You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What Is Happy Practicing?

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

In this special episode, Adam and Peter talk life and musical evolution through their personal experiences.Unlock your FREE Open Studio trial to become a better player today.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

Hey, Adam. Yep. Check this out. Does that have some meaning to you? It does. Check this out, though. I got one more for you. Okay.

Check this out, Adam. Jerk. We solved that, though. Did I tell you? I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast. Music advice.

Coming at you. Coming at you. They're sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJazz.com for Oh, do you jazz less? I think I have your chair. Yeah, we just somehow switch chairs. Caleb, did you switch our chair?

Is this April Fool's? What's going on? Nope. Caleb just goes, by the way, shout out to producer Caleb. Shout out to producer Caleb. Shout out to runner, Caleb. I'm sorry, shout out to marathoner. That's right.

Caleb. Producer Caleb completed his first marathon this past weekend. You know what they say? It's a sprint, not a marathon. No, it's a marathon, not a sprint. No, I think that's the other way around. Yeah, and you were running into two, right? I ran the half.

which it turns out is half as long as the full. Little easier. Both. The half is shorter. Caleb, did you pass him twice too? We did pass each other. We passed each other in the night, which was fun. Oh, that's awkward.

I yelled out to producer, I was like, Caleb! Because we were going the opposite directions on like a turnaround down in Sular. Really? Was that Sulard actually? Or was that like, I love that neighborhood. That neighborhood is so cool. That part of Sular. It's where producer Caleb is from.

I know, I know. And I hadn't been, I mean, I've been. I mean, I've been in the more commercial part of Sular, but the residential part of Sulares. Gorgeous. One of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the United States, I would say. And one of the oldest in St. Louis.

It's absolutely beautiful. Now, don't go down there, just throwing French around willy-nilly nowadays. Well, because no one can understand it. But I yelled out to producer Caleb. I didn't yell producer Caleb. That would have been funny. Also awkward.

Yeah. I say, Producer Caleb. I say, Caleb kind of like looked around in a lot of different direction. Then it was like, hey. And then I realized, I was running with my daughter

Rachel and I was a little underwhelmed with the response, but then I realized, like, Caleb running through the streets of his hometown, his home neighborhood, being the popular guy that he's probably getting into that every block. So that probably wasn't his only shout out on this race. I'm pretty sure. If Caleb were to run from Sular to Cherokee Street and back, it would just be people throwing flowers at his feet. He's the king of those neighborhoods. He is the king. That's right. I was trying to attach myself to him a little bit. His head is in his hands. He gets very uncomfortable when we compliment him about his social prowess. He's the mayor. He's the mayor. definitely the mayor of the mayor of he's the youngest mayor ever of sure um man so you did so we were talking

about we're talking about practice today let's talk about practice not a game oh we should have brought our shirts i know uh we're talking about happy practicing and we started off by doing some things we do around here to start our practice you did the the chromatic scale yeah in contrary motion i did the standard genius chord warm up the moo variation the me you can check out my course genius chord warmups or more on that. And then you ended, you said, I got one more for you, and you did this. Yep. I think we talked about this on the podcast.

We definitely talked about it at the mentor session at Open Studio last week. Yeah. But we found a name for the thing that musicians do when they sit down. The handshake. Tom Meredith. Oh, that was my name. Well, the handshake is not bad. But Tom Meredith said, cup of coffee.

Cup of coffee. I like it. A cup of coffee. A cup of coffee. It's like when, when it's like old-timey baseball announcers when someone would hit pop fly. They'd be like, can of corn. Cup of coffee is really nice. It's like, what do you do when you sit down? A cup of coffee.

Green fancy rat. There it goes again. So, okay, so we're officially starting that now. That's the cup of coffee. Wait. Is that a unicycle? An electric unicycle. There's a person in a hoodie. What's funny is, we don't see a lot of traffic down here on Washington.

But when we do, it's strange. What is that? There's eventual traffic. That's like a police car, but it's private. Caleb and I were in here. We saw like a police chase go back. Yeah, I was here too. You were here for that? Thanks to remember. Yeah, that was fun.

Yeah. Like they crashed into this tree back here. There's weird stuff goes on down here. So the art of practice. Well, okay, one of the titles we thought about, I want to pull back in here. The art of happy practice. I know that might not make the final run,

but I think that's kind of an interesting way to look at it. Because there is an art to practicing. There can be an art to practice, and there can be an art to happy practicing. Well, and for years, Peter, on your videos at Open Studio, you've signed off with happy practicing. And I've co-opted that as well. I do the same thing now. And some people have been asking like, well, what do you mean when you mean when you say happy practicing? And I thought, I thought we could, I mean, it's just a, it's,

it's kind of a salutation. Right. More than anything. But it, there is something to it. And the more we teach around here at Open Studio and the more that you and I talk about our own process, I think there's some common things that keep coming up, especially for, musicians who are accomplished that we can talk about a little bit. But yeah, yeah, you know, just our own practicing journey. I don't know about you, Peter, but like I was not always the best practiser. Yeah. When I was younger, you know what I mean?

I would definitely like skip over the vegetables and go straight to like, I want to play fast. And I want to play the thing I like, you know, which is fine. I think that's actually, there's a healthy thing. We'll talk about following your own curiosity and how important that is. But I would definitely skip over some fundamentals that I just didn't. C would be important later, you know what I mean? And then it takes coming back to them when you kind of get older and you get more growing up. And I didn't have, I had a very lovely classical teacher as my first piano teacher when I was 10, which was kind of a late start for the classical

thing. So that's why I got into jazz. But she wasn't, she wasn't like very strict. I mean, she was a great teacher. She was much older. She was probably in her 70s. And this would have been in the late 80s. But so she was stricter than probably your average teacher today. But she was, She wasn't, she wasn't like super like keeping me. She really got a kick out of. She can stamp out of the love of music from you. No, actually, when she noticed that I liked improvising and, and playing jazz when I was like 11,

she started giving me boogie-woogie, which was very cute. Like, oh, this is what I like. Kind of a cool entry point, though. Very cool, like all that, like, you know, that stuff. Yeah. Working on tunes that had those boogie-wogie bass lines. So that was cool.

But I didn't, I didn't really approach, the fundamentals of the piano until I was an adult, like really, really disciplined on scale practice and all that thing. And I know that you had more of a classical upbringing, so you have that, I think, more. At least, did you do like classical, like literature when you were younger? Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. All the stuff?

