Hey, what's up, you'll hear at listeners. Adam Manus here. While Peter was out of town, we thought this would be a great opportunity to wrap up season three.

If you've listened to this podcast for while, you know that our seasons are completely arbitrary. They're just when we feel like turning over. So we're going to end season three. We're going to do a couple of best ofs.

This first one, we thought it would be fun. Well, Andrew thought it would fun. If we did our best of seven lists, but these are all different numbers from different best of seven lists.

Just listen and enjoy. I think, I think you'll like it. And we'll have another best of tomorrow.

And then we'll start season four, which we're very excited about so yeah hope you

enjoy this best of best of seven lists well we're Well, we got a couple of emails about, you know, and I get asked all the time from some of our open studio members, like, how do I practice scales?

We actually have a part of one of our courses, the elements of jazz piano, which is our very fine intermediate course. Yes, right down the middle. We have something called creative scale practice where we do a lot of these things we're talking about. Yeah. Because I think, you know, practicing scales is something that can seem tedious, but there are several different ways to do it, that it's not just this like up and down, linear motion. And you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So number one, I love what you put for number one,

which is to practice scales slowly.

Yes.

So often we're trying to push the boundaries of what we can do,

you know, for speed,

that we tend to neglect what might be even more important,

which is getting a good sound.

Yes.

And to do that, you have to practice slowly. Have to practice slowly. And then there can be some challenges too when you practice slowly that are unexpected, especially on scales that you feel like you've mastered. What I'll find I'll do is when I go through, and I actually do a lot of my scale practice when I do it slowly, almost all of it at this point is just like that's the biggest challenge for me. And then, you know, working in some of these things, we'll talk about later. When you're playing slowly, you can really concentrate on articulation and sound and evenness because you're playing slowly, but you're not playing out of time. Right. And that's the important part. Sound articulation, evenness. That's something that gets neglected if you're just trying to push the metron up and up and up. And you can't, sometimes you don't notice it as much when you're playing faster. So this is a time to really be critical and evaluate. A lot of people avoid this because it's difficult actually. It's very hard. And it's exposing. You know, can it kind of expose you for the fraud that you are? And maybe you think like, oh, I'm not making gains, but you are. You're making more gains than you think you are, especially if you're concentrating on getting things nice and even with the articulation that you hear. You know, so it's like literally from your brain to your hands to the instrument is uninterrupted and is exactly the sound you want to try to get.

You know, that's the important thing, the control.

Are you saying you'll hear it?

Is that what you're saying?

And you practice slowly, you'll hear it.

Yeah.

...