I suppose my middle and high school years were not at all similar to those of my non-musical peers. I spent hours in pain staking practice sessions that involved me breaking every bad habit I'd accumulated from Ken Stanton schooling (boo). I managed to play with five different orchestras for multiple seasons so that I would have the most orchestral repertoire possible under my belt. I even managed to save up $2,000 on my own so that I could attend the Brevard Music Festival and spend even more time staring myself down in a mirror breaking bad habits - this time, I'd do it in a practice room in the woods. During those four years in high school, I auditioned 28 different times, played in three orchestras simultaneously, and only cried a couple hundred times. Maybe after all of this time and effort I would have something decent to put on my resumé, and I could totally get into Juilliard.
It hardly made a dent. And I didn't get into Juilliard, but Kennesaw State University is still pretty close. ;) After all that, I'm quite positive that the only thing that got me anywhere in terms of the modest success I achieved is my self discipline.
Without that, I'm unsure how a musician or anyone for that matter could go anywhere. Sure, there's natural talent, but can that naturally talented musician go anywhere if he never seeks out ways of challenging himself through auditions or competitions or going to school? All musicians need an immense amount of self discipline to sit down in a practice room for hours on end and fine tune everything - you can't just use pegs. :P It also takes self discipline to set goals and to act on them as well.
And while my resumé isn't bloated with musical goodies and I'm not sitting around in a Juilliard practice room terrified of someone coming to cut my strings while I'm not looking, I think the success I've achieved is a decent amount, and I would not have the ability to continue that success without the self discipline I've developed over the years.
It hardly made a dent. And I didn't get into Juilliard, but Kennesaw State University is still pretty close. ;) After all that, I'm quite positive that the only thing that got me anywhere in terms of the modest success I achieved is my self discipline.
Without that, I'm unsure how a musician or anyone for that matter could go anywhere. Sure, there's natural talent, but can that naturally talented musician go anywhere if he never seeks out ways of challenging himself through auditions or competitions or going to school? All musicians need an immense amount of self discipline to sit down in a practice room for hours on end and fine tune everything - you can't just use pegs. :P It also takes self discipline to set goals and to act on them as well.
And while my resumé isn't bloated with musical goodies and I'm not sitting around in a Juilliard practice room terrified of someone coming to cut my strings while I'm not looking, I think the success I've achieved is a decent amount, and I would not have the ability to continue that success without the self discipline I've developed over the years.
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