I'm going to preface this post by going to tell you it's going to seem touchy feely, it has nothing to do with chops, and i'm going to have to tell you a personal story that I haven't told many people to make it make sense. If that sounds like its too much for you, then you should stop here, and I promise the next time you see a post, it's going to show you something really technical about playing the drums and have nothing to do with emotional/mental states.
OK? Cool? Read on at your own peril ....
So a bit of personal history. I started playing the drums at the age of 12. Like many, I started playing in church. And there was another guy in my church who started at the same time as me, was exactly the same age as me, and with what seemed like half the effort, managed to learn anything I wanted to learn twice as fast as me. Not just that, he was also extremely athletic, good with girls, was Singapore Scholar material ... (he ended up being a PSA scholar) ... you get the idea.
So at the tender age of 12, although I didn't consciously do it, I unconsciously worked out this equation in my head.
Talent x Hard Work = Ability
I figured i couldn't change the talent part of the equation, but I could manage the hard work part so that's what I did. I buckled and worked like a complete madman, so much so that by the time I was about 18 to 19, I was able to convince many people that I was some child drum prodigy. (they were wrong, by the way).
Imagine being in your twenties and getting to play with all the top guys in your industry and then getting a scholarship to go study music at the school you always wanted to go to (Thank you very much, person who helped me with the National Arts Council, you know who you are). Of course you're going to buy into the Kool Aid that you're hot shit. Yeah there's that distant memory of this guy you remember from church who was more talented than you, but you KNOW that as long as you work harder than everyone else you're always going to be able to trick everyone to thinking it was actually talent.
This story took a turn when I got to music school. I was suddenly surrounded by people who were younger than me and could play circles around me. No matter how much I tried to manage the equation of
Talent x Hard Work = Ability
I was always surrounded by people who had more talent, and who had a similar work ethic. Not just that, but because they grew up in the states when they were in the grammy jazz band, or grew up with parents who were active musicians in the music mecca of the world, there was absolutely nothing I could do to compensate for the years of exposure to the culture of the music that I wanted to be be part of that they had, that I hadn't gotten yet.
So many people don't know this, but I almost quit. There was a whole week where I couldn't go to class, where i lay in bed watching TV and eating pizza, and calling my parents and telling them I should come home and go to business school, and calling my then girlfriend (who's now my wife) and telling her that I was such a loser and it was time for me to call it quits so that I could go learn something practical where a person who was a normal person and not a prodigy could still make a living and we would be okay.
It wasn't until my parents graciously reminded me how blessed i was that I got to study what I loved, my now wife told me that she thought if I ever wanted to do the "practical" thing I'd figure out how, and the most amazing teacher I ever had my whole life Jon Hazilla spoke to me with such great kindness that it gave me the strength to carry on that I could go on with my music school life that I managed to finally stop getting in my own way and just start actually learning what I was there to learn.
Why am I telling you this story? Because I think if you're like me, and you have some desire that makes you want to play an instrument, get on stage, communicate through that instrument with people and have them validate you by applauding (or at least not going to the toilet during the drum solo) then you're probably pretty neurotic. Ok? It's par for course for being an artist.
Imagine instead of trying to play music, you were a basketball player. And I told you that even if you managed to play in the NBA, unless you were Michael Jordan, you were a failure. Well that's honestly how a lot of us relate to music on some level. Because whether we think we've failed because we're not Michael Jordan, or we refuse to strive to be because we know we never will be, they're both opposites sides of the same coin. We live in the fear that we're never going to be that person who has both TALENT and HARD WORK to the 1000% percent degree.
