City driving is stressy and bad. Wanna make it worse? Add rush hour. Wanna make it worser? Add a late winter Cleveland day - everything is lead grey, the road is slick, the sky is dribbling a weird substance that is neither liquid nor crystalline, visibility is nil, and everyone around you has utterly forgotten that they were born here and grew up driving in this garbage - and they have all become morons. 

I had one of these mornings recently. I made it through but was, shall we say, unhappy. I parked, probably slammed my car door, and trudged up towards the high school where I teach. I’m pretty sure my teeth were clenched. My blood pressure was undoubtedly ‘don’t ask.’ 

And then I rounded the corner, saw the big front doors of the school, and remembered why I was there. It was like my mind clicked back into place. My stress melted away (Mostly. This isn’t a fairy tale!), and I realized it. 

I teach music composition. So my job it to listen to the thoughts of young people, and help them make those thoughts come alive through music. We create written scores, digital beats, collaborative improvisation, lyrics, live performances. I could easily go off on all the cool, logical reasons this is good stuff. But that's not my point. My point is that I dearly love my work. Somehow the tasks, interactions, processes resonate inside me, they are what I'm meant to do. And even though like any job there are issues, problems, frustrations – “rush hours” – I am always righted when I get to walk up to another human being and say “Hi, good to see you. Let's hear what you've got today.”

Learning is messy. Mistakes are an extremely important part of it, in fact mistakes can be seen as a part of the definition of learning: if you don’t make any mistakes: You are not learning. 

Why? Because if you can already do something, then you are not learning anything new. In order to add to your skills, you have to do new things, new things you can not yet do. So in order to grow, you have to mess up. 

I see music students struggle with this every day. Adults or kids, when people do something they naturally want to do it right. But as I've shown above, that's not gonna happen. When you learn music you are doing something new, you will mess up. And this is not true only for beginners, any musician trying a new thing, experimenting, growing will make mistakes with it. That's true for me, for Steve Vai, for Beyonce, for YoYo Ma. You don't see professionals mess up; that's because we are performers and you normally only see us performing. You do not see us practicing, rehearsing, composing, working things out. Sure it's a different level. Doesn't matter, it's the same process. 

So ease up on yaself. 

Pay attention – if you make a mistake, you have to hear/see/feel it. 

Evaluate – if something went wrong, what/why/how, that's what you need to know. 

Play it again – adjust whatever you think needs it and try again. 

Repeat – and never give up 

Love your mess. It'll make you better.

Good Morning!

. . . . . . every day, every one of us, we all do it.

And there is a lot of advice about how to do it, mornings, I mean. When it should be, what you should do, what's for breakfast, etc.

Srini Rao has contributed this fascinating little article about mornings and how your Device, your Web, and your choices affect it.

Starting the Day on the Internet is Damaging Your Brain

                                      photo by National Institutes of Health

His gist is that you don't want to begin your day putting junk into your brain any more than you want to begin it by putting junkfood into your belly. Also that if you choose first-of-the-day activities which exercise and nourish your mind, it'll work better. Makes sense. Srini includes writing in his morning routine. He's a writer. I however am a musician. Many great options are available for us sonically-oriented. Here's one I've valued of late:

*Grab an electric guitar, plugged into an amp which has a headphone jack (this way everyone in your house/neighborhood/city needn't share in your morning ritual).

*Tune. Breathe. Straighten. I refer to this as guitar yoga. More on that another time.

*Play music.

Simple, seemingly. However this last one, the actual playing, involves a whole world of options and which ones you choose depends on your capabilities and your intentions, your outlook, and quite importantly: your mood. Usually, I close my eyes and ease through a few physical warmups ~ right hand string crossings and sweeps, tremolos, scales, arpeggios. Whichever ones I feel like or have simply been focusing on lately. I like this beginning since it addresses the physical aspect of playing, just like warming up, stretching, or actual yoga would for the body.

Then I might improvise for a bit ~ melodically, or more focused on chords, riffs, arpeggios. Or maybe find a backing track and let the computer provide a context.

Or I'll launch into a song that's been on my mind.

The point is I get sounds moving outward. Ideally without too much in the way of goals or stress, no vital destination. It is indeed a kind of musical meditation, and as Mr. Rao states, allowing one's mind to expand thusly, first thing in the morning, with an uncluttered consciousness, is an exceedingly healthy way to start your day.

Denny is learning how to play the blues. The vehicle I have chosen is Duke's famous "C Jam Blues", a classic 12 bar with a dead easy melody and as much swing as a dude can possibly pack into 4/4.

As we read through an original melody Denny created to go with this song, we entered into a long discussion of "E" the third degree in the key of C. It should be an E natural. Until it shouldn't. Then it has to be an E flat. Then it does that again, finally it wants to be an E natural again. He played it while I comped. I comped while singing variations. I changed chords to fit his melody differently. He heard the differences! And he approved. 

Score for teacher man!

But as we wound down he asked "Now, how on earth do musicians keep track of all this? How do you KNOW when it's an E flat or an E natural? Do you calculate it? Do you 'just know'??

Great question. Essential question. How indeed (Many people give up right about here. They say it's 'nature'. They say it's 'talent'. I hold back the tirade I wish to vomit out at such silliness.)? We learn things one at a time. We learn facts and skills. We then put them together. After we get really good at them, we kind of 'forget' about them. But that's not really it is it? We just let them slip to the back of our minds, trusting they will come back and work for us when we need them to. What was my example for Denny? 

Infielders: Batter hits a grounder to Third Base. Third baseman gets in front of it of course. But what else happens? Shortstop and Left Fielder are probably moving to cover him. First Baseman goes to his base to await the throw. Everyone else is paying attention in their own way. How do they keep track of all this? How do they KNOW when to move and where? Do they calculate it? do they 'just know'??

Double play for Songdog!