Growing as a Musician: Progress Isn't Linear

0:01 what's up guys it's Scoobert Doobert. Today i want to talk about progress progress this is something

0:21 that i i've always had a problem with conceptualizing progress mapping out things like practiceor achievements milestones goals because i'm a little bit too lofty and that's how i'vealways been but what changed it all for me was when i met my then girlfriend my now wife

0:50 she is a runner really good runner and she told me and taught me that progress is not linearno matter how badly we want it to be there is no straight path of progress and once i started runningthat's where the lesson really sunk in you you think that i would i would have gotten it for music

1:16 but it's not as as clear but looking retroactively after running i was able to apply some of thestuff to music too so here's what i mean when you're running and you're trying to train up for amarathon you start off barely being able to run a few miles and then your goal is to run 26.2

1:39 miles and run it as fast as you can i'm not now i'm not like very good at this i'm like a four-hourmarathoner but i have done several of them and i'm planning to do one every year for the rest of mylife god willing if you think that every run's going to be better than your last you're going to giveup the reality is most of the runs are not even going to feel like a progression because you're

2:07 always trying to keep yourself in the zone of being uncomfortable and that's the whole dirtysecret of training in general be it for a marathon or be it for music the goal is to keep yourselfright in a place where you almost don't feel like you're making any progress because it's alwayshard it's always right up at that limit and if you keep yourself there you will find progress but it

2:32 will not be linear and it probably isn't even going to be that satisfying it's not going to be thatfelt until you hit a milestone or until you find those gaps where you break out of plateaus

2:44 in order to not plateau you have to keep adding but as you add you're going to feel like you're notready for that addition when you go from running a 13 mile run on one Sunday to the next Sundayyou're running a 14 mile run you go what the hell i just ran 13 miles shouldn't this be a lot easierit's like no because you're running 14 but the whole time you're going to feel like you suck at running

3:12 it's the same deal with music is that if you expect i'm going to play these these new instrumentsi'm going to do it every day until i get good if you're doing it right it's going to be a constant

3:27 pushing of your ceiling if you're doing it wrong you're going to plateau because you're going to bepracticing the same thing over and over and over again and learning how to do one thingand you're not actually going to improve you're going to feel like you're getting better but you'renot actually going to be getting better it's like this it's like my record KŌAN it is it's almost

3:51 illogical the way that progress really is musical progress running progress whatever language progress

4:00 the key to it all is to find that zone and if you don't find that zone you're going to slip

4:10 between the cracks so what i mean by like progress isn't linear is that some days you're going towake up and you're going to be worse than the day before and that's going to be very frustratingthat might happen for weeks or months you might continually be worse than you just were and then oneday you're going to wake up and you're going to feel all of those months of practice and growth

4:34 all at once it doesn't happen in a step-by-step kind of way that you would expect it to

4:43 be it on guitar be it with the language whatever and so it's like not giving up faithand not feeling like it should ever really be comfortable

4:56 another good example is the first time i ever uh scuba diaped scuba dove scuba dividendthe first time i did scuba it was actually really scary i will admit it you uh especiallywhen you're going under the water for the first time in your life and i happen to do a open waterdive rather than a pool dive which is your usual thing usually they take you to a pool where there

5:23 is no current and they just dunk you in and you walk around the bottom of the pool breathingthrough your scuba gear instead i was in Catalina island i had some friends that ran the dive programand they let me do my thing i go into the water and the first thing that i feel is the currentpushing and pulling me as i'm underwater breathing for the first time in my life

5:46 and the funny thing about scuba stuff is it's not actually the same amount of oxygen that you'd bebreathing of course it's not you have a tank that's limited and so you're breathing a differentblend you're in so your natural instinct is like you want to get more air and you're kind offreaking out so like you want to hyperventilate almost but my dive instructor did a really good

6:09 job of as i was going into the current he stopped me and he he he basically told me to stopum paddling and just let the current take me to watch the fish and see how they are being ledin and out of the kelp forest by this current and only once you feel that current once you feel it

6:36 give and take push and pull and you're no longer fighting against it once you get that rockingmotion that's when you're able to find progress and that's when you start going along the ocean floorbefore you know it your 30 feet underwater looking up and a completely different world

