Thursday, March 31, 2016

$0.99 Downloads Now Available!

You can now download songs off my website!

Believe it or not, the title of this blog post, as well as the title of the heading, which both refer to downloadable files on my website, are really more about me bragging in sheer excitement of the fact that I actually figured it out, rather than advertising it. But before I brag about having stayed up late last night and finally managing to add the digital downloads, I think it's important to touch on why this is even important.



Music in the digital age

I don't believe that music in general will ever go "out of style". There are certain things that do go out of style, though, and for good reasons (like mullets). But music is one of those things where people have always listened to it, some more than others, and while styles of music can often morph, change, develop, and even mingle within one another (i.e. punk-jazz fusion, or symphonic rock, to name a couple of examples of these music hybrids), there is no time in history that I can think of when music just wasn't "in". I think the reason for this is, simply, that people love listening to it. Why people enjoy listening to it is an entirely different discussion, which for me would delve into issues of neuroscience, the science of sound, how music affects the psyche and how it generates different reactions, memories and emotions in people. We can save that for another discussion.

What does seem to go out of style, however, is the medium through which music is used. This is something that has clearly changed, and changed rapidly. My parents, as well as other relatives in their age bracket, have talked very nostalgically about how common vinyl records were, as well as 8-track players. And if you're well into your 30's, like me, you can surely remember a time when cassette tapes were still popular. The shift in popularity to the use of compact discs was obviously inevitable and not surprising, and owning a CD collection is (sort of) still somewhat common.
But even CD's are now showing signs of decline in popularity -- because now you have digital downloads. David Nevue, a composer who performs piano pieces all over the country and has released eleven piano albums, talked about this in his book How to Successfully Promote Your Music On The Internet. He explains that over half of his Internet sales are the one-song digital downloads, and not the physical CD's. People like buying downloads because it's quick and convenient, and because they can add it right into their iPod playlists. It also allows them to "cherry pick" from an album. You know, when you listen to a CD and you absolutely LOVE the first song, and you love the second song also, but the third song is kind of blah, and yet you love the fourth one, but the one after that sucks, and the last one is great for when you're feeling sad. That kind of thing. People skip tracks when they listen to CD's, and so the downloads allow them to pick out the ones they like and make their own "customized" album.


This obviously raises the question of whether the concept of a "CD album" is a dying art. However, there are two things I think I can say with certainty: one, the music industry isn't dying out, but it does seem to be constantly morphing. For all I know, in 50 years the downloads will become obsolete and people will just look at the song title on a telepathic-sensitive screen, save it onto a chip and then inject the chip into their brains so that they can listen to it whenever they want.

In any case, it's been brought to my attention that any musician attempting to make a livelihood by selling music must be willing to offer digital downloads of their songs -- otherwise they will starve. For many composers, songwriters and other musicians it's a huge chunk of their profits.

All buy myself...

As of last night, the CD page of my website is up and running, with the option to purchase the Heart of Storms album as a physical CD. Fully aware of the necessity for me sell digital downloads as well, I spent a few hours tinkering and researching, and finally figured it out. So yes, the downloads are now available for purchase! I even tested it out, and I bought myself a download for me, which I myself purchased (from myself) and charged myself $0.99 on my own credit card, by myself and from myself and then instantly gave myself a $0.99 credit into my bank account... so I essentially bought a $0.99 download for myself and from myself, by myself and paid it to myself and then made (and paid) the $0.99 from and to my own account. It was the most confusing transaction I've ever made, but, you know, I had to test it and make sure it worked. In retrospect I could have just had a buddy buy a $0.99 download from me to see if it worked, but watching my credit card get charged $0.99 and then seeing the same amount pop up into my bank account was just too much fun to ignore. The only question is do I report the $0.99 sale to myself on my taxes?

Incidentally, all of the pages on my new website are up and running, with the exception of the "Samples" page, which I'm working on and will have up either today or tomorrow. The Film Soundtrack pages are all in order, the CD's and Sheet Music or all up and running, and for sale, and I finished the "About" page (with a bio), the "Contact" page, the "Creative Writing" page and others. As far as the downloads are concerned, if you buy one you will instantly get an mp3 of the song emailed to you after you pay the $0.99. At the moment, only the songs from Heart of Storms are on there, but other songs will also be featured on there soon. 

