I’m gonna 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 19th century, trade with China. You know? Yeah.

They won the war. Anyway okay. So you can if you don’t know, you can formulate something you want or you can, you know, we can just begin. Yes. Inconsistency of performing.

Inconsistency of performing. You mean inconsistency as to when you’re in the zone, so to speak? Just being in control. Well, there’s a couple issues there. 1 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. You see, because that’s that’s sort of the ego. The ego wants you or that that we’ll 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 diseased 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, well, that’s nothing. It’s this stuff.

I I gotta 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 mind’s 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’re 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 go 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. 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, plan it 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 the 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 into 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 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. It 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. 1st, you learn how to touch your instrument without thinking. Or I don’t know if there’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 I ever heard.

Isn’t that you know? In other words, I convinced myself. I don’t wanna wait and do you know, you can you feel what I was doing? Evaluating this sound. No.

I wanna jam that frequency by Wow. And actually, doesn’t it sound beautiful? See what happens I thought so anyway. 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 wanna 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 to like you. You hope there’s a critic there and he’s writing good things, which he never is there. He occasionally writes good things, but he’s never actually there. You know? So these things are attachments which make it difficult to let go like you were letting 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 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 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 the gig. Do you understand what I’m saying? Does that answer it, or do 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 gonna 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’re gonna 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 2 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 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 evolves into 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 that happen to you? Okay. Thank you for saying yes. No. No.

She said, I’ll say yes what the hell the video is 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 there’s 2 or 3 chords in a 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 on those chords, you don’t find one way of playing through them, but perhaps twenty ways. Twenty 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 than there was any other point, then you’re done. See, 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. And, of course, it’s always gonna be beyond where you’re at. But if 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 to play on 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, 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 plan 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 adult 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, 3 months, and it wasn’t ready to happen yet. You know?

They have a saying in the various programs, you know, AA and all that. They say, don’t quit, a day before the miracle happens. And that could very well apply to your practicing. If you’re trying to learn to play in 5 or 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 2 different flows. The flow of playing is the acceptance of everything that’s coming through you. No time to to no centurions at the gate, so to speak. There’s no there’s no time for them to gate check everything that’s coming through.

You just gotta let it come through. And the thing that makes it sound good, this sounds like Harold Hill from 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, and every like, what was that?

That’s impossible. That’s all wrong, or it’s corny, and it 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, wait a minute. I just told my class today that you can’t do this. And that was and what he just played changed my life.

So, wait a minute, I have to reconsider this. So new theory is made by free souls who 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 they’re not afraid to go into those areas. What they have that they never talk about is a blank accept 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 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 you’re a sax player, maybe after every meal.

So you don’t get it in the mouthpiece. Although, birds they said bird had sandwiches and beer in 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 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 gonna have to do it again. Doesn’t matter how it goes. Boy, that was an outstanding tooth brushing session.

But you know what? It’s not gonna change anything. You still gotta 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 gonna get it.

And that is the the genesis of the negative attitude. I’m not gonna get this. All that’s happened is you haven’t gotten it yet. But you see the ego takes that and it 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 I 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 2 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 of 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, in other words, 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 1 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 unless you have to save yourself emotionally.

But if you’re not attached, then you can look clearly at 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 worst gig well, things I did wrong, man. I lost the time. I did 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. Whatever, you know. No. It happened because you haven’t mastered the form. If you mess up the form, it’s because you haven’t mastered form.

If you lose 1, 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 are honest with yourself, you know what to practice.

But if it hurts whenever you’ve realized that you can’t do something, then what you’re gonna do is rationalize. You’re gonna gloss over subjects because you remember hearing yourself play it well once or twice. So you don’t think you need to work on that, and you’re gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna be like an adventure and not the adventure that you were looking for. So there’s, some institutional or fundamental things that have to be learned for 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 gonna play it.

You can throw tunes by them, and they’re just gonna you know, as soon as they see it. Because the elements that 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 you are. 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 play 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 played great and a few people complimented you. Right?

Do you find that true? That your self esteem goes up and down with your playing. Does that happen to everybody here? Does that not happen to 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 into how good you play for two reasons. 1, 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 you won’t play as well. If you are gonna go up and down with how good you play, then it’s gonna 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 gonna feel bad.

You know what I mean? Now, what is that a bad thing? It is a bad thing because there’s 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 wanted to show them, or a jury. You know, you’re a jury.

You know? Think about that time. How did you play? When all everything was I gotta 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 in 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. And it’s going well. It’s going really well.

It doesn’t I mean, it doesn’t do me any good. If I’m gonna 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 trying to 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 3 months, like like you were even saying, I had a great recording session.

