A Master Class in Jazz Performance and Creativity with Pianist Kenny Werner

I'm going to throw it open if you have a question on anything involving anything in the world I can answer it you know nuclear physics transportation in the nineteenth century trade with China you know yeah they won the war anyway okay so you can if you don't know it you can formulate something you want or you can you know we can just begin yes in consistency of performing you mean inconsistency as to when you're in the zone so this week well there's a couple issues there one is you have to learn to play what is within your control because what happens is the mind sends messages that like you know you should be playing you should be more burning or it should be more modern or it should be more authentic traditional you know whatever the mind has always got possible criticisms and when you try to respond to those criticisms you actually move out of your comfort zone into a place that you're not familiar with it's because that's that's sort of the ego the ego wants you or that that just will just use that as the word the ego wants you to go for things that you haven't practiced and shouldn't be there anyway so what you have to learn to do is play within what's it's very hard when you're in school because you're always learning new things so you get into a sort of a disease state of mind where anything you play with easily can't be worth much you know because people are so busy trying to learn new things that the stuff that you already own oh that's nothing that's this stuff I I got to learn this stuff you know and yet performance is always about playing well within that comfort zone see because you want what you play to resonate and it won't resonate if you're not in control of the information now how do you do that how do you resist the minds propensity for bringing up issues and messing up your groove basically your groove is messed up in the mind or a lack of technique you know I mean it's always two reasons why a performance doesn't go one is you know you're not releasing yourself to the zone of just playing and that and just for a moment what does that mean the zone is created by not criticizing yourself in performance you cannot afford to criticize yourself in performance that breaks the zone that breaks the groove but of course you may hear notes that you don't like but don't key in on that a matter of fact in my book there's an exercise in the second step where you practice a sort of a brainwashing thing you brainwash yourself to like every sound you make not to flinch from any sound you make that is the closest thing to enlightenment in music-loving absolutely every sound you make no matter where it is see already you're halfway there people are intrigued with that because they don't accept themselves on that level so when they see a musician accepting everything they're doing with love that's half of the attraction the music being the other half and that takes practice so the first thing you need to do is learn how to touch your instrument without thought that way you stand a better chance of not thinking on the gig that's a long process the first thing that happens is you learn how to touch the instrument and not react now that may sound strange but it's your reaction that gets in the way of the groove if you like this you know you're already trying to impose yourself on the groove here's the groove there's one note there's another let's see they all have equal value if you don't judge them can you feel that I'm not this is no plan but whatever I play just feels perfect unless I try to you know create it planet or something you know imitate that then you'll hear it won't groove somehow notes will sound wrong when I try to fit place the notes too carefully so performance is about not being careful at all but to not be careful where's your safety net you know your safety net is in you in other words it's not in the fact that the audience will understand because you read a book effortless mastery and it said that it's okay to make mistakes so hopefully all the audience read the book you know the safety net is never in the world the safety net resides in you for example if you are always worried about having enough money right the safety net is not in having enough money because if you have enough money the next thing you'll be worried about is losing that money because the mind thinks that's what the mind does if you give in to the mind if you are totally controlled by your mind then you're always in a firestorm of mental activity you know and and I guess 25 to 50 years of therapy would do something for that I'm not an expert on therapy but I tell you there's another way where you just focus on something else other than your mind and when it happens it happens immediately happens all at once and suddenly like wow I'm just playing because my hands are playing you know and that's always exactly the right stuff in fact that's the right formula for living there is a place for thinking but it's not in performance now just knowing that is not enough you need to have a practice so that eventually the trigger of playing the instrument well I was about to describe the the sequence first you learn how to touch your instrument without thinking or I don't know if it's a singer here making a sound without thinking making a sound without thinking is this a jazz sound or is this the right sound or is it pretty enough or you know what I mean that that the rough thing about school is you're trying to educate yourself and it's awfully hard not to fall in the hole of always criticizing yourself education stimulates criticism and how to keep learning without falling in a hole of self-criticism so deep that you know you can't do anything anymore you know and so this is a practice of hearing a sound not just accepting it but even aggressively loving it now in the beginning it's like you have to fake it because you hear a sound and you just don't love it so from not not becoming to becoming you have to fake it in other words if I do this then before I have a chance to think I go that's the most beautiful sound ever isn't that you know in other words I convinced myself I don't want to wait and do you know can you feel what I was doing evaluating this sound no I want to jam that frequency by actually doesn't sound beautiful see what happens I thought so Emily what happens is what you're aiming for happens after you affirm it if you're waiting for proof that you sound good then it's like a dog chasing its tail you never quite get there so what you do is you affirm that what you're playing is beautiful and it becomes beautiful because as you accept it it starts to glow with your own acceptance so I would actually meet that this is one of the practices learning to touch the instrument without thinking then learning to love every sound that comes out of the instrument then you go to gigs and it's uneven because you can't ignore your attachments to that gig you know you want to sound good you want the rest of the band to like you you want the club owner to give you the gig again you want hopefully a record producer like you you hope there's a critic there and he's writing good things which he never is there occasionally writes good things we he's never actually there you know so these things are attachments which make it difficult to let go like you will let it go just in these practices but as you keep practicing letting go of your thoughts becomes less difficult to do and more natural eventually you've set up a program in your mind where to touch your instrument is to let go when you touch your instrument you go into a mental balance that you don't even own the rest of the day that can be programmed I mean the good news is that that can be programmed as you program that the inconsistencies in your performance will disappear see because you're looking for something to happen on the gig but the prep the mental preparation for that has to happen way off a gig the same I'm saying does that answer it or you have a follow-up question from that yeah that consistency has to be practiced and it's practiced not by hoping that you're going to play something better but by loving everything you play now that naturally brings up the question well then how do you get better because you had to love everything you play right don't you need to be unsatisfied you don't need to be unsatisfied in order to be motivated to go on go go beyond that because there are two functions in the brain you know there's the left brain and the right brain and I think the left brain is the more intellectual you know the side that takes care of business practicing is taking care of business you know practicing should not be sitting there for an hour just playing and enjoying yourself that's playing practicing is the study of that which you do not know or that which you haven't gotten control of yet and that's it efficient practicing means only dealing with things that you're not comfortable with yet not sitting there and playing for an hour why sometimes does a practice session start as a practice session and involves it too just playing doesn't that happen often you start with a specific idea but in a minute you're just playing does that ever