Links:

Thor's digital downloads

David Nevue's website




Sunday, March 27, 2016

Website launched!

Half of the webpages are functional

Finalizing a website and getting it ready to launch is kind of like cleaning an apartment that you're getting ready to move out of. It takes a lot longer than you anticipate. I went ahead and published my new website (ThorGunter.com), which has about half of the pages up and running, while the other half is still "under construction". I could have very easily opted to postpone the launching of the site, but I decided to honor the March 19th deadline. The pages that are still being worked on include the "samples" page, the "CD's" page and the "Sheet Music" page. After getting the store app and the shopping cart thing installed on the website, everything was good to go except that, for the longest time, I had a really hard time figuring out how to separate the two product types so that only the sheet music products would appear under the "Sheet Music" tab and only the CD's would appear under the CD's tab. But, believe it or not, that's not the only thing that caused the delay in finalizing the construction of some of these pages. More than anything -- and I'm not joking -- it was a bunch of cats.


How a building full of cats delayed my website

It's hard to be angry at these feline creatures, you know, because they're so cute and all. Actually, I can't be mad at them at all since it wasn't their fault. Right when I was getting ready to finalize the remaining pages of my website, I got a message from Tanis Cassidy (an independent director, filmmaker, video maker type guy) and he said he was working on a video project for the Butte Humane Society, and that he really wanted to use my music in the video. So I dropped everything and worked on that, which is really the main reason for the delay. I'm excited, though, because Tanis Cassidy's video turned out great and I was able to get a little bit more of my music out there in the public realm. The Butte Humane Society project was very time-sensitive also (I was given about a two-day deadline to come up with something for a 5-minute video).


For this particular project I submitted some variations from a song I wrote called "Velvet Touch", as well as the intro to a piece that's incomplete (or, as they say, a "work in progress") called "Triumph." I added a link at the end of this post for those who want to see the video. The video is also a tribute to someone who apparently is a very hard-working volunteer named Marty Sampson, who seems to contribute a lot of hours at the facility and helps take care of the cats. So obviously I could go ahead and just blame myself for deciding to take on this project last-minute, but jokingly blaming the cats is so much more fun.


A break from my day job (one of them)

Now I have a window of opportunity because one of my jobs (I have three, can you believe that?) will be on spring break this week, starting Monday. I normally go to this job two days a week - Monday and Wednesday - and not having to work on those days is going to allow me to kick myself in the butt to get those pages done. The Butte Human Society video is over and done with, so now I can focus.


Butte Humane Society video by Tanis Cassidy (tribute to Marty Sampson)


Thursday, March 17, 2016

3rd Website Update and Playing "With Feeling"

Website a Success; iTunes downloads will take a few days...

The 19th of this month (this Saturday) is still good to go for the launching of my new website, ThorGunter.com. I've been really excited about this, and fortunately I've been able to tap into the experience I had from learning how to set up my Arctic Melodies site. I must say, though, that I also have Wix.com to thank (the website design company) because I've been using them so long now that I've become familiar with a lot of their features. I was able to set up an Events Calendar on one of my pages, without anyone's help, and on the calendar you'll be able to click on an event to get the information on showtimes, locations, and entry fee if there is one. I was able to customize the design of the calendar, too - pretty slick stuff! And no, I'm not bragging about the recent developments in my design skills -- but yeah, I did that on my own! (*does a very animated victory dance*).


The recording has been quite an adventure, and I'll be submitting those on Saturday as well; however, the process that's involved in signing up, submitting the work, getting the recordings digitally "cleaned up" (whatever that means) and distributing the downloadable recordings on iTunes takes at least a few days, so they won't be available on iTunes just yet. From what I understand, though, Wix.com has a feature where you can provide downloads of the recordings on your own site, so I'm going to try that and make it so that you can still buy the downloads directly from me.


