That was interesting, I think. Last night my wife and I went dancing with a crowd of 20-30 somethings at a private club we belong to. The older crowd stayed home. A good time was had by all. After a lesson on the "Hollywood Lindy Hop" the band swung into action. The dance floor was packed. They set good tempi. They knew what they were doing.  The drummer keep it real simple. We had fun dancing. 

Before and after the swing set the band played function music for general dancing. I counted one new tune by Taylor Swift in their repertoire. The rest was the same repertoire I played for 35 years and I retired from that line of work over a decade ago. Most of the musicians were in my cohort. Lot's of grey. Tunes from the 60's, 70's, a few 80's, no 90's, two standards for slow dancing.   

I felt I was in a time warp and stuck in 1985. That was no fun. I like 2019. 

best, 

David

The idea of an accountability partner has been around for some time. They help us stay committed. 

The combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation has been shown to work best in staying in any long-term project. That means of course that the musician is internally driven to succeed and see’s a coach/teacher/mentor regularly to stay honest and accountable.

I have a drum coach: Enrique Loyola, he helps me work on the concepts introduced by my mentor Terry Clarke. I never want to let Terry down. 

I now have an accountability partner: Marc, a NYC musician I met last summer. We email each other our weekly practice numbers. It’s working like a charm. Last week 9.75 hours up from 8.5 hours the week before for me. He did over 20. Yikes. Some others I know are up there too. My goal is 10 hours per week on the drum kit. 

I now carefully watch my schedule for any open time. Every little bit counts and easily adds an hour or two a week to the total. In these micro slots, I focus on a single thing. It’s all very satisfying.

Now today is a snow day here in Toronto offering me an unexpected two hour slot. Off to practice. 

Cheers,


David

My bet is this. If you are interested in a blog such as this, you’ve seen way too many new years. And, you know the futility of making new year’s resolutions. If I’ve learned anything in 60 years it is this: we are what we do, intentions are meaningless. Aristotle asserted we are our habits. Blah, blah, blah.

So, what are the actions/habits that allow us to keep going?

1. Get enough sleep
2. Work out
3. Don’t eat crap
4. Put down that wine glass, you've had enough
   
5. Find a music coach
6. Seek out new playing opportunities with younger players from time to time
7. Count and measure carefully

​Have a great year.
 
David
 

I did it. I got a trainer, a boxing trainer at that. Day 1 done. I'm still standing. I was in much better shape that I thought. I look forward to our next meeting. Who knew boxing was so interesting?

Aaron, the trainer, goes how was that? I said, "call me in the morning and I'll let you know." Right know I feel like a super hero. Cool. Now off to work. 

Best, 

​David

Thank you to Martin Hagger Professor of Psychology at Curtin University for the above picture. 

I've come to believe that the field of sports psychology has a lot to teach us musicians, both as professionals and students.  

The good professor explores in some detail each of the above areas.

• Motivation
• Confidence

• Resilience

• Pregame routines

​Over the next few blog posts I will dig deeper into this area. 

cheers, 

David

American averages

4.5 hours a day watching TV
1. 4 hours a day staring at media on our phones

It gets worse. According to CNN we spend upward of 50 hours of the 58 hours the average person has available for leisure, staring at some kind of damn screen watching/listening/and doing god knows what. That leaves very little for practicing our instruments, jamming, making music and having fun.

Get all the depressing news here. CNN report. 

The solution is obvious. 

Best, 

David Story
www.davidstory.ca

Getting old can suck. Arthritis can sideline anyone. But my 77 year old student found out there are some work arounds that keep her in the music game. 

She started a webpage of original arrangements of folksongs from her home country of Scotland. She has learned to score the music in finale, create mp3 files, print the pdfs, and put it all together in a lovely website. It's a busy site with hundreds of downloads a week of her easy piano arrangements. She is having a ball. Each week at lessons she has a few new arrangements for class. We review, I suggest, she updates the files and presto up they go. 

My wife, who has taken up the fiddle in her 60's, is enjoying playing some of the melodies. 

What a great example of "staying in the game".

Best, 

​David Story

Cycling home today I passed a house having a BBQ with a live band jamming in the back yard. Band is a generous term. Guitar, bass, drum thingys. It was wonderfully awful: enthusiastic, spirited, sincere, and likely slightly drunk. All I wanted to do was run home grab a drum or keyboard and knock on the door with beers in hand.  I overcame the urge. But it made me think why do we jam. 

1. Keep our social connections alive. As we age this is a big reason. Isolation kills. For the cheery data check out this fine article with footnotes to real data. Loneliness kills more folks than obesity, so the data apparently shows.  Yikes. Here is one study. https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
2. Impress the girls, even if at this age they are 60+. Two thumbs up.
   
3. It's fun.

So, in conclusion, it's time to dust off the guitar, get out of the house and meet some folks.

Cheers,

David

It is possible to be doing all the right things to succeed but realise you've planted your garden on the wrong plot of land. To continue the metaphor, the plants look sickly, or worse refuse to show their heads. What then? 

Change your environment. 

It works.

Same effort, different soil=different results.

Five things you can do.

1. Are your colleagues worn and tired? Seek out some younger ones tied to a different scene.
2. Move cities. I left Hamilton with a piano teaching studio of mostly children. In Toronto mostly adults. And much higher wages. 
3. Learn a new instrument. Really. Drumming in my 50's took me to some cool places. Still does. 
4. Compose and present your own music. Why not? If it works, bravo. If it doesn't nobody will remember anyways.
5. Investigate new parallel paths in your own neighbourhood. Maybe the soil in your patch is fertile with a different crop. 

Cheers, 

​David