Consistency in practice and having goals are a sure way to improve your playing. But do you have the fire within you?
That drive, that anger, hunger, that push to improve. You are not born with the fire it is something from your experience in life that sparks this surge.
Let me tell you a story. I started taking lessons when I was 5 years old. Like many kids at that age it was just something my parents had me do. I had a natural ear and could pick music up without reading notes. During the week when it was time to practice, I hated it! It was difficult and would throw myself onto the couch declaring that I couldn't do it. But there was a turning point. One evening my mother took me, my sister and her friend to see a piano performance at a university near by. What I witnessed absolutely blew me away. She played the most beautiful Bach French and English suites I have ever heard. I have never seen someone express so much while playing. The use in the body and arms in creating beautifully crafted lines of Bach was something I have never even knew you could do. It was at this performance that sparked the fire within me to level up my playing. Since then I began to take the piano seriously.
See when you have acquired that fire, your whole mindset shifts. Where before you were directionless without a cause now is hungry, starving, ravenous to soak up everything you can get your hands on.
You may be wondering why I said anger up above. The anger I mean is productive, results-oriented, not accepting sub-par. The anger shakes up one's lazy, slapdash attitude.
Lessons and practice after that night were no longer tedious and boring. The more pieces I learned the hungrier I got, until learning the pieces were not enough, I had to know what was going on behind the scenes, the WHY and HOW of the music.
Where will YOU find your fire? For me it happened from a concert but it can happen many different ways depending on your own life experiences. Concerts help because the performers spends many hours practice and perfecting their music, and the performance is really the pinnacle of that practice. You will experience the result of hundreds of hours of practice in that hour of concert.
Your fire is out there....
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