You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Why You Don't Have A Practice Routine

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

It's time to get real. Sometimes it's hard to really solidify a practice schedule. Optimizing your time can be a daunting task so it's better to look at the challenge head on and figure out a way through it. In this episode, Adam and Peter offer a list of reasons we haven't gotten into a practice schedule and how to overcome those challenges. Open Studio Pro | WAITLISTHave 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

And you're listening to the You're here podcast. Music advice. Come on ad to ask today's sponsored by Open Studio at Open Studio. Atopatiojazz.com for, oh! Your jazz lesson, thanks. Back, 2024 style. I can't stop. I cannot stop.

Okay, this is the beginning of the year. Yes. Right? It actually is the beginning of 2024. True. You were talking about this earlier that you didn't think that this number was real, but it's real. It doesn't seem real to me.

Isn't it interesting, though, how time, you know, time is the one constant that keeps moving. And like you say 2020, I remember when I was like, 2000 was never going to happen. I remember 2000 was like crazy. Seems so far away. It seemed so far away.

Like that Prince song. The 1999, it was like, 1999 is a made up year. And here we are in 2024. But what's exciting about this for me and this journey with music and with,

you know, trying to like get better and not just be passionate about music. I think we're all passionate about music. You know, that's why we meet here. I'm just kidding. No,

I mean, it's like, it's one thing to love, to listen to music. It's like a universal language, as we said. There's all these different styles and that's fun. But what a fun thing to be like trying to play music, trying to be participating in music. It's like you're watching golf all your life on television. One day you go out onto the green. Is it what they call it the green? Or is that just the color of what it is? Well, there's the tea, there's the fairway. There's the green. There's the bunker. There's the

clubhouse. There's all sorts of parts of the golf course. Excuse me, Bubba Watson. Didn't know you knew all that. Yeah. So, but it's like, you know what I'm saying? Once you go to participate in it, you're not going to be Bubba Watson. Wait, does he play golf? Yeah, he does. Okay, is he good? Yeah, he's great. Okay, good.

So it was a good analogy. Like, you're not going to immediately, but you're going to be a golfer that day. Did he get in trouble? He might have gotten. Oh, I don't know anything about golf. I mean, either. Yeah, but you know what I'm saying? So it's like once you step out onto the green with the equipment in your hand.

So like once we become musicians and we're going and thinking about things like what we're talking about today, practice routines and stuff, like it's really exciting, but it gets real. Kind of like the clock going to 2020. It's like, it's real now. And I think that in order to keep the joy going, in order to keep us from getting too frustrated, and at least the kind of frustration that would derail us from progress and connection with the music, we want to think about things like practice routine and take them pretty seriously and not just be like,

well, I'm not a pro, I'm not this, or I'm not as good as damn, blah, blah, blah. No, no, this is about you. And this is about, so we're getting a little dogmatic in the title today, why you don't have a practice routine. But that's in the hopes that will inspire you to have. have a practice routine. Well, if I may, if I may, Peter, so so much of our, our musical mind and what we dream about, when we dream about being a musician and being about, a dream about being a great musician, right, is like some sort of identity dream, right?

Where we're dreaming far into the future, and now we're, we sound just like Chick-Correa, whomever that we're aspiring to sound like. Oh, he's got a little dream weaver. He's for the stars, because I'm a dream weaver. Is that how that sound goes? Something. Something like that. No, no, no, but our identity, that's just a, this is just like something we're making up, right?

It's a fantasy. It's a construct that we're making up. What we actually are is our behavior on a moment-to-moment basis. Like, that's what we are. So when you talk about like, you know, seven reasons you don't have a practice routine, these are ideas like we're going into the negative so that we can try to draw out a positive. These might be reasons that are kind of keeping you from the behaviors that great musicians tend to all have in common, right? which is that they work on music every single day in every single way.

I just said that because it was a rhyme. But you know what I'm saying? It's like it's not just like some construct of like, well, I can just think about being a great musician. And I can just have, you know, good taste in music and then I'll be a great musician. No, you actually have to like live a musical life. You have to behave in ways that great musicians behave if you want to be a great musician. It's really that simple. And hopefully these seven things that we're going to talk about are a little bit of some roadblood.

that might be stopping you from behaving in the way that great musicians behave every day. Absolutely. And I mean, that's why sometimes it's easier. Like, some people will reject things that are seemingly negative. It'd be like, why you're being so negative about this? It's kind of, I look at it as similar,

like if you're trying to get to the goal of having a great practice routine, first, just have a practice routine. Anything will do. Let greatness evolve. You know what I mean? But sometimes it's like, you know, New Year's resolutions.

