Episode #1: Isaac Wisdom

Isaac Wisdom is a pianist and trombonist from Arizona with music degrees from Berklee College of Music’s Valencia, Spain campus and from Arizona State University. He plays in many different styles, but especially enjoys jazz, samba, salsa, soul, and funk. Outside of music, Isaac enjoys learning languages and working on hobby electronic projects.

In this episode, we discuss what it means to study, learn, and teach complex skills like additional languages and music performance. We delve into what it means to be a musician, and Isaac sheds light on how newcomers navigate the jazz scene and overcome challenges associated with performing with others. You can find Isaac on Instagram by searching @isaacwisdom. 

© Hunter Langenhorst, creator of The Language & Life Podcast. All rights reserved. Episodes, audio recordings, original music, and artwork are protected by copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution is prohibited without written permission.

Transcript

Being a second language learner studying abroad

Hunter 0:18

So anybody who knows you, I think would describe you as a person of all trades. You've studied a lot of things, you play a lot of instruments, you know how to fix a lot of things, and you've been a lot of places in the world. So uh what brought you to study music in Valencia in Spain? Um, what was your trajectory like as a person in college, as a person in high school? Yeah, just overall what brought you there and how did you end up there?

Isaac 0:47

So when I was coming towards the end of like my undergrad, I knew I wanted to go to grad school, and I knew that I wanted to go somewhere that was Spanish speaking, and I knew I wanted to study music. And so when you kind of take all three of those things, it it kind of reduces pretty f heavily your what your options are. And so, you know, really you're looking at somewhere in Latin America or somewhere in Spain, right? Um and as far as music programs go, there's not a ton of music programs like a master of music or something equivalent that exists in Latin America. Um and so one time I was looking at programs, uh grad graduate programs for music, and there was an ad, there's literally an ad for Berkeley, Valencia, that showed up. I didn't even know that it existed, right? Which is ironic considering that we were literally there, like right next to it without being aware when we visited Valencia, right? Um and so it ended up checking a lot of those boxes. Uh one of the things that's harder than you might think about trying to go to school abroad is that different countries have different school systems or different school years. And so a lot of the programs, you know, when I was looking at graduate programs at what would otherwise be a normal time to be thinking about those things here in the US and Latin America, a lot of Latin America was too late. It's like hey, you missed the window. But what Berkeley Valencia has is that since it's an at the end of the day, it's an American university, it's under the Berkeley umbrella, um, it follows the United States school year, right? And so it ended up just being the perfect sort of well, it checks all those boxes, you know. It's a graduate program in a Spanish-speaking country, um, for music. And so it ended up being perfect. And so I kind of knew I think as soon as I was saw that this program existed, I was like, Yeah, this is this is the one to do, you know.

Hunter 2:40

Yeah, so for those in for those wondering, Isaac mentioned that we had been there previously, referring to Valencia. We had been on a vacation there after attending a summer school in Germany. So at that time you're saying you didn't know the school actually existed? Yeah, I had no idea.

Isaac 2:55

Yeah, and even at that time I had no intentions of necessarily going to grad school, you know, it and especially not in like a Spanish-speaking country. You know, we I was doing the Spanish minor, but I didn't necessarily have any plan that, like, well, I'm taking the Spanish minor because I'm going to live in Spain or Mech or whatever, right? So it kind of just ended up working out very, very convenient, very conveniently, that I'd finished the Spanish minor at ASU and then went on to live in Spain. And that's one of the big differences, I think, that at least between the experience that I had when I lived there and a lot of my classmates when I lived there is that the vast majority of them didn't speak Spanish, like at all. And so, I mean, obviously the people who came from Latin America or from Spain itself, they they spoke Spanish, and so they were able to interact with the culture in a different way, but so was I, and I was one of the few people who was, you know, not a native speaker who was able to do that of Spanish, right? Yeah, well, yeah, and so I think it makes a uh the experience I had is totally different, and I know because I lived I had two roommates when I lived there. Did you know them prior? No, I didn't know them prior. And were they also Americans? They were both Americans, both from the West Coast, one from Colorado, one from the Bay Area, and so culturally pretty similar, right? But the difference was I could speak Spanish, and so I got to do so many things, meet so many people, and just get involved in Valencian culture through that vector, you know?

Hunter 4:20

Do you think that made a difference, your previous experience of Spanish, and just maybe so people aren't wondering, you know, how you learned Spanish or where it came from, could you explain a little bit of that? But as you do, um, could you speak to whether knowing Spanish made you feel more comfortable going out into the community, whereas you might have noticed other people who didn't speak Spanish not as confident or not as comfortable, not as um able to develop a sense of belonging because of the language abilities? Yeah.

Isaac 4:52

I think the the funny thing, at least when we're talking about Europe as a whole, is that many countries in Europe have a very, very good English level. Like Norway has like over 80% of the population speaks English fluently. In the Netherlands, it's similar. And so um I've heard from people or I've seen on the internet people say stuff like, you know, if you're going to the Netherlands, like you don't need to know Dutch. You and if you're going to Amsterdam or any of these metropolitan areas, there's no need. In fact, it's if you're trying to learn Dutch, you're going to have a very hard time because everyone notices it clocks immediately that you're an American, that you're an English speaker, and it's like, oh, I can I speak English, it's okay. Spain is not one of those countries. Uh the level of English is some people speak it very well, but the most of the most people don't speak English super well. But the thing I noticed is that I also think it comes down a bit to your personality type. And so some of the friends, some of my colleagues when I lived there, they were very outgoing people, regardless of what language we might have been trying to work in at the moment. And so those people knew they didn't have the fear to just put themselves out there in what might otherwise be an uncomfortable situation, right? They knew I might have a little bit of trouble understanding people, but they weren't afraid of it. And so maybe the example I can give is that one of my roommates, he arrived in Spain, he didn't speak any Spanish at all.

Hunter 6:14

Wow.

Isaac 6:14

And by the time we left, he was ordering pizza on the phone. On the phone. On the phone. Yeah. And of course, it wasn't like perfect Spanish at all. It was very broken, but he got his pizza. His pizza showed up. And so as far as like communication goes, like he he figured it out. He he's his communicative purpose was served. Um, and I think that comes from the fact that his personality just allowed him to make mistakes. He wasn't worried about making mistakes, he wasn't worried about trying to speak perfectly, you know. And so I think that makes a big change. In in my situation, I'm not necessarily that person, and so the fact that I arrived already having a very high level of Spanish, I think was important. Um, but to touch on how I learned Spanish, I think I could say that I started learning Spanish to some extent when I was in like eighth grade, and I just for whatever reason downloaded Duolingo and started trying to learn. And so I would do that kind of semi-seriously, not super seriously, but I, you know, when you start at eighth grade, if you study something semi semi-seriously for enough time, you learn quite a bit. And so by the time I got to ASU, I had never actually studied Spanish formally, and of course I had um a year or two years of Spanish or whatever we have to do in high school, but it was all it was online in my case, and so it was worthless. I didn't learn anything. In fact, I I um it didn't check that I remember that the tool we were using, it didn't check if you were correct at all. Or no, it checked if you were correct, but it didn't care if you were wrong at first. And so I figured out pretty quickly that you could just brute force all the answers, right? Most of the activities were like drag and drop sort of things, and so I figured out, oh, it doesn't care, it just cares that eventually you get it right. And so I wrote or I found a tool that would basically just click on every option, drag and drop, and try to do it as quickly as possible. And so I made this thing to do that, and then I would say, okay, go, and it would just go brrrrrrr. It just it would get through the whole lesson in like a minute.

Hunter 8:14

So almost instead of a class on Spanish, it's a class on problem solving, and it sounds like you did a pretty good job.

Isaac 8:20

Oh yeah. I mean, uh and there's lots of people who use scripting like that in their everyday lives, but did I learn Spanish? No, not at all. But apparently that wasn't necessarily the goal wasn't to learn Spanish, the goal was to say, oh look, our students have taken two years of Spanish, right? Right.

Hunter 8:38

Yeah, that's a problem.

Isaac 8:39

Which is a separate, those are totally separate things.

Hunter 8:41

Yeah. But anyway, it's a whole it's a whole can of worms there.

Isaac 8:45

My own self-directed study allowed me to test straight into Spanish 202 when I got to ASU, and then I did the Spanish minor there. And when I finished the Spanish minor, I kept taking Spanish classes, and so I'd say I left ASU with a pretty high level of academic university context, Spanish, right? Which is totally different from what happens when you're actually speaking to people in the street. But because I had that base, that you know, very um rigid or academic base of the language, I wasn't able to get a lot out of the actual experience talking to people, right?

Hunter 9:27

So and do you attribute any of that sense of success or the feeling that, hey, yeah, I was able to talk to people to how your classes gave you confidence? Do you think how much would you attribute to, of course, on one hand, knowing vocabulary and grammar forms versus attributing your success and confidence to just having that increase in confidence of having been through years of Spanish and having been through years of activities that made you feel vulnerable and made you get out of your comfort zone? You know, what's the what's the ratio?

Isaac 10:01

You know, what's funny is one of the things I first remember feeling when I when I got to Spain is I had this sense of like, man, that didn't prepare me for the type of language I need at all. One of the one of the examples I remember is one time our sink got clogged. I tried to talk to our land, our landlady about it, and it was or I tried to, and it was in that moment I was like, Well, I don't know the word for sync, I don't know the word for clog, I don't know the word for plumber. And so this is over the phone, right?

Hunter 10:31

So you're limited, you can't.

Isaac 10:32

Well, I point it through the voice messages too, and I she she refused to ever type. She was an older later, I think, a lady. I think she had a hard time uh with the dexterity, and so she would only ever send me voice messages, even when I would be like, hey, I'm not a native speaker, and like it's hard for me to understand, some over didn't matter. And so you learn you figure it out. Um but I remember this feeling of like, wow, so many of these little things that you need to know in everyday life, which were just not things that I remembered learning in the classroom. And it's possible that sure, some at some day in class we had a day where we talked about where I learned the word plumber. But I didn't need it in that moment, you know, it wasn't important, and so it didn't stick, right? And I think when you extend this idea to everything, there's just so many little things that happen in everyday life that, for example, I think a great example is when you think of like words for utensils. Uh every language class I've ever taken, in any language, there's always some day or some week where it's like, okay, we're talking about food, we're talking about stuff that's in the kitchen, we're talking about utensils. I in because I'm at univers a university though, and speaking Spanish or whatever language in a university, I never need the word fork. Because we're never talking about forks, you know, for example.

Hunter 11:49

Yeah.

Isaac 11:50

And part of it is I wonder, well, how much of that is just the f the way that it is, you know, if if the way that we absorb language is just based on that sense of need, if you don't need the words of that the that category, or you know, if you don't need the word fork to be successful in the classroom, then you're not going to retain it. The moment that I had uh the moment that our sink was clogged and I needed to call a plumber, I learned the word plumber, and I still remember it to the all those words to this day because it was very important in that moment, you know? Uh-huh. And so I don't know if it's uh but I remember that feeling of the things that I should have learned, I didn't learn them. But then there's so many aspects of life that we use language that it's impossible to prepare someone for all of them, right?

Hunter 12:43

Absolutely.

Isaac 12:44

And so I I think after taking more language classes again, I kind of realized it's like, well, you know, I it wasn't that I didn't learn that type of vocabulary, this everyday vocabulary. Even if I had been taught it, I just wouldn't have retained it. Because it wasn't what I needed in that moment.

Hunter 13:02

Wasn't a part of your life world, uh so to speak, at that at that time at least. Exactly. Yeah. And what you're saying is that we could be learning lists upon lists of vocabulary words. Uh, but one day, inevitably, there's going to be a situation that we encounter where the words needed aren't on the list. And I think this also speaks to a similar sensation that every person who speaks any language experiences, which is that there are some experiences and some things that are difficult to explain, even if one has a distinguished proficiency in their home language. Some things just are hard to put into words, and it's even more the case when you're speaking a second language. Um But yeah, I think I relate at least to what you're saying about um words sticking with you when they're part of your part of your life world and part of what's important for you, part of how you're integrating into your immediate environment and doing action, engaging in action with the world and with others in in that environment.

Isaac 14:00

And I I think Spanish in particular is a really great example of how you at the end of the day what you can functionally teach people in a university classroom is limited because there are so many dialects of Spanish.

Hunter 14:13

Of course.

Isaac 14:13

And there's so much regional vocabulary that you think of a word like popcorn in Spanish as like 30 words for it, and it's like, well, realistically, is it worth us taking a day in the classroom to be like, well, here's all 30 words for popcorn, depending on what part of the world you're in, make sure you know them. Probably not. Because at the end of the day, you end up in Spain, you're gonna learn the word for popcorn in Spain because you need it, right? And so I experienced a lot of those sorts of encounters too, and that the words that I learned at ASU and the ASU Spanish program, which was admittedly it's more Latin American based, and even within that, it's more Mexican Spanish based because Mexico's right there, right? A lot of those words weren't the words that I needed, right? There were different synonyms that I needed to learn to actually communicate with people in Spain.

Hunter 15:04

And do they work enough?

Isaac 15:06

Yeah, and they you know they they worked totally, right? I remember one of the ones I really remember is like the word for for bacon that I learned is is tocino, right? And I go to the counter at that was like the first day where I go to the cafeteria um at the school and I was ordering a little sandwich um and they had bacon there, and so I was like, I mean that's tocino. And the word in Valencia, northern Spain, it's not tocino, it's bacon. Who would have thought? Well, yeah, exactly. And I was like, Tocino, and she was like, What? She looked at me like, what are you talking about? I was like, that, eso que está ya, right? And she's like, Oh, query decir bacon. I was like, I guess I do, right?