I feel like a Spanish architect

Originally, any set-backs in the recording process resulted from using equipment that's sub-par. Or maybe the person doing the recording had skills that were "sub-par," I'm not sure which. Recently, though, my recording experiences were a little bit different, and they reminded me of a Spanish architect by the name of Antoni Gaudi (pictured below). Keep in mind that I'm mentioning this person for the purposes of using an analogy, because you know how much I hate using analogies. Anyway, I read somewhere that while Gaudi was designing and supervising the construction of one of his buildings, the construction workers had completed about 95% of the project when Gaudi suddenly ordered them to tear the entire thing down and start over. This was because there was some minor "flaw", like the cobble stones weren't lined up correctly, or some wooden beam was off by a half an inch, or something like that. It was some minor detail that caused Gaudi to take weeks (or maybe months) of strenuous hard labor and throw it out the window, and then ask the workers to start again from scratch. Apparently, Gaudi was notorious for doing this, because he was a perfectionist and such a picky "artist" about his designs, that he always wanted the end-result to be "just right." You can imagine how frustrating this would be for his construction crew.

Antoni Gaudi

As of late, this "Gaudi complex" has been looming in my psyche throughout my recording experience. I recently had two experiences like this, although I'm not sure if the first one counts. In the first experience, I had spent hours (and when I say hours, I mean hours, in a span of two or three days, so maybe a total of 16 hours or more) working on a recording. The frustrating thing is that everything seemed perfect, in every way. I could barely sit still because I was so excited about how the recording was going to turn out. I then clicked on some tab that caused the recording program to suspend every track I had recorded, which caused it to be exposed to a glitch, which in turn made it impossible for me to ever access any of the tracks (in other words, the 16 or so hours of work suddenly went poof! and I had to start over). This can be very discouraging, but yes -- after I took about a day to mourn the loss of 16 hours of labor, I started again. And I recorded the whole song. Again.

In the second experience, I had been recording the opening track of the Heart of Storms album (a song I wrote called "Hailstorm at North Lagoon"), which also took hours and hours because the re-recorded version features instrumental tracks that are used for the background (strings and a little bit of percussion). I'm guessing that I put in about the same amount of time on this as the other song. The only problem was that I had immersed myself in the project for too long, which happens to be analogous to that whole "can't see the forest for the trees" thing. The notes were, indeed, played "correctly" and the instrumental tracks were lined up perfectly with the piano melody. So I saved it, made an mp3 file of it, smiled, brushed my teeth and went to bed.



When I listened to the mp3 track the next day, however, I frowned immediately upon hearing it, because there was one very simple problem: It was being played way too fast. For me to notice this, it took an entire night's sleep and a certain amount of time that would allow me to "step back" and listen to it again, because I had been so immersed in it during the recording. Hence, not being able to "see the forest for the trees." Plus I'd had like four cups of coffee before I started recording, so maybe that was part of it. So I did exactly what Gaudi would do; I highlighted every single track in that recording, deleted every single one of them, completely, and started over. Just like that architect who stepped back after hours of intense labor in the construction of some building -- he looked at the big picture and said "Nope, tear it down and do it again."

This is part of why there's a slight delay in the availability of the songs on iTunes, so I'm hoping that my sharing of these experiences helped.

 
Imperfection brings the tears

Recording "Hailstorm at North Lagoon" on four cups of coffee is a good transition into a topic that I knew I would eventually get into, and it's a topic which is tied to a common phrase that almost everybody hears, especially those who take any kind of music lessons or any musician who performs under the direction of a conductor or some kind of musical director. That cliche phrase, of course, is the "Play it with feeling" phrase. Some musicians might know what this requires, even if they know intuitively. But to some, being told to play a song "with feeling" doesn't help much, because it doesn't tell you anything. I've always assumed that the phrase means to make the piece sound more "emotional," and to accomplish this I have learned to create this effect by implementing several techniques. For example, don't play "Hailstorm at North Lagoon" at a thousand miles an hour when you've had four cups of coffee.

"Hailstorm" is supposed to be fast-paced, complex, and with a lot of energy, but I think that playing it too fast will take away part of the emotion that is put into the song. On the other hand, playing it too slowly will also take that away, because then it will just sound like it's dragging. If people want to learn how to play a piano piece with "feeling", they need to realize that a song will usually show no emotion if  it's played "perfectly" according to the sheet music. Even though there are subtle variations that can be added to the sheet music (i.e., dynamic symbols to indicate the loudness/softness), a performer must still add his or her own variations to the piece if it is to sound emotional. And, of course, since I never use analogies, here's an analogy to clarify this concept:

Think of a movie actor. As a matter of fact, this could be any actor, whether it's a Hollywood film actor or a stage actor. At some point, that actor had to read a script in order to play a part in a movie, right? That script shows exactly which words are to be uttered, when they're to be uttered, and at which point in the dialogue of a scene they are to be uttered. And sometimes there are even cues as to how to utter some of the words (i.e., sadly, gleefully, worriedly, etc.).

