You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Why Adam Wants To End The Pod...

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

Well... has it come to this? Peter and Adam reflect on the journey of creating and producing their podcast, sharing the challenges they faced, and the moments that make the journey so rewarding.Unlock your FREE Open Studio trial to become a better player today.Looking to drop a question? Want to listen to the audio pod? Look no furtherhttps://youllhearit.com/Have 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

Want to quit? Let's talk about it. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Music, Explored. Explored coming to you from Open Studio. Go to Open Studio. Go to Open Studio jazz.com for...

Oh, your jazz lesson needs. Peter. Question. Yeah. Is that the last time we're ever going to hear that? What is this thing called love? I sure hope so. What is this thing called the pod?

I thought that's what we were playing. What is this thing called pod? What is this thing? So pensive, yet so exploratory. Yeah, so, okay, so the title of this, let's talk about this. I didn't even want to do this episode. Well, like, not only are we- Did I force you to, though?

Well, you are the boss. Well, not a pot. No, there was no forcing of, but co-hosts. Two-way street. No, we were just, we had a whole existential crisis for the pod about two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, yeah. Are yearly. We have a year, I mean, we've been doing it for six, seven years now?

Seven years. Six years? Six years? Six years. Yeah. So, it's been a half. happen. But it was just kind of a great exercise actually in creativity. And I think it's definitely applicable. Our discussion on the pod and its direction. Applicable or applicable. Both. I think it's

definitely worth talking about the process that you and I and producer Caleb go through to make this podcast on a weekend, week out baseless for six years and trying to get better at it. It's a lot like playing music. And I think there's some things we can talk about with just first. of all, maybe the direction and history of the podcast, of which it's been constantly evolving, especially over the last few years, we've really kind of like tried a bunch of different ways, mostly for our flow, right, to try to get us into more and more good spaces for having good conversations. And I think that's where we'll kind of steer this ship today of like, where's it going? Yeah. What's going on? Is that I wanted, I did want to stop the feed.

Yeah. I wanted to cut the feed. Cut the feed. You were like an angry farmer. Yeah. With little pigs needing feed farm. Farm feed. Oh, and I wanted to,

what you said? You wanted to starve my pigs today? Yeah. You were, a little bit. Wait, are the listeners the pigs in this scenario? Who are the pigs? Yes.

Well, no. No, they're not pigs, but I'm saying, are you missing your metaphors? You said feed. I got you. I'm sorry, you didn't grow up on a farm like. Oh, yeah, in University City. Yeah, lots of farms over there.

And there was chickens in our, in the, not in our backyard. Hitcher chickens don't care, Peter. No, no, but I mean, I think that we do, it's called the feed, meaning like we were going to stop the podcast shooting. Right, right, right. But we also are feeding, hopefully ideas,

inspiration, community. I mean, I know we are. And we really take that seriously. That's why we show up every week for this. So the fact that why Adam wants to end the pot, I will be very clear. This title of this is not why Peter wants to end the pot. I love the pod, right?

I love the pod, too. Well, we could talk about this. Yeah. So is it in a, like... But sometimes, you know, I think for me, I'm thinking, sorry to interrupt you. Another problem with the pod. No, but like, we, we love so. I don't want to just put this on you.

No, it's like you have your little, but you have your little doggy. He's cradling a little baby, right? You know, it's like, nine night time, like Steph Curry, I got cradle. No, sometimes you can take your little dog and you love it so much that you choke it to death. Yeah. don't want to do that to the pod either. Yeah, yeah. So we love the pod, but I think, you know, just speaking for you a little bit and myself, too,

is like when we talk about possibly ending the pod, it's not because we don't love the dear listeners or love the content that we're doing, but sometimes we have to take a breath. We have to take a step back. It's just like with our playing or with like writing or something. What is the cadence of how we evaluate what we're doing, who we're serving, why we're doing this, and really just what is the creativity level versus the quality level versus the intentionality versus really the output of what we're doing. Like, is it something that we're proud of?

Is it something that we're excited about? We're always thinking about these things, right? That's right. Yeah. And thinking about really the best way to serve the listener and also the best way for you and I to engage and, like, keep our own interests going, which can be, I think, a challenge after so long.

