Sell Your Taste, Not Your Guess-Work

I have a confession to make: I love watching musicians argue about music. I find it fascinating to listen to the different opinions that people have, and I really can't think of a single musician I've met who hasn't, at some point, been tempted into a debate along the lines of: “Jaco Pastorius is the best bass player ever” or “Pat Metheny is the greatest guitar player of all time”. These kinds of statements are usually met with a fierce response like: “How can you say that? If you put Jaco on the Slipknot gig, there's no way he would sound good”. Frustratingly, even though both sides are usually adamant that they are totally correct, the debate normally finishes with all the participants willing to accept the viewpoint that “music is all just personal preference. Who are we to say what's good and bad anyway? Remember, one man's trash is another man's treasure”. Is this really true, though? I love debating and I love genuine analysis of music and musicians, but for these reasons I have always found the claim that all music can only ever be subjective to be a frustrating and lazy claim to make. In the middle of a heated debate like the one above, it feels lazy simply to accept that the answer of “music is just personal preference” is somehow the last word in any musical debate. In short, I think it's a cop out. It has got me thinking, though. Is there such a thing as an objectively good or bad musician? But more importantly, from the perspective of a working musician, is it possible for us to be objectively good or bad as musicians?

I feel the place to start is the question of whether there even is such a thing as objectivity in music. Suppose I have this maths problem to solve: 2 + 2 = ? Objectively, the correct answer is 4. Given the laws of mathematics, there is no alternative: 2 + 2 just does equal 4; any other answer is simply objectively incorrect; no other answer is possible. Here, then, the laws of mathematics allow us to judge objectively whether any given answer to our problem is correct or incorrect. The laws of mathematics make it impossible for the answer to the problem to be anything other than 4. They ensure that it can't be simply a matter of opinion whether a given answer to the problem is correct. If, in my opinion, the answer to the problem is 19, then, given then laws of mathematics, my opinion is definitely wrong. If there is objectivity in music, it clearly can't be like the objectivity we find in this maths example, for the simple reason that music is, all too often, much more diverse, ambiguous and undefined than my maths example. The nature of music just is such that it doesn’t allow us to divide answers to questions about music into two neat and clear cut boxes, the box of correct answers and the box of incorrect answers. For example, try and give a straight, yes/no answer to this question: Is a piece of music better if it obeys every rule of music theory? It’s impossible, isn’t it? The answer is neither categorically yes, nor categorically no. In short, the answer seems to be: “well that depends on a lot of things”. For one, it depends on which theory book we choose? One piece of music that obeys every rule in the jazz theory book might also break every rule in the book on classical counterpoint.

The above paragraph, I think, shows that it is a mistake to think of objectivity in music in the same way as objectivity in disciplines like mathematics. And it’s not difficult to see why the notion of objectivity at play in the maths example just isn’t suitable for describing judgments about music. When faced with the problem does 2+2 = 4, opinion doesn't factor. It's a yes or no question and there's no way that this answer can be affected by opinion. However, within music, opinion does factor and very heavily too. There's no way the “is a piece of music better” question can be a yes or no question which means we can't asses musical objectivity in this way because, within music, it's much harder (if not impossible) to define what we mean by the words “correct” and “incorrect”. Unlike the maths example, music isn't binary and it certainly isn't constant.

For these reasons, I don't think that there is such a thing as a sequence of notes that is, categorically, always good, nor a sequence of notes that is, categorically, always bad. If I were to learn a very dissonant and modern Michael Brecker solo, take a bunch of the phrases and then go and play them on a pop ballad then it would probably sound terrible. However, it's not actually that particular sequence of notes on their own that would make the Brecker licks that I have taken sound bad. And it couldn't be these notes that make them objectively bad because in some cases (like Michael Brecker songs) they actually sound like the most perfect thing ever. I remember having a similar conversation with a friend a few years ago about Pat Metheny. He said “I find it really hard to play his lines over a song that he didn't write but if you put Metheny lines in Metheny songs it's like magic. They all sound amazing”. This highlights what might be the most important part of this puzzle. When we talk about objectivity in music we shouldn’t try and analyse the objective merits of a note sequence by removing it from its musical context. Musical situations are often very unstable and open to quick and dramatic change. Very few musical situations (some would argue none at all) are the same. Trying to discover whether a lick is objectively good or bad by analysing the notes in isolation, is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole: it simply can’t be done. We will, most likely, never find a sequence of notes that always sounds good, no matter what musical context they are played in. The Metheny licks sounding good in one tune and not another is a clear example of this. Analysing the notes alone just isn’t helpful. So what's the conclusion to draw from all of this? Does this mean that as musicians we can't judge some passages of music to be better or worse than others? No. My view is this: if we look for objectivity by focusing on the notes in isolation, then we're just looking at objectivity in music in the wrong way.

I believe spoken language can demonstrate this a little more clearly.

In conversation, is there a perfect sequence of words, one that is the right thing to say to in every situation you will ever find yourself in? No, there isn’t. But there's no doubt that saying the right words in the right situation can have a hugely positive impact. If we succeed in doing this we often think “oh that was just the perfect thing to say in that situation”. Perhaps this thought is the key to understanding a different kind of objectivity, one that resembles the kind of objectivity that we might find in music, more closely. Just like musical situations, conversational situations can be quite unstable, and they are certainly open to drastic and rapid change. But nevertheless, we all have a very clear sense that some things are, in certain situations, simply the wrong things to say. We can all think of times when we’ve upset someone because we’ve said the wrong thing. Clearly, we can’t avoid these moments by just learning more and more words and phrases to say. But that doesn't mean we can't learn to avoid these slip ups at all. Of course we can: we learn to judge which things are the right and wrong things to say in a given situation not by learning more and more phrases, but by learning more about – and becoming more aware of – the conversational situations we find ourselves in.

Let's say that I go to a funeral. Present and grieving at the funeral are the deceased's children, wife, siblings and parents. All of these people are in floods of tears. They have lost someone that they all deeply loved and cared for. After the service I go over to all of them to offer my condolences by saying: “Chin up, it could be worse. Just sleep on it and the whole thing will have blown over by the morning”. I think we can all agree that this is simply the wrong thing to say. And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. My comment is wrong because it’s a horribly insensitive thing to say. The people in mourning have lost someone who was important to them. The children have lost a father, the wife has lost a husband, the siblings have lost a brother and the parents have lost a child. This one death has impacted hugely on all these people. My comment “it will have blown over by the morning” implies that they are making too much of the situation. Problems that have usually “blown over” by the morning are small and minor issues. Things that are upsetting, but ultimately unimportant. By saying these words, I'm actually classifying this death as a small and minor incident that isn't of any genuine consequence. Clearly this is not the case.

There are two important things to notice about this example. Firstly, the family’s judgment that what I said is wrong isn’t wholly subjective. It would be outrageous for me to explain myself to them by saying: “Well, in my opinion, what I said was completely sensitive, so I don’t know what you’re so annoyed about; we’ve just got a clash of opinions here, that’s all”. Why? Well, because if this is what I think, then, clearly, my opinion is, in this situation, just wrong. Secondly, if I went on to defend myself by saying: “Well I said the same thing to my friend who lost an amateur tennis match the other day and he said it cheered him up” then I am assuming that “one size fits all”, as far as saying the right thing goes. Clearly this is not the case. The “one size fits all” approach to judging whether something is objectively the right or wrong thing to say looks at the words that have been said and nothing else. It assumes the idea that the “chin up...” sequence of words have been comforting once therefore they are inherently comforting. It assumes that every single time I say those words they will always have the same effect on everyone who hears them, no matter what situation those people are in. This is, in fact, completely false. My mistake at the funeral is that I'm not aware of the situation. And this lack of understanding of the situation that I and the deceased’s family are in, this ignorance of context, constitutes the lack of empathy that makes those words, objectively, such a horrible thing to say.