So anyways I did my thing, came back, got to work and perform with the who's who of the Singapore Music scene, and then I decided to go do something else. In an interview that's still online, I was arrogant enough to say to someone who was asking me about how I was able to have the courage to quit being a professional musician and go on to trying to start and run a business
“The truth is, and I tell this to all my drum students, is that if you gave even a monkey the same number of hours working on playing the drums, he would be able to do what I can do.”
https://vulcanpost.com/137461/music-meat-soh-wen-ming-price-unconventional-job/
4 years wiser, I realise the stupidity of the statement. It's a spit in the face to people who have tried as hard as I have who haven't gotten the same results. The key thing of minimizing or disregarding the talent part of the equation is that it makes you arrogant enough to believe that you worked for EVERYTHING you were able to do ... but it's not true cause just because I knew I wasn't a prodigy, that didn't give me a right to tell myself I wasn't given some kind of a gift.
What am I trying to say here?
If you're here reading this blog, the likelihood is you're not Michael Jordan. You're not one of the chosen ones for whom the Universe has conspired to ensure that you're going to be enshrined in the upper echelon of whatever it is that you're doing, whether it's drums, or music, or knitting. Cause if you were Michael Jordan, you probably wouldn't even know what I was talking about. You'd be too busy being the best at what you do. In the world.
However, I just gotta say, even if you're not MJ, you gotta be pretty good to play in the NBA. And being able to play in the NBA is an achievement in itself.
What I'm trying to say is that trying to figure out how much talent you have, or how much someone else has in comparison, is an absolute fool's game. If you were Michael Jordan, you would know. And if you were an absolute hopeless case that just couldn't do this, you'd probably know too.
By the time you're looking at the musician next to you and so jealous of what he can do, you don't know what went into his talent x hard work equation to get his ability. Not to mention exposure to the language and culture. Also by the way, while you're judging the other musician who you think sounds sad, you also don't know how the hard work and exposure to language and culture is going to change his ability over the years. He just might be thinking the same thing about you in a few years.
Why am I spending so much time to explain myself? Because I want to be completely honest with you and let you know if this is something you're struggling with, and want you to know when I say the word YOU in the article, I've BEEN the YOU, and if I don't watch myself I easily BECOME the YOU.
The cosmic joke in the equation is this - the secret to sounding the absolute best we can
IS
TO
STOP
TRYING.
Here's where the lazy music student is going to misread everything i'm going to say, and use this as an excuse to not put in the work. So I'm going to try really really hard to be clear and to get my point across, because I've honestly run across enough people who've completely ruined the meaning of "Effortless Mastery" by Kenny Werner and went around telling their friends that the secret to being good at music was to be lazy about their learning.
So let's try to define two things : Performing, and Practicing
I find it honestly hard to put a firm definition on the word performing, but I find it helpful to use the analogy (and truth) that music is a language. If we come at it from this standpoint, we very quickly understand certain truths
The only thing that is ever truly impressive in the way a person communicates is the authenticity and ownership that the person has of the language he is using to communicate and of the topic he is speaking about.
Truly effective communicators may be putting effort and thought into what it is they are trying to communicate and how they might want to piece together words to form sentences and congruent thought, but while they are communicating to you they will never be able to be effective communicators if they need to put in effort into thinking about how to form the WORDS
If music is a language like any other, then what this teaches me is that it's impossible to truly be a communicator if the fundamental element of EXECUTION requires any effort.
So here's the big secret - The musicians that really know what's going on, it doesn't really matter to them WHAT it is that you're playing. What matters to them is your clarity of thought and OWNERSHIP of the material that it is that you're conveying. These are the people who KNOW that they KNOW. Not just that, the "uneducated" audience is wiser than you think. This group of people makes up the group of people who DON'T KNOW that they KNOW. They may not understand they theory you used to derive your musically genius phrase or the amazing secret double pataflataflata rudiment you used to gain superhuman hand speed - but they KNOW when you're speaking out of your depth. And immediately they disconnect because no one wants to listen to someone talking about a subject they don't know enough about.
