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A blog about performing music, teaching music and the business of music.
Filtering by Category: Inspiration
"Start with bad sounds and make them into good ones. Silence can not improve." - Arnold Jacobs
As with almost all Arnold Jacobs quotes, this one is so simple yet says so much. You have to sound bad in the practice room to improve. Avoiding problems with your playing (silence) does not improve anything.
Improvement starts with bad sounds.
"A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience." - Elbert Hubbard
When I was younger, I was very hesitant to record myself unless I sounded really good on a piece of music. I would then use the recording to refine my performance - the finishing touches if you will. This is a great use of a recording device but to limit it to only this scenario is borderline criminal and it was all only because of my ego.
Anyone that tells you they enjoy listening to a recording of themselves screwing up is a pathological liar. No one does, period. But great musicians are always efficient musicians. And great music educators are always efficient music educators. Identifying mistakes early in the process, whether in your band or in a passage you're learning, is by far the most efficient way to correct them.
"Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving."
- Dennis Waitley
The great band directors listen to recordings of their band's rehearsals when they sound great, when they sound horrible and everything in between. A great performer listens to countless attempts at a difficult passage and constantly checks in via recording themselves throughout the process.
We all need to be reminded to bury our egos, listen to recordings of our mistakes frequently and get to a better finished product sooner as a result.
"If I could define enlightenment briefly I would say it is the quiet acceptance of what is." - Wayne Dyer
I once heard Joe Alessi, in response to a question about taking auditions, tell a student that they had to get brutally honest with themselves about what they could and couldn't do on the horn. This is the musical enlightenment that all successful musicians experience. Once you realize what you can and can't do on your horn and quietly accept it as so, you can make a plan for conquering that which falls into the latter category.
This of course applies to what you can do on a podium, in a classroom, as an entrepreneur, as an interviewee, to any pursuit. Face and accept your strengths and your weaknesses with brutal honesty and you too will experience the enlightenment.