Musicians are often guilty of the musical equivalent of my slip-up at the funeral. They are often guilty of ignoring the musical contexts in which they find themselves, and they often make choices about what to play that are, given what the situation requires, objectively wrong as a result. In short, musicians that ignore the musical situations in which they find themselves, often play things that are similar to my objectively insensitive comment at the funeral. For example, if I learn seven fast tempo and dissonant Michael Brecker lines that sound good on a Brecker tune, and then go out and (playing them note for note) cram them into every single pop ballad I can find, I am assuming the same position of “one size fits all”. I am saying that, since these Brecker lines have sounded good at some point in the past, they will always sound good when and wherever they are played. I am totally ignoring the situation that I am playing them in, and by doing this, I am also denying myself the opportunity to understand why those lines, in the context of a pop ballad, could sound so objectively tasteless. What's so crucial to understand here is this. Firstly, there is real objectivity here. There’s as much objectivity in the pop ballad example as there is in the funeral example; the two examples are completely parallel. Secondly, the objectivity that there is in these examples is generated by the context a musician is in, and not something else that's unrelated like a different song or previous gig. My comment at the funeral is objectively insensitive because the conversational situation requires me to say and not say certain things, and I, in making my comment, totally ignored these requirements. Similarly, playing my Brecker lines on the pop ballad is objectively tasteless because the musical situation that I’m in requires me to play and not play certain things, and, in playing my Brecker lines, I’ve again, totally ignored those requirements. In fact, in the pop ballad case, the requirements that the situation puts upon me come from my role within the situation, my role as the bass player on the gig.

To see this, notice that, my role, as a bass player, within this music is, most likely, to play a bass line, not a solo. The Michael Brecker licks have been taken from a solo and not a bass line. When I play them, note for note, in this pop ballad they will probably sound awful because they totally undermine my role within the music. I'm there to support the melody, underpin the harmony and to hold a rhythm section together. In short, I need to be a real team player and not be the centre of attention. Secondly, the Brecker licks may also conflict with other parts of the music that I am sharing with the other musicians. If a keyboard player only has harmony consisting of triads and I (through playing these Brecker lines) am implying lots of dense altered harmony then I am ignoring my surroundings and the context in which I am playing, and it will probably sound awful. Making this kind of mistake doesn't necessarily mean that I am an awful player on a purely technical level, any more than me making the mistake at the funeral means that I’ve got a poor understanding of grammar and syntax. What both these examples have in common, though, is this: because in both I completely ignore the situation I am in, I, in both situations, do something that is objectively tasteless. Similarly, both examples suggest that I can avoid making objectively poor choices about what to say and about what to play by understanding and being sensitive to the situation in which I find myself. Crucially, in the pop ballad case, I need to understand the circumstances and musical framework that the situation of playing a pop ballad present to me, I need to understand my role within the situation and what performing that role in that situation requires of me, in order consistently to make good, sensitive choices about what and how to play.

As a musician, then, what you should play and how you should play are always, in some way, related to the situation you are playing in. So often, though, it can be easy for these situations to change very quickly. I've had countless experiences performing on stage when I make a mistake that actually sounds really good and this one mistake, often something as small as one wrong note, can change how I play for the rest of the song. In other words, one wrong note can completely change the musical context that I’m in, and then, given this change of context, become something that I would consider as being very good. I'm sure there are several people reading this now who can think of being in a similar situation themselves. I feel that these kind of experiences point out that a lot of musical contexts aren't that stable. Most, but arguably not all, are very fluid and open to these kinds of changes, which in turn profoundly affect what sounds good and bad at that moment in time. I feel it’s a mistake to assume that in music we should try to assess whether a certain sequence of notes is objectively good or bad by always comparing them to an abstract and constant reference point that never changes. But that's not to say that there’s no objectivity in music at all, or that, ultimately, it’s just a matter of opinion whether a certain sequence of notes is a good or bad one to play in any situation. Perhaps, underneath all this talk of musical objectivity, the real issue is this. As a musician, my goal is not to become someone who turns up to a gig with a mentality like this: “fast jazz licks always sound good, so I’m going to play one fast jazz lick after another, regardless of what music is being played and what the rest of the band are doing.” Granted, that's a very crude example of course, but I am equally keen to avoid these, far more familiar mentalities: “Those jazz licks I learnt this morning sounded great and I've got a really boring gig tonight that I've played so many times already. I'll use my gig as a chance to practice those jazz licks” or “I know the band leader said he didn't want me to play with such a harsh tone but that's my sound; I use on all my gigs so I won't change it”. The point is not that my jazz licks, to choose one of the previous examples, definitely won’t sound good; they might well do. The point is this. If, when I play the gig, I just blindly throw out lines without giving any thought to what the musical situation that I’m in requires of me, I’ll be more likely to make mistakes and slip-ups like the ones discussed above; I’ll be more likely to play something that is, given what the musical context requires, objectively tasteless. Sure, I might get lucky and throw out a line that sounds great. But if that happens then I can't take that as a genuine reflection on my ability as a musician because I got lucky. The next time I lead with guess work like this, I might not be so lucky. My goal, then, should be to make myself as relevant as possible to each situation that I find myself in.

Whether I'm playing in a wedding band, arranging strings for an artist, teaching students, being a musical director for a touring group, I always need to asses and engage with the situation in front of me. I need to figure out what is required of me, how I can use my skills, knowledge and experience to make myself as useful as I can. That doesn't mean I have to be the person who knows what every other musician should be playing, nor does it mean that I should strive to be someone who turns up at a rehearsal and radically changes every arrangement of every song. Not every situation needs that. Granted, I've been on some gigs when people have come to me saying: “We really want you and how you sound, so play however you want”. But I've also had a lot of other people saying: “This is how this song should be played and it doesn't matter if you're playing it or anyone else is playing it. This is how the song goes”. Those are two very different situations, but as long as I am able to engage with the contexts that those situations present to me, I can make plausible assumptions about what is objectively good and bad in each scenario. In fact, it would be totally careless for me to ignore what is often crucially important information about how I need to approach a situation, and end up having to rely on blind luck to get me through a gig. The goal is never to prove yourself. Rather, the goal is this: to sell your ability to assess and respond to the demands of different musical situations, not your ability to throw out your favourite licks on demand. In short, sell your taste, not your guess-work.

It's worth mentioning at this point that being in situations that require you to do play music you don't like, or that you don't think sounds that good, doesn't make you a bad musician. Whether you lead your own group and have total control, or you are directed through every single bar by someone else, is no real reflection of your ability as a musician, but your ability to be a team player is. The captain of a sports team isn't able to do as she pleases just because she has status. She is supposed to have the same goals as every other player in the team. If she doesn’t, then it's amazing how quickly she will completely sabotage the hard work of the entire group. Whether you are out playing a piece of music for the first time or the one-thousand-and-first time, you will always need to pay attention to others, and you will always need to listen. I would like to add at this point that if you do all these things, if you engage with the situation and if you try your best to genuinely make yourself as relevant as you can, and you still don't come up with the perfect part or the best idea, then there is nothing wrong with that. Likewise, if being a good team player means that you don't play a single note on some songs then it doesn't mean that you weren't creative enough or good enough to come up with a part. One of my favourite Branford Marsalis quotes is: “playing an instrument and playing music are not the same thing”. He's right. So many times, whether I've been on a gig, jam night, recording session or anything else, my best contribution has been silence. Not because I was playing badly, but because the situation didn't require me to play. If a bike has a flat tyre the best thing to do is to only use the tools required to change a flat tyre. You wouldn't change the tyre and then say: “Well I have a blow torch, a hammer and a wrench that I haven't used yet, so I'll break more things on the bike just so I can use all the tools in my possession”. It's pointless, and will end up causing much more damage to the bike than there originally was. The situation doesn't call for it and this is what makes it a bad idea.