And, you know, when I talked about ending the feed, and I feel like that should always be on the table, in my opinion. because I do feel like with any art, and I feel like podcasting is an art form. It's certainly like a modern since the teens kind of art form, but it's been really robust to watch this art form flourish. But I do think, like, in art of any kind,

having attachments to anything, I mean, imagine if we were still attached to like putting albums out on CD and relying on CD money to make any kind of living. And I see these people on my Facebook. We have no feed for our children. There would be no feed for the,

no feed for the Martin kids or the Manus kids, right? You have to, you know, I think when you're doing anything, really try to not be attached to any of it, including the medium, of course, but the art form itself. And when I talk about ending the feed, it's because I am questioning like, well, with the changes that you'll hear

it has gone through. Like, if you go back and you look through the first three years of what we did, it's a very different show. In a lot of ways, it is. In some ways, it's exactly the same. But it's a very different show. We've done all these different things, right? We had all these different different schedules where we were doing seven days a week, five days a week, three days a week, two days a week, one day a week sometimes. And trying all these different hour long episodes, short episodes, you know, they started off being like 10 to 12 minutes or 15 minutes. We've done all these lists of seven. We've done all these interviews. We've done all these record, you know, analysis. Breakdown. Yeah, yeah. We've done like nuts and bolts music things. Solo breakdowns.

Solo breakdowns. And we've had success in all those areas. And it's been all of these things. And I think, you know, one of the things that I think is one of my strengths as a musician, but also as I think in this medium as well is the ability to to really pivot to something that is maybe a little risky. Like I've never been averse to, well, I could do that. I could just drop this and I can do this here. And I don't like, I'm not afraid if it's not going to work. I'm not afraid if it's going to fail. I expect it's going to do great, which is probably like it drives my wife crazy.

because he's very much like a, we've got to be concerned about this. And I'm like, it'll work itself out. It's kind of always my sort of general attitude. So I am very much like, well, if we're not feeling it, let's just stop it and do something else.

Like we did this and it worked. We can do something else and it's going to work. And so that's where I was coming from with that discussion. And I think it's a really healthy approach that all of us can take on, you know, depending upon,

you know, I definitely see myself as not being risk adverse. I think we probably both are with the pot in a little bit different ways. But I'm definitely, I mean, I wasn't shocked when you said that. And I was like, yeah, let's talk about it. Because I think the only risk that I really worry about is that we're not adequately serving the listeners, serving the community and each other ourselves, too. I think we are very much, you know, I take seriously like kind of the mantle that we've been. placed on as sort of leaders or curators or just the ones with the mics. Like we've got the

platform, but it's, I don't look at this as just our platform. Yes, we can decide if we want to end it, if we want to rename it and all those things. I just think that we, you know, because what has been given to us that we are thoughtful about how we do that, not overly thoughtful. And we've probably made that mistake before where we're so beholden to like, we've got to do it the way we do this because people like this. And, um, Yeah, what do you think about that? What do you think about those strategies? Is it, what do you think about finding that?

We stumbled with some of those, to be candid. How so? Give an example. The balance between what we think people like and just doing what we want to do. Right. Like having, I think that when you talk about the art of a podcast, I totally agree. Like, podcasting, like a lot of things can be an art. It's kind of like how I open this laptop up or place the stickers on it can be an art.

Or I could just slap on something, right? And I think the art. A smiley face on mine. I don't know how that got there. I enjoy it. Right. It's the art of decoration, right? Right.

But I mean, podcasting can, it can just be like a one-way promotional thing where we're like, hey, welcome to the podcast, buy our courses at Open Studio. Like, that's not art. That's just only commerce. But there's also, I think that what we've done mostly and certainly what our intention has been, has been like kind of the art of the conversation, the art of the appreciation, of jazz, a meeting point to discuss a hang, right? Yeah.

which we're doing anyway because we love the music and we're friends and we have this commonality around the music. But we've also gotten into things like very specific keyboard-based things or theory-based discussions, nerdy kind of stuff, appreciation things. But when you say we've run into problems, what are you talking about? Well, I think when we think too, when we give too much stock to what we think the listeners want, right? Because, first of all, we're wrong sometimes.

and then it's a moving target too. So we're usually looking back at like, oh, look, this episode got a lot of views or got a lot of downloads. So they must want more of that. So let's kind of sometimes that works good because we'll find a different angle on that. We're never going to do the exact same episode again because it works one time. We've already done it. Like the nature of how we do this. But we do get into thinking about different themes of like, well, let's talk about theory.

