You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What Have We Learned Since Starting Open Studio?

Episode Date: September 26, 2019

Today, Peter and Adam answer a SpeakPipe on what lessons they've learned on music education since starting Open Studio. Wanna send a SpeakPipe of your own? Sign up for You'll Hear It Premium to access our SpeakPipe hotline! Go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/yhi for more info.Like those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam. Yeah. Do you have a learning and growth mentality? Always. Are you growing things in your basement under a lamp situation? That's none of your business. Okay. I'm Adam Manus.

I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio Jazz.com. You can check out Peter Martin's amazing piano courses. I'm even getting in on the game. We've got Jeffrey Kieser in there also. Yes.

We're about to release a course by Brazilian great Alves. It might be out by the time this is very close to it. By the time this is heard. Yeah, it might be coming out today.

Oh, okay. We'll see. Happy launch day. We'll see. I mean, we do wake up every morning and record these live. Yeah, of course. It's just so early in the morning.

So what are we talking about today? Today we have on the old podcast. We have a speak pipe from a premium member and yeah, let's see. This is from Sean. All right. Hey, what's up guys? Sean from Berlin. I want to say thank you so much for the tip on practice journals. I've been sleeping on practice journals and massively helpful for being efficient and organized out the gate.

Practice journals will never leave my life. So thank you so much. That's just, I mean, I don't know what I've been doing. My question is, I'm curious to know what you've learned. as a teacher and as a player during the time that you've had the site up and going, I'm sure there's been a lot that you've learned and information that, you know, maybe you never thought about as far as in your own plan and whatnot. So I'm curious to hear some feedback

and information on that. Peace. Man, did Sean just make practice journals sound sexy? He did. That was totally. Andrew, you got some stiff competition here, man. That's why it's like the deep voice going. Now, I got to tell you, have you been to Berlin before? I've never been to Berlin. Well, you're going to be surprised.

Everybody in Berlin sounds like Sean. You're thinking they sound like they have a German accent. They sound like Sean, you know. Yeah, that's a voice made for radio, but for good radio. That's awesome. Not our teensy jazz pianist voice over here. Hey, Adam, how you doing, man? Pretty good, man.

All right, cool. But I'm so happy that the practice journal was a game changer for you and continue. to be. It really is. I mean, it's... We actually have a... We're making a custom open studio practice journal. Did you know that? Yeah, it's going to be really cool, like a really cool, organized way to keep track of your week, what to practice,

what you've practiced. There's going to be a little chart for keys that you can hit. I think people are going to dig it. Nice. Kind of a... Kind of a boojo bullet journal for... A custom practice journal. Effective jazz. Yeah, look for that. Awesome. Awesome. Okay, so what have we

learned since starting open studio i could write a book i could if i could write a book i haven't learned that tune yet um but i think you know specifically sean you were asking about as a teacher and a player so i'll kind of just look first at as a teacher um i've learned so much i i you know i'm so fortunate to be in the situation and to have learned from our students so many things i mean possibly or probably much more than i've taught actually so i'm the beneficiary of of so many just you know comments here and there being able to meet our students out on the road around the world. That's been such a beautiful thing.

The variety of students that we have. And, you know, as a teacher, I realized that, like, we serve a lot of students that are at a surprisingly high level, you know, partly because we started with some kind of advanced courses. Sure. And there is, what I've learned is there's such a world of accomplished jazz players beyond just kind of the pro and local touring and local sense. scenes, you know, that we know here and that, you know, some of the places we've traveled, we've seen.

I mean, I know there's a bunch of great players in different places. But then there's this whole other level of, like, players that you never, they're doing other things. They're maybe doing an occasional gig, but they're pretty good, you know, and sometimes really good. Yeah, yeah. So there's like a wealth. I always get so inspired about the state of jazz. And when people like jazz is dead, I'm like, not at all.

I mean, the, the amount of, and I mean, we've only touched a small percentage of them, I'm sure. I mean, we're still trying to learn how to reach people that would be interested. in the kind of things and lessons that we have. Yeah. But the questions that I get asked and that come into us, you know, really get me thinking about putting things together. We've put together courses together.

