You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The WORST Way To Practice

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

How can we do the right thing when we don't even know what the wrong this is. Speaking about practice of course, In this episode, Peter and Adam show you exactly what NOT to do when spending time with your instrument.Unlock your FREE Open Studio trial to become a better player today.Looking to drop a question? Want to listen to the audio pod? Look no furtherhttps://youllhearit.com/Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Were we just practicing? Yes. I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the Ulyard podcast. Music Explore. Explore, brought to you today by Open Studio. Go to Open Studiojadogadjazz.com for all your jazz lesson needs, Peter. We're having fun today, aren't we're having a blast today?

Spin Drift is in the house. Our newest sponsor. Spin Drift, they've been a sponsor for a while. They haven't. In many cases, to the studio, please. Yeah, man. So we're talking practice. We're talking about practice today.

Not the game? Something, not the game, we might get into the game a little bit. I was actually, I don't know if you noticed, I was trying to do something. I did vary from it because I wanted to do a little bit of foreshadowing. I was trying to figure out what was happening. Yeah. Right. I was going to use, do a little bit of restricted practice.

I was just using the chord from the episode we just recorded. The just chords for beginners episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think this is an important thing, no matter what you're practicing, if it's something that you know, something that you're having fun with, something that you feel. Like, sometimes it's easier to structure. your practice with around something that you don't know. Like say you're learning a new tune.

Like you're not going to just fall into some mindless practice because you can't play it yet. Right. You've got to like look at the music or listen to the recording. There's a natural beginner's mind that happens. Yeah. And there's like there's there's a progression of events that you have to tackle or else you're not going to get anywhere. So you don't have to do those things. But but there's but it's different than like playing a blues that I've played a thousand times, 10,000 times that we have. Right. Yeah. So but then I think. I think it is important when we practice to put some guardrails in. That's why we talk about restrictive practice.

Some put some different things so that there's an intentionality that can be crafted around that in your practice. And that could be a lot of things because we always think about like progress. I mean, progress. That's a combination of practicing and progress. That's what we're trying to do. No, you're trying to get progress out of your practicing. You got it.

You got it. Just practice. Progress in a little bit. Progress in a little bit. I like progress. Practice it. Progress. Sounds like something that my uncle Bob would say in South St. Louis.

Well, that's progress. Ben, you throw your relatives under the bus so much more than me. But I have many relatives that are worthy of being thrown under the bus. You're just better at it. I've got hit relatives. Not a song. But the idea is like by intentional practice, it can sound like we're pulling all the fun away from it. It's like, I just want to play music.

I want to have fun. But intentionality within your practice. leads to progress, which leads to fun at the instrument, because you're getting better, like you're seeing progress in your playing. And it's not just about like efficiency and hacks. It's about actual living a musical life, joyous practice, where it's like, oh, things are starting to come together. There isn't that pressure and expectation of like,

if I do this and I do this and I'll become this. No, it's not about that, but it's like, I want to intentionally practice on this element of my playing. And that's going to be fun and it's going to be hard. Right. and it's going to be rewarding. Right. But what you want,

I think the whole point of it, no matter what you're practicing or even how you're practicing, what we want to get to in our practice, is that sort of curiosity, exploratory discovery zone. Like, that's what I'm shooting for, no matter what I'm practicing.

Like, I want to be engaged with what I'm practicing. I want it to challenge me. Just like you said, like you're learning a new tune. It's like you're not just playing the same shit you've always been playing because you're learning the new tune.

You can't because you don't know it. Right. It kind of forces a level of engagement on many different levels that's super beneficial for us. But there are ways that we can include that in everything that we practice, Peter, that oftentimes we don't. So like sometimes when you sit down to, at least for me, when I sit down to practice scales, which I think are still, even at my ripe old age, are a vital part of my practice routine. For keeping my hands sharp, for keeping my musical knowledge sharp, right? for keeping my relationship to keys sharp,

I will still get trapped into practicing them the same ways that I've always practicing them. And then I'll start to zone out, essentially, and play by road. The opposite of engagement. That should be the worst thing you should do. Totally gross. The grossest thing you can do to practice is to play things that you already can do. Yes. And that's kind of the theme of what we're talking about here.

