Learning from the Pros

While you might guess that this post is going to be about technique, it's actually about the philosophies and personalities I've come across of some professional musicians.  I try never to be preachy, but I feel like it's actually selfish of me if I don't share these and why I felt they were important. Feel free to take these quotes and my impressions of them with a grain of salt.

Showing up

I'm a fan of Jonathan Coulton, who is currently in the process of recapping his Thing a Week project from 2005/2006 (this week revisits "A Talk With George", one of my favourite songs of his). Several weeks ago, he described the week that he felt was the worst of the project, the week he failed to produce anything. He felt out of ideas and that his bold attempt at making music a career was failing, letting those depressive thoughts keep him out of his home studio that week. However, in a few weeks time he'd begin to record some of his best work. He finished with a little bit of wisdom that I liked:

"1. Most of being creative is showing up.
 2. Sometimes showing up is the hardest thing in the world to do."

In the past two months, I've written and recorded two songs. Regardless of their quality, I've still done more in two months than I've done in the past ten years, and it's simply been by forcing myself to suck it up and do it. There are going to be days when I feel like all the ideas I have kicking around are garbage, and there are going to be times when I question whether anything I create or perform will be any good at all. Which leads me to my next observation...

It's all relative

I watched an interview on CBC's Q TV with Dallas Green of City & Colour/Alexisonfire, a musician I greatly admire. Part way through the interview, Dallas talked about his lack of faith in his own work, even with frequent adulation and awards. As an example, he recalled catching a Bruce Springsteen show the night before and thinking to himself, "what am I doing? Why do I even try when people can listen to this?" But he does what he does "because I don't know what else to do."

I've had the same feelings of hopelessness coming back from shows I've been to, walking away with the thought I shouldn't bother picking up a guitar ever again.  But the knowledge that even someone who strikes me as incredible talented experiences those same feelings underscores the importance of me sticking with this project. I will probably never feel like anyone should listen to me instead of dozens of other musicians I could think of at any given time. But knowing what I would be deprived of if some of my favourite artists threw in the towel when faced with similar doubts, I have to keep pushing on. I'm not allowed to judge whether or not I'm worth listening to; I have to leave that up to you.

Of course, sometimes your judgments are not going to be favorable. With that in mind...

Ty Cobb

I read a brief interview with Rik Emmet while flipping through a promotional booklet from a music store. Rik is the frontman for the Canadian rock band Triumph and widely considered to be one of the best guitarists in Canada. In reflecting on success, he pointed out that Ty Cobb - holder of the record for highest career batting average - had an average of .367. In other words, the greatest batter in major league baseball history still failed more than 6 out of 10 times.

A good portion of what I put up here may suck, and I'll have to accept that. I can already tell "Always Something Better" fell flat. But "The Law Did Rise" seemed to be at least good enough that one friend shared it with their friends, and another friend asked me for guitar tab to it (which I still owe him) and led to him asking my advice on stuff he had been working on. It may not be much in the grand scheme of things, but to me it still felt like a victory, however small.

Okay, last one...

Keep it simple

I picked up a book called Zen Guitar a while back on a whim. At the beginning of one of the chapters is a quote from Neil Young:

"I like to play with people who can play simple and are not threatened by other musicians thinking they can't play. So that eliminates 99% of all musicians."

I'm not against skillful, virtuosic playing; some of my favourite musicians do stuff that blows my mind. But they also tend to know when it's time to hang back. I've made music with people who play like they've got something to prove, and it's not pleasant. Sometimes they're drowning everybody else out either in volume or busyness, even when they should be sitting back and letting another instrument/voice come forward. Sometimes they're so engrossed on what they're trying to do that they ignore everybody else and throw things off. Sometimes they try something they don't have any hope of pulling off and manage to derail everyone.

I've made sure to keep this in mind as I've been jamming with other musicians lately, and luckily none of them seem to suffer this affliction either.