How to Become a Better Musician, Part 6: Patience

My wife frequently tells me, "Be careful when you pray for patience. God will most certainly give the opportunity to have it."

And you know what? She's right!

As a fruit of the Spirit, patience leads to greater levels of humility (which we'll talk about in another post), but it's one of the easiest fruits to leave untouched–especially because losing our cool feels so good in the moment. 

I've seen this play out so many times over my career as a musician, and I've reached the end of my fuse more times than I care to count. It's mostly driven by pushing for perfection, which in itself is misguided. (Excellence should be our pursuit, and perfection becomes a byproduct—but it's a long-play game.)

It's easy to demand the same level of commitment from others when we've dedicated hours and days of our time to discipline, practice, listening, adaptation, and thoughtfulness. But this demand can (and often does) backfire—our team will most likely view us with apprehension, and we miss chances to draw out the best in them through patient encouragement, giving grace for shortcomings and offering steady insight to help them improve.

Let's take a deeper dive into what this looks like—you'll be surprised to learn how much the internal factor has a greater effect on your patience than external factors, like people, technology, and other systems. 

Examining Patience

Usually, music directors and team members often lose their patience over missed notes, rhythms, bad monitor and FOH mixes—the list stretches on and on. However, these are external factors that, by and large, actually amplify the conflict within ourselves. 

If you're like me, then your internal dialogue probably looks like this:

"Ugh... that should've been better."

"Why can't I do it right?"

"They definitely noticed that."

"I should just pack it up."

This type of internal dialogue is spurred on by our cultural value of fast, perfect results in whatever we do or consume. When we don't meet that same level of results in our playing, singing, conducting, mixing, or programming, it can lead us to to constant negative self-talk, which then transfers to our team, blowing fuses and resorting to authoritarian measures to achieve better results, more quickly. 

The reality though, is that results take time, combined with correct preparation. In my experience, when I learn a new tune or improvisation concept, it takes about three months of dedicated practice for that to become cemented in my psyche. This is a drastic difference from what we constantly see through media and industry, pushing immediacy and instant results. 

Realistic results combine like a snowball effect, eventually making the impossible into something that is easily achievable, all because you've mastered the learning process and applied it to your repertoire of tunes, techniques, and other areas. So you have to shift your mind from an immediate expectation to a longer time frame. 

Implementing Patience

When you make this mindset shift for yourself and give yourself some grace, you're positioned better to give the same for others on your team. The inner peace and grace for yourself translates into being more agreeable and cooperative with the people you work with. But this doesn't mean you should let everything slide—in fact, you do your team a disservice if you remove accountability from the equation. 

This removal of accountability masquerades as grace and patience, and you endanger your team by resting in complacency that results in stagnancy. Patience isn't the avoidance of correction; it's best exercised through steady instruction and correction when the need arises. We often make an incorrect delivery at this phase, which makes us come across as impatient and demanding. Here some adjustments that you can make to redirect the energy of your direction that bears patience instead of impatience:

• "You're playing the wrong note, run it again." ------> "I heard some wrong notes in there, let's try it again; here's the correct line."

• "You're out-of-tune." -----> "Let's check our tuning," or, "Make sure we're singing with good breath support so the pitch doesn't fall."

• "My mix is off, can you fix it?" -----> "Can we tweak the mix a bit? I can't quite hear [x], so we might need to bring down the levels on other channels."

In these cases, you've shifted from demanding results into identifying a problem that is immediately followed up by a solution. Make sure your tone is even and uncharged—this will help your team receive the instruction more amiably. 

The Bottom Line

The biggest takeaway is this: Once you master your patience with yourself, you can then master your responses to external factors that would otherwise make you impatient. We can't eliminate frustration completely, but we CAN mitigate its effects through mature and helpful responses.

Be blessed 👊✌️