I said, well, you have to be concerned whether it lasts. It’s not it’s not that the reason it won’t last 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 shit 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 2nd 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. It’s 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 the practicing. They put pressure on the practicing. And what does that pressure do? It causes you to practice more things because you wanna 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 will 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 ever 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 3 or 4 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 3 sections and do a rhythmic practice, a harmonic practice. But I will not give myself, like, a program of 12 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 sabotages your 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 I almost anticipate that question.

How do I discriminate and 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 gonna slow down for you to meditate. You have to stake out 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 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 in all these things, it’s the mind and the pressure it puts on your life because your life’s not good enough. 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 it comes to you, the freer you’re gonna be. So I mean that pretty much all came out of your question.

We have another question that we could that we could work with? Yeah. How much should should you balance, practicing practicing on specific things and, also practicing your performing. I mean, you don’t 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 do you about how much playing versus how much practicing. And I think there’s no formula.

Play anytime you feel like you wanna 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 gonna 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 gonna be late for everywhere and you’re not gonna go anywhere. Okay? So you can’t do that stuff in 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 wanna be attached to that performance. So that the next one could 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’re playing.

Not just criticism, but I mean really a diagnosis. You know, Your rhythm could be this. Your lines are very limited to that. Your, you know, sense of the you know? And then be given exercises to correct them.

A lot of times you do a clinic and there’s a great player there, not necessarily a great teacher, but a great player. And he goes, oh, man, you’re not swinging. You know, next week I want you to swing. You know, come back. You’re still not swinging, man.

Yeah. Well, don’t just criticize. Give somebody an idea what to do about it. That swinging, I don’t know what to do about it either because that’s an esoteric idea of swing. But playing on changes?

Sure, there are things you can do. Playing better rhythm? Sure, there’s things you could do. Getting better intonation. There’s 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 as just like brushing your teeth. And then what will happen is 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 when you’re practicing. In your practicing, actually investigate another voicing.

Then it might just come out. So that’s really the answer to that. It’s not at all any kind of formula. Just make sure I mean, actually, you know, it it can’t just say make sure that you practice consistently. Because there’s always a pre step to all this.

Make sure that you always play freely and never question yourself. Make sure that you practice absolutely consistently and only focus on things. You know, the 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 your teaching a dog. You know? If the dog says, sit, and the dog comes out. No.

You know? We we have a dog that just loves to go out as a puppy. He 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 him with groceries, boom, this dog runs out. This dog’s gotta sit.

You open the door, and when you say go, you say go. Every time he he moves, and I didn’t tell him to move, I close the door again. Until he realizes that if he doesn’t sit, he’s not gonna get to go out. Well, I would sort of tell you the musician and 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 you know, 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 of what I’m saying. I mean you’re not thinking about yourself. Whenever you are that’s why television is so attractive. 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 intelligence, nobody gives a shit 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, you’re balanced. 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 from there.

And when that’s broken, you walk away. And what happens is the length of time that you can stay that focused grows. See, if you let that practice morph into just, you know, I’ve just gotta 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 that you’ve made markings of 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 in your practicing, and you work on them until you hear them in your in your playing. And you’re not looking for them. Everything I practice, I never ever care if I ever hear in 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 I always use time signatures because it’s a very stark example. If you want to be able to play freely in 5, you practice models of ideas in 5.

You don’t just play, you know, because that all that is is an inferior way of playing 5. It’s playing 5 that counts it out for you. That was okay when American musicians first started to play 5, but but that’s not gonna go anywhere. So you practice the way you wish you could play in 5. How long should you do it?

Until somebody calls something at 5, And you feel as free as you did in 4. Each practice is like a 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 5 when you’re not yet making sense in 4. Because 4 is the dominant time signature of western music. And you can be employed. You could play great in 5 and not not play good in 4, and you’re not and you’re not gonna play anywhere. You know?

Whereas you could play great in 4 and not be able to play 5 at all, and you’re gonna play everywhere. So to jump to 5, this is just another gross example to give you an idea. Taking things out of sequence will also sabotage you playing. If you’re working on 5 and you really haven’t achieved anything in 4 yet, then the best you’ll get in 5 is the level that you achieved in 4. Do you understand what I just said?

You gotta 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 in 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 713. Because people will be amazed at how natural it feels. That’s my whole setup.

I 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 bone in its mouth.

And he looks in the water and sees the dog with a bone in his mouth, and 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 what I mean? But I work on creating more somethings in my practicing. Another question?

Anybody? Yes. What’s a song? What’s a song? Yeah.

Song is, a determined amount of bars. Usually, song refers to words. So, a shansong, as in shansong and Well, in lieu of what you’re talking about, it’s like that’s something that kinda stays over time. Like, do you access a song, or does the 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 1. 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. Now the reason I’m playing that so well is because that key is comfortable.