Developing taste and good circumstantial judgement will always be an ongoing process. It will never be something a musician can fully achieve because music itself is always changing. Whether you're in the studio working on a ground-breaking record, or in the corner of a bar being told to play a little softer than you had originally planned, you will always have to think about what you, given your situation, and the others in that situation with you, need to play at that moment in time. This will serve you much better than thinking instead only of what I, and only I, want to play. Some situations may start out one way and evolve into something new, just as another situation may be presented as one thing when, under the surface, it's truly another. In the process of developing this sense of judgement you will get things wrong and you will experience failures, as I continue to do. Developing good taste is hard, and it takes time.

Finally, let me finish by returning to the idea that musical situations generate the sort of objectivity that I’ve been talking about, the sort of objectivity that makes it objectivity tasteless for me to play my favourite fast and dissonant Brecker lines over a pop ballad, regardless of what that ballad requires of me. Some of you might be thinking that there’s nothing inherent in a musical situation that means musicians have to play one thing rather than another. If I think a musical situation requires silence and you think it requires fast licks, then we just have a difference of opinion, and that’s that. And if there’s nothing inherent in a musical situation that means that, objectively, it requires one style of playing rather than another, then nothing I’ve said about certain musical choices being objectively good in some situations and objectively bad in others makes sense. Is this right? Well, not really. As a working musician I spend the vast majority of my time working for other people. I teach students and help them reach goals they have set themselves, I record songs that other people have written and I do gigs playing other peoples arrangements of those songs. In all these cases, and many others, I am hired to help someone realise their vision. That vision might belong to a student wanting to learn about technique, a recording artist writing an album, a musical director on a gig or any other number of similar situations but they key thing to note is that all these people are stating, in one way or another, what they want out of me. Not what I want out of them. Consider, for example, the artist who hires me for a session during which she aims to record an album. There’s no doubt, in hiring me, she places me in a musical situation in the studio. And there’s no doubt that I could respond to that situation by saying: “my interpretation of this situation is to play loads of fast licks instead of a bass line on her music”. But I shouldn’t for one very simple reason: she has hired me, so she gets to decide what the situation that she’s paying me to be in requires of me. Sure I can offer suggestions and my ideas. Doing so is actually very common but I have to offer thoughts and ideas that are relevant to the goal of the artist's particular situation. If my performance ignores the requirements that she puts upon me – and that I accept by taking the gig – then my performance is objectively poor, no matter how fast my licks are.

Similarly, I have to keep in mind that I might not fully understand what these people are aiming for. I may not be able to see their vision with as much clarity as they can and failure to acknowledge and act properly on this can seriously cloud not only my judgement, but also my playing. If I'm working with an artist who has a clear idea of what they want me to do and how they want me to contribute to their musical vision I need to trust them. This is exactly the situation I described in my last post about experience when I found myself playing orchestral Persian music for the first time. I had never played it and as a result I wasn't playing the music with such good feel at first. Sure, I could hear how I thought it should be played, but my view point on how to play wasn't informed by vision, knowledge of experience like the conductor's was. I took his advice, engaged with his objectivity rather than just my own and, as a result, the gig went great. I couldn't have just said “this is what this situation says to me so that's what I'll do” because then I'm back to square one. Or square “one size fits all”, to be more exact. I had to play for the team and that meant sacrificing my ego, offering my skills and my opinions under the guidance of someone else who was more informed that I was but always doing so with the aim of realising another person's vision.

But none of the above necessarily means that performing well on a gig is simply a matter of mechanically satisfying the requirements that different musical situations place on me. Quite the opposite, in fact: performing well on a gig often requires the creative and sensitive use of taste. As anyone that has tried to write music or lead a band will know, it’s often difficult – maybe it’s even impossible – to articulate exactly in words, or even notation, the subtle nuances of style and interpretation that constitute a musical vision. For this reason, our employers often give us a comparatively rough or vague account of how they want the end product to sound like, and it's this that sets the tone, gives us the sense of what – in the employer’s eyes at least – the music requires. We are then employed for our judgment and discretion, our ability discern the subtleties of what the musical situation set up by the employer requires of us and we have to respond accordingly. By developing this ability, we make ourselves more likely to be able to respond to musical situations and make the music sound good, and we make ourselves less likely to make the funeral-fast-lick style mistakes that result in us, ultimately, not getting called back for the next gig. Regardless of what you think about the ultimate nature of objectivity and whether there even is such a thing in music, the fact remains that, if you want to get gigs at any level, you need to develop taste, and you need to use it for the good of the team.

The process of developing taste will always be on-going, and whilst it's never too late or too early to start there is certainly never a good time to stop. You will most likely experience difficulty, failure and days when you want to quit and forget you ever started. I've had plenty of those days but the more I learn about failure and how properly to understand what it has to tell me, the fewer and further in between those days come to me and the better my taste becomes. So, I guess the question now is one along the lines of “how can I best understand failure”? Good question. So good in fact, that it will just have to wait until next time.


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There Is No Substitute For Experience

As I write this post, it is late December 2014, and I have just been asked one of the hardest questions I’ve ever been asked. I am currently playing in a theatre show. After one of the shows, I was on my way into town for some food, when a young boy, aged maybe eleven or twelve, approached me and said: “you were the bass player in the show just now, right?” I told him that I was. He told me that he’s just started playing bass in his school band. “I really enjoy it”, he said, “but I get quite nervous before we do concerts. How long will it be before I stop getting nervous?”. This question stopped me in my tracks completely. I understood where he was coming from. We’ve all had nerves at one point or another, so I was able to give a stock, but true, answer along the lines of “just keep practicing and try not to think about it. The more you play and get experience the better you’ll be able to handle your nerves”. But I was genuinely struck by how big a question this was. I don’t really get nervous now when I perform. I thought “well I’m quite experienced now” but I stopped myself and began to realise that I don’t always have prior experience of some of the gigs I do. Surely I should be nervous then. Also, how could I class myself as experienced when I haven’t done some of those gigs before? But most curiously of all, why am I able to reap the benefits of experience (not suffering from nerves to name one) when I haven’t done a particular gig before? This, all of a sudden, felt bizarre. What do people actually gain from experience?

Whilst I was waiting for my food, I began to think about it. Surely I should start by analysing the experiences that have taught me the most. After quite a bit of thinking one came to mind: the first time I went to a jam night in London. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, these are nights hosted by a small group of musicians (the house band) and are open to other musicians to come and play songs with the house band or other people who attend. Jam nights can be very strange places at times. If you know the people who are regulars, then they can become some of the most friendly places you’ll ever go to, but if you don’t know anyone (I knew no one at this point) then they can also be some of the most daunting.

A friend had told me about a night that was on near Liverpool Street station every second Wednesday. It was a jazz night and because my jazz repertoire was very poor at the time I was nervous about getting up to play. “What if they call a song I don’t know”, I used to say to my friend. He would usually reply “then you’ll know what to learn for next time”. This particular time I sat it out and just watched. I won’t lie about it: I was terrified just watching some of these musicians. They seemed to know every song you could name. It didn’t matter what key, what version, what arrangement, they could play it. I spent the whole night asking people “what song was that? Who’s it by?”. I took note of all these songs and decided to take my friends advice. Surely if I went away and learnt these songs then next time I could come back, ask to play one of them and give a better impression of myself. So that’s what I did. I took this list of twenty or so tunes I had made home and began to learn them. Two weeks later I got a text from my friend “Hey, do you fancy going to that jazz night again?”. I replied saying I wouldn’t go. I told him I was still learning the songs from the last one but next time I would be there. Another two weeks went by and I got the same text. What was my response? “Oh hey man, maybe not this time. I can walk through the changes ok but I’m still not happy with my solos on them. Let’s go next time”. This went on and on until five months had passed and I’d still not been back to play. However, the next time I was asked it would be different. I knew all those songs, I could improvise over the chord changes and I could play all the melodies. The next time I was there I would be bullet proof. And before long, I got the same text from my friend. “See you there at nine”, I responded.

