We could title this “things I would have liked to have figured out sooner in life.” I’m not talking maudlin regret, I’m talking about our shared life goal of having our act together sometime before we die. If I die smart, then the large periods of my life where I was a true idiot are erased.
They used to tell Marines going into combat “they’ll only remember you for the last thing you did.” Meaning, try not to do anything stupid that gets you killed, that people are going to talk incredulously about.”
We’re going to turn that on its head. We’ve got to, because unfortunately the idiot part is kind of unavoidable.
…if you avoided that and started out a genius… congrats, I guess. Some kind of prize is in order. The rest of us, trying to unidiot ourselves, are looking for some kind of feeling of self-acceptance and comfort in our lives, our abilities. You get good at something, and you get to feel awesome about it, right? I thought that was the arrangement. So we keep trying to get to feeling awesome by doing our thing better, but it never happens without also gaining some understanding. Wisdom, I call it.
It’s the main stuff people worry about their whole playing life. A lot of this was told to me when I was younger, it can just take some time to understand it and accept it:
Specialness isn’t enough
We could have a conversation about the necessity of believing in our own specialness— you do have to be the star of your own movie. Just understand that your specialness as a person won’t carry you musically. For a time I thought of myself as an inherently grooving player. How could it be otherwise? True or not, you draw some confidence from that. But it gets undermined when the actual results of your playing don’t feel great to you— if you’re honest with yourself. You have to keep working on things that you believe are your natural talents, you can’t just keep leaning into your ego and expect it to carry you through.
From the movie Searching For Bobby Fischer:
For all his natural ability, Bobby Fischer studied harder than any player who ever lived. He woke up thinking about chess. He went to bed thinking about it. He dreamt about it. Why? Isn’t it enough to be a natural? If you don’t care about winning, it’s enough, but he wanted to win. He had to be champion, and in order to do that, he had to work, which is what we’re going to do.
It’s especially true if you if you don’t have exceptional talent. You have to work at it whatever you think of your talent, whether you’re right or wrong about it.
We’re in a time of extremes this way— self deprecation to the point of disfunction, coexisting with total infantile egocentrism. Just believe you’re an interesting worthwhile person with something to say musically, and work hard on it to make sure it’s true.
Limitations
In the 90s I decided that I just had certain limitations as a player— I had developed a personal thing I was good at, and I wasn’t necessarily going to be real good at odd meters, or at real involved Latin styles. I wasn’t good at singles. I didn’t do high polish. I was good at playing by vibe, and definitely had point of view, some definite color. Holding those beliefs only allowed me to put off some things I should have been working on. When I actually started working on those things— out of idle curiosity, having realized that this is a long game— they proved to not be limitations at all.
After all that, I’ve come to be accepting of limitations again, mainly to do with my musical ear, and with my ability to fix any playing situation from the drum chair. Not all situations are fixable by the drummer. No amount of practicing drum crap will change my playing if my musical ear is not also developing.
Other people get to play good
There are always going to be other players who sound great, who play things you wouldn’t play. You not playing the same stuff is not a personal defect, it’s just a fact of life that you’re a different person than them, with different ears. They do have a slight advantage, too, in that they’re working their own gig. You just listen to them and learn, maybe you’ll start hearing what they hear.
They— and the people playing with them— don’t always feel great about what they’re doing, either. We’re all our independent little balls of neuroses, sweating over how each other plays.
They can’t do what you do, either
This is one of the pieces of advice we get when worrying that someone else is a better player, or a flashier performer. It doesn’t feel very consoling, but it’s true.
Compare Vinnie Colaiuta and Jim Keltner— two LA studio professionals. Keltner is considered to be a rootsy, groove oriented, creatively oriented player, Vinnie is a musical Lamborghini. They’re both highly versatile players who have worked a wide variety of situations. But they’re ultimately funneled into situations in line with those characterizations. Nobody calls Keltner to be a Lamborghini, nobody calls Vinnie to be earthy.
Becoming professionals part of our goal is to be able to play any situation, to “play anything”— but there’s a difference between being able to take a kind of job vs. being able play with another player’s voice. Even if you could/can fake someone else’s thing, people want the original guy, who committed himself to that thing, who can talk the talk about it, too.
An exchange between two really world class saxophonists I know, who were both playing the same session. One is famously a rather manic individual, the other enigmatic. No last names, Portland people will know who they are:
Rob: I was trying to do your thing all night, I couldn’t quite figure it out.
Rob: […]
Rob: I still played better than you.
John: No, you didn’t.
In a way we could see ourselves more as actors. George Clooney may be able to do a lot of things, but he’s always Clooney (my references are all 10-15+ years out of date). There’s a very distinct texture to his presence, which is what people want when they hire him to make a movie. It’s different from Brad Pitt’s texture. They could imitate each other, and probably have, but it’s not the same thing.
