Conclusion
I’m going to start this post with my conclusion: No one should ever feel that they can’t do something they love, and, in fact, I believe a love of something is really the only true gift we are innately born with. The rest is cultivated in some form or another. Not to sound like some big cheerleader, or perhaps this is the teacher in me, but I believe that ANYONE could make music like I do (and better than I do). I believe the perception that musicians, or those doing something others admire, are able to because they are “gifted” is a myth.
This all began a few days ago when my friend, guitarist and longtime collaborator Stein Malvey and I were talking about music. In so many words he said, “you have a gift”. This got me thinking about what exactly that “gift” was. What part of my ability to write, produce and perform music was I innately given? All I could think of was how much I WASN’T innately given. Here is the list:
1) My Ability to Play Instruments
Cultivated over the past 30 years of my life, first by my heroically patient parents through piano lessons, then by me on guitar, drums and voice.
2) My Ear
Cultivated by the Suzuki Method.
3) My Ability to Write Music
Cultivated by my 30 years learning, working with and loving music. Break apart my songs into small enough chunks, or the right chunks, and you’d see that every decision I’ve made is stolen completely. All of it is a shade of something I’ve heard and loved in other people’s music. Melody is just notes in relation to chords and every note I’ve placed against a chord was done so because I’ve heard it before and loved it and wanted to put it in my creation.
4) My Ability to Write Lyrics
My love of language was cultivated by every English teacher I ever liked. My lyric writing began when I was around 12, but I became more intensely focused on it in my early twenties and throughout my time in college by my lyric writing teacher Pat Pattison. Make no mistakes, when I am working on new material I am doing some writing every day, far from inspiration most of the time.
5) My Ability to Engineer, Record, Mix and Master My Music
Began in my teens with a 4-track recorder, then really cultivated in my studies at Berklee, but really developed over the last 10 years, first in my commercial writing work, then as I attempted to produce, mix and engineer my own music. Every choice I’ve ever made as a producer I can trace back to some concept or result that I’ve heard and loved in someone else’s music. No gift there, all stolen.
6) My Ability to Pursue Something Daily
Stolen from my mom and dad. My mom was a special education teacher, something that takes a level of daily devotion and patience that few people understand, and my dad has been in the daily pursuit of something my whole life: Japanese, mandolin, operatic singing, stained glass…you name it.
The Gifts
So what are the indivisible elements that without which I wouldn’t make music?
1) My love of music: Bottom line, the single most important innate quality I possess. If I didn’t love music, the way it has made and makes me feel, it’s boundless possibilities, I wouldn’t do this.
2) My delight in creation: I get a remarkable high from working on original pieces, for which the only limit is what I can (or can’t) imagine.
3) My sense of wonder: Somewhat ties to number 2, but if I didn’t feel a vivid sense of wonder at the world and a general delight in possibilities I would never have begun creating things.
So that’s it. I didn’t ask for these and you could roughly say that I didn’t actively cultivate them, though I believe that number 2 and 3 can be cultivated and were in me by my parents, various teachers and other adults in my life.
Here’s how I’ve come to think of it, actually just throughout the writing of this:
I have been the recipient of some amazing gifts, 11 years of daily devotion to helping me learn piano from my parents and teachers, and another slew of devoted teachers and concerned adults in my life and a belief in me by some key people. And then a whole lot of work by me that has been threaded throughout my 30 years of daily pursuit of some aspect of music. Somewhere along the line music moved me deeply, I connected to that movement and wanted to recreate it over and over in myself and others. Is that the gift? I think so, which circles back to my “conclusion” with which I started this piece. Our ability to feel love is the only true gift. Your interest in that feeling, in feeling it yourself and cultivating it in others, can drive you to do anything you want. And that sentiment, I assure you, was stolen completely from Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, and countless others.
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