The Shed: A Musicians Guide to Meaningful Practice

‘The shed’ is a mythical world created by musicians to explain the process in which self-reflection guides a metaphorical journey to a place of self-improvement, in the vein of carving a better musical version of oneself. This process is shared by anyone who possesses a musical soul, whether that person is young or old. Pioneers of the music tradition are prime examples of such phenomena. Stravinsky cast himself into a cold room in Switzerland, where he wrote the ever-inspiring Rite of Spring. Sonny Rollins used the Williamsburg Bridge as a setting to help shape his musical intuition, and create a body of work that defined his legacy. John Coltrane used his attic as a venue to compose A Love Supreme, which told the journey of his transition to divinity. 

In modern-day standards, it is hard to quantify these epic tales that are so far removed from our current reality. For most of us, the musical journey starts at a young age, with us getting pulled by the collar, to face the dreaded piano teacher. When I wish to look at a musician's guide to meaningful practice, this applies to all, from child to adult. Although we might all think we are in different places in our musical development, in reality, we are all working towards the same thing. It is not to appease our demanding teachers, nor is it to gain the attention of thunderous applause. The pursuit of music is a journey of self-reflection, in which we hope to gain happiness. Although we may think we are garnering crowns of knowledge through this process, what we are actually gaining is a discovery of happiness, in the discovery of a musical voice inside of us. 

Step 1: 

Create an intention for your practice session today, a week from today, a month from today, and a year from today. 

The primary objective of the shed is to refine your musical voice with a direct intention in mind. Without setting an intention before your practice, you are limiting the amount of growth you are willing to make in a given period, sometimes this can persist for one's entire life. What does this intention look like? 

Firstly, look at where you would like to be in a year. Rather than immediately thinking in the present, think of what you would like to be doing in a year. This can range from applying to a specific institution, moving to a specific city, writing a specific body of work, or embodying a specific spiritual connection to the music. This will help guide the more short-term goals we have when making intentions. When we have an annual goal created, it is time to shift our focus to improve on a month-to-month basis. Say if we want to compose a full album, we can tell ourselves, “For me to achieve this in a full year, I need to compose one song a month”. For the same example, you could also say, “For this month, I am going to just think about what I want the instrumentation for my next project to be, so I can spend 2-3 months composing the music”, which is a much more realistic scenario. The time of a monthly intention is great for thinking long-term, as it gives us time to collect our thoughts into a cohesive web of ideas. It is important when working on monthly objectives to be very specific, while an annual objective can be broader. The reasoning for this is that the annual goal we give ourselves is usually more general, and the monthly intentions give us time to figure out a way to find the solutions to this vague year-long idea. This process is often messy and requires refined organization for it to be successful. Once you have a concept, you have to act upon that spark. For each week you have to hold yourself accountable in a caring way. In an institution, your weekly goals are to appease your private teacher, so you can impress them with the work you have been able to do. During the times when you can truly practice for yourself, it is easier to give yourself goals that are much more meaningful and caring in their intention. This means that rather than setting rigid goals for your improvement, realize that life is a thing as well and that you improve at a dynamic rate rather than a static rate. That means you can set a goal for learning a specific melody in 12 keys, and if you only get through 10 be happy that you were able to do that, rather than focusing on the two you were unable to do. You have your entire life to do those others, and it is going to be the first thing you will do the following week anyway. Finally, you have to think about the intention in which you practice your instrument on a day-to-day basis. This process is far more intimate than the relationship you have with any of the other objectives, as you are always in the present, rather than the inevitable and unknowable future. This means that you can have certain expectations of yourself in a year, but you have to realize that you are yourself today. To accomplish a goal daily is to understand how you can connect your annual, monthly, and weekly goals in one ribbon. But in reality, we can’t accomplish all of these goals at once, rather we chip at it away, as one does in a woodshed. The more time you spend shedding away at your instrument, the more connected you get to the music. The quality of your practice determines this, as the person wielding the tools is far more important than the tools themselves. You can spend your entire life making jagged wooden tables, where you can take the time to apply yourself, have patience, and create a smoothly finished marble table through hard work, compassion, dedication, and a strong intention. 