Well, I think maybe. What's the absolute worst version of that? Yeah, I think maybe not to scare people off too much, maybe that's 10 to 20% of what we are practicing things that we know. It's very hard to get to like, that's Uber efficiency where you're just like every minute. I mean, I think there's going to be times when you're practicing things that you know in a way that you do. And it's a process to get to this because I think most people are used to practicing 80, 90% of what they already know. And the only new part is like a new tune or a new solo, something that's built in,

structurally like that. And it's almost like if we can flip it the other way, you're going to make a lot of progress and you're playing. And you're just engagement level. And I think for a lot of people, I mean, it kind of depends on what your mindset is with this, but I think for a lot of our listeners, this will really be one of those pathways to, as we say, living a musical life, being engaged with what we're doing. It's like the difference between somebody that literally sits on the couch and watches on television people running in a race and people that go out the door and run in a race. That's right. You know, it's not about what you're going. you're winning or what your time is, it's about engaging with that as opposed to just being a spectator

in it. Totally true. Just experiencing your practice is not going to work. But I think that like maybe the thing that, just to frame this a little bit, it's like if you go out and then run and you've been a runner, if you always go out and run the same path, you don't do a workout, you don't try to learn about another way to do that. Yes, you're a runner, but your level engagement with the sport and the art of running is going to be kind of low. And I think that's what we're talking about. You can fall into a rut as far as practicing things that you know,

playing things in the way that you know how to do them. And it does get boring then. It totally gets boring. Now, that's not to say, by the way, that you can't have rituals and that you are always playing something new. I mean, Yo-Yo Ma starts

every practice session out, apparently with the Bach cello suites. Right. Chello's suite number one. I think he knows that one, too. He knows it very well. But it's like an entry point, an engagement, a warm-up,

like a musical warm-up, right? That's him greeting the instrument. And that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about are you in a growth mindset with your practice routine? And I know that's a buzzword for tech bros and growth growth. I'm here for it. But there's a reason why businesses focus so much on growth. And there's a reason why I think if you look at your favorite artists, they focus on growth.

In kind of a different way. But I think it's relevant. I think if you are still trying to conquer. the same F-B blues in the same way without changing anything for 20 years, you are in trouble. Yeah. You are in trouble artistically. You are in trouble with your relationship to music. You're in trouble with your relationship. Probably with the relationship with your spouse, too.

And your children. Probably not. Everything's spiraling out of control. Could be in a sour mood. With the law. Dad's upset. He's playing the F-Bloos again. No, but you know what I mean?

Like, you know, we've all fell victim to it. I'm not, you know, we're not coming at a place of judgment here. This is something that we have to. remind ourselves off too, because I can easily sit down for every session and play an F blues, read the instrument with my little cup of coffee, gross, and then work on my same pentatonic shit on the F blues or whatever it is. But I'm at my best when I have a simple plan of growth that I'm trying to execute in my playing, right? I kind of map out, okay, where do I want to be? What do I need to work on to get there? And then I can infuse that into my practice routine. Or I am

in a state of growth of listening to new music, trying to find new muses for music, trying to find new inspiration. It can be another path from growth. But you have to include that in your pathway. Well, and think about this, because I know sometimes people think, like, well, but, you know, like,

it's hard to be inspired because I know blues. I practice in different keys. I know my scales. I know, not to say I know every tune, but it's like I got to keep challenging myself with new material. It doesn't have to always be new material. And I like to think about other things that we partake in sometimes can be better examples for us to be able to understand them

than bring them back to music. So I got a little basketball analogy for you. It's my favorite non-ice-related sport. Right. Ice, no, baby. So if you go and see, for instance, Steph Curry, ever heard of him with the Golden State Warriors, quite the marksman, warming up before, as I've seen before an NBA game.

I mean, I'm talking about a couple hours before the game. Hero of the Olympics. Hero of the Olympics. Now, there's nothing that he really hasn't done in terms of achievements, but also in terms of the game, like dribbling the ball, shooting a three-pointer, shooting a layup. I mean, there's many things, but it's like the greatest shooter of all time. He's the greatest shooter.

