Celebrating the Art of Failing Forward
Salutations, friends! Failing is hard. Failing feels icky. We don’t like to fail. Guess what? We’re going to fail. That’s a part of life. However, learning to fail is essential to any musician, whether it's failing at a recital or concert, not booking gigs, or not landing a record deal. In the Dojo, we learn to fail. Yes, you read that right. In Garrett's music studio, we don't just teach music; we teach the art of failing forward, a skill as vital as any scale or arpeggio you might learn.
Failing Forward: The Unsung Melody of Musical Mastery
The journey of a musician is punctuated by missed notes, off-tempo performances, and sometimes, just getting plain lost in the music. Yet, it's in these moments of apparent failure that the true essence of music education reveals itself.
1. Embracing Imperfection: In music, as in life, perfection doesn’t exist. I’m sure each professional musician you meet will tell you they’ve never had a perfect performance. Each stumble, each missed note is not a setback but a step forward. It teaches resilience, pushing us to strive not for unattainable perfection but for continuous improvement. In The Dojo, we celebrate these moments, for they are the seeds from which growth sprouts. Grit and resilience are just as valuable, maybe even more so, than nailing a piece of music right away.
2. Cultivating Grit: Learning to play an instrument is a marathon, not a sprint. It demands persistence and the grit to keep going when progress seems slow. The legendary cellist Pablo Casals was asked why he continued to practice at age 90. "Because I think I'm making progress," he replied. Each failure is a lesson in persistence, teaching us to persevere through the difficulties, knowing that mastery lies just beyond the perseverance.
3. Building Confidence: It might seem counterintuitive, but failing actually builds confidence. By facing our musical fears and overcoming them, we learn that we are capable of more than we imagined. In The Dojo, we encourage students to play those wrong notes loudly and proudly because this is how we learn, and this is how we grow. Make mistakes. Be proud of your mistakes. The mistakes are what get your white belt stained. They’re what turn the white belt of inexperience into a dingy, dirty, dignified black belt of wisdom.
4. Encouraging Experimentation: Fear of failure often stifles creativity, locking musicians into a comfort zone. But when we learn that it’s okay to fail, the musical world opens up. We dare to experiment, to try new pieces, new genres, even new instruments. This freedom is the birthplace of true artistry. There isn’t any artistic growth in your comfort zone. All artistry happens outside of it, dealing with the uncomfortable.
5. Learning Adaptability: In music, failure teaches us to adapt—to adjust our technique, rethink our interpretation, and approach a piece from a new angle. This adaptability is invaluable, as it fosters a mindset ready to tackle not just musical challenges but any obstacle life throws our way.
Failing is like Pointillism.
In case you’re unfamiliar, pointillism is “a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.” Imagine each mistake as a point on a canvas. Every time something doesn’t go right, it’s a point. After trying, trying, and trying again, take a step back. After years of practice, you might see something extrodinary
Paul Signac, Femmes au Puits, 1892, showing a detail with constituent colors. Musée d'Orsay, Paris