Trying really hard to execute some technical wizardry, managing to pull it off (meaning if i transcribed it, yes you hit the notes at the right place) but being so tense that it all sounded like someone was strangling you while you did it is the equivalent of the being the person who memorised a joke word for word but forgot about the importance of delivery of the message and then had to explain the joke after he told it and had to keep saying "geddit? geddit?" The only people who are going to "geddit" are the musicians who are deeply interested in execution of music that is impressive but who put no weight in the importance of music's role to CONNECT to people, and are more concerned with impressing the person next to them. In short, your audience is going to be the people who sadly don't know that they don't know.
Long story short, if I have to spend any mental/physical effort into the technical execution of anything during PERFORMANCE time I've already lost the plot, just like if i'm trying to use a word in conversation that I have to check the phonetics of in a dictionary before I know to pronounce it there's no way I'm ever going to effectively communicate.
So if we know that effort is the enemy of an effective, moving performance, what's practice?
This one is simple for me. Practice is where how I prepare to perform. Basically, it's where i teach my mind, body and ear that something that I want to achieve, that used to take effort, doesn't actually take any effort.
Here's the thing. When we're practicing, we're learning much more than how to move our arms and feet to make a sound. We're also learning and remembering an emotional state that we associate with the phrase that we're trying to learn. We're also teaching our bodies what it feels like to execute this phrase. We're also teaching our inner ear what this phrase sounds like internally to us and if we tell ourselves it sounds like tension, fear and negative energy, that's going to come out when we perform. Ever worked on something REALLY HARD in the practice room and told yourself you were going to execute it THAT NIGHT on the gig? I bet if you were to ask yourself what it sounded like in your inner ear while you were either executing that lick badly or blowing it and making a completely mistake, you'd probably come to the conclusion that in your inner ear, you probably heard nothing. cause all you could hear was your mind telling you "Boy, i really hope I make it, cause I only managed to get this to 75% in the practice room".
You can know 4 words ("I Have a Dream") or 4 chords or 4 licks and make great, moving statements. As long as you really own them. And you can always add to your vocabulary and be just as effective a communicator, you're just not going to be if you're only trying to figure out how to pronounce these words while you're on the podium. Should've done it at home.
How does what i'm saying about the performance state, and the practice state, tie in with the fear of not being Michael Jordan?
It's because we worry that we're not Michael Jordan that we constantly mess it up, and practice while we're supposed to be performing, and perform while we should be practicing.
Neurosis is what causes us to believe that we what we have to offer TODAY is not enough, that the topics we're truly confident in and have a firm handle on in the realm of music are not enough for us to bring anything of value to the performance. We start striving to be more than we have any capability to be in the moment and we start trying to bang that lick out when that's what we should be doing in the practice room. It happens to even the greatest and most experienced. I've spoken to people i've deeply respected, Elders I've listened to and learned from who told me about how they felt like because everyone has passed them by that they had nothing to offer anymore. I've seen the same people overreach time and time again, and cause a self fulfilling prophecy that they play out in their heads that they don't sound as good as they want to. Simply because they didn't realize that within what they were comfortable with, and had confidence to execute, they were masters of their realm and that the only thing that really moves people during performance is demonstration of MASTERY.
I don't think there's ever such a thing as too much musical knowledge, but I'm sure there's such a thing as enough. What we define as enough is up to us, as long as we're happy to exist in the realm that we're masters of. As long as we do that, while we're performing, the odds of us performing in a way that is moving, engaging (and probably impressive!!) are high.
Fear of not being Michael Jordan also trips us up in the practice room. Michael Jordan flies through the air, and seemingly is the fastest running highest jumping man alive. The fact that at what it is that we're trying to learn, we haven't reached the "Michael Jordan" level of knowing of that lick causes us to try to shortcut the process, to rush it, to go faster than we can in the moment. Maybe we'll be able to force it out, but it's going to take EFFORT. But the only way something can sincerely appear during a performance is if we go slow enough to learn all the motions perfectly, give our ears the time to really ingest the sounds that are coming out and give ourselves the time and space to learn that this thing is actually EASY (learning and improving at the pace of one unnoticeable BPM at a time).
