I went to the gym tonight....for the first time in probably six months.
This is not a big deal to many people but in a former life, I earned a degree in exercise science and was a college strength coach (true story). Now, I'm a chubby guy in my 40s back on a college campus and using a fitness facility while surrounded by 20 year old guys who have crazy things like 'metabolisms' and 'testosterone'. Sound scary? It shouldn't be, but it is. It's terrifying.
Even when I first came back to school and was going regularly I was only doing things like heavy squats and deadlifts. I justified this by claiming to myself that I was doing 'functional' movements and wasn't playing around with 'cutesy' exercises. Of course, with my ever present self reflection I can tell you that I picked those exercises so that the young uns would see me throwing around heavy weights. It was all about EGO.
This is a struggle that we as musicians go through daily, and not for the reasons you might think.
You see, on one end, the ego is a fabulous thing for musicians. It drives us. It is what puts us on stage even when our knees are knocking. It makes us try to learn things that we haven't done before so we can so things we haven't done before......
.......and then it gets in our way....
You remember fundamentals? Oh yeah, those darned things.....scales, long tones, articulation studies. You're too advanced for those, right? You already learned your scales. Why bother with those?That's beginner stuff! That's for middle schoolers! That's time you could be spending learning high level literature, transcribing Dexter Gordon solos, learning to be the next Brecker, except...
Those boring old fundamentals are just too darned critical to your success to ignore. That's why Casals practiced them into his 90s. That's why Heifitz did them. THAT.....is why they should be the basis for every single thing you do in the practice room.
Get your metronome and tuner
Get your pencil
Get your ego out of the way
Get it done
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