hi this is Jeff Schneider and you're listening to the musicality podcast ever
wondered why some people seem to have a gift for music have you ever wished that
you could play by ear sing in tune improvise and jam you're in the right
place time to turn those wishes into reality welcome to the musicality
podcast with your host Christopher Sutton hi this is Christopher founder of
musical u and welcome to the musicality podcast today I'm joined by
Jeff Schneider an award-winning composer and music educator whose youtube videos
the saxophone and piano online courses and blog and email lessons are helping
musicians around the world to wrap their head around everything from equipment to
technique to music theory and listening skills in this conversation we cover a
ton of interesting topics including sight reading improvisation what makes
for effective practicing and the entrepreneurial requirements of being a
professional musician today Jeff shares how many hours a day he practiced
growing up one activity that was central and the one thing he thinks is essential
to practice effectively he shares one resource he's found really useful to
help him balance his creativity with the desire to make a living as a musician
Plus Jeff shares several punchy tips on improvisation sight reading jazz and
rhythm I know you'll enjoy this one and it'll inspire you to check out Jeff's
website and sign up for his email list and don't miss the unforgettable name
that email list has we talked about it towards the end of the interview my name
is Christopher Sutton and this is the musicality podcast from musical u
welcome to the show Jeff thanks for joining us today
thanks so much Christopher great to be here so I have a sense of who you are as
a musician these days from your fantastic YouTube channel but I don't
know all that much about your backstory and I'd love to know what was your early
music education like how did you get started and become the saxophonist and
pianist and educator that you are today well if we go to the very beginning my
family's very musical family both my parents played classical piano and my
sisters into musical fee my brother plays classical piano piano
and guitar I was sort of the one that was like very interested in just
learning how to play by ear so I didn't have that traditional sort of grew up
with the piano doing classical lessons I never really took to that I'm just kind
of figuring out how to play movie movie themes on the piano so we'd watch a
movie as a family and then I'd go over to the piano and figure out how to play
that by ear my my dad taught me about you know basic chords and inversions and
how to make that work so you know from the very beginning I was I was really
interested okay how do I get my ear stronger whereas you know a lot of kids
they grew up just running through scales and playing classical pieces and I think
there's a lot of merit to that as well but that wasn't really my my early
background going on from there I started playing saxophone in middle school which
was a little bit later than some of the other the other kids I think most most
of the students were starting in fourth grade but I was in seventh grade and you
know it was it was fun I was again you know kind of just messing around
noodling figuring out how to figuring out how to play things by ear and then
in high school is when I really started to get obsessed with practicing and
playing music and from you know there on out it was just like really my obsession
and that's all I wanted to do was was make music all the time that's really
interesting I don't think there are many high school students who would say they
were obsessed with practicing that sounds unusual tell us where the
attitude came from well you know it was a combination of you know there was some
musicians that were older than me in school that I really looked up to and
actually there's this moment where I read this interview it was with Charlie
Parker and I think Paul Desmond was conducting the interview and in it
Charlie Parker talks about how he practiced for like 15 hours a day for
three years I just thought that was you know ridiculous but I was like wow that
kind of made something click in my head was and that was if I just work hard
enough I'll be able to get to that level so I started putting in as many hours as
I could and there was like a summer I remember distinctly after I think
freshman year in high school or sophomore year in high school and I
practice like eight hours a day all summer
and it was clear when I came back to school that the following semester there
was such an improvement in my playing and it was just a real affirmation that
that the practicing paid off and that the hard work paid off I have a couple
of questions there I guess the first is whether you have any observations on the
environment you'd grown up in or your school's attitude to music that let you
be so positive about the idea of practicing so much you know I'm sure
there's a personality aspect to it but I know there's also a lot of music
education where the practicing is so dull and the payoff so intangible that
people really struggle like even if they're excited to get to the end goal
it's very few who actually follow through and do a lot of practice at that
age yeah after teaching for a long time - I've kind of gotten to see both sides
of the coin there how some students are just so engaged in getting better and
have the drive to to sit through the more boring exercises because they know
that on the other end of that they're gonna see some real real results whereas
you know there's plenty of kids out there who just don't want to you know go
through the hard time so you get to the good times which is you know
understandable that's sort of human nature so a lot of it like you said I
think is personality but everything just kind of excited me and I was just so
into it at the time and still AM for that matter but at a young age I was so
into it that like I said I was able to kind of push through exercises that
would make some people go crazy and you know I'm sure made my parents go crazy
when I was you know practicing all hours of the night but to me it was just like
so much fun and awesome so yeah I guess it I I do think it's a personality thing
but there are also you know like you were you know kind of alluding to the
school system that I was in music was very much supported we had a good music
program in my high school so you know my my band director gave me a lot of
opportunity and encouraged me and I think that does have
a lot to do with it as well and my parents of course you know the same kind
of thing very supportive they would let me practice when I wanted to which often
times was in the middle of the night so you know it was I had that the right
environment to put that kind of work into it terrific
and you touched a couple of times there on the second thing I wanted to ask you
about in that which was what that practicing looked like you know you made
