How to choose your musical path?

The beginnings of my music making started in the music center. I was about 7 when I went to my first piano lesson. I didn’t show any great interest in music at the time, I just treated it like a school – it was a duty, you had to learn.

So I practiced, sometimes more willingly, sometimes less willingly, but subconsciously I gained certain skills and shaped discipline. After a few years, I got into a music school, where I entered the classical guitar class. The piano began to fade into the shadows, and the guitar became my new passion. The more willing I was to practice this instrument, the more entertaining pieces I was asked 🙂 I was lucky to find a teacher who, apart from the obligatory “classics”, also gave me entertainment repertoire – blues, rock, and Latin. Then I knew for sure that this was something that was “playing in my soul”, or at least I knew it was this direction. Soon I had to make a decision about high school – either music = classical or general education. I knew that when I went to the musical, I would struggle with a repertoire that I didn’t want to play at all. I went to high school, I bought an electric guitar and together with my friends we created a band, we played whatever we wanted, learning how to work in a band, arranging, conscientiously, on a slightly different basis than at school.

I do not want to evaluate, say that one or the other choice was better / worse. Everyone has their own way, sometimes you have to grit your teeth for difficult and tedious exercises to bring results. I do not regret my decision, it may be too dark a scenario, but I was afraid that the continuation of this kind of learning would completely kill my love for music, as I understood it. The next step was the Wrocław School of Jazz and Popular Music, where I could very brutally revise my skills and level. I saw how much sacrifice it takes to fulfill the dreams of beautiful playing. The words “man learns throughout his life” began to be very true when I got to know new harmonic and rhythmic issues and a sea of ​​other topics. If someone has enough determination and brain capacity, he or she can try to learn everything, but it will not work anyway 🙂 I realized that you have to take a path, set realistic goals. I have a problem with laziness all the time, but I know that if I start with small steps, but consistently follow them, the results will immediately appear.

Taking a path may mean something different for everyone. It may be a form of exercise that suits us, it may be some genre of music in which we want to develop, or it may simply be learning a specific topic fluently in every key, or a particular song. If someone is more advanced and, for example, creates their own compositions, has a band, setting a goal can mean something great, such as setting a specific recording date, or just organizing regular rehearsals.

As musicians, our job is to develop. Of course, music is supposed to bring us joy, not only toil and hard work, but who of you, after many months of playing, did not say that you are still playing the same, that the phrases are repetitive, that the chords are still in the same arrangements, and more and more learned pieces become ordinary tasks of new chord strings or new melodies? Where is our enthusiasm and enthusiasm, passion for the music we have come to love?

After all, each of us once “molested” the “rewind” button on the tape recorder to listen to some licks, solos for the 101st time. In order to become an inspiration for the next musicians one day, we have to choose our own development path and keep a close eye on the exercises. Of course, everyone has more and less “fertile” stages of development, but being disciplined, we know that every conscious, thoughtful contact with the instrument and exercising “with the head” improves our level, even when we think that we have learned nothing new today .

So ladies and gentlemen, for instruments, for players – practice, inspire yourself and use the many available sources, choose your own development path so that it is the most effective and pleasant for you at the same time!