The Old Manufacturing Plant

So I have an old manufacturing plant. Its been mine since I was about 16 years old. Its full of many things, some completed units, many unfinished and some assembled with parts missing. Definitely few items worthy of leaving the plant to be sold. The walls and structure are in need of repairs and refinishing if we want to open up for business once again!

Where do we start? Well I can start by cleaning up thru a process of categorizing items into "Trash" or "Save". Then move on to essential repairs, then refinishing. Think of those times when you make even more of mess in order to cleanup things right! When all this is done, we can again open the doors and hopefully do business like never before!!

Ok so I lied, I don't have a manufacturing plant perse! But what I do have is years of performing music in several different environments; Weddings, Parks, Festivals, Dinner shows, private parties but mostly in Church as part of a Praise and worship team. However things like "LIFE" happened and for whatever reasons that contains, the music venture came to a stop, a full stop. One of the biggest reasons however was the lack of mastery that haunted me constantly. I new there were holes in my playing and for whatever reason, I continued to ignore these!

Time passed by.. then suddenly (last year) I had an epiphany about playing music as a sort of Partial retirement or who knows what! The Torch of Inspiration had been rekindled once again with a new and refreshing aspect. The new aspect being, fix and repair all the holes in my music knowledge and performance ability. Add to this. that unlike before, my goal is to master music using 2 hand TouchGuitar (In my case the Megatar) versus standard Electric Guitar which has been my mainstay since I was 13 years old!

So why pursue Mastery? Is it even attainable? Well.. There's a lot of folks that think that is attainable but then again the term mastery could mean different things to different people. Is it merely attaining a state of proficiency in the language of music or say specifically "Jazz Music" (which is my passion)? Or is Mastery broader than this?  Does it not include being able to connect with an audience or write music that is received well? Is it having your own voice after learning to speak the language of music? Is it being able to deliver a solid performance night after night, week after week?

I would have to say the answer is most likely "all of the above" and that's a daunting task. Much like the old saying of how do you eat an Elephant comes to mind! And yet performers do this everyday!

Onward.. So where I'm at right now, I'm back to basics and I mean "basics" but going after "Mastery" at every turn. No longer will I breeze thru exercises that seem mundane or not really helpful only to get to the "good ones"! NO, those exercises are there for a reason, even Charlie Parker was known to run thru some very very rudimentary exercises when he warmed up backstage! So everything needs to reach the smoothness that I'd want to hear myself at my favorite artists concert.


So how will it go? What will be the outcome? We'll have to wait and see.

However, if the years have taught me anything, its this: "Doing everything the same way will get you what you already have". Also, doing nothing will get you nothing!

My Father in-law always says "The Years are going to pass whether you do something or not". So the way I look at it now, I don't have any more minutes to waste!

Please stay tuned and follow me on my Journey!

Pete.

P.S. Please check out my YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNm63wMiuSh3-8Y4f_LUDvw