a reference there two boring exercises and endless drills and maybe we could
just take that summer where you were practicing eight hours a day if you can
cast your mind back what did that look like and and how did you know how to
spend eight hours or did you know how to spend eight hours frequently yeah that's
a great question and I think you know boring is in the eyes of the beholder
right you know some things are gonna be exciting to some people and others will
find it boring but you know I I had this distinct memory of taking this Charlie
Parker lick because I had just gotten the Omni book the the transcriptions of
many of Charlie Parker's solos and I would take lines in the Omni book and
just transpose them into all twelve keys just little bebop licks and I would
force myself to see how fast I could do it like go from one key to the next and
do it up to tempo and those are the types of exercises that I practiced a
lot of trans transposition and that was just something that I heard you know
from random people at like a music store or you know I had a great teacher my
sophomore year of high school will Vinson is this alto saxophonist amazing
player and a fantastic teacher and you know he would he would tell me to do
things in other keys as well so I just took whatever I could find and
transposed it and that made a big difference
gotcha that's really interesting and I think it it fills in a little bit
because I think you talk to people who kind of taught themselves by ear and you
talk to people in the jazz world who are like of course you should play
everything in all 12 keys but somewhere along the line you need to wrap your
head around what that means and particularly I think if you are more an
ear player than a sheet music player that's not always easy to do so it's
interesting to hear that was a big part of your practice though yeah that was
probably one of the things that got my understanding of scales
cords that fury knowledge that's what got it together because as I said I was
sort of coming up as an ear player and the act of transposing forces you to
really know your scales well to really know your chords well so I think what it
also does is it helps you internalize on an aural level whatever it is you're
working on because whenever you hear something so many times in different
keys I think it helps you internalize whatever it is that you're you're
playing so it does come out both on a sort of a left brain and a right brain
side mmm and so it sounds like sex was your main focus at that point were you
still playing some piano I was still I was always playing piano just kind of
messing around camp I would compose on the piano I was also playing guitar
quite a bit I had this sort of Stevie Ray Vaughan blues phase a little bit
before I started really getting into saxophones so genre wise I was spread a
little bit out there but yeah by by that time when I was doing the epic saxophone
practicing sessions it was definitely primarily sax at that point gotcha and
you clearly had some inspiration about the kind of music you wanted to play or
the kind of musician you wanted to be during that period were there any kind
of rewards or kind of results of your labor that kind of kept you motivated
because you know for our listeners motivation is often a big thing it's one
thing to you know get really psyched about learning a new skill and put in a
week or two but to keep you going overtime often having some kind of
outlet or some kind of event or some kind of sub goal can really help keep
you passionate and so I was just wondering you know for you was it like
okay now I'm gonna work for 10 years and become a professional or were you kind
of seeing some payoff from all of that hard work along the way I definitely
noticed results in terms of you know how the practicing was paying off but at the
same time I would play concerts at school and just be so self-critical that
I would you know want to want to quit because it was I was really
getting the opportunity to play with other people especially people who are
close to my age because you know if I was if I was playing with somebody who
was around my age who's playing I really thought was great that would push me to
to want to get my playing better because you can kind of see what's possible it's
like you know if you hear if you hear a great player who's thirty years older
than you yeah that's that's fun to listen to but at the same time it's like
oh yeah that guy's like or gals thirty years older than me it makes a lot of
sense that they can play like that you know whereas if you if you go to hear
someone or play with somebody who's closer to your age you know where I'm
going with this and they actually have those skills that you want you're like
wow I really got to get it together here because I could be doing more so that
was real big motivation for me going to like music camps during the summer and
you know regional whatever they call them like Allstate all that kind of
stuff local competitions that sort of thing cool and so did you have a sense
of what you want to do after high school and if so was that what panned out yeah
I think by the time I started doing those epic practice sessions I was
convinced that I was gonna just go to music school and music conservatory and
just become a professional musician too you know
really and my parents were amazingly supportive with that even though they
I'm sure they were sort of scared quite a bit but I was you know I have a very
obsessive personality and they they were I don't even know what the word is I
just had my son I don't I don't know if I would send him to music school but
they they they agreed to have me go and and it all worked out you know I I love
what I do now I get to be a professional musician whatever that means and and it
all worked out nice and you say there be a professional musician whatever that
means and it's something that's come up a few times on the podcast that whatever
realm of music you're in it's not a clear-cut job description right it's
very few musicians who just do one thing to support themselves through music so
I'd love if you could share a little bit about what that journey has looked like
for you and how you've approached becoming a professional musician from
the point of okay now I'm a good player how do you then get to the point where
you're like great I'm paying my bills this is my living I am a musician yeah
well I'm glad you pointed that out like I I intentionally wanted to try to keep
that open ended in terms of not defining what it is to be a professional musician
because as you said the word journey that's so key it's you know in my case
and I think just about everybody's case rarely is there a point where things are
static and you're just doing the same thing over and over and over again in
this field it's my job and my way of making a living has been constantly
evolving over time I've I've taught little kids I've taught older people