6:57 and that's the same thing going into like music learning an instrument is part of it is you haveto acclimate to that sense of not really being in control especially like when i first startedto learn drums not like i'm very good at drums but i'm way better than i was when i first startedto learn i had to kind of give in to the sense of my brain needs to rewire itself i need to be able

7:22 to do one thing with this hand another thing with this hand another thing with both my feetand not just think of one or two rhythms i need to think of four and they all need to

7:30 work together but work against each other that was not something physically i was capable ofdoing even though i could picture what i wanted to have happened in my head even though iprogrammed drums and had a really good sense of like time and feel and rhythm and subdivisionsand all all these theoretical concepts and was actually able to play them on guitar and pianos

7:51 like i had some limb independence but then you introduce feet my feet were and still are dumbbecause i've barely used them in my life i run but i don't i've never played like soccer reallyi've never you know i'm not i'm a musician i'm not the biggest athlete and and they were i'venever really involved in my musical journey yeah sure you tap your foot but nothing more complicated

8:17 than that it's not actually involved in the music and so in order to even start playing drumsi had to give into that current that ebb and flow of literally what's going on is my neurons arerewiring themselves to become capable it's not it's not i can't brute force that

8:40 i just have to do it enough train your brain to say this is something i'm trying to do noweventually your brain will listen it might take weeks might take months but then after that thenyou can really get to work but you have to find that that flow and you have to grind through

8:57 the physical rewiring of your brain then that's what progress is is it's painful learning is painfulbut it's it's worth it in the same way that exercise is worth ityou get to the other side and you don't really realize how far you've come

9:20 it's almost impossible to fully look back but that's one of the beauties of something like alike a marathon or having you know 15 years on an instrument is

9:32 every once in a while you'll do something and go wow like how am i even capable of that

9:40 because i still remember what it's like when i picked up my guitar for the first timeor when i heard a guitar solo so i want to do that and then eventually like you do itand you look back and go wow i made it all the way up that mountain and you look out in thedistance oh there's a bigger mountain over there you gotta go climb that and you put one foot

9:58 in front of the other and tell you do understanding that there will be some peaks and there will besome valleys there will be some times that you don't realize that you're going uphill and you'regonna be gassed you're hoofing it and you don't know why it's so hard until you realize you justmade it up another peak the progress will slow down and then every once in a while you're gonna hit

10:19 a valley and you're gonna you're gonna pick up pace and you're gonna be like oh my gosh i'm the besteverything's going so well until you hit another hill and that's just the way it is

10:29 the worst thing is to just hit plateau after plateau where you just go in these straight lines

10:36 that's that's the zone of stagnation if it's not painful anymore you need to try something elseyou need to push yourself it's like i think david bowie said this in an interview basicallythe second that you're making music that feels easy is the second that you're making bad music

10:58 you need to always be pushing yourself i think it was actually knows it was a Jonathan Higgsfrom everything everything that's what he was saying that he was saying like talking about theneed to reinvent is being fundamental to the artist's journey because if you just keep making thesame record over and over and over again it is the definition of plateauing and by doing that

11:22 i think the the muses are not super pleased because we are dynamic creatures you know i feel likethe goal is is for every 10 years or so to look back at the stuff you did 10 years ago and beproud of it but not feel like you could possibly make that again because i was a different personyou grown so much and it's harder to experience that growth moment to moment

11:50 and so don't i think that's like the center center piece here is like give into the work

11:57 try to make it painful push it up to that level of emotionally painful not necessarily physicallypainful push it up into that zone of uncomfortability and then go with that flow ride that tide

12:14 and don't worry too much about those milestones get to those milestones and you'll knowset goals have ideas of the mountain that you're pointed towards and then just hoof it

12:28 look down at your feet as you walk towards it and you'll be surprised at the pace that you makeeven though it might feel like a snail's pace you will close gaps fasterthen you realize if you just put in the work this is a message for myself to because it's not

12:49 always perfect sometimes it's very hard to decide to give back on the horse again and put in some morework but that's what i'm about to go do i'm gonna go make some music now and i hope it's good andeven if it's not the point is doing the good music will come hopefully some of it's come already

13:15 if you want to keep in touch reach out to me Scoobert Doobert dot pizza is where you can find all of mylinks um and happy to cover any topics ranging from you know creativity to music theory engineeringwhatever on this craze little podcast i've got going so thank you for listening this is Scoobert Doobert reach out scoobertdoobert.pizza always here to chat bye