In my last post, I spoke about defining your passions in music. The next step in your development is your path. Now, this is where most self help books would talk about setting goals. I’m not going to do that. We are, after all, musicians and not Olympic decathletes. Now don’t get me wrong. Professional goals are necessary. I have major ones. I want to teach 100 students a week. I want to play on the biggest sessions in Nashville. I want to perform at the most prestigious jazz festivals all over the world. I want to teach improvisation at the collegiate level and write a book on the subject. However, this is an article on practice, passion and motivation.

What I want to stress is this. Be Real! What do you really want? If you know what you want, why do you want it. Be honest with yourself and really listen. Listen to that voice deep in your heart and that feeling in your gut. When I was younger I wanted to “make it”, whatever the hell that means. I wanted a record deal, lights, flash, cameras, glitz, adulation, and accolades. The funny this is, I couldn’t tell you why I wanted it, if you asked me. I blindly wanted it until one day something clicked in my head. I realized that it was my MTV generation, pop culture, raised on radio mind that had established a set of “goals” for me. I was chasing down a phantom of a dream, and an image of myself that only existed in my head. I realized that something had been gnawing away at me. It was the fact that my musicianship was suffering. I was more concerned about my hair then I was about my instrument. I had momentarily lost touch with what made me love music and guitar in the first place. So I cut my hair, quit my band, enrolled in graduate school and earned a degree in jazz performance. Now, I’m not saying that this needs to happen for you the way it did for me. The point is, I listened. I was honest and I was real. I finally knew who I was, what was important to me, what I really wanted, and what I loved to do. That set me upon my path.

Once you have a real vision of who you are and who you want to be, you can formulate a realistic practice regimen to compliment that lifestyle choice. Notice I used the words “lifestyle choice.” True practicing consists of milestones, not the attainment of a goal. It’s like fitness. If you stop working out, you get flabby. If you stop practicing, your skills get dull. Your specific passion, path and practice regimen work together. I’ve actually heard people say that they want to be better technical players, yet their practicing consists of playing things that they perfected 15 years ago, followed by playing songs for that weekend’s gig. There’s a disconnect there between the path they want to be on and the path they’re taking. If your passion is songwriting, your daily practicing/lifestyle should be increasing your catalogue or challenging yourself with new lyrical concepts, story lines, melodic ideas and chord structures. If your passion is Be-Bop music, you should be transcribing Charlie Parker and learning the vocabulary from a great teacher. You may not care about your development on the instrument. You may want to be an entertainer and make people smile while getting paid for it. Great! That’s a noble pursuit as well. Live a routine of preparation that supports that.

Once you are honest about what you love above all else in music, and set forth on that path/lifestyle, you can take a good hard look at your shortcomings and weaknesses to forge that path. Your weaknesses are not cause for dejection. They are a divining rod leading you to what needs to be worked on. More on this in part III.

I’ve noticed a lot of people in their early to late middle age years develop quite a negative and depressing attitude towards music. Now, I’m not talking about being a little jaded, or being a realist. A little bit of that can actually drive your true passion and make you wiser. I’m talking about when I hear people say that they don’t want to do music anymore. They’re quitting, giving it up, and selling off gear. When you ask them why, they say things like the following: ”The music business let me down.” and ”Clubs, labels, band mates and agents have all turned me off to music.” To all these people, I respectfully pose the following questions. What did you want out of music that you didn’t get? Was it your passion? Did you really want it to begin with? Did your path compliment that passion? Were you real?

Coming soon: Part III Patience