Helpful Tips From The Studio
Here’s a video I made where I share some helpful tips on how to make progress in the studio and not get side tracked with all of the endless options for sounds, software and technology.
Please share your thoughts, comments and questions below!
Thanks for sharing this. I’m currently working on the f# minor nocturne! they’re beautiful pieces. Afte completion of this, I would go for guitar lessons.
Don’t get me wrong, you have to be strong and confident to be successful in just about anything you do – but with music, there’s a deeper emotional component to your failures and successes. If you fail a chemistry test, it’s because you either didn’t study enough, or just aren’t that good at chemistry (the latter of which is totally understandable). But if you fail at music, it can say something about your character. It could be because you didn’t practice enough – but, more terrifyingly, it could be because you aren’t resilient enough. Mastering chemistry requires diligence and smarts, but mastering a piano piece requires diligence and smarts, plus creativity, plus the immense capacity to both overcome emotional hurdles, and, simultaneously, to use that emotional component to bring the music alive.
Before I started taking piano, I had always imagined the Conservatory students to have it so good – I mean, for their homework, they get to play guitar, or jam on their saxophone, or sing songs! What fun! Compared to sitting in lab for four hours studying the optical properties of minerals, or discussing Lucretian theories of democracy and politics, I would play piano any day.
But after almost three years of piano at Orpheus Academy, I understand just how naïve this is. Playing music for credit is not “easy” or “fun” or “magical” or “lucky.” Mostly, it’s really freakin’ hard. It requires you to pick apart your piece, play every little segment over and over, dissect it, tinker with it, cry over it, feel completely lame about it, then get over yourself and start practicing again. You have to be precise and diligent, creative and robotic. And then – after all of this – you have to re-discover the emotional beauty in the piece, and use it in your performance.
Thanks for the comment Biplap! I personally don’t think “fail at music” is the best way to put it… But I totally understand what you are saying. It certainly helps if a person has goals that they want to achieve with music and they should be realistic at first until they know how they react to learning and progressing at music.
How people learn and how they progress varies widely from person to person. Also, how they view the process of improving varies as well, whether its for Credit or just for fun. I’ve known plenty of people when I was in school, who were in complete bliss with no other main life focus than to get as good as they could on their instrument.
In my opinion its a great life long journey to always improve, discover new abilities, instruments and ways of self expression
Mike D