You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What Should I Be Practicing?
Episode Date: March 14, 2024In this episode, Adam and Peter dive into a topic we can ALL get behind... what should we be practicing?? Join us as we dive into what we need to practice on the monthly, weekly, and, most im...portant, DAILY. ↓ Links from the pod ↓Unlock your FREE Open Studio trial to become a better player today.https://openstudiojazz.link/trialMonoNeon Artist ManifestoDavid Goggins InspoHave 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
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Cool.
So today's episode is about something we've talked about several times, but it's always great
to reintroduce this topic because I feel like it's one of the most requested topics about practice that we get.
And not only is it a question that I think that our listeners want to kind of readdress, you know, several times,
but it's something, Peter, that I think you and I are always evolving and learning and growing from too.
And that's what should I be practicing, right?
My time is limited.
What should I be practicing?
We actually have a speak by peer from Michael, who he lays it out actually very eloquently.
Hi, Peter and Adam.
This is Michael from Elmont.
And I have a question about practicing.
Where's Elmont?
When I try to figure out what the practice every day, I try to be as efficient as possible and focus on the topics that are going to make me the most progress in the least amount of time.
But sometimes I get overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of the subject matter that needs to be this.
discussed or covered, such as scales and modes, the different voicing, the time feel,
developing melodic ideas, dropped to other techniques, working in different keys,
looking at licks and taking licks and injecting them into other melodies,
blues, different forms.
So there's so much stuff to cover, I'm wondering, where do I begin?
I want to apply to Pareto principle that I've heard of where 20% of the inputs yield 80% of the results.
But what is that at 20%?
I mean, where do I begin?
I'm wondering what I should cover first.
Should I stick with a topic for a long time or, you know, just jump around?
So any guidance you could provide would be very welcome.
Thank you very much.
And thank you for all the work you do to educate us.
Thank you, Michael. Great question and just really well put. And I think, you know, you are not alone here. This is a question that we've gotten, you know, for years and years. And it's one we get probably at least every week here at Open Studio.
I don't want to interrupt you. Yeah. You are not alone. The Michael Jackson hit from 1994. I believe Lisa Marie was in the video. You know the words? No? Just I'm just going to just a do-a-do-a-do-do.
go ahead. Please proceed.
So,
that was a great interruption.
That's a good one. That's a good one.
So what should I be practicing?
You know, notice one of the first things
that Michael brought up is I want to get the most progress
with the least amount of time.
Yeah, he used the word efficient.
Efficient. And I think, so the first thing
that I would like to tackle is that idea.
Yeah.
Is the idea of our practice must be efficient,
that we should be trying to get the most results,
the maximum amount of gains from the minimum amount of effort, right?
If we agree with, right? Oh, no. I mean, we don't agree with.
Well, I mean, we don't want to be inefficient. So we don't want to be doing things that,
that are not going to help us get to be the artist that we are. But I would just push back with
the idea that there is an optimal practice routine. Like, I'll push back with the idea that
there's, there's the right thing you should be doing and it's one thing. Or it's,
two things. There's, you know, from, from my experience, there's an incredible spectrum of,
of options that you could be, you know, practicing that will make you grow. And this is, I think,
with a problem, a lot of people realize this. And they're like, well, there's got to be one that's
better than the other. And I just, that all kind of depends really on where you are. And it's,
I don't, I think it's almost, it can be crippling to think about that a little for some people.
Like, it can be a way to stunt your growth because you're frozen. You're like, well, if I
If I'm not practicing the right thing, maybe I just shouldn't practice.
Or maybe I should really figure out what it is the right thing to practice.
So the first thing, Michael, I'll challenge you, is that when you talk about, you know, I forget the principle he mentioned, but the 20% of the-
Peretto.
What is it?
Peretto.
From the Italian philosopher, Eduardo Pareto.
20% of the, 20% yields 100% of the results.
In my experience-20% yields 80%.
80%.
sorry um in my experience uh you know the the process is more important than the content so if you want to
work on something work on your practice process how you practice how you design your life i'm going
to go back to that mono neon artist uh manifesto for those of you who don't know mononons it's very
eclectic brilliant electric basis and he puts out these weird quirky amazing brilliant
shorts. And at the end of them, he posts his artist Manifesto. And one of the things is,
I'm just paraphrasing here, is let go of the worldly idea of becoming a great musician,
just live a musical life. Michael, from hearing you describe your process here, it's something
you might consider a philosophy you might consider embracing. That there's, you know, we think
that there's these levels that we want to get to, and there's a step-by-step process, and then
I'll cross the finish line and now I'm a great player. And that's not how it works. You're better
off spending your energy designing a musical life so that your life is designed around your,
the things you want to be spending time with your art. And the more that you can work on that
process, am I practicing consistently every day? Am I getting to the instrument? You know,
that is more important than what you're practicing, in my opinion. Can you practice the wrong thing?