And the first time we didn't have any master plan, but we talked about it. And that hit a nerve with a lot of people and people were interested in gathering around us to discuss it like there were other places and to engage. I think that's what it is. Like we love engagement because it makes us feel validated in terms of like there's not just people watching us one way. They're commenting. They're getting something out of it. Maybe they're disagreeing. Maybe they're agreeing. But ultimately like the kinds of engagement, the different levels or types for me that they gratify me the most is when someone says stuff like, man, I watched your thing or your discussion of this. That got me listen to that album again. It got me so excited about that. Or that got me thinking about a different way to practice. I mean, how many lists of seven ways to practice different things have we come up with? Are all of them the greatest practice hacks of all time? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, no, they are. They definitely are. Oh. Yeah. Oh, they for sure are. No, we've conquered that. But when we hit at those things that are not just feeding the information, because as we know, you can't information your way to becoming a better player. I've heard that somewhere. Trademark.

But when we get into the more inspiration, but actually applicable things, you know. And it's not that, I mean, look, we're not reinventing the wheel here. We're both big fans of podcasts. We're talking all the time, oh, did you check this one out? Did you check that out? And we're looking at ways to apply these techniques to what are sort of sphere of influences and I think what you hit on, though, is just like, is you'll hear it the framework

that we have, the pod, the feed, whatever you want to call it, limiting to what we could do to serve even more people or even just to serve this. audience, if that's it, that's fine, better. Yeah, one of the attractive things I was thinking about is we were hashing out what what it would look like if we stop the you'll hear it feed and then sort of retooled our whole podcast network. Like something that's attractive is then like, because we have, because we've been doing this for so long, we've been doing 1,100 something episodes forever, we've had all these

different styles of episodes. So imagine an entire podcast that's just the album breakdowns, right? Right. An entire podcast that's just us talking about nerdy theory. stuff. An entire podcast that's just us talking about our practice routines and performance anxiety and meditation and how to be a better performer or, you know, the kind of intergame kind of stuff. Health and life check-ins. That would be an ignored feed right there. Well, we'll see. See this is what I'm saying. And I really love that because I feel like sometimes, and this has been a

great lesson for us, is like, because this podcast, the You'll Hear a podcast can be anything we want it to be. It's been everything. We've tried everything. And so there's, there aren't many guardrails on it, right? But I wonder if they're to, we're doing an episode now about it. Like, that's what I'm saying. Right. But I wonder if, I mean, love to hear from the listeners on this is it actually a little more focused than we think it. Like, it may feel like to us that we've tried everything. First of all, we've been at every episode. That's been the one thing. Save a couple. Yeah. Even our most ardent supporters and listeners have not heard every episode. they don't remember every episode.

It's just a small part of their life. Right. It doesn't. And even for us, this is not, we're not 24-7 podcasters. Like Open Studio, this is just one part of what we do here. I mean, you're teaching live courses

at Open Studio Pro every day. You're the creative director here. I'm making lessons. I'm CEO. Producer Caleb is like, this is just part of the overall production. So, you know, it would be an interesting thing to think about what would happen

if every day we came in here with just like, what podcast fee could we do? Who else could we put? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I do think that perhaps the listeners and the viewers actually look at this as a highly focused and in terms of like content and subject matter, a highly curated thing, more so than we feel about it.

Yeah, it is funny. We do get some pushback when we leave things like straight ahead jazz, you know, which is interesting because I don't know any musician who's just into sort of one era exclusively. Yeah. But whenever we kind of step outside that, but it really goes to show you the power of a podcast and sort of the power of the relationship with the listener because we've done so much straight-ahead jazz, I think, and we've heard this actually from producer Kayla. Like, Peter, people aren't coming to the You'll Hear a podcast to talk about Donnie Hathaway or whatever.

