Category: Music

A wise musician once told me that only mediocre players are picky about their musical instruments. If you are a bad player, then it doesn’t matter how good of an instrument you play on. The music will not sound good anyway. If you’re a good player, then it also doesn’t matter how bad of an instrument you play on, since you will figure out a way to make beautiful music with it anyway (like what Keith Jarrett did in Köln in 1975). However if you’re somewhere in the middle, you could fool yourself in thinking that you’re good by playing on a great instrument. It may occasionally produce decent music despite your lack of practice.

A little over a year ago, I came out of my sabbatical and started working with high school students at an independent school in Silicon Valley (yes I’m back on the west coast!). Getting to know more young people has been a really great transition for me and has given me a renewed sense of hope for the future.

I am concerned, however, at the general culture of the current times, and what some of these kids are told as “advice” by some of their outspoken but misguided peers and adults around them. For example, there is a tremendous number of tasks whose only purpose seems to be to just optimize the college admissions game. These are things like spending an entire summer learning the ins-and-outs of the SAT (just imagine how much wiser these kids would be if they spent an entire summer working a job, reading great books, or working on a passion project instead), or even worse, taking a year-long course whose subject the student is neither interested in nor plan to use, just for the sake of putting something that looks good on their applications.

To spend so much time on this game is horribly inefficient, since most undergraduate programs will teach very similar things anyway, and the time you spend on this game is necessarily taking away from true personal development. The name of the college, it seems to me, is very similar in effect to musical instruments. If you remain bad at what you do, then your work will have little to no value to anyone, so what college you attended won’t matter. On the other hand, if you become incredibly good at something, then your work will speak for itself and you’ll have plenty of opportunities as people covet your work, so the college you attended won’t matter either. So the signaling that comes from the name of the college on your resume, if it makes any difference at all, only matters if you’re mediocre. By telling kids to care so much about the name of the college they attend, we are basically telling them, “We have low expectations of you and think that you won’t amount to much, therefore you will need to go to a famous school in order to signal to people that you’re better than you actually are.” What an uninspiring message that will for sure kill the intrinsic motivation these kids all have.

The tragedy in all this is that by focusing on this admissions game, we are intentionally choosing to stay mediocre. Or at least we are optimizing our life with the assumption that we will stay mediocre. With this mindset, we’re guaranteed to stay mediocre, because our daily actions are not aligned to true growth. I don’t necessarily think that is a bad choice if you’ve intentionally chosen it and are content with it, but a lot of people are funneled into this mediocrity mindset without realizing that there are other options. Developing yourself is a time-consuming process; you must choose to do it, and do it on a daily basis. Because time is finite, you will most likely have to give up some other things for this, but trust me, the tradeoff is well worth it.

Music has been a major part of my life, starting early on. My mother’s diary speaks of the day when the 26-week-old me discovered that a piano responds to my touch to make a sound. By age two, I was able to sing over fifty Japanese songs with precise intonation.

I must have decided early on, although not consciously, that it was okay to not be the best at everything, if it meant that I could play more music. Of course I wasn’t thinking that deeply about my life, but now I realize this about my past self, because whenever I got a time-consuming assignment or a project from school, I tended to not do them, opting to practice with my time instead. Of course I tried to make sure that my grades did not dip so low to a point to fail the class, but I was not always successful.

One evening after I came home with a failing report card, I was trying to sleep when I overheard my parents discussing in the dining area. The topic was whether I should stop playing music so that I can focus on my studies more. Thankfully, they decided against that idea. My father’s precise words were, “But if we take away music from Shin, he would have nothing left.” I think he underestimated me a bit though, as I have achieved some things outside of music too. I was just a late bloomer on most of my pursuits in life.

When I got in trouble with my mother, unlike most mothers who would take away their video games or a day out with friends, she took away my ride to music lessons. That did not deter me, and I simply walked. My cello teacher’s house was a 1.5-hour walk each way, and so I walked from and to the lesson, with a cello on my back.

When I was in high school, my father left his job to pursue more education. My parents said that they were financially okay to continue paying for our living expenses, but the music lessons had to go. That’s when I decided to take the only job I knew how to get at that time, a minimum wage job washing dishes in a restaurant in the evenings and weekends, and used almost all of my earnings from the job to continue with the lessons. Surprisingly, this was a change for the better (take note, parents). Did you know that people value things much more when they have to pay for it? I never knew until then, but from that day forward, I have never hesitated spending money for my education. I even asked my piano teacher to charge me more so I would take my studies more seriously.

When it came time to decide on a college major, I considered studying music for a bit, but the practical side of me won out and I chose physics instead, and I eventually changed to an even more practical major in engineering. Little did I know that the lessons I learned through music would propel me in all these pursuits.

