Hey everyone,
Maintaining focus, staying motivated and avoiding burnout…these are a few things I get asked about by students and while there is no one-size-fits-all approach to this, something that I find almost always works for me is reconnecting with some of the music that inspired me as a played when I was younger, because reconnecting with that almost always gives me a charge and re-stokes the motivational fire to get better!
This is something I’ve fallen back on recently myself (I get tired and semi-burned out as easily as the next person) and as it happens, the band I’ve been reconnecting with is Dream Theater. John Myung (as some of you might already know) was one of my key musical influences in my formative years as a bass players and was (along with Anthony Jackson and John Patitucci), one of my key motivations in switching to a 6-string bass as my primary instrument.
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I’ve been preparing the song ‘Scarred’ (from the Awake record) for a recording session where I’m also going to be filming a whole stack of new lessons for you all, and as part of my prep to record a complete take of that tune I’ve been getting myself back into the DT headspace and musical mindset, somewhere I’ve not really been for quite some time. I mentioned this to a good friend of mine while we were rehearsing for an upcoming classical project, and he hipped me to the fact that all the original demo tracks from the Falling Into Infinity record had now been released. The only one of those I was familiar with was Raise The Knife (which they played on the Score live DVD) and there were other tracks on there I’d never heard before in any form, as well as totally different arrangements of songs that made it onto the record, as well as the demo version of Metropolis Pt.2 that I never thought I’d see on an official DT release (thank you Inside Out!).
In listening to these old songs, I was really taken back to what it was that I love about Dream Theater’s music from that era, when they were a genuine progressive band as opposed to the metal band that writes long songs that they have now become. That’s not throwing shade at them per se, it’s more that their music and writing has morphed and gone to a place that I don’t care to follow, which is fine. Bands and the music change as much as people change! The music they wrote between 1986 and 2002 occupies a very special place in my heart, and listening to these demos took me right back to the headspace of discovering it for the first time (which in a way, I was doing all over again!). The music has texture, melody, some monster chops, unison and counterpoint ideas, harmonic interest, space for all the instruments and some of John Myung’s very best and most creative bass work allied to production that gives the sense of the music existing ‘in a space’ as opposed to having John Petrucci’s guitar cabinets an inch from the side of my head the way DT records are recorded and mixed these days. There is also a real sense of fresh ideas and artistic vision and wanting to go on a musical journey rather than endlessly working a given idea. It was a thoroughly enjoyable 90 minutes of listening time!
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Reconnecting with all this over the space of several days really helped to chase away the musical fatigue that I’ve been feeling over the last week or so. Preparing to record 4 tunes and almost 20 lessons has been a lot, but some musical reconnection really helped to blow out the cobwebs and recharge the musical batteries. Practice is less taxing, ideas come to me more easily and things generally feel less ‘stale’, so if this is resonating with you, I would absolutely recommend throwing on some of the records that first inspired you to play music and sitting for an hour or so and just taking the music in again.
This might feel a little counter intuitive (as I mentioned in the Listen First. Practice Second) article, but as with the gym sometimes the work we do away from the instrument is as important as the work we do with it. It’s incredibly easy to get completely submerged in the stuff you are working on (as I have absolutely been the last couple of days) but it’s absolutely crucial that you occasionally come up for air and keep in touch with the musical roots and keep them fresh and healthy.
Hope you’re all keeping well, staying inspired and as always leave your thoughts and comments below! :)
I should be doing this! There’s just not enough listening in my day right now. Thanks!
Sage advice! I could imagine this creeping up under the radar for many. Might just set some time aside on a regular basis to just chill and listen to my influences.