A good actor doesn't just read from the script; he shows emotion.
Now imagine if that actor just read the script, word-for-word, without much inflection in his voice, and in sort of a monotone manner, and without any kind of emotion or dramatic behavior. The movie would be downright boring.

The sheet music of a song is like the "script" of a movie. If you just play the notes that are on the page, and you don't dramatize it or show any kind of emotion, the song will be boring. The performer of the song is like that actor. As movie-goers we obviously expect actors to be dramatic, lively, animated, and revealing of human emotions (pain, grief, joy, etc.). I think by now this analogy must be clear. What I've found many people curious about, however, is how exactly do you "act" out an emotion when you're playing an instrument? What exactly does it mean to play "with feeling"? I'm so glad you asked! Here's how:

1) Speed up in some parts, and slow down in others, even if the sheet music doesn't tell you to.

2) Slow down and make dramatic pauses in certain parts of the song, even if the sheet music doesn't tell you to.

2) Play loudly in some parts, and softly in other parts, even when the sheet music doesn't tell you to.

3) When the sheet music tells you to play two notes simultaneously (e.g. a bass note and a 3rd interval in the mid-range for the melody), play the two notes slightly separately, with one note occurring a split-second before the other. This adds a tremendous amount of emotion, especially when the bass note is played just before the note in the melody.

4) If you're a composer, avoid the overuse of conventional chords. Major triads, for example, are generally boring. Augmented chords, sevenths, ninths, suspendeds, etc., are good because they add a "spice" and they add flavor to the piece. They also evoke different emotions depending on which chords you use and which order you play them in (see my previous blog, How To Make Your Music More Emotional). Now, and I know this is shocking, but here's an analogy:

Writing a song that is full of conventional, bland chords (like a row of major triads) is like watching a movie that has no conflict, no plot, or no "problem" in the story. Why would you want to watch a movie like that? When we watch a movie, we expect there to be a conflict, right? That's what drives the story and makes the movie exciting. Adding dissonance to a piece, such as a suspended chord or a major seventh in the dominant chord before progressing to the tonic, adds "conflict" to the song; people hear it, and even if they don't know what it is or what to call it, they still hear it and they'll like it.

5) I don't know what the solution is for most other instruments, but a piano has a sustain pedal. Use it! In sheet music, there are symbols to indicate when the sustain pedal should be pressed, but even this (in my opinion) can be used with some variation. You can press the pedal sooner than what it says, or even delay it a tad, or press it only part way in some spots, depending on what effect you want to create.

Bugs Bunny playing "with feeling"

6) Keeping all of these technical details in mind, you can usually learn to accomplish all of these techniques by literally re-experiencing the emotions you want to evoke out of your audience. In other words, close your eyes and dwell on the memory of a deceased pet or relative, the heart-wrenching breakup, the grief you felt when your friend moved away, or even from a sad movie that touched you. When you re-experience those emotions, use that to influence the five techniques I listed above.

7) Close your eyes before you perform the piece, and paint a vivid picture in your head of what the song is about (e.g. a sunset, a snowstorm, etc.) While you keep that image in your mind, re-experience whichever emotion you think should be associated with that image (e.g. A sunset = a feeling of contentment, peace, romance, etc. A snowstorm = a feeling of anxiety, fear, awe, struggle, etc.), and as you re-experience those emotions, and as you keep those images in your mind, use that to control the first five techniques I wrote about in this list.

Yes, this works. And, no I don't take bugs bunny seriously. He's just hilarious.

These performance techniques (and there are plenty more, by the way) encompass what musicians call "interpretation". I tell every student of mine that interpretation is just as important as playing the right notes -- if not more. Beethoven said that playing a piece without passion was "inexcusable", and he was right. The correctness of the notes and a good interpretation (just like good acting in a movie) are equally important. In fact, a wrong note will often go unnoticed, actually. But a robotic performance, with no "feeling", will not only be noticed, but it's likely to bore the audience.