Hunter 15:47

I guess that is what I meant to say, right? Thank you for correcting me. Yes.

Isaac 15:50

So I I I think there's only so much that you can I think the thing that I took away is, well, you know what uh studying Spanish at ASU did give me was that base. It gave me a very solid base of knowledge to then build upon. Because I the amount of progress I made obviously that when I was living there was just huge. Right. And and I'd say I probably learned as much functional Spanish knowledge in maybe the first six months I was there as I learned in the whole time I studied at ASU. Wow. You know, but that wouldn't have happened if I didn't already have that knowledge to build off of, right?

Hunter 16:27

Well, hey, your your roommate was able to order a pizza, so and you know that's the other thing too.

Isaac 16:31

He had no formal Spanish training, and yet and he I don't even think he was necessarily taking classes or like studying with Duolingo. Maybe he was doing a bit of a Duolingo, but really it was him just like that natural immersion of like I hear people say these things around me, and some of it starts to make sense, and then suddenly I can say those words.

Hunter 16:51

And on the flip side, is it just him being immersed in an environment, or is it him actively immersing himself in the environment and participating in the environment?

Isaac 17:00

Well, he was actively he was actively immersing himself, and because the the reason I know that is at like I said, at the end of our time there together, he was able to order the pizza on the phone. But I remember it was maybe halfway through or a bit before halfway through, he also tried to order a pizza on the phone and was not successful. He had to hand me the phone to finish for him. How nice of you. Right. Well, and but so it the thing is to think is even in that halfway point when he sure he wasn't ready to order a pizza on the phone, he didn't care. He tried to do it anyways. And through that encounter, and I remember afterwards he was like, What was what should I have said right then? Or like what was my mistake? And I was like, Oh well, you said this, but you should have said this. And he was like, Oh, okay. And six months later, he's ordering the pizza himself. And so the him having the like the the courage maybe to just even try in the first place, and he was constantly trying. Didn't matter what the environment was. He was constantly trying to use whatever language he had to communicate whatever he needed to, right?

Hunter 17:58

Yeah, whatever resources, maybe beyond language, he's using his body, he's using objects in the environment, words on on menus, words on other other written artifacts in the environment.

Isaac 18:10

Exactly. And so that's why maybe I think he was able to then make that amount of progress, whereas maybe some of my other classmates weren't able to because he wasn't afraid to just try, you know?

Hunter 18:23

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's really interesting to think about what it means to learn a language, of course. You talked about what your experience was like a little bit at ASU taking classes, and then how it was different when you got there, words were different, ways of participating in social life were suddenly different. Um, and I wanted to ask

What is it like to learn complex skills like additional languages and music performance?

Hunter 18:45

you, what is it like to study something like music performance? Which some people might hear that and they they go, How can you formally study such a thing? And what is a college degree in a subject, if if a subject is even an appropriate word for something like this, um, formally and and technically. So if you could explain what your degree was called, and then yeah, it shed some insight on what it's like to study something like that and maybe compare it to what it's like to learn a language if if there's overlap.

Isaac 19:17

So the official name for the degree I completed was a Master of Music in Contemporary Performance. That's what it was called. Oh, with a production concentration. That was the full title of the degree. But you're right, what does it really even mean? We think of academic subjects being certain if somebody says I study math, that makes sense to us. It's like, well, there's math textbooks and they teach you things about math and you do math, right?

Hunter 19:42

Like learning systems.

Isaac 19:43

Yeah, right, exactly. And something, really any art, it's a bit more subjective in terms of you know, we even have a hard time defining, well, what is music? We avoid that question a lot of the time because it's a little bit too you think about it too hard, you start to freak out, right? And so the thing I can say is and every university will approach this in a different way. What I'll say is the degree that I did, the way that they interpreted contemporary performance or just performance is that we were constantly playing music with different people in different genres, and we were constantly recording. And so in a sense, it was very much a learn by doing. I remember at the end I I recorded, I was in like 50 recording sessions. Wow. Yeah. I so and all of them were very different styles, there were very different types of music, and so it was very much that's a learn by doing, you know? And I think it almost comes to the same sort of idea of the you don't know what skills you will need until you need them, right? Um for example, one of the ensembles I was in it was called a Mediterranean ensemble, and so we were playing Mediterranean music, um, which is already that's a very broad category. So um, but realistically, we were playing a lot of Balkan music, and so a lot of music and odd time signatures. And so that was one of those moments where I was like, okay, well, so a skill that I might need to be better at or that I need is playing in odd meters, right? Improvising in 7-8. You know, before that it was like, yeah, I can't, I hadn't really done it very much, and so it was very it was difficult, right? But I didn't necessarily know that it was something I would need to be able to do or even want to do until I was in that environment, right? Um, the other part of this degree was the production concentration. And so, like I mentioned, we spent um, at least I spent, I had 50 50 recording sessions that happened. But the other part of this was we also had to do a lot of projects where we were on the other side. There was one class where we kind of got paired up for different projects, and one person was the artist and the other person was the producer. And we had a lot of we had a lot of assignments that were about, okay, here's how you work in Pro Tools, here's how you record music. And another part of this was okay, we spent time where someone would be in the studio recording, but then someone else, and this is again my performance classmates, would be in the in the recording room. You're in your Operating up Pro Tools, you're operating the desk, and so you're being the recording engineer. And so they they they made us um we we spent a lot of time kind of on both sides of of those of that role. It was the same thing with live sound. We had uh one part where we every week one of us had to put on a performance, and three of us would have to mix that performance while it was happening, and so again it forced us to be on both sides of the equation. Some of my classmates then found out, oh, I really like production, I really like live sound, and they actually you know they went that way, they went more into it and pursued careers in that field. Some of us didn't, but what we got from it was that appreciation of this is the perspective of the sound guy, right? So when the sound guy seems annoyed, now you understand why, because you've been in his place, right? Or if your your recording engineer is running two hours behind because he's still trying to patch everything in the studio, it's like, well, you want you get it, you relate to it because it's like, well, I remember being in the same spot trying to figure out how to patch this mic channel through this compressor to then go back into Pro Tools, right? Um but that the the question of what does it mean to study performance? Um you can consider someone who's studying uh classical, suppose a classical clarinetist, the things that they would study would be totally different from the experience that I had, right? And I can't even necessarily speak too much to what their experience would be because it's not my own, right? And I don't know what it is.

Hunter 23:55

So, you know, you have experience, and I know this because I've known you for years, but you've you've studied topics related to physics, uh and m high levels of mathematics. I might say something like thermodynamics.

Isaac 24:09

No, never thermodynamics, but uh in that realm at least. Linear algebra. Linear algebra. It's probably as far as I got with the math.

Hunter 24:17

And so those things, people tend to conceptualize those subjects or topics as um like as long as you learn all the things there are to learn in a book or many books or many classes or many YouTube videos, wherever your source is, you have mastered the subject, and therefore you can operate efficiently and effectively in contexts where those mathematically oriented skills are needed. But you know, as someone who's also studied, I'm putting this in air quotes, music performance, or I'm forgetting the full title of your degree name, but I'm not sure it's necessary to fully repeat it. No. What is it is there a an experiential difference that you sense uh in in terms of like, wow, I'm I'm really good at this, or I'm getting this. What are your your mile marker signs, I guess, with when it comes to being being good at it, being good at what you're doing and studying?

Isaac 25:15

I think that's one of the other interesting things that's things that comes from the idea of even studying music is it's not as easy to quantify progress, right? And I experience this, I'm I teach music lessons, and so I experience this all the time when parents ask, like, oh, how's he doing? How's she doing? And it's like, well, good. Because you know, how do you even you what does it mean to say, oh, well, you you got an A in piano lessons? What would that even mean, right? Um when I was in those math classes, and the reason I was in those math classes, as you know, is because I was at the time studying electrical engineering, right? But you can consider a class like Calc 3, right? The third year of or third semester calculus for engineers or whatever it was actually called. And you can think about the kinds of assignments that I had, and then you compare the assignments that maybe I was doing when I was in music classes, right? And so a typical assignment for a calculus class might be like, well, here's some concept in calculus, some particular style of equation, some particular family of equation, we're gonna learn how to solve them. And the homework is you solve a page of those problems, right? And some of them, a lot of them, they're the practical uh application might be more obvious, and other times it's not as obvious, right? But it's it feels like a very quantifiable thing, right? Uh it might be like, or when I was in the linear algebra class, it was like solving second-order differential equations. It's like it sounds like something you can quantify. Either you can do it or you can't.

Hunter 26:49

Yeah, I mean you either I'm not a mathematics person and I've never been mathematically oriented, but when I did it, there were what you know appeared to me to be correct answers. I like you're it's binary, it was or it wasn't. It was the correct decimal point afterwards or not.

Isaac 27:05

No, it's like you either got the right answer or you didn't. And so then you think, how do you apply that to music? Well, that you know, for example, one of the assignments a lot of times, so when I was in my and studio to the trombone studio Jazz Trombone Studio, we would have a list of semester assignments, like tasks or kind of things to complete. And oftentimes there was always there's always like one transcription. It's like you're gonna learn this solo from this record, right? And that in a way is a kind of a binary task. You either can play it or you can't, right? But even within that, there's like there's so much detail, right? It's like, are you playing it with just the correct notes? But are you playing with the correct notes, but are you also matching the same articulation that the player had? Are you playing it with the same articulation, but also playing in tune? And there's so many you can go in as deep into it as you want, right? And so it's a bit harder to say, well, uh, oh yeah, you can play it. Oh no, you can't play it. It's seem it can be a binary, but it's at the end of the day, it's not, right? And so I think again, with the kind of idea of what does it mean to study music performance, it's comes down to, well, can you navigate your instrument efficiently, right? And what needs and the skills that you would need to navigate your instrument are going to depend, depending on what kind of genre you are, right? Um the people who are in the classical trombone studio, they probably can play their arpeggios a little bit better than I can, right? And they've spent more time doing that, right? They can probably play uh they can probably sustain a the middle middle F for 32 bars with a better tone than I can. But then those aren't the skills that those are the skills that they need to have, and they're not necessarily the skills that I need to have, right? One of the like one of the skills that I've had to develop is being able to read tenor sacks charts on trombone, right? The B flat tenor sack chart on trombone, because there's so many, there's been so many gigs where there's been so many gigs that I've played where it's like, well, do you have a trombone chart? It's like, no, but we have a trumpet chart and we have a tenor chart. And it's like, okay, well, uh, I guess I'll take the tenor chart, right? And so then that's the skill that I have that's important to the work that I do that wouldn't be for the classically trained trombonist who's always gonna have a part for their instrument in the environments that they're playing in, right? And so there are certain hard skills that you can point at. I think what becomes difficult is that the world of music as a whole is so huge. How do you pick which of these skills are gonna be important to what you need to do for any given student, right? And so when it comes to kind of grading or just you know qualifying, good job, you've learned music. It's impossible, right? Even the greatest uh musicians, they you can ask them, what's your practice routine like, and they'll have an answer, right? And it's like when when did you feel like you were done practicing or done learning? It's like never. I'm still learning. Barry Harris is a jazz pianist, he's he passed away, but there's an interview when he was in his 90s, and somebody asked him this question, when do you feel like you were done learning? And he's like, I'm not done learning, I'm still learning new things every day, right?

Hunter 30:26

Yeah, being done learning, that whole concept in itself is interesting because it presupposes that there is a complete system of the thing out there and it's possible to reach the end. And I think many people, even who's people who study mathematics or physics, understand that that's not really the case, even for those subjects which seem fixed and seem concrete and have correct answers, and maybe in some senses are less multifaceted than music, which as you mentioned has to do with tone and articulation and just overall flavor, if you want to put it that way. Yeah. But yeah, there's so many things out in the world, including, I would say, language, uh, to compare what you've been describing um in a little bit to language, there is no endpoint, and to suggest that there is would be I don't know, to take away the infinite nature of the thing, the limitless possibility of expression that exists.

Isaac 31:24

There's a point where it's it can be, you know, a little misguided to say something like, Well, I'm done learning Spanish.

unknown 31:31

Yeah.

Isaac 31:32

And so something I've said, like right now, I'm not in any Spanish classes, I don't actively study Spanish, and so something I'll say is I'm done studying Spanish right now. Right?

Hunter 31:41

Or in the university context. Or in the Spanish, you speak it, I mean, with people outside of the university.

Isaac 31:47

And it's like, I'm done formally studying Spanish, right? But you're never done absorbing it, you're never done reinforcing the things that you do know. And it's uh you can make you know parallels with music. I think the same parallel there with music is that you don't know the skills that you need until you need them, right? Um I didn't know the word for plumber until I needed to know the word for plumber, right? I didn't know how to play to improvise in 7-8 until I needed to learn how to improvise in 7-8, right? But there's like you say, there's an infinite world, right, of there's an infinite something I say sometimes to some of my classmates is there's an infinite number of words pretty much in a language, right? Vocabulary is endless. Yeah, you'll never learn all the words, right? And so how do you find the words that you do need to know and how do you be comfortable using those? Right.

Hunter 32:43

Yeah, a lot of students ask me about when will that when will we be fluent? Or you know, as a teacher, they ask me, when did you reach fluency? And I I think my instinct is to laugh a little bit, and maybe they're caught off guard by that reaction as it as a teacher in their classroom. I'm like, oh, you know, fluency, because they see fluency on things like rubrics or instructions or guidelines for how they're going to be judged on things like how well is your how well is uh or how good is their fluency in this context? But yeah, I completely agree with what you're saying.

