“Television is only negative or positive depending on how you use it,” I continued. “Like a Zen master once said: ‘Nothing is either good or bad until,’ uh . . . ‘we think it is,’ or, no, ‘until thinking it’s so,’ or something like that.” It was my turn to be poetic, and I blew it. “Anyway, if we’re gonna watch it, why not use it to our advantage? That’s not the only way. Day-dreaming, night-dreaming, sitting in nature, meditation, and many other things could help me learn how to ‘not concentrate’ so that we can spend more time feeling the music. If we had to concentrate all the time on the techniques and the instruments we use to talk, we would never be able to say anything worthwhile. Being able to concentrate, or not, is necessary before one can reach his full potential. If television can help me with it, that’s what I’ll use. You may choose to use something else if you want to.” I folded my arms (instead of my legs) and nodded my head one time.
“Spoken with true understanding,” Michael commented as he bowed down to my feet. “Teach me! Will you teach me, master?”
“No! I can teach you nothing,” I responded, patting him on the head.
We laughed for a long time about my narration. Michael seemed pleased with it. I was shocked about what I’d said and the authority I’d expressed because I didn’t know where it had come from. I knew what I’d said was accurate, though, and I was sure of myself like never before.
Without warning, Michael hopped up, picked up three sticks, and started juggling them. I was impressed. What he did next was even more surprising. He walked to the front of the car and used the sticks to play a rhythmic pattern on the hood—and never stopping juggling the whole time.
"That’s pretty good,” I remarked.
“How’s my drumming?” he asked.
“Great!”
“Close your eyes and listen.”
I closed my eyes and listened closely. In doing so, I realized that his drumming was not that good at all. His juggling was great, but his rhythm was unsteady, mediocre at best.
“Fooled you with my performance,” Michael stated as he caught the sticks in one hand.
“I guess you did.”
“A great performance can make anyone sound good.”
“I see.”
“Technique often serves the same purpose,” he added. "The use of flashy techniques can cause the audience to start watching and stop listening. At the appropriate time, this can be a useful tool. The problem with it is, more times than not, it is the musician who stops listening and not the audience. That should never happen. More and more bass players are learning the flashy techniques first.” For some reason, he pointed at me as he spoke. "They should develop a more solid foundation before they venture off in that direction. It doesn’t matter what the technique is; just make it solid before you make it flashy.”
I knew that he was talking about me, so I fired back with my own comment. “I’ve seen you use flashy techniques before. ”
“Yes you have, but when you close your eyes, what do you hear? You still hear good Music. You don’t have to watch it to enjoy it. I make sure that even my flashiest techniques are used musically. I can’t say that about all players.”
I could’ve tried, but there was really nothing for me to say. Still feeling a bit defensive, I kept quiet and listened.
“Here’s the difference,” he continued. “My techniques are not born out of the need to be flashy. They are born out of the desire to produce with my hands what I hear with my mind. Usually, if I keep my mind focused on Music, the technique will create itself. Remember, like talking, techniques are tools and not the end result.”
I nodded in agreement trying not to let my insecurity show. Michael didn’t seem concerned; he just kept on talking.
“Many musicians get caught up, way too caught up, in the technique when it could benefit them to get caught up in the Music. Some of them measure their accomplishments based on whether they’ve mastered certain techniques or not. That, to me, is like being proud of yourself because you can curl your tongue in two or three loops. That’s all good and well, and maybe you should be proud; I am not here to say one way or another, but if it is Music we are talking about, maybe these musicians should reprioritize.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up a finger. I sat on the hood of the car, swallowed my words, and listened.
“To the real musician, techniques are nothing more than tools to get you somewhere. We only need to focus on them long enough to find the correct and most efficient ways of doing things. Once we do that, our attention turns back to Music. The more we feel Music, the faster the technique falls into place. I know musicians who have worked on simple techniques for years with little progress.” He shook his head. "That is because for years their attention has been on technique, not Music. That is a mistake.”
“I haven’t heard you call anything a mistake before now,” I remarked.
“I only call it that in relation to what you want your outcome to be. If your goal is to speak Music right now, concentrating on a technique for years may be viewed as a mistake, a waste of valuable time and effort.”