Even worse, sometimes the fear of not being Michael Jordan causes us so much psychic pain that we can't accept that at this thing we're trying to learn, we haven't reached a Michael Jordan level of knowing. We then regress into playing the same things that we already knew to a Michael Jordan level of knowing to comfort ourselves in the practice room because its better than accepting than we're beginners at this other thing we're trying to learn. As we end up playing things in a performance state. To absolutely no one except ourselves.
Spending time in the practice room is NOT practicing. It's simply spending time in the practice room.
I don't know about you, but the way I see if, spending time to be alone in the practice room where i'm communicating with nobody is a pretty selfish act. It's time I could be spending with my family, walking my dog, doing volunteer work, or even playing video games or doing something that was just pure fun like spending time at a all you can eat buffet with my buddies. Every hour I spend alone in the practice room is an hour of my life I'm never going to get back where i'm communicating to NOBODY and even if i'm playing something super impressive the only person i'm impressing is ME! Basically, unless i'm getting something out of the time in the practice room that is productive that helps be be a better performer, any time in the practice room is basically the most self indulgent, unproductive, completely stupid way I can be using my time possible. I'd rather my students spend an hour a day in the practice room REALLY practicing and teaching themselves good habits of emotional ease and relaxation while learning to tackle the seemingly technical impossible, rather than spending hours in the practice room teaching themselves horrendous bad habits of tension, both physical and emotional.
Look, everyone's going to tell you. Practice slow. I'm trying to tell you why it's so hard to practice slow. It's cause fear and ego is in the way. It's there yelling at you when you're practicing to stop REALLY practicing because practicing means admitting you're at the beginning of the learning process.
Fear and ego is also the thing that is yelling at you when you're on the bandstand to overreach, because it tells you that based on the few things you TRULY know and mastered, you don't have enough value to be on stage.
I don't know how the talent x hard work equation works anymore, but I've come to learn that the one thing people forget about Michael Jordan is he had something much greater, in much greater concentration that any of his competitors of his time. It was his love for the game. He loved basketball so much that he had it written into his contract that he was allowed to play with or against anyone he wanted, during the offseason even though that meant he was putting himself at risk of injury, making him a potential liability to the team. He loved the game so much that while he came into the game as a gangly, high jumping slam dunking wunderkind, he also loved it enough to take the beginning steps at weightlifting so that he could withstand the punishment teams were putting on him when they were fouling him because they couldn't stop him and by the end could crack walnuts with his bare hands. He went from being known for being a prolific scorer to being the number one defensive player in the league. He didn't really try to shoot three pointers, until after a legendary practice session of shooting three pointers in private, he went on to rain bombs on the Portland Trailblazers during the playoffs.
MJ was the greatest, no doubt. And definitely had the talent and the hard work. But he also figured out that the more he worked on things that he couldn't yet do in private to teach himself that the execution of these things that he currently found difficult, and that other people thought were impossible, could become as easy as speaking to a good friend with the right kind of practice, the more he added to his arsenal and enlarged his field of mastery. And over time he mastered the WHOLE GAME.
In our own pursuit of mastery, my hope is that we are INSPIRED by his process, and not caused the neurosis that is so crippling that is caused by the fear of never being able to approach his level of greatness.
Because truthfully, none of us know how talented we are. And while we can manage the hard work part of the equation, the constant worry about whether we're lacking in the TALENT equation is actually going to derail all our hard work and cause us to apply all our energy in the wrong places, at the wrong time.
May we all come to understand that the true gift for the practicing, developing musician, is not talent, but the love of the game.
As a parting note, if you have time, check out Michael Jordan talking about the fundamentals of basketball. Talk about a guy who has spent the time to master his rudiments so he can execute the effortlessly!
All my best
Wen
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