I remember reading this thing. I can't remember who came up with it, but it resonated so much with me. and I've been using it the last few years. And that's like, try anti-resolutions instead of resolutions. Think about things that you're not going to do, that you're going to adjust. Because, you know, I've always been kind of had a love-hate relationship with resolutions. But we can all identify things that are roadblocks or habits that we want to remove.

Sometimes those are easier. And then they create the white space for some good habits. Take things away and let yourself be as it is. And great things will happen. If you truly love music and you take things away, they're blocking you from working on the thing that you love, it will happen. Absolutely. And really, it's sometimes it kind of exposes and reveals a beautiful simplicity and a playfulness. And I know you're great about talking about this and connecting with, you know, living a musical life and like that inner child with our initial

connection with music, these things that we develop that are actually bad habits. They may be masked as good habits, but they're in fact bad habits or at least they're counterproductive for having a good practice routine. We have to consciously remove some of those things. And then actually the practicing is not that hard. Of course, there's the discipline of it and the execution of it. But a lot of times when we take these things around it that make it harder, like how do you get started and things like that, it can become a lot easier. So hopefully we'll reveal some of those in our own little negative way today. Well, let's start with number one here because this is, I think, a major roadblock for a lot of people.

And it is certainly for me. And it's procrastination. Right. But before we talk about that, can we talk about some other things? Okay. Can we procrastinate before we talk about? I'm trying to show an example of it. put it, oh, you're going to put it off. Yeah, I got it. I was a little slow. That's number two is how

slow I am. Let's talk about the weather. No, yeah. So it's a great example, Peter. Yeah, of like, you know, you're, you're wanting to get down to business. You're wanting to get to work. But I got like three hours here, so I don't have to start right now, right? I could just chill out, watch some sopranos, maybe have a, have a protein shake. I don't know what you'd drink, Peter. And then, and then maybe I'll get my hour of practice center. Yeah. Don't probably, get your work. I tell my children, get your work. I tell my children, get it done. Right.

And then go have fun. Right. Oh, I love that. And that's going to relate to something we're going to talk about, I think, in the later ones. But it's also like, if you put an importance on having a practice routine, then that's the thing that you're going to do first.

Now, you're not going to do it first, maybe, you know, ahead of things like if you have an infant or something feeding them. And of course, there's very, very important. You're going to prioritize your thing. Yeah. We're not saying to put. But like your example, it's like a lot of times when we have extra time, that's hardest time to have a routine. It should be the easier.

Oh, man. Think about people that want to develop a practice routine, but they're single parent, they've got little kids, they've got two jobs and all that, you know? I mean, if I get a day off, it's actually harder to practice. Most unproductive day ever. 100% because I just want to kind procrastinate until nothing happens. But that's the whole thing about a routine. If you're into a routine, it won't matter either way. Because yes, if you have one hour available, you're probably going to optimize to get to your practicing better. I mean, unless you just have other blockades that we're going to look at as well. But yeah, procrastinate is a huge one.

And number two, this is something that I don't really know anything about, but I'm sure other people struggle with it. And that's perfectionism. Yeah. Yeah, I have no problems with this. Well, this is, yeah, and this is kind of more about, like, having the perfect situation to practice. The sun has to be coming around.

I need the best lighting. The piano's out of tune, so I can't practice. Like, there's all sorts of things. They're really, this is just variations on procrastination. Yes. But they can be masked and cloaked on, you know, with things that are like, oh, no, it's really important. because I want to develop my ears.

And I've fallen to this. Like if one note unison's out of tune, I'm like, oh, that's throwing me off. I can't really get to my, and it's like, no, there's always going to be something. It doesn't matter what level you're at, what instrument you have, what space that you,

I mean, I think back to some of my most productive practice was years ago at Juilliard School of Music that everyone's like, oh, they must have great practice rooms. They were horrible because you could hear everything around there and everybody practiced too much there. You know? It was like constant,

but I got a lot of stuff done because that was the only situation that I had. You know what I mean? And so, and people are banging on the pianos and they're out of tune. I think some of this too, a lot of people, at least we have a lot of open studio folks that write in and they're scared to practice the wrong thing, right? So it's like they need the perfect thing to practice or else it's not going to be worth it because I don't want to go do the wrong thing.

It's like, yeah, I mean, we always want to be practicing like, quote unquote, the right thing, although I don't actually think that's true. I think that you don't have to practice the right thing all the time. No, no, no. You're proven that. You need to like, sometimes you have to put your head up against a brick wall and go through it and figure out what is the right thing. before you can always optimize whatever.

