You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What to Do When You're Not Feeling It

Episode Date: July 17, 2020

Is it better to "fake it until you make it," or should you be honest with your audience? Peter and Adam offer their views on today's episode.Open Studio is proud to use their platform to support various nonprofits to help make the world a better place. The Nonprofit of the Week for this week is Beyond Housing. This organization works to improve underprivileged communities in the St. Louis area through housing, education, and economic development. If you'd like to donate, go to https://www.beyondhousing.org.Today's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)3:00 PM - Live Guided Practice Session with Adam Maness - YouTube8:00 PM - Peter Martin - Shelter in Place Live #18: Solo Piano Concert - YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkInterested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey Peter. What? How are you feeling? And not good. I'm not feeling it, man. I can tell. I can tell. Well, you know, that's why we're going to talk about what to do when you're not feeling it.

Uh-oh. You're not feeling it either now? Well, now I'm not. Okay. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Music advice, life advice, inspiration, perspiration, wait, degradation, everything.

Coming at you. Hold on. Inspiration when we're not feeling it. How's that awesome? Well, come on. We've got to turn the tides, man. We got to write the ship, you know? We do have to write the ship.

We have to set the stage. Now we're going to write the ship. We're going to write the ship. Yeah, you know, we... Do we... No, you know, we... You haven't had the best recording days. Sometimes we walk in, and it's like, we're crap and gold.

Sorry, that was vulgar, but it's true. Wow. I've never heard that term before. Well, I just made it up. You know how it is. It's like sometimes you just come in, you're dropping dimes, right? You're dropping gold, apparently. Yeah, everything's...

going your way and sometimes you start your podcast your daily jazz advice podcast yeah it's not it's not you're not feeling it yeah yeah and so we thought um not that that ever happens to us like 10 minutes ago but uh we thought that we would talk about this today and maybe extend it also into you know what do you do when you're not feeling your practice yeah you know because that happens often what are you not feeling it what do you do when you're not feeling it and you're about to have to perform yeah that's when it becomes real because you can't you can't reschedule that one usually oh i'm not feeling it so i'm you know like the surgeon's about to go into the surgery everything's open up you you've got to get that mindset going and you have to rise to the occasion but i think in terms of uh practicing is

something that we all experience this uh at times and if and especially if you're really committing to daily practice you are going to um you're going to hit the i'm not feeling it feeling Pretty often. Oh, yeah. More often, not more often than not, but more often than you would like to. Well, yeah, when it's a daily thing like that, life is going to happen. And especially kind of now in the time that we're in, you know, we've got to give ourselves a little leeway that it's a very strange and stressful time. Yeah.

For most of us. And we're going to, we're going to hit a wall sometimes. And we still want to be engaged, right? We still want to be engaged in our lives. We still want to be engaged with music, which is for many of us, the, ultimate purpose of our life, I think. If you're listening to this, if you're listening to this podcast, it's probably very important to you to say the least, right?

And so how do we stay engaged with it? How do we commune with the things that we know make us feel better? You know, as much as we're not feeling it, doing podcasts with you makes me feel, it makes me feel good. Oh, thank you. It is fun. Yeah. And so I don't like it when I'm not feeling it.

And so we need to like develop some strategies to get over this. So what do we do? Well, I think, you know, we look at the tools that we have available to us. And I think that, you know, this is not just a look on the bright side, look at the glasses, half empty. But it's really more nuts and bolts, as we say sometimes in terms of like, let's think about as musicians, what do we have to bring to a situation? And I think that this is not about let me play a C diminished scale because I've got that.

