The D Word

A couple of my advanced saxophone students display great promise. They can play their instruments quite well, and they have both shown steady growth in most areas except for one: discipline. 

I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but bear with me.

Neither of them has finished a single objective. Not a one. In my classes, we are big on goal setting. My students bring something, whether for school or a personal need, and we make a plan that includes a series of exercises and a deadline.

Sounds good, doesn't it?  But it's not so good if you never actually finish anything.  

These particular students jump from one thing to the next. And they do manage to improve in a half-way sense, but there is that one thing that is missing: the mastery that comes from discipline. 

Which happens to be a common trait among all of the major artists you can name. Discipline. Monk, for example, is said to have practiced a single song at performance tempo for an hour at a time. 

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In the end, non-finishers never get that fully-developed sense of completion of a job well done. And I think that's vital to the pursuit of  anything -- not just music, but anything, really. 

Never actually finishing something (learning your major scales, for example) means that, as a musician, you will always have that unfinished business to get back to. In time, the stack of unfinished business adds up and becomes a burden. And eventually, it will show up in one's performance on the band stand. 

There's a simple solution:  ready?  FINISH WHAT YOU STARTED.

Key words: discipline, practicing tips, self esteem, la mesa saxophone, Thelonius Monk, goal setting, achievement