Yesterday, the biggest issue I faced was getting tense while working on music—literally clenching my jaw while playing. I’m taking this too seriously.
I’m currently working on an instrumental song I’ve randomly called “Tasty Message.” I’ve reached that exciting point where I know it has enough interesting ideas and material to become a full arrangement, so I’ve mentally moved it to the “arrange” stage in my project management system. But now I’m finding it challenging to connect these good ideas. Too much good material? Ha!
In trying to compose transitions and through-compose from the good ideas to find workable variations, I think I’m getting stressed. But damn, it’s just fun! Even though music is all I do now. My intent is that I’m doing this professionally. But even so. It’s just music. And the best music is play.
As jazz pianist and educator Kenny Werner–obviously a (much more) professional musician–says in his book “Effortless Mastery,” “this is just music. It’s not important.” I’ve been reading his other book, “Becoming the Instrument,” which prompted this reflection. His approach to physically playing instruments has been profound for me—my playing has become incredibly more relaxed. His work draws heavily from Daoist principles, and I’m trying to internalize these concepts myself. But his advice tends to focus on the act of playing rather than composing and producing, so I’m struggling to develop “effortless arrangement” or “effortless composing”—what the Daoists call wu wei, or effortless action.
The thing is, I’m fighting against the natural flow. There’s this constant tension between wanting to force the arrangement forward (yang energy—active, pushing) and needing to let it unfold naturally (yin energy—receptive, allowing). I keep trying to muscle through the creative blocks instead of trusting the process. Classic yin-yang imbalance.
So why get stressed or tense about it? What does it matter if I get the part played well? Or get it played well quickly? What does it matter if it takes 30 takes to get it right? Or 50 bad takes to create enough audio to comp together an acceptable final version?
It doesn’t matter!
If it takes a long time, I should revel in the playing. Be grateful there’s motivation to go deep into music and just play. What does it matter that the song and the album will take longer than I want? It doesn’t! I don’t have any external pressures other than the ones I imagine. And even if I did—fuck them.
Do I care that the music is good? I care about music. But it doesn’t matter if it’s “good.” There is no absolute good. Or more precisely, it’s always partially good and partially bad—the eternal dance of yin and yang. It cannot be absolutely perfect. And anyway, it’s devoid of real meaning in that sense—it just is.
The greatest thing I can get out of this is the process, and the best process is an effortless one. An effortless process is wu wei—action that doesn’t feel like action, like water flowing around rocks. It’s play, which means there are no stakes. Even for an eventual listener, the greatest thing they can experience is authenticity. Authenticity comes from true self, not ego or expectation or judgment, or contrivance. It’s effortless expression unattached from outcome; it’s simply embodied action flowing from my being and nothing else.
Today I’ll remind myself that this doesn’t matter. And that I’m worthy and deserving of accepting the gift of music and time for play. Acceptance and pure expression are radical acts. Radical change is what the world needs right now—maybe it starts with learning to work with the natural flow instead of against it. Today I will let go before I play—with a minute or two of breathing or qigong. Today I will set a periodic timer to chime and remind me to let go, to return to wu wei.
Oh, and if you are curious what “Tasty Message” sounds like right now, here is (gulp) an export of the project before I started trying to find transitions. The different parts are just forced together to emphasize the need for transitions so that I can hear that when reviewing the ideas. This is definitely not a draft arrangement–not even a sketch arrangement. Just an export of ideas.