And, I mean, I think it's helped my playing too because it gets me going back, even stuff that I've known and practicing it again. That's right. Because there's nothing like teaching something and getting dogmatic about it. And then be like, wait, do I do that? Can I do that? I shouldn't I be doing that? Shouldn't I know all this?

I feel like I'm just teaching myself. But it really is fun. And it keeps you in that. I think that's the biggest way I would describe it. It keeps me in that student mentality, which I love being there. I was going to say something similar. I never graduated college, so it's funny that I'm saying that, but I love. I'm like this student that never leaves.

Yeah, for me, like, the analogy I come up with is it's changed the way I teach in that I was teaching, like, across the table at someone, and now I feel like the best way to teach is to come to the same side of the table, almost like, hey, we're learning this together. I have these insights. Like, I've been working on this, but, like, we're all. just growing together, right? And so whatever I can share with you, I want to share whatever you can share with me,

I'm gonna use that too. Here's what I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the approach that for me has really been a huge game changer in connecting with people and actually, like you said, improving my playing to really take an honest assessment of like, okay, what I'm about to tell them is something that

is really good advice because I'm trying to grow. Is that a part of my routine? Do I have that? Like, am I, you know, living into my values that I'm putting on other people? So that is an enormous value of being a teacher. And I think something that I've taken from Open Studio. And then just as a player, all those details that we get asked about all the time. Like sometimes people ask us like, hey, like, how do you finger this certain thing?

And I'm like, I've never thought about that. But if I refine that, that's actually a huge. you know bonus for my playing right you know so it's like things that you don't even think about that you have that you're not identifying as holes in your own playing someone would be like i have this hole and you're like oh i have that hole too i know let's figure it out you know even even things that are um i remember being kind of fearful at the beginning that um as i started to see trends you know of questions like how do you do this and i realized it was something that you know either people admired in my playing or they wanted to know how to do it and then i realized i didn't really know how to do it and then i realized i didn't really know

how I did it. So I was going to have to go back and kind of, or maybe I learned it so long ago, or I learned it so unconsciously. So I was kind of fearful, oh, if I learned the intricacies of it, it's going to start sounding contrived. So I would be like, oh, I don't really know how I do that. And then I realized that wasn't really helpful to people, though. I mean, I tried to make it like, just do it. I can just do it. But the reality was I actually did learn that on some level, some level of consciousness at some point. And once I learned that you can go back and figure it out kind of reverse engineer or really going backwards from how you do it now

and then try to figure out a way to explain it effectively, even if it wasn't the exact way that I learned it, that that was not going to mess. It was only going to strengthen it actually for me. Like the thing we ended up calling bluesy double stops. Like I've been playing that since I kind of stumbled upon it so long that

I never had any, I mean, it was definitely a sound, not a sound that I created, but it was a sound that I liked. And so I was always like, no, just play that. What do you mean? But then I said, you know what? There's actually a technical way that can make this easier for people. So I started breaking that down. Yeah.

And that's really been super gratifying because one advantage, I mean, all this stuff is the same as like, I think teaching one-on-one with someone. There's no real huge conceptual difference to doing it online. But there are some kind of gradations that are interesting. Like we have the benefit of kind of crowdsourcing questions and starting to see trends in a way that if you're just teaching the same people, which we've both done, you know, on our careers as well, one-on-one you don't necessarily get. It's so personalized for them and what they want.

