MUSIC LIFE is about playing the notes you’re given, even if you don’t know what to do with them yet. In this life, you don’t get many second chances. In the grand scheme of things, your solo isn’t even that long. If your life was a song, and you were the lead guitar player, then you’d end up playing rhythm most of the time… have a few fills here and there, and at best get about 8-12 bars to work your magic. Thats it.

You could work your whole life trying to perfect exactly what it is you want to say, but from a person who’s taken the stage quite a few times at this point, the truth is… it never goes the way you expect. You might have grand ideas in your head of the perfect solo, but in reality… the lights will be dimming before you know it and you’re 8 bars will be over.

Try More Notes

So when you practice, give your energy to trying more notes and trying them with different intention. Stop playing your scales with the hopes of sounding like someone great, but instead, play them with the knowledge that you can create something great yourself.

Replace your expectations of sounding perfect with the desire to sound joyful, expansive and inspired… reach out for a new sound, a sonic palate that has your unique signature on it. Ask yourself the question, what do I sound like?

It’s Never Too Late

It’s not too late to find out. We spend so much of our lives looking in a mirror, poking and prodding at the face we’ve been given, examining and maybe even doing out best to cover up the evidence of a few hard years. But when was the last time you listened to yourself? Have you ever pondered the question, what do I sound like? Is there music in me that wants to come out?

YOUR Voice Matters

Your voice matters. Your sound belongs here, in the space and time that you were given to occupy, and it’s never too late to discover it. It’s not hidden behind the perfect technique or hours of grueling practice. It’s available to you now, the second you pick up that instrument. In the first moment you try… that very first mark on the page.

A zen master once said, you are the closest to mastery in the moment you first start. I believe what they meant was that you you were the closest to mastery because hadn’t learned all the rules yet. Well, what if you started there… and never left. What if you spent your energy getting good a listening to yourself and the sounds that reverberated out of you. What if you stopped looking at the rules as boundary markers but as messages in a bottle, marks on a map from past travelers. What if the notes on the page were not perfection immortalized, but merely brave attempts of simple journeyers who refused to let THEIR melodies fade off into memory?