I mean, not all this stuff, but I had some really good teachers. Yeah. And, yeah, it was mostly classical stuff. I did get into jazz pretty early, too. It was always kind of on my own. I mean, not always, but it was mostly then. like middle school band and you hear in different things or whatever but i thought you know one thing that you said as far as like you didn't always eat your vegetables or whatever and that's kind of

you know one way of thinking about happy practice or the art of happy like joyful practicing i probably should have thought about a little bit more would that have worked his salutation well no joyful practice joyful practicing because happy is like you know happy christmas or happy birthday right and i don't you know i'm not as much of a i'm not enough of a grammarian to know like is happy different from joyful probably is sorry can you say that again Grammarian. Is that a real word? Well, it's like I used to be a Presbyterian, now I'm a grammarian. I'm thinking about going to Methodist next.

That's funny. So, or wordsmith, right? That's better. Gramarian. I just feel, I don't know, I'm going to look it up here, but I don't know if grammarian is. If you have to look it up, you're not one. That's what it is. Gramarian. Yeah, grammarian. You know, somebody who's verbose and understands words, a linguist. A person who studies and writes about grammar.

You are a grammarian. Oh, well, actually, that's wrong. That's not what I thought. I thought it was more about words. Grammarian, that would be different. That is words, though. Is it? No.

That's, yeah, of course. How they fit together. Yeah. So, no, but you said vegetables. It's like you felt like you didn't like your vegetables. You didn't. And, you know, I think when I look back at the different periods, even up until now, that I really engage in happy practicing, you know, or in terms of like teaching things to people

where they're like, wow, I tried that. And it was, they might not say those words, but you can tell. it works. It's kind of like you're eating your vegetables, but the vegetables have been prepared so they're delicious. Like now we both grew up, well, I grew up in the 70s, you kind of 70s, 80s, but we were both in that period of like vegetables, especially in the Midwest. They weren't coming fresh. They were coming via a can. And if you were like, if your mom was like my mom, there was not going to be any like extra seasonings from the like none of the sugar added ones, just the raw vegetables that have been sucked from any life.

or joy or happiness from them. It's not the whole food's produce section. No, no, no, yeah. So, I mean,

we got into that a little bit later. But I mean, the idea is like, if you actually, like, if the vegetables are kind of like the root fundamentals of practicing, root vegetables,

yeah, that we assume that there's no way that it can be a joyful experience to be learning about it, to be practicing, to doing that daily repetition, then it is very hard to engage with kind of, like happy

happiness within your practice. Whereas if you're having vegetables that you discover that you do like, like you might try some vegetables, you don't like canned peas. Nobody does. Those are horrible. The frozen ones are a little better.

You put some butter on them. Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying. But then you love the butter. You don't love the actual pee. It's just covering up the bad stuff. I mean, half of my diet is a butter delivery device. Come on.

Right. But I mean, so the idea of like, is there a way to make those vegetables where it gets into that zone that they're delicious. Maybe not in the way that, you know, buttered and sugared. But like, there's enough of a combination of nutrition that you're getting from it with good taste, too. Maybe not the way we were used to. Like, so you have to go through that acclamation period where, like, can I get used to just tasting a vegetable, a fresh vegetable without butter on it and find some joy in that?

That's not going to happen right away because you're going to be like, where's the butter. So what kind of practice there were you when you were a kid? Because you started pretty early, but like, what were you? were you a self-starter kind of practiser? Mostly, yes. Yeah, because I was lucky enough and blessed enough to have teachers and parents and stuff that were showing me some things, some vegetables,

you know, that were good enough and I could make that direct connection between being able to play something better that it seemed worthwhile for me to practice those hard things. And you come from a musical household. Yeah. So it was kind of baked into your... We talk about living,

One of the things I want to talk about is living a musical life. Yeah. And so your parents, who are career musicians, were probably living musical lives. And that was just baked into the thing. And I think that's a huge blessing to have when you're starting out, especially when you're a kid. Yeah. And I'm thinking back to it was like a lot of people like, oh, it was easy for you because both your parents are musicians.

Oh, it's in your jeans. I don't know. I don't think anything's easy. Right. No, no. But I think it was more what you're talking about. I had an example of people living a musical. Like they love, and they still, they love music.

I go over to my parents' house. My dad said, come in here. Check this side. I got the CD. I was like, where'd you get a CD, man? So great. First of all, I got a laser disc of the latest Star Wars. No, well, we mimic our parents. I mean, there are models for everything. And I know you had that you adopted and emulated maybe or inherited that love that just your dad had. My dad loves music. And he would pull the guitar out on weekends and play, you know, the folk songs that he used to perform in the early 70s when he was in various folk outfits around town here. Yeah.

So that was my sort of like touchstone with music all the time. And thinking about it, it makes sense because it's like, I think we, if we're in the right situation, inheriting that love of music, which is probably the biggest part of living a musical life, even more than like practicing scales and finding joy in that, that's more agnostic to different styles. Yeah. So a lot of times people will be like, oh, you know, you're a great jazz player. You know, and I said, oh, my parents are musicians. Oh, that's where you got it from. So were they like, and like, they both play jazz. And I'm like, no, they were classical musicians.

Oh, how come you didn't do that? Like, people think that you're going to do exactly what you see them doing, wherein maybe it was more that I adopted this kind of love just of music. And then I found my own one at the right time or whatever that resonated with me. And so for you, you saw that love of music that your dad had, that connection that he had, living that musical life. That doesn't necessarily push you to that kind of music. per se, but it pushes you to music. And then you find your own path with that and make your own

connection. Well, it was just a magic trick that he would pull out. You know, it was like, I can't believe my dad can do this because, you know, he would pull out like some kind of like some, he bought when I was maybe eight, he bought like a white, white on white fender stratacaster and a little amp with some reverb or whatever. And he would play like Dick Dale surf tunes, you know, like all that stuff. And then he would play like, you know, they call the wind Mariah and country road and all these things. I used to love more I carry myself too. Hughes, he was fantastic.

And then he had acoustic guitar too. And I just would, you know, you're just, when you're a kid, your dad is your hero or whatever. So I was like, this is amazing. But I think, but I think to your point though, like, you know, one of the important things, at least for me on my own practicing journey, we talk about happy practicing or whatever. And one of the things that I wasn't such a great classical student was that I, I was super curious. I think it's just a little bit of part of my personality and a lot of people's personalities, but I'm very curious about music. I'm very curious about how it works. Like if I hear something I like,

even when I was six, seven, eight years old, I would try to figure it out. You know, like I would hear a, there was when I was a school age kid, like elementary school, I was really into the beach boys. And so I would try to learn all of these beach boys songs on my little Cassio keyboard or my air organ that my aunt got me. And I would try to figure out the melody. and even the harmony, like trying to figure out the, basically what we teach people at Open Studio, like figure out the root movement, see if you can hear the chord, see if you hear the melody. I was trying to do that. I was singing the melodies and just trying to figure out the song.