We met at the jam. We watched the house band play. Again they were brilliant, and around half past ten the night was opened up for other musicians to come up on stage and play. Usually there aren’t that many bass players at these kind of nights so I took my chance and got straight onto the stage. The saxophonist greeted me and asked “what shall we play?”. I replied (trying to act like this was a regular thing for me) with one of the tunes I had spent months learning. “Let’s play Spain”…..a very tired look came across the sax players face “let’s do something else. We’ve been playing that solidly for months now”. Ok, don’t worry, I thought. Let’s try another one. “Caravan?” Same response. I went through all the songs I had learnt: Oleo, Impressions, Tenor Madness, as well as all the others from my list. They all got turned down for the same reason. Eventually I ran out of songs. I simply didn’t know anymore. “Oh I’ve got an idea”, said the drummer, “How about Moments Notice?”. They all agreed. I didn’t know it but a chord chart was put in front of me, the song was counted off and we started. In short, it was a total train wreck. I didn’t know the song and I had no idea what I was doing. I just about got through it and then quickly left the stage.

How did this happen? I spent ages learning some songs only to get down to this jazz night and no one wanted to play them. My first thought was how different this was to my practice. When I practiced I spent time working through the chord changes, often at a slow tempo, thinking about how I could navigate the song or coming up with short lines I could slot into the song at certain points. I was able to properly prepare myself for playing the songs. At this jam night, I had none of that. It was a baptism of fire in many ways. But my first thought was that I should’ve been much better. Had I not just spent five months practicing jazz? Why was I unable to play this one song when I had spent so much time and energy on learning how to play jazz?

It wasn’t until I got home did I start to realise what the problem was. “How was the jam?”, asked my flat mate when I arrived home. I responded: “Nothing like my practice”. I froze as I said this. It truly was nothing like my practice. I didn’t know the song, I had no time to prepare and my first run through was at a really fast tempo. In almost every way I could think of, the jam was totally different to the preparation I had done beforehand. No wonder I didn’t play well. My practice didn’t actually prepare me for what I’d experienced.

Clearly there is an issue here. The question I began to ask myself was whether or not doing any practice at home would actually prepare me properly for doing performances. I started to realise that just doing “bedroom practice” doesn’t actually give me everything I need, because in some way, shape or form, “bedroom practice” usually assumes a perfect performance scenario. By this I mean that it assumes that the performance will take place under exactly the same conditions as the practice leading up to it. For example, in the situation above, I assumed that these other musicians would only want to play the small selection of songs that I knew. My practice hadn’t considered that they might be bored of those songs and want to play something else which is exactly what happened on the performance. After realising this I started to notice that this “perfect scenario” assumption cropped up nearly every time I practiced at home, no matter what I was working on. If I wanted to practice sight reading, I would always assume I would have a music stand (not the case on some gigs), I would always assume that it would be properly lit (not the case on many gigs), I would always play through at roughly 70bpm, which is unrealistic, as music can be at any tempo. These aren’t the only examples, but there is no way I could possibly list them all. In short, I was too attached to practicing within my own perfect scenario and it usually made my practice flawed in some way. So, why was I doing it? My practice seemed to lack so much genuine context that all of a sudden I felt it wasn’t much use at all.

After I had thought through my experience at the jam, I saw that it had pointed out so many things I didn’t understand. But I had found a new kind of practice. I started to wonder if it would it be better to try and view performances, in part, as a kind of practice. However this wasn’t possible because, at that moment in time, I wasn’t really doing many gigs. If I only ever did that, I would hardly ever do any practice. I decided to split the difference. I would still practice at home but I wanted to make sure that, for the time I spent working on songs, I was as unprepared as possible.

The next day I got up, pulled out my real book (book of jazz songs or “standards”), chose a song I’d never heard, found a recording, pressed play and started to play through along to the record. It was difficult, but I loved it. It was so much more engaging than just mindlessly running scales all day. It also started to highlight a lot of the same problems that the jam night did: I found it hard to navigate quick chord changes and I struggled to follow the form of the song. However, rather than spending time fixing these problems and finding a perfect way to play the song, I moved straight onto the next recording and started to play. I continued this process of playing through a new song once then moving onto another one for a few hours, until I took a break for lunch. Whilst I was eating, I started to think. Whether I was trying to find a bass line, take a solo or comp through the chords, I was always having the same problems with every song I played. I decided to focus on just one, playing walking bass through quick chord changes. It was, however, really hard to decide what to do. The whole point of my new practice routine was to be totally unprepared. It would defeat the point of my new routine to spend time figuring out some prepared lines to get through the songs or to look at the song and learn it. Without properly deciding on how to approach this aspect of bass playing, I went back to practice. Surprisingly, I actually found it a little easier this time. I was still playing songs I hadn’t seen before and I was still as unprepared as I was during the morning session, but what was making it easier for me? The answer? I had gained, a very small amount of, experience. The gained experience wasn’t telling me exactly what I should do, though. It was just informing me of what was likely to come my way during the time I spent playing these songs, namely, quick chord changes. This was a very important realisation for me. It continues to be so too. From that day onwards, I began to think that perhaps many people have a misconception about what experience really is. It’s not something that always tells you exactly what you should do next. In my case, I still had no idea how to get through those chord changes, but what experience did help me to do was to keep calm and approach the situation rationally. This is still something that is true for me to this day, and I hope many more days to come. Let me put it another way.

Imagine I am a chef. I’ve been working in the kitchen of a top-level restaurant for twenty years. There’s no doubt that I am an experienced cook, but I still haven’t made every single dish under the sun. It would be impossible for me to have done so. Suppose I’ve been asked to cook from a recipe that is in a style I’ve never made before. The key thing to grasp here is that my experience won’t tell me exactly how to make it; I’ve never done it before. How could it? My experience will, however, help me avoid making basic errors of technique or judgment. It will help me make a very informed and plausible attempt at cooking the dish. Sure, I may not have cooked this particular dish before, but I will have had experience with cooking equipment, cooking methods and using and mixing ingredients together. If it was a stir fry, for example, then experience would tell me to make sure the pan was incredibly hot before starting. If it was a trifle dessert, then experience would tell me not to add beef just because it’s something I’ve done well before. Despite me having never added beef to a trifle, my experience would help me to avoid making a school-boy error: it would tell me that it’s something I shouldn’t do, not unless I wanted a job as Rachel Green on Friends. The same thing is true for music. The experienced musician doesn’t know how to play every song in existence, but if you put a song that he’s never heard in front of him, then he would be able to keep a cool head, properly analyse the task and think about the situation he’s in rationally, rather than just throwing out a bunch of things he doesn’t really understand and hoping that they work. Whether you want to perform, teach, write or program, there really is no substitute for what experience can give you.

Gaining experience, however, is often a difficult thing to do and it’s certainly never a truly comfortable process. Sadly it does involve taking your fair share of knocks along the way, but it is worth doing. Also, the more you do it, the easier it becomes to allow yourself to be humbled by situations where you aren’t comfortable. Recently, I was doing an orchestral gig, playing Persian music. Whilst I do have experience of playing with orchestras, I had never listened to, let alone played, Persian music, and during the first rehearsal, it wasn’t too long until this showed. The conductor came to me and said: “the notes are all correct but it doesn’t quite feel right”. I remember my thoughts exactly at the time. For a split second, the reflex of “he can’t be right, I’m a great bass player etc” went through my head. But then experience kicked in and I thought “actually, I’ve been in this position before with other people; this conductor plays this music all the time and I’ve never done it; his opinion is rooted in knowledge and experience, mine is rooted in nothing; I should take his advice”. The conductor was also a bass player and was able to demonstrate what he wanted and also suggested some listening to me. Yes it was a bit of a knock to my pride not to come in and nail it first time but, in all honesty, I’m glad I didn’t because this experience highlighted something to me that I could improve on and that’s what really counts. This is really a big part of how I get better.