happen to you does it happen to you okay thank you for saying yes no no she said all I'll say yes what the hell the videos running you know no no I mean you start with something specific and that specific thing gets diluted you start to cover more stuff as you're practicing and eventually you just start playing tunes you just start playing them over and over again the problem with that is in real time you can never get to any new stuff you will not upgrade your language in real time you've got to take spots and you've got to upgrade through variation in other words if it's two or three chords in a chord progression you don't play well you go right to those chords you don't play the tune over and over again and in those chords you don't find one way of playing through them but perhaps twenty ways 20 good ways and you get them under your fingers enough so that key or that scale or those changes start to feel more natural now when are you done practicing those changes the next time you play the tune and there was no more thought in your mind at that point of the tune then there was any other point and you're done so you practice things until they bear fruit if I'm working on a spot of a tune I will play variations on that the kind of stuff I wish I could play in real time that's what you do when you practice you make models of the music you wish you could play of course it's always going to be beyond where you're at but you keep doing that those models start to sink into your thinking they become not patterns of music that you play but patterns of thought you know like learning the plan changes is very tricky especially for adults because adults don't have the proper patience that it takes to become natural with something as highly it's like a new motor skill as you start as an adult it's difficult not because an adult can't learn a new motor skill but because an adult is always questioning themselves how am i doing today how am i doing tomorrow I should have learned this by now you know a an adult is always judging when they should have or should not have learned something so let's say you've been studying how to play on changes and you go to do a gig and you can't play on the changes the adult goes and the ego of the adults says oh man I suck you know I'll never get this you know you make a bunch of grandiose statements that don't help and they're not true the truth is that you've been practicing playing on changes for say three months and it wasn't ready to happen yet you know they have a saying in the various programs you know AAA and all that they say don't quit I'm for the miracle happens and that could very well apply to your practicing if you're trying to learn to play in five where you're trying to learn to play in a weird key or you're trying to learn to play better lines than you play don't quit a day before the miracle happens your mind messes up more than one flow it messes up the flow of playing but it also messes up the flow of practicing there are two different flows the flow of playing is the carte blanche acceptance of everything that's coming through you no time to to jut no Centurions at the gate so to speak there's no route there's no time for them to gate check everything that's coming through you just got to let it come through and the thing that makes it sound good this sounds like Harold Hill for music man but I swear it's true the thing that makes it sound good is your love and acceptance of it how do you think monk played these notes you know whenever it like what was that that's impossible that's all wrong or it's corny and was the most wonderful thing I ever heard in my life see the personal power of the musician makes those notes right I'm not saying that monk planned to do this to us he simply didn't have any discretionary powers when he played I mean he didn't block anything he was playing so if he went it was okay and so the musicologist in the audience that day might have gone Raymond I just told my class today that you can't do this and that was and what he just played changed my life so and I had to reconsider this so new theory is made by free souls and play the music by not having too much respect for the present theory new stuff is created by people who are genuinely bored with what's happening now and are not afraid to go into those areas what they have that they never talked about is a blank except a blanket acceptance of everything they do that's how they have the audacity to venture into these other areas so what breaks the flow of playing is questioning yourself what breaks the flow of practicing is questioning yourself but they're different questions you're asking how am i doing or why haven't I learned to do this yet you know questions that tend to break you down or you know or just injecting impatience into the process if you could practice with the detachment and consistency that you say brush your teeth now think about that brush your teeth every day once or twice a day or if your sax player maybe after every meal so you don't get it in the mouthpiece although birds they said bird had sandwiches and beer and his mouthpiece and didn't seem to hang him up you know but think about how you brush your teeth you don't brush your teeth and say wow we're really getting somewhere here you know I really feel like I'm getting to a new level of of white teeth you know you don't think of it progressively you just do it and you know you're going to do it again doesn't matter how it goes well that was an outstanding tooth brushing session but you know what it's not going to change anything you still got to brush them tonight or the next day right if you thought of your practicing like that you could attain anything you want it doesn't take talent to upgrade your playing it takes patience it really does we don't give ourselves again we don't give ourselves the generosity if we don't get it in the time we think we should get it we think we're not going to get it and that is the genesis of the negative attitude I'm not going to get this all this happened is you haven't gotten it yet but see the ego takes that and runs with it oh I can't do this and in fact every limitation in our life is from these presumptions that aren't true you know like you know I can't swing I'm Danish or I'm a woman I can't really put mean you may not have ever thought that but subconsciously it could hold you back this is a this is a man's world this jazz thing you may never have said it out loud but you may have thought it and then passed on that thought these thoughts are limiting and more importantly they're totally false the person that doesn't listen to those thoughts they go very far so this propensity for thinking breaks the groove of practicing and breaks the groove of playing there are two different grooves the practicing is done from the left brain in other words you really take stock when you're practicing what can I do what can I do and that's not as easy as it sounds right again why because if your ego it hurts you to admit something you can't do rather than seeing it as an inventory which will help you figure out what to practice you look at it as a weakness or proof that you're not really talented or you know you know what you make more of it than it is so if it hurts you to realize that you don't have very good rhythm let's just say some people here don't have very good rhythm the way you gloss over that is by remembering one gig where you had good rhythm and then because of that gig when someone asks you how's your rhythm you go my rhythm is fine it's just that all those other gigs were flukes that one gig that's really the way I play see that's not actually the best way for you to look at it if you and unless you have to save yourself emotionally but if you're not attached then you can look clearly what you don't do well and what you do do well and then it's easier to upgrade you know but if it hurts you to admit that you're not I mean this is how I rate myself whatever my worst gig is that's how I play whatever my working with things I did wrong Matt lost the time either but it was you know could never happen again it happened because I had a cold it happened because I didn't get enough sleep last night you know it happened because I had a headache you know no it happened because you haven't mastered the form if you mess up the form it's because you have mastered form if you lose one it's because you haven't mastered meter if you can only be rhythmic occasionally then it's better to say I'm not rhythmic yet as long as you don't go into the depression over it but you say this means I'm going to practice a lot of rhythm so I'm just using rhythm as an example because you were honest with yourself you know what to practice but if it hurts whenever you realized that you can't do something then what you're going to do is rationalize you're going to gloss over subjects because you remember hearing yourself playing well once or twice so you don't think you need to work on that and you're going to skip on to something else those parts of your game that have not been adequately worked they will plague you for the rest of your life they never get better just because you get older for example if you have bad time it's not going to get better unless