Isaac 33:12

It's it's almost fluency is like a fake concept because again it comes down to this idea that we're creating a binary where there isn't one.

Hunter 33:19

Yeah. Right?

Isaac 33:20

It's like, oh well now like you just said, I can't point to a specific day and be like, well, that's the day that I became fluent in Spanish. Before that, I was not fluent, and the day after I was.

Hunter 33:31

Yeah, you could borrow the same construct for for playing instruments. Oh yeah, like fluency in playing trombone, for example.

Isaac 33:37

Yeah, that you don't there's no point where you point, there's no thing you can point at and be like, Well, that's the day that suddenly, yep, I'm a I can fluently play the trombone, I'm a professional trombonist.

Hunter 33:47

Yeah.

Isaac 33:47

Right? There's there's no such thing.

Hunter 33:49

If you if you had to define fluency, both maybe in terms of language and instrument playing, what kind of parameters or descriptors or feelings almost would you use to define fluency for you?

Isaac 34:03

One of the things I think that comes for fluency, at least with language, is the internally, does it feel hard? Does it feel like you're struggling? Right? And so that experience I do remember because I remember when I first arrived in Spain, it was very hard to understand people. It was hard to put words together sometimes, right? And then by the time I left it wasn't. Um and so by the end, I was like, yeah, I'm I can speak. I remember there was a time I was like I had spoken to someone at a bar or whatever for like two hours straight in Spanish, and afterwards I was like, wow, I just spoke about all these different topics without struggling for like two hours. Right? That to that is like a measure of fluency, right? Um but it relates to your personal feeling, and it was exactly it's that feeling. It was like I felt like well, that wasn't so hard. I I did that in struggle, I didn't struggle so much to do that. That is one of those metrics for fluent fluency, I would say, but it is very personal, right? Yeah. The other thing that I think about too is this one of the jokes I say is you don't actually have to know that many words, you just have to really know the words that you do know, right? And this comes down to just the way that we are as human beings, the way that we perceive and the way that we judge others, but and you know the research that shows that it doesn't really matter how well you speak a language, if you have a foreign accent, you get perceived as being less intelligent. Yep. It's just happens just for whatever reason, that's the way we are as human beings. And so the student who knows very little very little vocabulary, but has a great accent and doesn't uh have to search for words, is going to be perceived as being more fluent than the student who has a huge vocabulary and has a great control of the grammar, but it takes them a couple of tries to get the sentence out correctly. Yep. And they speak with a poor accent.

unknown 36:04

Yeah.

Isaac 36:05

And so which one is who's I mean, sure, maybe this student has more vocabulary knowledge. Does that mean they're more fluent? This student gets perceived as being more fluent, does that mean they're fluent? I don't think there's a an answer there, right?

Hunter 36:17

Yeah. And another thing people have pointed out in in lots of research in the language classroom is like, hey, if our students do have a breakdown, what ha why are we discounting their hard work to repair the breakdown and get it back on track? Is that not a type of fluency in and of itself, a marker of fluency, being able to pick something back up where it once fell or once totally disintegrated and get it back on track? That's an important skill to have.

Isaac 36:45

I think one of the things that's interesting is we almost have we have sometimes higher standards when we're trying to compare our when we're speaking a foreign language. We or some maybe in the university, it's like you make an error, that's a point off. But when you're speaking your native language, you make mistakes all the time and you correct all you monitor yourself all the time, right? And so I think to make mistakes is human. So why do we act like learning a foreign language, making a mistake is this horrible thing? Oh, you're not fluent, you accidentally you use the wrong conjugation, right? I think one of those but like you're saying, the the ability to correct is very important. You use the wrong conjugation, you notice and you fix it and you continue. Great. That's the sort of thing people do in their native language all the time. You use the wrong conjugate conjugation, you don't notice, you don't fix it, then sure that maybe that is an error, right?

Hunter 37:43

Yeah. Yeah. So many different ways to think about it. Um so when you were at the is it Valencia University or the University in Spanish, right?

Isaac 37:53

It's so the what's the name? They it's Berkeley, I think the official name is Berkeley Valencia.

Hunter 38:00

Berkeley Valencia. So when you were there, what kinds of do we call them professors? Do we call them instructors? Did you have? What was their role in your education? You mentioned that for you learning and studying was doing in many ways and was hands-on and was experiential. So given the hands-on, um, hands-on-ness, if we will, of your education experience there, what was their role? Were they watching you? What were they sort of taking mental notes about how you're doing and then debriefing you afterwards? How was it?

Isaac 38:30

So um, yeah, they were called professors. And a lot of times it would depend on the the class. So for example, I was taking private lessons, and that is just as how you would expect private lessons to be, right? Where there's not a textbook that we're working out of. Um, but for example, I remember one of the first lessons, he my professor, his name was Albert Palau, he asked me, What do you want to learn? What do you want to work on? And I had um a concrete answer from him. It was like, I want to learn, I need to learn, get better at playing uh modal jazz. And then he was able to take that and it's like, okay, here's the things that you need to be able to do to play modal jazz, right? And that was private lessons, and then we had like ensembles, and so then the director or the professor in that case is more of like an ensemble director. They're helping us pick repertoire, they're helping us refine the performance of the music that we're playing, right? But then, for example, another one of our classes was a music business class, and that was a very kind of typical university. We go to lecture, you take notes, and then um, I think we probably had to write an essay or something. I did not pay attention to that class at all. I really didn't like it. And so hopefully they're not listening, they probably won't um uh and so the each type of environment was different. The recording class, I think we had a recording class where we it was a very good mix of kind of mixing the theory with the practic the what would be more practical in the sense that the first day of the week was lecture, and so it would be learning, for example, about different types of microphones, different pickup patterns or different tools or whatever, but all of it was you know lecture based, and you would take notes. Then the next uh class of that week, now you're actually putting it into practice. So maybe on Tuesday we would learn here's how you mic a drum kit, and then on Thursday, okay, mic a drum kit.

Hunter 40:32

Right.

Isaac 40:33

And so that was a very good marriage, I think, of the theoretical knowledge and the practical knowledge, right? Some things lend themselves a bit more better uh more easily to that sort of approach. Um, other things didn't. I remember we spent quite a bit of time learning kind of how do microphones work at the electrical level. Um, and the expectation there wasn't you're going to understand the electrical engineering behind a microphone. The expectation there is, well, now you understand why is the console, the recording console, set up the way it is. Why is a patch base set up the way it is? Because these electrical signals that come from the microphone have to move in a certain way.

Hunter 41:11

Wow.

Isaac 41:11

Right. Um, and so the the practical side of that is more just saying, like, well, that's you're looking at the console and well, I know why it's set up this way. Right.

Hunter 41:21

Wow. That's pretty deep knowledge. So then was every week like that where you would you know you would go into the theory and then immediately put it to practice?

Isaac 41:30

Yeah, I'd say pretty much every week.

Hunter 41:32

For your entire two years there? Or was it one? It's just one year. One year, that's right.

unknown 41:36

Yeah.

Isaac 41:36

One year. Um one of the other interesting things is we had everyone had to write a thesis. I mean, it's a master's degree, right? Even though it's a music degree, um, we all had to write some sort of thesis. Um and so for me and many of my classmates, our thesis was I I created an EP. I composed five songs and then recorded them while I was there, and that was my you know, they the they didn't call them theses, they called them uh culminating experience. Okay. That was the word that was used. And I think the idea there is to kind of de-emphasize the written portion of it, right? Or at least acknowledge that in a field such as music, there's going to be some other part of this that is not written. That said, we all still had to do some sort of written part. And so in my case, my written part of this was just of was documenting my experience, was documenting what did I learn from each song that I wrote and recorded, what I documented what worked the way I wanted it to, what didn't maybe work the way that I wanted to, and what changes did I um make when I was going into the next song that I wrote and composed, right? This was very personal, right? It wasn't necessarily very research heavy. Um I in my case, I did have I had four songs that I picked out as my research songs, and I transcribed them and I did harmonic analyses and all sorts of things, trying to figure out I really like these songs. What are the elements of this song, of these songs that I enjoy, right? Trying to figure answer those questions and then okay, now how do I take this these concepts and apply them into my own music? Right. But even then, that's not like research necessarily in the way we might typically think of it, right? I don't think I had any citations or like research articles and in mind, but I had a discography, of course, right? I had some interviews with the composers of those pieces, right? Um so it's a very different approach. What the one thing that was funny is we had to use Chicago Turbian.

Hunter 43:47

Oh.

Isaac 43:48

And so I I had no problem with that, right? And even they like taught us how to find academic resources, and I had no problem with that because of all the things that we did while we were studying musicology. Uh-huh. A lot of my classmates had never even heard of Chicago, right? The Chicago Manual of Style. And so those the these people they struggled a bit more with the kind of more academic side of it.

Hunter 44:13

That's interesting. So, on one hand, the theory part of the week. I'm I'm just thinking here and comparing it back to our conversation about your studies of electrical engineering is like the the study of the system, so to speak, and the role of your professors in that context is to not unidirectionally pass the information to you as a passive recipient, because that's probably the most extreme uh way to put it, but you're there in a classroom, you're getting this systematic knowledge, and then their role when you go into the practice part of the week is to listen or watch you and give you moment-to-moment feedback on what you're doing.

Isaac 44:54

Yeah, and I think exactly like you said, it's the kind of direct you know, they don't directly impart knowledge in the way that they might be following out of standards in a textbook. It's it's much more of like you have a person there who's guiding you in what at the end of the day is your own kind of process of self-discovery, of self-improvement in music, right? Um when you come back to like the ensembles, especially, that's very apparent. Um the some instructors would be more hand-on, hands-on, and others were uh a bit more laissez-faire, and in the sense that they wouldn't necessarily speak up or say something unless they felt like they needed to. The idea is that it's a student-run ensemble for the most part, right? And they're help there to help guide this ensemble achieve its best product, right? But they're not necessarily dictating this is how you should play this song, right? Because at the end of the day, there's no such thing as one way to correctly play a song, right?

Hunter 45:59

And they recognize that learning is doing, and if they're constantly interrupting you, then the doing is sort of at stake.

Isaac 46:06

Yeah. If you have to learn by doing, then you just have to do a whole lot to improve. Um interesting comparison, I think, that can be made is one of the big reasons I left the electrical engineering degree is that there was that there was this huge separation between the theory and the practical knowledge.

Hunter 46:28

Yeah, we call this the theory and practice divide. It's pervasive in many disciplines, really.

Isaac 46:33

I think many people um go into electrical engineering because they're interested in electronics. But they're interested in designing circuits. They're interested in there's again, there's it's a whole world and there's so many different um sub-disciplines within it. But there's some sort of physical object or some sort of practical thing that they can point to and say, well, that's what I like about electrical engineering. And at least for me, those first two years of the two years of the degree that I completed was all effectively theory knowledge. So there's cal calculus for engineers one, calc one, calc two, calc three. And so sure, you're solving these equations, these calculus equations, but they're totally divorced from some sort of connection to the real world, right? Um which I think is a shame because you're learning this knowledge because you need you'll need it in some capacity to do real things, to create real products or real-build bridges, get cruise ships to float, rockets to launch, planes to fly. Exactly. And so how hard is it to take the same class, calculus one, and and you learn the theory behind it, and then when you're solving the problems, they're not just random variables divorced from the real world. It's okay, now you're going to calculate how much fuel this rocket is going to burn while it does this thing. You know? You're actually now putting it into the language of real life. And that helps reinforce the reason. That that question of, you know, it's a question that's always school kids say, why are we learning this? Well, here's why, right? Yeah. One of the big things I remember too is uh I got to my first uh they say triple E, because it's the course code is E E E. I don't know how there's three E's because it's electrical engineering, but there's three E's. Um I got to my very first like triple E class and I was like, okay, finally we're gonna do something real, I hope. And no, it was effectively just a math class using um the language of electricity. Um and so it's like here's a printout of a circuit. Look at this piece of paper with a circuit on it and calculate what each part is going to do. Right? But it wasn't a real circuit. The circuit had no, it wasn't like a real circuit that fulfills a purpose. It wasn't like here is a an amplifier circuit, calculate which each thing does. It was here is a circuit, a random assortment of components, calculate how it's going to behave.

Hunter 49:10

Yeah, that that's a problem, and I think it is probably why a lot of different disciplines, well, I can't necessarily speak for all disciplines, but at least in the languages and world languages and in big universities across the United States, there's a big push for a focus on career readiness because that's the feedback that employers across the nation and world have been giving us, uh, university faculty, is that people have a great foundation about the theory, but there's this divide, this canyon between being able to use that or to know one thing and then to use it. And I think every discipline should be doing what they can to fix that. Um, and you this reminds me of what you said at the beginning of our conversation about when you were taking Spanish in high school and how in many ways it was the same thing. I maybe I'm not characterizing this properly, but you were learning grammatical concepts and practicing conjugations divorced from any context about how speaking to somebody or with somebody in a situation.

Isaac 50:14

Exactly. And something that you know very well is that at the end of the day, the classroom is not the real world, as much as you try to even pretend or make-believe. Let's pretend like we're in the real world right now. At the end of the day, you're still in a classroom pretending to order food.

