Practicing simple things.

If we want to become fluent musicians we must learn like a child. Practicing simple musical elements that can be deeply understood and absorbed. 

But the ego doesn’t like this. 

The ego wants complex problems to solve so it can have a sense of ‘accomplishment’. This sense of accomplishment tends to be very short-lived and empty. It sets us up to always be playing to impress; ourselves and others. 

I know many musicians who started out like this with music. Always striving to learn the next impressive thing, then as soon as it’s learned quickly becoming bored with it and moving on to the next shiny thing. Some would argue that this striving introduced them to many different songs/tunes and so developed their playing along the way. In a sense, yes this is true - they were able to use this urge to develop a degree of technical proficiency. 

The problem with this approach is that as we get older our ability to impress ourselves with our playing diminishes and we are left with a relationship to playing that is always yearning for something outside of the music. Getting to the end of a piece with no missed notes, praise from others etc. This creates tense unsatisfied playing. Music becomes a means to an end and the true magic of playing is lost. 

This ‘future reward’ method of playing tends to carry people through years of playing as children but very rarely makes them into life-long musicians. And even more rarely life-long expressive musicians who play for the joy of the moment-by-moment expansive possibilities of simply speaking through the instrument. 

So we must defy the ego and practice in a playful, child-like expressive way. Free from self criticism and the need to ‘sound good’. Not an easy thing to do and for some it can take a lot of self-enquiry but the rewards are deep and fulfilling in a way that transcends the limitations of the ego.