And that kind of curiosity, if you can develop that or keep that as you learn more formal music, I think it could be a big advantage. But then, so this was like, you know, when I'm an adolescent, it's harder for me to have a classical teacher at 10 or whatever. And I'm just not great at like follow. the Bach and the Mozart down that path. I'm just not curious about it. You've gotten better hanging out with you.

But it just wasn't like, it wasn't peek in my interest as much as like the pop music. And then when I discovered jazz specifically, I was like, well, we're all in now. Like this is, you know, for someone who's curious about how music works. Yeah.

It's like, it's, you know, learning about jazz and about that kind of harmony and rhythm is just like, it's unlocking this world, you know? And so like my practicing went, from having to kind of practice the Mozart piano sonatas or whatever, the minuettes when I was super little, to like trying to figure out, okay, like, Stella by Starlight has this weird chord on the sheet that Carol Beth gave me. I don't know what that is. And where else do I hear

that? That was my practice of like trying to figure out what these things mean. And I still do that. That's still part of my practice is like, what am I loving? and what is going on. Yeah. Well, I think we might have hit on our first big element of happy practicing, which is curiosity. I think it's a huge part of it. Yeah. I think following your curiosity, specifically in your practicing,

yes. People are often looking for someone to tell them what to play. They don't want to practice the wrong thing. Right. And like one of the first things I say, I said this yesterday at the thing is like, what have you been listening to? I've said it on the podcast before. What is, what's the,

yeah, because what piques your interest more in terms of, curiosity within music than what you are actually listened to, live or recording. 100%. What's your favorite song? Do you know how to play your favorite song? Right. You'd be surprised at how many people don't know how to play their favorite song. Right.

It's crazy. You're a musician. You're a flappergasty right now, aren't you? Go play your favorite song. It's your favorite song. Your voice is going on. It's going up in octave. No, it's true.

And I think it falls in the category of like so obvious and so simple that it couldn't possibly be the key to great practice. Yeah, right? It's like, no, there's got to be something harder to do. What's the heck? I guess it's got it really hurt. But what's the scale? Well, I mean, it's like, you know, training for the marathon.

You know, Caleb and I talked about this over different times. There's all these different techniques and, you know, what are you going to eat, fueling, different ways to train. What did you eat before? He said taco. Although that was after. It was after. Yeah. Bowl of spaghetti.

A solid marathon choice right there. Classic. Yeah. Bowl of spaghetti. That was weird. We saw that on the Instagram. I was like, good. That's more of a night before, isn't it usually? He went spaghetti at 6 a.m.

Wow. It worked for him. Nice. Good. Got you through. But the idea of like we can talk about all these things about like training for a marathon. I mean, but the bottom line is like you got to be out there running. A lot of miles.

You know what I mean? Like that's that's the preparation for it. So like that curiosity and that for the art of the marathon is about curious to run long runs, short runs. How do you respond to the? those. And like, that's the equivalent of like learning your favorite song. That's right. I mean, there's a certain, a beauty in that simplicity if you're willing to embrace it. And I think something, that kind of curiosity. And it's also kind of reverse engineering, even hearing the way you're describing when you're coming up. It's like, I wanted to figure that out. I wanted to do this.

So like, how do we organize our practice so that it really supports our curiosity instead of stamping it out? And that's why just little things like, oh, I love that McCoy Tyner phrase he's playing. Instead of going to find it on YouTube with somebody's got the PDF available for purchase of the transcription of it, see if you can figure out, like, stay curious enough. I mean, sometimes it's fine to look at a transcription. Yeah. But

like sometimes the happy practice can really be in that piquing the interest of course of something that you love, chasing it down, figuring out, it's like with the computer, pull off the back and like, how did they do this? Don't just watch the tutorial. Like try to figure it out yourself. Have some fun with it. Absolutely.

Yeah, was there something before before like you got into jazz when you were about probably the same age as me right like early teens yeah 12 before then what were you what were you mostly playing the classical repertoire were you doing anything else no I well I did a little bit of weird very awkward but curious like improvising with my friend Jeremy Davenport oh no way if you call him Jeremy pre jazz you were pre jazz we would play a song called long long ago because he probably started with classical too his father was a trombonist in this evening is that right he was playing trumpet as his dad plays trumpet too

and we used to teach trumpet and Jeremy started on trumpet. For those who don't know, Peter's father, Bill, played viola in the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and then Jeremy Davenport who also lived in your neighborhood, I think, right? Who's a famous now jazz trumpeter in New Orleans.

Davenport Lounge, ever heard of it? Davenport Lounge at the Ritz Carlton. It's actually a great show. Go down there and check out Jeremy. But you guys grew up together. His father, Jeremy's father, would play trombone in the St. Louis Symphony as well. So you got these two professional classical

musicians, the two sons that end up being jazz musicians. Not the only ones, by the way, from that orchestra. Absolutely. And I mean, and actually, Roger, Jeremy's dad, was really the one responsible for getting our first, who are supporting. We wanted to get a little group together in the seventh grade. And he got us these, he kind of organized us to be able to rehearsal. It was so cool, we went over his house. He had the piano moved into place and everything. He's like, go at it. And Jeremy's mom, Diane, made us sandwiches. We had a little break for tuna sandwiches. No, there's nothing cuter than the kids trying to play a band together.

Right. My kids formed a band when they were three and five called Yes, Giraffs Aloud. Nice. Exactly. Yes, giraffs allowed. That could work as a big time band. That's a great band. Yes, giraffs allowed.

Yeah. But, yeah, so we did. And even before that, when we were younger, we used to do a little parlor routine. You know, you parents would have like a party. Come in here. We didn't realize later. They were probably high and drunk and everything. That was my only job from the ages of 8 to 15 was to play in living rooms of my parents' friends.

