WHY IT MAKES YOU MORE USEFUL:
It makes you consistently the best you can be.
WHAT TO DO:
Flip the ‘ON’ switch and give it your all. Tell yourself, every time you play, that thistime, this performance, this will be the best one you ever did. No holding back, no coasting, no excuses. You have to practice doing this, but you can get yourself to the point that it becomes habit. No sleeping through anything—EVER.
THOUGHTS:
I learned this lesson kinda hard, but I owe a debt to the guy who taught it to me. I was in the recording studio, making a record with a band back in the early 80’s. We were laying down tracks the old fashioned way—all of us playing at the same time, looking for a take that had the magic dust on it.
The guy producing us was experienced, had worked as a kid at Chess records, running cables and plugging in mics when the Rolling Stones came through and recorded a couple of tracks. His name was Brandon Wade, and he’d been the voice on one of those ‘Letter From Vietnam’ records that had actually made it onto the charts. I looked up to him, and had bent his ear about wanting to be a successful musician.
On one particular song I was struggling. Just kept messing up, wasn’t happy with what I was playing. At the end of the 5th or 6th take, I said, “I don’t know what’s wrong, here…must be the barometric pressure, or something…”. I thought it was a clever thing to say.
Thirty seconds later Brandon came charging out of the booth, angry and headed in my direction. With his finger in my face, he shouted at me:
“I thought you wanted to be a professional. I thought you wanted to be a CRAFTSMAN. That’s what you told me. If that’s what you want, you’d better STOP making excuses and start learning to give it your best EVERY SINGLE TIME. Whatever you have to do, wherever you have to go in your head, you’d better learn to reach down deep and FLIP THE SWITCH when that red recording light comes on. EVERY SINGLE TIME. If you can’t do that, if you can’t make it happen when it needs to happen, then somebody who CAN do that will come and TAKE YOUR PLACE. Let’s do it again, and this time, MAKE IT HAPPEN.”
I was speechless as he stormed back into the booth. The other guys where saying, “Hey, Ed, we’re really sorry. He shouldn’t have talked to you like that. He was out of line.”
But I was so scared, embarrassed and angry that I was really, really pumped up. And guess what: I played a great take the next time around.
And then I went home and thought about it. Was he right? Up to that point I’d always thought…I dunno…that I had to be inspired to play really good. Could it be that I could play my best every time by just…pumping myself up? So I started trying it. Every time I played I’d raise my breathing rate, psych myself up and charge into whatever I was playing. Even the slow, soft songs—I played them with as much passion, accuracy, humanity and feeling as I could muster. After a while, it started to become habit, and I was on my way to, if not playing like one, at least acting like a professional.
This is an excerpt from my book, “The Useful Musician”. Available on Amazon
theusefulmusician.com 