Yeah. But if you do a couple of things that we'll talk about here in a minute, it's almost impossible.
the practice, quote unquote, the wrong thing.
Yeah.
Right?
So that's where I would start is put your energy toward your process of enjoying the process.
How can you set up your process so that it's consistent?
It's something that you love doing.
Like if you were to choose to watch TV or practice, you would practice every time because
you enjoy it so much.
You're so rewarded by it.
A lot of people don't have that.
Right.
But it doesn't mean that watching TV isn't easier or more pleasurable on an immediate level.
we should just say.
Because I think a lot of people
be like, well, I feel like
I have a good practice routine,
but I'd rather just,
especially if you're working all day
and then you come home to practice
versus watch TV,
you can have a great dialed in practice routine
and still until it's a habit
on some level,
like you have to break some other habits sometimes.
You have to give it a chance.
Well, and you also have to,
you have to commit fully to the project.
So you have to really commit,
like, my time is best spent
working on the thing that I know yields me the most happiness, which is working on my art,
which is working on music, which is spending this time. You have to convince yourself of that
if that's not the case. And then you have to set up your life so that that's very easy for you
to do. And that's a part of your daily existence. It's not just here's my bespoke practice routine
that's perfectly efficient. And now I will finally progress. You design your life so that it's a
musical life, one in which you can't help but be growing because you're just surrounded
by music, you're enthralled with the music that you're practicing.
Yeah. And so where I think, so you said easy, set it up so that it's easy, right?
This is where some people get tripped up and hopefully we can be of help to clarify this.
And we might have been a hindrance before because we'll use different concepts and they all
work together, right? But in different ways for different people in different sorts of times.
But I think by making it easy, that means your environment, like being able to start to develop a habit.
It's not going to happen immediately, but starting on that process of any habit, this goes beyond music or whatever, you can look to other parts of your life where you have great habits or bad habits and look about what is it that's easy about coming home and, you know, opening up a beer and watching TV or whatever.
It's nothing special with that.
It's just, it's become a habit for you.
For someone else, that might be very uncomfortable.
Yeah.
You know, or they would have to get in that habit.
Now, whether or not you view that is good or bad, that's up to you.
But what we're talking about here.
No.
Oh, no, sorry.
I didn't mean to interrupt.
No, please.
No, what I, you know, I just want to interject about the beer thing.
Yeah.
You know why that's easy because you make it obvious and available.
Right.
Because you stock your fridge with beer.
Right, right.
If you had to go across town and then, like, pull out your ID and do all this stuff.
Probably wouldn't have a beer when you came home.
That's right.
If you make music as obvious and easy to work on as grabbing a beer from your fridge, you will do it easier.
Right.
But the distinction I want to make in terms of, I think a lot of people get that, do that, start to set up their life, live a musical life where you're listening, where you're experiencing so that if,
it is pleasurable to be doing things with music because music is great music is fun we all love like
you're probably in the car on your way home from work listening to some great music that you want to
work on there's nothing better than that but then what happens when you get into the actual and we're going
to talk about this some i think with the optimal practice routine um like well i mean whatever that
means for each person but that's going to involve a lot of things that are very hard that's going
involve especially, well, and not even at the beginning, at any times, pain and friction, right?
So how do we combine this thing of like, wait, I thought you said it. You have to set it up easy.
Now it's going to be hard. That's kind of an incongruent thing that you have to really be able to
pull together. So you want your environment, your access to practice to be easy. But once you get in there,
like, don't be like, oh, why is this hard? Peter and Adam said that it was going to be easy.
No, it should be easy to start the practice session. It should be easy to start.
to practice every day to get to it.
But when you're practicing,
and this could bring us to our next point,
it should be a little hard.
It should be hard.
So you have,
the beginning to that is to embrace that.
It's like,
this is great.
You know,
it's like if you go rock climbing,
what's last time you went rock climbing?
It's been a couple weeks.
Really?
Yeah, no, no,
I don't know if you can tell
just by general vibe,
but I'm a huge rock climber.
Define belay.
What does belay mean?
What's that?
Exactly.
