Still Progressing

It's amazing how quickly you can get behind on something that you meant to do frequently. I was thinking today, "I haven't updated my music blog in a few weeks" only to look and realize it had been several months. Despite a little funk I went through where my motivation waned a bit, I'm still making progress though - as usual - not nearly as much or as fast as I'd like. Part of the problem I'm discovering is that it's oddly difficulty to write about music especially given my current state of musical skill isn't especially interesting to anyone but myself and possibly my instructor. And when you spend a lot of the little free time that you do have either practicing or in a class, it makes it hard to get around to updating a blog that no one reads. Still, I started this for myself as a motivational tool, and it will be nothing but a boon to me if I can keep it up a little more regularly with better detail than I've provided previously. My lofty vision of what I was going to do with this page was pretty high up the mountain side compared to what I've actually accomplished.

In my effort to fill all of my spare time with productivity, I think I possibly bit off a little more than I could chew. In addition to piano lessons, I am doing vocal lessons, as previously mention. Pile onto that the fact that I dusted off my guitar and have been trying to get back into that, as well as taking about 3 classes - 'music theory', 'music tech', and 'learning how to learn' - I think it's fair to say I'm a little overwhelmed. That's not even counting the self-study I've been doing for work to try and improve myself so I can progress there as well. All of that said, I'm sure you can see how I have gotten a little over-zealous in what I can accomplish in a given time and have had trouble staying afloat.

I'm going to try and spread myself a little less thin so I can give each thing I'm working on a bit more quality as far as my effort and thought goes. At this point I'm almost doing myself and anyone helping me a disservice by drowning myself in work.

I will do better.

Slow and Steady

  I sat down to play some new songs this evening and was pleasantly surprised to be able to work my way through them without a lot of long stretches of staring that alternated between the keyboard and the sheet music. Usually I feel like I'm trying to crack the Rosetta Stone when I look at a new piece of music and it takes such a ridiculous amount of time for me to get through a very short amount of music.

"Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles.

  I'm used to fighting tooth and nail to make progress on every single beat. First I would work my way through the notes, then I'd notice the song had dynamics, then I'd notice some accidentals that I had missed, then oops, this alternates between mezzo forte and pianissimo several times, and at last notice I'd completely overlooked the repeats. It was nice to flow through a song for once and feel somewhat competent at the whole process, being able to take in a majority of the nuances the first try and actually play them where it almost sounded like the actual song on the first go-round. It made me think of those 3d puzzles you'd stare at as a kid, when you'd say, "I think I might possibly maybe see the spaceship," before getting to that point where you could see it instantly, every time, in its entirety.

Hint: not a spaceship.

 Progress isn't something you tend to notice in the present when learning something new. Usually it's only after looking back at where you've come from that you notice the improvements, which I suppose is pretty much what I did today, but it felt more "in the moment", if you will, than I've experienced before.  It made me think that everything was really coming together.

There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave.

You were what I wanted, I gave what I gave. 

Deliberate Practice

  It's easy to get caught up in the general day to day grind of life that causes the weeks/months/years to slip away without you realizing it. Focusing on 'just getting through the morning', then 'just getting through work', then crashing from exhaustion at night, only to focus on the same thing when a new dawn arrives. For years I did this and no one pointed it out to me and I wasn't self-aware enough to notice for a long time. That's certainly no way to live life, and that's how I did things for far too long. I'm not sure what snapped me out of this behavior, but I'm thankful for it. I lost a bit of myself during that time but hopefully it's not too late to recover those pieces.

These only go around so many times...who knew?

  I read some articles this week about deliberate practice that were so inspiring I could almost feel the heat radiating from the light-bulb that appeared above my head. The cumulative result of several articles and a few conversations was that I began to think of practice in ways I never had before and to understand why I had failed to excel at skills even when I felt I had the capacity to do so. The concepts are probably obvious and old-hat to most of you but for me, having nothing new to try and improve on in a long time, I suppose the ideas never had an opportunity to reveal themselves in their due time.
  When I would think of practicing, my first thought would usually be, "I'm going to work on this for an hour." I never put more thought into it than that. I figured that an hour of practice was an hour of practice, never considering that I should be mindful when I practice, or prioritizing goals over the time limit. One hour, and I was done. If I even took that full hour. Exhibiting mindful practice seems that it should be a given but for me it wasn't.
  There are so many fantastic quotes I ran across in the last few days related to this topic that I could fill up several pages, but if I average what all of them were trying to say, it's a very simple concept that, no matter how short or long a time you work at something, always devote your full conscious mind to what you are doing. It seems pretty evident that 10 minutes of very deliberate, focused practice is better than an hour of distracted, thoughtless effort, yet somehow that never made itself known to my mind. I can be a bit slow. But thankfully I'm not the only one, because it turns out that most of us don't practice that way, and usually the people who truly excel in the world are the folks who do.

  As motivated as I have been these last several months, I realize now that my level of effort could be greatly improved. I often find myself falling into a pattern of working on something that I've already become decently proficient at because it makes me feel accomplished to be able to perform a task well. Obviously continuing to work on something I'm merely "good" at so that I can become "great" at it is a worthy feat, but when that is all I focus on, that can quickly and quietly become a limitation. I need to force myself into new territory and uncomfortable situations, work on things that I am quite bad at and forcing myself to improve, instead of simply moving on because I am not (yet) that great at it. I realized I need to devote this manner of thought to everything that I do, not simply music. My work, my health, all of it. I need to be that guy who people always say gives every ounce of his effort to anything he does. In some areas I feel people might say that now, but I wanted to be that motivated in all aspects of my life.
  I'm still trying to fit this new inspiration into my days more smoothly, specifically with music. One of the stories I read was focused on a basketball player and while I'm not a sports loving sort of fellow, the message certainly came across. When the player practiced, his goal was a given number of shots. Not "I'm going to shoot for two hours" but instead "I'm going to make 400 shots today." Maybe that can translate as easily as me saying "I'm going to make it through this song flawlessly 10 times" instead of simply practicing for an hour. I don't yet know, but I've been experimenting and though I've not hit the mark yet, I feel like I've made a lot of strides in a short period. And even though I've tackled some things that I am currently awful at, there is a greater sense of accomplishment working this way. I can sense that I'm working towards a long-time goal instead of the need for instant gratification.

  I didn't bookmark all of the articles, but two of them can be found here if you want to motivate yourself:
1) What Mozart and Kobe Bryant Can Teach Us About Deliberate Practice
2) Deliberate Practice: What It Is and Why You Need It

"Let me in the wall you've built around-

we can light a match and burn it down"