Hunter 50:33

Yeah, it's a really interesting phenomenon because of course it is part of the real world. There's no denying that, but the definition we might we might say the definition of the situation is always going to be different than being actually at a restaurant, like you're saying, a role play is in the real world. We're two humans face to face doing something together in the real world, but we're defining what we're doing properly. There's always this atmosphere of pr play pretend that kind of removes the motivation.

Isaac 51:05

Yeah, right. It's not organic, and um, I I something I always find is that there's one of the problems is you know that you're pretending, and your partner knows that you're pretending. And so there's not that you don't have that innate need to actually fulfill the the communicative function. Yeah, it's not an actually important, right? I think at some subconscious level our brains know that yeah, if I don't really do this right, it doesn't matter because there's not going to be any consequence there.

Hunter 51:36

Any real social consequence. I mean, maybe apart from letting your partner down. And so maybe there are things that students do orient to uh with a s an ethos of seriousness, like a feeling of seriousness, but maybe it's not the instructions that they're given. Maybe it's not talking about vacation options abroad, maybe it's you know, being there joking around with their partner or being sarcastic about what they're doing, because that's a more important way to support their partner as a human being.

Isaac 52:02

Exactly. And there's this, I think at the end of the day, it comes down to the question how much can you really simulate the real world inside of a classroom, especially with language, right? We use language all the time. Um, you know, another kind of why did I make so much progress when I was living in Spain and not maybe as much while I was studying in a university classroom? Well, because when I was living in Spain, it mattered, right? I either functionally communicated what I needed to communicate and got the product, got the help I needed, whatever it would have been, or I didn't. Yeah. There were real consequences there, right?

Hunter 52:38

Yeah, you you ask for directions and end up at the wrong place, at the wrong destination. Right.

Isaac 52:43

And so there's that it for you know, there there are stakes. There are stakes. There are stakes, and I think you can't really simulate there being stakes.

Hunter 52:55

It's fundamental for learning stakes. Yeah. And even was that the case in in learning how to perform jazz music? Like being in front of an audience, did did those learning moments feel more generative or fruitful for your learning?

Isaac 53:09

That's you know, the f that's what's funny about I think a lot of times music maybe isn't necessarily the same way, because the degree I did was so practical, you know, it was there were stakes a lot of the time, right? Even when rehearsing with other musicians, uh something you mentioned is something that idea of letting your partner down. If you're an ensemble of people, there's seven of you performing together, that is six other people that you could be letting down by not you know having knowing your music and not being able to play at the level that you need to, right? Yeah, and so there almost always are stakes in music, right? Um but if you think of for example, the recording class when we were recording our actual music, like our actual music for our projects or whatever, those were stakes. But when we were setting up a drum kit just to record, just to see how a drum kit how you mic up a drum kit, yeah, those weren't really real stakes, you know? There wasn't any consequence to doing it wrong. Um yeah, there's there's an interesting parallel there to be had with with language. I just think the very nature of music involves doing the things for real a lot more, right?

Hunter 54:21

Yeah, I think so. There's so much overlap.

What does it mean to be "a musician?"

Hunter 54:24

But speaking of taking theory to practice, and in one sense, this is similar to the idea of taking something in your classroom to the real world. Um, how was that transition away from your your studies in Spain in Valencia to now being um a music instructor, teaching people to do this as part of your job? You're you've been doing tons of musical performances, tons of gigs, at least my perspective, as I see you post on social media and whatnot. Um, so did do you feel like your education prepared you well for this quote real world uh experience?

Isaac 55:03

One of the interesting things for me and my story is that everyone in their life goes through that period of time where you are now a young adult, you're not in university, you're not in college, there's no one telling you what to do anymore. You are on your own and you have to forge your own path. For me, that moment of time happened in Spain because I stayed there another year. And so I lived that first year of wow, I'm an adult now and I have to like earn money and you know contribute to society. That for me happened in Spain. And that period of time was one of the most difficult periods of time, I think, in my entire life.

Hunter 55:41

Wow.

Isaac 55:41

Um, and some of that comes from the fact that many of my classmates, the vast majority did not stay. They went back to their home countries or they found a job somewhere else in the world. And so my social circle, you know, within like a week or two weeks after graduation just disappeared.

Hunter 55:57

Wow.

Isaac 55:58

Right? Yeah. And so suddenly it was really that sense of, wow, I'm in this foreign country and I'm alone. And I'm a musician, right? Which is also there's all the stereotypes about being a musician, and they're all for the most part, I think they're true. Um one of the problems, for example, if you with being a musician can be the fact that it's not a traditional form of employment, right? Um many if you were a musician, many musicians you don't have a boss, right? You don't go into the office, right? And and so it's such a different approach to um making an income that I think the way that sometimes even society is structured, there's this idea that you go to college, you get a degree, you get a job, and you know, it plays itself out. What happens when you're in a a field, an artistic field, where that getting a job isn't really a part of the story, right?

Hunter 56:58

Well, I I mean I think you're what I'm hearing is you're referring to the corporate structure where the workforce is the pe people who go to work after college typically are those who big companies uh use for lack of a better word. Yeah, exactly. Uh and you know profit from, but suddenly you're referring to a context where no bigger entity is relying on you for their profits. You are relying on your craft.

Isaac 57:25

Exactly. Yeah, and that I think is difficult to navigate. That's difficult to navigate for anybody, but that kind of story of well, I've graduated, now I find a job, it doesn't exist, right? Um, and there's so many avenues of earning income as a musician that that also makes it difficult. Uh so for example, in my case, uh it's funny you say I I gig a lot. Um, and as far as the musicians I know, I I'd say I gig a lot less than many musicians I know, but there are some musicians who are gigging all the time, just constantly. Like every day. Like every day. Yeah. And then there are some who are not, and I'm one of those who's not. And so how do you bridge the gap between them? Um, I do a lot of transcriptions. Um, so somebody sends me a recording of some piece of music that they need the sheet music for, and I make it for them. Um I do a lot of orchestral arrangements, of pop orchestra arrangements, and so I work with this Florida uh this orchestra in Florida. Um, and they send me, for example, one of the most recent ones I did was Rocket Man by Elton John.

Hunter 58:37

Wow, that's cool.

Isaac 58:37

And I arranged it for an orchestra with a singer.

Hunter 58:41

Wow. Is there a recording of this out there?

Isaac 58:43

I don't think they've recorded it yet.

Hunter 58:45

Wow. Will it be a live recording or is it a studio project?

Isaac 58:48

It it's just a concert series. They're a pop orchestra, and so they they put on concerts for the public. Wow. That's cool. Pop music, and they have a they have a whole contingent of arrangers because there's a lot more music that they need arranged than one person can handle, right? And so I'm I'm only doing a small part of all the different music that they need. Um and so like these are two avenues of my life as a musician that my work as a musician, we can say, that are I mean, those are those are totally contract-based, right? It's a gig, it's a gig economy, it's a gig sort of work, and it's um it's individual, right? It's again, there's no they're not my boss, they're clients. And you don't know when the next job's gonna come in. Right?

Hunter 59:39

That's the tough part. That's one of the tough parts.

Isaac 59:41

It's one of the tough parts with being a musician, and that's why very many musicians, a lot of musicians teach. Because it's one of the few things that we can do that is more of that traditional sense of employment. Um you do go somewhere to teach, or even if you're teaching at home, there's some space you can say, as well, that's my workplace, right? And it is consistent. The same student's gonna come every week for a lesson, right? And there's so that variability that I think makes many um art professionals and the arts anxious doesn't exist for teaching, right? Um but so those musicians I know that gig all the time, they don't teach because they don't need to.

Hunter 1:00:26

I guess it also depends on what types of venues you're gigging at, the budgets of those venues. If you're at a small place, of course they're gonna pay you less. If you're at a wedding, they might pay you more, if you're at a corporate event, they might pay you even more. Yeah. Um, and another thing I hear people talk about, musicians I'm referring to, is challenges with um navigating, turning your passion into your work, and suddenly feelings get intertwined and entangled with each other that might that they might not uh have wanted to go together in the first place.

Isaac 1:01:02

One of um the other interesting things about being a musician professionally is that there are very there are a lot of people who play music as a hobby. Right? And so tons of people. Probably millions of people, yeah. And so it's hard. How do you that again with anything in life, that line between I play music as a hobby and I play music professionally isn't as clear-cut as we would want, right? It almost to me it becomes like an identity question. I identify as a musician, right? That's what I choose to label myself as. Um, but I've for example there's this sex player that I play with in Colorado who is just phenomenal. He is incredible. Um and he let's give him a shout out if you're okay with that. What's his name? Um his name's Damien. I don't know his last name. He's from Arizona, actually. Yeah, he's from Arizona. I I don't remember his last name, but he's amazing. He's this amazing tenor player. Um, and to my knowledge, he only plays a few gigs a year. And he spends most of his he's he has like a day job, he created his own software company, if I'm getting the story right, right?

Hunter 1:02:08

Okay, I thought you were gonna say that he from a couple gigs a year can survive.

Isaac 1:02:11

No, okay, and so it's like and he gets paid for the gigs that he plays. And is he a professional musician? Yes, he gets paid to play music, but is he a professional musician in the same way as someone who's playing a hundred gigs a year? Not really, right? And so even within music, you have people who have day jobs, right? Some sort of other thing that they do to help sustain, you know, to pay the bills that'll then allow them to play music.

unknown 1:02:41

Right?

Hunter 1:02:42

That's starting to sound like the definition of what a musician is is just as wishy-washy and fluid as the fluency construct. It is, it really is, you know.

Isaac 1:02:53

Um and like we were saying with fluency, it just comes down to at the end of the day, well, what do you choose to call yourself? Right? Yeah. Something that's just fairly related. One of the I think an interesting experience that every musician, especially every working musician, has is this you just finish a gig, you just play a gig, and someone comes up after and they're like, Oh cool, I play guitar. And it's like, okay. You don't know how to respond to that. Well, what are you supposed to say to that, right? It's like, I like I like to play guitar, but I'm not very good. It's like okay, keep keep playing. Keep playing, I guess, right? It you know, it'd be like if you go up to uh this uh a very prolific artist, a painter, for example, and you're like, sometimes I like to doodle in my notebook, right? And it's like okay, cool, right? And so it's this one of the things that's interesting about music is it is very accessible. I think anyone can play music, anyone can learn to play music, right? But someone who's dedicated their life to it is a different person than someone who just plays it as a hobby, right? Um and so I sometimes I think there's this idea, well, oh, we both, for example, the example I gave, we both play guitar. And it's like, well, sure, on paper we both play guitar, but you play guitar sometimes, and I this is my whole life, right? Um it's just an interesting experience. What I've learned to say is when if someone's like, Oh, I used to play piano, the other one that always happens is I used to play piano when I was a kid. Because so many people were forced to take lessons exactly, and it's what do you say to that? You know, it's like, oh okay.

Hunter 1:04:36

With the people who come up to you with the guitar example, it seems like that's maybe a little bit different than the piano example in that they seem somewhat proud. They're like, hey, I play guitar too. I wonder if, because on one hand it is funny, right? They're coming up to you after performance and they're like stating this fact, but I wonder if that's part of the process of leaning into the musician identity. Like you have to take baby steps, so maybe you have to say it to people out in the world. Hey, I play guitar, and although it might seem inconsequential in the moment, to them, it's like, hey, this identity now exists out in the world in other people's minds. So I don't know.

Isaac 1:05:12

It is also, you know, interesting. I think a lot of times with musicians, when we think of this concept of identity, for example, I identify as a pianist, I identify as a trombonist, I don't, for example, I don't identify as a tubist.

Hunter 1:05:28

Even though there's a for for those wondering, there's a tuba. There's a tuba.

Isaac 1:05:32

Right, there's one right next to me. But if somebody asks me if I, you know, somebody if I'm in a conversation, it's like, you're mus oh, you're a musician, what do you play? I'm going to say piano, I'm going to say trombone. I'm not going to say any of the other ones.

Hunter 1:05:45

Yeah, and there are a lot that you could say. Well, we'll get to those later. Right.

Isaac 1:05:49

And um, but again, it's this idea of that I think it comes down to the concept of identity, right? And even specifically, a lot of times if the question isn't really what do you play, it's what can I sometimes the question is that's really being asked is what can I hire you to play? Right. So I meet somebody and they they they say a musician, for example, and they say, What do you play? I'm not gonna say Flute.

Hunter 1:06:18

Right. If it's a job, I mean, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Isaac 1:06:21

You know?

Hunter 1:06:22

It's contextual. It's yeah, again, not divorced from actual context.

Isaac 1:06:29

Like I'm never gonna I don't say to I don't tell people, I never say, oh, I play trumpet. I don't say it. Because I don't I'm not confident in my abilities to, for example, play a gig on trumpet. And so for me, then it's not accurate to say that I'm a trumpet. I'm a trumpetist, I'm a trumpet player, right? It's like, can you play the trumpet? Yes. Are you a trumpetist? No.

Hunter 1:06:51

At least not in this context with you all today. Exactly, exactly, right? Yeah. There's no transcendental musician identity. It's all dependent on what we're doing right here, right now. Yep. Yeah. I can relate to that. If people ask, like, what do you do? Sometimes I say I teach Spanish. Sometimes I say, oh, I study, you know, more broadly human interaction. Sometimes I say I help my dad in construction work. Right. Like, and if it's if it's I'm with excuse me, if I'm with people who I get a sense that they might not want to know I'm a university affiliated person. Right. Yeah. They might go, oh, you're you one of those people. Then I just say the construction work. So yeah.

