My friend Ryan from Texas recently
sent me a link to a YouTube video his 13 year-old daughter Skylar created.
She’s covering the song “It Will Rain.”
Her piano skills are
competent (learned from YouTube!) her voice is in pitch with a lovely timbre.
She’s attractive, fresh and yearning. She could go anywhere – or nowhere. It’s
up to her.
She reminds me of myself at around
that age. I had some talent. I had written a few songs, sung in a band, taken
some lessons, had a few gigs. Then I didn’t win a musical contest, got my
feelings hurt and dropped music for “real life.”
35 years later, I wish I
could have told my 16 year-old self about the three pillars to success in music
– and, maybe life.
Find your unique talent. When
I started playing guitar, I thought I’d be the next Melissa Etheridge – gutsy,
angry, dynamic. As it turns out, I didn’t have a rusty, belting rock voice. A softer,
folkier approach worked (think Mary Chapin Carpenter), but as a passable
songwriter, I had limited success.
It wasn’t until my companions
at a dinner party egged me to sing a couple of torch songs that I could imagine
singing jazz. Jazz was always attractive, but a little too hot, vulnerable and sultry
for my feminist frame on life.
But singing jazz at a ripe
nectarine 48 is not like 23, and jazz finally felt like a tailored evening
dress; snug to my body, smooth velvet and in just the right color! I had found my
music at last.
Maybe your niche is comedy
songs, or children’s music. I had a dear friend who excelled in Hawaiian
slack-key guitar music. This is characterized by open tunings and dangling a
needle over the guitar strings (from a thread hanging from the mouth) to produce
a soft, chiming sound. He was so passionate and the best (and only one of his
kind) in Buffalo.
Finding your singular voice
will take time and probably be frustrating, but will pay off as people discover
(and reward) the original that is you.
Work like a dog. This as not
as obvious as it might seem. In an era of instant stars ala “America’s Got
Talent,” and “American Idol,” we have come to view success as talent + opportunity
= meteoric success. And so, with all the other upstream swimming salmon, musical
hopefuls scour opportunities, waiting in long lines to be heard, get auditioned
– becoming demoralized (as I had) at the smallest failure.
This model disempowers the
artist. It puts all the control in the hands of the judges, observers and
critics. What sets the greatest musician apart surely is talent, but it is the
unseen hours of work that boosts her over the top.
While her fellow hopefuls
attend endless open mics and talent shows looking for praise, she is in the
basement singing, working, building on the talent she has. Work is her secret
weapon – her edge.
In his book Outliers, Malcolm
Gladwell writes that it takes 10,000 hours of work before the greats
experienced success (Bill Gates, the Beatles, Beethoven, Tiger Woods).
While
one might quibble with the hour count, hard work is the non-glamorous component
common to most success stories. You can’t
control shifts in taste or create cultural tsunamis like Lady Gaga has, but doing the work? It’s all yours.
Seek qualified criticism and
take advice. In the current “everyone gets a trophy” “student-of-the-month”
atmosphere, we have become soft. Everyone desires to be praised and no one
likes to hear the truth.
At my very first jazz gig, I
sang in front of a small crowd in a coffee shop. I had prepared three songs and
this was my first experience singing without a guitar in my hands. Not knowing
what to do with them, I stuck them in my pockets.
In attendance was an ancient
jazz aficionado named Harvey Rogers. Old enough to have and give an opinion on
everything, he shouted from the audience “take your hands out of your pockets!”
Though mortified, you can be
sure I did and from that moment on, paid attention to what my body was doing as
well as my voice, later watching videos of Liza Minnelli and Nancy Wilson for
good examples of stage presence.
I also have two vocal coaches
– both old Italian guys who have been around the music business block. Guy
Boleri regularly shouts at me for poor intonation and sloppy phrasing. Andy Anselmo puts me through endless scales and vocal exercises to improve tone and
berates me to “sculpt the words!”
My feelings have been hurt on
many occasions by both of them – fighting tears a few times too. Maybe it’s my
age, but I can finally take criticism without permanently folding. It’s
beneficial for me and the critics are so hard because they must think I’m good
enough to take it.
The three pillars: find your
talent, work hard, let go of your ego. I wish someone had been able to tell me
these things when I was Skylar’s age. But, somehow, I doubt I would have
listened.