Let’s be clear, too, this is just to address the doubts happening in our own heads. In reality, people mostly will not be hiring you because your identity as a player, but because you’re around, and available, and they know you, and they like you. Or they’re used to your playing. It’s not going to be some stranger saying Lipschitz is the man for this job, did you hear his work on Basinette Of Degredation?
External validation
Multi-stage item here. The first stage is to seek praise, because you’re a child and that’s what they do. We do. The second stage is to dismiss praise in favor of your own opinion— you feel bad about your performance as people are complimenting you, because they don’t know. Third stage is to gracefully accept the praise, and to understand that you are not the only competent judge of your performance, it can have some meaning apart from what you wanted from it. I’m in the second stage emotionally, third stage intellectually.
A lot of performers never get over this— they need endless praise from others, and it’s never enough. Some are downright pathological about it, like the presidents of some major clown countries. Usually it’s just some magician running around telling anyone who will listen they liked me, they liked me, losing all semblence of dignity. Yes, I’m thinking about a real person there.
It’s one gig
This is one gig, you will play other gigs. So, a) they’re not going to all go great, b) you don’t have to do all your stuff every time, like you’re never going to get to play again.
…actually I do believe in playing every gig like it’s your last, but there can be some balance there.
Stuff happens
It’s one gig, part B. People like to make a post-mortem accounting for all the things that went wrong, “I screwed this up, I screwed that up…”.
Like, OK. Stuff happens. I’m not sure it’s terrible to even mention it, just in the right spirit, just don’t be fishing for someone to tell you it’s OK. Usually just don’t talk about the gig. Tell them about a movie you just saw, ask them about their car, anything.
Keeping up appearances
This was never my problem, but I’ve seen it in others— the puffery people get into, trying to appear more happening than they are. Usually younger players. You don’t need to do that, unless you actually have some names to drop. The falseness of it is really obvious, and annoying. Just talk to people. If I’m noticing you told me you went to Julliard more than once, you need to cool it. Do your talking with your instrument.
I’ve gone the opposite direction— I had to learn to a) think what I’m doing/have done is significant enough to mention, and b) remember it as a thing to even mention, c) have some kind of conversational path to bringing it up. It is part of how musicians talk to each other— people who are working all the time talk about where they’re playing. If you’re not working, say you’re not working. Say you’re scuffling, to put it in musician terms. If someone else is doing something awesome, be happy for them and tell them they’re doing something awesome, you don’t try to be on their level. Let somebody else be great for a minute.
Self-defeating self-deprecation
If you only say bad things about yourself, at some point people are going to start believing you. Or get annoyed with you, thinking you’re fishing for praise, which you may be. Best to learn to clam up. Even if you’re thinking it, you don’t have to say it.
Acceptance
We can’t all be king of the world in our every endeavor. There are these little heirarchies of status and accomplishment, and it’s fine— that guy is King Kong, I’ve got my own little thing I do, and it’s fine.
I said this was about feeling some kind of comfort and acceptance— in fact the hangups are usually never ending. Having accomplished some part of what we wanted, we don’t really believe it, we just linger in the familiar uncomfortable striving mentality. But every one of these you actually figure out, you get a little more integral within yourself, you gain some stature in how you interact with the world, you behave more like a cat, whatever your level of accomplishment.
I am happy to help you with any of the materials on the site, and with anything else drumming related— contact me for private lessons, online world wide, or in person in Portland, Oregon. All levels of players, and all people, are welcome.
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Great post Todd. Is what people call talent actually aptitude and can one pitfall of talent, if it exists, be that people who are told they have it don’t put in as much work because they rely on innate ability (talent) ?
Unfortunately, in England jazz has a bit of a reputation for being elitist, acting as an extension of the class system, so there’s often a lot of puffiness about what school people went to, gatekeeping etc as if it’s more for status symbol than love of the music.
Thanks, Soliman– I think really talented people do fine, they’re on their own– I was thinking more about people like me, when we were students. There would be a lot of BS about who was good at what, which nobody was– everybody needed to be working harder. I think I was working harder than anybody, but I really should have been working on different stuff.
Jazz is in a weird state all around. I was talking to my friend Michael in Germany– he sees a lot of students with not a tremendous attachment to music, who just fall into a jazz studies major. There’s also a big generational values shift happening that puts it in a weird state, detached from some things that are to me essentials.
I hear you. Yes, very important to work on a variety of stuff and trying to develop our ability in areas we might find harder.
“I was talking to my friend Michael in Germany– he sees a lot of students with not a tremendous attachment to music, who just fall into a jazz studies major”
Interesting, I wonder why that is.
What do you think is the generational shift ?
I can’t say– he has a college teaching gig and sees more of those kinds of students than I do. We were talking about his situation ethically, where he’s supposed to be preparing students for a professional career, which is a very dicey prospect at the moment. So he has to have some very frank conversations with them.
My students are all over the map– they’re usually either younger or older than that. I feel pretty good about my middle school/high school age students. They’re all into music, and listening to a variety of stuff.