You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What to Practice When You Can't Play

Episode Date: June 5, 2019

Peter's Back! Sort of. Peter's calling in remotely to talk with Adam about things you can do when you can't play.Check out this video from Greg Hutchinson on practicing rhythms without any instruments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_s1dcLS4Cg. And for more drum lessons with Greg, go here: https://www.openstudionetwork.com/project/fjd-overview/.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Pete. Hey, man. I'm sitting in your chair. Come on, man. Get up my chair, man. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast.

Daily Jazz advice coming to you from both coasts. Yeah, man, where are you at? Where you at? I'm in D.C., our nation's capital, Washington, D.C. At the Kennedy Center, our nation's performing arts center. Man, you missed it. The last two days we had your buddy, Jeff Clapton here. Did a great job on the podcast.

Was he sitting in my chair? He was sitting in your chair. Come on, man. You're supposed to protect that. That's the golden throne. It's like Big Pete. And then he played a demo on the table with brushes that was so swinging that my microphone broke. He knows how to do it.

He knows how to do it. He basically tore down the pod cave with the groove. It was great. One question. Did he mention anything about some one-on-one basketball games that we had in New York City about 12 years ago? Did that come up? He did not. Okay, good.

Because he likes to lie about that. I beat him down. And, you know, Jeff's about 6-2, 6-3. Yeah, he's like, I'm about 5-11. And you took it to them? I took it to them, man. Oh, my gosh. Took it to them.

Yeah. Well, we're trying out. This is the first time we've done remote in a while with the two of us. Yeah, yeah. But we've done it with much success before. So I'm not worried, man. We got Andrew on the case. We did fail a health check, I noticed, with our system here.

Is that cool, though? That's fine. It's working now. We got it. I mean, you know, my microphone's broken. We failed the health check. What else could get wrong, right? All right, so let's get to it. So we have a couple of questions. We have a speak pipe and we have an email, and they're about kind of similar things. So I thought we could kind of tackle them in the same, in the same episode. So first I'll read the email. This is from Connor in Austria. Australia. Big difference. Hi, Peter and Adam. I am a first year student studying upright base in Australia. I'm currently undergoing treatment for wrist and thumb injury. And my base is currently. currently being serviced. Thus, right now, I can't play my instrument. My question to you guys is, what the hell do you practice when I can't play? What the hell do I practice when I can't play? I constantly get in a rut when I can't play my instrument and begin to overthink things

because I feel my theoretical knowledge is passing the practical applications of this knowledge. Loving your podcast, guys, and thank you in advance for the advice, seven stars. Nice. Well, look, yeah, thanks for the question. But Adam, you and I are so in sync, even when we're thousand miles apart. We're going to answer this. Number one. Listen. There you go. Bam. That becomes even more important when we don't have our instruments. But let's let's let's what do we call it? Make lemonade out of limits. That's right. Let's not lead with we first thing I think is get your mindset change. We're not going to be like oh I can't yeah and you can't play your instrument due to physical limitation. But let's take advantage of that. Yeah. Okay. Let's not worry about what we

can do. What can we do? Yes. Let's let's go into some deep listening. That's not going to kill him, is it? No. No. No. I'm going to let him do that. You know what man, and in fact, thinking about this, I go through, even when I'm not, I mean, I'm luckily knock on what haven't had that many injuries at all in my career. And, but I still go through cycles where I spend a lot of time at the instrument, and then I spend a lot of time ingesting, you know, music and art and things that I want to come out of the instrument. So there's like, I have what I consider to be like an output period and an input

period. And I need that balance. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So I would say for Connor, for you. This is definitely, I mean, it's a forced input period, but it's a time that you can like discover new music, really spend your time listening to as much as you can. And the deep listening thing, man, it never, ever, ever hurts. Absolutely, deep listening. Now next, I'm thinking about

actually something we were just talking about the workshops here at Kennedy Center today, and that is composing. And you might think, well, he's a bass player, so I don't know if he's composing at the piano or whatever, but compose away from everything. This is such a great exercise, and it's such a great way into really developing your ears further,

your compositional skills, but you can be composing every day, and it gets you away from composing bass stuff or piano stuff. You know, it's always fun to play the things that are comfortable, and we think, oh, check out what I'm hearing. How much are you really hearing it, or are you playing what is kind of your go-to thing on the instrument, you know? So we can really develop.

That can be painful, though, because if you haven't done this much, it can be hard. Like, I did some of my first big band arrangement, I ever did were with big staff paper. We've talked about this before, away from the piano. And I'm so glad I did that, you know. I mean, I just kind of had to go to a different place, but it forced me to start to hear stuff that was not piano-pean-e, as we say.

