# Leveling up



## tokatila (Apr 21, 2017)

While I believe that skill accumulation is a continuous progress, the results definitely don't feel like it, but more of a stepwise/tipping point progression.

I almost feel like it's leveling up. You bang your head against a wall for a long time and then suddenly; you have improved a lot almost overnight. Any experiences?

...............

I have been stuck on level 2 for two years or something, but the song I'm working feels a definite level 3 song. And it doesn't feel that the improvement is incremental, it actually feels I compose a lot better than yesterday. Feels great, can't wait for stucking on level 3 for a couple of years. (Below are personal highly subjective levels I'm using to measure my composition abilities)

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1 - Newbie / Absolute Beginner
2 - Beginner
3 - Advanced Beginner
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4 - Low Intermediate
5 - Intermediate
6 - High Intermediate
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7 - Low Advanced
8 - Advanced
9 - High Advanced
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10 - Master


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## J-M (Apr 21, 2017)

Pretty much how I feel...I think I got to level three with my latest (yet unreleased) composition. :D


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## FinGael (Apr 21, 2017)

I agree to some good extent, but there is something that does not leave me alone - regarding this topic...

In the middle of the 90's I used to make songs with one synth (+midi) and a sequencer. I was a total newbie to midi composing/sequencing and had only played some guitar and some keyboards (self-taught) at home and in some local bands.

I made pieces in genres I had not been listening to, and was not familiar with at all, and many of them were highly original and had some pretty advanced techniques goin on in them. I had no idea what I was doing - just intuitively playing and adventuring with music. In retrospect it almost feels like I was channeling some source outside of myself. Some pieces were put together in a very short time and to this day I have not understood how I managed to make them. To put it shortly: they were a lot above the skills I had that time.

Since that I have progressed in many ways, although had a long pause in composing, but I do not seem to get the same magic (+freedom and purity) in what I do.

It is haunting me. I have spent so many nights in thinking of how to get back into that state of mind.


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## Mornats (Apr 22, 2017)

I totally understand that FinGael. My friend who got me into writing music urged me not to learn too much theory as he liked what I came up with when I went for intuition. I was experimenting and he liked a lot of my "happy accidents".


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## Smikes77 (Apr 22, 2017)

It's when you get to level 10 that you think you really are only at level 1


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## dannymc (Apr 24, 2017)

one composers level 10 could be another composers level 1. very subjective decision. 

Danny


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## JohnG (Apr 24, 2017)

tokatila said:


> 10 - Master



Everyone else is a master here, man. I don't know what YOUR problem is....


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## chrisr (Apr 24, 2017)

Where can you go from there? Nowhere, exactly!


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## d.healey (Apr 24, 2017)

I like this idea -


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## thesteelydane (Apr 24, 2017)

The moment you feel like you know what you are doing is when you should be careful - the Dunning-Kruger effect and all that. If you think you suck, you're probably better than you think. If you think you're great, you probably suck. The truth is we all suck, and the artist's only job is to try and suck a little less everyday. When Casals was asked why he was still practicing hard well into his 90's and long after he'd retired from the stage, he famously replied "because I think I'm making progress".

@tokatila I have heard some of the stuff you post here, and you are much better than you probably think. Keep moving forward!


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## dannymc (Apr 24, 2017)

do you really feel you suck? i don't think anyone should feel that way about their own stuff. it should be a buzz creating music. i know for me i've discovered one of the best high's in the world creating something from nothing. hearing it grow in front of you as you compose, its such a rush. 

anyway for me its not about feeling how much i suck it more about how much do i know of this music game. i feel i know about 10% and i have 90% more to learn before i can be confident i have a lot of the tools required to be really good one day. gotta keep learning every day 

Danny


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## thesteelydane (Apr 24, 2017)

Yes, I do, but it doesn't make the journey any less enjoyable. I come from the background of professional performing, used to play up to 200 concerts a year with some of the top orchestras in Scandinavia. Nothing beats the feeling you have on stage, or that first beer after a good show. But I also know that sometimes you work your ass off for months on a difficult piece and then go on stage and suck hard in front of 2000 people. If you are not prepared that that can happen, it will crush you - eat you alive, destroy your soul, kind of crush you. If, on the other hand, you accept that you suck, and just try to suck a little less everyday, then that occasional missfire becomes just a bump in the road, not a soul crushing defeat. I remember having a big crisis about 2 years after getting into conservatory, realising that no matter how much I practiced, not only would there always be thousands and thousands of people who played better than I, but more importantly that I myself would never be as good as I would like to be. I almost quit right there and then, but slowly came to understand that that is a blessing. To be able to keep improving for the rest of your life. You'll never catch that ball, and that's the whole point - if you do, you're finished as an artist. So I suck, and I'm ok with that.

That said, I left the orchestra game because I don't want to do another audition in my life (that's a whole other level of soul destruction), but also because of a girl in Vietnam, and that I - like you, Danny - discovered the joy of creating my own music, and not just play other peoples music. So now I'm trying to turn this composing thing into a living, because I just can't imagine anything else I would rather spend the rest of my time here on earth on. And boy, do I suck at it - and I'm ok with that...

I do miss playing in orchestra though, but now I'm back in Denmark for a year, and hoping to get a bit of freelance work.


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## tokatila (Apr 24, 2017)

thesteelydane said:


> The moment you feel like you know what you are doing is when you should be careful - the Dunning-Kruger effect and all that. If you think you suck, you're probably better than you think. If you think you're great, you probably suck. The truth is we all suck, and the artist's only job is to try and suck a little less everyday. When Casals was asked why he was still practicing hard well into his 90's and long after he'd retired from the stage, he famously replied "because I think I'm making progress".
> 
> @tokatila I have heard some of the stuff you post here, and you are much better than you probably think. Keep moving forward!



