The Importance of Your Practice Engine

This episode is sponsored by the Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle. If your goal is to level up your jazz playing this year and feel confident in providing over jazz standards, the inner circle has everything you need and more. With monthly jazz standard studies, a library of powerful courses and a vibrant community of like-minded musicians, you're guaranteed to improve your playing every single month. Podcast listeners can get 50% off their first month when you go to ljsinnercircle.com. That's ljsinnercircle.com or find the link in the show notes. Now on to today's episode. All right, my friends. What's going on? Brent here from Learn Jazz Standards. Welcome to another episode of Learn Jazz Standards. Podcast and another Fast Track Friday episode. This is where at the end of the week here of the show, I'd like to kind of look back and see if there's any trends in some of the questions or just some extra thoughts and things I want to elaborate on. Today what I'd like to talk about is something that's really near and near to my heart, which is your practice engine. Your practice engine and really this fits under the category of practicing, being really good at practicing and oftentimes when I talk about this idea of practicing, I know that there could be a little bit of a tendency or reaction from folks to kind of turn off a little bit and just be like, that sounds boring, practicing. I don't want to learn about practicing better, because it's just we'd rather hear about what's a really cool improv strategy or what are some cool songs I should be learning or what's a cool hack or something that's going to shorten. It's shortened how long it takes me to learn something like those are more kind of sexy and interesting to talk about and when we talk about practicing, that just sounds a little bit boring. However, this is something concept, this idea of the practice engine. This is something that I've been talking a lot about to our next level jazz coaching students. And for those of you who are just completely not familiar, learn jazz standards. We have two things. We have the learn jazz standards inner circle. That's our membership. We learn tunes together in courses, and then we also have a newer program. It's been a really a lot of fun. It's our next level jazz coaching program where our students have their own private dedicated coaches, and then we also do these bi-weekly group coaching calls and a few other things. It's a great time. And the reason why with these particular students, I've been really focusing on practicing, especially in our coaching calls, and the practice engine, is because when I look at the difference between an amateur jazz player or even just a amateur musician in general, and a pro or an expert one or just a very advanced player, right? One of the biggest differences that I see is the way that they approach practicing. And I don't just mean like, oh, do they turn their cell phone off? Do they have a dedicated time every single week? Do they have a really good practice routine? I'm not just really talking about those things. I'm really talking about the way in which a musician treats practice as a skill that they're trying to master alongside of their actual jazz playing, right? Their improvisation, their solos, their comping, their bass lines, all that stuff. They're really also very concerned about their practicing and mastering their practicing. And that's the income's this concept of the practice engine. Because these musicians, the best musicians in the world understand that the practice engine, their practice engine, is what's driving all of the results, right? So just to give you a little bit of, I guess like a visual example here, you know, something to compare this to. Imagine there's a car, right? Okay, there's a car. And inside of that car is an engine, all right. Now in order for that car to run, right, it's going to need some fuel, right? So imagine like a gas container. I suppose, you know, we could go clean energy on this thing, but let's let's just go, let's just go with the fossil fuels for a second here. So there's a gap, you're think of like a gas container, right? That thing needs to have fuel. And we need to get the fuel from some kind of source, right? So think of the source as a gas station. So so you have, you have a, you have the car that's the vehicle as the engine in it. It's got the fuel and it's got the source, right? The gas station. All of those things need to be there in order for that car to run and move forward. And then on top of that, the quality of the engine itself is important, right? So now like think about, let's think about it in musical terms here. Let's think about the source. So the source could be this podcast is a source of musical information. This course could be, maybe a membership like our learn jazz standards in a circle. Maybe it's a YouTube channel. Maybe it's, it's a teacher, right? An actual like a coach, like our next level jazz coaching students have. That's a source, right? That's a source of information, right? And then the fuel, let's say the fuel is, it's the exercises that you're working on. It's the music theory that you're learning that you're being taught. It's, you know, even some of the practice strategies, it's, it's, it's the solos that you're learning. It's the songs. It's, you know, fill in the blanks. It's like the things that you're actually doing and working on. That's like the fuel. And you, you're like the vehicle and you and your instrument. You're the vehicle. You're the car, if you will, right? And then you have your engine and that's your practice engine. It's the way that you're practicing and utilizing all this stuff. And so something I want you to pay attention to really quickly here is you could have the best source ever, right? You could be like literally, you could get like the best jazz teacher in the entire world, right? In your corner, you could get the best course. You could join the best jazz membership, right? You could have the best fuel as a result of that, right? Like you're learning the, the, the best solos