You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What Do You Do When You Can't Hear Yourself?

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Peter and Adam answer a Speakpipe on how to react when you're unable to hear your instrument during a performance.* Learn how to master the major scales - check out Adam's Major Scale Course* Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipe at https://link.youllhearit.com/speakpipe* Support the pod by spreading the word with the link openstudiojazz.link/yhi* Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Huh? Well, I was going to say. What did you say? Exactly. I can't hear you. I'm in a mess. And I'm Peter Martin.

And you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Music advice and inspiration coming at you. Coming at you today, we're sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open Studiojazz.com for all your jazz lesson needs. Peter, we got a speak pipe today. Now, say that three times. I can't. It's really hard, awkward word.

Speak pipe. Speak pipe. So speak pipe just means a voicemail. You can leave us a speakpipe if you'll hear it.com. It's right there. It says leave us a message. and you can ask us a question like Luca did here. Let's listen to what Luca wants to know.

Hi, guys. It's Luca from Milan, Italy. I'm a big fan of yours, follow you every day. I have this question for you. How do you cope with the sensation of not hearing the piano while playing unplugged? I mean, in general, when we play, we have our amp, we have our monitor, so we can hear the piano very well and our dynamic is full and we are relaxed.

and everything. But when you play old school on stage without any amp, there's a lot of noise, the drum is very loud, maybe you're the one on stage that can hear the piano left than anybody else, because, for instance, drums can hear you better than yourself, because he's on the side where the sound gets projected, and when it happens to me, since I'm not accustomed to it, I tend to overplay, my sound gets very stiff, I put a lot of tension on it, and I don't like it. So what do you do when it happens? I mean, do you experience the same thing and how you cope with that? You get along with that.

Thanks a love, guys. Bye-bye. Thanks for that, Luca. Again, go to You'll Hearit.com. I'm going to leave us a message yourself. That's a good question. That's an awesome question. Thanks, Luca.

First of all, I just want to say Lucas English is incredible. It reminds me, it's pretty much the equivalent of my Italian. I've often been said that... I've heard your Italian, and I don't think you do. A little different than Lucas English. Yeah, I don't even know if you could... Do you even know the word amplifier? I know.

Stage? Ja, bella. Exactly. Um, cafe. O cafe. Do it a cafe. Do it, cafe. So this is such a great question.

Very topical because I know we've both experienced this many, many times. So the answer to the first part, do we experience it? Absolutely. I will speak on our behalf. Totally, yeah. And it actually happened to me last night. So I happened to me at rehearsal last night. Okay.

So not only does it happen to us, it just happened. So I think we can give it a little bit of. Topical clarity. Totally. I was thinking about this, Luca. Yeah. Yeah. But I would just say, first, and you've heard me say this before, Adam,

let's just think about the mindset that we take when we go to the bandstand. Yeah. Before we get into the specifics of dealing with this. I love it. You know, my mindset junkie. Yes, man. Because I think that no matter, you know, and we're going to definitely give you some concrete tips, I've got some thoughts on this.

But no matter what, things are going to happen that are going to be unexpected. I mean, worst case scenarios, you can. can't hear yourself at all. Totally. And nobody else can hear you. You know, talk about the drummer can hear you and you can't. Well, at least somebody can in there. That happens sometimes too.

Yeah. Sometimes the audience can't hear you. Yeah, right, right, right. But I think you want to go with a mindset of flexibility and being able to react in the moment to whatever happens. So you have to kind of think through and practice hopefully in different real world scenarios, which kind of comes with the experience. But keeping your eyes and ears open as you have.

especially adverse experiences is really important. Totally. Because a lot of people like, oh, wow, I did this gig and the piano, it was a nine-foot Steinway and it was perfectly tuned and my monitor was perfect and the drummer played at the perfect volume. The hall was perfect. The audience was all, everybody in the audience was attractive and listening. You know, like everything was perfect.

And that's great. But that doesn't happen very often, first of all. Never. And secondly, you don't learn anything from that. No. Except how to, like that's a different kind of pressure. Absolutely. Like, you really got to deliver that.