I posted this thread about not what my level is but how improvements seem to come. But...hmm...maybe the "being stale" / a no apparent improvement "effect" might mean I have entered and have been in the valley of despair for a while...But does it mean that my next piece is feeling better is a beginning of a gradual ascension or am I just about to reach peak Stupid. At least if the criteria being there is to realize how much there is to learn, that box can be checked. I have heard Dunning-Kruger before, but had happily forgotten it.

And thanks.


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## thesteelydane (Apr 25, 2017)

tokatila said:


> I posted this thread about not what my level is but how improvements seem to come. But...hmm...maybe the "being stale" / a no apparent improvement "effect" might mean I have entered and have been in the valley of despair for a while...But does it mean that my next piece is feeling better is a beginning of a gradual ascension or am I just about to reach peak Stupid. At least if the criteria being there is to realize how much there is to learn, that box can be checked. I have heard Dunning-Kruger before, but had happily forgotten it.
> 
> And thanks.



Ah yes, I might have gone slightly off topic, but I was simply referring to the feeling of not being where you would like to be, and making the point that it never really goes away, no matter how good you get. As for learning and progressing, if it is in any way similar to mastering an instrument, it's always 2 steps forward and 1 backwards, and it's certainly never a straight line. It might feel like you are stuck, but you are probably just laying the groundwork for your next leap forward. If you keep working on a skill everyday, you will get better, and while day to day progress may seem non-existent, over time you are moving forward.

The most important thing I have learned from practicing an instrument, is that if you focus on improving the quality of the process, rather than getting a certain end result, the latter will be better just by itself. It seems self evident, but it's so easy to forget. Focus not on nailing that difficult scale run, but rather om improving the quality of your concentration and learning, and you will nail that run a lot quicker.

I used to think that learning composition could be approached with the same methodology I would apply to learning a physical skill like playing an instrument - deliberate practice, varied repetition to build myelin, breaking problems down into their smallest components, fixing them and putting them back together in context etc...all that stuff. But now I'm not so sure that's the best way to learn writing. As Mike Verta said in one of his classes, you sorta have to learn everything at once, the way you learn how to drive a car. You can't focus on only practicing right turns, because you'll get killed.

There's been a lot of research into efficiently learning physical skills, both in the world of sports and more recently also on musicians, but how - and if - that translates to learning composition I don't know. On a side note, if anyone is interested in practicing their instruments more efficiently Noa Kageyama has a lot of interesting articles about the latest research on the subject here: http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/blog/ The focus is on peak performance under pressure, but there are a lot of articles about efficient learning and practicing. But again, how it translates to what we are doing, I'm still trying to figure out.

Edit: This is my favourite explanation of the Dunning-Kruger effect:


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## Ashermusic (Apr 25, 2017)

Stop grading yourself and just create the best music you can.


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## tokatila (Apr 25, 2017)

thesteelydane said:


> ...
> 
> There's been a lot of research into efficiently learning physical skills, both in the world of sports and more recently also on musicians, but how - and if - that translates to learning composition I don't know. On a side note, if anyone is interested in practicing their instruments more efficiently Noa Kageyama has a lot of interesting articles about the latest research on the subject here: http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/blog/ The focus is on peak performance under pressure, but there are a lot of articles about efficient learning and practicing. But again, how it translates to what we are doing, I'm still trying to figure out.



Yes! My favorite blog, since my eldest started playing piano last autumn in a Suzuki group and I'm her "home teacher" so I have read that blog many times already and I'm so happy that she has blasted through that book 1 already and we are playing also some ABSRM4-5 level stuff, while some other members are still playing song 2 or 3. *END of bragging* Besides, I don't like group teaching so I want to get rid of that Suzuki method as fast as possible. Being her manager is my B plan.



Ashermusic said:


> Stop grading yourself and just create the best music you can.



Well. That might be fine and dandy, but since my wife supports my learning...you can't say to investor that "I'm doing my best", you say "My goal is to progress to level five in 3 next year and finally starting to have a positive cash flow from quadrant 4 of 2020".


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## Ashermusic (Apr 25, 2017)

tokatila said:


> Well. That might be fine and dandy, but since my wife supports my learning...you can't say to investor that "I'm doing my best", you say "My goal is to progress to level five in 3 next year and finally starting to have a positive cash flow from quadrant 4 of 2020".



The entertainment business does not work that way. You are as good or bad as the projects success says you are.

Music does not work that way. You are worse than you will be a year from now if you work hard this year and little to no better if you do not.


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## Harry (Apr 25, 2017)

tokatila said:


> Well. That might be fine and dandy, but *since my wife supports my learning*...you can't say to investor that "I'm doing my best", you say "My goal is to progress to level five in 3 next year and finally starting to have a positive cash flow from quadrant 4 of 2020".


This sounds like every man's dream. Is it putting pressure on you?


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## tokatila (Apr 25, 2017)

Harry said:


> This sounds like every man's dream. Is it putting pressure on you?



Yes.


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## d.healey (Apr 25, 2017)

Harry said:


> This sounds like every man's dream.


Not mine!


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## Prockamanisc (Apr 25, 2017)

Focus on measurable things, and check in on your progress every 3 months or so. Don't think about what level you're at, think about what it takes to increase your level. If it's more time spent writing, then every day track how much you write. Ignore the level thing, it'll happen on its own.


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