One Thing At A Time

If you are interested in developing your musical understanding, one skill that you probably won't be able to live without is the ability to focus on one small area at a time. This might be obvious and apply to the accumulation of knowledge more generally, but I've found it useful to look at how this simple idea can be directly applied to music.

Much of musical exploration can be looked at in two ways; time spent that is directly beneficial, and time wasted. This wasted time is usually never completely without value. If you are playing or practising, you are at the very least spending time with your instrument and perhaps this is part of the process of learning how to practise or what not to do in your playing. It is much more desirable, of course, to progress quickly. There are only so many hours we have to devote to anything.

The best way that I have found to maximise my own development is to learn to focus on one thing at a time. Of course, learning to stack layers of complexity and joining ideas together in a linear way is what we have to learn how to do as musicians (no matter how ‘simple’ or ‘complicated’ the music) but it's only by taking a close look at the layers individually that we can fully understand anything and make it sound easy.

If you are like me or any musician I've ever met, certain aspects of music will come easier to you than others. To advance those aspects that don't come so easily often takes deliberate focus. Even areas that come more naturally often take deliberate focus in order to move them to the next level. In both cases, a stripping away of all other stimuli will help you move forward quicker. 

Let's say you are learning about the major (or ionian) sound; what characterises it and how you might go about expressing it as a composer or improviser. Once you have a gone a little way down this seemingly simple (but in reality gargantuan) rabbit hole, you'll need to break it down to much more rudimentary pieces to make real progress. There are many ways to tackle this problem of the major scale; solidifying in your mind the notes that are part of that sound in a particular key, picking out simple melodies and phrases, finding the different triads, changing the bass notes, identifying it in music you know, identifying some different ways it might function etc. These different approaches need to be looked at on their own as they are complicated enough if you don't know any possible solutions. Never underestimate how much time it may take to get from playing something slowly and deliberately (where you are still working it out in real time), to being fluent and not having to think consciously about it. You are learning a language after all. 

Whilst developing your overall firmer understanding of this major scale in question, it's important to experiment within the confines of it. Stick to it assiduously but experiment with the sound; come up with (for you) new ways of looking at it. In my opinion, musicians that stand out are always people that can see the same thing from many different angles. It gives their understanding and expression a depth and openness that cannot be easily faked.

When I'm learning something new, I will often break it down to very simple tangible steps I can take and individual problems I can slowly figure out. It may take weeks or months of looking at that particular thing on a daily basis until it becomes fluent enough to find its way into my playing or composing. Patience with this process shouldn't be underestimated.

So if it may take months to become confident with just one way of viewing something so simple as a major scale, there surely isn't enough time to learn what you need to know about music as a whole. This is where balance comes into play and an overall sense of what it is you are trying to achieve. The ability to work on a few different areas within an hour of time on your instrument is key. Spending let's say 15 minutes of focussed time on one small thing, followed by 20 minutes on something else etc is so important to give you a healthy learning experience. Don't forget to put whatever you are learning into a musical context if it isn't already. This will reaffirm why you are learning it and allow you to hear it as an organic part of music as a whole.

To really know something well takes a depth of understanding which comes through repetition and the ability to see the same concept from many angles. Something I will often say to students is that we all understand the concept of 1+1=2 so well and so deeply that we don't have to think about it. We have been shown it, told it, empirically tested it, experienced it through language and physical objects and explained it to others. This level of understanding is something like what we are aiming for with a musical concept, whether it is understanding the major scale or anything else we might want to learn. It will only come about through a combination of focussing on one area at a time, allowing your own personal creativity and brand of experimentation to happen within the framework and finally letting go of all of it to just play.