You Have To Love The Work

My process for always being able to hit the reset button and stay realistic about the goals.

This new journey I’m on to reach 100k subscribers on YouTube by April and then on to a million and beyond, has put me right back to maximum output on all fronts. I’m working on storytelling, improving my studio and video setup slowly but surely, and most importantly I’m reaching more people which will make it possible to work on touring my live show.

I can’t believe the numbers just from the first two videos in this re-booting of my YouTube channel, and if you’re one of the people who has liked, commented or subscribed to the channel, it really means a lot to me.

But how does one fall in love with this kind of work? In fact, how does anyone fall in love with any of the avenues of hard work we have to travel down as musicians in search of our own voice, and a chance to perform for live audiences?

I think some of us are lucky. I know I am, and am grateful that I’m simply hyper-curious about everything I hear, and know I’ll never run out of things to work on. Some of us are driven by factors such as fear, greed, love, ego, mental health issues, even despair, and the list goes on. I’ve met many people who fit lots of those categories, and it’s very interesting to see how we all arrive at a similar places sometimes, having taken completely different routes to get there.

My current path, and basically a similar looking one I’ve been on for most of my career, is fueled by a combination of curiosity and the search for artistic freedom. The fresh injection of energy into the YouTube channel is something I hope will connect me with more people and more parts of the world, so I can explore places I’ve never seen before, as well as revisiting some of my favorite places to play on earth.

It’s a nice idea, I’m all-in on the process, and at the same time I’m totally prepared for it to fail. If it does, I’ll have learnt something from it, and will be onto the next thing as fast as I can.

The underlying method to the success of any of that, is to not forget why I’m here in the first place, and make sure I’m still as focused on the process of making music as possible.

This past 10 days of producing these two videos for YouTube, monitoring their success, and finding out what I can do better next time, has definitely put my practice time on the back burner more than I would like.

As always it comes down to finding the balance, and that is always one of the hardest challenges I’ve faced. When I was single, living on my own and touring a lot, it was the balance between the time on the road working live, and the time in the practice room working to learn new things and become a better musician.

Now there are a ton of other factors with a family and a totally different professional life and outlook from even 10 years ago, and that balance is definitely being tested, as I try to make this huge push forwards into what the modern musician/artist has to have in their arsenal of tools.

As always, when things get off the rails a little, I go back to basics right away. Tonight was no exception, and I went back to my favorite practice method: Play the basics, record them, and then listen back to see where you can improve.

Here are my takeaways when I listen back:

• It’s cold in my studio, my hands are cold, and I can hear all the misses.

• Having not touched my instrument for two days, I feel way more strain in the lower register on my left hand

• My stamina is shot from my inconsistency of practice

• In just 90 seconds I can start to feel some improvement in my tone production, but there are problem areas of the neck that aren’t singing the way I hear them

• Accuracy of false harmonics are good

• playing the exercise in two octaves when I got to C minor was something I should have done in every key. It took me 11 times to realize that, and that is too long. (The note to myself here will be: More focus needed on the concept for the idea)

• I should work this idea without the safety net of reverb

This is typical of the observations I’ll make when I listen to any short clips I record of a simple exercise. I’m 100% honest with myself, as harsh as I need to be, but also making sure I look for some positives at the same time. It’s easy to get into a negative spiral if things aren’t going the way you hear them, but you have to trust in the time you’ve already spent with your instrument, and know that your baseline of ability is probably better than you give yourself credit for.

Again we’re talking about balance, and this time it’s the balance of being brutally honest while at the same time being kind to yourself.

If this process is something that is interesting to you, I’d be more than happy to share more, and embed audio clips of how I work on this stuff day to day.

Drop me a comment below, and let me know. Thanks for all your support here and on the YouTube channel, I’m more excited about the next two years of music than I have been in a really long time. The fact that I’ll get to share that with some of you in-person, makes it all the more motivating to love and do the work.

Janek