you admit it and you do certain exercises to work on if you have if you're not good with changes then every tune is going to be like an adventure and not the adventure that you were looking for so there's some institutional or fundamental things that as we learned four improvisers improvisers have to have an easy if not effortless relationship with rhythm with time with linear manifestations of chord changes if that all comes easy then just throw the music in front of the guy or the woman and they're just going to play it you can throw tunes by them and they're just going to rev it up a little bit you know as soon as they see it because the elements are what go into that have been learned you see what I mean there's foundational stuff in order to play a tune and so when you play a tune with difficulty there may be something in your foundation that's missing if you you have to be honest with yourself to find out what that is to be honest with yourself you have to stop taking it as a measure of how valuable war you know the reason this thing gets to be an emotional thing music is because we don't just evaluate our playing we evaluate ourselves you know on a day that you played very badly maybe in front of people where it was important you don't feel as worthy that day now maybe there may be exceptions here but generally you don't feel as worthy as a human being that day as you do the day that you really play great and a few people complimented you is right do you find it true that your self-esteem goes up and down with your playing is that trapping everybody here is that not happening anybody it's okay I'd like to know well that's an unhealthy linkage you know your value as a human being is not to be tied in to how good you play for two reasons one spiritually it's not true you know if you take the broader implication of what a life is then it's so much more than a solo or how you play an instrument I mean that is just taking this broad broad thing and subjecting it to the most shallowest of of definitions I'm a good player therefore I am a valuable person spiritually that's wrong that could be even thought of as a sin to me to devalue yourself that much is very ungodly the second reason is it won't play as well if you are going to go up and down with how good you play then it's going to become very important that you never go down you always have to play good there's pressure on you to play good it's just being put on by you because if you don't play good you're going to feel bad you know what I mean now what is that a bad thing it is a bad thing because there is a paradox here a lot of times I start clinics by saying think about a time that you really needed to sound good because of who was there and what you needed to do what you want to show them or a jury you know you were a jury you know think about that time how did you play when all everything was I got to really do well tonight how did you play was that your best performance or was it your worst performance or somewhere in between did you not play better when you were just fooling around the practice room the previous Tuesday and then you get on this gig and everything feels like you're fighting through a paper bag or something did you ever have that experience and it's just the time when you so wanted to play well and then when you don't care so much it all flows so I adopted a philosophy about 30 years ago of not caring it's going well it's going really well it doesn't mean it doesn't do me any good if I'm going to play in Carnegie Hall tonight it doesn't really do me any good to sit there going wow I'm playing in Carnegie Hall that does not help my performance therefore Carnegie Hall Carnegie Deli doesn't matter doesn't matter you have to have that sort of attitude in order to be consistent wherever you play in order to get to you you have to not be impressed by the externals you know in a way it's a healthy way of not caring when you play of course you care you wouldn't be in this school spending so much of somebody's money try and learn to play if you didn't care right but it doesn't help you to be aware of your caring when you play it helps to not care when you play that gets it flowing that's another way of getting it flowing all these things take practice you know you could agree with it but then you can't do it I get a lot of calls from people who say you know I read your book and for three months like like you were even saying I had a great recording session I said well you have to be concerned whether it less it's not it's not that the reason what less is because when you start to play well that becomes your new attachment oh wow I tried this approach of detaching myself and I played great and I keep thinking about that gig where I played so great next thing you know it sets up an attachment for the next gig and the next gig goes very poorly because you have an expectation that you didn't have on the first gig that's the only reason that you were able to let go on the first gig for some reason you didn't have an expectation you know I can't tell you how many gigs you travel with people and you're on a very long you know 30 hours on a train and one guy's got the runs and another guy's got pneumonia and they don't and they're pissed off that they had to travel all that way just to play this one damn concert and I don't care about this gig and this promoter can't treat us this way we'll show them we don't give a about this gig and you know what happens unfortunately they play their asses off because they go in there like I don't care about this promoter and I don't care about this audience and I'm so pissed off at being on the train for 30 hours and all that sets up such freedom that's the best gig I remember gigs like that then you play there the second night now you're well rested you took a shower you've been in a nice hotel you've meditated whatever you've had a good meal and that gig doesn't go as well so it's a funny paradox that pretty much is endemic to all humans like human nature developing that detachment creates a consistency in your performance developing a detachment to your practicing creates a consistency in your practicing see not not saying things to yourself like wow I've really got to get better by tomorrow you know or next year or ain't getting any younger you know all these kind of thoughts they just push to practicing they put pressure on the practicing and what does that pressure do it causes you to practice more things because you want to get better faster but you see your concentration should be the thing that decides how much you can practice you should practice as much as your concentration allow if it's one thing that you can examine but you can examine it so well that you can begin to own it that will have a better effect on your playing that if you practice 10 things and you run through them because that's your program but you never notice you practice that way but your playing doesn't change my playing changes all the time I only practice one thing at a time I mean I may have three or four things but in my mind it's one thing until I'm done with that then there's the next thing or I might break it up into three sections and do a rhythmic practice a harmonic practice but I will not give myself like a program of twelve things to do and and you're just doing well just to get through it because you're not getting any better that way and it's another way that the ego sabotage is you're practicing by taking on too big a load now of course the natural question is well I'm in school I'm getting way too much that's true everywhere I almost anticipate that question how do i discriminate and learn how to fashion a practice that honors me a practice that I can control that I can relax and focus on how do I do that in school well the answer is that life is never going to arrange itself to make these things easy you have to leave a little space in your life for your inner practice you know meditation is an inner practice for example when you do that practice the world is not going to slow down for you to meditate you have to stake out five minutes ten minutes twenty minutes half an hour whatever it doesn't have to be long and in that space is where you practice the Zen of practicing you're connected to what you're working on here and you don't go there until you get done with this and then you drift over to here and you work on that and you work very very thorough with great care and with great concentration and how long should you practice when that practicing starts to get diluted by adding you know just by losing your patience it's better to walk away because sometimes you can undo the good work you were doing by practicing something specifically clearly clarity and all these things it's the mind and the pressure it puts on your life because your life's not good enough you know whatever's going on it's not enough that's sort of the pressure it exerts I'm not a good enough player therefore there's a great pressure on my practicing to improve me if that pressure helped then I would advocate it but it doesn't it hurts because it takes you out of focus and it doesn't allow you to really fully own some of the important foundational stuff of music own rhythm as far as I'm