I mean, maybe they are, but they probably aren't. But does this fall into the shut up and dribble of basketball? A little bit, but I could see their point, though, right? because this is sort of where our interest intersect and where we've found an intersection and a relationship with a lot of users. So when you and I start coming in and talking about like cocktoe twins all of a sudden,

people are a little bit like, there's other podcasts for that. And you guys aren't really experts on that. You are experts kind of on this one thing, which is jazz piano. And so, you know, please stay in your lane on that. We get that a lot in varying degrees of sentiment. And I kind of agree with that in a way,

even though that's way more than my whole career in life that I consider. But I think for this show, I think it can be helpful to put guardrails on things and be like, maybe we were just talking about this episode that we have coming up. And it's like, I mean, maybe we should do things from the 2020s. And it's like, yeah, but we're not really experts on jazz in 2020s, like all the albums. We first said, let's do something more modern, you know, like from the 1980s. For 40 years ago. And we had to jump a little later once we did the math.

It's a great point. It's like, you know, I definitely don't keep up as much with like all of the latest releases. You know, I know the big names of jazz artists who are making music now. And I know some of them and they're amazing. And I love a lot of that music. But I certainly am no like Nate Shinnon expert on music of the last 20 years or whatever. As much as I am on a very specific sort of subgenre from the 50s through the 70s and 80s, right? I know that stuff really, really well because I grew up with listening to it. But is it like, is, is it us that's actually driving people's expectations? So like, in other words, we could say, oh, well, people are coming for us for what we know, right? So that means it's the similar things that our listeners probably know.

Or if they don't know the exact records or the exact concepts or something, they're willing to list, they're excited maybe even for us to expose that to them. But if we go to something that's newer for us, which I think can be an interesting thing where we're, we're exploring something and be like, well, what is, like we had the episode recently, the state of jazz where we went through, you know, the Spotify playlist. That was really fun. Yeah. And I mean, maybe we all need to kind of explore more. And I think that's one of those things when we have these existential crisis on the pod that

we're thinking about it's like, why can't we talk about, like, what's controversial about us talking about Donnie Hathaway, Roberta Flack record? It's something that we know really well. We know the music. It's very interesting in the prism of how we look at. at this in terms of like keyboard approaches even and like sound of the record. It's a classic record. Yeah, it's not straight ahead jazz, but like harmonically we can break it down. And it's in our wheelhouse. And I think that like if we let ourselves be defined by other people's perceptions

of our wheelhouse, we do risk not attracting or growing into this other audience of people that are like, oh, well, either like, I love that record. I've been waiting to hear somebody talk about and gather around that record, for instance. But then all. people within our audience that are like, wow, I've never realized that Donnie Hathaway and Roberta Flack's keyboard skills were so interesting. Of course, I knew Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans and Kenny Kirkland and maybe we expose them to them, but like, yes, but why is there a line? Because for us and our listening and our study, there isn't a line. And I would direct you as just as you give your retort now, which I'm super interested in, but just consider a little thing called the heart

melter short. Yeah, yeah. And is there a similar space where it's like, well, let me show some other things that I can do, which are maybe not what you think, that bring other people in the fold that are actually interested in our core competencies, but there's an entry point somewhere else. I hear you there. I hear you there. I think as long as it's something that we are sort of authentically interested and curious

about and have a deep understanding of, my thing, and I brought up the Donnie Hathaway Roberta Flack thing is because like, okay, if we do an album with, if we do like a monk album or a Sonny Rollins album, like I have a reference for every player on those albums for other albums that they've done. I know their whole careers. I know their solo albums, most of them. You know what I mean? I know who else they played with. And I'm talking about the side musicians, right? Yeah. Yeah. But I don't like with that Donnie Halfway, Robert Flack, I don't know that scene all that well. Right. Like I don't really know what the drummer is up to other than that album. I'd have to look it up. You know what I'm saying? Same thing. It's even like songs in the

Key of Life. I know some of those musicians, but some of them is just not, I don't know as deeply, and the albums that they're on because I don't, I didn't, I didn't ever followed pop music in that way where I'm like checking out who's on the record as much as jazz albums where it's way more prominent, usually in the liner notes. And it's like, it's important who's playing piano. Yeah. On a Sunny Ronnie Rollins album to me as a, as a musician,

it's not as important as I'm looking at like a Stevie Wonder or or, you know, Roberta Flack? Roberta Flack or Hall & Oates or anybody, who the studio musicians are. Because that's never in that scene. You know what I'm saying? Right, but that's only one part of, I think, that we, and that's been even more recent,

