I wonder if anyone wakes up one morning and thinks, “I’ve mastered music.” There are too many possibilities, life is too short, and our physical skills wane with age.
Some pretty impressive research has been done demonstrating that virtuosity requires an early start, even for people with talent. The neural connections that virtuosos need between hands and brain seem to have to be made before the onset of puberty, for most players. There are exceptions, of course, but most virtuosos start very young, and by young, I mean around the age of 4 or 5.
And they spend every waking hour learning and practicing for many years before they become masters, folks like Mozart excepted.
But even masters can’t do everything. Case in point that really opened my eyes:
I had my first opportunity to work with an ensemble of a well known symphony orchestra for an advertising campaign. Each player was truly a master of their instrument, or they wouldn’t have gotten the gig.
I figured that this would work like a pop session. What did I know? I was not a master of producing orchestral music, I was a beginner at it. But I was the composer, so I figured I’d already done the hard part.
Well, no.
I printed out charts for all of the players, in the right clefs (another thing I had to learn about for this gig), and recorded each of their parts on synth, figuring that between hearing the music, and reading the charts, they’d nail it in one or two takes.
After all, my pop/rock session players only need to hear a track once or twice, and have at most a chord chart. Most of the time rock session players on an ad don’t even need that.
I booked an impressive studio, the players came in, we set up, and started to roll tape. The players sat there with puzzled expressions. “What’s wrong,” I asked on the talkback mic?”
“We need a conductor.”
“There’s only 30 seconds of music, and everything’s written out, and you’ve heard the piece.”
“We still need a conductor.”
The clients were in the control room. I was freaked out, and more than a little embarrassed, because I was utterly unprepared for this. I felt like I had sh!t the bed. Actually, I had sh!t the bed, and almost soiled my pants when I realized the fix I was in.
I walked into the recording stage, and said, “I can’t conduct, I know nothing about it. If I move my finger to the beat, and point to you when your part comes in, can you wing it?”
Basically, I was begging, and sounded like it! They must have felt sorry for me, and said yes.
So I stood there like the unskilled, unschooled moron that I am, and conducted these world class players for thirty seconds. And yes, they got it in two takes.
My “aha moment” was realizing that these orchestral masters hadn’t mastered doing a session the way pop sessions are done. It’s a different skill from what they were trained for and had mastered. They spent their lives doing, and mastering, a different thing.
In other words, no one masters music. There are too many possibilities. Maybe they master a tiny slice of the pie.
The problem is that it takes a lifetime of dedication and work to do even that, and most folks can’t/won’t give up that much time, even as kids.