concerned you should be practicing I don't even know you're playing but everybody should be practicing some rhythm thing against time for the rest of their life because rhythm can always get better and the the more natural you the more effortless your rhythm becomes the freer you become over form you know you know the easier comes to you the freer you're going to be so I mean I pretty much all came out of your question we have another question we could that we could work with yeah how much should you balance practicing practicing on certain specific things and also practicing you performing let me meet over well I mean to me I don't find it good to practice performing because sometimes all my best stuff comes out in the practicing of performing you know and I mean I have so many stories of where we were rehearsing the day of and it was going so well we should have stopped because that night it wasn't as easy as it was I think the question is how they about how much playing versus how much practicing and I think there's no formula play anytime you feel like you want to play and as long as you want to to your heart's content but don't neglect the very focused act of practicing playing get back to that right-brain left-brain thing playing is completely right brain now you're not going to run your life with your right brain because you need to get paid you need to get places on time you need to catch subways you need to whatever you need to do that's left brain with your right brain you're going to be late for everywhere and you're not going to go anywhere okay so you can't do that stuff and right brain but right brain when that's light when I get on stage it's all right brain yes yes yes yes oh I love that yes yes more do it to me you know and that's it that's the only message I want in my brain until the light goes off and then I walk off the stage as if it never happened because I don't want to be attached to that performance so there's a next one to be good too I don't think it's a question of balance because one should never not play when one feels like playing that goes against one's own nature but a lot of times people who play a lot don't have the patience to practice they also don't have the method to practice they don't know what to practice that is the biggest thing I find with people trying to get better they just don't know what to practice so that starts with getting a good diagnosis of how you playing not just criticism but I mean really a diagnosis you know your rhythm could be this your Alliance are very limited to that you're you know sensitive or you know and then be given exercises to correct them a lot of times you do a clinic and there's a great player they're not necessarily a great teacher but a great player that goes oh man you're not swinging yeah next week I want you this way you know come back still not swinging man yeah well don't just criticize give somebody's an idea what to do about it that's swinging I don't know what to do about it either that's an esoteric idea of Swing but playing on changes sure there are things you can do playing better rhythm sure the things you could do getting better intonation this things you can do you know whatever it is you're trying to do and don't neglect it don't be afraid of it look at it is just like brushing your teeth and then what will happen this you'll get the joy of not boring yourself to death because I don't know about you but when I find myself playing the same things over and over again I start to wish that I could see something else and that's what breaks a groove of a performance wishing you didn't play that voicing again you know for example but it's better to love that voicing every time you're going to play it but then take care of it in your practicing and you're practicing actually investigate another voicing then it might just come out so that's really the answer that it's not at all any kind of formula just make sure I mean actually you know it can't just say make sure that you practice consistently because there's always a pre step to all this makes sure that you always play freely and never question yourself make sure that you practice absolutely consistently and only focus on things you know how do you do that you need to learn to control your mind when your mind makes you in a hurry and you're practicing walk away teach your mind it's like teaching you're teaching a dog you know if the dog hates it and the dog comes oh no you know I wake up we have a dog that just loves to go as a puppy loves to go out so much it's hard to get him to sit once you open the door now that's a drag because if you're walking in with groceries boom this dog runs out you know this dogs got a sit you open the door and when you say go say go every time he he moves and I didn't tell him the move I closed the door again until he realizes that if he doesn't sit he's not going to get to go out well I would sort of tell you the musician in you the same thing if I am going to be anxious and self pressuring and self-defeating I will walk away until you see how I'm looking at you right now and I see great balance in you right at this moment and the reason is because you're listening to what I'm saying I don't mean because what I'm saying I mean you're not thinking about yourself whenever you are that's why television is so attractive you need to do what is it it's a vacation from thinking about yourself I mean it's nothing of any value there but you know all the political discourse on the radio in television nobody gives a about that they just don't want silence so they think that they're politically concerned but they're not they just can't handle silence it's lack of being able to control your mind tame your mind but when you're interested in something else your balance because balance is when you get out of the way so when you're listening to me you're not thinking about yourself you're in perfect balance just the way you were feeling that's the way you approach your instrument and you practice them there and when that's broken you walk away and what happens is the length of time that you can stay that focused of grows see if you let that practice morph into just oh you know I just got to play you know then it gets fuzzy what happens is it's a dilution of this perfect focus you had but if you stop as soon as you lose the focus and you walk away now you've made markings that what the length of time you can focus is that length begins to grow because you don't just dissolve it into broad general stuff that doesn't make you play better so here's it's like an assembly line you work on things and you're practicing and you work on them until you hear them in your prep and you're playing and you're not looking for them everything I practice I never ever care if I ever hear my playing or not and when it starts to come out I know that I've been getting somewhere with what I'm practicing you see what I mean the playing if you got it set up right the playing gives you an idea of how far along you are in a particular study if you want to always use time signatures because it's a very stark example if you want to be able to play freely in five you practice models of ideas in five you don't just play you know because that all that is is an inferior way of playing five it's playing five that counts it out for you that was okay when American musicians first started to play five but but that's not going to go anywhere so you practice the way you wish you can play in five how long should you do it until somebody calls something in five and you feel as free as you didn't for each practice is like a journey each thing you decide to practice be prepared to stay with it think well of what it is you're going to work on next and try to make it the thing that you're playing is missing most often in other words don't think about playing in five when you're not yet making sense in four because four is the dominant time signature of Western music and you can be employed you could play great and five and not not play good and four and you're not and you're not going to play anywhere you know whereas you can play great and four and not people play five at all you can play everywhere so to jump to five this is just another gross example to give you an idea taking things out of sequence will also sabotage your playing if you're working on five and you really haven't achieved anything for yet then the best you'll get in five is the level that you achieved in four you don't say what I just said you got to create a standard in yourself so you stay with something until it gets to a very high level of ease and then every new thing you compare it to that like here that was very easy now and you play giant steps of 13 which I'm not about to do is it as easy as this when it is you can make a career just going around the world playing giant steps of 13 because people will be amazed at how natural it feels that's my whole setup I keep working on increasingly complex things but they don't come out of the oven until they just spill out of me that's why people could say wow you I don't know what that form was but it all felt so natural because I don't reach for something that I don't have yet that's like the dog with the you know the fable the dog with