The Road to Happiness in Playing Music

We hear a great master of the guitar, and say to ourselves, "I want to be able to play like that!"  This is perfectly natural, and if we didn't have those inspiring role models to follow, we would achieve far less.

The problem with this approach, however, is that we may feel that true satisfaction is going to be deferred until we reach some high peak of excellence; as we plod through beginners' music, scales and exercises, continually measuring our basic abilities with those of our favourite players, we are likely to feel a sense of futility, and that an unimaginably long, tedious and difficult journey lies ahead.

The truth is that most accomplished players have no sense of having arrived at their destination, but rather of continuing the journey they began many years before; there is always something new to learn and perform, and there is always room for technical improvement. 

Therefore a different attitude needs to be adopted by the student: the real joys and satisfactions are derived from the progress that is being made, day by day, lesson by lesson, year by year.  Small achievements should be acknowledged and celebrated, and each piece of music should be tackled just as if it were a towering work of great beauty and complexity.

You see: it's the journey that is the real source of happiness, regardless of where we perceive ourselves to be on that road.  Quite the worst thing would be to arrive at our destination... what then?  There would be only repetition of former achievements, a sense of staleness with the repertoire, and a loss of interest and enjoyment.  We would probably find ourselves taking up golf.

Provided a piece of music has real merit, no matter how seemingly simple it may be, it can be exploited for every drop if its artistic worth, and here lies the road to happiness in playing music.