And there's other things maybe that he's not as good at, but it's not like there's a lot of repertoire things that he has to still learn. It's not like he's in year 10 of his career, and it's like, oh, I want to add in a dunk into my repertoire. Like, he has all those skills. but the things that he excels at, for instance, three pointers, the difference between the way he practices them with an engaged level of intentionality

versus just practicing the way that somebody else would do, and this is what I want us thinking about bringing to our practice, door A is to go up and see if you can shoot 200 threes in whatever, 30 minutes, you know, and you're just shooting them. And then, you know, literally, you're not worried about, you have somebody just getting the rebound for you, just trying to get up as many shots as you can. Some people would say, oh yeah, that's the greatest thing.

That's all he needs to do. Just sets in reps, sets in reps, right? So that's one way of practicing. The next way would be he's shooting threes, maybe not 200, maybe a little bit less. And in between each shot, he's got somebody, maybe it's him or most likely he has somebody else making a note of how many he made and how many he didn't. And when he missed them, was it veering to the left? Was it veering to the right?

How high was when he jumped? Like, what are the variables in which that he's doing it? And not that he's worrying about that as he goes, but then at the end of that 30-minute practice session, it's like, okay, well, let's see how I did. Because he already knows how to shoot a three. Like, he's not going to, he's not shooting to, like, get the strength or get the skills.

Like, he knows how to do that. There may be some other ancillary work that he does with that. But when he's in there engaging with that, he's shooting the threes at a high level. So it could be very easy to be like, oh, I got this. Let's give me another challenge. But that's not engaged practice, right?

That's just like what we were talking about by rote. But when he gets the feedback, the feedback from the coaches or he could do it himself and starts to see like, yeah, I'm still hitting a lot of them, but what's happening when I'm missing them? Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like what is that variable? What is that variable? And how can I change that? And what if I change this? What does that do, you know, to lining the thing up? Maybe I'm not hitting as many,

maybe they're going long or whatever, and I'm getting above my pay grade and my knowledge of this stuff with basketball. No. But like, like, how do we bring that back? It's like there, either way, door A or door B, you're spending 30 minutes,

but I would put it out there that door B is going to be a much more engaged beneficial type of practice where you're getting that feedback that you're able then to apply to how you... 100%. This is why having that growth mindset is so important. Yeah. Like everything that you're doing is so that you are pushing yourself just a little bit past your comfort of what you can do now. Right.

Right. And with that, again, it sounds so fuzzy, but with that mindset of going into it, Would you prefer to use the word framework? Framework is great, also very buzzy, but I'll take it. But we do that here at Open Studio. That's part of, I think, what has made Open Studio, Open Studio, is your growth mindset and the fact that we are constantly trying to up the quality of what we're doing by tracking things. And that's another great thing that you'd mention about Steph Curry's example and about our business here at Open Studio.

And it's something that I've applied to my own practice is you can't change what you don't track. Yeah. Like you can't. Yeah. If you're not measuring it, you don't know how fast. It's how long it is, how good it is, how accurate it is. And that doesn't mean that you have to be like measuring your hand off the keys or whatever it is. But put a metronome on. Yeah. Darn it.

Talk about getting feedback. Put a metronome on. There you go. Record yourself on your phone every once in a while. And that doesn't mean, oh, I have bad time. I need to practice with a metronome. No, it's wherever you are. If you think you have great time, it doesn't matter. That's that feedback loop that we need. You know, like the exercise we did a couple weeks ago with the metronome where we had it going.

and that it came off and we were doing different rhythms and stuff. Yeah. Man, that's like, the difference between that and just sitting down and saying, I'm going to groove for 20 minutes. Yeah, well, and I can, like, I could play like this for 30 minutes

and have a lot of fun. We're here for it. Yeah, but I'm not going to get anything accomplished. Like, if I do that with a metronome, yeah, and then have the metronome go off for measure, and this, I mean, it could be anyway, but something where I'm like, oh, I'm in there, oh, I'm pushing, I'm pulling,

something that gives me something to hold on to as I practice. Taking it through all 12 keys. is a great way to get feedback. That's why, exactly. You know, because then you're really finding out how much you know about the piano and music. If you're taking everything on the regular through all 12 keys, and then you're getting feedback.