But don't be scared to go practice, even if you don't know what to practice. Yeah. You know, just go sit at your instrument and say, I'm just going to sit here, I'm going to play something for five minutes. Guaranteed you're going to find something to practice out of that five minutes.

Great. Okay, so that flows right into number three for the reason that you don't have a practice routine, and that is over-planning, which seems like the same as perfection, but it's not really like this is more like you've got such a perfect plan, you know, it's too much of a plan and that you're not allowing for things to go wrong or things

to go right even more importantly. So like you've got the perfect routine coming along. Now you feel good about it. You're like, I'm not looking for perfection because I've got it already. I just have to go through and do this. But that you're going to lose out on a great practice routine because something that's going really well. You're going to cut that off because you're like, I have to go on to the next thing. So it's like we want to plan, but we want it to be flexible. We want to allow for serendipity. We want to. We want to. allow, especially for us to get into the flow state, because happy practicing really is what I think is the biggest hallmark of, or really just entry point and ongoing way to keep a practice routine,

like the easiest way to keep a practice routine going. A lot of people say like, oh, that's the end result. Like once you've been doing a practice routine, you get to where it's all, you know, unicorns running through a beautiful meadow. It's like, no, you have to do that as you're going. So until you have a practice, perfect practice routine, which is actually not possible. But until you're close to that, you've got to be able to be in the flow state a lot so that you feel like and are de facto improving, right? And so if you don't have flexibility within there, you're not going to be able to get that. It's going to be frustrated.

Don't schedule every minute out. Just like you wouldn't schedule every minute of your child. You shouldn't schedule every minute of your child every day. Like you got to leave some time for play for actual just exploration and letting your child that's still a part of you have fun on your. instrument, don't feel like everything needs to be, you know, the optimization culture is, it's gone too far. Right.

It's gone too far. It has. You need to leave time to just mess around. I still love Dr. Huberman, but yes, you're correct. You know what I'm saying. Next up, number four is inconsistency. Right. So this, I think, comes right out of that, too.

So the flip side of like over planning, then you're just like, oh, I'll just kind of go with the flow, dude. Cool. Now, that can lead to inconsistency because you got to have some plan, right? You have to have something. It just needs to have flexibility to it because otherwise you're going to be inconsistent because you're going to be thinking I have to feel a certain way as opposed to sometimes you just need like let me just get in practice my scales. You know, you need some triggers for consistency because it's not a routine unless you're doing it in a routine way. Yeah. And just really honestly, if you commit, say that in here in January, which is what we are, I'm going to practice at least five minutes a day every day. That is really good work. Yes. Because that's consistent. That is consistent. It's practice. It's practice. inconsistency. It's like I'm, no matter what happens, I'm going to carve a little bit of time out of my day so that I could get to do the thing that I love. I get to work on the part of my existence that I love the most, which is experiencing and expressing music through this

instrument. And that brings us to number six. And can I just throw on one thing that I found helpful? This may not be for everybody, but I'll throw it out there in case it's helpful for some people in terms of inconsistency. If you're going on a good flow every day, even if it's five minutes, if it's 30 minutes one day, whatever that is. If you miss a day, do not let that make you inconsistent. One day does not make, and do you ever think you'd hear me saying this? No. I'm getting soft. Is this getting a little soft? Is this Mongolian cashmere making me soft? It is very soft. Wasn't it you that used to say you can miss a day, but don't miss two days. That's it. That's it. I found that very, now maybe for some people, it's three days, maybe it's

different, maybe, but the idea is like give yourself grace and know that consistency is not about a streak, right? It's about, but. You get past, yeah, it's cumulative, but it's also about it does get harder when you miss even one day, but I've found especially two days is not twice as bad. It's like 10 times as bad. This is Mr. I ran over 500 days in a row. Right, but I didn't run fast all those days. Yeah, you didn't run like long. A couple of days. But yeah, no, I mean, most of that many of those days was like, but yeah, I made a commitment to do it because I wanted to see what that felt like. And then when I came off the street, what I did find was missing one day was in bad. Missing two days got really difficult to get back on track. So it's just give yourself some grace. Do not consider one day miss as inconsistent, but don't miss that second day, if possible. Number five, not number six, but number five is you're not listening to enough music. Peter, check this out.

This is a new phrase I just came up with. You got to ingest to digest. Or else you'll regress. Oh, regress. Sorry, I thought you could say it. Nice. That's true. Yeah.