Looking back, I still don’t know why music has always been such a large part of my life, but in hindsight, I do realize what a positive force it has been in all aspects. I attribute so much of the beauty of life: my happiness, a meaningful and challenging career that I’ve been lucky to have, relationships with other growth-oriented people, and the insights to make good decisions. Here are some key takeaways:

I couldn’t bullshit my way through music.
In an academic environment, I can have the illusion of having mastered something. For example, if I do everything that a teacher tells me to do, I can expect to receive an “A” in a course and I would think that I have mastered it. But in reality, getting an A is hardly “mastering” that subject, as plenty of students get A’s, unlike in the real world where only a few are called “masters” of any field. Compare that to music. Music is very honest, and less confusing. The music that comes out when I sit down at the piano and improvise is a very real reflection of the work that I put in, and my limitations because of the work that I did not put in yet. I doubt that I will ever get to call myself a “master” of music. As such, just sitting down in front of a piano daily aligns my goals to my long-term growth. It’s the small things that matter. The daily decisions to act in ways that improve the unseen future, that’s what most of life boils down to.

Music taught me about “abstraction”.
Some people are puzzled why pianists can memorize a long piece of music, such as a 3-movement sonata. If you think just in terms of the number of notes, it should be impossible that any human can just memorize so much information. But music is not about memorizing notes. It is about how the notes are combined with other notes, and how that combination of notes moves to the next combination of notes. All of those follow a few common patterns that appear in lots of different places within all genres of music. These common patterns are the “abstractions” of music, and by having the knowledge about more and more of these abstractions, what I am able to create musically has increased exponentially over time.

I later learned that my other pursuits in life, such as physics and engineering, are also largely built on this concept of abstraction. So a difficult problem is actually not a complex problem. It is a combination of many simple problems that add up to give it its seemingly complex nature.

Something I’ve noticed about my philosophy in life is that unlike many people who tend to focus on the end-goals and results, I don’t have long-term goals, nor am I interested in what the final result of my actions will be. Kind of like a good poker player, who can detach the aspect of decision making from the result of their actions which are driven by luck. I have never had typical aspirations in life such as getting married, buying a nice house, or being successful. If they happen, great. If not, also great. My focus has simply been on building up my skills from the foundation up, like a pyramid, and I just let life unfold. As a result, I get off to slower start compared to others, but I eventually get to a point where my foundation is strong so that I can learn things faster. That explains my struggles in math classes early on, and my eventual success in physics and engineering. It also explains I was never the kid to enter piano competitions. What I could play was extremely basic compared to other kids taking piano lessons. Instead of learning to play impressive-sounding pieces by these genius composers, I was slowly building up my ear for music by listening to songs and learning them by ear, note by note and chord by chord.

The result is that now I can hear a piece of music and learn and understand both the melody and its chord progressions in a matter of minutes. I can join a band and come up with a piano part on the spot to make the band better. I can compose a piece of music at will. I can accompany a singer singing in any key without sheet music. I can improvise my way out when I get lost during a performance. It turns out that all these skills are important to a musician.

Abraham Lincoln apparently believed in this “foundations-up” approach too, as he said “give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Music is more science than art
Although music is so powerful in appealing to the listener’s emotions, the process of becoming better at music is very scientific in nature, and has so much to do with planning effective practice sessions and executing on them. To detach the emotional part and focusing on the science almost seem wrong, and I even remember being told by a non-musician friend that I should “feel” the music more while I was drilling on a left-hand passage methodically with a metronome, but such practice can be a very effective way to develop the techniques so that later on when you are feeling that emotion in music, you have the capability to express that emotion by moving your hand in a very specific way that matches what the emotions require.

But music is still art
After all I said in the previous paragraph, the purpose of music is still to capture the beauty in the moment in time and space with your music. Music’s power is in its fleeting nature, as no same sound will ever be produced again. As such, music parallels life, because after all, there is so much joy in being alive and experiencing each current moment. It’s a tragedy that we forget this, and life goes on without us basking in the beauty of it.

Yesterday does not exist anymore, and tomorrow is not guaranteed. Today is different though. Today, we can choose what to make of it.

The plane landed slightly before the scheduled time. There was an air of excitement among the passengers. We were all eager go home and do whatever it was that each of us were going to do next. Sleep, see our loved ones, or in my case, play my piano. Then we got word that we had to wait on the taxiway for an indefinite amount of time because there was another plane parked at the gate where we were supposed to deplane. I thought to myself, “cool, extra time to get my Spanish studying in,” and started studying. About twenty minutes into being stuck there, I couldn’t help but notice the complaints coming from those around me about the situation: “Oh come on who messed up?” “How is it that airlines can never figure this stuff out?”