we really, well, look, in straight ahead jazz traditionally, and even up until now, each individual player, and I know Witt Marcellus has talked about this a lot in terms of the democracy of the bandstand, which, you know, may have some holes to some people in terms of the approach, but I think has a lot of meaning and understanding to just people in general

that are not musicians trying to understand what's unique about this. It's kind of like if you get into any sort of artistic endeavor, you can just enjoy it on a visceral level, but it is fun to kind of nerd out. Even if you're not a painter, we have a fantastic artist, Kababi Bayak, who's across the street,

and I'm not trying to do any of this, but I love talking to him or just looking or trying to understand the construction of it and how it's different than other visual arts or whatever. And I think people come to jazz musicians and certainly a jazz podcast for those kinds of insights about, like, yeah, why is it so important that, like, it's Philly Joe Jones instead of Jimmy Cobb?

On Michael Jackson, you know, thriller, no one's talking about, like, the different drummers on each track or who's playing, and that's certainly a big record. Well, there are people talking about that. And I want to hear their podcast on that. I don't necessarily want to hear my podcast on that, because I don't really know who's on all those tracks and what else, all the other stuff. There's different things that are as important.

And I don't think those are as important to jazz musicians. as people that break down those records. And I think the examples you said here, the Roberta and the Steve was maybe more based upon my love and knowing those records. But I would say like if we did a radio head record, for example, that you, maybe you don't know every, well, you probably do know every player,

but every little historical detail about that record. But you know the music of it, like from a thoughtful musician and keyboardist and arranger, like, and harmon, you know, a theorist, you know that probably better than almost, anyone on the planet in a way. I know a lot of the music of this. Yeah. And I do know some of the cultural context around that because I was in high school and stuff when that was And I heard some of that but I don't so that might even be similar thing although you probably know

But this is the thing. This is the thing. It's like we're also following sort of the Venn diagram of what you and I are both into, right? Isn't that what this pot has always been? Yeah. Like either concepts or what we're playing, I mean like what we played at the beginning today, let you were just like let's let's play something. I mean literally it's just like let's play something. There was no like, let's do it like this. And I think as we started it or whatever, we came up with the, what is this thing called the pop, you know? Right. There was no master plan with that. But so if we're playing something, if we're talking about what albums we're going to do, I think we always had a general agreement that at least one of us, we have to both like it.

And at least one of us has to know it. That's right. You know, and hopefully, most of the stuff we do, we both love. We have different levels of like understanding. And like, sometimes you'll bring something up. Like, what was the album? It was like a Keith Jarrett record. We talked about me.

Well, we can't even do any. I don't know why we're thinking about doing Keith Jarrett. because we're going to get blocked if we do that. But like, Treasure Island. Yeah. Like, I've heard that record, but it's probably the least known record to me. I know it's a great record. I can picture the album cover.

But I'm like, if you really know it and love it, and then I'll do a pot on it because I'll be like in the backseat. You're the Uber driver on that one. But like if both of her are like, wow, this is cool. And we're kind of, you know, Peter and Adam react to Keith Jared in 1974. It's like, is that that interesting? But it might be interesting. You know, apparently Peter and Adam,

you know, react to IG artists, Jesus Molina or whatever like that. Oh, which is a whole other door I could open up here. It's a whole other door of things we probably shouldn't be doing. Is that going to make you want to end the feed immediately? That's not a feed I want to join. That's not a feed I want to join.

But people like that and people request that. And that's the thing. Like as many people are just saying, stick to straight ahead. And I respect that. I'm never like, don't tell me to shut up and dribble. You can tell me I might not do it. It really is an interesting one.

The IG, the OG's React. That's been an interesting thing in the history of the podcast, too, because... One of our best titles ever. Great title. Maybe not... And some of the episodes are really great, but it is funny because I don't think we really anticipated, like, for us to be anything but glowing or positive is considered to be quite rude from almost like a power standpoint somehow.

Of, like, you know, you guys have a platform. Why would you take time to shit on someone's music or whatever? even though that's not, I don't know how many times I can call Jose, Jesus Molina a genius. Right. Right. Well, there's something between shitting on and calling him a genius. I know, I know. But you understand what I'm saying.

To some people, they'll be like, yes, thank you for calling these frauds out. And other people like, you don't know, didn't you see his Berkeley sessions? That's pretty incredible. Yeah, no, like the whole time we were like, they're so incredible. And some people. One thing I don't quite like, and it's just like, how dare you guys get, and how many Caviats did we have on that, even in the title, we're reacting to, like, and we probably over caveat. I think so.