So I often find that if I'm struggling with a practice routine, it's because I'm not feeling super inspired, and not that you have to be super inspired every time you practice. In fact, if you're consistent, you're not going to be inspired every single day that you practice. However, and if you wait to be inspired every time, you're going to procrastinate until you get there. But it is easier for me to get there and actually to find things that I'm hyped about if I'm listening to a lot of music. So, and you can actually use this as your practice routine. You could say like, I don't know what to practice. You know what? I'm going to, I'm going to listen to an album instead. I'm just going to like do some critical, deep listening, instead of practicing at my instrument. And

nine times out of ten you're going to listen deeply and then you're going to go to your instrument because you're inspired by something. Oh, I love that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's kind of like making, as it should be, and a reminder for ourselves, that the music, listening to music is the reward. Whether you're listening to a recording, going to a live performance, playing yourself. Like, that's our actual, the physical manifestation of our relationship with music is listening to it in real time. And so I think even like some of the things we mentioned earlier, I would just throw in there, make those as a reward too. that'll be sort of the antithesis of the procrastinating, you know, to keep you from procrastinating. Like, say, if you're listening to this podcast to learn about how to practice, instead of, you know what,

pause us now, go practice and then come back and do this as a reward. It doesn't have to be an either or, but don't feel like you have to optimize everything. You have to listen to this podcast. You have to read another book before you practice. But you can still do that and learn things, but make that as an after, like as a reward. Number six, Peter. Yes. Overwhelmed.

Yes. People, they get overwhelmed. That's right. There's so much to practice. And that can kill a practice routine. It can be really, or they just are like, I got, these, you know, Jehari Stampley sounds so good. I'll never sound like that.

There's too much to do. There's too much to work on, whatever. I'll just go play video games or whatever. So this could tie in good to when you're saying, you know, number five, you're not listening enough. Listen to something that's not going to overwhelm you, that's going to bring you joy. No, yeah.

Because you could listen to something like Jahari and be like, oh my God, he's so young and so great. It's not worth it. but listen to something that you have a deep connection with that inspires you, maybe. I mean, maybe you're inspired by Jihari. I don't want to put it. Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. But yes.

Something that doesn't overwhelm you. If you're, if you're feeling overwhelmed, sometimes it can be hard to commit to working on music. But just know that even if you just chip away on, like, you know, major scale fingerings, like, that's something that's very useful and that professional musicians work on their whole lives. So don't feel like you have to build Rome in a day. Definitely do not. I definitely don't have to, like, come out. sounding like, you know, Sullivan Fortner after every practice session. You're just slowly... Young guys up in your head, aren't they? Slowly. Well, I mean, we keep saying Sullivan's young,

but he's like mid-30s. I'm 15, man. I'm old. I'm OG. Old guy. All right, number seven. Number seven, and this truly is the, just confusingly listed, is actually the number one reason you don't have a practice routine. And that is because you are too cocky and you don't think you need a routine. You'll hear it. That is, is this from personal experience? I'm being very self-reflected as we enter the New Year for sure. And this has tripped me up a lot. So this is kind of advanced level, I would say, in terms of practice routine. Just because you have a stretch where you've got a great routine or streak going, don't get cocky.

Oh, as the young ins say, and by young ins, I mean 40-year-old pianists, don't get a twisted, my friend. You know, you always need some kind of routine. If that's a reduced routine, if that's an enhanced routine, if that's a weekly, whatever it is, you need some kind of practice. practice routine to stay connected with the instrument, to stay connected with your progress. That's why it's called practice. It's not mastery, right? We're going towards that. And so I think it's like, don't get cocky once you start going because kind of like your

example you said with your kids when they're like, oh, we got plenty of time. Let's play around. No, you know, tend to your business first because you don't know what's going to happen. Humble yourself. The electricity is going to go out. Your three hours just became nothing. Yeah. You know, it's like take care of business.

Keep on your routine. Don't be cocky. Be humble before the music. Yeah. Maybe you had a great gig last night. And you're like, oh, man, I'm burning. This is fine. I don't need to work.

Maybe get to the piano today. Just try that out, see how it works. Absolutely. Well, until next time. You'll hear it. Wait, let's recap. Hold on. Come back. Come back, Caleb.

Oh, we're still rolling. Yeah, yeah. Wait, does this our first ever come back? Can we do it? We can do it. Are we back? We are back. Thank you for tuning in.

I wanted to recap. Okay, let's do it. Number one? Wait, we got to frame this. Why you don't have a practice routine? Procrastination. You procrastinate. Right.

Two. You're looking for perfection. Three. You over plan. Four. You're inconsistent. Five. You're not listening enough.

Six. You're overwhelmed. Seven. You're too cocky. Eight. You'll hear it.