the bonus mouth and looks the water he sees a dog with a bone in his mouth he drops his bone and jumps in the water I don't drop something to chase after nothing which makes me lose my balance you see I mean but I work on creating more something's in my practicing another question anybody yes what's a song what's a song yeah song is like a determine amount of bars usually song refers to words so a on song as in son song and well in lieu of what you're talking about sit like that's something that kind of stays overtime like you access a song or just a song access you to play it or you access a song first and then as you familiarize itself yourself with it you and the song become one and the most natural thing you could do is play that song like for me I probably have that relationship with Stella by starlight I could be on my deathbed yeah now the reason I play that so well is because that key is comfortable most of those cords are comfortable and I don't have to be too interesting my lines because the chord progression still is so interesting so but whatever that's like being home playing so let's darling so it starts with you and and now my question is when I start with a new tune I will work on that tune until it starts to feel like that too because that's when my voice starts to come out on the song my voice your voice won't come out on material you're not familiar with so for example here's a very good strategy if you're going to do your recording your CD and everybody will not that the world needs it but you will anyway there's already too many damp CDs in the world but but some point you're going to want to do a CD it's going to be some kind of validation of all this money that was spent okay now it would be a mistake to record the things you're working on record the things you know see because we don't want to know what you're working on we want to be enlightened we want to be you know enlivened we want to be charmed we want to be lifted up you know once you get out of school that's it for projects that you know playing things that you don't have control of you better go out there have total control it's funny when I think of a singer I think it was the most compelling amazing performances I have a witness was I only saw a Carmen MacRay one time but it must have been like what it was like to see John Coltrane because I mean with such presence that as soon as you she got up on stage you were already like I mean this woman was so in her body and so in the moment and in such control of the material she was about to do that her presence was a concert these are the higher goals of concerts not to show people what you can do or what you're working on how did we get that question I follow the song again or I think the people that are successful meaning people tune in to their music or music is played well well that's a little broader I don't know I would say that everybody that you would say the music they've they're successful because of the way the music comes out another way of saying is that they are in complete control in the Taylor live line that or that maybe they're using was a different branch than well sometimes but not always sometimes someone marks out a space for themselves because there's a sound that they find that they really connect to by the way if if that discovery is not sincere if it's a strategy it usually doesn't work out but if it's really what you're attracted to and you find yourself and if not virgin territory at least territory that hasn't been too well traveled that's sometimes how people stake a claim I think of people like John McLaughlin who definitely went places that still people can't go and he's you know he would have been famous for other things but or I think of Chick Corea you know the level of attainment of Chick Corea is truly amazing you know or Keith Jarrett who just by playing sounds that he's so loved actually took us into some sounds that you take for granted today but those sounds were not to be found in jazz music before Keith Karen like that funky was not played in jazz before Keith Jarrett and it was here obviously but it wasn't played in jazz so sometimes it's that it could be the most conventional music there's a lot of ways of getting over and there's a lot of ways of being successful the strategy that I've been following is to connect so deeply with what I'm playing that I don't have any definition of it but it's just one attraction after another see successful playing and let's assume let's assume let's get off the mastering of language subject let's assume you've mastered the language that doesn't make you a successful player there are people that can play the language very easily and they're totally uninspiring there's people that may not even play that language as well and they can be inspiring you ever noticed that phenomena why anybody know why yep what passion yeah how deeply that person means that particular music is really much more resonant with an audience than how well you play you know so that's my strategy my strategy was you know I always noticed that you know like Brazilian percussionists were thought of as such you know hi free spirits and percussion you know like people from like different ethnicities and that a guy from Brooklyn or from Long Island shouldn't expect of himself the poetry of life that say someone from the rain forest you know and then I realized everybody's got everything inside them you just have to develop it I became special in my own way for being from Long Island I what I had to do is continually go deeper and deeper into what that is go so deep it as soon as I start to play I start to go into a trance from what I'm playing and by learning to do that I have joined the other spirits who I've seen who I normally wouldn't have thought felt part of because the secret of these spirits is how deeply they love what they're doing that's a strategy another strategy is to adopt a music that can be universally popular with much less but then that's like the stock market you know if you get lucky you know does that answer your question because I think you almost it was something else it does answer well also if they follow musicians with a high level of attainment technically not even technically but just what you mean rhythm harmony melody or you mean high level of attainment in terms of the wisdom of what they play well you said come as a present that was that's a high attainment of human terms okay back and and that's what grace is the music yeah like your touch touch it yeah yeah but they both sound different like crazy this time different absolutely how do you feel about phrasing well you see there's no one standard for phrasing but the phrasing that sound right are the phrases that are natural extensions of people who play and go on automatic pilot they go in the zone they go as I said in the book in the space these are the phrases that there's no one universal language that will come out if you go into space and now everybody will sound like that do you like it yeah yes for example it is clear that Chick Corea played Latin music it's not so clear that Keith Jarrett played Latin music well I can hear that's one of the reasons is phrasing is different you know I mean so influences I mean you know on a tangible level influences will chip affect your phrasing for example if you grew up listening to pop music you start playing jazz at 19 if you ignored the pop music you would be not playing To Your Strengths you'd be trying to be somebody else and so you would be weaker for it so a real fray it's not again it's like your question about what's the balance of practicing the playing there it there is none what's you know the difference in phrasing is difference in people's anatomy you know how big the hands are or how much breath control they have in their upbringing their emotional makeup if somebody is angry then they should play angry because otherwise they're avoiding their own strength your strength is in what's really happening with you not who you'd like to be you know although you can certainly practice upgrading things about yourself but basically if you ignore the things that you are presently about that's your playing lacks strength and attraction because we're attracted to people who are not afraid to be who they are you know does that answer that okay another question I have a question but I don't know how to phrase it like why you're practicing as a ninja with individuals practicing in the day to day things are going on so you're sitting in your practicing your scales or whatever and then you start thinking about all I got to do the dishes all right I call the phone company oh you know just how to manage the day-to-day things okay was your in practice like this seems come up you have to learn to manage your mind I mean maybe not we all to deal with this present society that we're in and probably was never any different from this for example we have all this technology not supposed to save as time right you could be on the plane and you have your whole office with you or you know you can get all these now there's no when you travel you're not away from home you're not away from your business or your office or anything and so what if humans done with that have they