I admit that I too express my share of complaints about things at times, but if you step back and assess the situation, you notice just how silly this is. It is one thing to complain about something that can be changed. But to complain about a situation that simply won’t change or you have no power to change? What’s the point of that? Are those things even worth your attention?

One time, a student of mine messed up pretty bad in a piano recital. I asked him afterward, “so what do you think happened?” He was quick to respond “I got nervous. Also it was cold and my fingers didn’t move well.”

While it may be true that he got nervous and had cold fingers, I really was hoping for a different answer. Something like “I didn’t practice enough” because really, that would have been a much better attitude to have about what had just happened.

Do people get nervous for a performance? Sure, I get nervous every single time. Does a venue where you perform get cold at times? Of course. But those are out of your control. But you know what you could have done? Practice more. Practice so much so that you are so damn good, so that even with your nerves and freezing fingers, you still have complete command of the instrument, and you are able to perform at a high level.

Stop giving any of your attention to the things you cannot control, and focus meticulously on the things that you can. You will be amazed with your results.

During a recent music gig, a girl who looked to be a teenager came up to me and asked, “is it hard to become a musician?”

At that moment, I could have simply answered the question and tell her that yes, it is probably difficult and requires much more work to be a musician than most other jobs, but I wondered about why she was asking the question in the first place, so I asked her, “what would you do if I told you that it was difficult?”

After a short conversation, I found out that she loves to play the guitar, and her parents think that making a living as a musician is difficult, so she should pursue other things instead.

I see two main beliefs that drive this kind of thinking.

1. You should not pursue something if it is difficult.
2. Pursuing one career takes away an opportunity to pick up another down the road.

The only problem I see here is that both points above are completely wrong.

Often, it is very tempting to take the easy road. In fact, a lot of what we do on a daily basis is driven by how much short-term reward we can get for doing as little work as possible. For example, many people (including me) like to get drunk for the good feelings we get in return, however temporary they may be. We also like to satisfy our hunger by consuming junk food. And we attempt to garner “likes” on social media by posting an over-dramatic representation of some status update based at least in part on our lives showing off how great our lives are, or taking pictures of food that we didn’t even make ourselves, as if we somehow deserve the credit for the culinary art.

All these things give us instant gratification, but they make us worse off in the long run. They make us feel good just in that moment, but that feeling does not persist, and we even pay a price afterward. In the case of alcohol and junk food, the price is obviously our degrading health. In the case of posting things on social media, our price is the empty feeling we feel on the inside from desiring so badly for social approval while doing nothing of value to others.

It turns out that the things that are truly worth doing, like the things that change the world for the better and the things give us a sense of purpose, are all difficult things. So even though we all succumb at times to the desire to pursue the easy road, we must not give up completely by making that our default action. Whenever we come across a juncture (which is pretty much every single day), we must intentionally choose the difficult path that takes more work but also leads to more growth.

And as for the second point, no, we do not necessarily diminish our chance at one career by pursuing another, and sometimes, we even gain more, as our philosophy slowly builds to help compound our overall growth which opens up more opportunities. Besides, with the current pace of societal changes, there isn’t a single job that exist today that is guaranteed to exist twenty years from now anyway, so we might as well embrace the changes and take joy in all the learning that we must do continually. It is even becoming the norm for people to pursue multiple careers throughout their lifetime. Personally, I know that I have lost nothing by pursuing music. In fact, music taught me some of the most important lessons that allowed me the chance to develop my skills in other areas. Music helped me internalize that the only way to get better is to work to get better. It turns out that this applies in any other field. So just by knowing that and letting that conviction be the guide for daily action, you will have a leg up on anyone who believes that there is some magical shortcut in life to achieve more with less effort. There isn’t.

I happen to live and work by the gym where Kobe Bryant works out. He works out quite early, and today he showed up at 5:45AM for his morning workout. My coworkers tell me that this is nothing unusual for Kobe, and he’s been doing it since his high school days. Mind you, he is a retired player, but hey, Kobe is still Kobe, and I think the fact that he still shows up in the morning to this day says a lot about his attitude and philosophy toward life in general, not just basketball. Now I feel like a coward lecturing to my students about the importance of work ethic, when my daily practice sessions don’t start until much later in the morning (if it starts at all). Apparently, I still have a whole lot I must learn from truly dedicated people like Kobe. He makes me look like the laziest person on the planet, and that’s probably why he makes millions and I don’t.

By the way, here’s a little nugget of insight I’ve discovered over time, for anyone who thinks that practicing is too hard and unpleasant; practicing is actually not hard at all. What’s really difficult is to do the Step Zero, which is to show up for practice. Or in my case, to sit myself down in front of the piano. Once I can overcome that initial step, the actual process of going through the practice is not as difficult.