I've taught beginners and more advanced players I have composed for commercials
and advertising and television it's been such a wide variety of work that I've
sort of shifted in and out of that it's been it's been a journey and I think one
of the one of the I guess secrets there is just to keep your eyes open and keep
thinking about ways of of evolving and if you get too comfortable you know it's
really possible this happened you know recently with with the job market I
guess I don't know how recently but right where a lot of people started
losing their jobs because everything was changing so much and that I guess what
I'm trying to say is the model of getting a gig and having it for 40 to 60
years or whatever and then retiring is just not the way it is anymore so
especially if you're gonna be a musician where you're essentially an entrepreneur
and a business owner in order to do that successfully you need to think like an
entrepreneur and a business owner and not just like oh I got to go get a job
it's not the way to be successful interesting and I want to circle back
and talk in a moment about the mindset of an entrepreneur and what you've
learned on that side but if you don't mind first one thing that I think is
really notable about you and the built for yourself is creativity is
still at the heart of it I think you know a lot of people go to the
educational route and they may be extremely good teachers but they lose
that opportunity to perform or compose or arrange or create in their own
musical life and so I'd love if you could talk a little bit about how you've
approached I guess what you want your creative outlet output to look like and
how you factor that into this need to also pay the bills in some way shape or
form yeah that's another great question and I can reel it really resonates with
me because I I again I can always tell when I feel like my creative output
output is it's not great enough in terms of like quantity or the amount of
creativity I'm putting forth you know for instance on my youtube channel last
year I started this series called loop of the day and it was just a way of
forcing myself to actually make music as opposed to just teach people how to make
it so it was a nice way of combining the educational aspects of you know this is
how this chord works or this chord progression but doing it in the context
of me actually making something so I got to get the best of both both worlds
there I'm creating but I'm also teaching doing and teaching right so I have a I
have a keen sense of awareness as to when I need to be more creative and when
I've sort of become stale too stale for my own liking I don't want to go too far
down the kind of business side of things but we we hadn't interfered me with
Alisa Johnson Jones of the music ed mentor podcast and one really
interesting element that came out of that conversation was how valuable the
entrepreneurial skills that can be to any musician and you touched on it
yourself there where you know if you want to make a living with music you are
essentially saying I'm starting a business even if that's not how
culturally we're raised to think about it and so I'd love to hear any resources
or lessons or attitudes or philosophies you've kind of ink
corporated to help you adopt that business persona as well as I am a
creative musician yeah I think fee the number one thing for me was at some
point I realized okay if I'm going to think of this as running a business then
I have to look at how other businesses are run so when I started thinking about
was how our business is run you have the chief executive officer you have the
chief marketing officer you have the head of sales you have a creative
director if all these different positions and if you're running your own
business you have to basically fill those different chairs so that's that's
how I approached it I decided okay I got to learn a little bit about marketing I
got to learn a little bit about sales I already had the creative officer sort of
role figure it out because that's what my education was it was how to be
creative in music but those other positions you know learning how to
handle your finances yes at some point you can hire people to do this but if
you're doing a one-man show you need to you know at least have a little bit of
know how to to get by and to be successful and is there any clash
between you know you playing the role of chief marketing officer and you playing
the role of chief creative officer you know there's really varied opinions out
there about whether this is the best or the worst time to try and succeed in
music in terms of finding listeners and making a living with it how do you think
about that in you know reconciling getting your music out there and getting
paid for it versus I'll make the music I want to make yeah well one thing that I
read a while back that stuck with me for for a long time is this article that was
referred to me from I think Tim Ferriss it's like it's this guy Kevin Kelly
wrote this article called 1,000 true fans and in a nutshell he talks about
how if you can get 1,000 true fans like 1,000 superfans who are willing to
actually spend money on you whether it be maybe 10 you know 100 let's say a
hundred bucks a month or a year right yeah if you have a hundred if you got a
thousand fans who are spending a hundred dollars a year on you whether that be
for courses or for music that you're making or for merchants
whatever it is then you're making $100,000 by the end of the year which is
you know a respectable living more than more than respectable so I guess the
point there is if you can get these if you can get a thousand true fans then
you're good to go now maybe 20 years ago this would be very
difficult to do for a lot of people when the record companies are controlling the
the industry and so forth but now you have so much independence you can put
music out on the Internet Wow where you have you know 3 billion
people online and you have access to them so you know at some point I was
like really discouraged because a lot of people you know like I said these camps
that I was going to or in music school you'd hear a lot of discouraging things
like it's really difficult to make a living in music nobody likes jazz
anymore but when you think about the fact that there are 3 billion people
online and you only have to get a thousand of them to support you the odds
are in your favor and if you know how to leverage things like you know the
internet which I pretty much grew up with it's very possible to to make the
living doing anything really I mean even something as obscure as you know
high-level jazz theory it's it's possible to to do that because of the
access you have to the whole world terrific and I wonder if you could give
an example or two of where that's influenced you in terms of projects or
decisions you've made when has that idea of a thousand true fans helped you make
a decision I think it's helped me make decisions about not needing to pander to
