I'm Adam Manus and I'm Peter Martin, and you're listening to the You'll

Hear It podcast. Today we're going to talk about

four tactics to use when things go wrong. Well, this is really topical because we've tried,

I think, three times now to start this episode and things have gone wrong. This is literally

the fourth time we've tried to do this episode and I've messed it up every time. So fourth is a charm and that's what we're going to give you four tactics. So let's jump right in. Well first of all we're talking about on stage, right? Yeah, we're talking about, you know, if someone gets lost in a tune, if you get lost after a drum solo or maybe someone calls one tune and the bass player starts playing something else.

Maybe you start playing something that not everybody else is playing.

It happens to the best of us, but there are some things you can do to kind of bring it back.

Yeah, and I mean, this should be happening sometimes.

I don't want this to happen to any of you, but it should happen because we're improvising jazz musicians.

This is not a classical concert where the program is set a year in advance and everyone has a listing of it and you have a librarian putting the music out.

And even in those situations, things go wrong sometimes and you need to be able to deal with things.

Yeah, totally.

But I mean, when you're in a fluid situation as it should be on a fun jazz gig, stuff goes south sometimes. It's just the way of the world. So our number one thing to do is don't panic. This is good advice in life as well as in jazz. But I can't tell you how many times I've seen, you know, like in a jam session or something, a drummer might drop a beat during a drum solo or a four, and everybody loses their minds. Right, right. I mean, physically you can see it. Physically, you can see them turn white and start to sweat, and the audience knows something's wrong, but they don't know why, because no one is counting the drum solos.

Right. No one's even listening. No one really cares. No, but seriously, you, it's not as bad as you think it is.

Exactly. Outside of the bandstand. Now, you don't want to get lost to the drum solo. Obviously, it's not a good thing, so you should feel a little alarm and be on alert. But the first thing is, don't panic, don't sweat it, don't make the audience realize that something tragic has just happened because really nothing tragic has happened. Right. You know what I mean? Like, so the singer started singing autumn leaves in the wrong key. That will not be the last time. What is it, Wednesday night? Yeah, exactly. That will not be the last time that happens to you probably this month, so don't worry about it.

Right, and I mean, when we think about panic and not panicking, what is the opposite of panic?

That's being cool, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And when we think about, I mean, this is a little corny, but if we think about in the jazz world, the iconic most cool character around this music ever is probably Miles Davis, right? And, you know, he never panicked. Now, that's not to say that things didn't go wrong and that he didn't specifically play quote unquote wrong notes and he even had a concept and a

quote and I'm going to screw it up a little bit but the the general thing of what he was saying is

you can't play a wrong note it all depends on what you play after that's what decides if it was

right or wrong so if you're panicking you're never going to be able to do that because you're

...