The Art of Letting Go

From the title of this post, you might think I’m about to tell you that it’s time to forget your fears and push through some dark inner resistance that prevents you from letting it all hang out and that if you do so you will magically be able to improvise just as you’ve always dreamed.

I’m not.

Actually, while writing this I did look for a photo of a cliff diver mid-dive on the way to the water. I was going to post that above, next to the title. But that’s the wrong image.

“Letting go” is not anything that comes to mind when you think of what you “need” to do.

Rather, “letting go” means extinction of trying.

If I were to do the typical thing to maximize the commercial potential of these newsletters I’d whet your appetite for becoming happier by becoming an improvising musician. I could do this by implying that if you got enough information from me that you would eventually become creatively fulfilled and the envy of your friends.

Actually, I wouldn’t really have to say anything at all because this is the prevalent conception about the arts, and about music in particular.

The only problem is that it isn’t true. Music won’t make you happier. It will give you a means to express the happiness, or sadness, you already possess. It might give you great fulfillment and enrich your life, but that fulfillment will happen just as surely when you are a beginner as when you are a master.

It’s not about your achievement. It’s not about chasing happiness. It’s especially not about getting approval. It’s a means, not an end. It’s not about the notes you play, but the mental/psychological/spiritual experience you’re having while you play them. The players that really make you listen, that are really communicating something, they have nothing to prove, they luxuriate in the simplest thing, and you can hear that.

Let’s take a break from the theory and improvisation techniques we’ve been discussing in these newsletters and talk about what it’s all really about. Why are you doing this? Does the world need any more notes? No, not really. Does it need another person to wow the crowds? Nope. No matter how good you get there will always be someone who is better.

The world is awash in notes, and in talent.

But the world does need your…wait for it…mental state. It needs your absolute relaxation, your sense of calm, your joy in creating for its own sake with no thought of the outcome and no need for approval. This mental state of calm, of creating a still point within no matter what is going on outside yourself, is valuable to yourself and to the world. And music is a great way to practice it.

Even the late James Brown, the most manic, out-of-his-mind showman, said that you always must maintain a still point within, no matter what it looked like from the outside.

So how do you develop that still center point?

I’m going to speak for a moment exclusively to pianists.

What’s the story you hear when the subject of piano playing comes up in any group of adults? It’s the same, 99.9% of the time. “I took lessons when I was little but I gave it up. Now I wish I could play.”

You hear that less often about guitar. Why? I think because it’s socially acceptable to play guitar badly, to just strum a few chords.

Well, it’s ok to play piano badly.

And once you get that, really get that, you have a chance at playing it well.

A musical instrument should become, over time, a refuge. Merely touching the instrument should lower your blood pressure. It’s meditation in the true sense of the word and a unique way to experience the true basics of life.

Acclaimed jazz pianist Kenny Werner has championed this approach for years. I highly recommend his writings and video clips. He expresses it better than anyone.

Music is unique in that it requires an unprecedented combination of fine-motor skills and mental knowledge along with, paradoxically, the ability to switch off all attempts to control. You must be able to sit down and have mastered all of the elements, but most of all to have mastered your desire to be admired and approved of. To invest yourself in precise, relaxed excellence while at the same time caring not one bit whether anyone, including yourself, thinks that you’re great or that you suck.

That’s a lifelong practice that has benefits well outside of music.

The key that’s often missed: if you’re playing and thinking either positively or negatively about yourself, the playing will suffer.

This points to the way life really works, and to an innate flaw in the New Age “manifesting” or the positive thinking movements. If you have any sense of doership at all, including affirmations and thoughts such as “I am worthy, it’s my time to shine, I will receive my due”, the music worsens. If you think at all about yourself, it suffers.

But don’t mistake this for piety or altruism. If you’re thinking about how you’re going to be a good player or a good person because you’re playing for the sake of others and world peace, that’s not it, either, because there’s still a level of self-consciousness. Meister Eckhart astutely pointed that out to the medieval church in the 13th century and was almost killed for it, among other things.

Music happens on its own when you are

a) prepared through patient, slow, and attentive practice, and then

b) caught by accident looking the other way.

This is the reason for the saying sometimes heard in recording studios: “first take, best take”. It’s why studio engineers will often leave the microphones on and recording when the musicians are just warming up or practicing, because then they’re off guard, not conscious of performing, and happy accidents can occurr.