It's not that kind of tool. But it's the creative side that we have. So the great thing about being. creative is that you are not limited. Like that's the ultimate mindset thing. And so this transcends being a musician. This gets into any kind of creative endeavor. Once you put that costume on,

once you put that personality on, once you put that lifestyle, that mindset of an artist, of a creative person, then you actually have the skills. Now these can be at different varying degrees. They can go up and down. And certainly over your lifetime,

they go up as you develop. But day to day, we can forget that we have those. But by having creativity, like we can kind of manufacture a solution to not feeling it based upon us being creative souls. That's right. And so that's the first thing to sort of realize

is like, thankfully, we are creative people so we can deal with this. You're still going to come up to that obstacle, but it's kind of like, you know, you're driving and you're driving down the road all of a sudden there's a boulder blocking the road. You know, if you're not a creative person and don't have a creative mindset,

you're like the road is blocked so I got to go back. That's the end of the day. That's the end of my journey. I got to go back to where I started. You know, a creative person, an artist will be like, well, let's think about the different possibilities. And it's not even like, well, you would say like an engineering kind of mind would be like, well, let me look at the angle of that.

Is there a way to go above it? Yeah. But really the artistic mind, the creative mind mindset would be like, how do I dance around it and make it look good as I'm going around it? Like how do I, you know, reach into my. arsenal of other artists or whatever come up with some kind of creative solution something that's not based upon something you can necessarily see with your eyes right in front of you well let me take you back just a little bit let's just take it back just I think the first the first thing to think about with this boulder metaphor yeah is that first you need to

acknowledge that there's a boulder in the road right you know what I mean so don't try to deny that there's a boulder in the road and then just drive into it in the words of shrek that's a nice boulder uh yes shrek that's right that's right that's right that's right the wheelhouse of your kids. Yeah, that makes sense. No, but so like if you're not feeling it, it's totally okay to be like, you know what? I'm really not feeling it right now. Because there's a big ass boulder. Because there's a big ass boulder in the road. No, that's cool. Like, because then that's when you can actually develop real strategies on how to dance around it in an artful way. Yeah. But if you're just like, nope, just going to go straight into the boulder, that's not

going to work. That's not going to work. You're going to hurt yourself as you as you hurl yourself into that boulder. And I think, too, you know, this thing of like when you're not feeling it, it is in terms of what we can creative and having that creative mindset and what we can create in those situations a lot of very interesting art you know composition artistry dance theater and everything comes from these comes from that side of the the human emotion of kind of despair you know and and and not feeling it and stuff so tapping into these things it's it's not just about you know riding when everything's going well and everything is joyous it's like What are you going to do when stuff starts going, when some boulders start showing up?

Like what, you know, how are you going to act? Like, are you going to become one that pulls everybody down with you? And it's like, come on, everybody, let's go back. Let's not keep going because it's blocking. Like maybe those, some people are, a lot of people are kind of in the middle. They're like, they don't know if they're creative or not. They're like, oh, if there's a boulder, I don't. So somebody leads.

And you've got, you know, kind of a negative kind of leader that doesn't have a creative mind. It's like everybody turn around. And then people will do that. If that's what, that's what they're being told, you know. So we're just going to stick with this, even though we're kind of beating a dead horse here. So we got our boulder. Yes. Are we on a mountain pass?

Is that probably the case? I like it. You're getting creative now. You're giving a little bit of scenery. That's better than just a road in the old wild west, just nothing else around because then it'd be easy to go around. Anybody who's driven through the mountains has envisioned boulders coming down and then you falling off the clip. That's right. Yeah.

So that can definitely happen with our practice. All right. So the boulder is there. We have acknowledged that we're not feeling it. And I think the first thing that I think of when I think of this, and this happens to me quite often because I practice pretty much every day now. And the first thing I think is I just need to show up here. I need to show up, even if it's for five minutes.

It rarely happens that it's for five minutes. But if I just tell myself, I just need to show up for five minutes. And by show up, I don't mean even like just physically be at the piano. although that does help. But I mean just like, I just need to engage this muscle for a second. You know what I mean? Just let me connect with the instrument and let me connect with music in a way that's for me, even though I'm not feeling it and I'm pissed off because whatever reasons,

my kids didn't set up the cameras the right way. Now I'm really mixing. The boulders, it's the boulder can't get in focus. Now I'm mixing my metaphors. Right. But you know what I mean? And then you just show up for five minutes. before you know it, in my experience, 20 minutes has gone by.

