Accuracy Over Speed

In music, we often impress upon students this little adage. Accuracy matters more than speed. In fact, speed should be a bi-product of great technique, not an end or goal in its own right. I was just thinking how this applies to life. I have sooo many things moving forward right now, and it’s very exciting. It’s also potentially very overwhelming and I can quickly hear the increasing volume of the clock ticking.

I was a young man in the 1980s. During that time, there was a growing culture of fast living. It was all about the hustle and how much money you could make. And how little sleep you could survive on. And multi-tasking. Fortunately, we grew out of enough of this. At least, I did. It’s now been proven that multi-tasking is ineffective. Sleep deprivation can literally kill you. And while I’m in full pursuit of money to build a better world around me, I’ve long since learned to be happy without a lot of it. I’m not looking outside myself.

What’s this got to do with music?

I’ll use guitarists for the speed thing. We all do things in music to avoid emotionally connecting to the music. Guitarists play too much. Once I was coaching a band and the guitarist was doing all the usual moves. We was technically very good. He was also a teacher. I stopped him and asked him about the song they were covering. We agreed that it was basically blues. So, I asked him to…