At this point, I want to make something very clear. I’m not suggesting for a minute that “bedroom practice” is pointless. It isn’t. I have learnt a huge amount practicing this way and I’m sure there will be more things to come. However, the experience I just mentioned and several others besides have helped me realise that “bedroom practice” and a performance are two totally different things. If I want something that I’ve practiced at home to come out on stage, then I have to expect it not to work at first. I have to accept that I’ll go through a phase of using a particular lick, for example, completely tastelessly or perhaps even trying to use it and see it fall apart completely before it becomes a useable part of my playing. I have to take the knocks, I have to be honest about the fact I need to be humbled in that respect and in many ways, above all, I have to be honest to others about the experience I do and don’t have. If I’m not, it may blind me to gaining more experience which will help me in the future but also, if I do go and run my mouth off about being the greatest sight reader, the quickest technician or best improviser when I’m not, then sooner or later I’ll be asked, in one way or another, to prove it. And if I can’t, I will let a lot of people down. One of the hardest things I have learnt to do during my career is knowing when to admit that I don’t know something. It has been very tempting on so many occasions for me to give a false impression of my ability, knowledge or intelligence. In other words, to say that I have experience that I really do not. However, I also can’t let this exact same reason become an excuse for me not to go out and gain more experience in the first place. To clarify, I’m not saying that because a musician lacks some experience, they will never get called for anything. Everyone has to start somewhere, after all, and, yes, a lot of the time the best work does go to the most experienced players, but by always telling yourself that you shouldn’t start until you’re ready, or that you’re not prepared enough, you’re denying yourself the chance of landing any kind of opportunity. When I was at the jazz night, granted, I wasn’t the best or the most experienced jazz musician in the room. And, no, I didn’t land any major gig, because of my playing that night. But the point is I was at least there and willing to take in as much as I could. That was the reason I made such an important realisation, a realisation I would never have made at home, no matter how much I practiced in my bedroom.

The point is you do yourself a real disservice if you avoid gaining experience. We’ve all had moments saying things like: “I won’t take that gig until I feel ready; I’ll stay home and practice for a year then go and do it”. In truth, it is impossible to prepare completely for every new experience precisely because, since the experience is new to us, there will be some aspect of it that we haven’t considered. How can we possibly be completely prepared? This is true at any stage of your career. Even for a seasoned and experienced musician, having experience doesn’t mean that they always know what to do. Sometimes, their experience may only tell them what they shouldn’t do. And, experience doesn’t always mean that something has happened to them before. If it did then they couldn’t truly be experienced until they had done everything there is to do which, of course, no one ever will. I have always felt that waiting until I know what to do in every situation, what notes to chose in every style or what bass to bring to every gig, actually stops me from progressing because it’s impossible to always have the answer. It’s a balancing act. Yes, it is important to spend time on your own, in your bedroom or living room, studying things that are totally alien to you. After all, if you spent every night gigging then the chances are you wouldn’t be playing different songs at every single gig and you may switch off. After five months, those songs may not present any new challenges, like they originally did. They would no longer provide you with the chance to learn something new. Bedroom practice is important, but without experience, it will only get you so far.

Anyway, I’m now back at theatre. We’ve just been told we have five minutes before the start of the next show. We only have five shows left of the run, and after this is finished, I have a run of gigs coming up with a jazz trio. I haven’t played jazz for a while. I should go practice, right?

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I Learn Everytime I Play. What A Shame.

“I learn every time I play” is something I have heard so many times during my career. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it is impossible to learn when you play, and I certainly don’t disagree with the sentiment of this statement. Imagine how great it would be to make progress every time you picked up the instrument. Unfortunately, for me, this simply isn’t so.

Several years ago I was fortunate enough to perform in a six week theatre show. We rehearsed for a week, doing band rehearsals, cast rehearsals and technical rehearsals; then we went straight into five weeks of shows which finished at 8pm everyday. This early finish was great because I could either go to bed early (a rare occasion for a working musician) or I could go on to do another gig. The theatre show was a run of fifty five shows, but I also did another six shows after in the evenings, two days of teaching which I did on off days from the show and two recording sessions. So sixty five engagements in six weeks. This is a lot, even for someone who does this for a living. The first day back home after this finished I felt like my playing was in good shape. I had been playing several hours a day for six weeks and I wanted to take advantage of this and keep the momentum going. I sat down at home to start practicing and began by doing a short warm up. Usually I play through some simple songs that I know just to get the blood in my hands moving. I had been going for ten minutes before my flat mate knocked and the door and asked if I wanted to go to the cinema. I hadn’t had a day off for six weeks so of course I said yes. I didn’t worry about not practicing and I certainly needed to do something other than music for a day or two.

But was it right for me to walk away from that ten minutes on the instrument saying that I had taken in some new information, that I had learnt something new? In my opinion the answer is a clear and resounding no. What could I have possibly learnt in that time? I played through a bunch of songs I had played many many times before; I wasn’t really paying attention whilst doing so and I wasn’t approaching this situation with any intention of learning. I have spoken to several of my peers about how they warm up and this routine is something we all do in a similar way. We find warm up exercises too boring so we find small, simple pieces of music to use that accomplish the same goal. A successful warm up. In my case there was nothing new to me about these songs in any sense. So why would I be compelled to say that I learnt something from them? Or by extension, that I learn every time I play. There’s something that doesn’t quite add up.

First of all I feel it is important to outline and define what constitutes learning. When I think back to past experiences when I have learnt new things, not just in music but any area of life, the learning process has always involved me engaging with something new. Something that I didn’t completely understand or even something that I didn’t understand at all. Now, it is important to say at this point that it is perfectly possible to learn something new from a piece of music or a situation that you are already familiar with. But, even so, the above idea of finding an aspect you are unfamiliar with still applies.

For example, I have a big problem practicing technique. I hate doing exercises because I find them boring. I also think that they often lack genuine musical context. But it is vitally important for musicians to have efficient and effective technique. Several months ago I found a weak spot in my playing. Leading with the index finger on my right (plucking) hand. Before I had always used my middle finger first and I wanted to work on this problem. Rather than doing exercises I decided that I would start learning Bach pieces. They have all the ingredients of technique exercises. They have scale runs, arpeggios, tricky fingerings for both hands, they help to develop relaxation, stamina and much more. They also present a huge musical challenge. It is very difficult to get pieces like this to sound like music and not a constant stream of 16th notes. I began practicing the piece (the gigue from the D Minor Partita) in the same way that I start anything that I find technically challenging: without a metronome. I feel that good technique brings together co-ordination and time. My fingers have to know where they are going and how to get there but also at what time they should execute these actions. Co-ordination has to come first. If my fingers don’t know where they are going speed is an irrelevance. So I didn’t practice this piece in time. I only worked on fingerings for both hands and once I was comfortable I began to practice in time but still I wasn’t using a metronome. I have been listening to Bach for years now, and so many of the recordings I hear have sections of rubato timing (where the tempo isn’t constant), which helps add more emotion and feel to the music. I listened to several recordings and tried to copy bits of phrasing that I felt added something to the piece. However, there was a problem. My version of the music never sounded as good. Even after practicing this piece for a further three months I still couldn’t get the version out of myself that I wanted. Why not? I knew the piece; I knew the form; I didn’t need notation; and I knew where I wanted to add these artistic interpretations; yet it didn’t sound good. After a break of a few weeks I came back to this Bach piece and made a discovery.

I decided to play this piece through with a metronome. I thought it would be easy. If anything, I was, at first, using a metronome for the sake of doing so. I honestly didn’t think I would learn anything from it. I took another look at the score and saw the piece was in the time signature 12/8. I programmed this time signature into my metronome set the pace as 40bpm and got to work. All most instantly I fell apart. Even though I could hear the time signature and tempo when I was practicing without it, I had made my own interpretation of that time signature. Once a strict tempo (the metronome) was put in place, so many more aspects I hadn’t considered came to the surface. I all of a sudden could see where Bach had written passages that stressed accents against the time signature and where he had written cross rhythms. All in this constant stream of 16th notes. Without doubt I learnt something, but only because I searched through several aspects of the piece to find something I hadn’t considered and wasn’t comfortable or familiar with. This is a clear example of my original point. Whether or not you are searching for this unknown stimulus material within music you already know or music you don’t isn’t the issue. The point is that, in either case, you’re learning because you are actively engaging with something you don’t fully understand.