I tried to convince myself that he was talking to me and not about me. It was hard. I’d been working on some techniques for a long time to no avail; it was frustrating to say the least. If Michael could help me with this problem, I was ready to give in to him once again.
“I wanna learn to use my thumb like a pick the way you do,” I said, moving my hand up and down. “I’ve been working on this double thumb technique for too long now.”
“You think of double thumbing as a new technique, so it makes it hard for you,” he explained. “If you think of it as an old technique that guitarists have used for decades, it will be easy. You are being trapped by your mind.”
He pantomimed holding the bars of a jail cell again. He shook the bars, reminding me of his earlier comment.
"The first thing you must tell yourself is that you can already do the technique,” he continued. “Once you do that, you will be two giant steps ahead even before you start. The final step will be convincing your hands that they also know what to do.” He looked at his hands as if he was talking to them. Then he looked up at me and asked a question.
“If you were to practice this technique twenty hours a day for one solid week, do you think that you would then be able to do it?”
“Of course I would.”
"Then why spend years learning something that you know you could learn in a week?”
“I . . . uh . . . well . . . if I . . . hmm . . .” I didn’t have an answer, so Michael continued speaking.
“At the end of that week, what would have changed about you? Would your thumb, hand, or arm muscles be bigger? Would the skin on your hands be thicker? What would be different about you, one week later, that would allow you to do what you couldn’t do before?”
“Well—” I thought for a moment before answering. “I don’t think my muscles would change much in that short amount of time. They might be sore but not bigger. I think the main difference would be coordination. Yeah, I would feel better coordinated at the end of the week.”
“Okay, coordination,” he mumbled. “What is coordination? ”
He looked at me as if he was confused, which confused me. I rested my head in my hands trying to think. It was the first time I’d ever been asked that question. I sat there silent, unable to answer.
“What is coordination but a form of convincing?” he asked, spreading his hands and hunching his shoulders.
“What?”
“Is coordination anything more than a form of convincing? ” he asked again.
“What do you mean?”
"Through practice and repetition, could it be that you are just convincing your muscles and your mind that they already know what to do? Maybe that’s the primary function of practicing.”
“Uh, maybe so,” I replied, trying to keep up.
He pointed his long index finger at me and continued. “Now, what do
you think would happen if you could convince yourself first, at the beginning of your quest? In other words, before you start practicing anything, convince yourself you can already do it. What would happen then? I’ll tell you. Depending on how well you do at the convincing part, you will cut your practice time in half. Use the full potential of your mind, and practice will become a thing of the past. How do you think I can play any instrument I choose? Do you think I’ve practiced them all? Can you imagine a master like the Buddha having to practice before he could play the bass?”
He stuck out his stomach and played an air-bass. It was a funny sight, but there was no time for his levity. I had to put my vision of the bass-playing Buddha aside. There was more learning to be done.
"That idea sounds interesting to me. It even makes sense, but that’s make-believe, right? It’s not truth. I can’t imagine actually doing it. I mean, can I really convince myself enough so that I don’t have to practice?”
“Can you?” he replied in his familiar fashion.
“Stop it!” I responded in my own familiar way. “Just tell me the truth.”
“Truth? What is truth? Truth is up to you. You make your truth; no one else does. Tell yourself that it takes a long time to learn something, and it probably will. Convincingly put yourself at the end of the path and you will find yourself looking back at the beginning. It is all up to you.”
He seemed convinced. I wasn’t. He pointed his finger at me and continued speaking.
“But know this: you cannot fool yourself. You cannot half-heartedly tell yourself that you can do something and then expect to be able to do it. You must be honest. From all levels of your being, you must know what you are talking about. If you want to practice anything, practice knowing that you can do whatever you set your complete mind to. Don’t practice believing; practice knowing!”
“Okay then, how am I supposed to do that?”
“How are you supposed to do that?” Michael raised an eyebrow and paused.
I hated it when he answered my questions with my own questions, and he knew it. I think he took pride in being able to frustrate me so easily. Knowing I wouldn’t answer, he continued—continued frustrating me, that is.
"There are a million and two different ways to do it. Which one are you looking for?” he asked.
Out of frustration, I gave a sarcastic reply. “I only want the eight hundred and forty second one.”
“Oh, that one. I don’t know if you’re ready for that one.” He lowered his head as if he was really thinking about it. I could see him smiling. That bothered me.