You know, where we're like, we don't really know. This is why we kind of abandoned that whole series, because it just didn't feel right. It didn't feel like we were able to, like, you know, be truthful. Right. Without sort of caveating a lot or worrying about. It just wasn't that fun for us either. It wasn't very fun. You know, and part of that is our own fault in terms of we do think about the reaction more than, like, if we were just, like, it's hard for us to come in.

and just purely react to something honestly that we don't really know when the cameras are rolling, or the mics are on. I quickly realized when we started releasing that series, like, oh, this platform, it's not a huge platform, obviously, but it's like, it's not,

it's not, shouldn't be used to just like, talk smack on other musicians at all in any regard. We should just be highlighting, like the lovely Heather McCorkal last night was talking about she, when she was working in restaurants for years and she's alive for a restaurant person. And we were watching the bear.

And we're kind of in the middle of the season, this latest season. And there's a reviewer coming in. And she's like, she's like, hate it when reviewers review restaurants negatively. Because it's usually like a mom-and-pop place that are going for something artistic. And there's, you know, 80 people whose jobs are at stake. And then some jerk comes in and it doesn't like what they're doing. And what have they ever done? And they're going to, you know, put a review.

And whatever. She's like, she was talking about a restaurant. She worked in once where the reviewer here and saying, famous food reviewer here, didn't like the restaurant. Yeah. And just didn't review it. Just wouldn't review instead of giving a bad review. And she was like, I appreciate that.

Like, you know, instead of just, instead of like, because it's a, we're a small food scene here, good, very good, strong food scene, but it's not huge. And it's like. But can we be a great, for this example, a great food scene if we don't go to that next level where we're going to have a great reviewer that does, that's a journalist that. that doesn't ignore something just because there's like this collective commerce element of saying, oh, let's not like an honest. I think jazz is a little bit like that.

Exactly. Yeah, it's a little bit like, well, but just anything anybody's listening to is good because we're trying. I know. Because it's not Taylor Swift or it's something a little bit more. Like let's support our own. But there's also a problem in the jazz community. And I think we've called this out and I'll be willing to call it out again. We're also just too precious about, like there's too much of like you can't say you don't like something that somebody.

that somebody that up on high, and hopefully we're not the ones up on high saying this. Definitely not. Well, no, but I think some people would construe that from us. Like, we do have a platform. And if we say, like, we'll talk about certain records, you know, black code codes from the underground, songbook, interplay. I'm just thinking of stuff we've recently done.

Roberta Flack and Donnie Hathaway. I think there's some people that would be scared then. It's like when we put a line in the sand saying this is a classic. I mean, we're not saying that. And we're not saying you have to love it at all. I don't think that's the way we, but we could be perceived as, like, we're tastemakers to a certain group of people. And I think we need to, like, not shy away from that, but also, like, our caveats are always like, we're not journalists. We're not reviewers.

We're not. But there might be a certain higher level, at least of honesty or, like a demarcation in terms of, like, what they're doing with somebody like an Ethan Iverson or an Allen Iverson, depending on if we're talking basketball or jazz. No, but Ethan Iverson is saying, I mean, he is a writer and he is a jazz critic. Now, he has some conflicts of interest because he's also the product and he's a pianist and he's known as a great player and made important records and stuff and plays in important bands. But so he has to kind of separate those things. But like we've always, I think, been a little afraid to be like, we're critics. We're critical. Like, we're more cheerleaders of stuff that we like.

And then we're probably like what you're saying, well, if it's not something that we like. So, but what does that mean when we ignore everything that comes, not everything, like pretty much everything that comes out from young artists? Are we saying, oh, we don't have time to listen to that? Or we think our audience doesn't care about that or we're not qualified. We're definitely qualified to give an opinion on what we think it sounds like.

It's just harder. It's harder to review. If you don't like it. No, no, it's not that you don't like it. It's just like it hasn't been around. I mean, you don't like some of it. It's just easier to talk about great albums. of the past because all the crap is

fall by the wayside. They've already been proven. They've already stood the test of time. I know, but who did that? Was that the critics of the time? Was that the listeners or is it like cream rises? Yeah, we talk about this all the time. Sometimes it's just like, you know, an album is a sleeper for a while and then a group of people latches onto it and loves it, or an artist is a sleeper for a while.