Isaac 1:07:33

And it's because identity is fluid. Yeah. Right? The person we identify as depends very much on who we're with.

Hunter 1:07:39

Right.

Isaac 1:07:40

Yeah. Um one of the interesting kind of things I've experienced with this idea of identity is when I went back to ASU and started taking language language classes again, right?

Hunter 1:07:53

Um What are you taking?

Isaac 1:07:56

Right now I'm in one French class and one Portuguese class.

Hunter 1:08:00

But you have taken Chinese as well.

Isaac 1:08:02

But I did take the semester of Chinese. I did. Um I think one of the questions that always happens on the first day of class, any class in the university is say your name, what your major is, and what year are you. Right?

Hunter 1:08:17

I'm guilty of this as a teacher. I asked the same question to my students.

Isaac 1:08:21

And it makes sense because 95% of the people that are in that room, those questions make sense. They are they're apt questions to ask. Right? I'm not one of those 95% of people. And so it then there's that choice. It's like, okay, am I going to say right now, like, well, so technically, like, if you go by the number of years that I've taken scope, no. You're not going to be all it's too, you're not going to get all into that. But then at the end of the you still have to give an answer. And so, well, is the answer that you give it's complicated? Maybe for some people it is. For me, not at all. I I don't I'm not going to be like, oh well, the year I am well, that's a little complicated, but I'm not that person. I'm not going to say that.

Hunter 1:09:05

Yeah, you don't want to open a can of worms in a situation where you're supposed to talk for like 10 seconds.

Isaac 1:09:10

Yeah. And it's also it's like such an unsatisfying answer. You know? Yeah. It doesn't actually answer the question.

Hunter 1:09:16

Almost makes people look at you be like, he just wants to look cool. He wants to be different.

Isaac 1:09:21

It could be that, or it's like, it's like, yeah, there's so many. Okay. So what I take, I took to answering, what I've taken to answering is just say, I'm a senior. Is it true? No. No.

Hunter 1:09:34

But maybe in one sense, I don't know. You're close to being done with university classes in the sense that you want to be done. Yeah, exactly.

Isaac 1:09:42

Yeah, and so and it's like and I in that sense it is, you know, what does it mean to be a senior? Does it mean it's your fourth year of college? Yes. Does it mean it's your last year of college? Also, yes. Yeah. And so in some way, it's the I found it's like, what is the most concise answer I can give to this question, even if it's not super accurate, but that kind of conveys the correct sense of where I am. I'm a senior. Right.

Hunter 1:10:10

It's amazing when you really dig into how it seems seemingly every word is negotiated, the meaning of every word is negotiated and co-constructed. It's amazing how we get on with business at all in the world.

Isaac 1:10:21

Yeah, we decide what every word means in the moment we say it. Yeah. Right. We we're just deciding. We all agree what words mean, and sometimes what we agree for those words to mean changes, right? That at least that first year that I was taking classes, that senior answer felt pretty accurate because I had one more year of classes to take for the Spanish degree. And then that year passed, and I was like, Well, I can keep taking classes, so I will. And so now it's like, well, okay, senior as an answer is less true than it was before, right? And now it's gone from being like, oh, it's kind of true to being like, yeah, that's not really true, right? And so now it doesn't feel like the correct answer anymore, right? But for the moments that the question did come up, um, I think I was just like, um, I'm a senior. The problem is it's like the fault for immediately preceding question would have been, What's your major? And I'm like in a French class, and like I span I study Spanish linguistics.

Hunter 1:11:21

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I audited a German class uh last semester in the fall, and I was sitting next to my classmates, and again it came time to introduce ourselves, and I sat there and I was like, What do I say? Because I yeah, like that I'm uh also a teacher just like like the instructor the German instructor from the rope. And and that would kind of ostracize myself in a certain sense from my peers, and I didn't want to be the ugly duckling, I don't know, sitting in the corner. So I wanted to be able to socialize properly, and so that identity has a huge role. The the words we choose, when we choose them, and why totally have a real impact on the one of the things that's just interesting in this regard is I found that once I got through it's like how do I explain that the answer to that question, what year are you?

Isaac 1:12:11

Almost for me, at least in my case, requires almost explaining like my whole life story, or at least like the last seven years to really get the full picture. And it's like, well, I'm not gonna do that with someone I just met, right? But piece by piece, you eventually impart this information to people, and once I'm like through that stage, then it's fine. It's no, it's like there's no problem, right?

Hunter 1:12:33

Yeah. Just is this a matter of when you have to unload this information in a matter of like 30 seconds on people? Yeah. What do you think?

Isaac 1:12:40

It's not possible, really, right? But so the example I can give is like in my Portuguese class, the Portuguese program at ASC is very small, right? Which which you know, and so as a result, there's not that many students in it, which means that most of them, most of my classmates in the Portuguese class, they already know. Like they already know my story as a student, right? Which means I'm way more comfortable because I don't feel that need to have to explain it, you know?

Hunter 1:13:07

That's a benefit of these of language classes. I'm sure of the music classes I took, and I'm sure many other classes at universities across the nation, the smaller classes, you just get this close-knit feeling of community with the people around you, whereas you don't necessarily get that in other big lecture hall rooms. I don't know if it was something you experienced as an electrical engineering major, but being in a room where you don't know anybody, you're you're surrounded by so many, yet you are known by so few. It's an interesting feeling, I imagine.

Isaac 1:13:37

Yeah, no, of course. And I think uh when we think about language learning, a lot of that again comes from your comfort you if you're comfortable to make mistakes. At the end of the day, speaking anything is putting yourself out there. Yeah. Even and it feels even more exposing when it's a second language or foreign language that you don't feel super confident in, right?

Hunter 1:13:57

Yeah.

Isaac 1:13:58

And so when you're in the context of, well, this is a class of people that I've this is now my third semester with more or less the same people trying to speak Portuguese, you feel way more comfortable to make those mistakes to to even put yourself out there and speak than when it's a class of people that you've never met before, right?

Hunter 1:14:18

Yeah, well, the one of the uh profound philosopher Wittgenstein called um speaking languages basically language games, and and when you know who you're playing with in a certain sense, it makes it a lot easier to play the games for reasons relating to, you know, are they gonna threaten my face if face being you know my reputation or my standing in the in the social environment? If I make a mistake, no, you know, I know who they are, they know they know who I am. We're we're cool here, so yeah. Um it's so much easier to go out in on a limb when you know people. And what what you said, I also you said that um speaking especially a second language is an inherently vulnerable act, and I think it relates exactly back to what we're talking about with uh how words construct our identity. You said musician is a way that you construct your identity through language, senior, but every word in a sense, every single choice we make helps to construct who we are, portray who we are to people, give them a sense of who we are, our standing in the world, our positionality on things. And so when our vocabulary is inherently limited in a second language, because of course we're learning it from from books and and very slowly through social social interaction and different contexts, we are limited in options in portraying our identity. Exactly. It's tough and it's frustrating sometimes.

Isaac 1:15:41

One of the like really concrete examples that's interesting, I think just in the case of Spanish and Portuguese, is at least in the Portuguese program, there are some most a lot of the students are coming in, they already speak Spanish, right? Some don't, some are only family ties to Brazil, or they did a mission in Brazil, and so they they're coming at Portuguese as just Portuguese, right? But for those of us who speak Spanish, we have a very hard time not speaking Portugal, right? Yeah, and so there's that it's uh to me, it's almost like another aspect of identity, you know. The first time you hear you're in a Portuguese class and you hear someone accidentally say um like pero mais it's like instant you clock, it's like uh you're a Spanish speaker, or at least like you speak Spanish, right?

Hunter 1:16:30

Yeah, yeah.

Isaac 1:16:32

And like that comes back to that idea that you're saying of the how much of the identity that you're putting forth comes from the words that you use, whether you're intending to use them or not. And your accent. And your accent, right?

Hunter 1:16:44

Yeah.

Isaac 1:16:45

You know, you can hear in the accent too that it's like uh you speak Spanish. You're speaking Portuguese right now, but you speak Spanish, right?

Hunter 1:16:53

This is

Confidence as a music instructor

Hunter 1:16:53

I I'm gonna ask you a question that might sound weird, but when you teach people music, do you feel like you have the ability to portray the identity of a music teacher through the way you play your instruments? Do you have that uh I don't want to say mastery because that is totally antithetical to what we've been saying about what music is, but do you have a confidence rather that allows you to do that, portray your identity the way you want?

Isaac 1:17:21

I would say yes, I would say that I do, but it is interesting when you bring forward the concept of like mastery, because I I'll tell my students from like I'll play something or try to play something for them, and then I'll be like, Yeah, that wasn't very good, but you get the idea, right? It does happen. Um But to me that's almost also maybe an important part of teaching is the again also being able to teach, like, hey, it's okay to make mistakes. And something I sometimes say, I sometimes say to my students is like, I'm not expecting you to be perfect. I'm just expecting you to be pretty close, right? And so it's like there is room for error, right? It is okay to make mistakes. You just again can you identify them and can you fix them, right? Um, but this kind of persona, the idea that we that comes to mind when we think of like a music teacher, there are also lots of different types of music teachers, right? There's the stereotype of the like strict Russian music teacher who like will hit your knuckles if you play something with the wrong fingering, right? And it's a stereotype, and yes, but those types of people do exist, right? Those types of instructors do exist. Um, there's others who are much more laid back, who are also more likely to ask their students, well, what do you want to work on? What song do you want to play? Where what do you want to learn? Um, I'm also not that type of instructor. I'm I guess I'm somewhere more in between where it's like I'm going to pick the pieces that you're gonna play, and sometimes I give them what it's the illusion of choice. I'll present three different pieces for them to pick from, and I don't really care which one they pick, right? It's but I've already made the choice and that I presented them those three specific three pieces, right? And so the student feels like they are participating, they're making a choice, but really it's an illusion of choice, right? I'd be fine with them playing any of those three, right? The purpose that I've need to fulfill or whatever learning objective I have for them is fulfilled by either of those three pieces, for example, right?

Hunter 1:19:30

So they get some freedom, they get the sense that they're doing something they want. Yep. Now you said something interesting that which was that you you yourself make mistakes sometimes, which is totally human. Like although, of course, you have a master's degree in performance and you've been doing this for years, uh I at least let's see, more than more than half your life at this point playing instruments. I yep um you embody the the uh reality that humans of any stage of musicianship will make mistakes. Do you think that has an important effect on your students? Them seeing those moments in you I think it does.

Isaac 1:20:11

Um and I think the vast majority of students get it. They get like, hey, everyone makes mistakes, and I tell them I'm everyone makes mistakes, it's okay to make mistakes. Um but it's not very often, but there are sometimes some students where you get this sense that they're trying to like um like evaluate, like, are you really like do you really know what you're talking about? Right? Or some students who are a bit more like obstinate to and like receiving instruction. I have um one student for example, for example, who will sometimes read the wrong note. Maybe it's a G and it's and they played an A. And I'll be like, check that note right there, and they'll look at it and they'll be like, no, it's a G. I'm like, no, it's not. Like, check it again, and they'll be like, no, it's a G. I'm like, look, I'm not I'm not telling you for as a joke. Like I know what I'm talking about here, like check the note, right? And so that happens. Um maybe an interesting place to explore is that this rarely happens, this sort of that sort of me feeling like I need to prove myself, so to speak, rarely ever happens with piano, rarely ever happens with trombone, but it does happen sometimes with trumpet, which is a place where I'm not as comfortable playing, right? I'm not as uh confident. And when we come to identity, questions of identity, when I first started teaching trumpet, I might have I would tell my students, my new students, that I would get, I would say something like Um, like for example, I used to bring my trombone to the trumpet lessons too, and I would say something like there we there might be some things that I can't demonstrate super well on trumpet. Um so I have my trombone right here in case I need to do that. I don't do that anymore. And I don't even necessarily like state, I don't, it's almost like I don't make the concession ahead of time. I don't say oh I also I am actually a trombonist, right? But I do remember I had one student who at least at first I could just you feel that sense. It was like you're sizing me up right now, you're sizing my me up, my trumpet skills.

Hunter 1:22:22

Yeah. I mean, as a second language learner of Spanish, teaching Spanish classes, there's a lot of literature that looks at uh teachers' own identities and perceptions of their efficacy as of as teachers of second languages, as non-native speakers, but and there's also uh uh body literature that looks at student perceptions of the of these people. But yeah, it's always a question: how is my performance in either language or in your case playing an instrument conveying my identity as you know, I'm I'm gonna put authority in air quotes here, as an authority in this area. And sometimes we can do we have better days than others. Um yeah, but I think the fact that we're we're out there with the intent to help another person do the thing, uh, and we're there to uplift them and empower them, give them confidence, give them knowledge, give them space to practice on their own. That's it's gotta be worth something, even if we aren't quote masters of something that really is questionably masterable because it's impossible to master.

Isaac 1:23:34

You know, you'll you'll spend your whole life trying to master it and you'll still not actually get there, right? Um just the funny thing I think with sometimes with these students, it's like, well, hey, guess what? At the end of the day, I've literally been doing this longer than you've been alive, so I know what I'm talking about, right?

Hunter 1:23:50

Like just gotta evoke the the ethos there. Yeah. Pull a fast one on them. Yeah. So

"Vibing" in the jazz scene

Hunter 1:23:57

do you experience any of that with peer musicians? Have you have you experienced that sizing up kind of uh phenomenon?

