These are the beginnings of some thoughts I've been having around my musical practice and how it's had an impact on my own life. My hope in writing this is that you can take home some nuggets you can use for your own practice. Let the adventure begin!
What's the first thing you think when I say the word “practice.” Do you think of slogging through another session of music making feeling like you're not really getting anywhere? Does it invoke fear? Dread? Or does it light you up with a sense of adventure?
The latter is how I see practice. It's always been this adventure into the unknown to meet with gods, slay dragons, walk enchanted lands and come home with lots of stories to tell. I think because I approach practice int his way, it's made it way more fun and because it's more fun, it opens me up to have the ether/universe/muse to pour it's magic into me which I can then take and bring it out into the world where it can be hopefully enjoyed.
So, I’ve always thought of myself as a good musician. Does this mean, I’m infallible? No. I make plenty of mistakes and have plenty of foibles but I work through them. This is what the practice of music has taught me to do. I work through these trouble spots with patience, persistence and an openness to unlearn unhelpful habits and replace them with helpful ones. It’s no big deal. I don’t ever think I’m terrible at music or feel embarrassed by lack of skill. I just simply just work at a skill through repetition until I do get it. In the beginning, these repetitions can seem to take so long to master but here’s the good news. As you practice more, you get to know what you’re capable of and when you learn that, the learning curve is evened out a bit more. After some 55 years of making and playing music, I look back on my practice and can see that it doesn’t take me nearly as long to learn something as it did when I was a kid. I learned quickly back then, but because I know what I’m capable of and how my learning style is, I can learn even more quickly.
These are things that the practice of music can teach you. It’s not all about learning just the music. It’s about learning about yourself too. I’ve had a lot of students with ADD and ADHD and when I’ve worked with them, I make learning music into a game. For example, in learning keyboard orientation on the piano, I have them spell words using the letters of the keys or by using the groups of black keys to learn with the notes of the white keys are. It’s the idea of making something fun while you learn. It’s what we do with younger children all the time. It works for adults too.
This brings me to talk about the idea of play and allowing yourself to play. As adult beginners, we often lose sight of the allowance to play. So often, I see students get wrapped around the axle over technical things, playing things correctly and getting it right. There’s no doubt these are important but so is the allowance to play which also means the allowance for mistakes. We’ve all heard how mistakes always have something to teach us. This is so true! But we have to be open to learning and that’s the key and for that we have to adopt what Buddhist’s call “beginner’s mind.” Beginner’s mind is the allowance of things to happen without attachment to any outcomes. When we can get into this mindset, it makes things so much easier . This is one of the most important things a lifetime’s practice of music has taught me. So how do you get into beginner’s mind? Well, first you have to know what you want to accomplish. Then you place yourself at the beginning of that journey by taking one step, then another, then another. It’s a process that can be challenging but in the end, is so rewarding when you reach your goal and then can look back at all of the steps you took to get there. You can see the work and fun you put in. You’ve learned how to problem solve, get out of your own way, trust and find what you’re capable of. This in turn, gives you confidence to try more new things helping you to grow your practice.
There’s so much more I can say but I’ll stop here and let this digest for a bit. I hope you can have some great take always from reading this. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Until then, keep practicing, be open to learning, be gentle and kind to yourself and treat your practice like a journey…..because it is!
Love, Pam