Most of those chords are comfortable. And I don’t have to be too interesting with my lines because the chord progression of Stella is so interesting. So but whatever, that’s like being home playing Cell by Starlight. 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 tune. 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 gonna do your recording, your CD, and everybody will, not that the world needs it, but you will anyway. There’s already too many damn CDs in the world, but but at some point you’re gonna wanna do a CD. It’s gonna 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 and have total control. It’s funny, when I think of a singer, I think of one of the most compelling, amazing performances I ever witnessed was I only saw Carmen McRae one time. But it must have been like what it was like to see John Coltrane. Because, I mean, it was 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? Oh, the song. Yeah. I think the people that are successful, meaning people tune into their music Yeah.

Or music is Or music is played well. Yeah. Well, that’s a little broader. I don’t know. Or just stay.

I would say that everybody that you would say the music they they’re successful because of the way the music comes out. Another way of saying is that they are in complete control of the material they’re playing. That or that maybe their music was a different branch that needed to be explored? 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 in, 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 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 Jarrett. Like, that funky was not played in jazz before Keith Jarrett. I mean, 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 notice that phenomenon? Why?

Anybody know why? Yep. What? Passionate. 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 I always noticed that, you know, like Brazilian percussionists were thought of as such, you know, high free spirits and percussion you know, like people from, like, different ethnicities.

And that a a a guy from Brooklyn or from Long Island shouldn’t expect of himself the poetry of life that, say, someone from the rainforest. 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.

What I had to do is continually go deeper and deeper into what that is. Go so deep that 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 I think you almost it was something else.

Yeah. It does answer? Well, also, if if all musicians with the high level of attainment, you’re speaking of like Technically. Not even technically, but just her musically. Well, I I you mean rhythm, harmony, and melody?

Or you mean high level of attainment in terms of the wisdom of what they play? Well, you said Carmen McVeigh has a presence and that she That was that’s a high attainment of human terms. Okay. That and And that’s what graces the music. Yeah.

Like, you’re talking about Chick Corea, KiKJae. Yeah. But they both sound different. Like, phrasing, they sound different. Absolutely.

How do you feel about phrasing and improvisation? Well, you see, there’s no one standard for phrasing. But the phrasings 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 in the space. And now everybody will sound like that. Do you feel like people’s presence are different because they’re different individuals? Yeah. They’re awfully, really well, and great names.

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 his phrasing is different.

You know what I mean? So influences, I mean, you know, on a tangible level, influences will affect your phrasing. For example, if you grew up listening to pop music, you started playing jazz at 19. If you ignored the pop music, you would be not playing to your strength. You’d be trying to be somebody else and so you would be weaker for it.

So a real phrase it’s not again, it’s like, your question about what’s the balance of, practicing and playing? There there is none. What’s, you know the difference in phrasing is difference in people’s anatomy, you know, how 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, while you’re practicing as an individual’s practicing in the day to day things that going on. So you’re sitting here, you’re practicing your scales or whatever. And then you start thinking about, oh, I gotta do the dishes. Oh, I gotta call the phone company.

Or, you know, just how do you manage the day to day things. Okay. Was it during practice, like the scenes come up. And 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 it was never any different from this. For example, we have all this technology, and that’s supposed to save us 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 have humans done with that? Have they used this upgraded 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, I got to 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 about to practice?

No. That means subdividing what you’re doing at what moment, and that 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’s perking. But if a 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 5 10 minute opportunities. I mean, we waste more time. If we borrow 10 minutes of the time we waste, we’ll be practicing. All you have to do is not have too much of an agenda in your practicing. Otherwise, you’re always waiting for an opportunity to begin in the day.

The second thing is, if you could pay that bill at 3 o’clock, you can pay that bill at 4 o’clock. So you say, for this 20 minutes and it’s always good to to sort of reverse psychology. If you if you say I’m gonna practice for 2 hours, you don’t practice at all because you’re waiting for 2 hours to come up. If you say I’m going to practice for 5 minutes, you’ll practice a lot. And every time you start for 5 minutes, before you know it, 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 5 minute opportunities in my life. Let me focus what I’m going to practice so much that in 5 minutes I can go to something and start working on it. For one thing, it’ll feel good because you’ll starting finally start to feel that you’re not a hostage to the external events in your life.

Like when 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, well, I didn’t practice last week. I lost my girlfriend.

Oh, my mother died. I say, well, then you forgot what we talked about. Instead of not practicing at all, why didn’t you practice 5 minutes? 5 minutes is always your way in. So if you say, I’m too emotionally upset to practice these days, instead of not practicing, practice 5 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 with strategies. Slip it in there and slip it in there. And every time you do it, that 5 minutes usually is 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 are you gonna 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, EST.

