You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Origin of Open Studio - #76

Episode Date: December 10, 2018

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Hey, Peter. Yeah, who is this? Where the hell are you? Where are you, man? I hear you in my ear, but what's going on? I'm in the pod cave, dude. Where are you? We were supposed to record today.

Oh, man, I went to the wrong pod cave. The pod cave in Denver? Yup. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you from several time zones today. Now it's interesting because I sound like I'm in a robust podcave with a beautiful microphone

and you sound like you're in a hotel room. You know what? I'm in a hotel room and it is not a pod cave, but next time I'm going to try to make it more podcave like. It's more podcave light right now. It actually doesn't sound too bad, man. It sounds pretty decent on my end. I'm not sure it sounds terrible from where you are because you're in a hotel.

No, no, it's all good, man. Good to be back at you. Yeah, we had a little bit of a scheduling conflict, so we thought we'd experiment with maybe doing a little remote. You'll hear it recording. PM's always on the road. That's a classic road dog, this guy. Right, right.

Roof, roof. We've got to make do. Yeah. So today we're going to talk about something. We've been asked this a few times, actually, and we just recently got asked this in the Facebook group. The question was from Glenn in the Facebook group, and he says, you know, could you guys share how you met

and came to collaborate on this venture. And really, it's about the origins of, you know, not only the podcast, but the whole Open Studio thing. And it's not just me and you. We should put that out there first and foremost. You know, we're the voice of the podcast. Too small, right, but two small cogs in a greater podcast and Open Studio family. That's right.

So, yeah, I mean, should we, and actually, though, I think this could be a little bit educational. We always try to swerve into the educational. lane just because, you know, jazz is a grind, you know what I mean? And it's a hustle. And sometimes you've got to go to where, you know, things are pointing. And I know for you, your story of how you started, you know, doing these lessons and how we started doing this podcast is by following those kind of signs, you know, being aware of them. So you want to give a little bit of a background on that. Yeah. So we started with just the podcast or the or the entire open studio. Let's go with the whole open studio for people who might not know.

Okay. So, yeah, Open Studio kind of came out of, you know, really just an idea I had for ways to, you know, spread information about how to play this music beyond just the individual students that I had at the time. You know, like how could it reach more people? And that sort of started organically just from me traveling, being on the road, and meeting, you know, young folks, students, not even necessarily just young folks, just anybody who's interested in music asking me different questions, and me also wanted to learn from them and from other people. And I was thinking like, how can we leverage maybe technology and the potential global reach of the internet to get some of this information out there? And so I was teaching up at Northwestern University, and I used to make these little videos really just for my individual students that were kind of reiterating things that I taught them in a lessons.

And I would send them because they would ask me questions, kind of follow up. And so I just made, I always feel like music so much more from listening to it and watching it. So the idea of making a little video was like, this will be easier for me to show it to you. I'll explain it to you too. But if you can see what I'm doing and imitate and it's learning. So we had these videos and there was a new little enterprise starting around that time called YouTube, which has gone on to big things. apparently I hear from the kids.

But we put some of those short videos that happened to be around two minutes long, which was kind of my, what I perceived as the attention span of my students up in Northwestern. And, you know, people really started responding to them positively and letting us know that they were getting something out of it, you know, via YouTube. And we were actually on some real jankety pre- YouTube video sites, if you can believe that. Really? Yeah, see if Dan Martin remembers Vidler, a little place of Vidler. Dan Martin, you remember

Vidler? That was part of the mix at the beginning. But basically, you know, Dan kind of groaned a little bit about Vidler. Right, right. But I mean, the idea was just to kind of put it out there and then people are looking for answers and this was a new place for people to look for them.

And so when I started getting the response from folks really all around the world and then meeting people, oh, I love your two-minute videos. I'm getting so much out of it, I thought, If I really put some thought into this beyond just two minutes, structure out some lessons, this could be a fun thing on both our sides. So that's really as simple and as complicated as it was, the idea for Open Studio. And then when it started working for piano students and we set up a site with longer lessons

and took requests and put it together as a course, then for me, the next logical thing was, you know, how do we bring other teachers, other artists in that will have people, you know, that have information that would be of use to folks that are, that are looking for answers to the questions or just fans of that particular artist. And so that's when you brought in Gregory Hutchinson and Romero Lubombo. Is that right? Exactly. They would they were they we, we, we refer to them as the OG, original gangster artists or also OG stands for old guys as well.

But yeah, Greg and Romero. I mean, you know, what a wonderful thing to to, to make the foundation of this enterprise of this lesson series, this company, Opel Studio to be based upon these guys. I'm so honored and grateful that that's really the foundation of everything that we built was around, you know, the courses that we did with them. And, I mean, it was raw at the beginning. Greg was in Rome, recording with a GoPro and a little studio, you know, breaking down his knowledge and stuff.

