Trav's Blog: Updates on Trav

Although I’ve listed music behind writing, I love it just as much. It comes more from the heart and soul and less from the mind. But it’s also even more competitive and unreliable a business, and some would say, like writing, a dying business. Regardless, I believe so long is there is human society, music will exist as a viable profession. But neither of those factors matter much to me. Just like writing, music is something I will do to the grave. Its part of how I celebrate being human, part of how I feel alive. Even more, I know that my dedication to music for music, alongside my dedication to improving and strengthening myself, will pay off in a hopefully lifelong to play and write music, actually progress with age. So long as I am me, I will have to give music an honest shot, now while I am still young, without waiting any longer.

The main reason I was dissuaded from not ever considering a musician’s path seriously was because of the competition. I won’t question the inherently competitive nature of a business with its fair share of passionate, driven and talented musicians, but I believe this characterization is distorted. First of all, music has a very low barrier to entry. There are millions of casual players in this country alone who will never put in the time and energy required for a serious career. On the next wrung up there are people who put in the time and perhaps have the talent, but don’t understand or strive to understand the business side. They see their role in the music business too narrowly, and never learn how to sell their stuff. I believe I can avoid this by taking a more holistic approach to music in which it becomes a perfect marriage of my burgeoning interest in entrepreneurship and my lifelong love of creativity. I will educate myself and know my business and know my craft. There are hundreds of books on composition, on theory, on songwriting- neat little baskets of ideas waiting to be picked up and added to my repertoire. These are steps which aspiring musicians rarely seem to take. They think you’ve just got to have “it,” and while talent is ultimately the dealmaker, strategy, marketing and the true business of the music business appear woefully neglected in aspiring musicians. Strategy is something I care deeply about, and its the field in which I want to write as well: personal-development is the strategy of human excellence. It applies to music in the way that one crafts musical habits and devotes oneself to the instrument and to songwriting, the way in which one develops the techniques of composition and arrangement, the smaller but impacting skills one can learn along the way (ear training, for example), networking, marketing, group dynamics and communication…. It’s not hard to see the cross-over into personal development, is it? As I embrace entrepreneurship on the writing side, I’ll be helping my musical career as well. I’ve heard it said that the most successful artists today aren’t always the most talented, but the best businesspeople. This seems especially true for music, especially today.

Another concern is that I have not been playing long enough. I’ve been a drummer for a while now, and will absolutely take those skills into my music, but my voice and the guitar are fresher developments only seriously undertaken in the last year and a half. That’s not much time. But consider that I’ve been writing music in my head, saving melodic ideas or bits of lyrics, for nearly my whole life. I remember being 5 or 6 years old and swinging in my uncle’s backyard on my cousin’s swing set, and in the 45 minutes to an hour I was outside, I composed and sang an entire “album” in my head! That kind of compulsive composition has never stopped- it’s scribbled on a thousand notes from a thousand separate moments, all stemming from the same recurrent inspiration to play. Besides a period of 6 months or so near the start of college, I have always entertained the dream of a life of music. I can look at any year in my life and see that I was dreaming about music during that time- sometimes more important than at other times, but a dream that’s never died and never could.

This kind of creative path is in my genes. I’ve got the music DNA coming at me from all direction: on my mom’s side, all three of my uncles have played in bands all through their lives, even played in bands together (complete with 3-part harmonies), and two still make music professionally. On my dad’s side, I’ve got a father who plays a mean harmonica, an uncle who graduated from Berklee College of Music and took a shot at music for many years, and a third uncle who also tried to make it with a band in his 30’s. It’s little surprise I have the same inclinations. In fact, the whole orientation of my aptitudes is geared towards abstract creative works like writing and music. And my best sense by far is my ear, whether in writing or in music. I won’t ever be fully alive if I don’t have a career that requires my ear. I’m not made to be a builder, computer programmer, or architect like many of members of my family. My aptitudes for that stuff are my absolute weakest. I do best with abstract creative projects, ones that constantly require new, fresh ideas. I feel at times like I am carrying a torch that they have genetically passed onto me, that it’s my moment to take up the calling, that there’s hope that I can push myself and achieve just a bit more than they did. Whatever I do, I do for them, in a way.

I believe the surest formula for excellence is a ferocious dream and an uncommonly powerful strategy, topped off with some preferable initial conditions. When it comes to music, I like to think that I have all three working for me, and I can’t wait to see where this passion takes me in the next year. As mentioned previously, this summer I am minimizing my responsibilities in order to focus on the previously mentioned online business, and writing music. This coming fall, I’ll be taking guitar lessons and a music technology course, which will show me the ropes of a semi-professional studio and grant me free access to it! Needless to say I’ll be recording like a maniac during that time, probably continuing into the following spring when the music tech II is offered.

Whether it’s this passion or my writing that ends up paying the bills, it’s really all the same for me. What’s important is the commitment of my time towards engagements that make me feel most alive. In 21 years of searching, music and writing are the best I have found that work best with my skills, personality and passion. It was never a secret to me that writing and music would play formative roles in my life. The breakthrough was realizing that I had to pursue them directly to live without regrets and be doing what I love. No more neglecting a passion to maintain “security” when that very security is stifling to my passion, my aspiration, and my intuition. No more eschewing my own greatest dreams because I see that they are shared by many others and the going won’t be easy. And perhaps most of all, no more wasting time by not allocating mine directly to what I love the most. It’s economic, it’s romantic, and it’s 100% me… What else can I do that satisfies all three?