Okay, anyway,
I haven't been rock climbing,
in a long time.
Are you serious?
No, I'm serious.
I haven't.
The 80s, 1980s.
But the idea with rock climbing and people that are invigorated by that sport and that activity
is the challenge of it.
It is hard.
You know what I mean?
Now, some of them get so into it that they want it to be dangerous, too.
But the idea of approaching music, like if you know that going into it, like,
hey, do you want to come rock climbing with me, Adam, this weekend?
You're probably not going to be like, oh, that'll be easy.
We're going to be drinking beers sitting by a lake, you know, fishing.
That's a different kind of activity.
So when we think about practice and know that there are going to be parts that are hard and that are difficult, challenging, then when we get there, we can kind of lean into those.
We can sort of almost in a weird way luxuriate in the hard stuff, you know, do hard things.
Why not?
That's going to be great.
You can't do it the whole time and you don't need to.
And so I think this idea of the Pareto principle, instead of worrying about, okay, how can we optimize the 20 percent?
I mean, I think that this can be true.
And I've seen it in my practice where 20% of what I've worked on over a longer period
certainly contributes to 80% is it exact no.
But there's something to be said for like when you look back on what you were practicing,
oh, these are the things that really led to the breakthroughs.
But the thing is it's not so that you want to strip everything else away and practice
20% of the total time because you have to go through those other things to get to that sometimes.
And it's a shifting kind of sand situation.
That 20% is not always going to be the same.
So I wouldn't worry so much about optimizing for that 20% or finding that as opposed to just putting together a musical life and a musical productive practice routine.
It doesn't have to be highly optimized or optimal, but it should be productive.
And you should go through with the mindset that some of it's going to be hard, you know.
It should be hard.
Now, maybe the first thing you do shouldn't be hard.
What do we recommend for the very first thing to practice?
Chromatic scale, baby.
Chromatic scale.
But not if it's hard for you.
If you're not on the chromatic scale, you're not on the chromatic scale, you're
start with the major, but once you've got that chromatic, a great entry point, you know.
All right, let's talk a little bit about the content that you should be practicing.
And I want to talk about some strategies for deciding what to practice.
You know, Michael, you very quickly drilled down on like modes and repertoire and time and
and all these things.
All those things are great, but there are some bigger questions that I think for a lot of
people, they don't take any time to refine or any time to think about.
And the first one is, I think if you took some time to be honest, to be passionate, and to be
courageous about your taste.
Courageous.
Courageous.
What I say?
What I said?
You said courageous.
To be courageous.
Which is good.
It's like the most courageous.
Courageous.
It's like a cross between ageist and courage.
No.
But we digress.
No, if you can really work on, Michael, like defining your taste.
Have a vision for your taste.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Can you hear that pianist in five years?
Because if you're practicing everything,
you're kind of practicing nothing.
You're not practicing, you know, a path to be the artist that you want to be.
Can you have a very clear vision?
I want to sound like this.
Is there a North Star?
Is there a mentor that you could reach out to?
Is there a player that is your favorite?
What do they sound like?
What do they do?
Do they play modally?
Do they play like bebop?
Do they play? What are the steps that they took when they were learning to learn? Can you reach out to them? Are they still around? Can you write them an email and try to form some kind of...
slide into their DMs, perhaps.
Something to connect with them and just start a relationship.
Those things are not out of reach for a lot of jazz pianists and inspiring jazz pianists.
They're more in reach than they've ever been in the history of time.
For sure.
And maybe there's someone in your local area that you really admire, that you want to sound like.
Reach out to them, find your mentor.
But the point is, if you can't hear your sound of where you want to be, then how do you know what to do to get there?
So this could help you to decide.
If you want to sound like Chick-Coree on, now he sings,
now he sobs. You better start working on some two-handed lines. You better start working on some
pentatonic. You're going to listen to that record. You listen to the record, listen to a lot of
McCoy Tyner, who is chick's influence for that kind of thing as well, like really start to steep
yourself in that kind of music, you know? And a lot of people, I feel like skip this step. And they're
just like, well, whatever Peter says to work on, he likes Winton Kelly, so I'll work on Winton Kelly.
Like, you know, that's who Peter likes to work on. And that's cool, and it can be very helpful
to know, like Peter Martin likes Winton Kelly. If you want to sound like Peter Martin,
you can probably check out some Winton Kelly
because Peter Martin won't shut up about Wynkely.
You know what I mean?
Like that's a great information to have.
But if you want to sound like Chick Korea,
well, who's Chick Korea talking about?
