by Minim Pro @ 2011-06-30
The longer I study music, the more I
become more convinced that our development as musicians owes as much to our
thoughts and feelings as it does to the mechanics of music-making.
Without the right mindset, music is
always going to be difficult, frustrating and perhaps ultimately unsatisfying.
The process of learning to play is a long, complex and non-linear one and many
of us have our self-worth bound up in how well we are playing; we judge our
value as people by the quality of our music-making.
This of course, is neither valid, useful
or healthy and whilst we might know this is the case, it can be very hard to
stop ourselves from letting that little voice in our head run amok and prevent
us from playing to our potential or doing the things that we need to do to get
to where we want to be.
I've been giving this quite a lot of
thought over the last couple of weeks and it occurs to me that there are really
four key character traits or virtues that we can try and adopt to produce the
right mindset to save us from ourselves and calm the negative self-talk and
raging anxiety that is so common amongst musicians. I call these my four
'pillars' of musical development. They are as follows:
Passion
A simple truth: Without a passion for
the music, you're not going to stay the course. There are many people enamoured
with the idea of being a musician, but that's not
the same thing. In these cases, the desire to play often comes from wanting to
be admired and respected rather than any real desire to play music for its own
sake.
These are the kind of people who talk a
good fight. To listen to them speak, you'd be forgiven for thinking they were
the cream of the crop. They invariably show up at all the jam nights in town
where they tell tales name-dropping all the the best players in the area and
show off their extensive musical knowledge.
Unfortunately, on the rare occasions
they actually take to the stage, it becomes apparent that they're all about
style over substance and they're not too hot as players. When they come off
stage there will always be a reason why they sucked – they couldn't hear
themselves, they weren't used to the action on the instrument they borrowed,
their reed was broken, their valves were sticking or some other disingenuous
excuse.
This is not passion for music, this is
wanting to live the perceived lifestyle of a musician. Real musical passion is
much, much deeper than that. Many people like music but that doesn't mean they have
the kind of passion I'm talking about that will keep you in it for the long
haul.
Look at it this way: If something
apocalyptic happened tomorrow, you were the last human being on earth and you still kept on playing and trying to get
better, then you probably have it.
Honesty
How good are you really? Many of us lie
to ourselves about the things we know and can do and we often exaggerate our
abilities – in many cases we're not even aware that we're doing it.
When our self-worth is linked in with
our playing, then it's very difficult to be objective about our strengths and
weaknesses, but if we aren't capable of assessing ourselves honestly, then
we're not going to be able to overcome those weaknesses and move forward.
Have you ever experienced that horrible
awkwardness where you meet somebody new and the next time you run into them,
you can't remember their name? You're too embarrassed to admit that you've
forgotten and so you don't ask. Before too long, you're seeing them around
regularly and you have no idea what they're called. The point where you could
have asked passed long ago and now you're stuck bluffing your way through every
interaction. Sometimes this can go on for years!
The same thing happens sometimes in our
playing. If there are certain fundamentals or aspects of music making that we
never really go to grips with, we can be too embarrassed to admit to those
weaknesses and it gets harder and harder to do so as we improve in other areas.
It could be not being able to
sight-read, only being able to play in certain keys, not really knowing your
scales, having a weak ear or being unable to hold the rhythm internally and
getting lost if someone else on the bandstand plays a cross rhythm – whatever
your particular weakness is, I bet there's something, some area of music-making
that you feel deficient in and are terrified to admit it, even to yourself.
Nevertheless, the fact you haven't dealt
with it already shows that you're not really prepared to acknowledge that
weakness and overcome it. You're probably ashamed to admit to not being able to
do something you think you should.
Now, most of us have a proverbial
'Achilles Heel' in this respect that may take significant effort to overcome,
but there's often lots of smaller issues that would be much easier to correct
if we would only acknowledge them.
The point is this: if you're unable to
assess yourself honestly, if your ego and self-esteem are inexorably tied up
with your musicianship, then you're never going be able to tackle your
weaknesses and take your playing to the next level.
A musician who is capable of being
honest with himself about where he's really at and what he needs to do to move
forward has already taken a huge step towards reaching his goals.
Of course, it's easy to say 'be honest
with yourself', but how can you separate your sense of self from your music and
adopt a mindset that will allow you to be objective? I think the answer lies in
the remaining two pillars of music-development and I hope you'll join me next
time when I'll explore these two crucial values.
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