what I think was going to be like a popular way of thinking or a popular
sound it can be really easy to try to people please and and make stuff that
you think it makes stuff only for the reason that you think other people might
like it but when you realize that there are so many people out there who you
know if you like something and if you do it well somebody else is gonna like it
too and if you do enough work
when it comes to getting your music out there doing some promoting learning a
little bit about marketing in sales you're gonna find a thousand people out
there who like what you do might not happen overnight but it can certainly
happen so you know there's a lot to be said for staying true to what you like
and what you feel is good and the kind of art that you want to make or whatever
it is that you want to do even if it's super super unique and oftentimes it's
the unique stuff that goes the furthest it's you know that concept of niching
down where you really get specific and that way you know maybe there's gonna be
a lot of people out there who hate it but you know if you try to what is the
expression if you try to please everybody or get it you're not gonna
please anybody so the I think the same thing goes for
music and for most things in life really so we've talked a bit about creativity
there and I know that some of our listeners who are songwriters or
composers or starting a band that will have really resonated with them and
they'll really have appreciated your perspective at the same time I know
there are some listeners who don't consider themselves creative and one
thing we often talk about here on the show is how improvisation is not an out
of reach skill only for the expert jazz musicians for example and you as a jazz
specialist yourself and a sax player you have a ton of experience with
improvisation and I've particularly enjoyed some of your YouTube videos
talking about how to approach improvisation so I'd love if we could
talk a little bit about creativity in that context and maybe some of the more
practical side of being creative in music absolutely I'll begin by asking
just the simple question of how do you think about improvisation in music and
and you can answer that in as a teacher or as a musician or as both yeah I'll
answer is both the the way I think about improvisation is basically just like any
any language where when you speak you don't have an exact idea of what you're
gonna say and how you're gonna say it you just start talking and
you say something that kind of gets at what you mean hopefully improvisation is
the same thing you have an idea in your head and because you've practiced
speaking so much previously to continue the analogy you're able to communicate
what it is you want to say musically so to get a little bit less of esoteric
there and talk about this in a more practical way let's say you learn and
all you continue the analogy here with language because I do you think it's
helpful let's say you learn a bunch of vocabulary words and and the metaphor
there is vocabulary words it means like a lick let's say you so you learn a
bunch of licks and you start to integrate yourself you're stretching
integrate the language of music into your subconscious mind by maybe you're
doing transcription so you're transcribing these licks maybe you're
doing transposition exercises like I was discussing before where you're really
internalizing these licks after a while just like when you learn a new
vocabulary word you force yourself to use it in a sentence you force yourself
to write it down and use it in your writing in your everyday speech when you
do that with your musical ideas when you do that with licks you force yourself to
use them in a solo you force them yourself to use them in a composition
eventually those lines that you've practiced so much in so many different
keys in so many different contexts even if you've been forcing it eventually
those ideas come out organically and that is when improvisation really starts
to feel effortless and that you're just speaking like like I'm right like I'm
speaking right now where I don't have to think about every single word and every
single you know grammar rule or whatever it's just coming out naturally the same
as possible for improvisation it takes a lot of time a lot of the the struggles
and the challenges arise because well when we learned language when we learned
to speak our navel native language it was at a very young age when we just
kind of soak up the information and we don't need to think about grammar or or
spelling or anything like that we just kind of learned to speak by figuring it
out when most people learn to improvise later on in life when they don't have
that same neuroplasticity or whatever you want to call it so you do need to
really spend a little bit more time learning learning how to improvise just
like when you're learning any language any second language you you need to they
say when you know the best way to learn a language is to put yourself in the
country of where that language was spoken and that's because that immersion
is so effective and if you immerse yourself in music if you're always
practicing you for always transposing if you're always listening and transcribing
and playing with other people the music will start to come out of you
organically and that's an amazing feeling when you just suddenly have
musical ideas kind of come to the surface out of nowhere it seems and then
you're able to play them because you have that connection with your
instrument I'll say one more thing improvisation is just composition but
you do it spontaneously so just like to improve your speaking you can practice
writing to improve your improvisation you can practice composing so
spontaneous composition is is also a very I think useful way of thinking
about improvisation terrific that that was a really well put explanation and I
wonder if I could scoop it more on something you touched on there which is
kind of your internalizing all of this vocab and now it's in you in some sense
and so when the time comes to improvise you bring out can you shed any light on
what for you or what you think should be the mental process for making that
happen like is it an ear thing is a music theory intellectual thing is it
pure instinct and what does that look like once you've internalized this vocab
yeah ideally it's an ear thing however in order for it to become an ear thing
sometimes we need to rely on theory to help us get there so when I was talking
before about transposing exercises and how that helps internalize something in
your ear that's kind of what I'm talking about now where if you use theory to
help you get there eventually it's going to make whatever
it is you're practicing is going to make its way into your ear another thing you
can do to help that process along is by actually singing even if you're not a
singer if you're just you know an instrumentalist by singing you also help
