Drum Tips - Music Lessons - Stop Reinventing the Wheel

George Bernard Shaw's famous maxim - "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches." -encapsulates the low esteem often placed on teaching, however, it is terribly wrong.

Should the little time we have in life be spent reinventing the wheel? Such a terrible waste! To go through one's life trying to figure out things that other folks have already figured out. This is why we study history, learning from the past so we do not repeat the same mistakes that have already been made by others.

Working with a great teacher is simply the most efficient way of benefiting from the efforts of all the folks who have already spent lifetimes making the mistakes you do not need to repeat.

Basic concepts have been figured out – invented, refined, and perfected over the past few thousand years. To sit and learn an instrument without the help of a good teacher is to try and figure out thousands of years of this – invention, refinement, and perfection – all on your own. The last time I checked, most people don't live long enough to figure out thousands of years worth of study on their own.

When I started getting serious about playing drums I had all these ideas floating around in my head, and my hands just couldn't keep up. I could have spent years trying to figure out how to get my hands to do what I wanted. Instead I started working with a great drum teacher in the San Francisco Bay area named Chuck Brown. Chuck had already spent the years figuring out what to practice. He was able to show me so many things that I would have wasted years figuring out. He helped me to quickly develop the tools I needed so that I could play the drums the way I was hearing them my head.

I have worked with too many "musician/artists" who believe that working with a music teacher will "smother" their inner creativity. This is absolute CRAP! Working with a good teacher will show you how to expand the vocabulary of your inner creativity.

Have you ever noticed that the really great musicians, artists, authors, actors, etc., are all happy to discuss the great experiences they have had during some form of formal training in their art.

The "wheel" is out there, it works great, don't waste your time trying to reinvent it. Go find yourself a great teacher, learn everything you can from that teacher and spend your time inventing new, fresh, exciting things that we have not heard before.

1 Comments:

Blogger Matt said...

Hey there Troy,

Love the site.

Monday, April 23, 2007