Comparison, the thief of Joy?
This week I 'ave mostly been playing music
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've rekindled my interest in playing musical instruments. I'm learning the Alto recorder and I've got my mandolin down off of its hanger.
I haven't (yet) exhumed my D/G melodeon from its case, hiding on top of the bookshelf, but that's only a matter of time, surely?
I've dipped in and out of playing music all my life and never got to the stage where I feel I'm any good at it. This isn't false modesty. I just haven't ever got past the beginner stage, got to the point where I'm comfortable playing, where I make few mistakes, where I can get through a tune if not artistically, then at least competently.
I've tried, over the years:
- Recorder
- Guitar
- Piano
- Mandolin
- Bodhran
- Tin Whistle
- Melodoen
I played recorder at primary school, and learned to read music. I had piano lessons at age 12, or so. I never liked it, never practiced, abandoned it as soon as my parents realized it was a waste of their hard-earned money. I've tinkered with other instruments on and off ever since.
Why do I fail to reach "competency" each time?
How long is long enough?
How long should I try an instrument before deciding I'm just not going to become acceptably good enough? How many hours of noodling, of targeted exercises, of repetitive tune mangling?
It's never got to the point where I'd be comfortable to say publicly "I play the (Insert instrument of choice here)".
How many hours....? Is it the mythical 10,000 hours? That seems like, on one hand an awful long time and on the other hand fairly reasonable. 3 hours a day (if you're serious, you'll spend the time) is 3333 days. Let's call that 10 years. Seems a long time. I've been tinkering with music since I was a child. I'm 60 years old now. That's plenty of 10,000 hour opportunities to get good enough.
Of course it isn't a simple as "spend 10 years at something and you'll be good at it". The 10,000 hour magic number has largely been debunked now.
But undeniably time spent doing the thing is a major factor in how good you become at the thing.
Talent or Commitment?
Failed amateur musicians often point at successful amateur musicians and say "but they've got talent, and I must have none".
And the successful amateur musicians reply "no... I practiced hard, for many hours, many days, weeks and years, to get this good. It's not talent, it's commitment"
But the failed musician might have started out just as keen, just as motivated, spending just as much time and energy as the successful one. Who can say? Why was one successful and the other a dispirited failure? What happened in the first year or two that made the successful player keep playing? Were they actually improving more rapidly, and the feedback kept them keen and motivated?
Did the failures (I count myself in this group) improve much more slowly, if at all, and give up because of a pragmatic realization that they can't devote even more time and energy than they already are doing, and therefore it looks like they aren't going to improve to any significant degree?
The successful player uses the positive feedback of early progress to fuel their hard work, the failure uses the negative feedback of their lack of early progress to justify giving up.
I spent years at the melodeon.
I played for hours and hours and hours and hours. I took it to work with me. I took it everywhere. I played alone though, with no tuition. I learned tune after tune after tune. None of them done particularly well. I just never made that longed-for breakthrough where I suddenly felt like I was a melodeon player. I can't count the hours I've spent at it.
I was in my mid-late 30s and early 40s. I wasn't a kid, I understood that things took time and effort and commitment. Yet still I wasn't good enough. And again, that's not false modesty. I really wasn't good enough.
I saw other people take it up, on forums etc. and within months were posting really competent You Tube videos of their progress. Much, much better than anything I could do.
Did they really spend so much more time playing and practicing than I did?
Really?
I truly think there is such a thing as talent which decides whether you're going to become good at an instrument. The talented people will spend time getting better, and better. The un-talented, but keen people (myself?) will spend the same amount of time initially, muddling along, but getting slowly, inexorably disenchanted at their progress, then the time spent dwindles until they just give it up.
Yes, the talented people commit huge amounts of time, hours upon hours upon hours of practice.
And they improve.
They attain competency.
They become musicians.
And they put it all down to the time spent.
They tell the failures "if you'd spent as much time as me practicing you'd be just as good". They believe it's all down to their undeniably hard work. They spend more and more time at it as they progress, because the positive feedback makes them feel the investment of time and effort is justified.
Failures gradually spend less and less time at it, for the same reason; the time invested isn't justified.
Go and find something else to spend all those wasted hours on.
A new beginning
From this negative-sounding introduction, I'm now feeling positive about playing again.
Yes, I still haven't got the talent, but now I'm comfortable with that.
But I do have more talent than some other people. It's a sliding scale. There are some people who, no matter how many hours they spend they just aren't going to become musical. I am at least capable of making some musical noises on my instruments.
That's the realization I've had recently. I don't need to get to be a good musician, I just need to enjoy spending the time actually doing it. If I can get to that stage, where my amateur squeaks and plucks and squeezes are enjoyable to me, and me alone then that's a worthwhile use of my time.
another way of looking at it
I do a bit of sketching - mostly in my diary. A few years ago I forced myself to learn how to do it after a lifetime of being "unable to draw".
And I came to the conclusion that with sketching there is no right or wrong. Just whether you like the outcome. I read a quote somewhere which helped me accept my scribblings
They aren't mistakes, they're your style
My sketches are sometimes poorly done, nothing like what I was aiming for. But the more time I spend doing it the more I feel the "mark-making" is done with confidence and it's the confidence of the lines that shows, as you do it more and more and more.
It might not look any different to the scribbling of a child, but it feels different.
It feels right. Good, even, well, good enough anyway.
Another phrase I like
Done is better than perfect
How does this relate to music?
I need to accept that I'll never be note-perfect in my playing, just like my sketches aren't a perfect representation of what I'm trying to draw. My imperfect drawing shows my own particular style. In music I'm going to start believing the same thing is possible. As long as I can start to ignore gross mistakes while playing, and just keep going through a tune, I can start accepting that the "mistakes are my style" and stop trying to be completely accurate according to the dots on the paper. Especially with folk music. There's no "right or wrong". There's a basic form for the tune. You have to stick to the skeleton. Listening to different renditions of the same tune on You Tube it's obvious that nobody plays according to the dots. Everybody puts something of themselves into the tune. The dots are just the bare minimum, lowest common denominator representation of a tune that has got many, many different interpretations in the wild.
The dots are just a starting point.
This isn't classical music, I'm not playing with an orchestra, I don't need to slavishly follow the score. As long as I interpret the tune in a pleasing way, adding my own variations (sometimes they are done to make a phrase easier to play, sometimes because it sounds better, sometimes to just change it a bit for one-time-around, to add variety).
And ignore mistakes - stop stopping each time there's a wrong note. Push on, get to the end.
Of course you need to spend some deliberate time practicing a tune phrase by phrase, working out complicated twiddly bits. And some other time doing drills, scales and exercises. You need to build up muscle memory and mechanical skills.
But stop trying to be perfect.
Embrace the wonkiness
Don't compare yourself to other people, even those that inspire and motivate you. Find the joy in the act, despite what you see around you.