Not a 'what' but a 'how'.

“Ultimately, musicians of the world must come realise the potential of their calling.
Like the shamans, we may serve as healers, metaphysicians, inciters, exciters,
spiritual guides and sources of inspiration.
If the musician is illuminated from within,
he becomes a lamp that lights other lamps.
Then he is serving planet and its people,
healing what ails us. Such music is truly important.
It is said that “only one who obeys can truly command.”
When the artist is immersed in a services,
giving himself up over and over again, another paradox occurs:
He is being seen by all others as a master.”

-Kenny Werner

As a card-carrying introvert, I spend all day thinking about things. Because my hobbies and career both revolve around music, my thoughts are often swirling around obstacles I have with creativity and how to best educate other musicians.

I have always yearned to be creative, looking up to masters who effortlessly self-express through their instruments while scratching my head in frustration at my plateaued progression. Yet, I have had enough success earlier in life to build up a respect and passion for music keeping me, moth to flame, trying to create again and again.

I spent about 20 years like this- being ‘all-in’ for music, accruing plenty of respect for the art form and occasionally more technical faculty, yet always ending up only a handful of frustrating creative blunders away from feeling lost, incapable of making what I heard in my head materialize. Any success that I found felt on accident. I felt like I was working around my problems but never directly combating them.

Then a new world of advice- I stumbled upon the teachings of Kenny Werner, jazz pianist, educator, and author, a couple years ago. His book, ‘Effortless Mastery’ and talks he’s given online and elsewhere shattered most every conception about what music even was for me.

Instead of poorly regurgitating his writings here (my wife and students aren’t so lucky), I’ll jump to the first surprise I encountered: Kenny said the reason why most musicians are held back is “due to their need to sound good”. I thought in response, “well of course I want to sound good, like all the wonderful music I love and that inspires me to even pursue it in the first place.” Kenny’s claims felt equal parts funny and ridiculous at first, yet I could intuitively sense he was right. After all, my inability to realize my musical goals had kept me searching for a solution and finally someone was saying something new.

That was the first of many things I learned from Kenny that immensely cleared up my confusion. I only pass along his advice because I myself have seen it immensely benefit my own musical life, as well as students who were plagued by similar problems. Here are a few of my takeaways, all ideas that are still totally transforming how I listen to, perform, and teach music. Due to my long-windedness, this will be split into multiple posts.

-What Music Even Is-

Music, for me, started as part of the fabric of my daily life; guitars around the house, songs in church, and weekly piano lessons made much of music natural. By the time I hit adolescence, music had become a prism through which I saw the world. Now as an adult who has pursued music creatively and professionally for many years, my skillset has no doubt improved, as well as my understanding and familiarity with the ins and outs of music. I also discovered a passion for teaching, feeling pride for students’ successes and increased musical understanding.

I had no excuse to feel as stuck as I felt. I enjoyed my metric weight of music as a listener, and even mostly as a player (I was able to experience early on that playing in a low-pressure setting is innately enjoyable, no matter the material). Yet the starving creative in me have never been able to parlay that joy into something new. Though studying music had enabled the acquisition of new skills and playing opportunities, it also fed an awareness of all the many ways I didn’t measure up to what was in my head (or to whichever artist affected me last).

On the other side of a now many month long epiphany, I clearly see a fundamental error in my old viewpoints. I thought music was like a rocket launch or an open heart surgery- something that can only go one way to be successful. I would hear an inspiring piece of music and thought it was merely the sum of its parts, necessarily perfect and intentional (for the express purpose of “needing to sound good”).

This way of looking at things nearly drove me mad. After hundreds of scrapped takes, surrounded by countless piles of makeshift aircraft littering the runway, I’m now convinced there is a healthier way to go about things. Kenny turned my attention to the ego and its role in creativity. Though not obvious, the ego can severely inhibit musical expression, obsessing over whether others will accept or resonate with one’s music. The ego also doesn’t want to be humbled to try new things or simpler ways of practicing- it’s only interested in shortcuts to success, not the long path. Likewise, the ego’s appetite for enduring the failures required to attain success is low to none. Even those with an oversized ego can attain musical greatness and feed it if their practice methods can temporarily temper it enough to get things flowing.

