During a jam last week, several college kids performed. Some were adequate, some were good, and two were outstanding. The house band bass player was their college instructor, who I was chatting with when we were both off the stage. I mentioned one of the ‘outstanding’ players, and his teacher said “yeah, he’s put in the time”. I guess that sums it up!

However, the instructor also mentioned that even with my limited fluency compared to these hard-working kids, none of them could play a ballad as well as I could – assuming age, maturity, life experience etc. contributes to the ability to express emotion musically. I guess ‘suffering’ is what makes us emotive – expressing past pain, joy, love, hate. However without the fluency on one’s instrument, we are limited.

So we need both technical ability and emotive ability, and if we can’t get that in 10,000 hours – well then we can always join a Kenny G cover band. :)

And 10000 hours by some people will be worth more than the 10000 put in by others.
This is another factoid that could either be depressing or motivating. And even after putting in 10000 hours, would you feel like a master musician. I’ll just choose to allow it as an explanation why it is so hard to get better. We need more hours in a day.

I feel it’s more a matter of quality of time than quantity. You could spend a million hours running up and down major scales and go to a gig and have someone call something in a minor key and suddenly all those hours are meaningless.

80 hours a week for 2.5 years, 160 hours a week for 1.25 year!!! Been there, done it. Gave up sex and food, still not good enough.