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A blog about performing music, teaching music and the business of music.
Filtering by Category: Inspiration
"Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple really. Double your rate of failure."
-Thomas J Watson (Founder of IBM)
You will fail many, many times before you succeed.
So get busy failing...
"You can't win unless you learn how to lose."
—Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hall of Fame Basketball Player
"An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field."
—Niels Bohr, Atomic Physicist and Nobel Prize Winner
In the music world (especially the classical corner of that world) we are taught to never, ever make mistakes:
There are hundreds of these rules.
The problem is this mindset completely fails us when trying to either acquire new skills or to get our current skills to the next level.
Until you have stood on a stage facing a bunch of elementary school kids and tried something that didn't really keep their attention very well, you are not an expert at addressing a room full of 7-year-olds.
Until you have played a Dixieland gig with no music and played the changes as they seemed to fly by, you are not expert at Dixieland music.
(Side note: Tom Holtz mentioned in a master class recently that every single person sucks on their first Dixie gig. Every one. The experts who are playing along with the new guy or gal expect them to not be very good, just as they weren't on their first gig!)
Until you launch a podcast network and record an interview that it turns out is basically unlistenable due to technical problems and you have to fall on your sword and ask them to do the interview all over again, you are not an expert at podcasting. (Thank you Rex Richardson!)
Think of someone who you consider an expert at something. I guarantee you they have sought out situations in life where they "lose", make mistakes, and fail at a number of things, every single day.
That is how they became experts in the first place.
"If I fail more than you do I win. Because built into that is this notion that I get to keep playing. And if you get to keep playing you get to keep failing and sooner or later you are going to succeed."
-Seth Godin
David Cutler (author of The Savvy Musician) calls Seth Godin "the Steve Jobs of thinking." I think that's the perfect description of him. He is the person whom I have most modeled my post-Boston Brass career after and he has absolutely nothing to do with music!
His lessons on the importance of failing until you succeed (which he gets into in this video) are must hear for anyone.
Side Note: His book Linchpin changed my life. It changed how I approach the tuba, how I approach other people, and how I live my life moment to moment. More powerful than you can ever imagine.
Enjoy!
"Never practice. Always perform."
-Bud Herseth
Mr. Herseth of course practiced all the time. But from all of the stories I've heard, he even played the most rudimentary of exercises as if he were performing for a large audience.
The biggest difference between good players and great players is intensity in the practice room.
Photo by regan76, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.
Ravinia, where Bud Herseth performed for millions of people over the course of his career with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Let's be honest. There are some days when we really don't feel like warming up. When we really don't feel like practicing. Anyone who denies this is either lying or should be put in a museum.
There are many tricks for navigating this occasional problem. One that I use is to put on an artist that can do something I can't do on my instrument, of which there are literally thousands. Could be a tuba player and could be a clarinet player. I then focus in on exactly what aspect of their playing I can not achieve on my instrument and then simply try to go close the gap in the practice room.
Listening that intensely to someone else's playing helps me to regain focus and identifying what aspect of their playing I specifically want to add to my own playing helps me be motivated enough to get to work.
This is a very quick solution to a common problem that we all encounter from time to time.
Here is an excerpt from a highly recommended read by Dr. Noa Kageyama of The Bulletproof Musician on challenging tradition:
Leon Fleisher once told a student (who was being a little too faithful to their favorite recording) to disregard every recording they had ever heard. And instead, to look at the score with fresh eyes. To actually play what was written in the score without being influenced by tradition and interpretations of interpretations of interpretations. He said that when we play what is actually in the score, we might be surprised to discover that it’s not the piece that we thought it was. That perhaps, we never really knew the piece at all.
Great artists, curve-jumping innovators, and visionary game-changers seem to be able to stand on the shoulders of those who came before them, yet somehow also unbind themselves from the constraints or limitations of others’ ways of thinking and forge new paths.
You really ought to read the entire article and subscribe to his feed. It is fantastic.
"Anxiety is practicing failure in advance."
-Seth Godin
What a quote! Seth Godin is in my opinion the most insightful thought leader of our time with regards to a whole lot of subjects but this might be my favorite quote of his ever.
If you suffer from performance anxiety maybe you should sign up for something like this?
Here is a thought-provoking article by Tony Plog about the realities of making it as a professional musician:
"But in music performance, good or comfortable is not good enough. Sometimes it’s not even close to being good enough. This may sound brutal, but in fact it’s brutally honest."
There are some hard truths in that brief blog post that all of us who "made it" in music were taught as some point along the line. Thank you for putting it into words, Tony!
"It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen."
-John Wooden
John Wooden may have been a basketball coach but he sure knew the secret to success in music. The difference between a superior rating and an excellent rating at assessment is the little details. The difference between your average professional musician and the greatest in the world is the little details. The difference between having a great lesson and a pretty good lesson is the little details.
Because the little things make the big things happen.
I don't know.
