My friend Alison has a blog about gardening. If you’re interested in growing plants for munching or as a hobby, check it out.
Growing a plant seems to me like learning a song in some ways.
To me, growing a single plant is like learning a single song on saxophone.
Generally a gardener won’t just have one plant. There’s a whole garden of them.
Likewise, you’ll learn a repertoire of music on sax.
Some plants are easier to plant than others. Apparently sprouts are pretty easy to grow according to Alison.
Same thing with songs.
A blues head isn’t quite on the same level as transcribing Coltrane’s solo on Giant Steps.
Plants need water, nutrients, and care.
With songs, you also can’t just learn them once and have them in the cupboard either.
They need continued maintenance if you want to keep them fresh in your memory, not to mention adding new approaches and styles (esp. for improvisation).
Otherwise they’ll wither away and need to be revived or even replanted if you will.
Having a variety of plants and songs makes the whole situation more useful and pleasing. In terms of nutrients, you need a lot of different vegetables, fruit, etc to keep things interesting and healthful.
With music, versatility in styles will get you more and better gigs and broaden your musical horizons.
You probably don’t want to eat seven pounds of carrots in a sitting and an audience likely won’t want to hear eight cha cha songs in a row (especially if they’re dancers).
How’s your saxophone garden doing?
Good one! I like the comparison. Gardening and Learning songs are two different things but have essential similarities. You have pointed good comparisons of the two! Keep it up! 🙂
Thanks Thea
Hey Neal, I love your analogy. Thanks for the saxy shout-out. What next? Sax in the garden?
Thanks Alison, I thought it worked pretty well. Maybe that could be the followup, haha.
Sprouts!? That word alone let me revive the nightmare of my youth namely brussels sprouts. Didn’t liked them then, don’t like them now.
Never learned to play an instrument. If i had to learn to play an instrument Saxophone would be on the list. Mostly because i liked how Candy Dulfer, i think that is her name is spelled, played the saxophone.
The reason i never learned to play an instrument is that one must constantly practise. Just like one must constantly take care of the sprouts.
Maybe i must take up gardening, and who knows, the saxophines mayb be ripe enough one day for me to take up playing them.
Hey Johan,
Haha, I’m not a fan of brussel sprouts either. Other types of sprouts can taste pretty good, on a bagel sandwich with Monterey Jack and tomato is pretty good.
Candy Dulfer seems to be doing pretty well these days. That’s funny she would be your reason for playing.
-Neal
Well, these are lentil sprouts I teach you how to grow, not Brussels sprouts. Way easier – just take 3 days and a couple of minutes twice per day. Easier than learning sax I’m sure – I’ve not tried sax but I’ve learned some piano, violin, recorder, clarinet, and classical guitar. Still never figured out the music reading part to any level of competence, though the piano reading was the hardest.
What do I know though? I’m sure Neal has the hang of making sax much more understandable than piano, but not easier than sprouts.