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If You Have a Tendency to be Impatient, it Will Be Evident in All Aspects of Your Life
Impatience in My Own Life
I have always been impatient. Even as a child, I was hyper-active and had difficulty concentrating. Not surprisingly, I learnt about impatience early on in my playing career.
Within 3 months of beginning to play the instrument, I had broken the clarinet in half! Oops! And the reason? I was frustrated because I couldn’t trill fast enough between two notes. Fortunately, it was only plastic, although my father had to pay to replace it.
Impatience, however it manifests, haunts most of us. Even seemingly positive goals can be destructive, if impatience motivates.
Years ago, I was bedridden for a month after seriously hurting my back as a result of being in a in a hurry to gain strength several months after major abdominal surgery. In my overly optimistic attempt to regain strength, I pushed past the limits of my body’s strength and paid a dear price.
In Musicians, Impatience is Usually Self-inflicted
Tending to be highly self-motivated and driven to perfection, most successful players commit incredible focus and time toward attaining peak performance. It is only natural to become frustrated or even angry at oneself along the way, or to become lost in some misguided effort to reach a goal.
Each player has unique weaknesses in technique, concentration, or breathing; and each requires unique solutions. But maintaining the big picture, while solving minute daily issues, can be quite challenging.
Impatience Can Cause Damage to Young Music Students
The majority of students are motivated to become better. They are trying, for sure, but with raw gumption and very little patient perspective. Underlying their direction is the basic strategy of “to get better, practice harder.”
For example, when assigned a concerto, a student may be shown by the teacher how to practice the first few phrases and then is asked to work his way into the piece. There are endless opportunities to stray and several days to reinforce the wrong technique.
Even if a student feels he is being patient, he is often unable to produce efficient results. His perspective and strategy are generic, copied, mimicked. The motivation is geared toward compulsive, mindless repetition, with little sensible refinement.
There is scant constructive internal dialog or directed focus, characterized by inefficient problem solving.
Practicing is just something to be checked off in a busy schedule. If the student is unable to improve the piece by the next week, he is told to go home and practice it some more, harder this time. The cycle repeats. The harder he tries, the more lost he becomes.
Teachers Carry a Huge Responsibility
Beyond the problems the student creates on his own, a teacher may aggravate a student’s already compulsive nature. In an attempt to give the student direction, the teacher may only frighten the student, which in turn inspires even more maniacal and often destructive practice.
Or, a teacher may not be equipped to solve a particular problem. The student is then left with the generic answer, “Figure it out on your own” which is a sure sign of trouble to come.
Moreover, a young, recently graduated performer may lose their way after relying on teachers’ guidance for years. Considering this, it is a miracle that so many good players graduate.
Young graduate level players fall subject to serious injury from self-inflicted impatience while struggling to survive in highly competitive music schools.
One previous student of mine, only 23 years old, has developed serious ulna nerve pain, resulting in months of lost practice time. The issue, which is persisting, may cost him his career. Even under the training of one of the leading US music schools, he has dug himself into a dark corner.
Due to the fact that musicians use their bodies as instruments, they are more prone to physically damaging habits than non-musicians
Some may be lucky – not only to have a good teacher, but the right one for them. Other musicians may not find the right teacher, and will still succeed by figuring things out on their own.
I was one of the ones who figured it out on his own.
I Learnt the Hard Way
My career story started out relatively happily. Despite having had the best teachers available at the best (and perhaps most expensive) university, I still had to figure out many basic techniques on my own, including breathing, articulation, voicing and intonation, among others.
Luckily, my choice to self-motivate after obtaining a Bachelor’s degree paid off. On my own, with only one or two lessons in 7 years, I was able to attain my goal of winning several auditions, landing me a place in the very respectable Columbus Symphony at age 29.
But I also had time on my side; I was gainfully employed as a musician in the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra and I also had lots of time to practice. Few young players find themselves in such a comfortable position to explore their art deeply.
Yet, even with my relative mastery, I slid off track, and then didn’t take the time to rebuild properly.
Many well-educated, talented and motivated players, including myself, stray from the most sustainable and efficient path at some point, due to any combination of injury, surgery, illness, anxiety, depression, or just chronic, insidious excess tension. The symptoms may go unnoticed for years, as in my case.
How Impatience Can Prevent Even Good Players From Maintaining Peak Mastery
If profound patience is not developed as a foundation habit from the start, far too many players stray far off the path to their sustainable best – their peak mastery.
Ultimately, no musician is immune to potential misuse of their bodies if problems are not dealt with at a basic level, as they occur. The stresses of studying or performing music have a natural tendency to lead to impatience and cutting corners. As a full-time orchestral professional, I unwittingly lost my way for various reasons.
Old habits die-hard
Beyond the diagnosing a problem, the recovery and rebuilding can take years. Only recently, I have finally had to learntrue patience, having gone through nearly a decade of backtracking, step by small step, to restore my playing to the high quality I had achieved in my 30s.
While struggling through complex scores, barely avoiding the numerous mine fields of technical challenges, intonation and rhythm, professional working musicians build a mighty array of tensions in their bodies.
A performer in a larger ensemble such as an orchestra is required to constantly adjust to the variable efforts of other players involved, including the whims and directions of the conductor!
“Get ‘er done!” is no joke for a struggling performer. It’s a survival strategy. As the old saying goes, “The show must go on!”
Summary and Conclusion
Impatience, both internal and external, leads to dysfunctional behavioural habits and mindless motivation. Many successes may be still be achieved in spite of impatient behaviour but those accomplishments will be fragile.
By pushing oneself towards desired goals, the greater the danger of misusing one’s body and hampering progress. Over time, a performer may grow accustomed to misuse, barely noticing discomfort which may then accumulate and cause damage for years.
Furthermore, bad habits developed though impatience are difficult to undo, even when the stressful pressure is released.
How do you avoid these insidious problems which can arise from various forms of impatience? I’ll discuss that in the second post of this series, “Skills Required for Patience”.
Would you like to share practice ideas with other musicians? Consider joining the Musician Practice Group on The Buzzing Reed.