The small practicing creature, Libertango, and sexiness fails

Sharon's Weekly Head Dump

Got some new subscribers this week—thank you to the folks who have been recommending this newsletter!—so a quick note on how this works, which long-time readers can skip. Because I have the loveliest, kindest ex-Patreon readers who contribute to my recording fund, this weekly newsletter is designed for paying supporters (subscription levels here, and you can customize how much you want to contribute). Every 4-6 weeks I post one free newsletter that all non-paying readers get.

If you do not have the budget or inclination to pay—and you don’t need to explain why—but would like to get the weekly posts, just respond to this email asking for a comp and I can comp you a subscription. I would much prefer this to you signing up for a subscription and then canceling, because I do have to log payments and refunds myself when I do my business accounting and that creates a lot more work for me.

Today’s newsletter is paid, so if you’re a free subscriber, you’ll hit a paywall. The next free post will likely go out at the end of August.

---

I don’t know when it ends, but a not-insignificant part of my post-schooling musical journey has involved retooling my approach to practicing. For the longest time I internalized the frantic, urgent approach that so many teachers applied to practicing: you need to practice now and you need to practice constantly and practicing is the most important thing that you’re not doing enough of, drop the other things you’re doing and practice more, etc. etc.

(To be very fair to my teachers, it’s entirely possible that they really had to double down on this approach with me because I spent a great deal of my youth being a little shit breezily underpracticing because you can go a long way coasting on natural talent with minimal effort.)

The thing is, this approach works and, to some degree, is kind of necessary because kids are little shits young musicians often require more external discipline, and because there are so many immovable deadlines and strict requirements built into the first two decades of musical training. There are performance, theory, and aural exams; there are recitals; there are competitions; there are auditions; there are rehearsals and workshops and festivals. These things are so packed into the academic year that just being prepared for each required thing involves nonstop sprinting to meet the next deadline. And when you’re young, you have way more natural endurance and energy to get through all the sprints.

In the past several years my body has very rudely asserted that it is soft and has needs (??? citation needed) and that I cannot simply squeeze endless frantic practicing out of it for the rest of my life. The nature of how I make music has also changed with the disappearance of exams (good [bleep]ing riddance!) and such things from my life. “Be able to muscle through this Chopin etude at quarter=144 in two weeks for a clipboard-wielding jury” and “Figure out what you want to communicate in this work and how you’ll express it to a paying audience so they leave happy” are two very different missions.