You're also hopefully helping to push yourself to grow. And then even Peter, you could talk about this personal music growth on this sort of macro level as well. Like, you should always be, at least for me, I'm talking to myself here, but I think this is probably helpful for other people too. I should always be, I know this, have a project where it's pushing me to write or arrange something new, make some kind of music. Yeah.

Right, some kind of personal project. Like right now, it's the trio that we've been doing every Thursday night to have that immediate weekly gig and we're trying out new tunes and we're working on our arrangements and the vibe with the trio is jelling. Like that pushes me to practice more and more. It pushes me to grow in my practice to try new things, to start. outside of my comfort zone. You know, that's what the orchestra was about. That's what your Gen S project was about. It's like pushing ourselves in these ways.

You can do that on the macro level where it's like, and maybe it's not that for you. Maybe it's just like, okay, I need to start hitting the jam sessions. Or I need to like show up to the Open Studio Pro classes and like participate. Like I need to go to the jam session challenge at Open Studio Pro, actually participate. Those kinds of things. Just having those small, you could call them career goals or whatever.

But those milestones are important. They are. Because oftentimes a deadline is the only thing that pushes you to actually get yourself going. You know what I mean? I mean, is there ever actual growth without challenge and some kind of adversity and some kind of overcoming it? Like real growth that we can have in not only are playing like specific technical things, but more of like growth for us as a musician. You could say growth as a person. Also growth as certainly as a runner, as basketball, you know, all these different, any kind of endeavor.

like there has to be that like pushing out of a comfort zone. You got to do stuff that's hard. You know what I mean? And showing up at a jam session is hard, right? But wow, can it be so rewarding? You know, and not just rewarding. Like, you show up to the jam session. They call a tune that you know you think,

oh, this is so good. I'm going to kill it and people are clapping. Like, that's actually the least kind of growth. For me, the best growth I've had is when I got a jam session didn't know the tune. Yeah, of playing something you know. Yeah, you don't want to be just running your, fingers, you don't want to be just, you got to challenge yourself a little bit.

And then can we end with a little bit of a contrary motion? Yeah. Contrarian? Contrarian. Yeah. There's also a season for rest. As much as there's a season for growth. No, but there are.

It's called winter. It's called hibernation. Season for rest. So if you are trying to build muscle on your body, you can't just go work out hard on that same muscle every single day. Right. And just exhausting. Because it won't grow.

It just, you're never giving it the chance to rest and reheal. And it's the same thing with our art as well. So pacing. Pacing is everything. But I think the acceptance of, because I think the acceptance that there are these two things is important. Because I think that we can often get into this. Well, I just got to work harder. And I just got to, here's my growth. And I got to, Adam and Peter said, push myself past my whatever.

Yeah. And that's good to do sometimes. And then it's good to balance that with times where you are laying down and you're still. And you're just listening. And those two things need to be fairly balanced in your life. Oh, very much so. And I mean, that's part of the growth process of figuring that balance out, the timing of it, the time of day, all those kinds of things.

Because the more, you know, anything that you're participating in, the higher level that you go with your engagement with that, in this case, the art of playing the piano, would just say generally, right? Or the art of playing music, developing as a musician. So the higher, the levels, as you move up in levels with this, the more attuned you have to become if you want to keep. Because, you know, it's like anything, it's like the closer you get,

the more it starts to kind of like flatten out. And like you, I mean, at the beginning, think about when you can learn a lot. Like, say if you're an adult and you're going to learn the piano, you've never played the piano. You're like, I want to learn this. But you have a teacher or you have a course like, you know, or you're just figuring it out on your own. At the beginning, you're going to be like 10%, 20% of like, like, oh my God,

yeah, everything. And then as it gets more, it gets harder. That's right. You know, so we have to get more sophisticated with our approach. So like rest, as you're alluding to, becomes so important because that's what energizes this focus growth. So that 30 minutes of Steph Curry or whatever, it's like he doesn't have time to be messing around and just jacking up threes, you know.

