Practicing: keeping the emotions in check.

There is a strange alchemy going on when one practices. Specially if he/she already is a good player trying on a brand new concept. She cannot help but feel absolutely powerless. Which is very frustrating.

But, and it needs to be highlighted, a veteran musician knows to keep her feelings out of the learning process. Easier said than done. We are, after all, being of emotions, always going from one wave to the next. More than that, as artists, we are ask to have a sensitivity towards the world and communicate our feelings through the medium we chose.

I confess that, confronted with the perspective of trying to climb a high mountain in the form of an incredibly difficult exercise and knowing that I will fail at a certain almost predestined spot like I failed there a hundred time before, and yet, try and try again, is not a happy perspective for me. Some anger is bound to seep through.

So?

So, I think that I have been able to become a professional musician because of these humbling experiences. People stop (I’m talking about the ones who want to become professionals), they stop because they are facing an impossible challenge. That could be the exercise itself, the tedious task of having to chip at your own limitations, but, more often than not, they quit because they cannot manage properly their own emotions when they practice. And that, I completely understand.

Controlling ones arms or fingers to work on said lick or New chop is one thing, but keeping our rage and frustration in check at the same time can be above one’s strength. I confess that I have been too many time guilty of stopping a practice session for those particular reasons. But, I always thought that tomorrow was another day, deserving optimism and bright outlook. And so, forward I went.