But we start to see when like hundreds of pianos asked the same questions. And at first we're kind of like, oh, that's stupid or whatever. Then we're like, wait, no, that's not stupid. We're the stupid one. Yeah, there's a void somewhere of knowledge that these folks don't have. And so it's kind of helped us to be able to pinpoint

these important elements. Like once enough people were asking about the blue. And at first they were like, I don't know, different people were calling them different things. I called them double stocks. I came up playing violin. Yeah. That's the way I thought about it.

but bluesy double stops or whatever. They were asking how do you get that bluesy sound or something in your line. And so then I was like, cool, let me go break it down now that I've identified, let me give it a name, let me try to help people get to that. That's awesome. Yeah, for me too, one of the more important revelations

working here at Open Studio is really being around all these high, high level world class artists yourself, Christian McBride, Diane Reeves, Tomero, Hutch, like all these incredible people that I grew up listening to and idolizing. So old people, basically. No, not just a little bit older than me. But it was realizing as a performer how important, you know, being honest was on stage and how, you know, I've been talking about this all year about, you know, watching you perform so much now and knowing you personally and realizing that there's very little disconnect between your offstage personality and you're playing on stage. and the work that that takes to have that sort of confidence.

You know what I mean? And that's really the hardest part is because it's not something you can shed in the practice room. It's like a personal growth kind of thing, right? Yep. But again, awareness, man. Awareness is key. So just being aware that like, okay, I have to work on being more me on stage, right? And being confident that that's cool and like not trying to do, not trying to people please or whatever as I'm on stage.

That was an eye opener. for me. Yeah. And very, very important, you know. That's great stuff. One other thing I'm thinking about is, I think, you know, that I've really learned from the students is that there's like a real, you know, interest and awareness of sort of the real information kind of coming. I don't even know how to describe. We kind of start to call it the open studio way, but it's this idea that not everything has to be approached theory first, you know. And it was something that was always kind of natural to me and then once we met you know whatever 10 years ago and then slowly kind of

started talking about these things as pianists we never like delineated it or wrote it out or anything it was just sort of a natural way that we thought about music I mean I think we both have a you know fairly deep theoretical understanding but we never really approach things theory first and so I had been doing that already in the lessons and stuff and I always felt like

I was like man I think that there's other people like this beyond just yeah when I met Roy Hargrove and connected with him when we were like 22 years old I was like man this dude is like way better than me, but he kind of thinks about music the way I do. He listens to the same stuff.

This is going to be fun. Right. But I was like, this is really what the spirit of jazz is. This is nothing that I came up with or you came up with. I think we just sort of found a way

to maybe put it out there and almost like dangle it like a fishing line. Yeah, like, hey, is anybody else want to think about it like this? Yeah, we're going to talk about theory and drop two or whatever, but we're going to really just talk about

how do you get the feel of this music? How do you get the vibe? How do you get the groove? And that's for everybody. And so, but I wasn't actually sure because I was like maybe maybe not everybody can do this but what I've learned is so gratifying

is that like at varying levels everybody can that like kind of puts a little bit of time and effort into it and so I was very confident beginning like if you do this you'll be able to but I wasn't sure but now I've learned I mean you see the development that the students have had and look when you're doing it online we're not there to make you do it so if you don't put anything into it

we're not going to magically make you better just because you come to us but I've seen players that have really developed and so that's extremely gratifying Yeah, that is something I've learned, too, is that you cannot acquire information to be a better player. Yeah. That's not how that works. No. Like, you can't information your way to being a better jazz music.

Not at all. There are great jazz musicians right now who are like 16 years old who do not know as much music theory as you do. Right. And they sound great because they feel great and because they're putting the importance on the things that actually sound good. Yeah. Not the theory, not the information. You know, that's... And so it's been a tricky balancing act because we get asked,

a lot about information. Like, what is the drop to and all that? And, and I, man, I love nerding that thing over my head, aren't you? You brought it up. But, man, I love nerding out about that kind of theoretical stuff as much as the next musician, but there's something bigger

that you have to focus on. Exactly. Good. Cool. Great conversation here. Yeah, thanks, Sean. Thank you, Sean. Enjoy Berlin. That's one of my, my grandmother was from Berlin. Was a Berliner. Ah, I'm a Berliner. She was? I'm Berliner. It used Berliner in fact because she was a little older.

Wow. Yeah. And so I was able to go to her apartment building and visit it a couple times when I was there. Crazy. That was fun. Yeah. That's cool. So carry on until tomorrow. You'll hear it.