So, naturally, I had to delete the recording of "Hailstorm" because the pace wasn't right. If it doesn't convey the right emotion (or any emotion at all) I'm not publishing it. Luckily, it just took a few clicks to fix it, and it will require me to sit on the piano bench for another seven hours or so. But it won't require me to move cinder blocks, or pour concrete in the baking sun. I'm kind of glad I'm not a Spanish architect. Thanks, Antoni Gaudi. You crazy, perfectionist weirdo.









Thursday, March 3, 2016

Website/Recording Update and a Word on "Talent vs.Training"

First, a quick update: The March 19th launch date for my music website is still standing. I may, in fact, have the new tracks of Heart of Storms submitted to CDBaby earlier than that (I'm hoping by the 15th) because I think it takes some time before those recordings are available on iTunes (a few days perhaps, or maybe longer). Either way, the website will still be available. I created and set up all of the pages, with a design idea. I submitted the design idea to Shawn Dyer (he is a graphic designer for The Ray Morgan Company, a.k.a. the Design Wizard, a.k.a. the go-to guy if you want a professional-looking design, a.k.a., Mr. "Hey Man, Can You Help Me Design This? I Don't Know If Mine's Any Good, I'll Buy You Dinner") and he was kind enough to help me by making a few tweaks in the design that I have to say I'm really excited about (pictured below).


On the "Home" page of the current draft there's also a video of me playing, and by the deadline I plan to either keep that video there or upload a different one that I would have to create in the near future.  

Musical talent is not like a birthmark

In addition to gradually getting my website together, the work I've been doing with the private music instruction has continued steadily. I have a total of eight students, and I recently lost two but then gained two more, keeping the number at eight. I have to say the money is nice, but what I really want to touch on is this concept of "talent". I find it intriguing that so many people use the word "talent" as if  it's something that "you're either born with or you're not." To some extent, I actually disagree with this, and this is what the "Talent vs. Training" part of the blog title is about. You're not necessarily simply "born" with a talent the same way that someone is born double-jointed or born with Type O blood.

Almost all of the students I've had are children, with the exception of a guy I had who is in his 40's and an 18 year-old, so most of my discussions about scheduling and/or money issues are with the parents. One of the moms called me recently and said she wants her son to take a break from lessons because learning the piano just "isn't for him." I won't get into this conversation too much but I wanted to bring this up because I hear this from people all the time. I hear different variations of this excuse, too. Here are some of the others:

"Music is just not for me."
"It's not in my blood."
"I have no talent for music."
"I could never play like that."
"I've just never been musically inclined."
"Nobody in my family is musical, so obviously I don't have it."
"It's not in my genes."
"The only instrument I play is the volume knob on my stereo."
"I tried taking piano lessons once, it was just not for me."
"I tried taking lessons once but after two weeks I got bored/frustrated."
"I wish I could be one of those people who had musical talent."

I'm going to be very clear: I think that, most of the time, these excuses are total cop-outs. Yes, some people may have more of a "knack" for playing an instrument than others (i.e., maybe they have a slightly better ear for music than others, or their fingers might be slightly more coordinated, etc.) but I think this plays a much smaller role in a person's musical success. I think that the vast majority of a person's musical success is not so much because of their "knack" for learning an instrument but more about early intervention and proper training. I especially find myself shaking my head when I come across someone who listens to a musician and says "I could never play like that", because usually these are people who have never taken a music lesson! So how would they know? It's like listening to someone speak Japanese and saying "Wow, I could never speak that language." If you were born in Japan, raised there, and lived there into your early adolescence, you would end up speaking fluent Japanese, as skillfully as the others. That's because you would have learned Japanese when you were very, very young.


What does genetics have to do with it?  

The "very, very young" part of my last sentence in the previous section is what I'm driving at. It also brings me to the point about a stereotype that many of us are familiar with, and that's the stereotype that many Asian children seem to be incredibly skilled with classical instruments, like the piano or the violin. And many of them are, indeed, but it's because these children were musically trained at an early age, sometimes as young as five. The reason why many Asians are so musically skilled is cultural, not genetic. There's no evidence, that I know of, that children of Asian descent have some kind of genetic inclination to be better musicians. It's popular in their culture to get kids started early and to give them very strict, disciplined training, so that when they're a little older they can wow audiences with musical skills that stun and perplex people. I'm convinced that if the same kind of early intervention and training was popular with American kids (or any other kids), and the kids actually stuck to it, the level of talent, abilities and success would be about the same as that of these Asian children.

