You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What To Practice When You Don't Feel Like Practicing

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

It happens to the best of us - sometimes you just aren't in the mood to pick up your instrument. Today, Peter and Adam give you some ideas to help get you in a practicing mood.Interested 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.Monday's Open Studio Live Events:1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)4:00 PM - You'll Hear It Live on YouTube6:00 PM - Bass Guided Practice Session with Bob DeBoo on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkLet 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, Adam. Yeah. What do you do when you're just not feeling it? Well, I usually, I get up, I pick myself up, dust myself off, and I start all over again. A little procrastination via a standard song from the Great American song. Yeah, is that what you're saying? Be thankful. No, sorry, space on the lyrics.

Be grateful. Be grateful. No, I just give up. Be spanky. I give up. I give up. I'm Adam. And I'm Peter Mark.

and you're listening to the Eulerard podcast. Daily music advice and inspiration coming at you. Oh, I feel, I feel inspired by your hand gesture there, because you guys can't see this at home, but Peter went, they're coming at you. Like he twirled his hand. I love your discreet. It's like NPR.

Like an defeat. Yeah, it's like NPR when they have certain sound effects. They walked into the library, and then you hear like books being open. Oh, don't you have some applause there? Huh? Some applause? Well, I could, yeah. Oh, I feel so great.

That feels so great, man. Feeling inspired, feeling inspired. Feeling very inspired. We are brought to you by Open Studio. Yeah. You can find Open Studio at openstudiojazz.com. Yeah, that's true. That's where we make all of our jazz lessons.

And today we are talking about what to practice when you don't feel like practicing because we were just talking about like, oh, what do you do and you're not feeling it? Well, there's a whole art to that. Can we get full disclosure? Yeah. Okay. So this came out of us feeling. Can we be honest?

I would prefer. Is this an honest social bubble, a safe space with our listener, our dear listeners? Well, we got a nice, sturdy piece of plexing. That makes me feel like I'm in a bubble. It is pretty safe, yeah. Yeah. So we were not feeling this episode right now. And so we were about to, what do we call, throw in the towel.

Yeah, we tried like four or five intros. None of them were working. But even before that, maybe we're like, ah, can we? You know, sometimes you just not feel it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? And I think especially during the pause pandemic period, you know, I was doing some reading on this. Everybody feels this sometimes and probably more often because everybody's,

Everybody's Everybody Feels Pandemic Kind of lousy Yeah Because there's a lot of just

emotional pressures And everyone And it's all good But we weren't really feeling Doing this episode But we need to do this Because we have dear listeners Out there relying

For daily advice Music advice And inspiration So we thought We would talk about How this applies Specifically to practice Because this is also

something Yeah That as we are constantly effusing Our love And for practicing and our dedication to it, which I think we definitely both have

and exemplify and lead by example, hopefully. But the reality is there are times when you're not feeling like practicing. But how do you get over that hump? What do you do? Like if you're making a podcast episode and you're looking through some plexiglass at a guy that just looks totally uninspired right now,

disinterested. And, you know, like, what do we do? They got to hype him up. I've got to be the hype man. Come on, Adel. Let's do this. No, I'm ready to go, man. I'm ready to go.

I'm just thinking about what do I actually do? Because I do commit myself to practicing every day, and that means that some days I'm not really feeling it when I start. Here's what you do. Here's the first step, number one. Take yourself up. Dust yourself off and start all over.

No, here's the first thing to do is just commit to five minutes. Commit to getting to your practice routine for five minutes. Right. You just look doubly safe. He put on his mask. I did. I put it to safe. Commit to five minutes,

and that usually lasts longer than five minutes. So like when we're going in to record this podcast, we committed to, okay, just 10 minutes, right? That's a short podcast for us. Can we do it in 10 minutes? We might not make it. We might not make it. We're not looking at the time.

We committed to doing it. We showed up here and that's half the battle. And you know what? Now that we're getting into this conversation, I see you coming to live. You know what I'm saying? Oh, whoa, no, no. I just do my mask at him.

Sorry, that's, ew. So, yeah, I think it's very much along the lines of different endeavors, you know, be it, you know, you're going out jogging or something. It's so hard to start, especially in the winter. It's dark. It's cold. The first five minutes are the hardest. The next five minutes are even harder.

But then you get warmed up. And then it's as much a physical thing when you're practicing as I think a mental and emotional. And sometimes like all of those are working against you. So you're not physically feeling into it yet, like that connection with your instrument, which never happens right away. Ever. And then you're not emotionally into it because you're kind of like a, blah, blah, you're not feeling inspired.

