funny. You know, they just think like, because they see the moves behind it. Yeah, yeah. Right. And they appreciate the quality of it, but they don't. Yeah. Now, they make, make a note to steal that joke, you know, just like we would do it a gig or something. Yeah, yeah.

But, I mean, when you get, I mean, it's like, you know, both Adam, you and I are both big lovers of podcasts, different podcasts, even before we started the award-winning, you'll hear podcasts that you're listening to right now. Award-winning? We have won awards, man. You always doubt that, man. Everyone's important, man. Everybody's special.

You don't know that? We got the 10th place Jazz Podcast Award? Something like that. Self-given. That's really bad. We gave ourselves 10th place. Yeah, that's given by Dan Martin to us. But I think, you know, we love podcasts when we decided to do it.

do one, then all of a sudden we looked at podcast a little bit differently. Like before we were, you know, we were listening to them for enjoyment. Now we were listening to steal. Yeah, we're stealing tactics. But I mean, it does get you thinking about it differently. What mic are they using? Exactly. So I mean, you know, yeah, what's time of the bumper music? How many seconds did the bumper music come back? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But it's great. It's fun stuff. And as jazz players, that's what I mean. When we talk about listen, it's not just have it on in the background while you're drinking your wine in the evening. It's like people associate jazz with. It's

that kind of active listening and that balance with practice of course really is the way to play jazz. And I love this because it's a little bit less dogmatic thing as far as like you've got to listen in this way and you know there's always tactics and strategies within there that we get

into but you know keeping the kind of overall view and strategy of listen as like an umbrella with which everything else sort of fits, you know, be a technique or scales or solos. Every part of your practice and performance comes out of that. It's really a great umbrella to use because it can be so malleable to you, which is the important thing. If you're going to stick

with anything for long term and really grow and really practice consistently and try to get better, you can't be, I don't think you can hang on to some dogma created by someone else that you're not that into. You know, you have to be open to changing it up for what hits. you at that moment, like you said, you know, as you grow and grow up and you change and your life changes or whatever, you know, and you change the musician. But if you keep listen as like your guiding light, that's when you're, when you're off the instrument, that's when you're practicing the instrument, and that's when you're performing with other people, you know, you can't go wrong with that. Yeah. You're going to grow. Absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, so.

We solved it. That's the one way to learn jazz. That's it. Number one through seven, again. Well, it could also be a nice way for you to kind of, you know, if somebody tries to corner you, there's always those type of people that, I guess the young folks are calling them trolls online that are trying to, like, needle you, like, which way to, you know, this is the way to learn jazz. This is the way. Gatekeepers. Exactly. You know, when they try to back you into a discussion about what do you think about this, Barry Harris, for or against, you know. Yeah. Or you're not a real jazzition unless you've done this, this, and this. When they try to bring that kind of thing is like, you know, diverting the discussion and the potential argument to this thing of like, well, what I really believe in is like deep listening. You know, deep listening and how that applies, you know, to my practice, to my playing. And that's what I try to use as the sort of overall strategy. I mean, who's going to argue with that? No one.

Yeah, you could. Yeah. Cool. Well, if you have a question for us or an idea about a future episode. You can go to You'll Hearer.com. You could leave us a question. You could also leave us at rating and review at Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts. Yes.

Or wherever you get your podcast. Or wherever you might get your podcast from. Those are the ones we check, though. We appreciate seven-star reviews. They are impossible, but we like you to try. Yeah. And to do that, usually have to go up to at least five. Exactly.

There's no I and try. No. No, there's not. Yeah. Tried. Yeah, there is. But, yeah. Okay.

And we've actually been getting, I don't know if you've been checking, but we've been getting some nice, I wake up every morning at 4.30 and go right to the check-out ratings and reviews. Yeah, I have a bookmarked on every single device I own and comes up in my car computer, even when I turn on my car. Adam, you have one new review. Right, right, yeah. Our sense of self-worth is totally defined by this, you know. But we had a nice one over the weekend here. We had title of it was great podcasts, all caps. I like where this is going. Let me count the stars.

One, two, three, four, five. Oh, no, I thought it was six. It's just five. It looked like six. It's so many. Go on, man. This is the greatest podcast I've ever heard in my life. Life changing so much information that is useful.

Why are you laughing? It's ridiculous. It's not ridiculous. This is Andre comma, Kama, C-A-M-A from... Oh, I thought you said, like, Andre, comma, no. Andre, Kama, I don't know how you say that. Okay. on iTunes.

It's not ridiculous, man. Andre loves the podcast. Is that review in all caps? The whole reviews in all caps. Is it really? So much information that's useful. Well, we appreciate that because we really are trying to give

actionable, useful, you know, fun, loving as well. But we really believe this stuff. We should give out some kind of deal, maybe, for people who leave reviews. Well, we did that in the past, and we actually, remember when I first sort of mentioned that off the cuff,

you might have thought that we never followed through on that, but we did. The thing was, and we can offer this again, if you, so we did this on Twitter, or we got to remember to check it, though. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like, I'm never on Twitter. Twitter or Instagram. We're going to say either one. This would be good for us to go there. So hit us up at Hey Open Studio on Instagram or on Twitter with a screenshot of your review and your rating, five, six, or seven stars. Your choice. We don't like to tell people how to rate us. That's up to you. I mean, except that we do all the time. We do all the time. We're totally insecure. We're a weird combination of needy and insecure. But anyway, yeah, just take a screenshot

of that. I think this will be fun and send it to us. And we've got a little something special for you. I think it's going to be a t-shirt. I think we're talking about an open studio or you'll hear a t-shirt. A happy practicing t-shirt, maybe? Happy practice. That'd be good. Although it's always an issue with size. Like everyone, I go to these festivals all over the place and they always give, it's like a it's like a large. They just give everybody large. Yeah. And it's either too big or too small or so. But maybe a T-shirt or maybe something else. Last time we did

actually a CD that we just talked about magically appeared in the mail for that person. So hit us up and we'll hit you with something fun and useful. That's right. Okay. And if not, you'll hear it.