How to Become a Better Musician, Part 8: Love

Well, we've reached the end of this series on "How to Become a Better Musician."

We've talked about the roles that discipline, practice, listening, adaptation, thoughtfulness, patience, and humility play in refining and building your prowess as a musician, and—more importantly–as a person.

All seven of these facets will greatly improve your abilities, honing your talent into a formidable force that yields great personal satisfaction, encouragement for others, and a pleasing offering unto the LORD. Indeed they're all great...

...but the greatest of these is the final facet: love.

Defining Love in Music & Worship

When we speak of love, especially in the church or at university, we are speaking about three kinds of love: phileo (brotherly affection); eros (romantic attraction); and agape (selfless/unconditional love). These terms are beneficial to know when understanding the contexts of emotion when considering "love," but within music, we see bit and pieces of many kinds of love on display, and I would sum it all up in word:

Passion.

Indeed, passion—when understood as a strong desire of and devotion to an activity, object, or concept—is integral to the motivation of a musician. Without passion:

• Our discipline becomes lax.

• Our practice becomes infrequent.

• Our listening becomes self-focused.

• Our adaptability becomes stiff/locked up.

• Our thoughtfulness becomes painfully boring.

• Our humility becomes poisoned with selfish pride.

To make progress in music, our passion—our love—for creativity and collaboration must drive our pursuits in the other seven areas, which in turn fuels our passion even more.

A Recent Story

The other night, I was attending a ministry meeting with several other folks from our congregation. We broke out into small groups, and I headed for the far wing of the church with a group of guys. From the room next door, we observed a familiar sound to which we had be come accustomed to hearing for several weeks: a duet of flute and piano, their lines faintly filling the background while we would talk amongst ourselves. 

Normally, these players would be in a different part of the building, and it was their custom to get together to play Bach duets while the ministry meetings were being held. So usually, none of us were privy to how their sessions would go, but this night was different. 

Their normal spot was occupied, so they had to move to the room next to where our small group was meeting. Since they were literally next door to us, we could hear the weaving of their instruments, with the delicate flittings of the flute dancing among the steady contours provided by the piano. 

As the simple polyphony of only two voices unfolded, we could now hear what we only faintly detected in the weeks prior: a crescendo through a moving line, one instrument retreating back while the other soared above, and both instruments then rising together in perfect unison until the final note...

...followed by hearty laughter of both players—which is hardly the reaction one usually expects! 

To me, this glimpse into an unassuming ritual of art was the perfect display of all previous seven facets of becoming a better musician, blended together by the players' passion and love for the music, their friendship, and their object of affection—the LORD. 

• Their excellence was a witness to the weeks of work put into patiently adjusting their parts.

• Their ability to perform was unhindered by an unforeseen change of venue.

• Their interpretation was a witness to their thoughtfulness and cooperation.

• Their laughter spoke volumes about their friendship and humility.

My encouragement to you is that you harness these facets of how to become a better musician and focus them just like the two players above. It can be in any setting—private rehearsal room or 500+ person auditorium—it doesn't matter. What does matter is that our supreme object of affection—the LORD—is worthy of every ounce of our artistic/musical being: preparation, intellect, and creativity, used in selfless serving, coming together into a pleasing and encouraging offering.

Be blessed 👊✌️