Like that's where you can really start to refine your taste.
And it can help define what you practice.
You know, it can really,
like if I want to play like, you know, Emmett Cohen,
I might start working on a little more stride.
But if I want to play like Kenny Kirkland,
maybe not so much.
You know what I mean?
You know, it's interesting.
So I like, you started out saying,
define your sound and like using that,
maybe as a goal sort of, you know, to start to define what your trajectory is going to look like to get there,
what you want to work on and stuff. And I love this idea. I love that idea, but like combine it
with where you came to at the end, the refining of it. Define and refine. That's right.
They rhyme. So that's fun. But like that means it's such a great thing for something that's artistic,
because that gives you the chance to be definitive and say like, this is where I want to go.
Chick Korea, now he sings, now he sobs. But as you're on this,
that journey to go there by allowing yourself to refine where it is that you're going,
that allows you to take a little bit of those beautiful little detours along the way
and start to, like the refining part, I think, is about getting your own sound.
And more importantly, being able to get to that place where you can tell your own story,
not just when you get to the destination, but along the way.
Because not to add in something more complicated to this,
but an important part to remember about practicing and trying to get somewhere,
is that we always are saying it's about the journey, not the destination. So how do we make progress,
but also allow ourselves to be able to be artists and to live a musical life as we're going?
And I think this kind of practice, as long as you're saying, let me define and refine along the ways,
allow yourself that can allow that. Well, this is where I think the courage part comes in.
So if you can have courage, some of the best artists I know, they know that, say, Peter Martin recommends Winton Kelly.
but if they're not into that, they have no business with that until maybe someday they will.
But you know what's important about that is that I do recommend, of course,
we talk about that solo, but what I hope people can, what I think is really valuable for folks to get,
yeah, if they want to sound like the way that I took that influence, then others, you can go directly there.
But hopefully the important point of that is like find something that's your Winton Kelly Freddie Freeler.
Exactly.
You know what I mean?
Like what is your touch point?
Because that's almost like a mentorship.
I never met when Kelly died years before I was born.
But I feel like he mentioned me because of my close connection with that solo.
Well, and the point is, is that your passion about his playing.
It reaches you on a level that influences what kind of artists you want to be.
If that's not you, Michael, but maybe it's like someone who is not, you know, quote unquote,
as cool as Witton Kelly or whatever, sometimes it takes courage to have conviction to follow the art that moves you and not other people.
And some of the best artists I know are extremely courageous.
and myopic about not just doing things that people tell them to. And then, you know, like they,
and they'll change some, they'll change their minds. If whatever they're feeling, whoever they're
actually into, their tastes are so defined and brave and their own that they will follow their
taste wherever it goes and they make incredible music because they're passionate about everything
they're working on. Absolutely. We've seen that happen so many times. We're seeing that happens,
you know, with our students. And I think what you start to realize is that the mentor,
you know, the music that you choose to be your mentor.
It's about what you're learning from attaching yourself to that as part of your musical journey and your practice journey.
Yeah.
It's not so much, like once you actually get there for the, and for this example, you're like, you've learned the wind, Kelly's soul, and you feel like, oh, I've got it.
Or that now he sings, now he sob.
Like, you're not actually going to, you're not going to sound like Chickoria then.
Yeah.
But what have you learned along the way?
Of course, you can sound sort of like him more so than you started.
it, but it's all those beautiful things you learned along the way.
All those little ups and downs and like solutions and challenges that that revealed to you,
the ear training, the optimization of your practice routine around something beautiful and
connected in the music.
That's the great thing.
So that's why it's like then you start to refine what your definition of success within
your practice and you're playing in as an artist and all these things.
That's right.
And I know we're not giving you like, you know, Michael, like the exact like, okay, practice
seven minutes on time and then eight minutes on scales and eight minutes on melodic things
and then 17 minutes on drop two.
We are going to get that.
We're almost there.
Not that.
Well, I'm just saying, like, yes, and that's important.
But like, there's actually no precise definition for any, for everybody at any time.
And this will bring us to our next point.
But just one follow off on that, you know, you're talking about, we're talking about
Chick-Koree and Witten Kelly.
Yeah.
But Michael, if that's, you know, George Winston is your guy.
Like, if that's your guy.
John Tesh, perhaps.
Yeah, but don't be like, well, no, those.
of open studio.
All the cool jazz musicians
make fun of me.
If I don't,
like, if you can be courageous
to be like,
no, you know what,
this is my shit.
