What Should I Do To Be A Better Musician

How do I become a musician?

You make a pact with your future self to make decisions that lead you towards becoming a musician. You pick an instrument. Or learn them all.  You fire up Youtube for specific instrument lessons. Or you practice on your own. You get inspiration and tips from social communities dedicated to your instrument or musical production method of choice.  Or you decide to singlemindedly work things out your own way.You listen and absorb what your influences have done before you. You wonder how they made those sounds/songs. Or you Google the answers and try it on your own.You obsess over your music, your musical instrument, your musical creation process. You live and breathe it. You create accounts on Soundcloud, and Youtube, and upload full songs or snippets of your works-in-progress there. You receive feedback with a grain of salt knowing your only real audience, the only one who counts, is yourself.    You create. You play. You experiment.A long process? Perhaps. But only if you feel you need to prove to yourself that you are indeed a musician. If you're less stringent about process, you could do it the easy way: You become a musician the minute you decide you are one. Granted, you won't be a great one right away. But your mental acknowledgement is step one. And the rest will follow.

Can studying music theory make you a better musician? If so, what musicians have studied that and became better musicians?

I believe it does. One of the most useful things music theory does for musicians is give them a vocabulary. A large amount of the vast sounds from musical expressions are already documented and named; this is a tool of music theory. When two musicians understand music theory, not only can they communicate exact expressions in the same language, they probably also understand how excellent musicians have used these expressions in the past, and can therefore apply this to their own music and practice. Not only does it give you words to describe what you hear and do, it is almost like a shortcut into understanding what’s ““under the hood” instead of coming across things accidentally. Even great musicians who never learned how to read music had their own music theory systems; Jimi Hendrix still knew scales, the importance of half steps and whole steps, and chordal voice leading - if only using his ear.Randy Rhoads is one musician who studied music theory in order to become great. Even though he was already an accomplished guitarist and living large playing with Ozzy Osbourne in the 80s, he wanted to quit that life and study the guitar in higher education. He also learned piano to deepen his understanding of music theory. Studying music theory no doubt opened up his ears to brilliant compositions by classical composers, as he is known as one of the ones to bring neoclassicism into rock and roll. It makes you wonder how much more some musicians might have brought to the table, had they had music theory knowledge.Speaking from a personal perspective, before I studied music theory, I would frequently have trouble explaining things to band members of what I wanted to hear. I would also play something cool, not understand how I did it, and forget it. But now that I have been to music school, not only do I understand what I am playing, I can also write it down, I am better improvisor, able recognize chords and intervals just by hearing them and not touching my instrument, and the list goes on and on. Some may see music theory as antiquated, or that it’s cooler to remain ignorant, but I say knowledge is power.

What can a person do to become a great musician?

You need to attain effortless mastery, where sounding great is as natural and obvious as tying your shoelaces or eating with a spoon. In order to get there, you need to practice for as long and as deeply as you did when you learned to tie your shoelaces and eat with a spoon. That is going to be more difficult as an adult than it was when you were a small child, but it can be done. In order to do it, though, you have to have no reservations or doubts about what you’re trying to do and why you’re trying to do it. And to have that level of single-minded focus, you need to find your own musical voice. Aside from the practicalities (money, competing life demands etc), finding your voice is the biggest obstacle most of us face when trying to get from competence to mastery.Some stories from my own life: I got to be a pretty good country and rock guitarist, but was never great at it, because I just didn’t care deeply enough about my country and rock playing. I loved that music, and still do, and the path to greatness in those idioms is clear and well trod. But I could never force myself to practice the way I knew I needed to practice to really have mastery. The same thing happened when I was studying jazz. My teacher kept saying, dude, you need to trascribe solos every day, and learn them in all twelve keys. I knew what to do, but I couldn’t force myself to do it. Now it seems obvious that I wasn’t lazy, I just didn’t want to become that great at jazz. I mean, I would be happy to be great at jazz, but it wasn’t worth sacrificing everything else in order to attain it. As it turns out, the music that I make draws on rock, country and jazz, but goes far beyond and outside it. I was wise to get as good as I got and then to move on.I’m great at two things: blues harmonica, and producing groove-based electronic music. I learned harmonica as a teenager, and learned computer music as an adult. In both cases, these are the skills that I practice(d) relentlessly, daily, without having to force myself to. Quite the contrary, I have/had to tear myself away from working on them because otherwise I’ll stay up all night or neglect other areas of my life. Even when I can’t work on productions, I still walk around thinking about them. Working on them barely feels like work at all. Jazz and rock rarely felt like that for me. When you find your true musical mission, you’ll feel a similar sense of deep compulsion. Then, to become great, you just follow that compulsion.

What does it take to be a great musician?

Well, I guess the question could be answered better if you are playing pro or semi-pro? Also, what genre— electronic, rock, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, classical, etc?If you want to become a successful musician, you have to ask yourself what the level of success is measured by?In my opinion, if you want to make it modestly, or at least play clubs for the sake of doing what you love, then the following is essential:Hard work that creates a unique or solid form of talent (not everyone is born talented and many of the best musicians worked at being talented,) a loose sense of music theory, a strong work ethic, and be willing to wait as long as it takes and play as long as needed until you reach your own level of success as a respected musician.If you want to “make it,” then add and subtract the following:Subtract the following: “Be willing to wait as long as it takes.” From my experience, you won’t reach the success of many bands or artists in your 40s and beyond because you’re “too old” to be marketable,Add other unique and hard working musicians and personalities with the front having ‘better looks’. If you’re a drummer (and I am,) just be good and don’t worry about this aspect as much,And finally, add sprinkles of luck and a good portion of timing. Unfortunately, timing is everything when it comes to cutting edge or rehashed music; it’s always constantly rotating, especially in the rock genres.Thanks.

Does being mathematically inclined make you a better musician?

Sure.Although music only come natural to people who have innate musical abilities such as perfect pitch and an innate understanding of harmonization, as well as just a talent for learning instruments, music, like most other things in out natural and physical realm, is just mathematics.a good example would be the circle of fifths, which I couldn’t possibly explain in an answer and I highly encourage you to look it up if you don’t know it, because of its simplicity and mathematical beauty. every reason a certain chord works (meaning that it sounds ‘good’) and every reason certain notes can be played on top of eachother in a scale, goes back to mathematics.so does being mathematically inclined make you a better musician?well, you’d have to be a musician first, play an instrument and/or learn theory.if you are mathematically inclined you might not be any better than a guy that never finished high school and is bad at math related subjects, but chances are you’d have a better and wider understanding of theory, and why what you play works, as well as know how to traverse your instrument better.think about it like this: a guitar, for example, is an eagle’s eye view of a city.in this city, you can see the streets, waypoints, turns, roundabouts etc. but you have no idea where you are, and no idea how to get to where you want to go.in order to know these things, you’d need the names of the streets.music theory teaches you the names of the streets, and how to get to them from anywhere. music theory is the musician’s waze.