Teaching and the desire to practise music

I teach a handful of private bass students in between my gigs and tours, and one of the interesting things I've noticed about myself is that it's often a lot of fun working on learning basslines with a student. I'll introduce something in a style they may not be familiar with, and as I break it down bit by bit to explain it to them and analyse it with them I find it's quite exciting as I understand things about the line I otherwise may have not noticed myself.

I then wonder why it's so hard to motivate myself to learn things in this way when I'm on my own. Why can I not explain things to myself in the way I would to a student and analyse these musical concepts to help myself grow? Maybe that's the essence of teaching ourselves? Maybe we have to think of ourselves as both teacher and student.

When I teach I have a motivation at work… money. It sounds cold, but nobody does it purely for the fun of it. It can be fun and it can be very rewarding, but primarily the reason we do it is to contribute to our making a living as a musician. So, when I teach myself there is no immediate financial reward in front of me. It's not about the money directly, because I'm already at a level where I can go out and play professional gigs (not any kind of pro gig, but gigs up to a certain standard and technical requirement) and these gigs make me a living as well as being creatively satisfying. But, the results I want to see from teaching myself to play are far from immediate. They require regular, daily, constant work over weeks and months and years.

I suppose that as I've got older I am wanting to see the results happening faster, as time slips by. When I was younger I didn't worry so much about the results. I probably could see improvements happening much faster as I was learning more fundamental things from scratch. It seems that as I get older, the more I learn the more there is to learn. This collides with an awareness of my failings as a human being, my bad time-management skills and the fact that time is passing more quickly (or seems to be).

I should be playing my bass rather than sitting here writing this, but it's another way of putting it off.

I got home from some gigs in America yesterday so I am still very tired from the trip home.

The lawn needs cutting DESPARATELY.

The house needs cleaning.

I have a student coming over at 3:00pm.

All of thes things nag at me and make me think negatively about practising. This happens on a daily basis.

As I think about them it becomes painfully clear that these are all symptoms of profound laziness. It's probably why I don't have a proper job. Is the ony way out of this to force myself to work at what I do? I think I might go and mow the lawn…

Music practise… driving me crazy

I'm a 33 year old professional bass player, driving myself mad between gigs as I just cannot get myself into gear to practise to become the kind of musician I want and hope to be. Previous to going to music college I practised daily, regularly, for hours on end, learning, passionately listening and studying my instrument. I went to college and the passion died.

One good thing about going to college was that it made me realise the kind of things I should be working on. The down-side is that I constantly feel overwhelmed now, aware that as I get older there is more and more to learn, and I not doing it. I've been put off by the mountain in front of me, and the feeling of attempting a small part of it each day makes me feel like I'm not doing enough, that I'll never improve. A vicious circle, because if I don't attempt it at all, I won't improve.

I have a regular gig with a touring artists and we tour the UK and Europe. Lots of playing work and some good times… but there's always this aching inside me, I want more but can't face the mountain of practise. Musically it's not incredibly challenging but it's always a challenge to play relatively simple music in a mature and tasteful manner.

All my current musical heroes are people who have dedicated themselves to years of hard study and developed themselves to become respected players with their own character and sound and have created their own music. I feel a sense of frustration as I'm not able to become like that. My dream is to be a jazz musician. My nightmare is that I've left it too late, as if there's some magic time that you have to have it all learnt by, and I've missed it.

I've bought books to study from, music to listen to, instruments to play, got my computer up and running for recording… but nothing happens.

I suppose all this says as much about my state of mind and lack of motivation as it does about anything else. How to get over it and move forward is the problem. I think a little and often policy might be worth adopting. Maybe I should attempt to practise in small, meaningful chunks, the important things I need to learn, without worrying too much about the results… just kind of let them happen. Maybe I could document them on here to show my progress from week to week and also to inspire others who are having the same difficulties. That's my aim, as I see it right now. I just hope I can commit to that!!