I love this.
And how does one know that?
Because it moved,
because you are listening to it,
you find yourself coming back to it again and again
because you actually care about it.
It actually stirs your emotions to a point where it is the music that moves your person.
You're so on a visceral level.
On a visceral level.
You're feeling your way through this.
Right.
Yeah.
You are,
it's a feeling more than it is like,
I want to be,
it's not a story.
It's not,
I want to be this kind of musician.
I want to be cool and I want to do this kind of thing.
And maybe that is.
Maybe it's like, you know, I want to, I want to learn how to, you know, just play, you know, like Bernie Warl.
I want to be that kind of musician.
Like, that's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Maybe it's, what would you learn on that journey?
That would be nice.
Yeah.
I mean, musically, rhythmically, like, like harmonically, you'd get some nice skills out of that.
But I think defining your taste is, what if it's John Tesh.
Maybe that's the thing that stirs you'd follow that.
You'd learn some good music on that, follow that.
And passionately, courageously follow that.
You know what?
We could combine for the curse.
courage. What's that? If you're familiar with a book called
Ages? Can't hurt me.
No, we're not going to.
Can't hurt me by David Goggins. Is that the time of it?
A little Goggins. A little Goggins. This is
where you want to get to. You want to get to like whatever it is that you love.
If that's George Winston, why did we make that an example? But yeah.
Well, George Winston is a great example because I think he's not like, you know,
the coolest, has the coolest reputation. He's like not Kenny Kirkland or whatever.
But a lot of people love his music. It's obviously doing like, you know what I'm saying?
You know what I'm doing? 100%. And actually, he's not. He does it.
right.
100% and actually he makes
really good music.
Yeah.
So whoever it is.
For his genre.
Right.
That can't hurt me thing.
It's like you got to get that mindset
where you can go to anywhere
and be like this is how this is me.
It's not you.
You know,
but like this is my journey and these are the things
that I like.
And that's a very admirable place to be
where like you,
it doesn't matter what anybody says.
It doesn't mean you're not going to learn.
No.
It doesn't mean you're not open to new things.
But you have a security
with what you like and what vis,
like what are you passionate about?
Like that's the one thing.
Not everybody can play at a certain temple.
Not everybody can play blues and all, you know, all these technical things, like the skills
that we want to acquire.
But what is it that everybody that's on this journey can do?
They know, they have the possibility.
Yeah.
Of knowing what they love.
I think that's one of the most important things.
And it's a very mature position.
And, you know, just some inside baseball, you know, this is one of the things, Peter,
you and I struggle with whenever we do struggle with like featuring artists or playing certain
things.
Like, people are like, you guys do the same people.
again and again.
And it's not because, like,
those are all Peter's people
or those are all my people.
That's the Venn diagram of the people,
usually that Peter and I have in common
that we really love and are passionate about and know a lot about.
We're a little dug in.
No, but we're,
you know,
even though we are obviously very similar,
we're from the same city.
We both play jazz piano.
We grew up, you know,
playing with Willie Aiken's the same people.
We love a nice sussamp.
We do.
There's a lot we have in common,
but there's a lot, too,
that we don't have in common.
And so, like,
we found that when we do this show,
or we do anything in Open Studio,
if we're both passionate about something
it's way better.
We're both more invested.
It's more fun.
So that is our process with this too.
And it's a good one.
One more thing on this, Michael,
about, so now that you kind of have your taste define
and we're going to be like passionate about defining our taste,
we're going to be courageous about courageous about defining our taste.
How can we,
how do we know when we're on that path?
And I think one of the best things you can do is record yourself as you practice.
and really be honest about your weaknesses.
And I don't mean be honest, like be, you know, super hard on yourself.
I suck and I'm weak at here.
But really be, like, very discerning about, like, when you listen back to your practice
sessions or your gigs that you're recording or sitting at the jam session, what is the one
thing?
The one thing that stands out to you that is not, say, again, using Chick-Correa, right?
That is not up to the standards of the Chick-Korea that you want to sound like in five years.
what's the one big thing?
You know, you ask like, what should I should be, should be rhythm or form or whatever?
Find the one thing.
And then that is what you practice until it starts to feel a little bit better.
Yeah.
And there's no examples of what that could be.
So like, how broad is that?
It could be as broad as like, okay, well, I keep getting lost in the form.
And I never hear Chick-Korea get lost in the form.
So I can work on that.
Yeah.
Work on.
Bill Evans said, someone asked Bill Evans, what do you practice?
