You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What the Hell Are Adam & Peter Practicing?

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

For today's "What the hell..." episode, Peter and Adam update you on some things that they've been working on improving lately.To help out YOUR practicing, pick up the official Open Studio Practice Journal. Track your progress for a whole year with 52 weeks of journal entries, including spaces to track scales and tunes in every key. For more info, go to: https://openstudiojazz.link/practice-journalThis episode of You'll Hear It is sponsored by Anytune. If you want to improve your jazz playing and transcription skills, Anytune is the #1 tool you need. Just load any track you want into the app, and Anytune allows you to change the speed, loop sections, change the pitch to a different key, and so much more. For more information, go to https://anytune.us/youllhearit/Want every Open Studio course for free? That's right - over 300 hours and 1200 lessons can be yours with free lifetime access! All you have to do is enter Open Studio's 2019 Holiday Giveaway. Go to https://learn.openstudiojazz.com/giveaway/, or watch this video of Peter for more info: https://youtu.be/KsdhVXE5ovILet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam. Yeah. What the heck you practicing, bro? I will not respond to heck. Okay. I'm Adam Maness. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to The You'll Hear Podcast.

Daily Music Advice coming at you. Yeah, man. What the heck? I see. It's starting to grow on you like a fun guy. It feels so Andy Griffith showish. I know. You know what?

We're trying to class it up here, man. Come on. Hell we are. Hells yeah. Today we're going to be continuing our What the Hells here. I love the series. I love it. I love it just because it makes you

a little uncomfortable for some reason. It's a little aggressive but very instructive. But you're not a prude. That's what it's so interesting is. I'm not a prude at all, but... I guess when the mic's on. We're on the public airwaves. We're not.

Well, isn't this an FCC regulated or podcast? No, no. Stitcher. Stitcher's part of the FCC. I doubt it. Yeah. Today we are sponsored by AnyTune. Anytune is an amazing tool to help you transcribe, to help you learn music.

You can slow things down, tracks down without losing pitch. You can loop. You can set marks. markers. You can isolate instruments. You can take away instruments. Honestly, I've been using it for months. I love it. I know you're using it too. We're actually going to talk about how you're using it a little bit today. Yeah. It's incredible. You can go to anytune.us slash you'll hear it to check it out for yourselves. We've got a ton of great feedback from our listeners about it already. Yeah. And just to clarify

for it's any tune. I know some folks that we're saying any tone. Any tune. Yeah, any tune. Yeah, cool. Check it out. Check it out. All right. So what are we talking about today? Well, we are talking about what the hell are Peter and Adam practicing? See, what's what I'm saying? Couldn't it just be what are Peter and Adam practicing? Yeah, that's not as fun. See, you're all about the click, baby. I'm just all about switching it up. Swishing it up. I like that.

Swishing it. I'm all about swishing it up. You know, I just thought it's close to the end of the year. I thought maybe we just check in with what we're working on. Yeah, I like it. I like it. And I think this will be a good opportunity selfishly for me to get some ideas, steal some ideas from you. For sure. You're welcome to steal some ideas from me. folks are welcome to comment and contact us with things that they're practicing because that's really of interest.

And I think it is topical, you know, at the end of the year also for rolling into next year as we plan our practice routines and things we want to change, things we want to introduce. So we don't mean this as to overwhelm you. This is really just kind of what we're working on. And you might take one idea that resonates that you want to throw into your routine. You know, it's fortuitous that you mentioned practice routine because I have been working on my out of my open studio practice journal. So, Ryan, could you put a link in there for the practice journal? It's been really popular, too. We have a custom practice journal where you can keep track of what you're working on.

That's a shameless plug. But check it out. No, it's good. It's very, very useful. Nice little gift for your musical loved one. For sure. We kind of used to call it the bullet journal or boojo of musical journals. And then we call it the Pujo.

The Pujo. The practice journal. T.M. Okay, so why don't we start with our number one, which is listen. There, we set it together. finally that was beautiful so this is i mean this is really you know i'm always practicing that like even when i'm in between practicing i find that the great thing about listening not only is it fun and it's like just one of those joys it's kind of like when you go to the beach you know especially

for us that live in landlocked um not only landlocked i mean we live in st louis which i don't know if we could be any further from a beach yeah you know but um you know i'm always like wow this is so great look what look what the world created look what the you know whatever you believe in Like, we've got this bottle. You can focus on the negative, whatever. So every time I'm listening to great music. Is this where you're going? Trying to figure out where you're going.

No, no. The beach, to me, listening to music is like that. Like, I never... It's refreshing. I never take it for granted. I'm like, look at this incredible thing that humanity created. What are you listening to most right now?