So let’s take this view point back to my ten minute warm up. Yes, I was already familiar with the songs I was playing, so I could’ve tried to dig deeper into them, but the important thing to understand is that I didn’t. I am the first to admit that, during this particular warm up (as well as many others), I wasn’t really paying attention to the music I was playing. Knowing that, how could I possibly have been engaging with anything new and further to that point, how could I possibly have enabled or facilitated any kind of learning? Clearly, I didn’t. Even though I was playing, I learnt nothing.

So, where am I supposed to go from this realisation? Should I only play when I am in a genuine learning situation? Is time spent playing time wasted unless I learn something new? Absolutely not. The first thing to understand is that not all time spent on the instrument is meant for learning and improvement. A great deal of it is either maintenance or making end’s meet. Now that I can play this Bach piece to a high standard I have found that I have to dedicate some time (between one and two hours a day) to keeping it at the same standard. This isn’t time spent learning. But it’s not time wasted. The purpose of these maintenance sessions is exactly that: maintenance. The goal is to keep this Bach piece at its current level and not drop below and certain standard that I have established, not to learn anything new.

I have come to think that learning is not only something that is rarer than we might think, but also something that is very demanding both physically and, much more often, mentally. Competitive sport demonstrates this well. I am a very keen swimmer. It is a sport I have enjoyed since childhood, and when I can, I enjoy watching races on TV. When I was younger I always found it really strange when a commentator would talk about a certain swimmer and say something like “they’re looking for a good result today but they (the swimmer) said in their press conference that they won’t be going for any records this time”. I always thought this was bizarre. They are competing in a race. Surely it would be logical to always try and beat the current record. If they beat the record then they are swimming faster than anyone has previously done in history, and if they swim faster than anyone else, surely they’ll win the race. The Commentator’s point, of course, was this. It would be reckless for competitive swimmers to push themselves to their limits all the time.

A swimmer at the olympics has several races to get through not just one. If they wear themselves down in race one, they might pick up and injury in race two, or by race five they might be so tired that they don’t qualify for race six. In other words, always operating at their limits will likely have a serious and negative backlash.

Music is the same. Learning is mentally exhausting. If I only ever tried to learn then I would only ever be working on the edge of my comfort zone. This would leave me far too tired to do all the other necessary things, like maintenance, that being a musician requires. The position musicians are in with practice is similar to that of the swimmers. In the same sense that not every race is an attempted world record, not every practice session is there for us to learn from. Some have to be about maintaining the level we are already at. If anything, trying to approach all practice sessions with the objective of learning is counter productive. Let’s say that I have a two week tour playing some technically demanding music. In this case, I would make sure that I divide my practice time into different sections which are designed to achieve different things. Part of it will be to absorb new information and learn new things, but part of it has to be to keep at the level I have achieved. If I spend my maintenance time learning something else new, then the very thing I set out to achieve will slip in standard. Learning is only one part of the process and we have to recognise that. Take a look around Youtube and find interviews with big-name players and you’ll find that so many will say the same thing: that a huge part of their practice routine is just repetition. I for one (given the amount of practice and learning they have done in their lives) feel that it would be a good idea to trust in their experience.

Another interesting point that “I learn every time I play” calls into question is the nature of progress itself. I have been told so many times by teachers and mentors that “progress comes in leaps and bounds”. In other words, this means that we don’t progress at a steady rate. Writing this now I can think of many times over the course of my career when I have had an experience or teacher that has accelerated my learning across a period of time. I’m sure that other people have had the same thing. And again, I have asked a lot of my peers about this and they all say that it has been inconsistent for them. Yet, surely, if we truly did learn every time we play why aren’t we making constant progress. Many of my private and Skype students contact me saying things like “I’ve been stuck in a rut for a few years now. I play a lot but I don’t feel I’m getting anywhere”. Does this sound familiar to you? It does for me as well. I have been in this position before, but the point I want to stress is that, if you are, have been or will be in this position at any point in time, telling yourself that you learn every time you play is not just false; the mentality of this statement may also be the very thing that is stopping you from progressing at all.

I mentioned in my previous post about the way that I had avoided doing hard work in the past by making excuses for myself not to practice. Something very similar is at play here. Let’s go back to my example of my first day off after the theatre show. During that ten minute warm up, if I told (and believed) myself when I said “I learn every time I play” I would actually have been setting a very low standard for myself. If I learn every time that I play then how much focus, effort and dedication I put into my practice becomes totally irrelevant because improving is, according to that statement, something that happens by default. In short, it becomes another excuse I can use to stop me from doing any genuine work: I don’t need to put in the hard work; I learn every time I play. Clearly, this doesn’t add up.

I want to point out that I’m not saying you shouldn’t play and practice on a regular basis. Nor am I saying that there aren’t benefits to reap from regular practice because there are. It’s a great way to keep your muscles in shape and your musical instincts sharp, but, much like the swimmer, a huge amount of this work is about just keeping in shape. I remember seeing an interview with olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps who said “some days I really don’t want to be in the pool but I have to know that if I’m going to break records I have to be consistent”. The point Phelps is making here is that progress isn’t arbitrary and so many times progress is dependent on the progress that has come before it. The previous progress helps to set standards which, when they are maintained, help provide a platform to the next learning experience. This interview with Chris Thile also supports the point of view that maintenance practice is vital. “I feel like if I’m not playing for two hours a day, I actually start to go backwards”. Granted: we all have good and bad days. But if we want to progress in any discipline, it’s not a matter of getting lucky. Victor Wooten has worded this brilliantly.

In his book “The Music Lesson” his teacher, a character named Michael, says that he can’t teach Victor anything. He can only show him things. Why? Because “the knowledge is already out there. You just have to tune into it”. I feel that this sums up my views on this topic very well. If you want to progress and learn something new you have to engage with something new. You have to actively seek out a genuine challenge, work hard at it but crucially be honest with yourself about whether or not you find it challenging. Many times in the past I have been guilty of doing something that doesn’t challenge me just to eat down hours on the clock. Of course I get to come out of it and say to people “I practiced for six hours yesterday” but that doesn’t mean I made six hours of progress. But, saying that, maybe my intention during that period wasn’t to progress at all. If it was not to improve but only to maintain there is nothing wrong with that, but I can’t use one as an excuse not to do the other.

Lastly, the biggest issue I have with “I learn every time I play” is also the one I am by far the most passionate about. This is an issue that has only come to light for me in the last four years. Only since I began teaching and following the progress of my own students did I realise just how reckless it is to tell someone you learn every time you play. As a teenager I spent a lot of time talking to other musicians, reading interviews, going to clinics and masterclasses. Sometimes I found it inspiring, but if I’m honest, a lot of other times I found it was a huge knock to my confidence. I would see players who were years in front of me make this dubious claim. I’d go home, practice, often get nowhere and then say to myself “I’ve practiced and learnt nothing. There must be something wrong with me”. This was never the case but I lost a lot of time believing that the work I put in was of no consequence or that there was something I didn’t get and was never going to get because I wasn’t constantly improving.

It can be soul destroying to put in some hard work and not get any reward from it, but what can be worse is the feeling that how hard you work is irrelevant because you’re not “gifted” or “talented” enough to learn every time you play. This is something I have never said to any student and I seriously doubt I ever will. If you’re reading this and you identify with this situation or being stuck in a rut then please know that the best thing you can do is be honest with yourself about what is and isn’t challenging for you. This can be daunting and unsettling but ultimately this is what progress and learning is all about. Uncharted territory. However, I have to say, whenever I get into these positions that expose some sort of problem in my playing, I take great comfort in knowing that it’s just a matter of work just like it is for everyone else. How many gold medals did Michael Phelps win during his career in the end?

