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Life is full of decisions. Should I get eggs? Should I get bacon? Should I skip breakfast and just sleep in and say screw it all because nothing really matters? No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. None of this is a good idea. I’m not saying that getting eggs, bacon, or sleeping in are bad in themselves, but what is bad is act of second guessing your original instinct. The same way of thinking goes for a test. I always find that whenever I second guess myself on a test question, especially multiple choice, my first intuition was usually correct. The only thing that prevents us from becoming the best possible version of ourselves is, quite ironically, ourselves. I can relate this same feeling to playing music. Music is really simple. By simple I don’t mean the technical simplicity of the mathematical relationships between the notes or however music theory would describe simplicity, but I mean more the simplicity of the feeling. Obviously learning to play a musical instrument takes time and dedication to master the physical requirements (like finger dexterity or lip strength), but once you have the muscle memory, an endless amount of music is literally available at your fingertips. With so many options to put your fingers (like the eggs, bacon, or any other of the guh-shmillions of life decisions we each go through every day) it can seem so overwhelming that you just second guess your first instinct and play something that is a little behind in “time” which is really you just hesitating your ability to naturally have rhythm. As long as a consistent time is kept in between beats in your soul, aka getting into the groove, you can chop up the micro moments into however many you want into whatever pattern feels good into infinitely small pieces and still be able to always resort back to that groove when your head bobs back down. But you aren’t even really resorting back to that groove because you were always in it as long as it’s going in your body and you feel it. But that is the key is the feel part about it. I feel (lol no pun intended there) like people haven’t put as much time into teaching music this way and thinking about it like this because it’s really hard to explain because we really don’t know why music does to us what it does. Why do vibrations feel good, like what!? Vibrations cause our brains to release certain chemicals that make us experience emotions, and I don’t think that the correlation between “sad” songs and the sadness you feel is a societal created effect. I think that music has an innate quality that affects each person in a unique way and we really don’t understand why. The songs reflect how that person was feeling when he or she made it, and how connected that feeling was to the music and how in the moment and honest and open he or she was when playing it. The more “into the music” the person is, the better it sounds (and feels for the player) because other people are able to feel what that person was feeling. But, back to my main point, the thing that made that music good is that the person playing was going with their first instinct when playing. You can’t fake a sad song (well you could but people could sense it), you have no choice but to be honest with yourself when playing it. This is why I think that sad songs often sound more “soulful” because that person is putting more of their true selves through the music. Take that same honesty and openness that creates the best music and apply it to everything in life. Just trust your true honest self and what you know is right, and flow with it without any anxiety or hesitation, and the most beautiful “life music” or whatever you want to call it because it’s all music, will be created. “Whatever the mind can perceive, the body can achieve”-Bo AKA the chill old dude who rides his bike around at Furman and plays mandolin. I truly believe that this statement is 100% true, it’s just that we rarely see it happen because of all of the distractions in today’s world and all of the things that bring us down causing us to doubt our own capabilities. You are you, so just do stuff. (was gonna say “just do it” but didn’t want to quote nike).
-Thomas DesChamps