How to be an Amateur

Some people have a lot of talent, but never seem to be able to find their big break. I think there are a lot of talented musicians out there who are struggling to make ends meet. Unfortunately, just having talent is usually not enough to pay your bills. Perhaps you've seen the bumper sticker that says, "Real musicians have day jobs". It would be nice if having talent was enough to put food on the table, but anyone who wants to earn their money through their talent, needs to have a certain mindset in order to make it past that amateur stage, and break into the professional world of whatever area they are in.

My Mother-in-Law has a modeling agency. (The b/w picture on the right was taken by me, by the way). The agency also runs a school for children and teens who wish to become models, performers or actors in the future, called "Actors Studio". Students enrolled learn modeling, singing, dancing, acting and even taiko. The classes are held in the company's studio, where we are able to practice taiko sometimes when it is not being used for other events. A while ago, I noticed an interesting poster hanging on the wall titled "The Differences Between a Professional and an Amateur". I thought it was very interesting and whether you are striving to be a professional sports player or to create a new taiko team, the ideas would be useful to you.

So today, I am straying a bit from the "taiko" theme in order to share with you the first half of these guidelines entitled: "How to be an Amateur".

1. Be satisfied with the way things are
2. Make sure you can always find something to complain about
3. Don't worry about setting goals (short term, or long term), just take things as they come
4. If something is difficult, awkward, painful, etc. don't bother with it. It's not worth it.
5. Don't take risks, stay with what you know is safe
6. Always question your own ability. After all, there are a lot of other people out there and most of them are probably better than you at whatever you're doing.
7. Change your mind easily and often
8. Become a procrastinator and find lots of useless activities to fill up your extra time (like watching TV, playing solitaire)
9. Try not to do anything where there is a chance you could fail
10. Spend your money how you want, when you want
11. If you try something once or twice and it doesn't work, give up on it, it will probably never work
12. If something goes wrong, make sure you find out who's fault it is, and make sure they are blamed for it (because it definitely isn't YOUR fault)
13. Always compare yourself to your competitors and define your success by how you stack up to them

After reading the amateur guidelines, I think you can get a good idea of what NOT to do if you wish to make it into the professional world. Tomorrow (or more likely in a couple days) I will post the other half of the poster, "How to be a Professional".

A Cool Song

If you have been following my journal, you may remember a month back or so I mentioned that I had started working on writing a song. About two weeks ago, I finished writing it. I mean, I finished it in the sense that it had a beginning, a middle and an end, but by no means is it any where near "final copy" quality. It is a first draft. Besides, I wrote it all from my head, or by beating out the rhythms on a table. I haven't actually tried to play it on drums yet. That always brings up new issues, and produces changes in the music. Anyhow, with my limited experience writing taiko music, and limited access to drums to actually try out the song, I decided to ask for some outside opinions. I first thought of Yamada san, of Hono Taiko, who leads the two groups I am a member of, but I thought, instead of going straight for a professional's opinion, maybe I should show it to someone else first. If they had some suggestions for improvements, I could fix it up a little bit before asking Yamada san for help. I was thrilled to learn recently that one of my students is actually a member of Koshu Taiko, the group the played at our school festival. (I also posted videos of their performance.)
So I decided I would ask this girl to take a quick look at the song. I told her, "Teacher needs to see her after school", so she stopped by and I showed her the song. She looked through it and said that she thought it was great. She even said we should play it for a senior graduation assembly coming up in February (Japanese graduate in March). Unfortunately we don't have a place to practice, nor the right drums to practice on at the moment.

My song passed the first test, so I thought I would make a copy of it and give it to Yamada san at the next opportunity, asking her to just look it over when she had time and to give me her overall opinion, maybe tell me some good parts and bad parts. Since giving her a copy, I actually haven't had a chance to go to taiko practice. This week was cancelled, last week I was throwing up and in bed. With the holidays, there wasn't going to be a practice again until January 14! Ahhh! Luckily, Yume-mitai added a practice on the morning of Dec. 24, and the hozonkai added a practice last night. I wasn't able to go last night, but my wife could go. We actually wrote the song together, so when she met Yamada san at last night's practice, she spoke with her about the song. Yamada san didn't say a whole lot about the song, but what she said was a big encouragement to me. Apparently, she thinks it's a really cool song, and she said she will help me make it even cooler! What a boost for my confidence. Well, I mean, "I'll help you make it even cooler" could translate to "I'll help you fix the bad parts", but even if that is the case, if it wasn't any good at all, I doubt she would have offered the assistance. So, I will probably see her at Monday's Yume-mitai practice and perhaps I will be able to set up a meeting time with her to work on it a little bit. I am very excited!

