Good News For The Hopelessly Untalented

Have you ever been told that you were good at something but not good enough to make it a career or life ambition? Especially with music, if you're passion is music you are hopelessly outnumbered right from the beginning. "You better have a back-up job" or "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" are common refrains heard from well meaning adults who inadvertently had their dreams crushed out of them.

The world has more then enough computer programmers and engineers and these professions are well paying ones. What are we musicians to do? Well, for one thing we can forget about needing "talent" to make it. What is talent anyway but a person's ability to connect with his or her audience. You might think that talent means technical proficiency. You couldn't be more wrong.

Here's the good news. Connect with yourself and your art and you automatically become talented. This means you don't have to wait years and years before you begin to share what comes out of you with others. In fact, most so called "really talented people" last in the limelight for a few years or so and then burn out to non-remembrance. If you consider yourself hopelessly untalented you are focusing on the wrong problem.

The question isn't do you know enough. The real question is, are you confident enough to believe in your own abilities. If you do, you will go far. If not, there's not much hope. Those who are able to let go and connect with the music inside of them are already truly talented.

Author By: Edward Weiss

How To Sound Like You Know What You Are Doing

Is your heart in the music? If so, it won't matter what you play so much as what is received through your playing. Do you still think you need to learn 43 chords to sound good or are you concerned with the joy of expressing yourself through this wonderful instrument called the piano? People who sound like they know what they are doing may indeed know what they are doing but does that mean you want to listen to the music?

Let's look at pop music for example. Here is a music that is produced so tightly and carefully that nothing is left to chance. Not a crackle or hiss, not one static spot on the entire 3 to 4 minutes of the track. Yet after a few listens or even after a single listen, the mind may grow disinterested.

It's like a sporting event - exciting and enthralling while you are there but once over let down and perhaps even a little depressed. Now most (but not all) pop music is like that. It gets you hooked up for a few minutes, gives you a feeling, usually of excitement, then its gone. New age music on the other hand is a more sincere and heartfelt expression, and as such, mistakes are allowed.

Id like to share something with you. When I recorded both "La Jolla Suite" and "Anza-Borrego Desert Suite" I made mistakes. "La Jolla Suite" was recorded live so I couldn't help that, but the Desert Suite was done in one take. I wasn't so concerned with the production value as the emotion I felt at the time I was playing. I could have gone back and redone the tracks I didn't like so much but then I could have gotten stuck in a perfectionist's rut.

No, I decided that a "wrong" note here and there wouldn't kill what was heard and might even make it sound more authentic. So if you hear a mistake it may sound like I don't know what I'm doing. Perhaps not. But that doesn't concern me. What concerns me is one thing and one thing only - am I present at the piano. Am I there in spirit as well as body? If so, I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

Author By: Edward Weiss