Latch Music Blog

Burn Out
by Dave Latchaw

Trying not to burn out. This is a challenge for anyone who is obsessed with an activity that is mentally all-consuming. Music is that for me. We have all seen or been the musician who has burned out on playing, teaching or just about any aspect of music. Music is too important to get burned out on. Too much of any good thing can lead to burn out, and one needs to watch out for it and take the appropriate steps to avoid it.

If a musician is playing on autopilot, it’s a good sign that they are burned out. You can see this when one is playing Autumn Leaves or Old Time Rock and Roll for the millionth time and approaching it with the same non-intensity as putting kogs into the kog machine. One is surely burned out when autopilot is happening. It is not fair to the music and the people you are playing for when you are just going through the motions. Performing on autopilot just leads to crappy music. Playing music deserves more respect than that. When one is burned out it may be a sign to take a break from the musical situation causing it. You could possibly need to take a break from music all together to be able to adjust your attitude. It is important for the uninspired musician to take appropriate action to help get rid of their burn out. Finding new musical endeavors that can rekindle your spark of inspiration for music is absolutely necessary. The process may be different from person to person and whatever it may take to have you keep your own personal music drive is up to you to figure out. When you are inspired it might help jump start the other players you are working with to a level of engagement that can make a routine gig fun for everyone. Inspiration can be contagious on the band stand, teaching and so on.

It is hard not to burn out when music is the way you make your living. One needs to make a living. Usually a musician that depends on music for a living will have several musical activities going on at the same time. This is to help make the financial ends meet. Because the full time musician needs to thinks of themselves as a business it leads to a variety of sources of income. As with any good business diversity is important. Having a variety of music jobs might make ones music activities easy to deal with for some period of time. Even then, doing a variety of the same things for a great length of time can create a situation that becomes mundane and mind numbing. It is even harder for those that playing, teaching or engineering is their only musical outlet. For both groups of people things may be cool for awhile but the probability of burn out is high. It is hard sometimes to recognize personal burn out sometimes because anyone with a gig should feel lucky to have it. If steak and potatoes was your favorite meal and you ate it every day you would eventually get tired of it.

Mixing things up between your musical work and your own creative interest will help keep things fresh for the musician and help in avoiding burn out. Your creative efforts may not make you any money but they can help with conquering that burned out vibe towards music, which is valuable just in it self. Outlets for your creative efforts which ignites that spark of inspiration about music is amazingly important. When you have projects that inspire you because they are new and exciting it becomes easier to deal with the jobbing side of your musical work. The routine of  the jobbing gig can be easier to deal with just knowing that you also have your creative efforts going on. If you are into composing start your own record label, build your own website, start your own internet radio station can be just some ideas of a fun and viable ways of presenting your musical interest. The worse thing that could happen is that you might start making some money from your creative pursuits and have less time to do your jobbing activities.

Learning to say no is hard is also important in helping avoid burnout. When starting out in the music bizz you say yes to every type of gig that comes in. It is part of the conditioning that comes from struggling to become financially sufficient with music. When one starts getting more established it is hard to cross the bridge of saying no to musical situations. Learning to say no to the dodgy gig that has you on the road for more hours more than the gig and does not pay enough to cover your time and gas money has to stop at some point. If you can do it and dig it, cool for you, but there are people that have done that kind work for years and will say yes to that and hate the whole thing. Let some one else play that gig. A downer attitude just makes the musical vibe a drag.  Just say “No” to any gig that you can’t have a cool attitude about. It is not worth it. It will eventually do your head in.

One has to look inward and work at creating a musical situation for a high level of personal inspiration and satisfaction which aids from getting burned out. It may take time to get where your ideal music situation may be. But, if you have something to shoot for it can make the time you spend on your jobbing side of music easier to deal with. Set goals, work hard and just say no to being burned out.

Allan Holdsworth is played a lot at Latch Music Radio.
Here is my review of Allan holdsworth’s “None Too Soon”

Allan Holdsworth achieves the level of Improvisational Jedi Master, other than a hard core group of people whoappreciate his efforts, he has not gotten the mass notoriety he deserves. His music could be described as too “Rock” for “Jazz” stations, and too “Jazz” for “Rock” stations. Most of the time Allan records his own material, but on this recording you can check him out playing brilliantly on some well known jazz tunes from John Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Irving Berlin and even Lennon-McCartney. The band for “None Too Soon” is great, with Allan Holdsworth on guitar and SynthAxe, Tribal Tech members Gary Willis on bass, Kirk Covington on drums, and Gordon Beck on piano. Very cool and worth checking out.

Tracks for “None Too Soon”

1. Countdown
2. Nuages
3. How Deep Is The Ocean
4. Isotope
5. None To Soon Pt I
6. Interlude
7. None To Soon Pt II
9. Very Early
10. San Marcos
11. Inner Urge

Click here to learn more about “None Too Soon”.

Related Sites

Allan Holdsworth
Tribal Tech
Gary Willis
Kirk Covington
Gordon Beck

Spreading Yourself Too Thin
by Dave Latchaw

As a music educator I see many students who are involved in too many various activities. For most this spreads them too thin, which hinders their capability to really excel at any one given activity. Parents often encourage their children to have many various experiences, which is good to a point, but with competition happening at younger ages all the time, streamlining one’s interests becomes necessary in order to excel. What I think happens is that when the student is involved with so many activities, they never really learn how to practice and prepare to achieve past the point of being average or mediocre. So often these students go from activity to activity without having ample time for the necessary preparation to do well, which causes a great deal of frustration. Some students get really stressed out, others handle it and figure out how to prioritize and be efficient with their time. The stressed out students definitely need help in learning time management skills, and also advice on how they can cut down on the amount of activities they are involved in.

Students have so many activities because there are so many things available to try. This is great, but there comes a time of overload. Many times parents approve of the student being so busy because they want their child to have the opportunity to try things and see what turns them on. Some may also think it will help keep the student from having too much free time to get into mischief. Parents have over the years have become less sensitive to the amount of activities their children are in, because they themselves have also become too busy with too many things, which makes their own life seem frantic. Being too busy starts to feel like the norm.

There is a fine line between stifling the student’s interest and keeping a perspective on just how much time it will take for adequate preparation at any given activity. You want to encourage a student to try things, but also help them to be aware of the time commitment they are making. The student also needs to learn that there is only so much time in the day, and they may have to make choices about what they can participate in. A common giveaway that a student has too much going on is when they are not successful and come up with negative excuses such as, “I got screwed”, “The judge had it in for me”, or any similar “passing the buck” statements. This happens because it’s hard to realize and admit that one wasn’t prepared and didn’t reach the standard required, or that the competition had worked harder and was more prepared. In some cases parents will support the student’s negative response rather than admitting to the student that the competition did better, or they just didn’t do well. This will just foster the “I got screwed” mentality. If students have less activities and more guidance on how to practice and prepare for the activities they choose to be involved with, their chance of success will be greater.

The balance of school work and extra-curricular activities is an added challenge. One has to figure out how much they can handle with success. Many times it’s easier to say something is “too hard” than to set aside the time it will take to do well. With instant gratification on so many levels in life it becomes more and more of a challenge to deal with any activity that is not instantly achievable. We have become an impatient society.

Because successful education is very often based on the quantity of content covered, the time spent on how to learn or practice is overlooked, due to lack of time in the educational situation. If a student doesn’t know how to practice or study they can’t be efficient with their time. In these hectic times we all have to learn to be efficient, and understand that things take time. Time management skills and the process of studying and practicing need to be incorporated along with the educational content. It should not be assumed that one innately knows how to study and practice. Learning is team process between educator, student, and parent.