I feel that between my own experiences past and present I could write volumes on the subject matter of "confidence" for musicians. Being fortunate to work on many projects, I've been able to observe how other musicians use and abuse confidence for good and evil. Like any task, confidence would seem like a no-brianer as far as music goes. It's a requirement. It gives you permission to close your eyes when you are playing your instrument, to try some off the cuff lick on stage, or create the most awesome ensemble of vocals on an album. I feel it gets lost much of the time though. Sometimes through experience, and sometimes by someone's lack of preparedness.
First, I'd like to point out how people can often mistake confidence for "will". Sometimes "will" can give us a push physically as a musician just like it can athletes, but people forget to nurture the cerebral parts of music and in those moments "will" can't help you. Did you feel "confident" on that test you never studied for? Did you "will" to have this weeks winning lotto numbers as they popped up on the TV screen? Did you "will" that high note to come out of your voice just because it was important you nailed it? Did you pull it off? We're your chances better if you had the confidence of preparedness in your corner? I hope after reading this, you will find that "confidence" and "preparedness" run many parallels.
Below is a list of a few key places I feel confidence and preparedness can make or break one's progress as a musician.
Lesson Plans and Goals: I can't tell you how many times I've mismanaged my practice time by undermining what I feel I could accomplish with the time I'm given or where I'm at as a player. You can't lie to yourself and decide your going to learn to sweep pick on the guitar before you've learned how to construct an arpeggio. Actually, you can. You can just learn a pattern and the mechanics. The problem here is you limit yourself and this in turn limits not only your creative ability but your "confidence". How many times have you set out to learn a tune or technique and only moments in you decide "forget it, it's too hard or ain't gonna happen today"?
Live Performance: It can still happen to this day! I'm on stage and I realize I'm not paying much attention to the audience and focusing too much on the notes of the tune. In those moments, I may lack confidence in my knowledge of the song. In turn, I don't have much of a mental or physical capacity to be entertaining on stage or look up at the audience and connect more frequently. We'll get into my philosophies on live interaction some other time.
In The Studio: "I never had this much difficulty when practicing." These are words I hear during lessons and in the studio often. First off, there will be plenty of blogs about being prepared for the studio.
The studio is the last word in where the quality of your playing is that day and overall. There is nothing to obscure all those little swiping sounds on the guitar like a loud band. Let's face it, the studio has been developed to reproduce our performances the best it can. Many of us can all agree that at times, it reproduces a bit too well. It can be a very sterile environment and without a good deal of experience and/or "confidence" it can be a creativity killer or send a project into the depths like an anchor. Learn about the sonic qualities of your instrument, the frequency ranges, how live tone doesn't always mean album tone. How live technique or even the strings you use may not translate the same. There's been a few times for sure where my confidence was broken in the studio because I couldn't use my favorite bass because it wasn't right for the song. Maybe I was struggling to find the right tone. Does this mean I intend to lay down a lack luster track? "confidence" will determine that.
Creative Process: The more confident I am with my song writing, the stronger it gets. It's that simple. Am I confident I can even play this very technical section I'd like to write? If I'm not, it's probably not going in the song. Am I confident that this really simple section in the tune is going to be effective? If I'm not, the section will probably sound small.
Sense of humor, patience, desire, knowledge, and persistence. All these things are granted through "confidence". Most everything else is just a reason why very little has been yielded.
My final thought is this... The biggest let down when your lacking "confidence" is, it's very difficult to have fun at what you do. I feel this is the biggest sin of them all.
Check out this little guy full of confidence, he's having a blast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z4PKBNzmuo
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