🧠 The difference is willingness to reach

Hey music maker!

Hope you're having a good weekend.

The practice theme for this week was addressing the gap between knowing you should try something hard and actually trying it.

Oftentimes, when we struggle to see growth, it's because we wait too long to cross that gap. We often stay in our comfort zone, repeating what we already know, waiting for some signal that we're "ready" for the next challenge.

But confidence doesn't come from waiting. It comes from reaching before you feel ready.

Here's what that looks like in practice.

I’m embarrassed to say this, but week 12 was the first time I actually attempted a guitar play-along with a full rhythm section backing me. I had to play power chords with two different rhythm patterns, then a single note melody, before moving to full strumming on two chords. At tempo, with a pick.

Six weeks ago, I would've skipped it. "Not ready for that yet." To make it worse I would've moved to the next lesson without allowing myself to develop the skills that would come from this challenge.

This week, I grabbed my pick and went for it.

It was messy and I made lots of mistakes. But instead of avoiding the hard thing, I was leaning into it. Major difference from the musician that I used to be.

The difference between Week 1 and Week 12 is my willingness to reach.

When you learn a musical shape or pattern once, your brain doesn't just file it away for that one context. It starts looking for it everywhere.

This week, I learned the movable minor shape on bass. Within minutes, I started to hear Rick James' "Give It To Me." Then I stacked two of those shapes (G minor and C minor, a fourth apart) to create the G natural minor scale and realized that it's the backbone of OutKast's "So Fresh So Clean" melody.

My ear led me to the songs and the notes I needed were already there on the shapes I'd just learned.

That's the power of learning systems instead of songs. Expert musicians don't process notes individually; they chunk. They see patterns, shapes, and movements. You can too, and once those chunks lock in, your development speeds up.

In terms of creativity, when those patterns become automatic, they free up space for wonderful ideas.

Now you won't notice the exact moment when practice stops feeling like work and starts feeling like play. But there are signals:

When that happens, your practice becomes a training space for creative expression.

And that shift happens because you kept showing up. Even when progress felt invisible, and you sounded worse than you wanted to.

Consistency is a powerful force in our skill-building journey.

The better you get, the more motivated you feel. The more motivated you feel, the more you practice. The more you practice, the better you get.

It's a flywheel.

Early on, every push feels like starting from a dead stop. But after a few weeks of consistent practice, the wheel has momentum.

Small inputs create bigger outputs.

The reaching is what creates the growth.

Quick question: Do you want more specifics about what I'm practicing each week? The actual exercises, techniques, and lessons I'm working through?

Hit reply and let me know.