Last time on the blog, I introduced my first two pillars of musical development. In that post I argued that real passion for the music and an honest
ability to assess one's own strengths and weaknesses are crucial for our
development.
However, I also pointed out
that it's difficult to be truly objective about our playing when so many of us
have our self-esteem linked to our musical abilities. When we start to judge
our value as people by the way we play music, not only are we doing ourselves a
disservice as human beings, we're also hindering our development by making it
almost impossible to assess where we're at honestly and to work on the
weaknesses in our playing. The remaining two pillars of musical development are
crucial in removing this obstruction.
Humility
The reality is that we're
at where we're at. Simple. There's nothing for us to be gained by keeping up a
show and pretending that we're better than we are. So many of us have our
guards up all the time, making excuses and justifications when things don't go
the way we want them to. We're terrified to admit that there are things that we
don't know or can't do.
Unfortunately this is
ridiculous. If we were truly able to disguise our weaknesses then fair enough,
but all anybody has to do to discover them is listen to us play. We can talk
all the rubbish we want, make as many excuses as we like, but they're so
transparent it's a waste of time. Of course, when we hear another, perhaps less
able musician doing this, we immediately see their defensive posturing for what
it is – an attempt to cover feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. So why do we
think that stuff works when we do it!?
If we can develop the
humility to accept where we are, then suddenly the world changes and so many
things open up to us. For example, it becomes possible to listen to great music
without feeling that horrible twisting in the stomach and hearing the voice in
our heads that tells us we can never be that good. We can
watch our peers play and enjoy it when they're doing well instead of secretly
hoping that they stink the place out and then feeling guilty of such unworthy
thoughts.
In other words, if we learn
to be humble about our own playing, instead of having to pretend that we're
awesome and on top of everything, we can separate our own music-making
from any music we hear. Not only do we get to appreciate it without constantly
having to compare ourselves to the musicians we listening to, but of course we
become much more receptive to new ideas and new possibilities that we might
hear. It's amazing how inspiring it can be to listen to music instead
of listening to that little voice in our heads all the time!
What's more, developing an
attitude of humility allows us to see ourselves as eternal students rather than
masters of music – an attitude that will serve us well for the rest of our
lives, no matter how good we become. Once we adopt the attitude of constant
learning and develop the humility to accept our current situation, we are free
to learn from other musicians and to talk honestly to players in our peer group
that we admire about their approach to music.
Generally most good
musicians are happy to give advice and share their knowledge with people who
ask in the right way. Why wouldn't they be? It makes them feel good to be able
to demonstrate what they know and they can usually empathise with people who
aren't as advanced because they remember what it was like to be struggling in
those areas.
Our peers or other
musicians we meet are some of the best resources we have at our disposal – if
we're not too proud to use them. Developing humility and making a commitment to
life-long study opens up a whole new world of music and learning possibilities.
All we have to do is to let go of our pride and the pretence that we know it
all. Especially when nobody believes it anway.
Patience
Ah, impatience - the cause
of so much of our frustration. It's not exaggerating to say that impatience is
probably the single biggest cause of our not being where we want to be.
We're all in a hurry to get
better. There's so much to practise, so much to learn and we want to be awesome now.
In our hurry to improve as fast as possible, we find ourselves flitting from
topic to topic, practising a hundred things and absorbing none of them fully.
We commit to working on something and then find ourselves heading off at a
tangent as soon as we aren't seeing the results as quickly as we would like.
Think about it. How many
things did you practise in the last year that you subsequently abandoned without
ever really getting them down? For many of us, the answer is going to be quite
a few!
The irony is that our rush
to get better fast is slowing our development down. Whenever we watch great
players, they make it look utterly effortless – this is because it is.
They're not just struggling through the music on the very edge of their ability
and hanging on with their fingertips. Instead, they're in total control of what
they're doing and have all the time in the world to conceive and execute their
lines.
The only things that we can
play well on the stand are the things that we have mastered - things that we
have totally absorbed to the point where we could play them all day without
getting them wrong.
Most of us have certain
things that we have mastered and a whole host of things that aren't quite there
but which we try and play anyway. When we try to play something we haven't
truly mastered, it's either going to go horribly wrong or in the very best
case, sound like a mere approximation of the thing that we're trying to do.
The reason that we have all
these things we can sort of do is impatience. Often, we aren't
willing to stick with a thing until it is truly absorbed. Instead, as soon as
it gets to the stage of being almost there, we zoom off to the next
thing in the mistaken belief that we can't afford the time to stick with the
initial topic until it is utterly mastered. However, without taking it to the
level of mastery, we will never be able to execute what we were working on in
the proverbial heat of battle.
I maintain that there is
strange and illusory aspect when learning to play something new. It takes a
certain amount of work to get something from the stage of not being able to
play it at all to being 'kind of' able to play it. Surprisingly, it seems to
take the same amount of work again to elevate something from the 'kind of'
being able to play level it to the level of mastery.
If we don't have the
patience to practise things until they are truly mastered, we'll never truly
have them down. This is why there are so many things that we can 'kind of'
play; so many things that we go for on gigs that almost come
off; so many things that we like to think we can do, but in reality can't quite
make count when it matters.
Having the patience to
stick with one thing until it is mastered is the only way that
we're truly going to take our playing to the next level. If we can be humble
enough to admit the things that aren't mastered and have the patience to go
back to them and work on them until they are, our playing would leap to a whole
new level so much faster than by employing the frantic, impatient, scattergun
approach that seems to be the default for so many struggling players.
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If we can adopt the four
pillars of musical development I have outlined in the last couple of posts and
put them at the heart of all our musical activities, I am convinced we will
find ourselves developing faster and, more importantly, getting much more
enjoyment and satisfaction from our music-making.
If we have passion for the
music for its own sake and not just for what being able to play might mean for
our egos: if we can learn to be honest with ourselves about the true nature of
our abilities: if we can develop the humility to become eternal students and
not to be afraid of asking for help, of seeking the advice of our peers, of
listening to music in an open way instead of constantly comparing everything
and everyone we hear to our own playing: if we can learn to be patient and put
mastery at the heart of our development, accepting that things take time to
learn and focusing exclusively on one thing until it becomes effortless: if we
can do these things we'll have built an incredibly strong foundation to achieve
anything we want to in our musical lives.
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