The Pursuit of Technical Proficiency
What does it mean to be "good" at something? While this is a question that can be asked for pretty much any profession, I want to talk about this in the context of fields typically relating to creativity, such as music, photography, or art. Most of my opinions on this topic have been shaped in my creative pursuits in music, as that has been my primary outlet and the field I have the most experience in. However, if dabbling in a bit of photography has taught me something, it's that what I'm about to talk about is largely relevant in other creative outlets as well. For the purposes of this article, I'm going to mainly zero in on this in the perspective of a musician. Let's dive in.
It seems that it's impossible to exclude subjectivity from the picture when dealing with art forms, as art is, and has always been something that each individual perceives in their own way. However, what many people don't seem to really understand is that there is base level of proficiency - OBJECTIVE proficiency - that is required to be able to create a piece of art. The interesting thing I've found is that while most people, musician or not, understand that a beginning musician (for example, a 5 year old kid learning the piano for the first time) needs to learn the basics of an instrument before he or she can create music out of it, the same concept of technical proficiency warps into somewhat of a dirty word as said musician is performing at a higher level. Don't believe me? How many times have you heard:
*Insert virtuoso name here* has amazing technique but no feel
I don't practice because it gets in the way of my creativity
(In response to some criticism on technique) music is subjective, I intended it to sound that way
And so on. If you haven't heard any of these things before, god bless you. I've been hearing this kind of shit for years and at the risk of sounding like a complete dick, let me just say that art is subjective, but shit is shit. Don't say you intended it to sound like that and that music is subjective if you tried and failed at soloing over some changes at 350bpm because it wasn't, unless your intention was to sound like shit. Don't say something has no feel because you simply don't understand - you can not like something, but that doesn't make it bad. And not practicing because it gets in the way of creativity? Let's move on before I punch a hole in my monitor.
My view of technical proficiency is that it is absolutely necessary. First of all, you need some basic facility on an instrument to play it, regardless of whether you formally acquire the abilities or figure them out on your own. As you develop and begin to channel creativity through your instrument, the only way to do so is by having the technical facility to play or sing what you hear in your head. With that said, I must qualify this statement by saying that musical context is very important when assessing technical proficiency. To play the blues masterfully, one requires a completely different set of techniques than to play heavy metal masterfully (of course, this is all built on some base level of proficiency on the instrument as mentioned above).
In a conversation about a similar topic with one of my best friends and mentor, he told me that if he hears more things in his head than he can play, he practices technique, and if he can play more things than he hears in his head, he goes and listens to more music. This statement pretty much sums it up - at a higher level, the technique and creativity are constantly playing catch with each other, each being the limiting factor at different times. In the context of the arts, the ends really do justify the means. The vast majority of people who will interact with your art will only see/hear/feel what comes out at the end, and likely don’t think twice about the process of that end being met. Provided that there is some level of self awareness, technique is something that is so obvious when it is lacking, and that makes it extremely straightforward to fix. We should all take that easy win and prevent ourselves from hindering our own musical growth.
One of the greatest drummers of all time, Vinnie Colaiuta, dropped this amazing knowledge bomb in an interview with Rick Beato: “thought is the enemy of flow”. Nothing sums up the need for technique to be second nature better than this, in my opinion.