I don't know. Well, I've been listening to this McCoy-Tiner. I've been kind of going back into McCoy's some stuff I used... Yeah. Some classic stuff. And what's so amazing about it's, I've listened to some of these tracks

so many times. Like McCoy Tyner, Lani's Lament from a Crescent. Like, I've studied that, that, and later on in one of my points, we'll get into kind of some of the reasons why I've been practicing that again. But, you know, it's like a lifelong, it's such a great thing because you're taking from it, you're learning from it, but it's so joyous to listen to over and over again. It's like those rare movies that you can just watch,

and every time it comes on, you know, coming to America comes to mind. Don't know why I didn't get multiple Academy Awards. I love that movie. Are they making a sequel to that? Oh, they are. I'm scared about that. I'm listening to I got a lot of Johnny Griffin on vinyl

recently that's a powerhouse of a player right there But then you know I've also been writing a lot of songs lately So I've been listening to this singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers She's amazing

Like young 23-year-old songwriter She's incredible Right Yeah nice Yeah but I always find that In terms of what we're talking about Here practicing the reason we are including listening Is for me

It's a what do you call it Like a A companion to practicing. So there's the actual listening while you're practicing, say if you're transcribing, learning a tune or, um, or what have you, but there's also the listening in between with an eye towards things that can inspire your practicing or they can make your practicing easier. For sure. So I always like to kind of couple that with that. All right. Next up, from PM, you are practicing. Oh, scales. Scales. Yeah. And that's just kind of an ongoing thing.

I don't think there's any time when I'm, I mean, there's been times when I go when I don't really practice much. But whenever I, uh, I'm, but whenever I am, you know, am practicing, and even those are relatively rare, but when I do, I don't think a day goes by that I don't practice some kind of scales, you know? And so I'm cycling through them. Kind of at the end of the year, I'm a little bit just playing different stuff a little bit randomly in terms of which ones I do. And then a lot of times at the beginning of the year, I'll be like, okay, I'm going to get regimen

and I'll kind of start hitting some I haven't in a while. And, you know, we've been playing around with some ones that we never really fingered like the pentatronics and stuff. So those are always fun. I get angry emails about the blue scale all the time. Yeah, why didn't you have the fingering on the D-flat blues? You said learning it all keys, you know. Does anybody have any fingering on the blues scale?

I'm sure. We're going to do that. That's going to be our new use resolution. I emailed this guy back who was like, why don't you have fingering on every key for the blue scale? And I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Yeah. I don't think there's a linear fingering for the blue scale on every key.

I don't think it's meant to be played that way. No. You know? So I think it's more of a series of shapes. We'll get into that later later. Yeah, yeah. So the next one for me is left hand. I've been practicing a lot of left-hand voicing with a lot of, like,

actually simple voicingsings, but working on some, some voice leading and then working through, of course, as always, like, keys that are not played as much or unfamiliar. I've been doing countdown in all keys because it's hard. First of all, that it gets you through a lot of keys.

So countdown with just like left-hand voicing super slow. Like, I think people would be surprised how slow we practice some of this stuff. You know what I mean? I think they hear you like playing all this stuff and they think, like, oh, that must be how you practiced all the time. Never. There's a lot of slow practice that goes on.

I never practice fast. I just, it's just not even in my DNA to do that. It's funny. I think, too, something that's nice with the, what you mentioned about practicing, voicing's in the left hand

and trying them in keys that you aren't familiar with. That's that kind of constant mentality you want to be in that mindset of like, let me practice things that are not comfortable. That maybe you know they're going to sound good, but they don't fall easily in your hands because there's such a great connection and possible disconnection between,

how playing any instrument feels. And, you know, depending on the instrument, obviously with piano, it's, you know, two hands and your feet on the pedals. If you're a trauma player, it's, you know, your armchair and your fingers, like they're each different, but they're all similar in that there's a connection that you want to make between how something feels

and how something sounds because this has happened at the same time. Excuse me. Yeah. And if we can get to the point where we disconnect more from how something feels and connect more with how it sounds as we're practicing. We have the ability to sometimes slowly over a long period of time, but nonetheless, continuing on that journey, we have the ability to make things that are uncomfortable, but have the potential to sound good start to become comfortable.

Yeah, your body makes the adjustment. Exactly. Your brain makes the adjustment. Yeah, if it sounds good, your body will make the adjustment because you want to... You validate it. Yeah, you've, yeah. I mean, it's like, who wants to... to practice something that sounds bad. Your body's

can be like, why am I wasting my time? Totally true, man. Totally true. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy, but that's really what practicing about. It's not just running and that's part of the reason I don't practice stuff fast because that's more like what you do on race day or a gig day or whatever. And playing fast is just one aspect of it anyway. But the ability to

play a voicing that you know sounds good in all 12 keys and learn how they sound differently and get them so they're comfortable. Otherwise, you're going to be more limited. You can still play some good stuff, but you're only going to go to the things that are comfortable. You're not going to be able to go to the things that sound good.