Right. Play monkey play. Yeah, exactly right. And they were probably all totally drunk. They're just like, look at the kids. Yeah, yeah. Kind of like we do with our kids. Of course. I mean, it's our, as it is our right to do with our children. But we would play, I'm sure we did other things, but there was one long, you know, long ago. Yeah. Like, I kind of knew it from Suzuki violin stuff and I could sort of figure it out on me.

piano. We must have done it in B flat though. That was another good thing like playing with Jeremy and different br- You gotta play weird keys? Well, it's like on piano it was in Suzuki, everything was in C of those early songs. Violin, which I'd first start it was in A and then trumpet's gonna be all like B-flat, E-flat,

whatever. So yeah, so we would play that and we would make it jazzy style. But this is like the way we would do it. It'd be like I think we even wrote it out one time like with Bop-Bop-B-B-B-B-B. Like with super serious. That was the jazzy part, you know. Oh, amazing. Yeah, we got a pretty good crowd reaction from the parents, as I recall. Of course you did. Yeah. That's great. But that was very much before I had really

like, oh, like, I mean, I had heard jazz because my dad had records some, but I wasn't like sitting around listening to him getting passionate about it. But there was something like, that was very much a jazz hands approach to improvisation, I would say. And that's how we all start, right? That's how we all start. Yeah, I think I wrote, the first thing I wrote that was sort of jazzy was like a, it was like a fake rhythm changes. Like I was, I almost was there. Like I almost had it, but I didn't quite know what it was, but it sounded kind of like rhythm changes. I think some of it was not quite there. So I think this will kind of bring us to our next point here. And there's, there's so many that we can cover. But one thing that I think, if you really want to grow, the thing that you cannot skip over,

the step you can't skip over is you need loads of time on your instrument. And this can't be avoided. You can't think your way through becoming a better player. You can't teleport your way. You actually have to experience it for hours and hours and hours. And there's the Malcolm Gladwell thing of the 10,000 hours. And that's actually debatable now about if that's the number. Oh, it's 11,000. Yeah, exactly.

But this can kind of lead us into, like, so we've been guilty here at Open Studio being like, well, here's how you do it. So you need to schedule your day as this, this, and this, and then be very disciplined about setting the timer of da-da-da. That's certainly one way to do it. but that's kind of like going on a crash diet, right? Like, that's not going to be sustainable. You can lose a lot of weight really quickly, but you're not going to be able to, like, live a healthy lifestyle if you're just, like, doing a super severe diet, right?

Yes, you could lose a lot of weight. You're probably, you're 95% going to gain it back. And it's the same thing if you try to crash practice. Yeah. I think we're just coining this term. So crash practicing is like, that's it. Crack. Crash this.

Happy crash this. Happy crash this. Crash practicing would be like waking up tomorrow and being like, okay, that's it. Nine hours a day, every day until I'm Brad Meldow. You know what I mean? Like, that's... Good work. That might be the only way to get there.

Hold on. There's nothing wrong with nine hours a day, but I'm saying the attitude of like, this is when I change. Like, I'm going to cut out everything that's not the, this is not going to work. It's not going to be sustainable. Especially if you, unless you love practicing nine hours. Or love Brad Mildow. You're not going to be able to do it for very long.

Yeah. So one thing that we've kind of... switched over to talking about here at Open Studio, and we talked about it on the podcast, of course, is crass practicing. It's like crass practicing. So you're very, so you're just kind of like, meh, you're just meh and crass. And crass with it. That's sass practice. Sass practicing. But, uh, sastist thing. Sastising. Oh, God, we've gone down a horrible rabbit hole here. Well, ever since you mentioned that,

let's do a 60 minute episode. I feel the liberties to just. Please do, man. That's what we're doing. So instead of that, instead of the crash practicing where you're like, that's it, I'm going on a crash diet. I'm going on a crash practice routine. Start making changes to your life to live a musical life. So that practicing becomes just a part of your existence. And that doesn't have to be some formal. I'm setting a timer. But you should be at your instrument a good part of the day if you want to be a professional musician. That's part of the job. And so how is your life not designed around that? And make the tweaks that. and make the tweaks that you can then, like, design your life so that you're sitting at the instrument.

I mean, we have a podcast, Peter, where we're sitting at the instrument. Right. At the very least, I know that I'm going to touch the instrument when we're recorded on my Tuesday mornings. I'm going to practice a little bit. I know. And then sometimes I get to play a duo with my buddy, Peter.

And, like, these are things that I've designed my life around magically. Right. That I get to be, you know, that I get to grow as a player. And so depending on what, and we've talked about this before, depending on what stage of life you're at, you could really design a musical life to where you're doing that sort of youngish person thing of practicing for six hours a day of eight hours a day. But there's no great musician that hasn't season for everything. Yes. There's no great musician that hasn't gone through that. All great musicians

that then go on to like tour and record, they don't usually have the luxury of doing that anymore because they're on the road and they're recording and they're making records and they're doing things that are much more time consuming. They have open studio that they have to teach at. And so, but but they've gone through that at some point. So you have to put the time in. And it doesn't have to be a prescribed whatever. Make a musical life. Design your life around music and you'll get there. That's fantastic. I just even maybe came up with the term. I'm sure I'm not the first. Oh, please, please. Musical lifestyle design. Musical lifestyle design. Because you know, they talk about lifestyle design. That's like a big thing now. It's like how you're going to design

your life. You know, a lot of times you hear this with like away from distractions or design your life so that it's going to be healthy, you know, like you talk about how do you eat healthy? It's like, have healthy things sitting, like, the easiest thing of like, how do you run a marathon? Train by running, you know. You know, you know, what was the one we used for practicing before? The obvious thing you said, remember you said there was something super obvious. So obvious that I forgot it. Yeah, must have been really obvious.

Oh, yeah, play for your song. Kail's like, you idiots. Play for favorite song. It's so obvious to remember it. Yeah, but that's like sometimes it's like the same thing. It's just like have, oh my gosh, I'm always eating ice cream at 10 o'clock at night. What can I do? Get the ice cream out of your house.

I mean, you can try to drive somewhere and find an open, but at least that's making it harder. That gives you a chance for happy eating, you know, and put a pair out there. Maybe you'll enjoy that. Yeah, the first day is it going to be as good as the ice cream? No, but eventually you'll start to appreciate that. And I think these things, musical lifestyle design, it's like, you know, have a keyboard around there. Have some time. Not just set up a keyboard, but like really, really.

enjoy your musical space. Like, make it your own. Spend some money on it. Like, spend some of your, of your hard-earned money that you're budgeting things for. Budget for your space where you're going to practice. Right. I like how you pull back there, you're like, but make sure you budget for it. I don't want to tell anybody like, spend all your money on gear, but like, no, make a, you know. Yes, and it's not a guitar podcast. I mean, it's been a game changer having my little studio in my house now where I have my basement studio. I've got this adorable little upright piano. And I've got a picture of Amad Jamal and Lester Young near me. And I, you know, and stuff works, man. And then posters of things I've done to kind of remind me of like, oh, yeah, this is what I'm doing, you know, and like things that inspire me.

