I record myself playing piano almost every time I sit down to practice.  But I’ve found over time I’m just performing as best as I can so I can listen back later and hopefully be reassured I’m good enough.  As far as being a good improvisor, I don’t think that’s how it’s achieved.  As a matter of fact, I believe now that what I happen to be practicing on won’t show up in my natural, spur of the moment improvising I may do on a gig for many weeks.  Or longer!  So I’m almost practicing something that I don’t even get to hear the results of for some time.  So it’s more like dieting and working out.  You put in the work now, you get the results much later.   Here’s an excerpt from a book I’ve been trying to put together for a long time.  It’s just my thoughts on struggle.   

The struggle
Problem solving is not my favorite phrase.  Because to me, life being a problem to be solved doesn’t sound like much fun.  I’d rather call it living life to the fullest or how to enjoy your life the most.  The answer for me anyway is you enjoy life the most when you understand there is a struggle involved.  It should be a struggle.  If you never struggle, you won’t enjoy your life very much.  It’s just a fact of life.  However, we do seek to be comfortable.  We naturally go for the easiest route to where we want to be.  We also have goals and dreams we want to see happen.  It’s funny when someone wins the lottery it’s on the news.  But when someone earns a million dollars through hard work and struggle, we never hear about it.  Playing the lottery is fun, but certainly not a struggle.  The real story is about the man who did it through struggle. 

If I hear something I want to learn on piano but I can’t play it yet, well, there’s my next struggle.  It’s a problem that needs to be solved.  There’s the overarching problem… the whole song, worrying about memorizing it etc.  But once I’ve seen the whole problem, I zero in on all the smaller parts.  Some are easy ones and some are not.  Let’s take a 2 bar phrase.  Then break it down to it’s elements, what notes are involved, what fingering can we use, what intervals are there, then I play through it out of time.  Then I add time with a metronome, Then as I speed it up I may realize I need to make an adjustment in fingering or something like that.  Then in a few minutes of struggling, I can play it better.  The next day I start from where I left off and clean it up.  I make sure I’m precise in rhythm and I’m staying true the accents of the original performance or transcription.  I make a conscious effort to try and feel the music.  I record it and listen to it and make more adjustments.  But all the while, I’m aware there is a whole song to learn and I move on to the next struggle.  There are many struggles ahead to be able to play this song. 

love to play the piano.  But sometimes I get frustrated while I’m practicing that I can’t play something yet.  Sometimes I even slip into beating myself up and saying negative things about my playing.  “You aren’t good enough” type of things.  It’s easy to do if you aren’t careful.  But I’ve learned this just means I’m tired and need to take a break.  If I can’t enjoy the struggle, focusing on the fact I love to play, that’s a big problem.  Similarly, you need to focus on the fact you love living.  Struggle IS living.  If you aren’t struggling, you aren’t living.  Dead people don’t struggle.  I get a lot of pleasure out of being able to play something that I wasn’t sure if I could play, took steps and struggled, and now I can play it.  I like the struggle even better than success, and certainly better than failure.  Success is super sweet, but rather fleeting.  Failure is painful, but if properly defined, a great learning tool.   

I want to thank Rex Benson for signing a song Karen Loveless and I wrote called "One Breath at a Time".  We wish him (and us!) lots of luck in finding placement. The demo had that magic we always hope for.  We had Sean Paddock on drums, Kevin Vonderhofen on bass, Travis Newman on guitar, Melissa DuVall on vocals, and myself on keys.  I mixed it and Karen pitched it around.  Good luck Rex Benson Music!