I've got some good work in. Feel a little bit better. I've forgotten about all the boulder and the focus and all that stuff. Yeah, I love that. And that would you say that comes a little bit, it's almost a stoic, a little bit of stoicism in there? We can lean on our stoic philosophers. Lean into it. Yeah, stoics are great for this.

Yeah, two, first of all, they know, they know how to show up. Stoics show up. Oh, yeah. Well, they're expecting boulders. Right. They even become addicted and even get a perverse. sense of joy when they see a boulder in a way. When they're in Kansas, they're like, I can kind of see Colorado from here. I know there's boulders coming up. That's right, right.

Oh, that's funny. Boulder in Colorado too. I got you. I got you. A witty stoic. That was an unplanned pun. The best kind. Yeah, but I think that there is, there's a certain, you know, with showing up and also with the expectation and a mindset that you're not going to be feeling it at times like there's a preparation like a mental preparation if not knowing exactly how you're going to go around the boulder but just that there are going to be hiccups there's going to be boulders in the road there's going to be days when you practice and you feel like you're getting worse once you acknowledge that that elephant in the room basically yeah um then when it does happen well first of all you should be all the more appreciative when every when no boulders come down

when there's nothing in your way because you know it's not always going to be like that and you don't want to get cocky. That's right. And be like, oh, I deserve this or it's always like this. Man, I was just reading this really awesome psychologist who has this really great podcast. And he was saying that growth is, it's a cliche, but growth is two steps forward, one step back. And it's a cliche for a reason because you know you're growing when you're going forward and things seem really smooth and you're learning and things are happening. and then you retract. Like you take a step back.

That's part of the process. Absolutely. And it's going to happen. Absolutely. And I think that, you know, the daily practice thing is such a marker for, you know, seeing how that's being implemented in your development because it's something that you can come to every day.

If you show up. If you show up. So in knowing that and some people might be like, well, why not learn and start to avoid the one step back? Then you can just keep going. two steps forward. The problem with that, it's actually possible. And I would even say that let's extend this into thinking about how we approach playing a solo as kind of a metaphor or representation of this very concept in our life. That's a great point. You know, it's like you can play a solo

in which you never take a step back. That's called a careful solo. But you're going to have trouble going two steps forward. Also called a crappy song. Also called it. Well, I mean, if you're really good, it could be a serviceable solo. It might not be crappy. I mean, yeah, in the grand scheme of things it's going to be crappy. But it's not going to be memorable. I can tell you that. Sure. But the thing about it is is if you don't, if you don't aren't willing to at least be open to taking that step back at least sometimes, you're going a very big difficulty in taking two steps forward. It's like really being able to leap up that mountain ever. You're going to be going slowly up because you're being careful. You're never going off the path. You're never stopping to smell the roses. You're never stopping to help somebody else along. You're never basically. You're being so careful, you're not enjoying what the process is. And I think, you know, ultimately at any endeavor, playing a solo, doing a tour, playing a concert, doing a podcast, making a video, practicing, producing something, being creative is always like there has to be a dominant or at least prevalent element of enjoyment by the performer or the creator. right so because we're offering this up to be shared now when we talk about improvisation

that's very important and and it's inherent in what we do because the sharing like we're real time sharing with the audience and so if we don't have that kind of energy if we're playing careful and we're looking inwards and we're like so scared about boulders that we're going to make sure we do everything we can to keep it close to the vass so that nothing happens um untoward then we're really not inviting the listener in it's it's a crappy solo and at worst and possibly just pedestrian at best. Let's talk a little bit more about performance. Like what happens when you're not feeling it and you have to perform?

I've been in this boat quite a bit. Yeah. Oh, doing a boat gigs, a riverboat gig. I hear you. You're definitely not feeling it if you're doing a riverboat gig. I've been in that boat too. No, but it's like, do you do this thing? I wonder, I wonder, because you do so many big stages and there's a,

you feel like you have an obligation to entertain. I do. Yeah. A little bit. But I also want to use. use the not feeling it, right? Like, not in the sense that, like, I'm not feeling. I'm just going to be kind of a jerk.