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Making Excuses: Why Do We Bother?

Regardless of the genre, I get very excited watching musicians of very genuine quality perform. I have been fortunate enough to see some that have had a huge impression on me. I have seen Pat Metheny, Chris Thile, Herbie Hancock amongst others and there’s something about seeing musicians of this level perform that always interests me.

Many of the performances mentioned above were ones that I attended with fellow musicians and, thinking back on those experiences now, what’s interesting to me is how we all seemed to go through a similar process during and after those shows. First of all we would all be inspired by what we saw. Next we would talk about how much we aspired to be of the standard that we had witnessed. Then finally would come the most significant stage of this process. We would, often without knowing it, decide on a mindset with which we would proceed our musical studies. I saw many people who looked at these great musicians and thought “look what hard work can achieve. It’s great to see that reaching this standard is possible. I’ll go practice”. All too often, however, I would find myself being on the other side of this fence. I would be the person saying “look at what (insert great musician) has achieved. They have done so because they are a genius. I’m not. I could never get there”.

This might well be a situation you have gone through or are going through yourself. Many of my students have said things like this to me before and I have been through this too many times to count. But there is much more to reaching this level than people who are talented and those who aren’t. When I was younger, and much more prone to saying “I’m not a genius like XYZ musician. I could never do what he does”, I didn’t understand what I was saying nor what I was doing to my development as a musician when this thought entered my mind.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, being a great musician requires a lot of hard work. Hard work requires discipline. And to be disciplined means not letting yourself off the hook. An example of this can be found in my early student life. I had been in London for two years and was studying hard. I had heard several of my tutors (rightly) say “you need to have a life outside of music”. This is true. Many musicians that I know have found it hard take a break from music. Not only is it their hobby, but it’s also their work. It is quite truly, their life. As a student I was no exception but my personal life did begin to suffer. I wasn’t happy doing music all the time so I started to see my friends a little more and I began doing more away from music. There was one social event in particular that I could never say no to. Poker night. I spent a year living with three other fantastic musicians during my third year in London. We all worked hard on our instruments but we loved to play poker. I remember that, on the first night we held, I had the advice of my tutors in mind as I sat at the table with my cards. In all honesty I had, not only a great, but also incredibly late, night. So as you can imagine my routine of waking up at 7:30am to be practicing by 8am went out the window the next day. But I didn’t mind. I told myself “it’s only once and I’ve been working really hard lately. I deserve a day off”. In that instance, this was true, but the trouble came two weeks later when one of my flat mates knocked on my door holding a deck of cards. “Poker”? This time I was practicing a lot but I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t feel tired, I didn’t feel fed up and I really wanted to get out of bed the next day at 7:30am to keep the momentum going. What happened? I played poker until 4am. Why? “I’ve been working really hard lately so I deserve a break. Anyway, what harm can one day off do?”.

What happened here is something that has probably happened to every musician I know. I found a way to justify not doing the work. I was right in the middle of this process, I was working hard, I kept that up because I was disciplined but the trouble is, I tricked myself. I let myself off the hook when I shouldn’t have done. This made me lose the discipline that I had developed, and as a result, the next day I was too tired to even think of doing any work. So I did none. What’s more funny though is that I was upset about this. I wasn’t upset that I was tired from the night before or that my routine had fallen apart. What upset me the most was that, for that day, I didn’t improve. I got no better. Five years later, as I write this, I have a smile on my face because this was so naïve of me. Of course I got no better. I didn’t do any work. Why didn’t I do any work? Because of the biggest problem the mindset in my opening paragraph outlines. I created an excuse.

This is something I have done far many more times than I would like to admit. Look back now at what I said in that opening paragraph. “I could never be as good as ……… I’m not a genius like them”. Is that not simply a thought that justifies me doing less work? This could easily be “I could never be as good as Charlie Parker. He’s at the level he’s at because he’s a genius. I’m not so there’s no point in me working as hard as him”. This (often all to easily) was the case for me and I was stuck in a very disheartening cycle for a long time. I would be upset, decide that “enough was enough. Tomorrow morning I’m getting up at 7:30 in the morning to practice”, I would keep that up for a while, get some discipline and then as soon as I found an excuse it would all fall apart. So I would wake up the next day upset about the fact I had fallen behind on my work, often give my self more excuses by saying “maybe I need a week off”, get further behind, get more upset and frustrated and then start all over again. “How do these top guys do this?” I would say to myself. “How can anyone always be so dedicated and never get out of line”?. This thought, eventually, raised an interesting question. Why did I always feel I deserved the break in the first place? What had I done to make the excuse so believable to myself that I would actually stop working when I didn’t need to? I had never thought about this before. I had only said “well I’ve been played bass for five hours today. I deserve a break”. Most importantly what I realised was that most of the time, I was doing just that. I wasn’t really practicing anything I couldn’t do. I was just playing things I already could do or learning other songs which weren’t that difficult or demanding. Eventually the penny dropped. When I was confronted with genuine hard work, with things I had to practice because I couldn’t do, I found myself making these excuses much more. And the reason why? Working on things that took me out of my comfort zone was worrying: it exposed flaws in my playing that I didn’t want other people to see because I felt they made me look bad. No wonder I made excuses and no wonder I believed them too. It gave me a reason not to accept and face up to my flaws.

Going back the example of seeing a great musician and saying “I’m not a genius or naturally talented like such and such a musician so it’s ok for me not to work as hard” is basically the same as me saying “I’m insecure about the fact I can’t do certain things very well at the moment, so I only want to focus on what I am already good at. It’s a lot less damaging to my ego and to the perception I have of myself”. This does bring up an interesting point though. I had spoken to some musicians who had reached great levels. When I met Hiromi at Ronnie Scott’s I asked her “how did you get this good?” Her answer was “I have worked very hard for a very long time”. Why did I not believe her? When you think about it, her view point on reaching a standard like that is routed in experience. She’s done it which means she’s had the discipline, she’s not let herself off the hook and as a result she was able to put in the hard work. My view point, on the other hand, was routed in what? Nothing. I haven’t gotten to the same level and I haven’t had the experiences in doing so that she has. I should’ve taken her advice a lot sooner than I did. Hiromi is not the only one either. If you were able to speak to Pat Metheny, Charlie Parker, Yo Yo Ma, Jerry Douglas or Chris Thile there is one thing I’m sure they will all say. “I put in the work”. What none of them will say is “I sat at home, doing nothing for most of my life and all of a sudden a huge surge in ability showed up and well, here I am”. They put in the work and dragged themselves through this mindset, this bad habit of saying “I could never do that”. They stopped accepting excuses. So how did I get myself out of this cycle? I have improved beyond measure since that first poker night but by my own logic I shouldn’t have fallen behind in the first place. I was hard working, I had discipline and a lot of the time I didn’t let myself off the hook. But there was still something I didn’t understand. Still something I wasn’t doing.

There is one experience in my career that I love to think back to. It’s my favourite thing that I have ever done. Roughly a year after the start of my fledgling poker career I got a phone call from a friend who told me he knew of an orchestral project that needed a bass player. This sounded interesting to me because I had listened to orchestral music for many years but, as an electric bassist, I’d never had a chance to play in an orchestral setting. I agreed to the performances but I was a little concerned about having a full week of day long rehearsals before hand. This seemed a bit much to me but this was also a really rare opportunity so I decided to go ahead none the less.

