I'm Peter Martin.

And this is the You'll Hear at podcast.

Daily Jazz advice coming at you.

We're coming at them like a freight train of eighth notes. Just like an endless stream of amazing language. That's right. You wake up, you're like, dang, we know it's coming. Unless it's Saturday, Sunday. Yeah, not anymore. We don't do the weekends anymore. So we're still having fun doing our thing. Today, what are we talking about, Adam? Today we're talking about seven things not to do whilst you're playing fast. I love it when we go negative because we don't really go dark. Well, we do go dark sometimes. But just because we're going negative doesn't mean we're going dark in this instance. No, in fact, there's a lot to be learned by saying what not to do.

Exactly. Our buddy Christian McBride did this whole two-minute video on what not to do in order to get a good sound, which is like a negative positive. I know. But it was super popular because it's like nobody wants to look foolish. No. You know what I mean? So sometimes it's important to be like,

I have all these options of what to do, but, you know,

tell me what to cut out here.

Yeah.

And sometimes, I think for a lot of us, especially as you get into the more kind of intermediate

advanced zones of your jazz playing, sometimes the key to improving is taking away some things that don't need to be there. And hopefully that's what we can help folks with today on this particular subject. But just in general, always think about that. If you're kind of stuck in a rut or something and it's always like, oh, I've got to add this, I've got to get better at this. Sometimes you just need to relax, simplify a little bit of a theme around the open studio offices this week, but maybe take some things away, get some clarity on a nice little jewel that's there that's being obscured by some some BS all around it. That's right. You know, we're telling you some do's and don'ts. These are the don'ts. So let's talk about some things not to do when you're playing fast. Why don't you kick it off with your first don't?

Okay.

Don't play a wall of notes.

That's good advice.

Yeah.

And so that is just, you know, a wall of notes is just basically too many.

They're disorganized and they're just coming at you from every different direction.

And there's, you know, I think what we think that we're able to sort of delineate through a wall of notes actually doesn't end up happening. Even if you're playing great notes and in perfect time and you're keeping up the tempo and everything, because it's just like a barrage of machine gun fire of which the listener can't make any sense out of it. And you're going to get tired, and you're going to probably screw up the time, and you're going to annoy the people you're playing with. Other than that, it's a great idea. Yeah, I think especially for pianists who we don't have to breathe. This is a great A way to hurt yourself as you're playing fast. Physically. To physically get to the point where you can't play anymore in a solo within a couple

courses.

Could it lead to, has it been scientifically proven that playing a wall of nose fast leads to carpal tunnel syndrome? Yes. We're not doctors, though. Yes, no, but we're saying that's true. I have no idea if that's true, but probably. But no, so there's actually something actionable you can do to practice this. and that is to practice when you practice fast, practice space,

practice letting the changes. There's actually something actionable you can do to practice this. And that is to practice when you practice fast, practice space.

Practice letting the changes go.

Practice like rhythm changes, something where there's a lot of changes happening.

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