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

podcast. Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at Podcast.

Today we're going to give you five swing thoughts to play less notes but better phrases.

Question.

What is a swing thought?

Well, I was just about to ask you that.

Oh, yeah, I wrote this one. Yeah. And mine is not a rhetorical question. It's an actual question. So a swing thought is, well, if you play golf, you probably know what a swing thought is. A swing thought is kind of, it's one thing to think about in your golf swing. And it's used because there's a lot going on in the golf swing. It's a big motion. A lot can go wrong before that little face of the club hits that little ball and it goes into the woods. So

oftentimes you'll use a swing thought to think about one thing that'll just kind of focus you. Your body then

just kind of goes through the motions of what you've practiced.

And I kind of use these two with music. And it's, you know, it's not lost on me that it's a swing thought and we play jazz. Right. That definitely wasn't lost. I was like, man, think swing,

think swing, think swing. I'm swinging. No, so sometimes when I'm on gigs, I'll use swing

thoughts to kind of accomplish things that I want to accomplish, you know, and focus myself a little bit.

And one of the things I've been thinking about lately is, is, you know, playing a lot of notes, trying not to play too much, trying to be more patient and be a better phraser, you know, in my improvised solos. And so I have some swing thoughts that I thought could be

useful. And I'll kick it off with number one. And this is the one that I think most often as I started

solo, which is I have more time than I think that I have. You don't have to go in blazing every single time. Now, you don't have to not go

in blazing either, but you have a lot more time than you think, even when you're on your

second, third chorus, you have more time than you think you have. The audience isn't waiting

for you to just tear off some kind of 16th note runs over and over and over again. In fact,

that gets really boring and it's usually not serving the music at all. Are they even listening until the second course? I'm never even sure. No, man, you've got to set yourself up a little bit. So the number one thing that I think of as far as like how to play less and when I want to play less, when I want to be more lyrical, when I want to phrase better, is I have more time than I think I have to be patient.

So, yeah, though, that's great.

And I actually think that a lot.

So I actually have swing thoughts, even though I'm just learning what they are.

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