Bad pianists of the world, unite!

A quick hat-tip to self-confessed "substandard pianist" James Sherwood, for this line in an old blog post:

I can play the piano not very well. I have played the piano not very well since I was seven, and I have now reached a degree of competence in the field of playing the piano not very well.

I couldn't have put it better myself. James, I salute you!

Working for yourself

I was fortunate to meet uber-blogger Stowe Boyd a few days ago, with whom I enjoyed good food, better wine and lots of excellent conversation about almost everything except "work".

Reading Stowe's blog afterwards, my attention was drawn to this post about working as a "creative". The feeling that work is an expression of your personality (which all too few people seem to feel), is intractably linked to the feeling that it's really important to be good at it. If you're bad at your work, and your work is an expression of yourself, then it's almost as if you're a bad person. In the areas where I associate my identity with your work, I am also invariably far more upset when I get it wrong, or sense my personal limitations. In many ways, it would be a lot easier to be indifferent to the whole thing and live a "quiet life".

Mastering the fear of failure (oh dear, what an appallingly self-helpy phrase) seems to be vital if you want to pursue your passions to any professional level. And that doesn't always just mean mastering your own self-doubt, but those of others too. Stowe puts it very eloquently here:

Paderewski, the physicist, once said, "Before I was a genius, I was a drudge." There is a lot of slogging involved. And others, generally, will not understand: especially before you have invested the full ten years. "You'll never sell a book!" "You call that music?" "That's the dumbest design I have ever seen!" "Keep your day job."

Another good reason to work apart from others, so you don't have to hear all that negativity. Close the door, and sharpen your pencil.

Hmmm, so have I discovered my first tension between the title and subtitle of my blog? In order to have the courage to do things badly, is it necessary to isolate yourself in the pursuit of your passion? Well, possibly. I'm not sure if I want to close the door and pursue my solipsistic pleasures alone, I'd rather use my drudgery to bring me closer to the people around me. That, it seems to me, is surely the point of creativity? Hence my plea to my friends, to my society, is for us to celebrate the doing of things badly, so that we don't need to be bad at things in secret any more.

Because no-one, no matter how brilliant, has ever learnt anything without first being bad at it.

I had a good chat with Stowe about my attempts to learn the piano, and he has a great theory about learning a craft which he calls the "10,000 hour rule". It seems that if you want to truly master a skill, your chances are geometrically enhanced if you practice for more than 10,000 hours. Or, to put it another way, mastering a craft is basically the process of doing it badly a hell of a lot. So if you don't take pleasure in doing it badly, it's not really your passion. And if you don't like it when other people do things badly, you're probably missing something important.

I'm off to play the piano now. And I'm leaving the door open.

Playing the piano badly

A very happy New Year to you all. I hope that you have all resolved to do more things badly in 2008? My resolution this year is to have more fun, which I shall begin doing badly for now and work upwards. Any suggestions for what constitutes "fun" would be very welcome. I'll keep you posted on how I get on.

My main "fun" activity so far this year has been playing the piano. I've flirted with learning the piano for many years, ever since I gave it up, aged seven, after a year of lessons. I grew up with huge admiration and quiet envy for jazz pianists, but I was always put off trying it myself: it was too technical, took too much work, and in any case I lacked any natural affinity with formal musical notation. So I didn't touch it for years, despite admiring those who did. The piano was clearly something that only very good musicians could master. I stuck to the guitar, with the other scruffs.

But a couple of years ago I realised something. The piano is basically just a big box that makes noise. Everything else is just stories we tell about it. Sure, if I want to be the next Dinu Lipatti or Keith Jarrett (and I'd love to be), knowing the theory and recommended techniques is important; but supposing I just want to play for my own amusement? Why can't I just make it up as I go along?

Each piano is a predictable system, and any predictable system can be learned by trial and error. Since I made this realisation, two things have happened: firstly, and most importantly, I've started playing the piano. Lots. And I'm loving it. So that in itself is cause for celebration. And secondly, I've had a series of polite arguments with almost every pianist I know about why I'm not just learning to read music and do it properly. I may well do just that at some point. But the answer, for now, is this:

When I was a little younger and I wanted to be a writer, my father said something very helpfully blunt to me: "all writers have one thing in common: they write. And you don't." Wanting to do something, for me at least, isn't the same as actually doing it. If I wanted to be a writer so much, why couldn't I enjoy the simple pleasure of writing a few lines in a notebook? We should enjoy the process, not just the end result.

In the case of writing, my current strategy is to write a blog - badly - and see where that takes me. With the piano, what unstuck me was the sheer impetuous joy of refusing to learn the boring bits and focussing on what I love, which is improvising by ear. I have resolved to take as many shortcuts as possible on my way to a basic level of competance. I have chosen role models (a key component of "sociable learning") who were way beyond my capability (Keith Jarrett, Thelonius Monk, Brad Mehldau, Dr John) and I've tried to impersonate them. And not only am I learning far more quickly than I expected, but I'm also really enjoying myself.

That's more than can be said for those listening to me of course, and at some point, I hope that I will qualify to "do it properly". But I am quietly hopeful that I can get to a respectable level without forcing myself to learn like everybody else. It's all about keeping the faith. I borrowed my dad's Teach Yourself Jazz Piano book over Christmas, and found the following in the introduction: "how many times do parents tell a child: 'Stop making that noise and play something properly'? Conquering this feeling of guilt is a prerequisite of learning to play jazz: for it is only in experiment that the association between note and sound can be learned."

So on I go, but in the interests of sociablism, I have also resolved for 2008 to find myself a piano swami who can guide me in my defiant approach to the instrument. The word educate, whilst having its roots in the raising of children, is related to the Latin ducere, to lead: it is the process of drawing out what is inside, not simply of giving instruction. Too often we forget this, or else perhaps we need a new term for this process of educetion (ah, another crime against the English language - Andrew Keen would be so proud). I would like someone to help draw out my inner pianist. All applicants please write to this address, etc. and so on.

So, the next time you want to learn something, repeat after me: I already have this in me, otherwise I wouldn't feel an affinity with it. So what is the best way of drawing it out of myself? Start from there and you can't go wrong. Or rather, you can go wrong as much as you like and as long as you're happy, who cares?! So happy learning, happy noise-making, and a very happy New Year to you all.

x Andy x