These 2 books were recommended on here recently (by Liz Gilbert and Victor Wooten) and I just read them both. Highly recommended. They won’t change your life but they just might improve your attitude towards your own music making.
Danger, danger! They are very “new agey” as we used to say. This could turn off some people. Especially the part about where inspiration comes from. No one knows. Is it from the creativity in your own imagination? God? Mother Earth? The Universe? How about, the music is an animate force floating around searching for a receptive mind? You get the picture.
Since we’ll never know, we can just kick back, open our minds to the potential and make beautiful music.
But, thankfully, neither Ms Gilbert nor Mr Wooten dismiss technique, hard work, and diligence. They say that technique is necessary and a tool to access the “big magic” of music (or writing in Gilbert’s case). It’s how you work that matters. With an openness to receiving and communicating the beautiful, from wherever it comes.
To paraphrase:
What you play may not be beautiful or magic in itself, but the experience of creating will expand your imagination, and hence your life.
You are not an accordionist. You are a musician. Just like a writer is not a “keyboarder” or “pencillist.”
Most of all, don’t stress, play lightly with joy and openness to the process. It’s just music, it’s not something important like, say, your choice of hat, or whether you have hand made reeds in your triple cassotto.
Or maybe it’s all bs, who knows!
Danger, danger! They are very “new agey” as we used to say. This could turn off some people. Especially the part about where inspiration comes from. No one knows. Is it from the creativity in your own imagination? God? Mother Earth? The Universe? How about, the music is an animate force floating around searching for a receptive mind? You get the picture.
Since we’ll never know, we can just kick back, open our minds to the potential and make beautiful music.
But, thankfully, neither Ms Gilbert nor Mr Wooten dismiss technique, hard work, and diligence. They say that technique is necessary and a tool to access the “big magic” of music (or writing in Gilbert’s case). It’s how you work that matters. With an openness to receiving and communicating the beautiful, from wherever it comes.
To paraphrase:
What you play may not be beautiful or magic in itself, but the experience of creating will expand your imagination, and hence your life.
You are not an accordionist. You are a musician. Just like a writer is not a “keyboarder” or “pencillist.”
Most of all, don’t stress, play lightly with joy and openness to the process. It’s just music, it’s not something important like, say, your choice of hat, or whether you have hand made reeds in your triple cassotto.
Or maybe it’s all bs, who knows!
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