Step 2:

Rest is paramount to the growth of an individual

So many of us believe in this lie that berating ourselves with constant practice will lead to the eventual destination of musical excellence. In reality, the tool of resting can be the key in the musical process, as long as the music is the focus when we practice, and life is the focus when we rest. In a sense, sometimes we get better when we don’t play our instrument and enjoy our lives. If we solely commit every resting minute to music, then we are starving ourselves from the tangible fixtures of our life that we refuse to look at. Most importantly, this includes our relationships with other people. By talking and sharing ideas of life with other people, we create meaning in which we express through music. I can say on a personal note, that when I took a break from my mad practicing sprees in university, it gave me time to breathe, and the time I would first come back to the horn. This rest can be easily taken for granted, but it allows us to be free from music. Consider what you can do around music, that will help positively aid your life. If you focus your efforts on cooking food, not only will you have the satisfaction of making great music, but you can share great meals with your friends. You can grow a garden, and take part in the process of growing life. All of these things will only help strengthen your connection to music. 

Step 3: 

Listen to the music you love, and make friends with music you are skeptical of.

When you listen to an album that has never entered your sonic space, you are going to perceive it much differently than from an album you have perceived a hundred times. For me, an aspect of practicing is challenging myself to find new recordings that will give me new ideas, while returning to those albums I have listened to a hundred times and getting something new out of it. For me, this process is important, as you challenge your notions of musical acceptability. 

When you listen to something new, you are doing one of four things. You are listening to something you already know you will like, you are listening to something you think you won’t like, you are listening to something and get the opposite emotional effect from what you originally intended, or you are going into things with a blank slate. I think a balance of all of these things is necessary to become a more informed person. If you can indulge these concepts, the days of “that music is stupid” will be behind you. When you listen to something you know you already will like, you are committing yourself to have fun. This is comparable to the child-like happiness we can experience. For me, this used to be listening to a new Michael Dease album. Whenever I would turn on a new record of his, it would then be in my ears for months to come. Although this is important, it is also easy to get a narrow vision and to not embrace others as you are so happy with your concept. Next, listening to something you think you won’t enjoy is equally as important, but much harder than listening to something you are familiar with. You can have the voice in the back of your head, saying “this sucks”. As easy as it is to do this, it will only polarize your musical conceptions. For me, these musicians were Frank Rosalino and Eric Dolphy. I had put off listening to these musicians for the longest time because to me the music wasn’t what I was looking for. The reason for this was because it was hard for me to embrace change in this way. Once I got hip to some of their different albums, I would get a taste for them, and they would get turned into that first category of music listening. The third category is interesting, as your perception of an album you haven't heard defies your pre-conceived notion of the music. When this feeling of “I was wrong” to assume that it was good, and it's not actually great or vice versa, comes to a point where it actively makes a change in your musical taste. This most often happens when you listen to an artist, and their new sound just wants the way it used to be. The importance of this makes you seek new music, rather than becoming friends with the music you once hated. When your expectations are changed, you look for something new. The last category to me is somehow more important than all of the others, to enter a sonic space with no intentions. When you hold yourself free from expectations, you detach yourself from an egotistical way of viewing the music. In this lens, you are just listening to music, and it just is what it is. If you don’t like it fine, if you like it that's great. I find this can hold us accountable for having narrow ways of viewing music, as, in reality, music is a short-lived history, in the perspective of space and time.

Step 4:

Just have fun

It’s important to realize where we started when we first came to music. When you have played music for longer than ten years, you don’t realize the same things then from the days of not knowing how to put your instrument together. Our connection to our instruments change as we age, and it's good to put that into perspective. If you are a tenured professor, your opinion and stances on music may be different than the curious new musicians who are searching for new sounds. What is important to recognize is that no matter our age, background, race, gender, we all make valid points when throwing our hats into the sonic ring of music. With this in mind, think of the joy we once embraced when playing music with other people. Let this concept of joy seep into your way of music, as it is the one thing that will define your relationship with the artform you should love.

‘The shed’ is a term that has a different meaning to all of us, and it is a concept that a lot of us participate in, without exploring its meaning. To me, it is a place where I can escape reality, and allow myself the space to reflect on the abstract artform we call music. By setting intentions, allowing rest, listening to music, and having fun with the music, we can set a guide to explore meaningful practice. All of us add meaningful dialogue to the world of music and it is a gift that allows us to grow not only as musicians, but as people.