As a parent of musicians…
Fun fact: I’m actually 1/2 of the parental unit for a couple of young musicians. The oldest is 18, and has released a single and an EP. He gets to play with musicians who are tied to performers who are household names, and actually gets paid from time to time to do the thing he loves. He started playing guitar when he was 12 and has refused lessons since day 1. Vehemently.
This post isn’t really about him.
I had a good friend ask me for some old videos of him the other day-you know, back when he wasn’t so good. It seems her 9-year daughter has hit a plateau in her guitar playing and is starting to feel discouraged. My friend was hoping that some recordings (that only a parent can appreciate) would help her realize that everybody starts at the bottom, everybody struggles, and everybody has self-doubt. “Unless he was born playing well of course”
Fun fact #2: No, he wasn’t.
Ever hear the song Seven Nation Army, by White Stripes? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J2QdDbelmY) I have — literally hundreds of times over the course of a hellish 4-week period that began mere days after he purchased his first electric guitar. And when I say we heard the song on constant repeat, I don’t really mean that. I’m speaking of that damn riff with those same damn 8 notes, over and over and over and over and over. It went from cute, to annoying, to wondering out loud what it would take for social services to discover that we were down to one child. Sometimes he’d put the guitar down and we’d think we caught a break, and then he’d be banging out the same notes on the piano. 8 notes on continuous repeat, with about a 25% chance of success. That’s why there is no recorded evidence that any of this every occurred. (The therapy has paid off, the nervous tic has gone away, and we really don’t need a reminder of that time in our lives)
“Are you sure you don’t want lessons? Happy to spring for a few”
A withering “no” was the most civilized response to our well-meaning question that probably also contained strong elements of self-sanity perseveration at its core.
But this isn’t really his story, even if he has a part to play-
I don’t give parenting advice, mostly because my wife and I found out pretty quickly with child #2 that the same tricks don’t work. (I know, it’s almost like our boys are two different people-who knew?) Child #1 was (no joke) the best reader in the history of his elementary school. Naturally we chalked that up to superior parenting skills, except someone forgot to tell #2 and he refused to play along. By the time he was five, I had distilled all the advice I will ever give into a single sentence — “The only thing you can hope to accomplish is to teach your children to use their powers for good instead of evil”.
We’re serious.
How does this relate to our musically-gifted children? If we had forced Big to take guitar lessons, he wouldn’t have lasted 8 weeks before putting down the instrument forever. (Heck, he might still be playing baseball, but that’s a story for another day) What he is, is a stubborn SOB who exists to prove his parents wrong at every turn. (“You think I need lessons to learn how to play? I’ll show you”) At 12 hours old he was convinced that he knew more about breast-feeding than the nurse who dropped by to help my wife with the process. He was wrong, but it took several hours of convincing for him to grudgingly accept that perhaps he didn’t know everything. Yet.
He and I spoke last night about my friend and her daughter, and talked about those same feelings when he was just starting out. Not getting better, not getting better fast enough, (having been in the audience, I don’t disagree) but also not wanting to give up because there was music he wanted to play. He’s not a parent yet, so he’s free to give all the advice he wants — but he had a single question “what songs does she like”, followed by “she should spend some time learning to play those”. He also pointed out that she was more than 3 years ahead of where he started and he still gets discouraged when his fingers can’t keep up with the music he hears in his head.
“Do you think that knowing everyone struggles and feels frustrated will help her?” I asked. He shrugged. “Maybe?” he offered. “But please tell her that it’s supposed to be hard, but worth every minute I spent practicing — even when there were weeks when I thought I’d never get better. Find a song, a riff, a chord that she loves and play that.”
Over, and over, and over, and over, and over…