Injuries

When I was in high school, I had a friend. He played the bass guitar and the cello. In the high school orchestra, he was principal cellist. He was two years older than I, and when I was a freshman, he was already a junior. Soon I heard that he had also been a rather talented football player on the varsity squad, but after his freshman year, or so, he went to the coach and said he wasn't going to continue because he was worried that he would hurt his fingers and wouldn't be able to play the cello any more.

This past summer, my whole family was together. My younger brother and I were shooting some baskets and we asked our older brother if he wanted to join us. He is also a working musician, who relies on music to put food on his table. He declined our invitation, saying that he doesn't do any types of sports where he could injure something like fingers, making it difficult or impossible to play music.

I think in both cases, I felt like these guys were maybe taking things a little too seriously, but the last couple weeks, I think I may have changed my thinking to be more in line with theirs. This summer, my family attended a pool party. I was looking forward to trying out the diving board. In junior high and high school, I was pretty fearless on the diving board, trying out just about any crazy dive I could think of. I wanted to try those out again, but it had been probably 15 years since I had tried any of them, so I was a bit nervous about injuring something. At the end of the party, I had tried most of the dives I could remember from my teen years, and hadn't hurt myself (nor anyone else). I thought, "I've still got it, I'm still young." The last month has given me reason to feel that I may still have it, but I'm not so young as I used to be.

At the start of October, the school where I work held their field day. Teachers were expected to participate and I was signed up for three or so events, including the 100 meter dash. I would not say that I am out of shape. After all, I am running several times a week and practicing taiko several times a week as well. But I have probably not participated in track and field events since elementary school. I never realized how many of your muscles you use in a all out sprint like in the 100 Meters. I gave it my all and ran as hard as I could. I could hardly move the next day because of sore muscles.

About two weeks ago, the school held another athletic event, this time just for teachers. I played softball. The following day's sore muscles again reminded me of my age. Baseball may look like a slow game, but reacting quickly from a stationary stance to a hit ball uses a lot of muscles that I was unaware of. Again, I was giving 110%, but I'll have to remember next time to take it easy, especially if it's a sport I haven't played in many years.

Of course, the sore muscles were not what changed my thinking to be more in line with my brother's. It was at the softball game, though. At one point, when I was trying a little too hard, I actually attempted to slide into first base. After thinking this through, this action probably showed my ignorance of baseball/softball because I don't think you should ever slide into first base. Anyhow, through that action, I believe I hyper-extended my left elbow. For a day or so, it was quite painful and I couldn't do much with it, but soon I was able to do most of the activities I could before. There was a pain in my forearm, however, which was not going away, and it would even wake me up at night sometimes. After about a week of undiminished pain, I began to worry that I might have fractured a bone or something. Although I was fairly certain this was not the case, some of the feelings were similar to those I had when I broke my thumb practicing kendo about a year and a half ago. This led to 6 or 7 weeks where I could not practice kendo. I began to think of the implications of a broken forearm. That would mean 6 weeks, at least, of no taiko practice. It was my left forearm, which is already weak as I am right handed, and after 6 weeks in a cast, it would be even weaker. When I have to miss one taiko practice because of a cold, or whatever, I am actually quite down. Thinking about missing 6 weeks was rather depressing. Then I began to think of my brother, and when he turned down our invitation to play basketball, and I started to understand why he turned us down.

Last week I finally went to see the doctor. He took x-rays and said there were not fractures, it was just taking a while to heal. Thank goodness. It was a bit of scare, but I am glad it was nothing serious. I do not think I will be cutting out all sports from my life now, but I believe I will certainly be more careful.