that that was designated for you to learn. You're the best songs. They're the, you know, your, your, your coach is finding the cracks and you're playing, right? And, and giving you the best fuel possible, right? And then your vehicle, you could have the best instrument, right? The best instrument, which does make a difference, by the way. You get a great saxophone, great guitar, great piano, all those things. And so you're set up for success there. But if your practice engine is not good, if you don't have a good practice engine, that means that your vehicle isn't going to be going anywhere, right? Let's just say your, your engine doesn't even work. You have the best source, you have the best fuel, you have the best vehicle, but you just don't have an engine that actually works. And then let's just say it's is working, but not very well, right? Well, your engine is not very good. It's a V6. Actually, I don't even know anything about engines. So I shouldn't name types of engines. I have no idea. You know, how good your practice engine will determine how fast you're able to improve. Right? So there's the, there's the Achilles heel right there. If you could have everything going well for you, but if that practice engine is not functioning properly, then it's not going to work. Right? So that's why it's so important to talk about your practice engine. So how do you develop a good practice engine, right? Well, I'll give you a few little things to think about here, as far as that goes. So first and foremost, right? You need to be always working on things that actually matter for you. And that doesn't necessarily mean things that are good, like good practice, right? Oh, hey, someone told me to learn jazz solos by ear. I should be doing that, but is that what you need right now, right? Always make sure you're practicing things that, you know, are, are a weakness of yours or even a strength of yours that you're trying to develop and get better. But always make sure that that is what you were doing, right? You were working on things that you know work, right? It's like the 80/20 rule, right? You want to be working on the 20% of things that's getting you 80% of the results at all, all times. And then how are you always reorienting yourself towards those things, right? How are you auditing yourself, you know, listening back to your playing, seeing if something that you're practicing is working or not? If it's working, you're doing more of that. If it's not working, you're trying a new approach, right? If you're noticing one problem in your playing, becoming more prominent than the others, you're shifting focus back to that, right? You're looking, you're always analyzing your playing, you're looking at your playing, you're getting feedback on your playing, and you're making pivots, right? Kind of thinking of not to use something like it gives violent, but like thinking about a torpedo and the way a torpedo works, torpedo shoots out. And then it's constantly sending out signals towards its target to see how far off it is, right? So maybe it's a little far to the left, signal goes off and it goes, okay, let's move a little bit more to the right. And then another signal goes off and maybe it's a little too far to the right now. So it's going to move back to the left. And until it finally hits its final destination there, right? So that's what we're also doing with our practicing, right? We're always trying to make adjustments. We're not just doing things for the sake of doing things or doing them because people said that that's what we should be doing. We're doing things that are specific to where what we need to do in order to get to the next level as a jazz musician. And then yeah, there's other aspects of the practice engine as well. I mean, I've done lots of trainings on this sort of thing. But, you know, thinking, yes, of course, about what kind of practice strategies are you using, right? When you're learning a piece of new information, how are you going about learning it, right? For example, if you learn the melody of a jazz standard, how do you actually do that? Because that actually does matter, right? Matters how much muscle memory you'll retain from that, how well you actually know that melody, how deeply you know that melody. The strategy does actually matter. So what strategies are you actually implementing when you are learning material, right? On one hand, we're talking about figuring out what to practice that's most ideal for you. But on the other hand, how are you actually practicing those things? What strategies are you using in order to make sure that, you know, you're really milking those for all their worth. You're getting as much of a return on investment on your practice time as possible, right? So this is just to get you thinking about this concept of the practice engine and really just to highlight the importance of, hey, if your practice engine isn't working very well, doesn't matter how much money you're spending on coaches, on teachers or courses or how much time you spend scrolling YouTube looking at your lessons and listening to podcasts like this one. Doesn't really matter because if your practice engine isn't working, you're kind of just filling your vehicle up with fuel and then not burning it very well, right? Makes sense. All right, my friends, that is all for this week of the Learn to Ask Standards podcast. Of course, we have another great week coming up. So make sure you subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening. And of course, if you've never left a rating and a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts, if you could just take a second to do that right now, that would really make a mean a lot to me, make a big difference for the podcast. Just hope so that people see that this is a show worth listening to and especially been listening to a long time and you have something good to say. Then that'd be really appreciated. So thanks for taking the time to do that really quickly. Again, subscribe to the show. I don't want you to miss out on any episodes coming up here. But we'll see you next time. Until then, happy practicing and cheers.