Before going on to my next point, however, I need to mention something about my upbringing. My parents got me into violin lessons when I was seven. And I remember my violin teacher, very vividly. I think this vivid memory is because of the effect she had on me. She was strict, experienced, passionate, serious, and she really worked me hard. Believe me, I was just like any other 7-year-old kid you'd meet nowadays. I wasn't necessarily "exceptional" with some kind of magic fluid in my brain that made me musically inclined. Just like the other kids, my mind revolved around Star Wars action figures and helping my older brother put firecrackers into the dog poop of a neighbor's yard. You know, a kid. My mind wasn't always on learning the violin, either -- in fact, I remember a time when I asked my violin teacher if I could skip a day's lesson because I wanted to watch Woody Woodpecker on TV. Her answer was no. Why? Because violin lessons were, for lack of a better term, sacred. You didn't not go to a violin lesson. It just wasn't done. You went every week, whether you were motivated or not, whether you were tired or not -- it didn't matter. Lessons were lessons, and you didn't make exceptions. It was like going to school.



Excuses, excuses...

My memory of having to practice daily relates to a concept that seems down-right absent to a lot of people. My teacher made sure that I practiced every day. And when I say every day, I mean it was absolutely compulsory, in all senses of the word. Not just required, not just encouraged, not "recommended", not "If you can", not "Try to practice everyday when you have time", not "At your leisure" -- but absolutely compulsory. The attitude was not "Please practice every day, to ensure adequate progress." It was, simply, "You will practice once a day, every day, seven days a week, no exceptions." Since I was only seven, and new to the world, I assumed that my daily violin practice was as mandatory and as important as my homework. I didn't think about why, nor did I try to make sense of it -- I just assumed.

In order to get good, and I mean really good, this daily compulsory practice is a must. I tell my students this. And their parents. The interesting thing about this is that most of my students actually don't practice every day. The reason for this, as far as I can tell, is there is simply a different cultural attitude towards musical training than there is in other places. Piano lessons are often a last priority in a family, especially in a family where the kids have school, grandparents, family visits, soccer practice, Little League games, camping trips, school dances, karate classes, video games, Facebook, etc. etc. They probably end up saying, "I'll practice tomorrow... what's one day? He won't notice." This becomes a slippery slope where they say the exact same thing the next day because they've made themselves too busy. Before they know it they're "cramming" and trying to practice during the two hours before their lesson with me. And yes, I can tell. And yes, I call them on it :D The fascinating thing is that I also call their parents on it, and they're usually just as full of lame excuses as the kids are.

When I was a kid, this idea of just putting it off and skipping practice for a day hardly even occurred to me. It was so ingrained in my mind that the idea that I could skip a day's practice didn't even occur to me either. It would be like if your parents said, "Oh, don't worry about showering today", or "Don't worry about going to bed tonight." It was just done. It was a daily thing, no exceptions, like brushing your teeth before bed, or putting your PJ's on -- you did your homework, you cleaned your room, you set the table, you ate dinner with your family, you bickered with your brother, you watched cartoons for a little while, you did your homework, you practiced your violin, you brushed your teeth and you went to bed. That was that.

The absence of this understanding in the American culture is, I believe, one of the reasons why you don't always see a multitude of Beethovens and Mozarts shredding an instrument on the stage at those recitals, like you might in some other cultures. There are exceptions of course, but let me put it another way. And by another way, I mean all the fun analogies I can throw in. Not practicing is a lot like saying...

"Are you ready to run that marathon?"
"Oh, yes. I'm ready!"
"Did you practice running?"
"Oh, no... I just didn't have time."

"Are you ready to give that 20-minute speech to this big crowd?"
"Oh yes. I'm ready!"
"Did you practice giving the speech at home?"
"Oh no, I've just been really busy."

"Are you ready for that high-stakes basketball game against that rival team?"
"Yes! We're gonna beat 'em!"
"So did you practice playing basketball?"
"Oh, no, I just haven't had time. You know, too busy. I haven't dribbled a ball in like two weeks."

