I’ve Been Doing It Wrong

Not everyone who picks up an instrument has “mastery” as their goal. For some, if it happens, that’s great, but the goal might be just to be able to play some chords for a campfire singalong, or know just enough to impress an attractive member of whatever gender they’re into that they have a sensitive, artistic side. For others, getting together with the guys on the weekend, kicking back with a few brews while kicking out some tunes, daydreaming about hanging up the day job and hitting the road provides a few hours every weekend that makes the work week bearable. I’ve lived for those few hours myself.

In no way am I disparaging those goals. Some of the best times of my life involve any of those three, and they emphasize one of the most practical uses of an art that many might consider impractical: music is a catalyst for connection. Few goals are loftier.

But for some of us, whether from the start or through love that blossoms from the simpler goals, understanding music becomes its own end. Music becomes a catalyst not only for connection to each other, but to something deeper, something primordial, something universal.

I’ve been there for a while.

Maybe that goal is too vague. I’ve had moments when I’ve felt the “universal” flowing through me, but those moments don’t last. Like anyone on a quest for enlightenment, often you get just enough of a tease to know that the quest may be attainable, but far more of your time is spent in the desperate, fruitless yearning.

Since I have quit my day job, not to hit the road for rock ‘n’ roll glory but to stay home for the quiet, contemplative life of a writer (same awful pay, lower overhead), I have from time to time hoped to devote more of my flexible time to digging deeper as a musician, to going down that rabbit hole on my crazy quest for universal connection, perhaps even uncovering the elusive “theory of everything.” Science has not yet succeeded – but music is both an art emanating from the heart and soul, and a science of sound waves interacting in a physical world. If the “theory of everything” is to be found, why shouldn’t it be uncovered by a musician?

I have taken the more traditional, serious paths to such a serious undertaking. I’ve tried to learn music theory, beyond my one college course in the subject. I made a mistake here – I started consuming everything, starting with an 18^th century “Treatise on Harmony” which was enjoyable, and easily read – whether through insatiable curiosity or uncontrolled insecurity, I also picked up The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Music Theory. Actually, it was a little curiosity AND insecurity; arranging is a topic of pure insecurity, and I had already picked up the same author’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Arranging and Orchestration, which suggested that it was necessary to study his book on music theory before attempting to understand arranging. Did I mention my insecurity? Of course I did, and this direction fed right into it. The problem was that TCIG to Music Theory presumed NO knowledge, I was bored with it, but felt that the author (obviously an expert, otherwise how was he pegged to write a book on the topic) clearly knew better than I what I needed to know, so I abandoned the harmony treatise, and have never been able to get engaged in the “Idiot’s” book. It’s not that the “Idiot’s” book is bad – it’s just that the author made me feel like an idiot before I ever got started.

This feeling that a “deep understanding” started with a firm grasp of the fundamentals extended from my theoretical study to the practical – my playing itself. It is a good idea to start with warm-ups every day – it is, I don’t deny that in the slightest – but I find myself going back to the beginning, figuring I’ll quickly run through the basic exercises, do a few different scales in all positions from my Bass Grimoire, then . . . be about out of energy to do much else, because it’s hard to get excited about going that far back to basics. It’s as if I had chosen visual art to pursue my muse, and forced myself to start by only using an 8-color box of Crayola’s on line drawings of puppies before advancing. Or if in my writing life I were to engage in a deep study of “Dick and Jane” books to work the progression to Tolkien or Frank Herbert.

The concept is right – fundamentals ARE important. But the approach is wrong. My approach eliminates challenge, which eliminates mental engagement – which over time eliminates the spark of inspiration that made the endeavor first seem worthwhile.

I recently found The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics as a Kindle deal. I know nothing about physics, though I know it would be useful to my quest in a “theory of everything,” and I know a little more than an average New Age devotee about Eastern philosophy. The book itself is not so much about the relationship between physics and traditional Eastern modes of thought, as it is a book about physics using traditional Eastern modes of thought as a metaphor to facilitate the layperson’s understanding.

Beyond the potential application to my “theory of everything,” the title just stimulated my intellectual curiosity. Not everything has to be so serious. Accepting myself means accepting that sometimes, I may want to read a physics book just because I think it sounds interesting.

One of the joys of being intellectually curious is that when you allow your mind to wander in one direction, you may find answers to problems you’ve been having in other directions. Thus it was that the Dancing Wu Li Masters gave me insight to my stalled progress, even regression, in my musical mastery.

Author Gary Zukav actually borrows from Zen master Alan Watts in defining the problem I’ve been having in pursuing my deeper understanding of music. In the foreward to Al Huang’s Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain, Watts wrote: “The traditional way . . . is to teach by rote, and to give the impression that long periods of boredom are the most essential part of the training. In that way a student may go on for years and years without ever getting the feel of what he is doing.” Hmmm, “long periods of boredom”? “Years without ever getting the feel of what he is doing”? That sounds familiar – not just to me, but to many who pursue music. Sure, countless hours of practice are necessary, but the boredom of this traditional approach surely has many fall by the side, convinced that they are just not cut out to be musicians.

What The Dancing Wu Li Masters attempts to do is get away from this “teaching by rote,” and get to how Watts identifies Huang’s teaching, and how Zukav defines a “Master”: “A Master teaches essence. When the essence is perceived, he teaches what is necessary to expand the perception.” Zukav further explains the purpose of his book in saying, “this book deals not with knowledge, which is always past tense anyway, but with imagination, which is physics come alive, which is Wu Li.”

Working on scales and finger exercises is important for masterful execution. I won’t suggest that exercises to this end are at all wasted, and even if they are “boring,” they must be done. But scales and fingers exercises are elements to music and performance – they are NOT the “essence.” People may appreciate your performance, you may feel more satisfied with your own performance, because of the hours you spend on those activities; in fact, neglecting those activities may hamper your own ability to touch the essence, and will certainly hamper your ability to communicate the essence to a listener.

So how do you start over working the fundamentals, without getting lost in the tedium that blocks your way to the essence?

As Huang explains to Zukav in The Dancing Wu Li Masters, “Every lesson is the first lesson. . . Every time we dance, we do it for the first time. . . . When I say that every lesson is the first lesson, . . . it does not mean that we forget what we already know. It meanst that what we are doing is always new, because we are doing it for the first time.”

This suggests an elegant solution to all of the many times I “start over” after some time away from my instrument, usually as a result of a lack of engagement as I get lost in the tedium of exercises that were barely challenging when I started playing bass. “Starting over” is the problem – the solution, rather, is just to “start.” Music shouldn’t be considered overly mysterious; sure, some knowledge and skills atrophy if not exercised, but the answer to atrophy is stimulation. If I am on a road trip and stop for the night, I don’t find myself the next morning magically transported back to my starting point – I get back in my truck and continue from the point I stopped. In continuing my quest for the essence, rather than re-starting my quest every few months, I will be exercising my fundamentals in a more stimulating manner, challenging myself – I can skip the building blocks, Lincoln Logs and Tinker-Toys, and try my hand at real nuts and bolts.

The important thing in searching for the essence is to always be doing something new.