In the game, he's going to have to do it with somebody big seven-foot dudes hand in his face and everything. So it's like, how do you focus during those times? How do you, LeBron James is famous for like having the most advanced rest routine. They take it very serious. Certain rooms, blackouts. no devices in the room. And that's, you know, physically,

I mean, he's still 40 years old, still playing professional basketball. So, I mean, I think these things are very applicable to us as musicians. Our minds have to rest. You know, we have to get away from music. We can't be listening 24-7 to music. Absolutely.

No, and, you know, they talk, if you've raised kids in the last 30 years, you know that there's a lot of talk about how boredom is good in kids. Yeah. Like, bored anymore. There's nobody bored anymore. Caleb, have you ever been bored in your life?

He's bored right now. He's not. They just tell, look at him. And Caleb's like, that's all today. Yeah. Yeah, but it is hard. You've got to get a mic on you, man. You're getting my comments.

I know. They want a Caleb mic. Yeah. Yeah. They can't hear you, so don't even try it. But boredom is crucial for a young mind. And I would argue for an old mind. It is.

Being bored, you will quickly figure out what you want to do. It leads to imagination, right? It really does. How are we going to imagine something if there isn't a white space to do that with? So there's that. Man, we nailed it. There's the worst way to practice, which is, really it's in between those two. It's some weird middle-of-the-road bullshit practice of I'm just going to go play Autumn Leaves for the thousandth time doing the same stuff.

I've always done without working on anything new. I had a great teacher that kind of framed this with classical music, and there's some interesting ways we could think about applying this to jazz or any kinds of music, but with classical because you're learning stuff that's generally entirely written out, it's a little bit easier to comprehend. but it was basically like as you're learning a piece like you're not there's very few pieces of classical music especially as you get more advanced that you can learn in one practice session

like that's not going to happen because you know Rachel and sonata well I'm saying like the three movements and all this kind of thing took those Brom canchercher I'm sorry you got your tongue there buddy

like me or really I couldn't actually spit it out and say I got the Brahms piano piano piano Johnny Brahms from Fettonnie Johnny Brocks Johnny Brocks but what they talk

me was like, Johnny Brums from Cedar Hill. Don't sit down and practice the beginning of the piece. Like as you're going through, like you're on day four, right? Jump to the part you don't know. Start there.

Well, what's our tendency to go to play through? Well, I need to review it. No, you don't. You need to learn that other part or else everything's going to be front-loaded and you're going to know the first part better. It's just a simple thing, but it's that mindset of like,

you talk about there's a time to work and there's time to chill. When it's time to work and to engage, you've got to go to that part. that requires that engagement from you, the music that requires it, and that you're required to bring that intentionality to your practice.

Well, Peter, I think... I think we nailed it. Yeah, let's go on vacation. You want to go on vacation together? I do need a break. I need a rest. I'm sick of this. We should also mention, Peter,

that the folks should get on some Open Studio Pro action. If you want to get on a proper balance of growth mindset and rest, open studio pro is the way to go to open studio jazz. com slash pro and join the fall season. We're working on the blues for the next three months. Sounds good.

All right, until next time. You'll hear it. Peace. Oh, Adam. What's going on? We're starting to do a segment here. What is this? This is the little Easter egg at the end.

You never seen these? No. Well, yeah, no, this is fun. This is where we, look, I'm talking in hush tones. This is where we separate the diehards out. Okay. Why are you whispering now? I don't know, because you were.

I don't know what's happening. No, this is just, we're coming back to say a final goodbye. Can we say something important? now so that we can make it their worthwhile? That's a lot of pressure, right? You tuned out already. I'm already on my break. I don't know what to do. All right. Well, until next time. You'll hear it. Peter, I did just think of something.

When you're practicing scales, whatever you do with your writing. Yeah. Do it with your love. That's, yes, affirmative, my brother.