But in the sense of, like, I need to take this frustration or whatever I'm feeling here and put it authentically into, like, I just need to use how I'm authentically feeling right now. Right. And perform this concert. You know what I'm saying? As opposed to just be like, okay, energy, you know, and big smile and like, whatever. That, for me, I think, would be worse.

if I had to perform like that, if I had to put on a big smile and pretend like I was in a great mood, I don't think I can do that. I need to use how I'm feeling in the moment. Like you said, so that I'm not faking the funk when I have to improvise, that it's like I'm connected with myself,

with the audience. I don't know. What do you think about that? Well, I think, yeah, I think the performance side of this, the main difference between these other areas, I think is that that's when our professionalism

has to really come out when you're not feeling it. because this is our job. This is our job to, and I don't necessarily mean professionalism that you're being paid or not, or how much you're being paid. I think a professional is a professional

regardless of the finances and the business side of it. It's like, this is who I am. You know, this is, I'm a musician. And part of that, and you know, different performers think about it in varying degrees, but I think that what you said in terms of entertaining,

that's always an element. Even the most, you know, the most detached performance. There's, I mean, if that didn't matter to a performer, you would just be playing at home. You know, people can be like, well, Keith Jarrett doesn't care about his audiences. That's not true. He cares very much. He may appear to care more about the music and his relationship with it, but ultimately, he believes so strongly that that's of actually the highest entertainment value to the listener. So, but I think that like as professionals, you know, that's, that's to me where like the stoicism like really comes into play because it's like when you're not feeling it's like too bad. Too bad. Too bad. A little. Too bad, little girl. Now it's time to put on the big boy pants, the big girl pants, and do what your job is. You know, and is when you're not feeling it, or is your personal expectation that you're going to knock it out the park and do everything?

No. But, and this is where the preparation, I believe, and to practicing and the confidence all comes in, your variation in levels, whether you're feeling it or not, should not be so great. You know, and that's the same thing like as far as when you're performing. Like if you're having a down night, it should not be that. the more professional you are, I believe, the less noticeable that is. And I think we've probably experienced that separately, maybe even together sometimes when we're like, and then people come up and are like, oh, my God, that was so amazing.

Yeah. And it's valid. That's valid. And I used to be like, oh, they don't know what they're talking about. No, it's they actually have a more objective view. And maybe you're being more professional than you realize, actually. Yeah, but do you do the, do you do a thing where you can kind of use the energy of frustration to your advantage?

Like, that's what I'm saying of just being like, I'm just going to accept what's happening right now. Not it like it's maybe this isn't apropos for feeling it but just for being like I don't know if I'm super into this situation or whatever I'm done I mean I'm not that I would ever be like I'm not into this but you know what I'm saying right where you would where you would use that as like let's rise I mean to your point about Keith Jarre I think that's a really great point in that people think that maybe he's too fussy or doesn't care about his audiences but I think you are correct in that he sees the purpose of of presenting the music as why the people are there. Yeah.

And so if it's not as good as he knows it can be, he's, he is very finicky. Yeah. But it's for them. It's not for him. Right. It's for them. And he's using himself as like a vehicle to get that altruistic purpose to them. Yeah.

And so that's how I feel too is just like, okay, I'm not feeling it. I need to use this for them. I need to use my frustration for them. Yes. Yeah. No, I totally see that. I think what I was saying in terms of being a professional. that's kind of one big element of that.

Like that's part of, you know, why do we do that? How come, you know, like if I go out to run, if I sign up to run a marathon and I'm like, I wake up in the morning and I'm like, you know what, I'm not really feeling it today. There's not going to be, there might be some kind of personal commitment that I have to myself like, you know what?