Isaac 1:24:04

So this is a big thing in jazz culture, right? Have you heard the like concept of vibing? Not probably in the sense you're about to use it in. So in in jazz, there's jazz jam sessions, right? So you go to a club or a bar or whatever, and there's a usually a house band. It's like a pianist, a bassist, and a drummer, and they put on a small set. They might play for half an hour or an hour, and then they open it up to anyone. Anyone who wants to come up to play can play. And some of these are more structured than others. Sometimes like the one of the people in the house band is putting together specific groups of musicians who have shown up um to play a particular song, and sometimes it's a bit less structured. But in these sorts of environments, there's this concept called vibing. And really what it means is to kind of like make someone else feel bad for the level of playing that they're at.

Hunter 1:25:02

That's an interesting use of that word.

Isaac 1:25:05

Vibing, yeah, we call it vibing. And so you know, uh, you know, to use it in a sentence, you might be uh on the bandstand, which means that you're up on stage playing or you're with the rest of the you're you're playing, right? You might be on the bandstand and playing a tune, for example, that you're not super familiar with, and um maybe you miss a chord change or you you play something wrong or whatever, and you might then at that moment the bassist like looks at you and like gives you a dirty look, and you might say something afterwards like, Yeah, man, I like I didn't know the tune that well, and I messed up that one part, and then the bassist looked at me, he vibed the shit out of me.

Hunter 1:25:44

Vibe the shit out of me.

Isaac 1:25:45

Yeah, wow.

Hunter 1:25:47

Hmm.

Isaac 1:25:47

And so there's this idea of in of vibe culture, right? There's some people who think that this is okay, that it's okay to vibe people because that's how the music that's how everyone gets better, right? It's the idea that you you get vibed, you feel bad about it, and so you go home and practice and get better so that doesn't happen again. Then there's others who think that Yeah, maybe that sort of environment's not very conducive to learning, right?

Hunter 1:26:15

This is so fascinating. Yep. Wow, do you feel like this version of socialization into the practice of doing jazz is in any sense categorically different than being socialized into the world of adulthood as a human? Because in one sense, we could look at how teenagers and middle schoolers experience understanding what nor quote normal behavior is, and we we see that they're bullied, they're laughed at for doing things, they're given weird looks, and this is a cr the harsh reality, and it's not ideal in any really any way, but it is reflective, I think, of how humans at large push and funnel behaviors, group behaviors towards the normal.

Isaac 1:27:06

Yeah, it's it's again, it's just that it's human nature. It's just this vibe culture, it's another expression of human how we are as human beings, right? This tendency to try and make people conform to what we consider normal, right? Um and so I know I think that in general this idea of vibe culture is uh getting better and that people have kind of realized like maybe it's not so nice to be mean to people for whatever reason. Um but then there I know there's still people who think that the the story here is that um the saxophonist, very prolific saxophonist, John Coltrane, um for more or less he became John Coltrane. This is the story people debate whether it actually happened or if it happened this way. But the story goes that he went to a jam session, this would have been in the 50s. He went to a jam session and he tried to play some tune, and he was doing such a poor job that the drummer there's two versions of the story. The drummer took one of his cymbals and dropped it on the ground while he was playing.

Hunter 1:28:15

Oh my god.

Isaac 1:28:15

The other version of the story is that the drummer picked up the symbol. And threw it at him. Those things are not light. No. And so, and then the way the story goes is that happened, and then he went and locked himself in a room and practiced for 13 hours a day or whatever, some crazy number for a year, and when he came out, he was John Coltrane. The John Coltrane that we know today.

Hunter 1:28:36

Wow.

Isaac 1:28:37

And every jazz musician's heard this story or been told this story. And I think that's where you know it's to me that's what vibe culture is at its core. This idea that you that this is how the jazz world keeps people, it's how it's how the jazz world expresses its its uh one of its uh values of not accepting mediocrity, of always needing to push yourself to be better to the point that you're now trying to push other people to be better too.

Hunter 1:29:11

Let's connect this concept of vibing with with identity and people who are in jazz for for longer. Is it um is there a tendency for people who have been doing it for a long time to shy away from openly vibing others, or are those the people that do it the most? And how do you know once you've gained the right, so to speak, to vibe others? How does one come to know that?

Isaac 1:29:39

You know, I think it's it's almost like you can think of the idea of like there being an in-group and an out group, right? Um when you are in the in-group or the out-group, I have no idea. I have no idea how you would I assume you just feel it, right? Um but something that I think does happen is the people who are okay with vibing probably got vibed at some point, and then they didn't shy away from the music. So it's like a rite of passage type of music. Maybe a rite of passage, right? It's like, well, it happened to me, and so now I'm gonna do it to other people, right? But the other thing too is that how many people got vibed at a jam session that they're like, well, you know what, I I don't want to do this jazz thing anyways.

Hunter 1:30:31

Yeah.

Isaac 1:30:32

And so they stopped playing.

Hunter 1:30:34

That would be a shame. It's almost like this type of behavior, like we both mentioned already, is like human instinct, human behavior baseline. But big corporate organizations have guardrails in place for doing this sort of thing or like bullying, basically. But jazz is one of those scenes where there's no organization to report somebody for bad behavior. You can I I don't know, as I imagine it, you can vibe all you want, and as long as you play your instrument well, you're still gonna get invited around and be able to perform. And there's so it's kind of like a rogue underground place.

Isaac 1:31:11

Well, and the thing that kind of happens I one example I can okay, here's an example I can give is recently I had to put together a band for a gig, for a Mardi Gras gig. And I needed to find I I'm not even gonna say what instrument because I'll be too specific. I needed to find a musician for a particular instrument. And in my mind I knew a person who would be perfect. I knew that this person knew the style, and I knew that this person would very effectively play the gig. Um, and yet I also knew that this person was kind of an asshole, right?

Hunter 1:31:46

Yeah, don't want to give too much information here. Yeah. And so I didn't I didn't hire that person, right?

Isaac 1:31:52

I I was it was like, well, I this person would be perfect, but I don't want to be around them. Wow. And so, you know, I found someone else, right? And so that's kind of when you talk in terms of like consequences or being like a central authority, there is no central authority, but at least for this one person and this one gig, they did not get that gig because they treat people badly of the way that they have treated people, right? But then other people who other people who are putting together bands, they don't care. Maybe they're vibers themselves. And so they don't have a problem with that, right? And so there's this idea we talk about when we talk about gigs, there's we say there's like three things, and two of them need to be true for you to take a gig. It needs to be good pay, good music, or a good hang. So two of and two of them have to be true. Two of them have to be true. So for example, if you're gonna play, if the gig pays really really well and you like the music, you're gonna take it. Even if you don't really care for the people that you're playing with. Or the people that you're playing with are your friends, and you'll have a fun time hanging out with them, and the music's really good, then you don't care that uh then the pay, yeah, you don't care if it doesn't pay very well, right? Or um you know you're gonna be hanging out with your friends, and you guys are all gonna get paid well, you don't care that the music sucks, right?

Hunter 1:33:18

So two of them makes perfect sense to me. Yeah.

Isaac 1:33:21

And and you know, we see these memes all the time with the triangles, and it's like pick two, right? Yeah. The other one is in terms of musicians themselves, and it's like you have to be three two of three things. You have to either be really, really good, um, you you have to be punctual, and you have to be prepared. So a G P P. So in other words, this then this is what this is the consequence of this. So someone who's really, really good and shows up on time, um, they can get away with not being prepared. Okay, someone who's always prepared and always on time can get away with maybe not being the greatest player. Right? And so it is when we there's a lot of ego in in music, right? Obviously in the world of music, and so at the end of the day, there's also this concept of like if you're really, really good, people are still gonna hire you. They don't they're not gonna care if you're late. If you're late, they're not gonna care if you're an asshole to people.

Hunter 1:34:26

Because you're really, really good, right? So good that you can generate a profit somehow, yeah, and that's that you know, takes over the but then the the aspect of a good hang.

Isaac 1:34:39

Yep, exactly, exactly. But then the the corollary corollary is also interesting to think that you know if maybe if you're not the strongest player, you're not gonna wow anybody, but you show up on time and you show and you're prepared. Like for a person who's a band leader, that's almost more important.

Hunter 1:34:55

Yeah, that's a good point. Right, yeah.

Isaac 1:34:56

Like I can is this person gonna wow me with anything that they play? Maybe not, but I know they're gonna be prepared to the for the rehearsal and for the gig, and I know they're gonna show up on time. And that's more that is what you need, right? More often than someone who's amazing.

Hunter 1:35:13

So have you ever experienced being vibed before? And if so, was it earlier in your career versus now, or is it now that you're expanding your reach into different groups? I don't know. I just um every time I see you, you just seem like you're having a great time on stage.

Isaac 1:35:32

So yeah, no, I've definitely been vibed before, I've experienced it. Um, and it's obviously it's not a great feeling, and again, it was more to when I was not as good when I was younger, right? And um yeah, it's not a great feeling, and for I can't necessarily speak to it having been like a specific instance, but it was more so a few years back. Um the culture, the culture of the jazz program at ASU was not super great. It was very vibey. And so I think that turned people away sometimes. Um and it also kind of gives you this sense that like you'll never you know, people have already made this assumption about you, they've already kind of decided what level you're at and how you play. And you're never gonna break that kind of assumption, right? And so I think that is part of why, at least in my stor my story, I didn't play straight up like Bebop jazz for a long time because I felt that kind of pressure, or maybe even not pressure, but that kind of outside look, like the the people are looking at you, people are gonna judge you, people are gonna vibe you.

Hunter 1:36:51

Is it during rehearsals mostly or during live performances or what you post on social media, or is it all the above?

Isaac 1:36:58

It is like strictly this is strictly a thing, at least in the way that I know it, in like the jam session.

Hunter 1:37:04

Oh, oh okay. So like a non-public facing.

Isaac 1:37:08

I mean a jam session is public facing, right? There are people like who aren't playing it or not. Okay, yeah, okay. Yeah, so people are, and so it is a public thing. Um and it might be some people that you know and it might be some people that you don't know, but it is it is public, you know, and it is it is a performance. Um it's not necessarily that it's not really something that's gonna happen in a rehearsal, for example, because if you're rehearsing with a group of people, it means that there is some there's some reason why you are all together, right? And it's any of those three, like the reasons that I said earlier, right? Um and so it's not as likely to happen. The thing is, is if you're rehearsing with a group of people, these are probably people that you know personally, because either you hired them for whatever show you're about to play, or someone in the band hired all of you, right? Yeah, a friend of a friend type situation. Yeah, and so there they're people that you know. There's there are social consequences to being an asshole to people. As there should be, as there should be. And so you're not gonna you're not gonna vibe people that you know that you probably know, right? Yeah the reason why it can happen in the jam sessions, the the the public in the jam sessions is because this is probably someone you've never seen before, you've never met before, and you might not ever see again.

Hunter 1:38:29

How much of of vibing is this this is gonna be a technical deep question, but how much of vibing is non-verbal? How much of it is the sense you get from eyes and from face and from how much of it is also musical? Can people slight you musically in the moment?

Isaac 1:38:47

It's a fascinating question because it is, I would say, like almost strictly nonverbal. To vibe someone is strictly in like nonverbal thing.

Hunter 1:38:56

Wow.

Isaac 1:38:56

You don't say anything, you never say anything that's too obvious, right?

Hunter 1:39:01

Because you want the benefit of a doubt, of the doubt that you're not an asshole. Yeah, yeah. If someone checks you, you're gonna I didn't say anything, right?

Isaac 1:39:07

But I mean it could be, it could be at least in my experience though, it's like it's usually like a visual thing. They give you a look, or like you said, they do something we'll talk about musically in a second. Um but it's very you know, I feel like I've never seen someone or heard someone like be like, hey, hey man, you you suck.

Hunter 1:39:28

Right? Like it just doesn't happen, right? That'd be a declaration of I'm not a pleasant person to be like, yeah.

Isaac 1:39:36

And so it that's funny. Musically, yes. Um, maybe one of the examples is that people just stop playing. Oh, yeah. Um Wow, so that'd be yeah, and that's like extreme. That's extreme. The funny thing too is how extreme it is depends on what instrument you're playing. So if you're a pianist and you're comping and the soloist is playing and you stop playing, that's not necessarily that is a sometimes the correct musical choice to make is to lay out and leave some space. So that could be vibing, it could not be, right? There's some plausible deniability there. If the drummer stops playing, that's vibing. But even then, you know, it not necessarily. I've heard drummers stop playing, and not because they're vibing anyone, because they're like, oh, this will be cool for me to stop playing in this moment, right?

Hunter 1:40:27

Is there a sense that by by stopping you are highlighting the person's perceived lack of ability, like putting them in the spotlight basically to others?

Isaac 1:40:36

No, I'd say it's less you know that could be it, but I've always kind of gotten the sense that it's more like, oh, you're not at the level for me to play with you. You're beneath me, so I'm not gonna play with you.

Hunter 1:40:49

That has to be a tough experience as the person being vibe.

Isaac 1:40:53

Yeah, well, and so I have a student who's super into jazz, and I don't want to like tell, I don't want to tell them like, hey, you should come to the jam, you should come to the jam session on whatever day at the Nash, because I can't control that that's not gonna happen.

Hunter 1:41:13

Yeah, right. But at the same time, is that just part of the part of the experience and and warning him saying, hey, this is a thing, uh, this might happen, but it doesn't mean that you're a cast away, doesn't mean that you're uh you know unable to better yourself and unable to one day participate at the level the people want you to be participating at or performing at?

