I'm Peter Martin, and I'm Adam Manus. Welcome to the You'll Hear It podcast.

What's going on, everybody?

Today we're going to give you seven secrets to playing fast.

Now, am I overselling this by saying their secrets, Adam?

Oh, no. You are going to be able to play lightning fast after you learn these very secret ideas that we've been keeping from you this whole time. Right. But now we've had a certain bout

of generosity that has just flowed over us, so here you go. Let's jump right in. Number one,

and this one, I know sometimes we

bury the lead until the end but this one I think is the most important one for playing

fast and that is to relax so this means relax your body relax your mind and breathe I mean

relaxing and breathing have to go together right you can't relax if you're not breathing. If you're not breathing, you can't even live. So it's even more important for that. But really, I mean, you know, it's so easy to get involved with thinking about, I've got to play these changes. I've got to get my technical dexterity to this level. I've got to get my time. Okay, all those things are important, and we're going to get into that. But none of those are going to matter if you're not getting in the habit of just relaxing and breathing. So for every instrument, there's different ways to think about this. And, you know, if you play an instrument where you actually have to breathe, the trumpet, the flute, you know, the saxophone, vocals, like where it has to be a part of your process for phrasing.

Just be glad that you have an advantage that, like, your instrument's forcing you to breathe. Absolutely. But pianists, bass players, drummers, it's so important. I mean, some of the great drummers that I play with, you know, Greg Hutchinson, Eric Harlan, Brian Blade. I mean, I look over at them when we're playing fast, and they are so relaxed and they're breathing. I mean, not just breathing for life, but I mean, they are breathing with the phrases, and they pay even more attention to that the faster they go. So, you know, it's something to think about, especially when you're practicing slow, practicing medium, that really getting into a good habit, even when you don't have to breathe

and relax, to get into those good habits so that once you start raising the speed, you're already

in that sort of habit of breathing. Yeah, how many beginner to intermediate players, especially on piano,

bass, guitar, drums, instruments, like you said, that you don't have to breathe, do you see where they're just not breathing at all, they're tense up, and like you said with those great drummers, you know, Greg Hutchison is, I mean, he could be just reading a magazine as he's up there, you know, at 350, 360 or whatever. But, and that's not a chicken egg situation. It's not

that he's so good that he just doesn't have to try. It's that he sounds so good because he's

so relaxed. Right. Think about it like that. It's, it's impressive because he's so relaxed.

Well, I've actually seen him reading a magazine while playing very fast. That was even more

impressive. What a punch. All right, so number two is to practice slow.

So in this example, we're going to use the analogy of a marathon.

You don't have to run a marathon before the day of the race to actually race a marathon, right?

So the idea is you don't have to blaze every practice routine

before you get on the gig to be able to play fast on the gig. And this is great advice because

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