You said you're going to do this. You're going to do it. But I'm not a professional runner. I'm a runner. But I'm not a professional runner. So I don't feel that like for my fans or for the race or for my family or whatever, it's just kind of a personal commitment,

which may be as important or whatever, but that's kind of different, you know? And I think that's why the performance situation with this may be differentiates and I think your technique that you talked about would be a little bit different than like, say, practicing and these different things because we might make a personal commitment

to ourselves that as not as a professional commitment, but just as a personal commitment. Like this year I want to really get better at playing guitar. Like I want to like, this is so important to me. like those kind of people usually are better in tune with enjoying the process even than professionals sometimes because they're doing it truly for all the right reason they're not like I want to be able to learn guitar this year so that I can become a professional and play for some people I mean they may be also rich and famous or

rich and famous yeah they may be thinking that too as another but like when you can tap into and I you know I want to do this because I want to within as quickly as I can be able to play something that I enjoy it my family maybe or whatever but like I want to master this skill. I want to be a runner. I want to be a musician. That's to me is that kind of a thing. And there might be other things along with it because I want to be healthier and I want to, you know, consume less media or whatever. But those are all sort of, you know, around the edges. But I think that the professional, as much as we can combine both of those, yeah, we're doing it to be rich and famous or we're doing it to be playing music because we want to be people to clap. But more likely it's like we want

to serve. We want to take what our skills are and serve the world, kind of do what our part is, you know. And I think that any professional musician more so than more so than monetary or job or whatever, you know, there's some element of that, of wanting to serve. And but when you combine it with the loving the process too, that's when, you know, you can overcome this. I'm not feeling it. Well, you know, and to that point, that also helps the loving the process part helps in having a little bit of if you're not feeling it or if things aren't clicking the way you want them to click, that helps with having a little bit of self-compassion of like, you know what, I'm going to be fine, a professional, I'm going to come here, I'm going to do my job, I'm going to use what I have,

I'm going to make the best of it, we're going to serve the music, we're going to serve this audience, and this, you know, I'm still me at the end of the day, no matter what happens. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, yeah, there's just a confidence factor that goes with that when you acknowledge that you're professional, you know, what you're doing because then when you're just like oh I'm not feeling it then when that doubt comes in of like oh because I'm not feeling it today there's there's something wrong with me is there something wrong with my skill am I am I still got the skills yeah I'm I'm less than of a person or of a musician right don't beat yourself up over that stuff you got you got to have some compassion for

yourself a little self-love a little you know what I mean a little acceptance of the situation that's right yeah that's right yeah I like it well I feel better already thank you man thanks buddy oh we did it do we press record this time no we got Peter back around everybody well you know what really makes peter happy ratings and reviews that is true go leave us a rating and review right here in your podcast catcher i heard someone call it a podcast catcher what the hell is that anything like that's stitcher that's apple podcast it's whatever you use is a podcast catcher never whatever you collect your cat your podcast so basically just go to the iTunes app yeah what you're saying essentially and leave us a rating and reviews we only accept seven stars well

Peter feels better if it's seven stars I feel better but you know what I'm not anti like if somebody wants to give us well first of all if you think this is a one star podcast or episode and you listened all the way to this point I think that's why we have such I mean look we average five stars did you know that I did know that yeah like we've we've got a bunch of ratings reviews and I don't know that they've all been five because we've had some sevens which have kind of skewed things which is nice um but I think part of that is because we ask for the rating review at the end of the episode what idiot would listen all the way to this point yes I'm talking to you listener if you're even figuring

about leaving one star. No, really, why would you listen? Why would you waste your time if it's this bad? I'm not saying more for everybody. Maybe like, it's like watching a car accident, like, where you get? Would you? Would you? You're just like, oh, this is so bad. I have to see how this is going to end. Yeah, but as a story, it might be pretty exciting if you keep watching it. Yeah, that's true. I mean, a crappy car accident is actually when everything kind of like, it's just a fender bender. Oh yeah, look at those people that looks like that was a one-star car accident. Yeah, there's no one's hurt and the cars look fine and the police are there and everybody behaving and getting along.

That's right. That's boring. Well, until tomorrow. You don't hear it.