internalize musical ideas in your in your ear and you also make it clear when
you don't actually when you're not actually hearing something accurately
because it's easy enough to you know put your fingers down on the piano or on the
guitar or press keys on a saxophone and just kind of blow air and the the notes
come out but it's a lot like I I was thinking about this yesterday actually
talking about how if you were to yeah sure you can use you can use words you
can say words that you don't understand and people are gonna know you don't
really understand them so it's a similar thing if you just push down your fingers
and hope that it sounds good you know maybe it might work if you're
lucky some of the time but most of the time it's gonna sound like you're
biessing just like if you were to go to France speak with a French accent but
just speak a lot of gibberish and a French accent you know it's not gonna
make any sense to anybody so the same is true for music and in order to really
understand whether or not you are hearing something clearly if you can
sing it accurately if you can sing each note very accurately get the center of
the pitch then you can't really confirm okay I do I do have this idea and I can
execute it clearly and accurately if you cannot do that then you need to slow
down you need to make sure you can sing your ideas and then you'll have a much
better chance at having those ideas pop up organically there's a really
excellent video with Bill Evans it's on YouTube you can just search for like
Bill Evans lesson or something like that it's an interview that or he's sitting
down at the piano and he's being asked these questions and he does this
demonstration of how if you approximate your improvisation it's very clear that
you're just basically biessing and and it's not anything of substance and then
you play something much more simple but it's much more clear and it's
substantial and the difference is clear and he probably
talks about the same idea in a much more eloquent and succinct way than I just
did so I highly recommend checking out the Bill Evans video that's out there
nice we will put a link to that in the show notes but I love love love that you
recommended singing like that it's such a powerful thing and I hundred percent
agree that if you can't sing it you haven't really understood it by ear and
I'd almost wrap up the interview here just to make sure we send everyone a way
to think carefully about that and if anyone is thinking oh but I can't sing
we'll have links in the show notes to past episodes where we've got deep on
that and showing you some ways you can get going with singing and singing in
tune I won't wrap up the interview though
because Jeff there were a couple more things I wanted to pick your brains on
and one was this fantastic blog post he wrote which will link to in the show now
it's called seven things I wish I knew when I started playing music and I won't
put you on the spot and ask you to reel off all seven but there were a few that
jumped out at me and we can refer people to the full blog post for more but I
wonder if you could just speak to a few of these one was that time matters more
than pictures yes I I saw this video with the bassist Victor Wooten it was an
instructional DVD and he does this little example this demonstration where
he plays every wrong note it was almost random in terms of the pitches but he
plays with such good rhythm and feel and phrasing that it sounds amazing if
anybody has heard Victor Wooten you know he's got an amazing feel and
amazing phrasing and great rhythm and that really kind of drove the point home
that if you have good time and good phrasing and good rhythm you can get
away with playing wrong notes unfortunately especially the way music
and jazz and improvisation is taught in a lot of places the emphasis is placed
on the notes the pitches the scales the arpeggios all that harmonic analysis and
that stuff is important don't get me wrong however you can play all the right
notes you want if your time and your phrasing and your feel and your rhythm
suck it's gonna sound bad so it doesn't go both ways you can play the wrong
notes with the good time and the good feel and the good phrasing and get away
with it it's gonna sound pretty good but you can't go the other way you can't
expect to play all the right scales and arpeggios and have bad time and phrasing
and aspect expect it to sound good it doesn't work that way so I think of you
know playing music improvisation or whatever in terms of a pyramid and at
the bottom of the pyramid the biggest section that's where the time and the
phrasing and the rhythm are and then above that later on in the pyramid is
where I put those pitches and the scales and the arpeggios and all that such a
powerful point yeah that that's something we emphasize in our approach
to improvisation that musical you but you're a hundred percent right that you
know when someone's learning to improvise they go so quickly to of what
scale should I use or you know what do I play over this chord and you know if
you're playing whole notes every bar no one's gonna be listening as you say you
know if you play the single pitch but an awesome groove you're gonna catch
people's attention and so the second one was anticipate the chord changes what do
you mean by that so I learned about anticipating chord changes from one of
my teachers in in music school Jerry Bergen see this tenor saxophonist the
amazing educator mazing player and what he had me do was anticipate chord
changes so basically let's say you're playing a blues in in b-flat so you have
a b-flat seven four four bars and then you have the E flat seven the idea is to
start playing a line that would fit on e-flat seven before the E flat seven
hits and this has a really cool musical effect where there's a little bit of
tension and then once the harmony catches up everything kind of resolves
and it sounds really good because you have that tension and release but
another effect I found is that when you are thinking ahead not just for a
musical advantage but you're at you're also preparing your mind to be able to
execute the chord accurately or and appropriately so even if you don't start
musically anticipating the cool you'll have an idea okay I know this
cords coming up it's not gonna catch me off-guard when it does hit so that when
a flat seven to use that blues example comes back around or comes comes up I'll
be ready for it and I won't be caught off guard that's sort of the the crux of
the issue you don't especially when you're playing a fast tune with
difficult changes by the time the next chord comes up it's already gone and you
lost your chance to nail it so by anticipating the chord changes by
thinking ahead you're you're gonna be better able to
execute and be able to navigate those changes in a way that is musical and an
effective super cool yeah I love that for a few reasons the first is that I
think it's one of those really simple concepts that can actually really kind