use this upgrading technology to create more space in their life no they use it to get busier this is what human beings do they clutter their life first with thoughts then with what the thoughts are saying so you see what you just said I got to pay the phone bill like I'll do this those were first and foremost thoughts and how does that mess you up it's true you have to pay the phone bill but do you have to think about paying the phone bill if you're brought to practice no that means subdividing what you're doing at what moment and takes mental control so when a person needs to get organized in their life I always recommend that they start by trying to learn how to organize their thinking because you could practice while the coffee is perking but if thought you have is that well it doesn't do any good unless I practice for at least an hour well if you have that thought then you're going to miss all these five and 10-minute opportunities I mean we waste more time if we borrow ten minutes of the time we waste we'll be practicing all you have to do is not have too much of an agenda and you're practicing otherwise you're always waiting for an opportunity to begin in the day the second thing is if you could pay that bill three o'clock you can pay that bill four o'clock so you say for this 20 minutes and it's always good to sort of reverse psychology views if you say I'm going to practice for two hours you don't practice at all because you're waiting for two hours come up if you say I'm gonna practice for five minutes you'll practice a lot and every time you start for five minutes before you know what it was 45 minutes so then you start to expect 45 minutes and you're not practicing again this is part of the what we do reverse psychology so if you start saying there are many five minutes opportunities in my life let me focus what I'm going to practice so much that in five minutes I can go to something and start working on it for one thing it feel good because you'll start finally start to feel it you're not a hostage to the external events in your life like when singing and I mean you're not alone when we all empower the environment to affect us and it always will but how much it affects us is up to how we train ourselves so if I say you know I'll have a student that say oh I didn't practice last week I lost my girlfriend my mother died I say well then you forgot we talked about instead of not practicing at all why didn't you practice five minutes five minutes is always your way in so if you say I'm too emotionally upset to practice these days instead of not practicing practice five minutes and you will be amazed and pleased with yourself that now these things that come up are not blocking something you got going something you got started you have to really come up strategies slip it in there and slip it in there and every time you do it that five minutes usually it's 10 or 15 and so you are functioning even in the face of resistance in the form of the world that's how you do it so it's easy for me to say to you don't think about paying the bills when you're practicing but how you going to do it it comes down to some mind control there are many modes of study for mind control there's meditation there's running there's mountain climbing there's Zen there's there's s there Scientology I mean all these things wouldn't have any attraction if people weren't personally conducting their lives or more power so it doesn't matter but what a musician does too often is underestimate how their mind is screwing everything up they say well if I just play good at will all take care of it you know but if we realize how many ways you sabotaging yourself every day all of us then you realize you're trying to walk uphill and you know like it's a Prometheus no he was tied to the rock who's the guy who always had to push the boulder up the hill one of those guys will get the information for the next video you know it's a Greek character you know god he's always pushing this thing up that's the way we lead our lives and this bundle is a bundle of thoughts so how do you feel good right now in this body in this moment it's the absence of thoughts that instantly feels good find a mode of study that will help you have more and more times where you're not thinking but just it just adds so much power and an organizational ability you know I used to have it I could catch you a second I used to have I think I ruined much of my life up to this point worrying about things that actually never happened and I heard this once someone said you know 95 99 percent of things I worry about never happened so I'm going to keep worrying you know as if he was joking but as if the worrying was what was keeping them that you're wasting your time worrying about things that aren't happening today and I started to adapt a phrase it was very helpful to me I'm not going to ask questions today that don't have answers today in other words if I ask a question like should I stay in New York I don't know there's no data today I'm not going to spend the rest of the day going back and forth well I should move oh no I better stay here you know have you done you know I mean an important decision when the answers not there stop asking the question because you're ruining time that could be potentially applied to the moment something that can be done and you may be able to order yourself I mean why share my experience I have to say that my mental processes never got any better until I actually took a course here or there you know I actually had to do something there is strength in numbers there's a power in a group you know from everything from getting sober to exercising to you know if you put me in a group of people are exercising every day I will actually start exercising miracle though that might maybe because I'm susceptible to a group I'm spending time with a group and that's what everybody in a group is doing so if everybody in the group is learning how to master their mind I'm spending at least an hour a week on that study and musicians would do well to add that to their work because it will maybe facilitate the rest of what you're doing get your question oh sure it was kind of an afterthought but um a lot of what you've been talking about is sort of preparing the setting the table to release this kind of stored up knowledge thought process whatever you want to call it um do you think that this is a process or do you think that this transformation of consciousness can happen instantaneously that's a great question a very important question because the answer is both it is a process and yes it can happen instantaneously so how is that possible I'll explain it does happen instantaneously when you change consciousness it's like whoa whoa but it doesn't stay you can't hold it let's say you experience complete freedom in your playing but for how long before you start getting bound up again so the process we all have an epiphany or a peak experience where I bet everybody here has had experience where for whatever reason they broke through and it was the best playing they ever did the best thing they ever did and they felt like they weren't even doing it because that's what that experience feels like by the way I feel like someone's doing it for you you know but it hasn't happened again or hadn't happened often and it can't happen when you choose to make it happen so the answer is breaking into that consciousness can be instantaneous learning to hold it to be able to choose to go into it like when the performance is important I say I'm going to go into that space and I'm going to let myself be a vehicle for this sound and it's going to pour through me to be able to say with certainty I can do this whenever I want to in other words be able to establish yourself in this very pristine space that is the process learning to stay there for longer periods of time the process is basically anything that brings you into that space so let's say you do take a course and that course is once a week for an hour while you're there you're going to make contact and if you didn't take that course you wouldn't it would have been connected to the rest of the craziness of your life so by setting something up institutionally in your life you have to revisit it every time it comes up that's one of the values of taking it seriously enough to actually find something to do you know something to do to master your mind and practicing staying in that space the more familiar you get with that space the more you can go ok I'm there and not get all excited about it because what the reason we can't hold is because we get excited about it it's you get excited about it it's gone go wow I'm really swinging Oh where'd it go you know almost as soon as you acknowledge how good your playing you've notice that it starts to tank on you so the practice is in not really noticing I don't really notice how I sound I knows how fields for example from not judging myself emotionally I have connected with the world of sensuality what it feels like to play the instrument the greatest singers are reveling in the sensuality of how their throat makes sound they're actually enjoying the feeling of the notes coming up now if you're trying to educate you know become a more you know