You know, people weren't, critics weren't exactly sure about Monk for the longest time. Right. You know what I'm saying? But it's kind of like that populist element to any art form. Like, we think we don't have that in jazz, but we actually do because the populist thing would be like, if something becomes popular, it's great and it's important and it's valid

and it's celebrated. You know, whereas jazz, a lot of times, has followed the sort of classical, critical model of certain writers for a time, although I don't think writers have a lot of power now. I mean, who's the most powerful jazz writer? It's not like Nat Hentoff back in the day or Stanley Crouch, where they could

write something in the Village Voice and be like, this is a great album. And then people are going to actually, it's going to push sales. You know what I mean? Like, I think it's more influencers than writers at this point. The influencers and really like Spotify, the actual corporation and however that structure, probably. Which we shy away from. And we really need to be looking. I mean, that's one thing like Rick Beato, if nothing else. Blessed Beato his name. No, but I mean, he's like, he's very involved in like how Spotify, like, analyzed. and explaining and discussing the influence of Spotify and to a lesser degree Apple music on how the music is disseminated,

why something's popular, why something is not. And I mean, I know he's also like, he's running a YouTube channel. Like that is his business. He's not running a podcast. He's not a reviewer. But he's definitely a tastemaker. And he's definitely a connect.

He's probably serves his audience more in the way that we've traditionally served our audience with the You'll Hear a podcast in terms of like mirroring what people want, like attract. You're going, you don't think so? I don't think so. I don't know. Are you talking about discovering new music? Well, not necessarily discovering, discussing new or old music, like connecting all with the common ground, but also informing and explaining and being a tastemaker to how we listen to, gather, and kind of perceive these modern ways of music. In other words, it's not just him saying, oh, check out this Led Zeppel.

Eppelin album you might not have ever heard. And people are like, wow. No, it's like, they already love that. But he'll say, like, why is this still great and why is this still important? But also, he does do a fair amount of, like, here's some new stuff that's really great that you might not have known. He's not saying it like that, but he's putting that out there. Maybe. And then talking about the nuts and bolts, the behind the scenes, kind of the equivalent of what we talk about with music theory. I think he's more of a storyteller for music of the past. I think he's a great highlighter of things that maybe have gone under the radar or highlighting things that are great and dissecting why.

I think he's the best of that. I don't think there's any better influencer or reviewer or someone who is a gatekeeper than the algorithms themselves. I mean... Controversial. Well, not at all. I mean, would you know about Corey Henry

if it wasn't for the YouTube algorithm? You know what I mean? I probably would because he'd be like, if it was old school where you're sort of elevated by word of mouth and being on the scene and like you would hear about it. I would and you would, but the general public, no. No, but there's no gatekeeper that's around that has been more influential for someone like Corey Henry or someone like Jacob Collier or even, or even someone like Sullivan Fortner or even more inside straight ahead stuff because they're pushing these viral clips and videos of these players.

Yeah, but what if you don't have as many viral clips? Like Sullivan maybe doesn't have like that, he doesn't have that viral clip that Corey Henry has as far as a keyboard solo. He has a couple from a few years ago. Like that one. Like the one that we made a whole podcast. Not like the Corey Henry Linguist thing. Yeah. Nothing.

Nobody probably does in terms of that. So then the algorithm doesn't reward exposure, wider exposure as much to Sullivan. Although I would say if it was a pure algorithm that wasn't being manipulated or, I don't want to say manipulated, just outside influences, inside influences, then that would be true. But you look at Spotify, like they're actively, to a certain degree, it's not a free and open. algorithm. I don't even think it's as free and open as maybe YouTube is in terms of like their business model is, and this is a whole other episode we could do, but is involved with like promoting certain things that they don't have to pay as much for people to hear. So like if they're going to play, you know, boring cafe jazz music with a piano trio that's not as good

as Sullivan Fortner's trio record, for instance. I don't know why we're, I mean, it's a good example. I'm not talking about Spotify though. I'm talking about social media. And I don't think Spotify is not social media. It is a music listening service. Where are people discovering music? They kind of way more on YouTube than anywhere else. On YouTube more than anywhere else. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Drop in the comments where you discover music. I'm sure. I'm sure plenty of people discover it on Spotify or Apple music. But statistically, YouTube is the number one music service on the planet. Right. Right. And I think a lot of people discover music on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram or Facebook. Right. Okay. So, okay, boom.