For me, it's getting rid of that split second of thinking about what I want to do. You know what I mean? That's what I'm trying to... At this point, that's what I need to eliminate is, like, for weird keys and weird voicing that I don't play every tune or every gig or whatever, it's like that's, I don't want to...

I'm trying to get rid of all of that. Right. So that I just have... The ones that I love, I just have available. That's great. And I, you know, I would liken what we're talking about right now, if this is helpful for anybody, is if you think about any kind of physical,

athletic endeavor like say you know shooting a basketball okay you can work on the mechanics that's a very solitary thing is just you shooting but you know at a certain point you're going to have to be able to shoot a basketball after somebody passes it to you and so do you want to be the kind of player that can

only execute perfectly when you receive the ball a perfect pass that's a good great shooter but a really great shooter is one that you receive the ball down low and then you adjust and you go and that's kind of like this thing with the voicing of like are you going to be the one that only plays it when it's comfortable, or you can be able to go to it in any key in any situation. That's right.

You know, yeah. It really just takes practice, again. Yeah. Practice what's not comfortable. That's why we're talking about what the hell we're practicing. You got WTC here. I'm assuming that's well-tempered clavier. Well, well-tempered.

So I guess it should be WTK, with the proper German there. Yeah, so I've been diving back into a little book two. I don't know why. Just because it was sitting there. I'd spent so little time on book two. Oh, book two's dope. Book one, nope. Yeah, no, they're both great.

I don't know why just the two, I think it was just because it was sitting there on the piano. And sometimes that's how it happens. I know. And then also, I see you have Phillips' exercises on this. This is something that you introduced me to. These are amazing for finger independence.

They're great. Phillips exercise for independence of the fingers, and that, you know, I rarely leave the... I wouldn't say I'm lazy with this because I've been diligently doing it, but I don't leave the first page a lot. You don't need to do it. You know, more than the first, like, five exercises.

Yeah. They're so good for you. Yeah, they're really good. I mean, the rest of them were great, too, and maybe next year I'll try to get out of my comfort zone. I've been, actually, let's talk in a couple days. We need to wait until we get closer to New Year's, because I want to talk to you about New Year's resolutions. We should do some kind of challenge. Yeah.

Like a 30-day challenge. For sure. Cold shower every morning. Separately. Ice bath. Everybody practice for an hour. Yeah, yeah. The Phillips exercises are great because they, like, it basically puts your hand in a position where you're putting down most of, you're, you're putting down most of,

of your fingers and then having to lift individual ones up. And it just forces independence of the fingers in a way that you can't be just playing, you know, one at a time. It's really cool. Yeah, definitely talk about getting out of your comfort zone. For me, most of the time I've been spending the last six weeks, actually, has been arranging and composing and songwriting. Yeah.

I've had a bunch of projects going on simultaneously. Like I had a bunch of orchestra arrangements for the St. Louis Symphony for their gospel Christmas show, Kennedy Holmes. that was really, really fun. Young Kennedy Holmes. Anytime you get to write for a major orchestra like that, it's such a treat. And so I tried to spend as much of my energy on that.

Oh, sorry. It is funny how, I don't know if you've experienced, I always feel like I'm really an amateur composer and arranger because I'm so, like, fickle. Like, if it's in this situation, when you know you're writing for a great orchestra, I like, I'll write better and get more inspired. Yeah.

If we were real pros, we'd be hitting that same high level all the time. You get more excited. Yeah, you step up your game. You step up for you. It's game day. You're playing in the big leagues now. But I'll tell you what I... And then I've, of course, been writing so much for my band, the 442s.

But also, I had this project recently, another project for the education department for the SLSO, where I got to sort of re-orchestrate some... Is that the S-O-S-Luice Lobster organization? What is that? Folks might not know. The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Oh, sorry, okay, got it. But it was for this Edge Show they're doing where I'm... It was actually reducing things like, you know, Beethoven's Fifth and the barber of Seville and some very famous pieces.

But it was like... The overture, right? It was like a two-week orchestration lesson, right? Because, like, you have to make decisions. But then you also, while you're making the decisions, you're really studying these scores in a way that I hadn't before. Shame on me that I hadn't before. But like... A little self-serving of you.

You get a little practicing while you get paid, aren't you? There's stuff in Beethoven's Fifth. orchestration-wise that I'm going to steal that it's it's so relevant still. Dude, totally out of copyright. You're all good. Man, so good. Don't try to steal from, you know. I'm not talking about melodies. If I wrote a tune that was like, that, da, da, that would be a little.

