To Be a Great Musician, Quit Every Instrument
I’m reading Seth Godin’s The Dip, a book about quitting, and I think one of the secrets of a great musician is that they quit playing so many instruments.
When’s the last time you talked to a guitar player and asked them how they got started playing? “Piano lessons.” Countless guitar players were dragged to piano lessons as children and forced to read shape notes and little classically based exercises until they finally said, “No mas!”
I’m one of them. From third grade to sixth grade I was attending piano lessons with Mrs. Guthrie. She was 88-years-old, one year for every key of her baby grand in her basement, and the best piano player I’ve ever met. She was a patient teacher, too. However after year two and a half, my mom realized I wasn’t practicing enough. She asked me, “Mike, would you like to take a break from piano lessons?”
Low and behold, this allowed me to find something new: By middle school I had moved to guitar and there was no going back. The best thing that happened was being allowed to “take a break.” To quit.
Here’s the secret though: Those three years of piano lessons made learning the music theory of guitar less foreign, more approachable. Plus, now when I talk to keyboard players about mixing our parts together, I understand a little of what they are doing. We are speaking the same language.
I’ve tinkered with harmonica, trumpet, mandolin, bass, piano, organ and some percussion. I suck at them all. They sit around my music studio like little neglected children impatiently waiting to wail.
Honestly, I’d love to be great at all of these instruments, but if it takes 10,000 hours to get great, I’m not sure I can practice them all enough to ever get there. I hope to become competitent at a few in time, but I know what I am. I’m a guitar-player first.
My real purpose of tinkering on many instruments is so I can understand these instruments better, so I can hear them better on records, so I can talk to professionals that I hire more clearly. Plus, it’s fun.
So don’t hesitate to gather those musical instruments around the house; don’t hestitate to drive your fiance or girlfriend crazy by walking around with a harmonica in your mouth for 20 minutes a week; but don’t forget to know your principle instruments and really hone in on one, two, or three instruments very well, depending on how ambitious you are. We don’t all need to be multi-instrumental gods, but it’s sure good to be able to speak to those gods when they are playing to our songs.
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