This was the title of a talk Sharon did at a few venues. She talked about her whole process after winning a studio spot at the Bethany Arts Center in an auction, which was just beginning to rent out art spaces. At first, she thought she’d write, but soon decided on painting. She had always doodled while talking on the phone, but never worked with color and canvas. The crux of the talk was the freedom of being a beginner. The common feeling when starting something new is excitement, but there are also often feelings of frustration, inadequacy and self-judgement. Not Sharon! She knew that for an hour a day, she’d be exploring the materials, following a pattern, just literally playing in the sandbox of pure creativity. She wasn’t attached to her creations, either, often painting over them. In three short years, she developed a skill and personal style that was quite impressive.
I try to bring the same sense of play and openness in my piano improvisations, letting the music flow where it will and not worry about making it “good” or trying to “entertain” with my transcendent brilliance..;)
But here I am, an actual beginner with making music using software. This complicates things: Sharon had no identity of herself as already being an artist. I have a fair amount of experience and proficiency as a musician, and, 30 years ago I really knew music technology, using it to create my first album of children’s music, “It’s a Lazy Day”. So, when I open up the software and try to make music, and I don’t know how to do something, everything comes to a grinding halt, if it ever even got started, while I try to figure out the problem. It ended up being too easy to procrastinate while I was at home. The truth is, it just didn’t feel good being a beginner, because I had an idea of myself that I should be better than I was.
Well, no more! I found my secret sauce. It’s the same approach that worked for me as a new gardener, and I will share it with you now, the SECRET TO SUCCESS IN ANYTHING: three ingredients…
- Accept your level of expertise (at every stage)
- Cultivate patience and willingness to make mistakes (yes that’s one thing!)
- Maintain interest and enthusiasm
I might add Minimize Distractions, but that’s just part of life and schedules. I had three days here in Dillon State Park, just living in my van. I’m sure locals would disagree, but I didn’t see any tourist spots to warrant driving around to experience. So I set up the equipment (got the time down to fifteen minutes!) and started to explore. It’s an entirely new process to make music, and I have no workflow to rely on. But even within three days I am already learning key commands and gaining facility. I’m so used to improvising, composing is like learning a new language.
I’m about to go to a three day music festival called Secret Dreams, and I’ll be back to visiting friends in Cleveland, Kentucky, Indiana, and Wisconsin, so it will be a while before I can get back to working on the piece I started writing these last few days. Stay tuned, be patient, and don’t have high expectations…