Your physical environment, that's really got lifestyle design stuff. Totally. Yeah. And I think the idea, though, is like, don't say like, oh, now I've got to, like, go watch a video of Adam and isolate all the gear and have this thing. Like, it has to be for you. And you can start this today. Like, this can be designed over time.

seen you do that with your home studio. Like it didn't just start overnight. It started upstairs and then it, you know, and then it became something else or whatever. So like, it's always, I have to remind myself, even this weekend, I was like, I need to tweak this studio. Like, not because it really needs much of anything, work in progress, work in progress. But because I want to, I want to put love into it. Yeah. Like, I want to always be adding some love to my space. Yeah. Because that's love to my brain. That's like where we are, like, our experience of like, where, like the spaces we live in and the people that we're around, these are, these are us. That is, there's no separation between what we think is us and the things that are around us.

And so giving, giving love to your space, giving love to your body to like how you're moving through the world and what you're moving to and what's around you is part of developing your mind and developing your personhood. Yeah. It was a little out there. But it's true though. Like it can't be understated like putting up in the clouds. I love it. Dude, putting love in your space has been a game changer for me. I mean, look at what we've done here at Open Studio.

Yeah. Like our old space was cool, right? But like this new space, the love that we've put into this, that two piano thing we did the other day, how beautiful is that? How inspiring it is that we can do that. Absolutely. Even this space here, you know. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's just a matter of like you want to be able to put yourself in the position, like to be able to have that happy practicing environment, of course. But it's also part of like the practice. For me, I know I find like staying relevant, and staying contemporary with different things, be it with my listening. Even how I listen,

instead of being like, I hate all this streaming stuff, I'm like, I love this stuff. I mean, I still love the LPs and maybe I love that more to be able to just sit down,

distraction free, that's one part, but they're not mutually exclusive. Sometimes I love like when I'm walking around and go down a rabbit hole of listening to, you know, an art Blakey thing

and then something jumps up from that same period that I hadn't thought of, you know? That's like inspires me to have a musical life, you know? Also,

your surroundings are always pretty dope. Like Peter Martin's house is pretty hip. Like, you've got a nice space to work. It's very Jetson-esque, right? Jetson-esque? Yeah. No, I feel like it's very like earthy and warm and... Earth-Ton's. I'm going to give Kelly Martin a lot of credit. No, no, I do most of the

interior director. No, no. The musical. No, it is nice. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's very well, we always thought it was crowded. You'll see this when the kids leave. Now we're like, you know, we had all these plans to expand and, like, I was going to have a home studio. Yeah. Now I'm like, there's like three different places. I don't have to expand anything. There's an empty room.

Empty rooms. Oh, just a tiny violin playing. Oh, no, there's not. There's no kids playing the violin. But it is cool. Like, we've been kind of cleaning and moving some things around. And, like, there's a lot of, like,

evidence and remnants of musical life in our house. Like, talk about viol- Like, we have this room in the basement now where all the instruments are. And there's, like, violins of all these different sizes that both the kids played growing up. There's a guitar that. There's, like, some golf clubs.

I was like, wait, who? I was like, oh, yeah. that Daniel for like seven days was a golfer kind of, you know. And it is fun though. But I think that it's such an ongoing thing because music, I mean, it's such a passe thing to say, music is alive and it's a breathing thing. And it really is. So we can tap into that energy to inspire our practice.

Yeah, sometimes it's going back to the well of the things that we know and having those habits and those rituals. And then sometimes the rituals are things that could bring us something very contemporary. Like what's our favorite song right now? It's something that's like brand new from from Beyonce or whatever because Beyonce is the newest artist I can think of right now. Taylor Swift. What about her?

Oh, producer Caleb, did you notice speaking of music and marathons? My daughter noticed this on the run. The obtuse amount of Taylor Swift being played at different intersections along that race was not great if you're not a huge Swifty, which I'm not. Oh, he was headful. See, that was smart. He was dialed into his. That's a professional. I'm a professional, huh?

Rachel's a Swifty? No. She's not. No. I mean, she's not anti-s, but she's just like, it's permeating our society a little too much.

I want to talk about another thing here, which is, and this is kind of one of the hardest parts, but I think it's one of the most important parts of practicing, and I want your thoughts on this. And this is part of my own process of practicing and just playing music in general. And that's letting go of the idea of a finish line, of like, results of what I'm doing.

And just focusing my energy on the process itself. So, like, I'll know if I'm doing it right. if the process feels right. And the results are not as important as actually what I'm doing, how I'm doing it. And like, I'm trusting that the results will come if I'm doing this right. And one of the things I think about with you, Peter,

is, and maybe you could talk about this, is like, you are one of the slowest practicers that I know. You don't practice anything to tempo. Practice everything very slowly. And that's a commitment to, because you don't get to see the results. When you're like, it feels good to be like,

you know, every time just, How many people do we have here, show of hands, who whenever you practice, you just play autumn leaves. Yeah. Just for your ego. Just to be like, I'm a badass, you know, whatever. Just playing something you really... Well, I would say it's just ego. I think that there's a certain comfort in sounding good and feeling good.

Yeah, it feels good. Like, it's like, ah, it is comforting. It's like, I can do that. Yeah. But that's not going to make you grow. Right. Exactly. So I think that the trick is to not, you know, kind of like the craft.

diet thing is like not to say like all my practice has to be uncomfortably slow or all my practice has to be uncomfortably pendantic. What's it? What not? I don't know. It's a combination. He's a grammarian. He's a grammarian.

Conventation of pandemic and pandemic and pedantic and a pentagic and a pentagram. And a pentagram, which is the devil's thing. The devil's. Hey, you said you wanted 60 minutes, buddy. This is what you get. No, like, it doesn't have to be so prescribed in terms of like, and don't cut it out. It doesn't have to be so difficult, you know what I mean? But you do have to find, like, it can't just be a free-for-all of just playing stuff that you're great at and feels good because you're not going to grow.

And you might say, well, what does that matter? We're supposed to be happy. Well, no growth, even if you're not worried about just the destination, not growing doesn't, is not going to feel good for long. You know what I mean? It's just like if we go to McDonald's and eat french fries and get a Coke, that's going to feel great. But if you keep doing it meal after meal, you're going to get sick or you're going to get sick of it and you're going to get sick. And so I think that like this is, you know, sitting, I'm not saying that sitting down playing something that sounds good is French fries, but it can be because you're not going to really grow with that. And so I would say like, how do you find the things for me very much practicing slowly, which can be uncomfortable for a lot of people. for almost everybody at first because it's exposing you.