But it's been a really a pleasure for me. And I know for you guys, for everybody, all of us at Open Studio, to see how much this, you know, how much it gives to people, how edifying it is to somebody when you can kind of unlock a little secret via video and watch it over and over again. Be like, wow, that's the way Greg Hutchinson, that's how you play brushes on a ballad. It's like you're learning from the OG. Yeah.

And at this point, I wasn't there. This was just you and Dan at this point pretty much, right? So Dan Martin, who is the co-founder of Open Studio, you guys were like out of living rooms and fittingly hotel rooms probably making it happen. Right, right, yeah, because we didn't really know Dan and I, and I'm so grateful to have Dan along for this ride because he really believed in this idea, but he kind of believed in it as far as I was able to throw it with the lessons, which is the great check and balance to have when you're trying to start something. You know, he was like, well, yeah, people like your two-minute jazz. Why don't you record some longer lessons and let's see how those go.

Yeah, yeah. If you can record those, I remember he told me, I think it was five or six lessons. He said, do five or six full-life lessons, and he said he'll build the original site and then we'll see what happens, you know. And we just, we started basic. We tried to always talk to the students as we went. I was, I was really lucky to have this core group of students at the beginning that I still have most of them, which is so great, that would give me, you know, responses to like what they wanted to see. And so then by the time you came along, we had a small infrastructure, but you were able to, you know, do a really great job of sort of seeing what people were responding to and start to fill in some of those holes on the piano side. Yeah, yeah.

And then, you know, really on all the courses now as creative directors. So we just kind of built it up one brick at a time. Yeah, and I think before I even started with Open Studio, you and I had met musically first, because I was playing with a singer for many years, Aaron Bodie. And I remember we did a concert in St. Louis opening for you and Christian McBride. And I think Gregory Hutchinson, that seems right, at the Sheldon Concert Hall when you had your series for a while.

And yeah, I just remember our whole band was like super nervous. because is that Christian McBride? We had no idea what it was. You know how it is sometimes when you're the side man or just show up somewhere and you're like, oh man, this is awesome. Yeah, and all I remember about you for years

when I was down in New Orleans and up in New York, they're like, yeah, there's this young up-and-coming pianist Adam Manus who says he can cut you at any time at any place and, you know, where is Peter Martin? He ain't been in town lately. That's all I used to hear.

I did spread a lot of rumors about you while you were gone. No, but I was so thrilled to join the team and I think I came in right when you were doing Peter Sprague's great course and helped do some transcribing on that and write out some tablature because I know a little bit about guitar. And then, so, you know, fast forward, I guess, as we're kind of growing this thing and releasing more and more courses from Christian McBride and Ulysses Owens or whatever, Peter walks in one day in January. And he's like, hey, we're going to do. Of this year.

Of this year, like 10 months ago, 11 months ago. and says not, hey, what do you think about? Or, hey, maybe we should try. It was, we're going to do a daily jazz podcast. And I was like, oh, okay, like in a month. And he was like, no, no, no, today. We're just going to start. So that first episode, we literally, like, sat down and wrote out some ideas and then just

recorded. And then, you know, it's kind of taken off from there. The weird thing is, is like, it was pretty immediate as far as, like, well, we can't stop this because people are actually kind of into it. I remember that feeling. What's the yule here train pulls out the station. You can't stop that bad boy. And you remember those first months? Those were seven days a week. I know. What's funny you say, I came and said, we're going to do a daily podcast and we started that day. Well, that lasted for a couple of months and then we went to five days a week, right? Well, it's hard. And oddly, we didn't get a lot of pushback from our people on that.

I don't think we had one person was like, oh, we missed the weekend once. No, our audience grew. They were like, oh, good. I mean, maybe we should cut it down to two or three days. I don't know. Let us know what you think. Right, right. Anyway, but that's kind of where we are now, not to get, you know, two in the weeds on the history. But we do have had a few requests about this.

So we thought we'd just kind of like tell you our story. But yeah, for me, it's a pleasure, bro. And glad we can make it work today remotely. Absolutely, man. This was fun, man. Yeah. Maybe we'll do another one tomorrow, man. Maybe I'll just stay here.

Come back to the pod cave. What's the temperature in the pod cape? Because it's like 17 degrees out in Denver. I'm in a hotel room. I got the thermostat up to like 78F. The pod cave is always cozy. It's cozy 24-7, which is surrounded by like foam. And the Kranican Bach, which admits some kind of ancient heat that only in a 120-year-old upright can.

Is it ancient heat or toxic fumes? Yeah, it's definitely some kind of asbestos paint situation. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, all right, man. You'll hear it.