Isaac 1:41:39

I think that's the debate that's going on maybe in the jazz world right now. That's probably been going on forever, but always that question of like, is this why do we do this? Should we even do this? Um, and obviously not everyone does it. It's more so is like should the subsect of the jazz world that decides to vibe, should we let them still do this, and should we just like let them get away with it?

Hunter 1:42:03

Right. What's the the worry or the downside? Is the downside that by not course correcting people's you use the term mediocrity, yeah, that the whole scene will start to deteriorate or that they'll just make a fool of themselves?

Isaac 1:42:22

No, I think it's the scene deteriorates, the art form, the art form itself deteriorates, right? I think that's the where it comes from is the idea that you know, thinking like this is hard music to play. You shouldn't be allowed to just mess it up.

Hunter 1:42:40

So you're like non-verbally gatekeeping the scene.

Isaac 1:42:44

Yeah, I'd say okay, that's exactly it. The other thing that's interesting is there's like a uh something that I've kind of realized some more recently is there's like a pragmatic part to this too, in the sense that it's more in the sense of a jam session where people there more or less just have fun. It's more fun to play when everyone knows what's going on, when everyone's competent. And so there's almost that like it's very like utilitarian or pragmatic. It's like, you know, if we keep the people who are not good from feeling comfortable to play, then the rest of us get to have a better time.

Hunter 1:43:23

Yeah, I can see that part of it too. I think maybe that's could be part of it, but so in moments where no one's being vibed, what factors in the moment contribute to a sense of like, yeah, this this one was it, this one clicked. We because in the way I use the word vibe is that I would say we vibed really well. Like, yeah, you can say that too. Yeah, yeah.

Isaac 1:43:48

It's context-dependent.

Hunter 1:43:49

Yeah, of course. But

How do musicians "click?"

Hunter 1:43:51

um, so it using the other an alternative use of the word vibe, how in in the positive sense, how what what cues you in on, yeah. Or maybe what events unfold during your performance that contribute to your reflective, retrospective sense that that was it.

Isaac 1:44:09

I don't know if there's like a if it I think it's a thing you feel. I think you can feel when it's like really like hitting when the music is really functioning at a high level. You can feel it, but it's hard to say that it's hard to like point at a specific thing and be like, well, that was why. You know, it's that you can feel it. And you can also see it happening. Because I remember I've been at jam sessions where you know you see a particular set of people playing, it's like, yeah, it was whatever. And then a different group of people come up, and for whatever reason, it's just like they lock in. It's really good, it's like a fantastic performance, right? And it's hard to say like what you can't point at any one thing and be like, well, some people might try to be like, oh, it was the basis' fault, right? You can't really it's the collective, you know, it's the sum of the everything, but you feel it and you can feel it when it's happening elsewhere too.

Hunter 1:45:05

The German word gestalt works well here. The the whole the ecology almost. Um yeah, is it like a resonance or an atmosphere? Do those words kind of help capture the feeling better? Like because you're saying it's the experience of the moment, you can't put your finger on it. To me, it's like it's a high. A high.

Isaac 1:45:23

It's like a high. You can feel it when it's like really locked in.

Hunter 1:45:29

Referring to the feeling that that was good. Yeah, it's like a high.

Isaac 1:45:32

And it's at least for me, it's in the moment, and obviously it like carries over afterwards, but yeah, it's it's like a high, I would say. The converse of that is you can also feel when it's not. You can feel too. It's like yeah, this isn't it. Because you don't have that high. Right.

Hunter 1:45:51

Can it also be if you notice that somebody else doesn't have the high, like just looking at them, or does that take away from the magic of it?

Isaac 1:45:59

Or I guess it could be. You could notice someone else is not into it, but I think like you said, it's if it is the whole, then it needs to be the whole, right? For it to really lock in like that.

Hunter 1:46:13

Do you get the sense that you lose your the barrier between you and your co-performers dissolves to a certain extent and you become one we unit almost? Collective unit, hive mind to employ these metaphors.

Isaac 1:46:29

It's definitely like collaborative, you know, it's definitely a collaborative environment. But something that's interesting, especially is you think when everyone's everyone's on a different instrument. And so your voice in the ensemble is inherently unique, right? Um and especially in jazz where there's a lot of improvisation, there are definite moments where it's like now the focus is on you. Now the focus is on you. And so there's that collaborative sense, there's that supportive sense, and that you're trying to support what else is happening in the ensemble. But I do think because of the way that jazz is, everyone does also still maintain their sense of the individuality, because that's one of the things that's valued in the it's one of the core values of jazz music, jazz music is that sense of individuality, right? Of originality, maybe even. And so I don't know that it necessarily dissolves the way that you might think it would.

Hunter 1:47:26

Would it and this is just me imagining things here, but could part of the high result from the fluidity of of motions from being a collective whole to individuality and back in the seamlessness of those motions?

Isaac 1:47:46

I think the seamlessness is definitely part of it. When there's no like friction points, you know, when when everyone just kind of seems to like know what's about to happen next, or everyone just like Yeah, there's there is that definite fluidity, I'd say, is a good way of putting it. That's one of those things that contributes to it, is when there's nothing like everything's just gelling together really well.

Hunter 1:48:10

Gelling, I like that.

Isaac 1:48:11

Yeah.

Hunter 1:48:12

Yeah.

Isaac 1:48:14

It is it's like you know you you have me really trying to think about what the difference is, and it's it's hard. I'm I'm struggling to kind of describe it, but that would be one of the words is gelling. Um another would be just the a lot of it comes from the rhythm section, obviously. Right. If the rhythm section's not good, then the ensemble's not gonna sound good. Right. It's a lot of pressure. It is a lot of pressure. Yeah, and so I don't envy drummers. Yeah. I think drummers have the least space to make mistakes out of everyone in the ensemble.

Hunter 1:48:53

Wow. Yeah. Because everybody depends on them?

Isaac 1:48:56

Because everyone depends on them. And everyone else, if you think of the standard kind of progression of a of a how a jazz standard would be played at a jam session, you play the head in, you play the melody in, that's everybody playing. And then you go through solos, and everyone if you're a horn player, you're playing the melody, you get a long time where you're not playing. If you're the uh pianist, even like I said, you can totally lay out. You don't have to play all the time. In fact, you shouldn't be playing all the time, because then you're just stepping all over everything else, right? So you get moments where you don't have to play. But like the bass and drums, you are constantly playing, you never get that that reprise.

Hunter 1:49:37

Sounds seems difficult to know when to lay off. I'm just imagining myself in your shoes. Like, how how do I know that my my co-performers aren't wanting me to lay off or that I'm laying off when they don't want me to? That's tough.

Isaac 1:49:52

Yeah, you don't you don't really know. So some people might be better at like telling and then others I'm not. Um some people are better at making eye contact or just looking. I'm not. I tend to stare at what I'm playing and use my ears for the other stuff, right? Um but I'll give an example. One of the times where I definitely will stop playing is when. If I hear that like the time between the ensemble is starting to get uh shaky. So like we're starting to do not everyone's on the same downbeats, not everyone's got the same sense of where the pulse is. That's a moment where I I stop playing. And that's where that's one where I will stop playing because it's like, okay, let's take some of the elements out of what's happening here so it can kind of fit back in, right? Or for example, another choice that I might make is okay, everyone sometimes and things just happen. It's like, okay, we're lost. Like people are in different parts of the form. And so like something I might do is I start playing very, very obvious chords, like very clear what the harmony is right on the downbeat. So it'll be like one, two, three, four, two, two, three, right, right on the downbeats, and it's like, okay, I am declaring where I think we are for the sake of us getting back on track, right?

Hunter 1:51:13

How many people in the performance have that ability to do that? Because I feel like the piano is an interesting position.

Isaac 1:51:21

Yeah, the piano's at least got one of the more powerful abilities to do that.

Hunter 1:51:25

Because I mean you can't just play a chord to let everybody know where we're at and they like what what key or what mode we're in on a trumpet.

Isaac 1:51:30

I mean, you can you can of course like do a little bit of skill to the piano, it lean lends itself a bit easier to that sort of declarative role, right? But the bass player can do it too. It's just that it's a bit harder, you know, to hear. You have to hear what the bass where the bass player is in the form based on what they're playing, because it is a single note line, right? But the bass player has the ability to make the sort of same sort of I'm let me play something more simple, and they just play the root for each chord for like four beats, and then the chord changes, they just play the root, right? So they stop walking, right? And that's again a way they can declare this is where we are.

Hunter 1:52:04

So you're all tuning into the fragility, the ongoing moment-to-moment fragility of what's going on. Yep. And pulling it back up even like the horn players have this ability too, right?

Isaac 1:52:18

They can um, for example, they play a short snippet of the melody. Right? Maybe we're in the solos at the moment, but they just play a short snippet of the melody as in the sense of in the way that it would sound like it was just a background, right? But you play that short snippet of the melody of like this is where I think we are in the form. Right.

Hunter 1:52:43

Interesting.

Isaac 1:52:44

Or, you know, you come back around to the end of the form and not everyone is agreeing on where that is, and so the horn player, whoever's playing horn and players is like, well, I'm just I'm gonna start playing the melody. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna start doing it, and I'm not gonna adjust to whatever else is happening. I'm gonna which but then the thing is is since that everyone keys in on that and it's like, okay, we're following him. Wow, wherever this person is in the form now, that's where we're at.

unknown 1:53:10

Wow.

Hunter 1:53:10

So you truly just you do become the problem if you're not adapting and I would use the word aligning with what's going on. Now quickly you can become the problem. Exactly.

Isaac 1:53:21

And of course, ideally, you don't get in this situation to begin with, right? You that no one messes up, no one makes a mistake such that you end up in this situation. But the recovery It's interesting in that the recovery is like a communal process, but I think it does require someone to take charge, someone to decide we are here and force everyone else to follow them.

Hunter 1:53:51

Would you say that jazz might be in great part a matter of exactly this, like going astray, going off the beaten path, yeah, having a trail, you know, having a trailhead in mind and having a path in mind, but being able to venture off into the outback a little bit, and find your way back and continuously do this recursively over and over again.

Isaac 1:54:14

And you you know what's funny when we talk about like skill is I think one of the things that happens is to go to like kind of get weird with it. And that that is the phrasing that I've heard before and that I've said before is like, yeah, we got kind of weird there in the middle, right? Um requires a certain level of confidence in your bandmates. You have to trust that well, one, they're you have to trust that they're one okay with getting a little weird with the music, right? Two, that they can manage themselves in that environment, right? That they have the skills to play like that. Um and then three, that they'll be able to come back. Right? And so there's definitely times like for example when I've been playing and improvising where the way that I improvise depends very much on, for example, I can tell it could be, for example, the bassist doesn't seem to know this song very well, or they seem seems like they're a bit newer. Um, and it seems like they're maybe they could get lost. And so that the way and then the way that I improvise, I change the way that I improvise. I don't do anything, you know, too weird, for example, right? I choose to maybe play in a way that's very direct, very where it's very obvious what's going on at each moment, right? But then the opposite happens too, where it's like you can tell, like, and this is where I think it's important when you have that personal connection with people, like if you feel comfortable, not just with musician, but like personally, do I have a personal relationship with you? Do I feel like if I start to do weird things, if I start to go out there, that you will one follow me and also support me as I do it musically? Support you. Right.

Hunter 1:56:02

Yeah, that sounds important. And so you don't want to because otherwise the weirdness is pretty much just weirdness as long in in the event that nobody comes after you and supports you, it's yeah, you it's just you alone.

Isaac 1:56:15

Yeah. And then that looks unintentional. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Hunter 1:56:20

Um, I'm sure there's a dissertation to be had in the dynamics of there are some studies that look at orchestra dynamics of orchestra players and whatnot. Yeah. There's a the term in human interaction studies that's called anticipatory pulsion that describes how people are always forward-oriented or slightly forward-oriented in what's going on in moment-to-moment coaction with people. And I think that is so true for music musicianship uh and and language speaking and human interaction. But yeah, man, beauty, uh, artistry, mistakes are all totally dependent and defined by the not just the immediate context of what's being played, but the macro structures of the songs, too. So there's so many different levels. Um, you might think of it or compare it to working memory, like what listeners have their working memory. Does it make sense with what they have there versus the long term or not necessarily super long term, but memory framed within what's been played in the song so far. Yeah. And does it sound like it blends or that belongs? So many levels. And there's the genre expectations which you might want to conform to or bend to a certain extent. So exactly.

Isaac 1:57:40

Yeah. Um,

"Owning" what you play as a musician

Isaac 1:57:41

one of the things that I communicate to my students is this idea of intentionality. And so this is a big one, I think, with jazz, because there's the meme that jazz is just playing all the wrong notes, right? Or playing whatever you want. And what I've told some of my students before is like, well, yeah, at the end of the day, you can play whatever you want, but it has to be intentional. You have to mean it. Right? Whatever you're playing, you have to really mean what you are saying, right? Because otherwise it is just random noise. And the other, um, the other part of this is then does it make sense? Like, like you were saying, it's like, is it within the genre? Is it purposefully without the genre, right? What does this make logical sense in everything that's happened up till this point, everything that's going to happen? Does it make sense? Right? Can you sometimes I say uh sometimes what I'll say to some of my student, one of my students, is like, can you justify that? Like you just played this note or whatever note. Can you justify playing that note? What is the justification for playing that note in that moment?

Hunter 1:58:49

Does the justification come verbally? Like actually, literally, is is the student explains it, or is it or is it sort of like, well, listen to what comes after?