It's exposing things that maybe you're not comfortable with your playing, but how can you kind of lean into that discomfort and start to make that something that's actually comfortable? Because that can be done. It's not going to happen overnight, but you just have to kind of keep, the hardest thing of developing a new habit is those first few days, those first few weeks.

So if you kind of understand it and believe in it and are willing to commit to turning into kind of a ritual in terms of how you practice or have it. So important in the rituals. Yeah. And so the ritual of like of rewarding yourself. Maybe you say, okay, I'm going to practice 20 minutes slowly over, you know, autumn leaves. Half notes in the laughing.

But it's, but you're not always going to be feeling, you know, maybe you will, maybe you won't. You're exploring. You're exploring. So it might be, you know, one person of woo and 99%. But say you do that for 10 minutes and then give yourself one minute of, to me that sounds worse. But, you know, but. Like something that's comfortable for you and fun. And then, you know, so it doesn't have to be all or nothing, right?

Then you start to get in that habit of doing some discomfortable things. Like, I don't talk about this a lot because a lot of people like, this is supposed to be fun. You're supposed to be fun. What happened to happy preaky? But like, like, there's a certain element. By the way, Peter's impression of people who are criticizing is always that. It's a weird voice.

I'm adam and I'm explaining to everybody. Exactly, exactly, exactly right. But the idea of like, there can be fun and happiness and joy in something that's uncomfortable, right? How did you feel up Mile 21, Caleb, on that marathon? Was that a fun, happy marathoning? Was that a joyful time? Right. It is for almost nobody.

But if you do five more marathons, you're going to get to the point where mile 21 is like, because you're going to know what's coming, you're going to be ready for it. And if you want to do it again, you're going to be leaning into that. Like, I can't wait to mile 21. Yeah. Because I'm going to do it better than last time I remember what it felt like. Maybe I'm altering my training. It's never going to be easy.

I mean, you think for the pros, that's easy? No, but that's part of the thing. And that's going to make that mile 26 when you finish all the better. So I think that that's, that needs to be part of our practice. It can't be the whole thing. The first miles are fun because you got the excitement of the energy of the crowd and all that. And we'll have that in our practice sometimes. But there's going to be days when you have very little in that.

and that highest level of happy practicing is to love those days even more than the other days. Man, so true. The challenges that life throws at you and everything. Life is, I mean, but think about almost anything in terms of like our growth. When we're in just, everybody wants to be comfortable

with everything. That's true. Oh, this is a comfortable way to play. This is, but I mean like it's pretty rare that not only great art comes out of that, but great like really meaningful musical experiences for yours or mine or anybody's musical life. Like comes out of it.

that. And a lot of people are just to think like, well, there's Thelonis Monk and Brad Mildow and Stevie Wonder and like that's just for them. No, this is all, just like a marathon, like the pro and the elites start out and then we come along. We're all going on the same course. Yeah. We're going slower than, but we are literally doing the same thing that they're doing. And it's the same thing with this musical journey. Man, so walk us through, Peter, like, and be honest here. Like, be truly honest. Wait, wait, wait. The assumption that I'm not being. Don't, don't tow the company line here. But walk us through, what is a practice session for you?

you like and I want like seriously like if you were to if you were to practice today I'm towing to come I'm literally talking if you were to practice today like I'm gonna have a you're gonna have a practice session later today yes what are you actually doing when you sit down I'm not doing that cup of coffee I might be a cup of coffee give me a cup of coffee um so sitting down I I would um almost for not every day but but the biggest odds today like yeah today that or any days that I would start with a slow scale not any days today today Okay, okay. No, but I don't want to make it like, this is what I always do, but this is what I usually do. So typically. You really do start with a slow scale. Yes. Wow. Okay. I mean, I think almost always. All right. Let's hear it. You really do this. Yes. And I mean, diminished scale would kind of be the most likely one. I don't know why. I don't think it's. I want to know what the, okay. I'm serious. I want to know what the, okay. because I'm listening, like, I want sort of the minimum sort of musical challenge.

So I'm not playing a piece of music, right? Yeah. But I'm, but I'm like simplifying and isolating an approach to connecting with the instrument in a musical way. So I'm making myself uncomfortable because it's kind of hard to do. Like, it's very easy for me to play that physically. Like, I'm not thinking about the fingering. The notes, like, I know that.

But in order to make a musical connection with the instrument and just really kind of, percolate my musical sensibilities like that's kind of an uncomfortable way to do it like that's almost like the leg swings like I could just go out and just start running but you're forcing yourself here to slow down

yeah and so what I'm listening for primarily there is like already there I'm not I'm not not liking but I'm feeling that discomfort because I didn't strike them together right so you're listening for minute details yeah like none of those are actually together I think that's more the keyboard

It's the plumbing, not the plumber. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, blame the instrument. And this is where you see more some deficiencies from keyboards compared to really good acoustic pianos. It's harder. But I'm also like really focusing on details

that I usually take for granted when I'm writing music. I mean, you know how it is when you're composing. Like when you do some of the best composition, you're just like, there's a pencil in your mouth and like, you know, like a coffee spilling. Yeah, I mean, it's just horrible. horrible, which is good because that's part of that creative process.

But this is like the opposite of that. So how long do you do this for? Do you just do one scale up and down? I might, no, no, I would, like if I was doing this, I'd probably go through the three cycles just to hit all of them. All of the diminished scales. Yeah, and I would go up chromatically. Incredible. Yeah.

And I mean, there would definitely be times when I would start here to. Contrary motion. Yeah. Diminish scale. Yeah. I would do that. Wow. But the same thing, very slow and like, you know.

I'm already going too fast. Well, it's not too fast. I mean, but it's like... And you do all three of those, contrary emotions. Yeah. Wow. I mean, just because not that I think there's necessarily anything magic

that comes out of that, but for me, it's kind of a logical way of covering all the bases. And then what happens after that? Then I take a stop and go get an espresso, a dopeio. I feel like I've done my part that. Then typically, like, I'm getting into something

that I kind of need to, or want to work on or hopefully both. Such as. Such as like today I would pre-practice. I'm doing a gig on Friday with McBride and the Inside Straight Group. So I'd kind of pull some of that music out. Probably not because I think all that stuff I remember pretty much I've memorized, but I'd like put the recording on, listen to it once, play along a little bit,

and then just play the tunes. But like I would do something that's not necessarily, that's a little bit above and beyond what I'm going to need to do. What's your setup? So like I would play the melodies, even though I don't play the melodies. Just to have it. Yeah, and they play through the changes and then try to add those together

and then do a little improvised. But again, generally slower. So this is so important. So you are, so what's, first of all, what's your listening setup like on the piano? Like, do you have this at the piano? Are you using a keyboard?