of give you a little leap forwards in how good your improv sounds but I think
it's also because it kind of blends those two worlds of rhythm and pitch and
and creates a looser feel of what should I play over this chord you know you're
still thinking that through but you're not feeling like and now it's this chord
I'll just do these notes and now it's this court I'll just do these notes like
I think it gives you a one step more sophisticated an appreciation if the
melody harmony interplay and but it's such an easy thing for people to try out
you know if you're used to playing over the chord changes just try you know
stretching that boundary a little like jeff recommends absolutely sorry sorry
to cut you off but you would making me think like what one other benefit of
doing that anticipation is especially on tunes where the changes are a little bit
unusual like maybe like a jazz tune like moment's notice or stablemates where you
have two fives that are moving you know chromatically where if you do like you
were saying play in a very vertical fashion when you're playing okay I'm
playing in on this key in this two five here and then switching abruptly to this
key and this two five there's nothing connecting it's very vertical as opposed
to horizontal and when you when you anticipate chord changes it doesn't
sound so abrupt when you go to the next chord change it's there's some it's like
voice leading in a way it's like there's some common tones between the two chords
even if they're not technically notes that would work on the previous chord by
force it it does connect the two harmonic
areas in a way that makes it feel really natural when you go from one key to the
next so if you have difficult changes try anticipating those chord changes so
that it's it feels much more horizontal as opposed to just vertical listen and
the third one that jumped out of me that I couldn't not ask about because it's
such a great heading was secrets of sight reading and you know that's a hot
topic for a lot of our listeners who may be struggling with traditional notation
or feel like they just can't get fast enough and what would be your
recommendations there yeah so there's a lot that goes into good sight reading
and and I didn't learn these lessons or a lot of them I just kind of figured
them out out of some trial and error but sight reading is always a real challenge
especially for me but what I found what I think helps quite a bit are a few
things one again the time is going to be more important than the notes so get
into the habit of if you make a mistake don't just stop and you know restart
that measure or go back to the beginning because in a real life situation if your
sight reading a tune or a chart with a band and you make a mistake they're not
going to stop for you if you make a mistakes you have to keep going so you
want to get into the habit of not losing the time a nice exercise to help you get
into the habit of this is playing measure and then resting a measure
playing a measure and then resting a measure and this will get you in the
habit of letting the time go forward regardless of whether you're playing or
not and it keeps your eyes moving along the page because if you make that
mistake in your eyes or suddenly locked on where you made the mistake you could
have a lot of trouble getting back to where everyone else is you want to get
in the habit of keeping that forward momentum sorry to interrupt but just to
clarify you took them out playing a bar and then letting the music continue as
it were but you're maybe imagining it in your head before you come back in mm-hmm
so you can sing that you can sing it in your head where you're resting or you
can just let the time go by it's just to get into the habit of not feeling like
you need to be you know getting every single note right the
cuz in fact the time and keeping the time going is more important than
nailing every single note right the beat Musil and with over that exactly
yeah well said so another thing that is really effective when it comes to sight
reading is chunking information so this concept of chunking is pretty popular in
and how to learn it's it's the the concept of taking little bits of
information and combining them into larger chunks so that your brain has a
little bit more free space to process things so for instance if you have a gob
a D and an F in succession rather than seeing four different notes four
different pieces of information you can say okay look it's G B D F that's a G
seven arpeggio so suddenly your brain is able to chunk four pieces information
into one and that's just gonna free up your mind space to look at the next
phrase and and what I do often times is if I if I'm handed a new piece of sheet
music is I'll just take a look through and just look like if I can find any
patterns right off the bat any sort of arpeggios or scales
maybe I'll circle them just to you know kind of remind myself okay this here is
an arpeggio for this chord or this here is a scale and and this is where knowing
theory can be really helpful because the more scales you can recognize like if
you see oh it's a pentatonic scale or oh it's an Augmented scale or a diminished
scale like if you can put those labels on it that's gonna really help you
organize the information in a way where it's chunked together and it's not just
gonna be a million notes on the page last but not least just practicing you
know like anything else you have to be familiar with
just like those arpeggios that I was talking about rhythms you know you see
the same rhythms come up again and again and the more you practice sight-reading
the more you're going to recognize those rhythms it's it does take time it's
difficult but I hope that those tips are helpful in some way they are for me at
least they they did they did help me so tried intro fantastic advise some
sight-reading and you mentioned they're practicing and
I'd love if we made to wrap up by talking again about practicing and in
particular you have a piece of advice in an article in
your blog about how to practice effectively that I just thought was so
so important for people to factor in and so I wonder if you could share it with
us what is the secret to practicing
effectively yeah I think the one of the one of the best ways to approach
practicing is to think of it think of it like I like to I like to think of a
balance beam so you have a gymnast on a balance beam and if they fall off the
balance beam everyone knows it's very very clear so where am I going with this
well I like to create exercises for myself and for my students
where it's very very clear when they fall off the balance beam and the reason
for that is I want them to know when they've made a mistake instead of
falling into the trap of just kind of noodling around sort of aimlessly
playing maybe they're working on an exercise but then they kind of get
distracted and they start going onto something else if you have focus to the