Actually, I would like to tell students, “never practice”, because “music practice” has such a connotation of stress and effort. I like instead the term: “experimenting”. Slowly, regularly, with precision and attention to detail, experiment. Speaking of piano specifically, experiment with how it feels to push a single key down…and how the key pushes your finger up. Can you play while feeling the pressure of the keys pushing your fingers up rather than the pressure of your fingers pushing down? Can you play and think about your breathing at the same time?

Jazz players are often taught to sing along as they improvise. I used to think that this was for the purpose of developing your ear. I now believe its benefit is really that it occupies your mind, giving it something to do so that it doesn’t obsess over the music and get in the way.

There’s a story about how elephant handlers in India will give the elephant a small stick to hold in their trunk while walking through the village. It gives the elephant something to do so that their trunk doesn’t get into trouble among the merchants’ tables along the sidewalk. A musician’s busy “trunk” is his mind.

Gabriela Montero, whose playing I admire tremendously, repeatedly says in interviews that when she’s improvising some piece – such as the folk tune La Cucaracha transformed to sound eerily like a Chopin Prelude – that when she’s improvising she’s in “free fall”, that there’s no thought besides keeping the melody in mind.

There is far too much involved in playing an instrument to ever be able to do it by thinking about it, nor could you ever walk by thinking about every muscle contraction in your legs or coordinate the flow between the ventricles of your heart or consciously separate proteins from sugars in digestion.

Just as there is an autonomic nervous system to handle duties in the body, there is an autonomic creation system, and the practice of improvisation is learning to use that autonomic system in deeper and deeper ways.

Music is unique in the level at which you must be prepared with knowledge, yet be able to turn off your knowledge in order to operate, to be simultaneously aware of both left and right brain processing.

There’s a lot of know, but the real skill in the end is to take a gentle step into unknowing and trust that the music will play itself while you watch.

That’s intriguing to experience. And good for life.

How does that look over a life span? Everything has to breathe. In the natural course of things there are times for learning skills and times to letting it all lie fallow in order to mature and deepen…or to move on to something else.

Even musicians at the top of their game still adjust their relationship to music. Vladimir Horowitz withdrew from public performances for long stretches totaling 21 years. Barbara Streisand gave no public concerts for 27 years. One of the top studio and television pianists in Los Angeles does not own a piano. Another top pianist and composer with multiple awards and an auditorium named after him actually wanted to be a veterinarian. The drummer of a phenomenally successful power rock trio in the 90’s used to fantasize while on stage about being a pro golfer. An in-demand bassist in a city where I used to live quit music for ten years, and is now known as “steady Eddie” for his grounded, rock-solid time.

The point, once again, is that music is a means, not an end. There is a time for perfecting your craft, and a time for learning to hold it lightly, so lightly that you are free to walk away…at any moment…

Ron

If you’re writing your own melodies from birth dates or other dates please share links to them on the YourSongCode Facebook Group.

Copyright 2010 by Ron Newman. All Rights Reserved.

Free Track: The Hero With A Thousand Faces

I’d like to give you another free track, this time taken from the CD Animal Dreams. This one requires a little explanation.

The composer George Gershwin wrote a famous tune in 1930, “I’ve Got Rhythm”, the harmonies of which became the basis for many other tunes by other composers. I decided to do the same and use the same chord progression without the melody, but slow it way down and fit it into a rhythmic structure from Bali. There, gamelan bands play a unique style in which everything is divided up into ever-decreasing slices of time. For example, a big gong might play once every 16 beats, a smaller gong once every 8 beats, and so on until you get very fast repeating parts. This style arises out of their belief that the universe is structured in precise time, and the timing of events in everyday life is important.

I also wanted some improvisation. In this case it’s a Japanese Shamisen and a flute.

All instruments – the gongs, Shamisen, flute, various percussion, and harp – are actually played on a keyboard. Each instrument is recorded digitally so that it can be played from the keyboard, and then I can play each part separately, overdubbing what was played before until the entire piece is complete.

Finally, the title. It’s taken from the seminal book by Joseph Campbell, “The Hero With A Thousand Faces”, which explores the universal stories of the human experience that he uncovered in myths from cultures around the world. George Lucas borrowed from Campbell’s work when writing the screenplay for the original Star Wars film trilogy.

Please download “Hero With A Thousand Faces” here. This track is edited for length from the CD version.

Ron

Ron Newman received a MME in Music Education and a MS in Computer Science from the University of North Texas, has film and commercial credits and opened for Willie Nelson and Tricia Clark as a member of the Great Northern Band. more…