And he said as little as possible.
and he didn't mean time. He meant subjects. Yes. So find the one thing. Work on that until it's
kind of exhausted in you, which might be a day. It could be a week. It could be a year.
Well, and you think about to 80%, work on it 100%, and then do 20 more. Use that peretto.
Especially stuff like form, you know, like overpractice it, over index on that.
And keep being honest about, keep recording yourself, you know, track your progress, at least in your mind as
you're listening back about where you are to your heroes and you might have a collection of
heroes where you're trying to reach, you will never not practice the right thing if you're
practicing this stuff. If you're practicing something that's part of your artistic vision,
somewhere where you want to be, and then you exhaust it, you know, and I'm not saying like,
you got to make sure that you can't take it anymore. It's not that at all. It's like,
have you turned it over enough to where now you've kind of like, I understand this and I'm kind of
losing interest? Then it might be time to move on to something else. Or you progress and now your
plateaued. That's a great time to move on to something else, you know, and come back to this.
Because remember, there's no finish line. We're designing a musical life. It's not a leveling up.
You don't go to sleep one night, a good pianist and wake up the next morning, great pianist.
It's just this gradual thing that happens over our lives. We design our lives musically.
Record yourself, be honest, be passionate.
That's great stuff. That's what we say. That's what's up. I'll add one thing that maybe is because some of these are just, these are such important principles, but these are
like really overarching things that you can guide weeks and months and even, you know,
six months and years of practice around.
And so just to give you something a little bit more specific on as far as your daily routine.
Because I did, I was sensitive to Michael's area of like these vast areas and listening and being
overwhelmed and not knowing what to do.
So picking up on the, picking up one thing from your playing when you record yourself that
you want to work out, work on.
Also listen to one thing that's going well.
Yeah.
You know, because that will be coming out of some part of your practice that maybe was intentional, maybe was serendipitous.
It doesn't really matter.
But not only just to give ourselves grace and encouragement, and it's fun to be like, I kind of, you know, it's like if you go out on a run and you don't quite hit your times, but maybe you did on one of the miles, you kind of overperformed in one area.
And you're like, yeah, I kind of finished out.
Like find some things because it's not about patting yourself on the back, but it's just, it's fun to do stuff that's cool.
100%.
And it's fun to progress.
So that's why it's important to go on these things.
that are challenges in your playing.
And in regards to this,
it's important to be patient with this, too.
This is one of these things where,
especially if you've been playing for a while,
you just move the ship,
you know,
the ship and the sea,
you move at two degrees
and you end up on a different continent
over the course.
I love the nautical anecdotes.
Of an ocean, right?
So, like, you know,
that's what we're doing here.
We're moving the ship two degrees.
And then if we look back in six months,
we look back in a year,
we look back in five years,
we can see some real progress.
Captain, my captain.
So, and then on the more tactical thing,
sorry, I forgot to add that part in.
But that is,
each practice session, give yourself one, I would say one to three things.
Really, if you've got time, i.e. more than, I would say, 30 minutes, you can go to three.
But like, just decide on the three things that you're going to practice each day.
Now, will you go beyond that?
Maybe.
Will you sometimes go below that, perhaps?
But, like, that way, you don't have to worry about the things that you're not.
You're giving yourself license to work on these three things.
And that's it.
And if you've got 20 minutes, that might be one thing, really.
Yeah.
You know, better to go deep than wide in terms of, like, practice.
As you get, and this really is more about people's life set up.
Because when you start to practice well and you get into that zone and stuff, time sort of melts away.
But not everybody has.
Not everybody's got, as we said, a sugar daddy or sugar mommy.
Sugar mother?
Sugar mama.
I'm not sure.
But anyway, like, not everybody's independently wealthy or has somebody in which you can just drift through the day.
That's great because then you can end up practicing for hours if you do it.
But still, limit yourself to three things.
Like every time I go beyond that, I'll occasionally have success, but it's more like hit or miss.
You know, whereas when I limit myself to, and I just do this on a daily base, I'm like,
these are the three things I want to focus on.
And then if I really nail one of those, I'm already feeling good.
And then I'm like, let me get my energy back and I'll go to those other things.
It's the Mozart principle.
You ever look at Mozart orchestration?
Is that the 18% versus 82% principle?
Yeah, exactly right.
Now, the Mozart principle and orchestration, there's only three things going on at any given time.
matter how big it gets, you can just track three things, Max.
Well, I want to learn more about that. So I'll come back to a later episode of,
You'll hear it.