Yeah. And that's usually the emotional impetus to practice because it's like you're emotionally charged up. You're like, oh, I want to learn this tune. I want to get the next phrase on this soul. Like there's something that will give you some emotional satisfaction, you know. So you're not there yet with that. And then, you know, intellectually, you're not really engaged.

Like intellectually, I think with practicing can be a really good entry point or connection point with practicing. But it's very hard. until you get into it to be intellectually connected with it. Because it's just theoretical until you actually start playing your instrument. Yeah, you can't actually hype yourself up intellectually before you sit down to it. So this brings me to the first thing that I would think to do when I'm not feeling it. And I often do this is start with something that I don't actually have to hype myself up about.

But I know it's good for me. It's like... An espresso before you start. That's always important. No, but just a little like... Little chromatic scale action, right? It's something that I can kind of put. on autopilot as my brain warms up to the idea of

I'm about to go put in some work here. I try to start actually every session with some kind of scale work because it helps just warm my hands up. Right. And it's good for me. And so if you could start with a chromatic scale, I think you'll find that by the end of it, you'll have an idea of like,

I should do the B major scale in thirds. You know what I mean? Or I should do some scale running over rhythm changes. Or you'll have an idea that will lead to some more inspiring areas, but sometimes just going off of something that is one thing that's very simple and very basic and you don't have to think about

can really kind of dust the cobwebs off of your brain that's trying to keep you back from being all you can be, buddy. That's right. That's great. And I think to, you know, something that you can attach to any way that you're getting into practicing it being the chromatic scale, being maybe just some simple cords, like anything to get you connected,

as soon as you get going, try to work in a little gratitude. There you go. Gratitude's not going to kill you. That's right. That's right. So, I mean, as soon as you're playing a few notes,

you know what, you're ahead of the game. You practice. That's right. Even if you stop now, it's not going to be your most productive day of practicing, but you made it to the instrument.

You're alive. Yeah. You're living someplace where you have access to an instrument. That's amazing. You know what I mean? There's not like gunfire outside of your home, perhaps, you know.

So I have a little, I remember my grandmother telling me stories about even if there is. It's not, directed at you. And even if it is, they're missing right now. That's right.

You're alive. Yeah, yeah. My grandmother used to talk about when she was in elementary school, she grew up in Berlin. And it was during World War I. You know, it was that,

that, you know, because she was born in 1903, I think. Yeah. And so she's like an elementary or middle school or whatever. And,

I mean, there's like, you know, troops running down the street shooting. And she was so into going to school because, like, at that time, that was the most entertaining thing. There was no internet.

There was no, they didn't even have Nintendo Switch. Can you believe that? Unbelievable. So there was no television. There was nothing at home. So it was like, did you guys get a switch? No, we didn't get a switch. You got a line on one?

I mean, we always, we've had one, the whole pandemic. That's another, that's another episode. Of course, we have a PS5. We got one of those. We know that. No, I'm just kidding. I don't even know what that is. Okay, so she would be so excited about going to school, but certain days when there was

gunfire and stuff, she couldn't go. Her mom wouldn't let her go due to the bullets flying around. So it's just like your perspective. is always kind of what it is, but we can look for gratitude wherever we are. And I think that, you know, music, it's like that crazy combination of something that's so beautiful and so wonderful, but it demands a lot of us, you know, to be connected to it. It rewards a lot. It's a big, what's the risk reward ratio? Very, very high. For sure. You know, which is what makes it so great. I mean, it's like there was this crazy, ridiculous boxing match on Saturday.

I don't know if you saw you that. Yeah, what was that all of that? Roy Jones. Roy Jones Jr. and Mike Tyne, a very svelte, Mike Tyson. Wow. Very good shape. Roy Jones, less so. Wow.

A little bit of man-boobage going on there. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, but I mean, it's like that's a sport that the risk, the risk reward ratio, very high as well. Very high risk, possible a very high reward. Yeah, possible brain trauma. and million dollar payoff. Yeah. So, no, but I think that, you know, a little bit of gratitude just to be able to have the chance to be connected with the music.

You know what I mean? To be connected with the instrument. It's something that's so potentially gratifying. But not every day it's going to give back everything that you're going to try to give to it. But just stay connected, stay grateful, and know that better days are coming. Awesome. Well, we did it. he's smiling everybody no and it just proves that just getting there to the instrument is half the battle

and you can get to it so thanks everybody for listening check out openstitiojazz.com for all of our jazz education online until next time you'll hear it