Isaac 1:59:00

Either way is fine. Some people are gonna some people can approach it verbally, right? Some people have the I think ability to describe it. I think many of our favorite musicians don't. They don't have the ability to verbalize the patterns that are there behind it. Um I've even said before, like something like, you don't have to actually tell me like a justification, but it's like, but could you justify it? Like a reflective question, right?

Hunter 1:59:25

Yeah, I get what you're saying. It makes sense. Intentionality, do you mean it? I I like that as you say, do you mean it? Exactly. Because you have to own it. It's like this is a product of my musicianship. This isn't an accident or this isn't me touching random keys because I don't know where I'm going.

Isaac 1:59:43

It's yeah, it's um there's like the the funny videos on the internet where the there's a few of these of someone's like cleaning off the keys on the piano, and so it's just making random noise, and then it'll be like when your jazz musician roommates hear, and it's like, ooh, that's cool, man, and they start playing a swing beat to it, right? But there's that's not intentional, there's no intentionality there, right? Yeah, that's an interesting one. And the funny thing I'll even say sometimes, the idea is yes, you can play any note you want, but can you justify it? Right? And I'll say sometimes, there's a million ways to justify the note. There's a million ways to justify anything that you play, but there has to be a justification, right? There has to be a reason why you're playing it. It's like I played this particular note knowing it would clash against the harmony because it would sound weird and clash. Okay, that's a justification.

Hunter 2:00:43

I bet you that that question eats away a little bit at young or junior music musicians, like but I bet you it's a fulfilling question to begin to answer as they do discover how to justify those types of things.

Isaac 2:00:57

And something I it's always interesting, I think you can make a parallel with language too. It's like, why do we practice scales? Why do we practice arpeggios? Well, because real music is built out of scales and it's built out of arpeggios. And so when you know those, you know how to express yourself. Even if you're not going to play a straight up major scale, you know how to work within it. You have the ability to express yourself using that. Same with like a conjugation.

Hunter 2:01:28

I was just thinking that, yes.

Isaac 2:01:29

Yeah, why do we learn conjugations? Why do we practice the predator and the imperfect? Why do we why do we do any of these? Why do we practice them? So that then when it's time to improvise, you can express yourself, right? I think there's a really big area of possible study, kind of studying specifically jazz improvisation and how people learn jazz improvisation, how what processes are going on in the brain, um, both when learning it and also while executing it and with foreign language acquisition.

Hunter 2:02:03

There's there are probably similar experiences, fleeting experiences, using these tools, I would call them, like the conjugations and the scales, to yeah, integrate into the immediate environment and do things that are that that have stakes. Yeah, yeah. It has stakes, right?

Isaac 2:02:21

One of um another interesting music concept one of my professors has that I think you can apply to languages, he said that improvising is like having a bag of tricks. And the reason we practice is so that you keep adding new things to your bag of tricks. And so then when it comes to improvise, uh it comes the moment to improvise, you can just keep reaching into your bag of tricks and execute these things that you've practiced.

Hunter 2:02:42

It's funny you say that. That's what my one of my mentors has said about conducting qualitative research in the social sciences. We have these tools and concepts, and he says it's like your your toolkit. It's a toolkit. Yeah. You take it and you use what makes sense and the context that you think it makes sense in. And it's it hinges on context, not on abstractness.

Isaac 2:03:08

And the the funny thing to me about this is like there are certain linguistic structures that we all gravitate towards, right? In this is the like the idiolect thing that are individual.

Hunter 2:03:18

We all as an as an English speaker or any language, any any speaker of any language, right?

Isaac 2:03:23

And but I think especially this becomes a bit more relevant in the context of a foreign language. You I I forget. I think like the first time I learned, or when I was in Spain, I learned Osea.

Hunter 2:03:34

Uh-huh.

Isaac 2:03:34

It was like, oh wow, this is great. This is super useful. And so then I would say it all the time, right? Um, and it's of obvious obviously that's not the only way of forming a sentence or to fill it. Like a discourse marker, exactly. But these like discourse markers that we use are very um everyone kind of uses different different ones. Yeah. Right.

Hunter 2:03:57

Yeah, like I have a a teacher from Peru who says este instead of ocean. Yeah, este. Yeah.

Isaac 2:04:04

Yeah, exactly. And I think that a similar thing happens with jazz improvisation in that the sense of that like there are certain things that I play pretty much in every every solo I play, there's this one line. I guarantee you I am going to play it somewhere once. It will happen. It just will happen.

Hunter 2:04:25

That's such a cool comparison.

Isaac 2:04:27

And then there's this other the kind of other comparison that could be made is there's this sense of when you're actually really I sometimes I say you're like barely holding on. Maybe the tune is you're not super familiar with the tune, or it's a really hard tune, and you are just barely making your way through playing through the harmony, like you are barely holding on, and so you are really clinging to the structures that you have under control that you know well, right? And then there's times where it's a tune that you've played so many times and you know it so well that you are purposefully trying to go outside of those, and you're trying to find what are new things I can do on this song, what are new things, new ideas I can play on this, and I think the same thing happens in language too. Um when you are in an uncomfortable situation, you start grabbing the structures that you feel very confident with, right? You're you avoid those uh you avoid those compound sentences where there's gonna be a subjunctive trigger, right? Right. Um, I think like I of for example, like in Portuguese, you avoid the verb, right?

Hunter 2:05:28

That's definitely me when I speak Portuguese.

Isaac 2:05:30

You avoid it because you're like, I'm I'm not comfortable with this, so I'm gonna avoid it. And you find ways around it, right?

Hunter 2:05:36

Yeah.

Isaac 2:05:37

I think a similar sort of thing happens with the with jazz improv where you find those structures that you really know well, and so you you feel comfortable using them, right?

Hunter 2:05:48

Yeah.

Looking back on life

Hunter 2:05:48

So looking back at when you were maybe I don't know, when you started playing music around 10, probably eight or seven.

Isaac 2:05:57

I was four years old when I started piano lessons. My mom put me in piano lessons.

Hunter 2:06:02

So you are 23 years older from that period. Yep. Did is this where you thought maybe as a at least in middle school or high school there you would be in life doing these things, this having this life world on a day-to-day basis?

Isaac 2:06:16

When I was a kid, I always thought I was gonna become a scientist. I I just I don't know why, but that was what called to me. And so I always thought I was gonna be a scientist. Maybe around high school, I thought I'm gonna be no, actually, I'm gonna be an electrical engineer, which isn't so far off from scientists, right? And I think it wasn't really until my senior year of high school when it came time to actually apply to college and pick a degree when I I just remember this distinct feeling, like I was going to apply for an electrical engineering degree, and I was like, Well, I can't stop studying music. I just I just knew I was like, I can't stop studying it. I I don't want to stop studying it. And so maybe in some sense that was one of those forks in my life, and that that moment I made that choice. Another one obviously is the moment I decided to stop studying electrical engineering, right? Um and even when I was in my undergrad in in my masters, I just I didn't necessarily know what life afterwards would look like as a musician, like the thing like I mentioned earlier that I do all these orchestral arranging things. I didn't I never anticipated that. I never expected that to be a part of my life as a musician. It just kind of happened into it, right? And so I think um maybe when I was I always knew to some extent, like I something the path that I end up taking is going to be something in music, but what that path looks like I'm not totally sure, right?

Hunter 2:07:48

Do you think that four-year-old Isaac would be thinking that this Isaac is cool? I think so. Yeah, I think so too. You play so many instruments, it always amazes me. You just yeah, it do you people say like, oh, when you learn one language, it's easier to learn another. And I think that's definitely true in in in ways. Is that true with learning instruments?

Isaac 2:08:10

I think it's true with learning instruments, and in the big obviously the one thing that's true is like music theory. The things you learn about music theory are universal. It doesn't matter what instrument you're on, they apply, right? One of the things, and this I think everyone who's learned more than one foreign language experiences this. When you start learning your second foreign language, when you're reaching for words, your brain immediately goes for whatever the first language you learned was. Yeah. Right.

Hunter 2:08:36

Yeah.

Isaac 2:08:36

So like when I started taking Portuguese classes, I could not get my brain to stop trying to auto-fill in Spanish, right? Um, but once you go through that, it be it becomes so much easier, right? The same problem didn't really happen when I started learning French. It was like my brain kind of already knew, like, to a certain level, like, well, I don't know what's about to happen here, but it's not Spanish, right? And so I think the same sort of thing happens with with music. Your brain kind of realizes, like, oh, this is different, and to not try and force in these ideas that you already built in, right?

Hunter 2:09:20

Hmm. So like instruments could be could be tools in a sense, and maybe our our instinct is to use the similar tools which have differences the same way in the beginning, but then we realize that we're not going to be able to do that. We're trying to shoehorn sometimes, you know.

Isaac 2:09:37

But then I think eventually you also find the nuance in terms into to which things are similar and which things aren't, right? Like um, I think the way that I approach Portuguese to a certain extent is knowing what words from Spanish not to say, you know.

Hunter 2:09:56

Yeah, it's it it's experience I have too.

Isaac 2:09:59

Yeah, it's like you you're at the end of the day, even still when I'm speaking Portuguese, I to some level I feel like I'm working with the same part of my brain from the same space in my brain as I used to speak Spanish. It's just like certain words, certain structures have just been like turned off. It's like, don't use that one, use this one, right?

Hunter 2:10:19

Yeah, and of course the sounds and everything.

Isaac 2:10:22

And so I think a similar thing happens with kind of music and different instruments. I've always kind of thought this way that each instrument is in its own way, it's its own language, you know, and something that we try to do as musicians and we try to do as speakers is take whatever we have in here in our heads, which is fundamentally not linguistic, right, or not musical, and we're filtering it through the instrument that we happen to have in our hands or the language that we happen to be speaking, right? And the big reason why we practice our instruments is to kind of make that connection stronger, to make that um conversion from like pure thought into the notes that you're playing more efficient, or the conversion from pure thought to the language that you are speaking more efficient.

Hunter 2:11:15

Another perspective on this sort of thing is like that you know, if you hold your trombone, it it's uh almost like an extension of your body, it becomes a part of you, and at first it's hard to use it because it's new, but with time your body integrates itself and becomes one with the tool. Becomes second nature. And so I want in a in a sense, you know days we have like 4e cognition, it's not just all in the head, it's embodied, it's embedded, it's extended. Um all these things. The instrument per who you know, perhaps some of the the expressive thoughts or expressive intentions are found in the instrument itself and not necessarily just in the confines we might say in the confines of the skin and skull of the head.

Isaac 2:12:00

Something interesting in this um regard, at least in my experience with jazz improvisation, is there's a difference between fundament like having the understanding of how, for example, a particular lick is constructed and being able to describe it and being able to fluently play it. Right. And the same thing happens with language. Yeah. We there's so many so many people can list off the conjugations of an ER verb. Yep. But then when it comes to the moment of performing with language, you have to just know it. There's no time to think. You have to have that internalized. And so I think a big thing with the practice for for jazz improvisation is you're moving this theoretical knowledge, this kind of you understand the music theory of the lick or whatever, and you are now ingraining that into your muscle memory such that you are no longer thinking about it. You just know it. You s play it, you say it just the same way you say a word. Right?

Hunter 2:12:57

Yeah. And to take it even further, maybe you're just as that information is is becoming second nature, you operating as a person in a specific environment on a stage, in a in a practice room, in a jam session, wherever it is, all being part of those bigger spaces is almost like a similar phenomenon occurring. Yep. Where you're like the yeah, I don't know, these levels of coordination and integration occur in different chunks, I guess. Something interesting.

Isaac 2:13:29

Head, body, is you have to like you not only learn you not only learn how to play, but you also learn how to perform. Right? Generally speaking, like I don't get nervous when I perform anymore. When I play. It's it to it and the but the way it feels is it to me it like feels like I got over it. You know? It like eventually I learned like this isn't actually helping me in this situation. Being nervous about it isn't helping me, and so I don't do it anymore, right? But in unfamiliar situations, I'll still be a little bit nervous, right? So it's normal. Um, but that's uh you know, that I've played these huge, some of these really big shows sometimes, and I look out at the audience, and it's like five years ago, six years ago, this same situation, I would have been really nervous right now. I would have felt it, and it's like through exposure, just being in that environment so much. I look out and there's audience of a whole bunch of people, and it's just like yeah, you know, it's normal.

Hunter 2:14:30

I wonder do you think that has anything to do with the fact that maybe now you can justify better your the things you do and you you own your things better and you in you in have this intentionality behind what you do better?

Isaac 2:14:42

And then there's the confidence. I think it comes down to confidence. I'm not nervous because I'm not worried about executing what I have to execute. There's the confidence. I'm not nervous because I I'm very confident in being successful in what I'm about to do, right? Which was not necessarily the case five or six years ago.

Hunter 2:15:01

And I wonder what you're gonna say with respect to this period of your life 10, 15, 20 years from now, you'll probably look back and who knows what you'll be up to. Yeah. But look, thank you very much for talking with me this afternoon. It's been a pleasure, and um, I hope to be able to talk to you multiple times in the future. Yeah. Other times. Be awesome. Um, but yeah, is there any way people, if they're interested, can find you?

Isaac 2:15:28

The best place to find me and the things I'm up to in music or otherwise that are on Instagram. That's at IsaacWisdom. Isaac with two A's.

Hunter 2:15:38

Isaac with two A's at Isaac Wisdom on Instagram. And you'll find lots of videos of lots of instruments, really cool stuff. So yeah, thank you again and uh hope to talk to you again soon. Awesome.

Isaac 2:15:48

Thanks. Yep.