Using earbuds? I'm just usually using earbuds or you tell you the truth. A lot of times I'm just doing it with this phone speaker. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because I don't do a lot,

like, for the instance of that, I would just listen to a little bit and then because I wouldn't want that at this stage to be a crutch to like, oh, I remember all that stuff. Because it's very easy. I look at it as like I want to be prepared wherein if everybody lays out

I got to play everything. You know what I mean? Like I try to do that. Yeah, yeah. And so like I'll focus in on some of the harder tunes that I know we do. And so I'll listen to a little bit just to get me going with it, get the tempo, whatever, and then I'll try to play.

And then if I need to check something, I'll go and check it on it. So you're playing along with the recordings for a little bit. You're playing the melodies even when you don't have them. You're really learning all elements of the tune. And then you're trying to do it without the music without the recording. Right. Right. And depending.

And you're doing it slower. then you're going to perform it. Usually. I mean, like a ballad on there, I'll probably do it at tempo. Are you doing like, you're playing the head

and then you're taking a solo kind of thing? Probably not. I'll probably just sort of comp through it. Comping through it. Yeah. Man. Yeah. I mean,

I generally don't practice soloing a lot at this point. Are you serious? No. Okay. So you're just like really focusing on. Well, just because we do, I mean,

I do enough things here like in lessons and stuff that we do like on gigs. No, no, I think to people would be surprised because you're soloing is so strong. I look at soloing as kind of like the race. Like you don't have to practice.

You don't have to practice. Like if you do the things that prepare you for that, like you can let that wait. So the things that are preparing you are the things like the slow scales, the accuracy of that. And then when you're practicing the tunes, you're just trying to digest like the changes,

like understand what they are. And that's why you're just playing the chords through. Yeah, I mean, really for that material. And this would be very different than like if I'm learning new material for a gig or if I'm writing or whatever. But for this, it's more refreshing myself. It's really more reviewing,

kind of getting that back into my consciousness. But there'll be like, there's already, know there's like a couple of tunes that I'm going to have to really like, you know, play through really, like, like there's this ballad that Steve Wilson wrote that's amazing, but it's so complex. It's so logical.

Is the Miss Angela? Yeah, Miss, Miss Angela, exactly. And it's like, beautiful song. I just have to kind of refresh myself with the logic. of what it is. So I'll just sort of play through the changes with the melody, you know, the chords with the melody, and then I'll break it down to just the chord. You're playing the

melody in the chords? Exactly. Exactly. And then you just play it like I'd be doing it solo piano. And then I'll just sort of start and then I'll go through the chords like I would be doing with a group, but not necessarily soloing over now. Amazing. Yeah. And that would be kind of the majority of your practice session. Yeah, today. Today. And so if you were learning new music though, or if you were like, let's say you had a trio gig. Yeah. Right. What are you doing? So for that, I would probably be like I'm going through, I probably would do very little practice unless there was something new I wanted to do. It would be like more going through and kind of like prepping, again, re-familiarizing myself with some.

Like actually, some of the most amount of practice I have to do is on my own tunes. I don't know if you get like this. Like I'll write something and then it'll be like right before the gig. I'm like, I'm practicing the other stuff. And then I was like, wait, I don't remember my own stuff. Yeah, every 442's gig, I have to like review my own composition and like play. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But yeah, it's mostly like reviewing, refreshing. I do like what I've been doing is like also as part of, it's hard for me to say, I don't consider it part of practice, but I guess it is like learning or learning. Like most of the stuff I kind of know, but I might know like 98% of it. Like I'm doing the Stevie Wonder Harmony of series. And so a lot of the tunes like I'll sit down and like play along with it and then turn off the recording and then just like see how much I know. And if not go back. Or like, or maybe there's a chord that I think I've always played a certain way. I'm like, let me really listen to that detail and try to fill that in. A recording is always a part of your practice routine? There's always some kind of recording you're playing on your phone or something. No, not always. Like sometimes if I'm not prepping for something of preparing a lesson or preparing a tune, sometimes I'll just do the technical stuff.

So, and then if you're just doing like some technique, technique growth stuff, what are you working on for that after the diminished scale? I'll typically, I'll take one scale. or maybe two, depending on how much time I have, and then start doing it in a number of different ways. Like when you say one scale, you mean like one... Like the diminished scale. One key of one scale?

No. I mean, for most scales, maybe, I mean, the diminished, I might go through all of them, but for sure, three of them, just because I think about it as three different scales. Like if you're doing a major scale. Yeah, that I would do in all keys, pretty much everything.

Yeah. Because once I start going, I'm like, oh, I don't want to miss the harder ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'll also do that in different ways. I won't always go up chromatically. I usually will go chromatically as opposed to circle of fists or force

because I think it's more challenging a little bit. Are you just doing like linear versions of this? Are you doing anything? I mean I'll do some like as that super but then I might do like on so I might do tens. Tens. Yeah.

And for sure contrary. I do a lot of contrary stuff with all scale. You do a lot of contrary stuff. Yeah because that's the easiest way for me to kind of like up the game a little bit. So like the tempo still stays slow. It might go a little faster, but it's never like fat.

It's never like. You're never doing those fast. Never. Never. Never. But I'll do like. Is this about the tempo you're doing things? Yeah.

Oh my God. And this like, but what that gives me the chance to do. I mean, I might go up to that. Like my goal is, my goal is like that seems fast to me. Like I'm like,

that might go up to that. That's crazy. My goal. I'm doing it all wrong, man. Well, I don't know if it's, I don't know. know if it's, okay, well, you show me. How would you pray?

Well, no, like, if I'm doing it scales, like, I'm starting here, and I'm trying to go, like, I'm going fast. Yeah. And I probably practice everything way too fast. You know, I, I'm not saying that you're always going to be right about this, but I do not spend enough time practicing as slowly as you're practicing. And if you've heard the difference between my eighth note and Peter Martin.

No, no, no, I don't think it's, I don't think, I don't think, there's a correlation necessarily there. There's something to it, though. There's something there. Yeah, because actually, I'm thinking like some of the 30-day practice stuff, which became the jazz piano technique course that I did. Yeah. Like, some of that stuff was...