“Stop jerking me around,” I shouted, losing my cool and banging my fist on the hood of the car. “You feed me this nonsense about how I can learn to quit practicing, and then you leave me hanging. Teach me something I can use.”
Michael spoke in an offbeat tone. “Hmm, the need to practice, when you are ready, you will lose, not before, and not after.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know. It just sounded good, like something Yoda would say, so I figured I would try it out. I like Yoda, don’t you? I remember seeing Star Wars for the first time when I—”
This time, I interrupted him, raising my hand and putting my open palm in his face.
“Come on now, enough! Stop messing with me and get back to the point. Tell me how I can learn faster. I don’t need to completely get rid of practice. I just want to learn faster. Can you give me a concrete tool that I can use to do that, or not?”
He recognized my sternness but was not ready to stop joking with me.
“Okay, okay, calm down,” he responded. “I see, you just want to sit on the sidelines while I score all the touchdowns for you. Isn’t it more fun to be in the game?”
“Michael!” I shouted. “Enough!” I hopped off the hood of the car and acted like I was going to walk away. I wasn’t convincing and I knew it, so I turned back around and stomped my foot like a child which made him laugh. This irritated me even more. “Stop playing and help me out!” I pleaded.
“Okay,” he conceded, still smiling. “I’ll be serious, but just for a little while.”
"Thank you.” I was feeling a little victorious.
“Ask yourself a question enough times and the answer will appear,” Michael replied. “And since you are a nice guy, I will give you some help.”
“It’s about time!” I groaned.
Michael took a step closer and placed a hand on my shoulder. Looking me in the eyes, he spoke. “We know that good techniques are a must, but most of us don’t have good techniques for learning them. I have already given you most of what you need to know.” He nodded, turned and pretended to walk away. He was more convincing than I was. I panicked.
“Wait a minute! Stop! You have? What do you mean?” I asked, trying to cut through my frustration so I could remember what had been said.
He sat down on the ground and proceeded to put his boots back on.
“Remember,” he said, “start by knowing you can already do the technique. Believing it won’t do; you must know it with all your being. Using ‘concentration’ to focus and project your thoughts is very valuable, as well as learning to use ‘not concentrating.’ This will open your mind to all that is available to you. You must know how and when to use both of these tools to achieve the greatest accomplishments. You understand that now, don’t you?”
“No,” I answered, still a bit puzzled.
Without tying his laces, he stood up and took a step closer to me. When he spoke, he spoke slowly, displaying the patience of a saint. “If I have a musical passage that I want to play, but don’t yet possess the required technique, I will focus on that technique just long enough to understand the exact movements required to do it in the most efficient way. After that, which usually doesn’t take very long, I pull my attention back inside my mind to where Music is. In other words, I release the technique. I let it go. I detach from it. Once that is done, the technique usually develops rapidly on its own. If it doesn’t, I will give the technique a little more attention. The key is this: I never lose sight of my real agenda, which is to make Music. This is the same method I use for talking. Rarely do I ever think about talking technique; I just talk.”
“Finally, something I understand,” I stated with relief, letting him know that most of what he had said was confusing.
"Here, try this,” he offered. "The next time you set your mind on learning something, act as if you can already do it. Ask yourself, ‘What would it sound like if I could already do this technique?’ Then, do it! If done honestly, you may not have to start from the beginning of the learning cycle. You may be able to skip a few steps.”
“Is it okay to skip steps?” I asked. “Won’t I risk missing something?”
“Skipping steps may not always be as thorough, but the better you learn to use your mind, the more knowledge you will bring with you no matter how many steps are skipped. As long as you are always listening, you should have no problems.”
He moved a step closer, his nose almost touching mine. The energy coming from his brown eyes alerted me to the importance of what he was about to say. Spoken in almost a whisper, his words gave me a chill.
“Whether we are talking about Music or Life, good technique is important. Understand that just learning techniques is not enough. You must make a choice, a conscious choice to take one road or another. Good or bad, each is narrow, making it difficult for U-turns.
“Know that the mind is a powerful tool, and that its power can respond to you both positively or negatively. Learning to use it completely should not be taken lightly. This is where technique as well as intention and attention come into play. Many people have gotten sucked into the black hole of the mind, never to return again.”
The Music Lesson Page 9