But when you get into any kind of adverse situation, and sometimes it's just one adverse part of it, and sometimes it's a total cluster beep, you know, you have to take that to be like, okay, hold on. Let me put that as our good friend of the, friend of the podcast and friend of Open Studio Orrin Evans told us, let's put that in our backpack. Yeah. Save that. I love that. Yeah. So, but the idea is like we're going to go into every performance knowing that, expecting that, things aren't going to be perfect.

Yep. Like when I do that, that already makes things easier. Yeah, well, because what you don't want to do, like first and foremost, that's right. The mindset of things are not going to go exactly as I hope is actually a, it sounds like it's a little negative, but actually can serve you in a very positive light. And this is a great example. If you can't hear yourself, you know what doesn't make you sound better, being super frustrated that you can't hear yourself for like 35 minutes.

And then at the end of the gig, you're like, oh, there's one tune left. I guess I'm just gonna, whatever. Like, that sounds terrible. Like, if you can, the quicker you can be like, okay, this is the way it is. Yeah. There's really, and if there really is nothing you can do about it, you know, if there's like just no way to hear yourself, then you need to accept that as quickly as possible. And then flip it, frame it in a way of, okay, this is going to be fun because now I have the challenge of,

I can't really hear myself. I have to use some tools that I don't get to use when everything is totally perfect, right? One of those tools, our good friend, Sean Jones, talked about in his second jazz trumpet Fundamentals Volume 2 course with us where you're like, well, wait, a trumpet player talking about how they can't hear themselves? How is that even possible?

But it happened. What kind of outdoor canyon is this? He was talking about outdoor games, but it is possible, especially on like a large venue with big speakers. If you don't have a perfect monitor mix, nobody could hear themselves, no matter how loud.

Or a big rock gig with a horn section, you know. So what do you do? Because trumpet players are dead in the water if they overplay. And so are we, really. Yeah. And that's really the first marker for me. When I notice that I have extra tension or I go for a run and like a faster run and it just kind of falls apart on me, I'm like, oh, okay, I'm way too tense here.

Like I am not relaxed because I'm trying to hear it, whatever. So Sean Jones talks about using your mind's ear and having that inner sound come through in your head and relaxing into that. So don't try to like push it in a fake way. Trust that the audience can hear you. Trust that your bandmates can hear you, except that you can't hear yourself and treat that as a bit of a challenge of, okay, can I use my mind's ear and stay relaxed

and just trust that everything's going to be okay? I think you'll find that it's a much better experience than just sweating it for like, you know, two hours or whatever. Yeah, that's, oh, that's so good. I would say, too, that like if we think about it's very easy to get into this kind of mindset where we're like, okay, the most important thing is that I can hear myself perfectly.

Like that's not actually the goal of the performance. The goal of the performance is that the audience can hear everything on stage really well and that you can play great music. Yeah. So now it is important for us to be able to hear ourselves in order to be able to play with each other and to play well. But to this great point that you just brought up of Sean Jones, we can hear ourselves in our mind. Like that's actually higher level and more difficult and more nuanced, but it is possible. So here's the thing. we need to be, what we need is to be comfortable with the sound to play our best, right?

Yeah. Now, that's a frame. Being comfortable with the sound, you could be as picky as you want and not be comfortable, right? You could have like the perfect sound and not be comfortable with the sound and be, you know, get in there and become a menace to everybody around you. Yeah, this is not about just accepting whatever and not caring about how it sounds. No, you can, but it's about accepting sometimes you have no control over it. And so get comfortable with that. Yeah. And the quicker you can get comfortable with that, the better you're going to play. And just the less suffering, it's going to be on the whole band. Right.

You know? Yeah, because, I mean, generally the audience doesn't know. Like, a lot of times the audience looks up, if they see a lot of equipment and, like, a bunch of, like, sound technicians or light technicians running around, they're like, wow, this is an incredible setup. They don't know how jacked up it might sound or be on stage. It's our job to get some kind of great performance out there into the world. And it's not like you can tell them like, hey, it sounds like crap up here. You know what I mean? Actually, that's the worst thing you could do.