Facebook. That's why it was last. Okay, so let's try to pull this back to why Adam wants it. What are we talking about today? No, no, let's talk about, no, but this is an interesting vector because we've come to this a lot in terms of like what is our place. And sometimes it comes to like, are we going to replace the feed? Are we going to do something different? Like, what is our place for help to expose people to music? Because let me just do one little thing in here. Beato, like we were just talking about Beato. I agree with what you're saying in terms of like a storyteller. But like, here. He exposes music.

That's a big part of his story. Miles Davis, Ron Carter interview, Brad Meldowl to his, like, that's part of the, how is that different than when we talk about a Stevie Wonder record to our straight ahead audience? And I don't even think our audience is as straight ahead as we think it is. Or, you know, OGs react to IGs. Maybe that one, not as much. Or talk about Radiohead in the context of songwriting and harmony. I think it's very similar.

I think it's very similar. And I think the reaction of his audience is very similar to the. direction of our audience. Lower views. Yeah, stay in your lane of what we came here to see. We subscribed to you for a couple of reasons. And interviewing Brad Meldow apparently is not one of them, as that's one of his more lower viewed videos.

And he still does it, as we should still do what we want to do, too, because it is part of his musical identity. He obviously loves jazz quite a bit and knows a ton about it. But we've also never made decisions solely based upon view. We definitely haven't. Like views, and I don't think we should, or like what we think, like, just using views or any of these other metrics. Yeah, I'm not saying we should either. I'm not saying we should either.

I'm just saying. As like the direction for what our content's going to be. I'm saying I understand why that's the case. I get it, I think, because, you know, people are coming for kind of one thing or a couple of things. And whenever we do those things, people respond really well. Absolutely. But it's like even just a couple of which we had a couple of, contents and by a couple it could just be one person saying wow like to the roberta donnie thing

i'd never heard that yeah blew my mind like to me that i don't care what else we get like it's worth it you know what i mean agree because others did that for me totally like that's that's part of the fun of this and i think that's where if we can continue to find our place with because i mean you have there's so much stuff that we don't even talk about amongst ourselves because we're always talking about we're going to do with this or that and that's what was so great about and i highly recommend shameless plug here, your Harmony of Radiohead course, which... Oh, and your Harmony of Stevie Wonder course. Well, yes, but these were fun things because we also, like, we were taking a risk with

that. I mean, what was the thing you did before? Well, I mean, you've been, maybe you had a little bit more of a, a little bit more of a gradual ramp up to that, and I've certainly done Stevie Wonder tunes and stuff, and there's such an obvious fun thing and overlap, but I mean, if I'd say modern approaches to Bebop Harmony, we know that's going to be a killer core. I mean, it's going to be a killer seller. I think please give us the modern approach

just to be about primity. And I do that every week in my jazz piano method available at OpenCubeo. Yeah, shameless plug. When I get a little time here in the next few months, I'm going to carve out some time

to do the harmony of Steely Dan up next, breaking down. And look, people, obviously, there's so many people that are out there like, oh my God, I would love to hear Adam Manus breakdown. Stevie, I mean, Steeley Dan's Harmony because I've heard him play it.

I've heard him talk about it on here. I know that he's an expert on this. I know that if they know you, that you're excited about it, and everything. But I think there's also, to me, the other side is just as fun where people are like, well, I came here for the 1959 records. We're all straight ahead jazz.

But Steely Dan, of course, I heard it late. Let me revisit that. Maybe there is something there, you know, and maybe not. But I mean, I think that us, however we continue the podcast, are you cool with continuing the podcast, by the way? Yes, we are going to continue the feed. I lost. I keep looking at this title.

It gets me nervous. I lost the meeting. And so we are going to continue. the feed as it is. But we are going to try to get a little more consistent with our schedule and the kind of shows we're doing. Yeah. And we're trying something today, which we'd be doing for the first time ever, so stick around, because if we can pull this off, it will be amazing. Well, it's going to be a few days for them. Oh, that's true. Yeah. They'll hear it. You'll hear it.