My dad introduced me to Leon Russell in 2003. My father noticed Leon Russell was play at the Magic Bag club in Michigan while touring. “Russell used to tour stadiums in the 70s!” my dad said.
It’s taken ten years for my dad’s introduction to Leon Russell to finally have grabbed me. I can’t get enough of these songs!
Leon Russell’s story about how he found his piano playing style is inspiring as well. Leon shared the how he got his style from a setback during an interview with Neil McCormick for The Telegraph:
“[H]e developed a unique style of piano playing, based around a slight paralysis of his right hand from a birth injury. ‘I couldn’t play what was written in front of me. I worked out the notes to fit my hands.’ He was exceptional enough to get session work from his early teens, and relocated to Los Angeles in the Sixties.”
Setbacks lead us to our style.
I told some friends that I was teaching myself piano, and seeking some piano players to offer me a lesson or two. My friend said, “Just use Youtube! You don’t need a teacher.”
This sentence captivates the current misconception about education. We mistake supplemental guides for a replacement of teachers.
At age 19, I was taking guitar lessons with a WMU music major, and my teacher asked, “Do you know about inversions?” I had never heard this musical concept before he asked me. Once he taught it to me in five minutes, it changed my entire playing!
Which leads us to the problem of only using Youtube videos to learn: How would I know how to teach myself this concept if I didn’t know the concept exists?
What a teacher does for a student is offer a guided curriculum, a pathway to success. A teacher opens up doors to new concepts that one might not ever realize on their own.
Last spring, I walked into my friend and fiddle player David Mosher’s house. Two random triangular, three-stringed instruments were sitting on a table.
“What are these, David?” I asked.
“Oh! Those are The balalaikas! Russian instruments from the 1800s,” he said. “I just got them for a Wild Swan performance this month.”
“Do you know how to play them?” I asked.
“I will before the performance,” he said, nonchalantly.
It reminded me: The best way to learn, is to give yourself a project.
Problem -> Choices -> Decisions = Change
Identifying the problems is usually simple. Even finding choices. But making a decision? That’s the difficult part in the daisy chain of change.
My guess is this is where we waste the most time, too.
Right now, I find myself with a problem. My outdated recording software (Protools 7) doesn’t work on my Macbook’s OS update, but this old Macbook Pro can’t run the newer versions of Protools…I’m not spending $2000 on a new computer, but I do have other choices.
I need to stop researching online. I need face the best decision that fits my budget and time, and jump in, feet first. But today I found myself still looking at websites about other recording software, etc.
It’s important to evaluate our choices, do our research; but evaluating can quickly become procrastinating.
Make the decision.
Every musician making a living in 2013 should watch this…
Jack Conte (one half of the Youtube sensations Pomplamoose, the creator of Patreon, and a darn fine musician) shared a presentation at XOXO.
Every indie or diy musician making a living in 2013 should watch this video.
Jack’s talk is one of the most honest discussions of a music career; and it also touches on the pulse of the chaos of the music industry, and I’m talking about the chaos now of the chaos.
