The temple remains.

Fragments of past transmissions echo below.

Category: Email Archives

  • How I Used to Lie About My Experience With Piano

    You don’t have to fit a mold.

    Most people don’t, you know. And yet, we generally assume that others will conform to our expectations.

    I used to lie about how much experience I had with the piano.

    When I was in 9th grade, my English class was studying Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I gave a presentation to the class on Elizabethan-era music. I prepared for this presentation by going to the music teacher and asking if he had any music from that time period, and he gave me a copy of a song called “Heart’s Ease”, arranged for two recorders and keyboard.

    I went home, figured out how to play it on the piano, and recorded it on a cassette tape. During my presentation, I played the tape for the class.

    “How long have you been playing the piano for?”, my teacher asked me.

    I thought for a moment, unsure of how to answer the question. Eventually, I replied: “four years.”

    A girl in the class gasped. “Four years? I have been playing for six years and I wouldn’t be able to play that!”

    The truth was that I had only been studying the piano for maybe 4 or 5 months at that time.

    Or, I could tell a different truth, which is that I had taken a few lessons at the age of nine, and then quit.

    Both of these are true, but it doesn’t matter. They’re just stories. However, stories are important because they influence our behavior.

    Are the stories you tell serving you, or not?

    If you want to know more about how to eliminate stories that are not serving you as a musician, check out my ebook.

  • It’s All Side-Effects

    I spent the weekend moving. It was far more difficult than I anticipated.

    I have way too much stuff, and I completely underestimated how much I have.

    I don’t like to get rid of material possessions. Especially the ones that have sentimental value. Ones that remind me of other times.

    But, I noticed a few problems with this mentality.

    First, every item I accept into my life brings with it its own cognitive load. That load is experienced whenever I think about the object, whenever I look at it, whenever I have to decide which box it’s going into, or whether to throw it out, or whether to donate it, or how to make sure it doesn’t get scratched when I’m carrying it.

    Second, many of these items were not brought into my life by my own volition. Some were given to me as gifts, others just appeared as a by-product of something else. But, I hold onto them because I feel guilty about letting them go. This leads to anxiety and anger.

    Third, these items are physically burdensome. They take up space, they are heavy to carry, and they lead to bodily injury as I pack and move them!

    Are these side-effects worth it? In many cases, no.

    But, this makes me think about how life is composed mainly of side-effects. How what we experience is only a result of something else that preceded it, and how little of it we actually asked for.

    I’ll leave you to connect this to your music practice. I’m not in the mood to go there right now.

    I know it would be worthwhile, though.

  • Mistakes Don’t Hurt Your Ears

    If wrong notes hurt your ears, good.

    A student of mine was whining about that once. He was 11 years old, and he had pretty good ears. I was pushing him a little bit out of his comfort zone, and he started complaining that his ears were hurting when he played wrong notes.

    I didn’t want to back down, because I could see that we were on the verge of a breakthrough, and I was eager to press forward. But, then he began screaming.

    “I can’t stand it!”, he cried, covering his ears.

    I was reluctant to take a stand, with him getting so agitated, but somehow I forced myself to do it.

    “Put your hands down and listen to the sound coming out of the piano, and tell me that it really hurts you.”

    He did as I said.

    “No, it doesn’t really hurt…“

    So yeah, there may be pain. But it’s not from your ears. When you learn to love those wrong sounds, your ears will feel much better.

  • Sight-Reading and Hesitation

    Hesitating during sight-reading is a bad idea, and I learned this the hard way.

    I had been hired to play for voice lessons at a rather prestigious music school. I didn’t know as much vocal repertoire as I would have liked, so a lot of what I was doing was sight-reading. And I thought I was a good sight-reader (and I was, all things considered).

    But in one lesson, a mezzo-soprano was singing a fast Mozart aria with pretty elaborate coloratura, and I got thrown off. I only needed to play two chords per measure, but I kept second-guessing where she was in the measure, trying to follow her runs note-for-note.

    We had to stop and do it over and over again. Pretty embarrassing for me.

    Even more embarrassing was when they told me I probably wasn’t right for the job, and they needed someone who could sight-read better.

    It was a simple mistake with a simple fix. My attention had been on the notes, when it should have been on the beat.

    I don’t make that mistake anymore.

  • How I Learned I Was Bad at Singing

    When I was in second grade, my music teacher decided to inform my parents that I was bad at singing.

    My dad and I were in front of our garage one day. We had a really flat driveway, with a basketball hoop, and I remember standing there as I heard him telling me that according to my recent report card, I wasn’t doing too well with singing.

    This was a total surprise to me. I thought I was good at singing. It actually really hurt to hear that, and I know that because it still hurts today when I think back to it.

    I think I was too young to understand the concept that teachers evaluated students, and that it was a bad thing if I was evaluated unfavorably, but it definitely bothered me to think that my teacher didn’t like my singing.

    I decided to prove my teacher wrong by singing the Star-Spangled Banner right then for my dad.

    I’m sure it was horrible.

    But yeah, that was the end of my singing career for quite some time. One teacher, with one remark, had such a strong impact on me. And I was only 7 years old.

    I’ve always wondered why this happened. I also wonder how many other kids are having the trajectories of their lives permanently altered in this way.

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