The atudes course, you mean? The atudes, I mean, yeah. Like, none of that's, like, super fast, but it's definitely faster than this. So, I mean, I don't mean to say that I'd never practice beyond that temple. But scales usually, I don't know, I'm kind of there. I didn't used to always do that. I used to practice scales fast and, like, take a lot of pride,

and being able to do that. I just got to the point where it's like, okay, I can do that. Like, what's, and this became more of a challenge for me. Interesting. What?

Because for me, do you work on any information? Like in terms of time and, and intentionality of like the phrasing of the volume, it's harder to control for me at that tempo.

So I feel like I'm getting more out of it. Do you work on any information practice at all? Like working on soloing or ideas? No, because you can't information your way to be a better player. There is, there is, or voice things.

Like, Do you work on anything of like pushing that, what you're doing with that kind of stuff? Or you just kind of like, you have your language and it kind of develops on the bandstand because you perform enough? Yeah, I mean, I'll do a little bit of like learning a solo or learning some voicing if it's for a lesson or like a course that I'm doing. And I probably should do more of that. But that kind of satisfies enough for me.

I feel like in terms of like actually transcribing something or like learning a new voicing or learning how something works. And I still enjoy doing that. And I definitely, like with the jazz piano method lessons, there's enough new stuff I'm still putting in there where I'm actually learning a tune. Like, for instance, I did Fly Me to the Moon last week or two weeks ago or something.

It was great, too. You did like this cool, crazy reharm on some of the stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And I kind of worked out those, what I thought was a really new concept. You told me it was just sugar chords. Yeah, it's a sugar record.

I'm not going to say that I invented it, but, you know. And I ended up, like, kind of systematizing it and writing it out, just sort of like notes for myself more, although I'm sure Max transcribed it more than I typically would. Like, but this was stuff that I've already played, but I'm putting it together in a way that I've never played it. And I wanted to be able to explain it because I think it's kind of a cool thing that, and it's stuff people are asking me about how do you do that? So I'm like, well, I can just show exactly what it is, but let me see if I can find a way

to kind of explain what the system is, you know, and then if you start to understand it, you can take it and use it in a lot of different situations, not just, oh, when I get to those measures of the tune. But I also went back and listened to that recording of, you know, Frank Sinatra to really make, I mean, I know this song, like, if I was on a gig and somebody called, I was like, I could play it. I've heard it enough. I didn't really know it. So I'll definitely go through and, like, and try to catch some little details. I'm sure I miss some things. So I'm, it's rare a week goes by I'm not doing some of that kind of like you're training from picking stuff off records. So when you're learning a tune, you don't really know

very well, you're going to go to the recordings and you're not going to sheet music ever? You're going to the records? Always. Yeah, I mean, if it's something I've done before, I'll go back to some sheet music that we've made, maybe, you know, here, and just to refresh myself on it, but if it's a new thing

like that, that I've never done a lesson. Because somebody requested that, and I guess I avoid it for a while because I'm like, I've never really played the tune much, so. We did that for blues for Alice, you know, the Charlie Parker tune, Blues for Alice. I'm going to tell you what, man, some of the Fake book versions of blues for Alice are janky. Like the melody is totally wrong.

And we, a couple of months ago, we got it off of the earliest recordings that I could find of Charlie Parker. A gramophone, perhaps? And then, yeah, maybe. And then we went to just practice the melody yesterday because at Open Studio Pro, we practiced, like, I've been really into practicing monk melodies and bird melodies because I feel like they teach people. First of all, it's great. It's part of the canon. Great to know those tunes.

also like it teaches you about yes rhythm theory placement all of that stuff those are so well written and it's like the it's like the language of jazz that's kind of pre-written language of the masters it was the masters anyway we go back and I pull up sort of an old chart or I think I found something online that to check ourselves for blues for Alice or something and it was I think based on the Omni book which is like you know but it was wrong it was not or it was from a different version or something because it was like Jackie, it was not, right? So it's always great, I feel to go.

Like, every time I do it, I'm like, there's so much more to this tune than what's in the real book or what's in. And I know people love the real book and I use it all the time. But like, go to the recordings and find the details yourself because, A, you remember it deeper. You know, you remember the tune easier. And then be like, you're going to get it, you're going to get it right to whatever version you're listening to. Right. And at least you can defend it. by being like this is the sunny rollins version this is the miles version like i know those versions

or this is the earliest frank sinatra version or this is from when you know uh jerome kern played it in a parlor somewhere in london and someone had a gramophone recording wax device or whatever like i know that version yeah the dusty versions the dusty versions go back to the dusty versions man it's fascinating to hear about your your practice i mean i've known you for a while now and i was there's some surprising things in there for me but very cool cool. Like the fact that you don't practice soloing is it's blowing me, blowing me away. Well, it's like I feel like I do things that help put me in a position. It's not like I don't, I just don't act. You know what I mean? But I also, but I do play because of like, and I think we forget

you, and you do this more than I do. Like we're playing for the students here, be it live or in a recorded lesson or whatever, a lot during the week. And like a lot of that or here or whatever, I feel like I do a lot of soloing and this, I don't know if it's practicing soloing or whatever plus gigs and I go through different periods of like, I'm not doing a huge amount of gigs. I mean, I'm doing one gig this week

but it becomes more, as opposed to doing five gigs in a week, I become even more focused on like, in a way that I kind of like now. But before it was like a volume play and you do it, I do a long tour and it'd be like playing a lot of the same music but you never know, maybe you would play it one night.

It's like if you play it on solo, it starts to deviant. night by night where it's like oh i'm going to go with this yeah like i love being able to be ready and try to like have that mentality of like i want to just lay it all out there on this one gig i know yeah i mean the tricky thing with this gig is that it's not like we're going to probably play seven tunes or whatever but it's like seven out of 40 tunes i don't know which seven they're going to know the 40 yeah yeah in order to nail the seven yeah so i almost feel like you know i don't really have time to like practice sewing on all 40 of the two i have time to kind of

refresh myself with the 35 that I know I know just real quick. And then those five that I need to kind of focus in on and make sure I've got them. You know, and then really having stuff memorized, which is hard on that game. I mean, I usually have everything that we play memorized. But when we go these months stretches without, that gets trickier. But that, I feel like, puts me in a really better position to be able to solo and really be in the moment, you know, at the game. So good. So good. Should we do a little playing on the way out, Peter? Sure. This has been fun, man. I can't. I don't practice playing. A nice long convo. Leave us in the comments.

Blipp. Cup of coffee. Handshake, cup of coffee. Have you done that one too much? What should we do? No, I don't think. Whatever, man.