The music we were performing was Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. I had heard of Bernstein before but I wasn’t really that familiar with anything he had written. I assumed, again naively, that this would be some classical guy thinking it was easy to write rock music or that this was basically be rock tunes with an orchestra. I was totally wrong. I received a PDF of the score two days before rehearsal and I decided to play along to a recording I had found. Within ten minutes I had found several moments in the music that I couldn’t play. There were loads of passages of odd time, several sections that were difficult to read and also really large periods where I had to wait through what felt like hundreds of bars of rests to play a few notes. This would be a challenge but I told myself “as long as I know the recording I can just learn it. I’ll be fine”. Again, I was completely wrong.

I got to the first rehearsal and began speaking to a fantastic trumpet player, who is now a great friend, who hadn’t prepared. He could sight read this. Alarm bells were starting to ring for me. Next the conductor walked in. We were working with Marin Alsop. She is, without doubt, one of the greatest musicians that I will ever work with. She was also a student of Bernstein’s. Mass is an enormous task to take on as a conductor. We had a cast which included the orchestra, several choirs, several actors, soloists, brass bands and much more. This combined gave us a cast total of nearly five hundred people, all of whom needed to be directed by the conductor. Marin made this look effortless. She could hear the smallest detail and seemed to know everyone’s score inside and out, by memory. A very true and great professional. I, on the other hand, had no orchestral playing experience and it showed. Before we started the first rehearsal I remember saying to myself “I can’t do this”. It honestly went through my mind that perhaps I should say another engagement came up at the last minute or that I had to back out for some reason. I had my excuses prepared and I was ready to let myself off the hook. Maybe I could justify this on some flimsy or poorly thought out musical excuse. I could’ve said “this is isn’t really my thing” or “yeah orchestral stuff is great but it’s not really what I do you know”? Crucially though, I didn’t. I really felt I couldn’t. Something wouldn’t let me. Which is more accurately expressed as Marin wouldn’t let me. Every time I missed something she would be right there saying “ok let’s do it again”. She was never rude or too encouraging to the point where she became patronising. Me not going through with this performance simply wasn’t an option for her. I’m certain she knew the process I was going through. And I’m certain she knew the solution. I needed to put in the work. This was the first time I truly understood what my “process” was. It’s a defence mechanism. It’s a way of me avoiding work that will expose my flaws to other people. In the past when I gave a truly pathetic excuse of “it’s not what I do, it’s not my thing” I could trick myself into believing that I was still a really great bass player, that I could do a brilliant job if I wanted but my time would be better spent elsewhere. Self deception would tell me that this was simply a case of the wrong tool for the wrong job. It was nothing like that. In reality it was in fact a case of a currently inadequate tool for the perfect job. This time, however, I was able to get past that. I was able to see it for what it really is and I was able to force myself to stay out of my comfort zone, not let myself off, keep my discipline and put in some very hard work.

Right from the start I had a lot of catching up to do. I had to ask Marin about quite a few of her conducting signals. Previously I had only worked with musical theatre conductors and she was very different to them. I also had to get used to hear rehearsing style. When she said “let’s do the Confession” or “ok we’ll go from Meditation number 3” that meant we would start there and not stop unless we had to. If there was no reason to stop we would go right through until the end of the entire work. It didn’t mean we would do only that piece of the music. As you can imagine this caught me out a lot of times. It’s very embarrassing having a cast of five hundred people which includes one of the world’s great conductors all staring at you because you’ve missed your cue again or because you can’t play the score correctly. The first two days weren’t pleasant. We rehearsed from 10am until 8pm and each day I had to take my score home and work in my room with my recording until midnight at least but the point is this. It’s wasn’t enough for me to simply recognise that I was insecure about not being able to keep up with the orchestra. I had to put in the work to catch up. I had to accept all the consequences that come with being not only aware of but, more importantly, alive to beating my defence mechanism. I had a rare opportunity to work with a brilliant conductor, on a truly great piece of music and we were due to perform at Royal Festival Hall in London. I couldn’t not do this. Going through with this final step of the process is something will always bruise your ego, it will always give you a very clear and often cuttingly accurate assessment of your ability but really, that’s the point. In this scenario, there was nothing that I needed more. It was embarrassing and I was convinced most of the orchestra thought I was a total amateur but it gave me so much drive and focus. Something that I wasn’t getting from my other gigs at the time. The reason why those gigs weren’t giving me much? Because I was too comfortable. I could’ve stayed with my comfort zone work and kept up my impression of someone who was always learning but the truth is, I wasn’t.

One of the moments of this experience that sticks out in my mind the most is the third day of rehearsals. I arrived at half past nine. Set up my gear, warmed up, tuned up and got my score ready on the music stand. Marin arrived at quarter to ten. “Good morning everybody. Ok, let’s go from the top”. The opening was one of my favourite parts of the entire work. After a pre-recorded audio and video sequence played we would start the first live piece which opened with myself, the guitarists and the string orchestra. This was one of the parts I could do pretty well already so I was able to settle my nerves. One of the things I had gotten wrong many times after though came next. Ten minutes of counting rests. Previously I had just sat back in my chair being very cool about the whole thing. Today? Not a chance. I’m not sure I blinked until my next entrance which was one I always dreaded because out of the five hundred people we had, I was the only one playing. At this, admittedly brief, moment, I was the only person playing. The whole thing rested on me. The two guitarists would have to find there place from what I played and I had to keep up with Marin. But I didn’t close my eyes and hope for luck or say that I wasn’t naturally an orchestral player like I had done the days before. I understood that I needed help and that there was nothing wrong with that. My eyes were glued to Marin the whole time. So I looked up, kept concentrating, got my cue from Marin and began to play. She smiled. “Excellent” she said. This time we progressed through the entire first hour of the work. We took a break and that was it. I wasn’t given any notes on my performance, I wasn’t reminded of something I had done wrong. I had done it. I had started to get past my excuse making, I had started to develop outside of my comfort zone and I was improving!

The rest of my time on Berstein’s Mass was incredible. It is something that I feel I am still learning from now and it has influenced me in a way that no other performance or gig has done. The performances were great, I began to feel much more at home with the other musicians and I made some great friends. I even got some compliments from the other orchestral players but most importantly I realised something crucial. Blaming anyone but myself for my lack of improvement is ridiculous. During my time on Mass it would’ve been so easy to “the organisers aren’t used to having an electric bass player” or “this Bernstein guy doesn’t know how to write for bass players” and so on but all of those things are excuses. Learning and improving is never a question of what someone else is or isn’t doing to or for you. It’s just a question of what you are simply not doing. I wasn’t properly engaging with the task at hand. No wonder I couldn’t do it at first. I was too proud to admit that I was lacking in experience so I made excuses not to do the work. It all highlighted the fact that I had very poor self discipline at the time. But, I came through it. I understood what I was doing to myself and this knowledge and experience is something I have carried with me ever since.

Writing this now, I can’t really remember the last time I said “I can’t be that good because I’m not naturally talented like so and so”. Maybe I am naturally talented, maybe I’m not; it’s irrelevant. The point is when I look at others and I say “I could never be as good as they are because I’m not naturally talented”, all I’m doing is tricking myself into thinking someone else has something I don’t. I’m tricking myself into thinking that there is a reason set in stone somewhere that I should only ever strive to be just ok at what I do and nothing more. Obviously this isn’t true.

Now that I understand what I was doing when I made those excuses I have found that other people inspire me much more than they used to. The fact that they have gotten to such a high level means it’s not impossible because someone has done it. The whole experience taught me that I am capable of so much if I am just willing to put the work in.

This experience has changed me in a lot of ways and it certainly gave me a different perspective on work not only during the last year of my student life but much more so now as a teacher. I remember during my last year at music school running into an old friend of mine in one of the practice rooms. “How was your summer?” she asked. “Incredible. I was part of a performance of Bernstein’s Mass”. “Wow” she said. “That’s amazing”. We talked about it for a little while. I showed her some photos I had taken during the rehearsals and shows. I also showed her the recording of the music I had spent so much time practicing to. “This sounds so beautiful. I have no idea how you are able to do that. I could never do that”. How funny, I thought to myself. Two weeks ago neither could I.

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