Letting Go – Removing The Handcuffs Of Self-Doubt

I wrote this article three years ago.  It was the first of my Mind Set columns for Drummer Magazine, and  I later posted it in my now-defunct MySpace blog.  I still get emails about it.  What’s odd – and really gratifying – is that the majority of the emails are from non-drummers.  Some emails are from people who play other musical instruments, but a surprising number have come from folks who aren’t musicians at all.

When it comes to doing anything well, self-doubt is a common bugaboo that limits our potential.  Worse, it can turn the thing we most love doing into something we dread.  It’s ironic that only when we take our limitations for granted, only when we embrace our missteps as inevitable byproducts of going for it, do we free ourselves up to do things and create things we once had thought were beyond us. 

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My friend, Brian, is a great bassist.  Fifteen years ago he handed me a book: The Advancing Guitarist, by Mick Goodrick. I read the title, looked back at Brian, and just as I was going to ask him why he wanted me, a drummer, to read a guitar technique book, he said, “Just read it.” So I did – and my life as a drummer changed.

Goodrick’s book is remarkable because in addition to dealing with matters of strict technique – theory and exercises – he also considers the role our mind plays in our path to becoming a better, more satisfied musician. Among the book’s priceless lessons was this one:  ”Students tend to think that eventually, after they learn whatever it is that they think they need to know, they won’t feel insecure anymore…Well as good as it sounds, it seldom (if ever) happens. In fact, their insecurity tends to get worse. ”

For me, these few sentences were revolutionary.  At the time I read Goodrick’s words I was practicing four to six hours a day and was so aware of my limitations that I stopped taking risks in performance. I didn’t like how self-critical I was, but I believed that if I mastered just one more technique book I’d achieve a skill level so advanced that I would be freed from all insecurity. Of course I was wrong. The better I got, the deeper I dug, and the more I found wrong in my playing.

The quality that separates truly great playing from mere proficiency is a fearless, childlike approach to the instrument.  This quality originates not through mastering sophisticated theory or acquiring flashy chops, but in a different kind of wisdom.  It’s about bringing peace of mind to your playing in each moment of the music.  Musicians with this quality don’t worry about what’s coming.  They simply listen to the other musicians in the room, to the song, and just play now.  You can hear it – it sounds like confidence.  It’s acceptance.  It’s letting go.  These masters aren’t concerned about messing up, not because they think they won’t, but because they know it doesn’t matter if they do. They consider their playing a natural act – like breathing, or eating, or walking.

Try this exercise: walk. Find a long sidewalk and just start walking. Listen to the sound your steps make. Notice the pendular motion of your arms. Feel how effortlessly your body shifts its weight in an easy rhythm. You’re not even thinking about tempo, yet your gate is so steady it’s like a metronome. And you could keep this up, seemingly, forever.

Now, if you were to trip on a crack in the sidewalk you wouldn’t think to yourself, “Oh no!  Maybe I’m not a good walker after all!  I wonder if I can make that turn up there.”  No.  What you’d tell yourself is, “Ah, how silly of me.” and move on.  You’d soon completely forget you stumbled at all.

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When I spent two months in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, drumming with an escola de samba, I learned that drumming is not the rare gift of a few, but instead is universal, just like walking.  From birth, Brazilians are surrounded by family members playing live music, so Brazilian children grow up taking their own rhythmic aptitude for granted. In the months before Carnaval, every Brazilian is a drummer and every object is a potential percussion instrument.  I’ll never forget a shirtless and barefoot four year-old boy playing beautiful and steady samba beats on a Coke can.  And his older brothers – man, those cats could wail!

These youngsters weren’t “schooled” musicians, just average kids.  How is this possible?  How could they play so beautifully? 

The biggest impediments to doing anything, especially anything expressive, are fear and self-doubt.  But for these young Brazilians, fear and self-doubt never enter their musical minds because such emotions weren’t part of their learning process.  These kids don’t worry about messing up because no one has ever told them they should worry.  They wouldn’t think to call a new technique difficult; the way they see it, they simply haven’t learned to do it yet.  And just like you never think, “Okay, I’m going to work hard to walk perfectly,” these Brazilian kids would never think in terms of drumming perfectly.  They just drum the way they drum, and what comes out is steady, pure, and beautiful, unbroken by anxiety.  For them “playing” is just that: play, not work.  It’s music, not math.

The difference between these Brazilian kids and a lot of us is the mindset we developed when we first learned our instrument.  In part, this difference is cultural.  Most of us grew up playing music in societies that promote competition between musicians and recognize a hierarchy of artistic achievement.  In contrast, Brazilian kids grow up in a society that sees music primarily as a force of social cohesion, a common language uniting everyone – young and old, rich and poor. And whereas music education in the West aims at maximizing students’ income and competitiveness in the industry (how many music technical college advertisements boast this very thing?), Brazilian music “education” consists largely of children learning to play through direct participation in their living musical traditions, that participation being an end in itself.  

No doubt, our society’s competitive drive has hastened the advancement of technique, and contributed to the West’s dominance in the business of commercial music (which may or may not be a good thing). Nevertheless, this same drive can lead us players into a mindset that cripples our performance. Ironically, our impatient drive to achieve can hold us back – we become afraid of the professional consequences of screwing up.

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When the musicality of a master and the playfulness of a child come together in a drummer the result is, well, you’ve heard the result: Elvin Jones, John Bonham, Clyde Stubblefield, John Jabo Starks, Steward Copeland, Keith Moon, Zigaboo Modeliste, Ringo Starr, Mick Fleetwood, Joey Baron, Billy Martin, Steve Gadd, and one of my very favorite drummers, Stevie Wonder. These are a few on my list.  You have your own list.

We love the drummers with the ability to make a beat sing.  These are not always the most sophisticated players, though some are sophisticated.  Not always the cleanest, though some are clean.  These players have varying individual styles.  But whether they use many notes or few, whether their time is perfect or changing, their groove has momentum.  They sound freed-up, and they’re relaxed both in the studio and on stage.  They’re spontaneous and unselfconscious.  They’re musical, appropriate, and have the confidence to play simply. And when they let loose, they really go for it.  You hear their emotion.  And if you listen closely, you might even hear them screw up. They heard it too.  And then they let it go.

Reading The Advancing Guitarist marked the beginning of a new mindset for me.  It was like a dam broke.  I realized that the knot I felt in my stomach after every show was limiting my playing.  And I knew that since I was the one who put the handcuffs on, I was the only one with the key to remove them. The result was tangible.  As my focus widened, I started hearing my whole band rather than just my own playing.  My groove deepened, my feel improved, and, most importantly, I was having a hell of a lot more fun.

Becoming aware of your insecurity is the first step to overcoming it.  The more experience you acquire on stage and in the studio, the more you will trust your ability, and the more you will put your insecurity behind you.  Unfortunately, self-doubt is something few of us will ever overcome completely, and from time to time we need a reminder to keep it in check.  My favorite reminder?  A memory of a hot February day in Rio, on an Ipanema street corner, where a scrawny kid with an empty Coke can is making me dance.