Find Your Art And Improve Your Business Game

I have been playing the guitar for the last 35 years. I don’t know how it started. Nobody at home would play an instrument or cared too much about it. I just felt the call from music, and I managed to get my hands on a battered second-hand Spanish guitar and, with the help from a close friend, started learning the first chords in the context of popular songs.

I still remember the dopamine flow when I managed to play for the first time some simplified versions of “The Beatles” songs like “Let it Be”, “Hey Jude” and “Help”. It felt great. I also got some positive feedback from friends so I kept trying new songs and started listening to new songs and reading everything I could get my hands around about this new language. There was no internet at the time and most music magazines and books would come from Argentina to Uruguay, with some delay of course.

I started playing at house parties with friends and would also carry the guitar with me to surfing and camping adventures at some isolated beaches in the Uruguayan border with Brazil. I spent some years playing the same repertoire not so much on the songs but on the chords required and the language. I could actually play many songs, but none with the level of sophistication used by the artist.

It was crystal clear to me at the time that I did not have the talent required to make a career out of my guitar and my music, so I decided to keep playing as a hobby, as an amateur, but get serious on my professional career on business, which by the way, I also enjoyed a lot. Pragmatically, my thinking was that to earn a living playing the guitar you really need to be great, while in business almost anyone can make it happen; business has significantly more tolerance for mediocrity.

I bought an acoustic guitar in 1992 with my first salary from PWC Uruguay. This gave me renewed energy to jump another step and take jazz guitar lessons and harmony, which I could afford to pay at that stage. I would hate the pieces I was working and practicing on. However, at some point in time, I realised that the practice of scales, the fingers’ gymnastics, and the understanding of more sophisticated chords allowed me to open up a new door. I started composing my own songs and recording them on cassettes. I had three to four years of creative work and then I stopped.

Work in my twenties grabbed almost all my attention and I would keep playing almost every day but as routine and not really pushing myself into any new stuff. I probably spent at least 10 years like this. Putting in the hours but always playing the same pentatonic scale or the same patterns and licks. It was almost like exercising my fingers but not pushing my brain. Very similar to what happens at many jobs, where you have one year multiplied by ten. You get the money, but you don’t get the learning and the improvement.

When I hit the thirties and moved into Spain, I felt the call again and the curiosity on how some songs were organised and played, and in particular I wanted to understand the thinking and rationale used by different artists. I explored Pearl Jam, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, U2 and of course The Beatles in detail but also some of the great artists from the River Plate like Luis Alberto Spinetta, Jorge Drexler and Gustavo Cerati.

In Madrid, I found a rock & blues musical hub in Carabanchel, where I started taking lessons with many professional Blues players like José Luis Pardo, Corey Harris and Bob Margolis (Muddy Waters Band guitar and also started to practice and play with a blues band. This opened up a new door and allowed me to go deep into the blues style, exploring in detail all the different players and styles; from Robert Johnson on the crossroads to the three Kings (B.B. King, Freddie King and Albert King). It also allowed me to play with a band on stage and jump into Jam Sessions, which are quite frequent in many blues bars in Madrid.

The process was to mimic the way each one of these blues players played the different blues classics. The way to achieve this was to focus on very small pieces of the songs at a time. Scales could be broken down into licks. We used to spend hours focusing on bending one string to reach the exact semi-tone or on doing the vibrato the B.B. King way. Each voicing has a tone, and accent and an intention that, if not played the right way, it doesn’t make the trick. The focus was entirely on the process and the journey and there was a great tolerance for mistakes.

The culture in the blues community is one of constructive feedback; you jump on stage with people that play better and worse than you do. There is always someone willing to share advice or provide feedback on the fly so you could improve. Nobody in this environment is aiming at playing on a big stadium or making money out of this. The satisfaction comes entirely from the improvement you make every time you play, alone or as a band in front of an audience. It also comes from supporting new players to understand the blues language and the subtleties to improve their “experience”, so the blues community grows.

Very soon I started to realise the impact this was having on my day-to-day business performance. The synergies between business and playing the instrument started to become evident. Playing the guitar became my way of achieving mindfulness through being in the flow. It was also exhausting on the neural connections you need to make to figure out how something has to be played or when and how you need to improvise.

When playing on jam sessions with people you haven’t met before, you really need to listen to what they are playing, the style, the volume, the language so you can join in being respectful and building with your sound something that is better than without you, but at the same time doesn’t go above and beyond the rest of the band.

You do see bad players pushing up the volume of their amplifiers, as it happens in business meetings, playing two rounds of solo improvisations instead of one or even soloing when the singer is singing, which is almost a crime and forbidden at all costs; out of the etiquette. Playing in a band, as in business, requires strong leadership.

You need to let people in the band shine and you also need to be humble to recognise mistakes and always try to become a better player. Long term, trust-based relationships are developed to the point that you know what the others will do next just by glancing at their body language. The speed of trust allows the whole experience to deliver great value for the band and the audience.

I have well-passed my 10,000 hours of practice in the last 35 years of playing. Some were high-quality process-oriented hours, and some were just “dumb” practice repeated but, all in all, my playing is fluid and I can play almost any blues/rock/pop song through following chords and improvising on Major Scales, Pentatonic Scales or using Arpeggios. While people tend to think of it as a talent, I can assure you without a doubt that the skill was all made through effort, practice, repetition and of course passion for it and a clear purpose to become better every day.

I just found playing the guitar at this level was complementary to doing business as reading, exercising or doing sports is. It provides a space to get in the flow, use other parts of the brain, channel energy, share and learn with other people and have fun. At this stage, it is something hygienic, like eating or breathing. Playing music to me is just one more habit. Something I miss when I don’t have. Something that improves my performance in other activities. It’s an essential part of the puzzle.

The way to start this journey is, as it always is, through taking the first step. It is not age related. It’s the same with any art. Grab your instrument, your brush, your pencil or your computer and start learning, practicing and creating. Break it down in many small pieces. Focus on the process. Forget about the outcome, it will come on due time. Make mistakes. Try again. Try different ways of doing it. This is one of those things you will never regret doing and you will carry with you well after you quit your job; until the end. Be brave. Have fun.