There’s Scientology. I mean, all these things wouldn’t have any attraction if people weren’t personally conducting their lives with 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, that will all take care of it.

You know? But if you realize how many ways you’re sabotaging yourself every day, all of us, Then you realize you’re trying to walk uphill, and you’re, you know, like, is it Prometheus? No. He was tied to the rock. Who’s the guy that always had to push the boulder up the hill?

One of those guys. We’ll we’ll get the information for the next video. You know, he’s he’s he’s a Greek character. You know, a 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 it just it just adds so much power and and organizational ability. You know, I used to have a I’ll I’ll I’ll catch you in 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% of the things I worry about never happen. So I’m gonna keep worrying.

You know, as if they I mean, he was joking, but as if the worrying was what was keeping them you’re wasting your time worrying about things that aren’t happening today. And I started to adapt the phrase that was very helpful to me. I’m not gonna 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 what I mean? An important decision. When the answer is 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, I 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 who are exercising every day, I will actually start exercising. Miracle though that might may be because I’m susceptible to a group. I’m spending time with a group, and that’s what everybody in the 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.

Yeah. You had a question? Sure. It was kind of an afterthought, but, a lot of what you’ve been talking about is sort of preparing, setting the table to release this kind of stored up knowledge, thought process, whatever you wanna call it. 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, woah, 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. You feel like someone’s doing it for you.

You know? But it hasn’t happened again Or it hasn’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 gonna go into that space, and I’m gonna let myself be a vehicle for this sound that’s gonna 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 gonna 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, okay, I’m there, and not get all excited about it. Because what the reason we can’t hold it is because we get excited about it. As soon as you get excited about it, it’s gone. Go, wow, I’m really swinging. Uh-oh, where’d it go?

You know, almost as soon as you acknowledge how good you’re playing, you ever 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 notice how it feels.

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 out. Now if you’re trying to educate, you know, become a more, you know, a musician’s singer, like they like to say, which I really say it could happen, but don’t aim for it because you’re aiming for something. The musicians are never gonna give it up anyway.

And then the people don’t get you because you again, you abandoned something for nothing. You abandoned the emotion of the words. You abandoned the bittersweetness of the melody, and you abandoned the sensuality of what it feels like to make sound in order to try to scat sing. Now if you can what’s that? Or yeah.

Or like that. You know? But, you know, sound like like. Just to say sound like. Once you try to sound like, you’re already away from the the natural act.

See, this is above all, it’s like I’m pushing buttons. The I’m I’m in tune with pushing the buttons. You know what 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 you’re a person that thinks too much, if you have a moment where you’re not thinking, you’re gonna get so excited that you’re gonna 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 could 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’s that feel? What’s it feel like? You know? Immediately, they were into now you have to do this. Put it there.

My meanwhile, your parents are giving this really inspiring message. Well, you gotta practice. So for a kid, playing music feels like homework that they don’t get graded on. And what do 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 wanna call it that even the educational system couldn’t ruin them. And as a result, they became musicians. You know?

Now when you get to high school, I I did a high school group one day. It was a hybrid high school and junior high. And I was trying to illustrate to them how to play and change it. So we took one chord, and we said what 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 1, you know. I said close your eyes and pick any note from that scale And the only thing I wanna 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 once he got this, it was like a sail with the winds. He started playing the upper 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, then now support him with that lick. They went da da da da da, you know, whatever, you know. And it was a support, but because they were thinking we’re 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 already, and he never really had the real experience in music, You know? So I think it’s important, and I don’t know exact there’s no patented method to do this, to establish the joy of playing first. Even if you got them in high school.

Let’s say you got them in 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 is the depending on your instrument, it’s a natural extension of one’s breath. You know? Phrasing is not the same for for for 2 different people. You know, you could point out how other people did it, but always try 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 in his mouth, mouth, it was an extension of that. You know? I 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 do they have?

What 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 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 at 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, a rebbe, a Hasidic rabbi say the problem with the sixties 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’ve got to do something. I mean, a 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 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? You know? It starts with an attraction.

You hit a note and you went, Wow, that is amazing. 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 I, you know. But ultimately getting back I try to get back to that wonder like the first time. Every time. I just get engrossed 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 the bug. Listening? Yeah.

Yeah. No. I mean, yeah. But, they you know, some may still not get it. Maybe it’s what you explain.

I had a teacher. I never liked opera. But in junior high school, I had a teacher who loved opera. And he put it in this one opera. I can still remember all the arias.

Il Trovatore. In fact, it’s the only opera I can remember the name to because this guy put the record on, and he acted all the parts. He went like that. He was so into it that we were enthralled. And then we went to see Il Trovatore.

And for 1 opera, for 1 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 theater teacher, and he made so many people for so many people who 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 charisma made of? 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?