Right. Because you know what an audience doesn't want you to do? Explain your hardships to them as you're trying to perform music. That's called jazz-splained. It's terrible. It's terrible. Great question. Luca, I think Peter and I's first instinct here is, will serve you right, which is really

just frame it in your mind in a way that you can get comfortable. Of course, do everything you can to get the best sound that you can on stage, but really just use that mind's ear, frame it in a way that you are relaxed into the situation. and you'll be better. And I think, too, look, if it's, you know, one of the things Luca brought up was, if the drums are playing too loud and that's the reason you can't hear yourself, you need to let them know that. You can totally have that conversation.

You can let them have the conversation. And if it's like the only time to have the conversation is as you're playing, then you need to kind of signal to them. Yeah. We've all done that. This is the thing. People like, oh, well, then I don't want them mad at me or I don't want them thinking I'm the, like when you start thinking like that, you actually don't care.

You care more about your feeling. Yeah. than the music. Yeah. So if you care about the music, you're going to communicate that. And you don't even have to tell them like, hey,

keep it down. You can actually do that music. Sometimes you do. Even louder. But even, but more than that, you can do things like. Yeah,

exactly pull back. Most drummers will be like, oh. And if they don't, maybe it's time for a new drummer. Then you got to yell at them. Yeah. And then two,

like, so the situation I was in last night playing at a big outdoor festival in Pittsburgh. That's the toughest. No sound check. Toughest. Throw and go. The worst.

you know, like Brandford Marcellus. It just played Patrice Russian, totally quick setup changeover. Yeah. And so it's just like when I heard the monitor sound, we're about to start. The piano sounded so bad. Oh, God. I mean, it wasn't so, I shouldn't say so bad.

It was just not great and it was loud. So I could hear myself, but I realized I was like, it's better for me to not be able to hear myself as much than to be able to hear poor quality. At least I'll have to lean in a little bit. And then hopefully with the drummer and the other monitors on stage, we could kind of pull some things down. So I'm signaling to the monitor. Like, the instinct when you. can't hear is to tell the monitor engineer turn it up or if you have control of your

mount or turn it up but sometimes you need to turn down and lean in or I love this idea of using your minds a year and so that's kind of what I did the whole night was just like now we got to the balance and stuff I could just hear it acoustically that was great but the rest of the time I'm like you know what you have to use or imagine it that's when you have to really be a pro and think about what it sounds like and and just kind of trust the process totally yeah great question look and if not get a bigger amp and just turn up to 11 Hey Peter. Do you know I have a new course with Open Studio?

I do. I'm a little scared of it because it's basic and fundamental but important. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It's called the major scale course. Yes. I practice the major scale in all 12 keys in a bunch of different ways. I'm talking about linearly.

I've been working on linearly. Thirds, triads, chords with pivots. But wait, Adam. What if I already know all my major scales? I don't need this course, right? If you don't know them like this, you don't really know that. Oh, okay, got it. Yeah, yeah.

All right, I'm getting on it. Get on it. That's the major scale course. You can go to open studio jazz.com if you want to check that out. What else we got, Peter? Nothing much, man. This is, we're having fun. We, as always, we accept Raiders.

The Raiders. No, you know what? They're not the Las Vegas. I saw some of them at the airport. It's weird, right? Because they beat up on the Pittsburgh Steelers. Oh, they were at the airport. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Do they end up winning that? I saw the first half. I didn't see the second half. Yeah, the Raiders won. The Raiders of Las Vegas. That still sounds weird. doesn't it?

That's crazy. Do they sell those crazy guys who would like dress up in like the furry costume? I don't know. I hope they followed him. Wouldn't they be hilarious if they just moved to, I mean, if you're that big of a fan, right?

Yeah, exactly. Anyway. So yeah, you can leave us a rating or review at, uh, wherever you listen to this podcast. That's great.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Do you ever do that? No, never. I mean for other podcasts. I don't listen to this podcast. No,

no, other like podcasts that you listen. I do actually. Yeah. I did just the other day on a, on a little meditation podcast that I listen to. Yeah, yeah. So seven stars only, though. We don't accept anything less. No, we don't. No, no, no. So yeah, do that. And you can check in with us every Monday for our exclusive. You'll hear it live on YouTube. Available only live. Did you know that? I did.

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