musicians singer what they like to say which I really said it could happen but don't aim for it because you're aiming for something the musicians are never going to give it up anyway and then the people don't get you because you again you abandoned something for nothing you abandon the emotion of the words you abandoned the bitter sweetness of the melody and you abandon the sensuality of what it feels like to make sound in order to try to scat sing now if you can skate with it or like that you know but you know sound likes like let's just say sound like once you try to sound like you're already away from the natural act see this is above all it's like I'm pushing buttons I'm in tune with pushing the buttons Oh you know I mean I'm just feeling that I'm feeling it sensationally so when you get past the world of thinking you fall into the world of feeling you know and then you jump right back into the world of thinking because you say this is not me I'm not comfortable you know if your person thinks too much if you have a moment where you're not thinking you're going to get so excited that you're going to start thinking again so the practice is in learning to stay there longer and longer until this is who you are to make that who you are is a process to experience it is instantaneous well yeah I mean I haven't had a lot of experience with pre-college people I have had some and you know you can take it all the way down to little children the first thing a person learns when they play an instrument is a drag you know trying to learn to read or you know and they may never have made that sensual connection with the instrument who here had a teacher that said oh just fool around how does that feel what's it feel like you know immediately they were into now you have to do this put it there meanwhile your parents are giving this really inspiring message well you got to practice so for a kid playing music feels like homework that they don't get graded on and what are they need with this and that's why as soon as they can they stop but then they are always sorry they stop because they see the gift of music but they see it in other people some people had such a karmic destiny to play music or whatever you want to call it that even the educational system couldn't ruin them and as a result they became musicians you know now we get to high school I did a high school group one day it was a hybrid high school and junior high and I was trying to illustrate some how to play and change it so we took one chord and we said with the scale is now I said to this trombone player now just play any notes from that scale and he was so timid see if you know that scale and you're not going to change the chord then the excuse is not I don't know what to play you're just afraid to play it so I said to him just close your eyes and you know what the kid said he had never closed his eyes and played before because obviously he's been in band concert Orchestra concert band he's been reading music since day one you know I said close your eyes and pick any note from that scale and the only thing I want to say is play it for sure play it definitely you know and he started to do that and I tell you in the beginning is a trombone player he was down in the middle register where you don't have to commit and after once he got this it was like a sail with the winds he started playing up a register and all this stuff on that scale and then I told the other people I see I was just playing a vamp on the one chord support him with this lick you know they're now support him with that look they went data data you know whatever you know and it was a support but because they were thinking were supporting him they just naturally took a dynamic underneath what he was doing and he felt them supporting him and when he opened his eyes he said it was the greatest experience he had in his life so here are the kids in high school ready and he never really had the real experience of music you know so I think it's important and I don't know exactly there's no patented method to do this to establish the joy of playing first even if you get them in high school let's say you get him high school they've already been ruined several times over but they're not irretrievable in every way show them the joy of being able to do this and listening to it you know and then if there are issues to be taught they're going to be have so much more energy for for learning it you know when it comes to phrasing I don't know what to say about phrasing because phrasing isn't depending on your instrument it's a natural extension of one's breath you know phrasing is not the same for two different people I you know you could point out how other people did it but always trying to point to the connection of how their lives led to that you know look he was this kind of person so when he put the horn his mouth it was an extension of that you know I think that's what's important about the biography not where they studied and what year they wrote this piece and what year they died but what kind of personality they have what were their tendencies and then you listen to their music realizing that that was the sound of that personality I just think and the other quick answer to every teacher is learn this deep connection yourself and then all you have to do is walk into the room and it's just going to happen if you embody that liberation music is a liberating factor I mean it's a liberating thing the reason we don't think it is because you have to learn forms in order to be liberated it's like yoga yoga you take you do these twisting things but the idea is to create a liberation while you're in the most pretzel like shape you're actually breathing and you're actually more comfortable if you're a master yoga that person that looks like they just stuck their big toe in their ear that person is more comfortable than the guy lying on the couch liberation through form is such a great attainment that it's the greatest feeling of liberation I once heard a Rebbe a Hasidic rabbi say the problem with the 60s was everybody wanted freedom from not freedom to that's beautiful that says it all you know in other words people you know dropped out to be free and well I don't have to do that my parents did that but that's square you know and so what they did was they dropped out from everything and what they found there was decadence and boredom you want to be free by mastering the form and learning that on that level you can do no wrong every instinct you have is right there in that form that kind of freedom is that important it's a game human beings are here we're here we got to do something I mean person doesn't have to do it but we have this ability to master ideas and forms and then transcend them it's a great way to spend a life it's a lot better than just flipping through TV Guide you know now somehow you communicate that by that's what you embody I could teach I do feel I could teach any class and within a short time they would share my excitement for the subject and I think it's important to get them on board that way more important than teaching them anything so what's the point of teaching somebody something about phrasing when basically they've never experienced why they're even playing that's the biggest question why are you playing you know there was a part in my book why do we play everyone it starts with an attraction you hit a note you win wow that is a mate you know but after a while it gets to be about all these sort of lesser things like well I started I can't stop now I gotta be a success or he plays next door and you know but ultimately getting bet I try to get back to that wonder like the first time every time I'm just getting grossed in something and I say it's better than anything else I do so it's so I mean I guess I would the class I would work on them seeing first you know have that vision of what music really is so I guess my class would be purely philosophic until I felt like they caught the bug listening yeah yeah no I mean yeah but they you know some may still not get it maybe it's what you explained I I had a teacher I never liked opera but a junior high school I had a teacher who loved opera and he put this one opera I can still remember all the arias it'll Trovatore I'm back to the only opera I can remember the name too because this guy put the record on and he acted all the parts we'rewe're like that he was so into it that we were enthralled and then we went to see eel Trovatore and for one opera for one year in my life I loved opera see seeing it through the eyes of someone who loved opera so I guess you know let your love of the music yourself just shine through and that may be the reason we had another teacher who was our theatre teacher and he made so many people for so many people came through his class or his you know experience of knowing him that was the most special thing that they ever had in the whole 12 years of public school many of them went on to be actors it was the charisma of this guy what is the Chris mamaev it's made of his genuine love for theater you know I think that's the easiest way for students to piggyback on a teacher say hey look I already know how beautiful this is get on my back and I'll show you you know you