Get the idea? You're not going to learn an instrument if you don't play it all the time. That's just the way it is. An airline pilot has to actually practice flying the plane before getting his pilot's license. A magician has to perform his magic tricks in front of a mirror, day after day, over and over, before going on stage so he doesn't mess it up. I could go on and on.


Beethoven is not alone

The way this relates to the "Talent vs. Training" concept is that most of the people I come across who say, "It's just not in me," or, "I'm just not musically inclined" are the same people who decided to be lazy and not practice on a daily basis. It's not that you're not musically inclined, you just didn't practice. "I took piano lessons and it was just not for me, I didn't progress," is actually code for "I took piano lessons and didn't practice, so I didn't learn it." Also, you are now 50 years old, not 5. Older brains are harder to teach. The student I had who is in his 40's learned much more slowly than children do, and it was very difficult to teach him -- although he still did learn very well because he kept at it. My eight-year-old student, however, whose mind revolves around Disney movies, Barbie dolls, silly putty, glitter, and her favorite stuffed dragon (again, just like any other 8-year-old girl) can now replicate melodies that she hears for the first time, often on her first try. Young brains are like clay. You can mold them, train them, and eventually they just pick it up. The only challenge of teaching young kids is trying to keep the brats still for half an hour.

In light of this concept, here's what I think many people don't realize: when you're walking downtown through a crowd of people, you're actually gazing at hundreds of potential Mozarts and Beethovens. They just never became those Mozarts and Beethovens because they didn't take lessons when they were kids, or they did but they didn't stick to it, didn't practice, or because they did other things instead. And then they went to school, played football, got married, had kids., etc., etc. This "knack", or talent, that people have, this "gift" for playing incredible music, or this inclination to be slightly better-coordinated than others, etc., is only a small part of what makes a great musician. The other part, the larger part, I'm convinced, is the wonderful luck of their parents urging them to take music lessons at an early age and having a good teacher.


If it's a chore, you're not a musician

I want to add, though, that many musicians are self-taught. I was mostly self-taught on the piano, starting at around age eight (pictured below) with the exception of maybe six months of piano lessons as a teen, and this includes many rock musicians who were self-taught on instruments like the guitar or the drums.


Practicing everyday can be extremely valuable in the long run, even without formal musical training. Regardless of whether someone has had formal training, there's a sort of "test" that I think works to determine if someone is really a musician, and for me it's whether or not they have the desire to keep practicing as an adult. For me, the word "practice" bears a different meaning, and even a different connotation, than it does for many others. For me, that word doesn't imply in any way that it's a chore. When I sit at the piano and practice, I never dread it. Ever. It's the exact opposite --  it's more like, Yes! I have 20 minutes to spare. I can practice! And even when I don't have time to practice, I put other things off and practice anyway. It gets addicting, and I want to do it all the time. There's a bliss and a euphoric feeling in practicing that I think most musicians understand. I've played in bands where the other players have shared the same thoughts about this and have admitted that they, too, are the same way. Find a vocalist or a professional singer and follow her around for a day. You'll notice that she is constantly practicing, singing whenever she can, humming and la-la-la-ing -- in the elevator, in the car, while doing the laundry, between work meetings, etc. This is the result of having had enough training that you just want to keep doing it. The same is true for instrumentalists.

Practicing is so routine for me that it's hard to imagine going a long time without it. When I go on outings like a camping trip, or something that lasts more than a few days, I start feeling a sharp craving to play the piano, just because I haven't been able to get my hands on one for several days. Again, it should never be a chore that you have to "bring yourself to do." It should end up becoming something that you crave regularly. When your bladder is full because you have to pee, and you come home and instead run to your instrument because you want to jam on it, and you end up playing it for an hour before you actually pee, then you know you're a true musician. But to get to that point, where practicing actually becomes euphoric and addicting, you have to have initially practiced daily and consistently when you were first learning the fundamentals of the instrument. If you don't do this, you'll become one of those slackers full of excuses. You take a shower every day, which probably takes you about thirty minutes. If you have thirty minutes to take a shower, you have thirty minutes to practice.

Slackers pee and watch television before they practice their music -- and often they end up not practicing at all. Real musicians have to pee but they hold it in without realizing it because they're so eager to practice their instrument. Creative writing, actually, is very much the same way.

Come to think of it, I should stop here. I really have to pee.