point where you're able to realize when your attention has wandered or to go
back to my balance beam analogy to the point where you when you fall off the
balance beam focus is the most important thing right and if you lose focus on an
exercise that you're working on you're not gonna be making the most out of your
time one thing you can do to improve focus is thinking about practicing like
meditation where basically with meditation in a nutshell you are
focusing on your breath as soon as you realize your focus wanders away from
your breath you bring your focus back to your breath it's as simple as that it's
like you realize you you're you're not thinking about what you're supposed to
be thinking about so you bring your attention back to where you're supposed
to be thinking and and doesn't have to be anything more complicated than that
it doesn't you don't have to bring emotion into it you know what they like
beat yourself up over the fact that you started thinking about what you want for
lunch later in the day it's just okay I got distracted now I'm coming back but
if you don't realize that you got distracted you're never going to be able
to bring yourself back so that's why the practice of
meditation is actually really useful for practicing music because if you're able
to become aware of the fact that you're thinking about lunch then you can stop
thinking about lunch and start thinking about your exercise that you're supposed
to be working on now what I was talking before about the exercises and the
balance beam and all that try to think of an example here let's say you're
doing something with a metronome so you're practicing something with the
metronome and then you have the metronome on beats 2 and 4 so it's like
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 and you're working on the I'm exercise let's say and it's kind
of tricky like sometimes you might mess up and now the metronome suddenly
shifted two beats one and three like if you flip the beat in your head so now
it's 1 2 3 4 and what happens is the metronome lets you know oh I've done
something I've flipped the beat I've fallen off the balance beam now I can
get back on it and practice this exercise and try to do it correctly next
time but if you don't have that awareness of the fact that you have
either made a mistake or your mind has wandered off then you're basically
wasting a lot of time because it's like spinning it's basically like spinning
your wheels so to wrap that up stay focused on what you're working on be
aware of whether or not you're focused or not and if you realize that you've
lost focus no big deal just bring your focus back to what you're supposed to be
working on and get on with get on with practicing that's that's all there is to
it there was some advice that is something that can make such a
transformational difference in the results people get I think you know and
I'm sure a lot of our listeners are in the situation I have been myself where
you set aside the time for music practice but if you really stop and look
at how you were spending that time it's more like just playing around then
practicing and I think you're absolutely right that focus is such a critical part
of that and setting yourself up in a way that you can really answer the question
was I focused a lot mm-hmm so I'm sure for anyone listening it's
clear at this point how much wisdom and insight is packed into Jeff's head and
how generous he is with it and I wanted to appoint you to something in
Jilla on his website that you must go check out Jeff could you tell us what
musical truth nuggets well musical truth nuggets are just a
fun name for my basically my newsletter in which I include some videos that I've
that I've made blog posts that I've written just an easy way to get notified
when I come out with new material and new teaching so that it gets delivered
directly to your inbox and you don't have to worry about searching it out so
that data can be found on my website there's a sign-up form right on the
homepage of Jeff Snyder music calm so those are my those are the weekly
musical truth nuggets that I try to I try to share with people nice well it's
more than just myself on the team who has been enjoying those musical truth
nuggets for a while now so I would definitely recommend going to Jeff
Snyder music calm and signing up could you give people an idea of what
else they'll find on your website and your YouTube channel yeah so my youtube
channel I talk a lot about the stuff that we talked about today
fortunately I'm able to edit myself a bit more so I don't come off as
long-winded but the the YouTube videos as I said cover a lot of a lot of
different musical concepts and topics and I try to get involved with different
visual representations of those concepts and topics so it can be very clear and
easy to understand also on my website I have some courses some guides that
supplement and support the YouTube videos so you know for instance I have
this chord scale chart I called the last chord scale chart you'll ever need
because it has like every it has everything and it's laid out in such a
way where it's super easy to understand and it's the kind of thing that I wish
that I had when I was learning different scales and modes and arpeggios and and
all that kind of stuff I have some piano voicings that I call sick sick voicings
volume 1 volume 2 is coming out soon and in that I include really hip voicings
for piano that are amazing for jazz and for gospel and neo soul and R&B and
again those are laid out in such a way that's kind of unique and it will help
you when it comes to composing Andrey harmonizing and it's it's all of all the
voices that I love to use in my own playing fantastic and I hope Jeff is
gonna forgive me for saying something rude which is that these courses on this
website are massively under priced for the value you get probably are so if
you're a man today spend a guitar there buddy here to check out his website see
if any of those courses appeal and then pick up a few because they are gonna
give you more musical truth nuggets and more insights and wisdom like Jeff's
been kind enough to share today all the remains it's a big THANK YOU Jeff that's
been such a pleasure talking through these topics with you and I really
encourage everyone to check out your website your YouTube channel and learn
more thank you so much Christopher it's been a pleasure talking with you as well
unlock your full musicality with musical you membership so I was pretty confident
that Jeff would live up to my expectations to drop some musical truths
nuggets in this interview and he certainly did I'm sure you had a few aha
moments in there so let's recap and see if the same things jumped out to you as
they did at me Jeff grew up learning music by ear on
piano and then sax he had a supportive family and musical environment at school
but it's clear he really had an internal drive to pursue music he read Charlie