Shortly after growing aware of my fragile musical ego I began to immediately have more success in my practice. I attribute this to something else Kenny taught me: music should play itself. In other words, you can interact with music in a way that leans into the process, or fight it kicking and screaming. The ego hates to admit that music is an automatic act, wanting to take all the credit for itself. A true master understands his work is wholly indebted to all that came before him, even the non-musical influences and inspirations too numerous to mention.

Ever since my awakening to these insights, I see supporting evidence everywhere. Students who learn a song just one way are technically playing music, but often can’t enjoy or be present while they are playing it. They are too busy trying to hold everything together. Any deviation from the ‘one way’ (a missed note, a different environment, anything the ego can blame other than its own rigidness) and self-doubt (or worse) immediately floods in. These students often share my previous confusions, thinking that music is some ideal product we must constantly attend to, wholly for others’ respect or admiration. It’s an easy attitude to fall into to, considering I’ve seen plenty of teachers who pass down their insecurities and bad habits to students (and been one myself).

When students learn to accept their sound and mistakes they grow to be flexible and adaptable, which in turn make them more capable of musical progress. Their overall gratitude and relationship towards their instrument deepens. Mistakes are welcomed because they show what to work on next. Novel situations, imperfect performances, and other abnormalities don’t distract them anymore- a healthy musician knows music isn’t about those things at all.

There were countless other toxic beliefs this new perspective helped me shed, like seeing music as like some sort of objective science, with “rules” taught in music schools everywhere that must be followed to produce something of merit. One of the main premises of Kenny’s book is that a ‘master’ can’t be quantified with skills or facility, but as Kenny puts it, “someone who loves their own sound” (so simple yet profound). I share in my toddler’s joy when he plays with my instruments, a constant reminder of how deeply innate music making is to humans.

It’s obvious in hindsight- of course music is automatic and devoid of the ego, for how else would anyone find therapy, fluency, or joy in it? Kenny recounts a story in his book of getting a chance in college to see the great jazz pianist McCoy Tyner play a two week residency in Boston. He watched as every night Tyner would play at a consistently high level, and was astonished at his seemingly effortless ability. Then it dawned on Kenny, it must be easy for him, like a good hang with an old friend or walk on a nice day (in other words, effortless). The only way someone can reach such high output is by yielding control over to the process. McCoy Tyner would be playing at home for his own enjoyment if the tour had been cancelled, because Tyner’s music is something that happened automatically due to equal parts regular practice and his ego getting out of the way. In all my musical instruction, no one ever bothered to mention this, but I suspect many in music schools share my previous confusion.

‘Music’ seen in this way might best be thought of as a verb and not a noun (or a “how” and not a “what”). People who create music but don’t enjoy the process will either burn or sell out soon enough, but those who enjoy it for its own sake embody music and can sustainably create indefinitely. The same song (a noun), in comparing performances, can be varying degrees of expressive or cathartic based on the state of the performer and listener in the moment (a process more like a verb).

Similarly, ‘Practice’ in this light is more a noun. I ask students about their practicing and I know their mind searches for the individual sessions that they interacted with music, but practice entails whatever you regularly do. In this light, everyone already has a practice (an orientation you regularly put yourself into and tasks you regularly take on that increase familiarity with something new). The question then for aspiring musicians is “what do I regularly do with my time and do I regularly sow seeds for future growth?” What one practices will never be as important as how one goes about it (and of course, that they regularly practice at all).

This new way of looking at music, for me at least, explains why things actually work, as well as how to get better. It contextualizes why I am drawn to many kinds of music; the subjective aesthetics and particular ‘voice’ of an artist aren’t (for me specifically) why I enjoy something, but because I’m drawn to the self-satisfaction and seemingly automatic way in which the artist creates. They realize it’s not about them, or even their product, but in sharing and communicating things that light them up and passing them along for others.

So perhaps a good working definition of music (when we forget due to our own egos’ insecurity) is not so much a ‘what’. Though that’s how it starts- learning songs, using tabs, learning scales, individual performances-that shouldn't be our resting state. A combination of wisdom, self-acceptance, and a healthier relationship to the whole thing can become the ‘how’ that tempers and integrates all the ‘what’.

Musical self-fulfillment is a transformational, joyful, and often therapeutic act. In turn, the betterment of oneself through lifelong learning and discovery becomes not only possible, but inevitable. The music plays itself, like a healthy plant sprouting up when attended to a little every day. Like gardening (and perhaps everything else under the sun), it doesn’t take any particular talent or skillset; if given a chance and cared after, something will grow.