So that's something that I think could be doctor. Check with your doctor. I don't think he's going to have a problem with that. Man, you know what else I would suggest is, you know, we talk about the importance of having like a strong sense of rhythm and groove. You can always set your metronome up and use, your hand on your lap or on a table or whatever and like work on your time man exactly i had to write you feel me you feeling me feeling you i had to write so many paragraphs in middle school

as punishment for banging on my desk because i was like so addicted to trying to get time going and i think this is like a crucial thing that a lot of musicians i know are able to make music anywhere out of anything that makes any kind of thud and so i would yeah yeah sorry go ahead no i'm just say it's like it's like this is you can you can actually create a practice routine out of banging on a table with a metronome you know practicing three or three over four rhythms practicing your time against the metronome practicing all kinds of stuff you know yeah yeah i would direct everywhere we're going to link below Andrew to um Greg Hutchinson's wonderful bosanova practice session for drummers but it could be for anybody from a restaurant when we were having lunch you were cafe oh sage and uh so yeah

kind of give you some ideas, but absolutely and just focusing. I mean, I think this is a great time. You have to refote, you're focusing away from your instruments. So let's do some focus. Composition. Let's focus on just rhythm, these kind of singular areas that whether you feel that they're, you know, we all have

areas that we know we're kind of lagging it, but even if it's something like, no, I got good rhythm. A, can always use some solidifying some isolated practice. And one more thing to piggyback on the listen thing, too, is now, also Connor is a prime opportunity to work on your ear training. You know, you don't need to be able to play the piano with two hands to be able to work

on your ear training. And there's always room to improve our ears. So that goes with just listening to music and absorbing new art and trying to, you know, sharpen your toolkit as an artist. Man, work on your ears. Work on hearing intervals. Work on hearing chord qualities. Work on hearing rhythms.

Working on all that stuff. It makes a huge difference. Sing. Sing. I was going to say sing. We can, because I was trying to think, I'm like, what instrument, this might be a time to pick up another instrument or something, but if your physical limitations, we can always sing. And that, that's the instrument, the original instrument, the one that we all have, that is best suited for your training. So we've talked about in other episodes, we won't go through the whole thing, but you can check those out where we talk about singing the parts of a bac chorale, methodist hymnal, hymnal, Lutheran hymnal, or whatever, working on your interval training within actual music. You know, you can see. sing, learn a solo. Learn a vocal solo.

How, you know, we're here this week actually celebrating Betty Carter, amazing vocals that I was so, you know, pleasure to be, to learn from her when I was, when I was young and played in her band. But we're teaching a bunch of Jazz Ahead program. It's called at Kennedy Center, intensive two-week study. And so we're, Betty Carter is really on my mind, but we were talking today about, like, if you're a piano player, how about learning a vocal solo, you know, at the piano, I was thinking, but how about learning a vocal solo on with your voice?

That could be some wonderful ear training. It can open you up to a whole different next level 2.0 phrasing that you'll come back when you're fresh, come back to the base. Connor's a bassist, right, if I recall the question correctly. You are correct, my friend. Oh, my brother, my brother. Yeah, so, yeah, absolutely. So look at the voice as an instrument and don't worry about how you sound, you know,

look it as an ear training opportunity. Cool. Well, thank you, Connor. That's a great question, man. And I mean, we've touched on that before a little bit, but I think it was great to talk about things to do away from the instrument. And by the way, if you listen to this and you're into this idea, don't think you have to wait until you're injured like Connor to do or you lose your instrument or whatever.

Like these are things that you can do easily and really find improvements in. Wait, hold up. I got to check with the jazz police on that. Hold up. Is that? Okay, they said, yeah. They say, cool. I just had to make sure the jazz police are up here.

Yeah. And also, we should just note, I might have occasionally called Adam Maness doctor, but he is not a doctor, neither am I. So this is not medical advice. And do not injure yourself just to take advantage of these suggestions, as Adam said. I mean, obviously, dude. I think that goes without saying. No self, you know, inflicted pain or anything.

You can do these things at any time. But like I have a sick mind would think to injure themselves. Whatever you say, Dr. Maness. I mean, Adam, man. No, but I mean, the. The thing of like, this is definitely like when we started out saying make lemonade out of lemons, I just like saying that. Beyonce. I'm a modern family friend.

Yeah. Ooh, I like that. I like Beyonce. Not a lie. So, but the idea is that we can take parts of this. We should already be having parts of this. But like, let's take this opportunity to really focus on these very interesting and important ear training rhythm, whatever the other ones we said. You know, focusing in an intensive way.

And it's like, wow. So then maybe as you're able to come back to your instrument. history. First of all, you're going to come back slow. You don't want to push it, but you're feeling like you're still progressing, so there's no need to push it and re-injure and all that. You're going to take your time, get back in there and all that kind of good stuff. Yeah, what he said, Connor. You know what's the episode? BAM! Oh, wait, what's our ultimate tip? Oh, I got it. I got it. Okay. Are we still sponsored by somebody?

We're sponsored by Open Studio, my man. Oh, hello. You can't see it because you don't have the video, but the people can be able to see it. I got my Open Studio's t-shirt. We're getting a lot of love for the You'll Hear Podcast. Here in D.C., I haven't even told you that, so thanks all you guys for that. And the ultimate tip is, I don't know, what do we want to do? Don't get injured. Don't get injured. Right, injury prevention. Until tomorrow.

You'll hear it.