Parker saying in an interview that he practiced 15 hours a day and that
actually inspired Jeff to know that hard work was what it took rather than Talent
where I think a lot of people his age would have just heard about all those
hours of practice and run the other way it sounds like Jeff had some pretty epic
practice periods growing up and was quickly focused on jazz doing exercises
to transpose licks into all 12 keys something that's often mentioned in the
world of jazz but often underappreciated by players in other genres I also
thought it was cool to hear how useful he found this given that he was more of
an ear player rather than the more theory or notation based players who are
often the ones recommending it I asked Jeff about motivation along the way and
he said their work performance and competitions and so on but really
what inspired him to keep working hard at music was to play with his peers
people around his own age and to see those who were a notch better than him
because that let him see what was possible next for him too
I think there's a valuable lesson there about being inspired by the Great's of
course but also taking motivation by seeing players just a bit better than
you currently are it's something we touched on in our past episode on
teachers coaches and mentors how actually your peers conserve a really
useful mentor role even if they're only a step or two ahead of you as I noted in
the interview Geoff is remarkable for keeping his creative output alive while
doing so much educational work and I really admire that so I was keen to find
out how he manages it it's cool the way he thinks about the different roles of
business needs and how he can cover each of them himself through studying up and
paying attention to areas like marketing and finances as well as the creative
activities the article he referred to Kevin Kelley's 1,000 true fans is pretty
much required reading for modern entrepreneurs but it was originally
intended more for creatives like musicians and I think it's getting
increasingly recognized as something that basically everyone should read so
we'll have a link in the show notes and you should check that out if you have
any connection with the idea of how the Internet has transformed the landscape
for getting your ideas seen and heard by the people you want to reach we talked
about improvisation and I really enjoyed hearing his way of thinking about it as
you would expect from a jazz musician licks and vocabulary a front and center
but he clearly wasn't talking about robotically reproducing the things
you've memorized in advance for him it's about internalizing those musical ideas
to the point where they come out naturally to let you express what you
want to just like learning vocabulary in a foreign language lets you speak your
own unique sentences I was delighted to hear him recommend singing as a crucial
part of that learning process because it's something we so keenly advocate
here at musical you the power of singing for every musician whether or not you
consider yourself to be a singer as I said I'll link in the show
notes to past episodes if you have any qualms about singing yourself but
assuming you're happy to try it then definitely do take on board what chef
said about singing things as you learn to play them and singing musical ideas
before trying to play them that point that you haven't truly understood
something in your ear unless you can sing it back is a really important one
for accelerating your ear training I asked Jeff to share a few of the seven
things he wished he knew back in music school and we'll link to that full blog
post in the show notes but he shared about three of them firstly that rhythm
matters more than pitch in music and especially when it comes to
improvisation hopefully hearing us talk that through you could imagine and
realize how true that is in our own improv roadmap musically you we have
some cool exercises to help you explore those two dimensions independently of
each other before combining them together and that's something you can
play around with right now today to improve your playing both in
improvisation and in general the second thing was about anticipating the chord
changes this is a bit of a specific improv thing but even if you're not
studying hard on improvisation I think it's an idea worth playing around with
because that interplay of melody and harmony is everywhere in music and
realizing that the music doesn't really care about the bar lines on the page and
those two elements go together but perhaps not completely strictly those
are powerful ideas to wrap your brain and your ears around and the third
lesson I asked Jeff to talk about was about sight reading where he again came
back to that idea that the rhythm of notes is more important than their
pictures when sight reading you have to make sure you keep that beat moving
steadily and for that he recommended an exercise of only playing ultimate bars
for the other ones just keeping the beat going in your head he also recommended
learning to chunk the notes into groups based on patterns so you can speed up
your visual understanding of the notes on the page and leverage the patterns
your fingers are already good at playing and finally he noted it comes down
under practice like everything else as was pretty obvious from his backstory
Jeff is a musician who has put a lot of time into practicing and a lot of
thought into how to best use that time to maximize results so it was cool to
hear his top recommendation of focusing on focus truly your practice time is
wasted in direct proportion to how unfocused you are and I'm a believer
that to a large extent the minutes of practice where you're not focused may as
well not happen at all there is perhaps some value in mindless repetition for
developing physical technique muscle strength dexterity and so on but those
are so rarely the things that are really holding us back in music so having your
mind fully present and your thoughts focused on your practice activity is
really valuable advice to take on board Jeff is continually publishing powerful
insights and recommendations like these on his blog at Jeff Schneider music calm
as well as his YouTube channel in courses and via his email list so do
head to Jeff Snyder music calm that shinai de spelt s CH nei de our Jeff
Schneider music calm and check out everything on offer as always we'll have
direct links to everything we mentioned including Jeff sites that Kevin Kelly sa
the past episodes of this podcast that were relevant and more all in the show
notes for this episode at musicality podcast calm thanks for listening to
this episode and I'll see you on the next one thank you for listening to the
musicality podcast this episode but your musical journey continues head
over to musicality podcast.com where you will find the links and resources
mentioned in this episode as well as bonus content exclusive for podcast
listener
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