A long-time music associate and dear friend asked for my thoughts on teachability in a comment on a post the other day. Great topic.
Your Craft
Compared to most people, you are an exceptionally teachable person. You have spent your life taking lessons, listening to every recording you can find, and stealing every cool lick you’re heard. Right?
Non-musicians, on the other hand, aren’t like this. I’m not saying that musicians are the only ones that learn, I’m saying that most everyone learns to accomplish something else (“if I do this, then I’ll get a job so I can have a motorcycle”).
Musicians learn because they want to get better at what they love to do. This makes them extremely teachable. About music.
Life
Unfortunately, there’s more to life than music, and MUCH more to success in the music business (all the arts) than music. And doubly unfortunately, little if anything of this “more” is taught to anyone in school. So we all – musicians and non-musicians alike – enter the world expecting that “doing” is the key to success.
Teachable?
Non-musicians quickly realize the “doing” is not enough for the simple reason that their bosses immediately enroll them in business training and personal development classes. The business knows that successful employees lead to a successful business and the employees gladly attend so they can have better motorcycles (and keep their jobs). They are teachable.
Musicians are not, and here’s why:
- They don’t have the advantage of a boss telling them what they have to learn in order to succeed (and/or keep their job). Without this “push,” it’s unlikely anyone would continue their education, especially musicians.
- The myth of talent: society believes that talent is enough and tells every talented person that it is. Musicians hear this all the time and believe it wholeheartedly. Who can blame them?
- The few that do hear about other things they should learn don’t think it’s fun. “What’s the point?” “I just want to PLAY!” “I’ll get a record deal and manager then I won’t have to worry about all this crap.”
Becoming Teachable
The first step in becoming teachable is to recognize in yourself what I’ve just described. The next is to think about the people you consider to be successes in the music business and ask this question: are they musically better than other people?
(The answer is no.)
Then why are they successful?