But it's just like these orchestration techniques that are just, I mean, he's so good. Well, I find that very... Obviously, newsflash. Yeah, so talking about, it's interesting you put composing and songwriting as in your practicing routine. I think that's very prescient of you to do that because, and maybe you can just, you know, wax poetic a little bit,

why you consider that practice. Well, only because I don't have enough time to do both sometimes. No, but I think it is. I mean, like, you are improving, like, if you have the right mindset about it, you're improving your, I mean, practice is about improving, yeah, our technique, but it's also improving our musicianship, for sure. Our compositional skill.

These are all things that we want to practice. I'm telling you, studying some of these Rossini scores or Beethoven scores is just as, useful to me is like working on left-hand voice. It's the same kind of thing. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I was always, I remember when I first kind of got interested in writing for orchestra when I was in, maybe in high school, yeah. And I remember my dad telling me, he's like, if you, he's like,

because he, you know, can write for orchestra, play an orchestra. I was like, show me some orchestration, and he, like, went and came back and, like, put down a WC, nocturn score. And he's like, everything you need to learn about orchestration, you can, he's like, listen to the recording and follow along the score. you learn everything you need to know there that's great that's great it's just like with playing jazz yeah yeah exactly listen to debussy no well yeah you can all right what's our last one okay the last one is i've been practicing diving back into a little mccoy tyner for my trans for my transcribe because i haven't done

it lately and i'm so excited about our sponsor any tune and and having the app that they so graciously gave us um you know it kind of reinvigorated me to go back and to be able to i realized i was like Well, I learned the solo, but I still had some questions. Now, this is like 30, is that possible? 30, no, more than 30 years ago, I learned this, which is crazy because I'm 37. Isn't that wild? I was seven years old, man.

No, but I, you know, I realized I was never, I mean, are we ever 100% sure we have everything when we learn a solo? No. No, but we feel like, we're like, if you get to like 98, 99, you feel good. So I was never sure how accurate I had it. And I was like, now I have this tool to really be able to hear that. And so I've been going back. And then I realized I don't remember the whole solo.

Although it's amazing how much of it I still kind of know. After 30 years. Well, how much of it comes back? Now, I've listened to the recording a lot since then. But that's been a lot of fun. And it kind of reinvigorated that as part of my... So I'm thinking about next year, like doing some getting back into transcribing, you know? Look at you.

You know what I'm saying? Going old school. Put on my little elementary school britches and get my lunch pail out and going old school. Have you talked about my McCoy-Tiner lunchbox? It's valuable, man. No way. No, I'm just kidding. That would be awesome, though.

Get like a blues on the corner. lunchbox. Yeah, yeah. I would be all over that. You do. Well, maybe we'll include that as part of a 2020 challenge of a describing. Building a McCoy-Tiner lunchbox? Actually, if there's any artisans out there that want to build us to McCoy-Tiner lunchbox,

we would totally take it. But I feel like you could order that from some Chinese like Alibaba or something where you just like upload the logo. I don't think you have to be an artisan. Ryan, order us a McCoy-Tiner, Blues on the Corner Lunchbox. Oh, that would be incredible. And put a link below. I'll take a real McCoy.

I want a Herbie Hancock headhunters lunch pale. That's got it. With vegan leather trim on it. You could do that. Not to eat. Just as trim. Anyway. Well, that was fun.

Yeah, we're going to do some boot camps. We're going to do some challenges in 2020. Like, we should do a transcribing challenge. We should do a technique challenge. I've been thinking about this just, are you familiar with like the 30-day thing? I mean, I'm familiar with 30 days. Like a month.

Yeah. Yeah, we use it. part of the Roman calendar and Greek. No, the idea of like you try to do something for 30 days in a row. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, my mom always used to say that when I was growing up. Like, if you do something for 22 days in a row, it's a habit. Right.

Yeah, that's right. So if you do it for 30, you're really overdoing it, son. Back off. Yeah, but, I mean, we could maybe do that some next year. I mean, I think, you know, even just third of January, maybe we'll be just practiced 30 days in a row. That's actually a lot. A lot of people like, oh, yeah, I practice every day. But do you know?

Do you now? Can you get 30 in a row? That Sunday when you woke up, hung over and didn't get out of bed until four. I mean, and they went to brunch. Come on now. Did you come back to practice? We are going to New Orleans in January. Ooh, we are.

Might make it hard to practice every day. We're going to be playing some music. Yeah, a quick teaser on that. We're going to be at the Jen conference. We're not going to go into heavy promo mode. But folks might want to make plans now. We should next week. We should start because it's a month away.

Yeah. And it's going to be some live you'll hear it's, right? We're going to do live. You'll hear it's at Jen. Oh, that's going to be awesome. Yeah.