Channel: ArtistsHouseMusic

Views: 160,014

Rating: 4.9224935 out of 5

Keywords: Kenny Werner, Pianist, Jazz, Piano, master class, Keyboard, Improvisation, Performance, Practicing, technique

Id: Un3p614XExc

Length: 85min 26sec (5126 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 29 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/JLP2005]

The quote at 53 minutes crushed me with truth. The quote where all the folks we look up to are just people who are unafraid of being who they are.,

Kills me.

[u/cleverbeefalo]

I was watching this the other night. It's super inspirational to musicians but what I loved was how it went even beyond just music. I actually retweeted it because so many of these concepts apply to different aspects of life.

It also reminds me of this Victor Wooten video.

[u/JohnPaulJones1779]

"Don't quit a day before the miracle happens"

I loved this. Thanks.

[u/the_cat_kittles]

read his book "effortless mastery", its kind of like inner game of tennis, but for music. Its great!

[u/thoughtime]

This guy makes so much sense it's scary. He embodies everything I want to be. I'll be watching this a few times.

[u/DJCubs]

great find

[u/dobdobdob]

His book "Effortless Mastery" is awesome. I ran into a random article by him in a jazz magazine years back not knowing what it was, but was so intrigued that i went out of my way to look him up and order his book. Highly recommended!

[u/[deleted]]

very zen-like interpretation to musical performance. awesome find.

[u/mage2k]

Can't watch it right now but definitely saved. I just started taking piano lessons about 6 months ago and am stoked to watch it.