Effortless Mastery Part 3 — Doing the Practices
Here's what to do the next time you pick up your instrument
Kenny Werner opened me to a path for making music fun and effortless. And, yet as he reminds us, “Without practices, a path is mere philosophy.” Kenny lays out his practices in four specific steps.
Please remember that this post is my high-level summary of a large chunk from Kenny’s book. For the full program, go directly to the source.
Step One: Enter the Space and play one note
In Step One, take time to slow down, center yourself, and enter the Space — a state of relaxed alertness that is free of thought and effort. Then, while remaining in the Space, play just one note.
You can enter the Space through any meditation practice that includes progressive muscle relaxation. Kenny’s book Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Musician Within includes a guided meditation for this step. You can also download the free audio files for the book, which feature Kenny as your guide. Insight Timer offers a guided meditation for Step One as well.
Note: All four steps are designed to be done while you’re “in the Space.” If at any point you notice that you’re thinking, trying, or making any effort to sound good, then stop playing. Close your eyes, take some deep breaths, and re-enter the Space.
I find that practicing in this way reduces the time I spend actually playing my guitar. Even so, the time that I do spend is of higher quality.
Step Two: Improvise freely
In Step Two you stay in the Space while playing more than one note. However, this does not include playing a specific exercise or tune. Instead, let your hands freely explore the instrument while improvising freely. Let notes emerge randomly and effortlessly with no concern for tempo, time signature, or key center.
In this step, make no conscious choices about what to play. Instead, allow the notes to emerge without any intention. Imagine that you’re asleep and your hands are moving on their own.
It doesn’t matter what you play during this Step. It might be a few notes of the melody, a short chord progression, or simply one chord repeated many times. The key is to stay in the Space and just let it happen.
Kenny suggests some additional practices for this step:
Remember the “Monk Principle,” named after jazz pianist Thelonius Monk, who reputedly said that there’s no such thing as a wrong note. (There’s a tune dedicated Monk titled Wrong is Right.) Affirm every note that’s played in Step Two as the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard — even the “ugly” notes.
Let your hands move over your instrument as quickly as possible with no concern about playing “right” notes or sounding good. This gives you the felt experience of effortlessness even before mastering a specific tune or exercise.
Mimic the act of playing without the instrument in your hands — another way to get an early “taste” mastery. This is something that you can do any time, any place, away from your instrument.
Do a visualization for sinking into a meditative state: Imagine that you’ve stepped out of your body and can see the back of your head. Then step back again to see the back of both heads. Continue stepping back until you see an entire row of heads. “Your mind will get quiet, and you might feel a bit high,” Kenny says. “You will also find that you are not able to control your playing from that state.”
Step Three: Play something you already “know”
For this step, decide in advance on a specific exercise or tune to play. Choose something that’s familiar — a piece that you’ve practiced in the past and think you know well.
Next, imagine that your hands are being lifted up to your instrument and then let this piece of music play itself. Again, do this with no concern for playing the piece correctly. You might end up just playing a simple version of the melody or using very basic chord voicings. Whatever happens is okay. Just observe it from a detached place.
“As soon as you get seduced into trying to play,” says Kenny, “STOP.” Do this even if you’re only a few notes into the piece. Take your hands off the instrument and re-enter the Space. Then play the piece again from the point you stopped, or go back to the beginning.
Repeat this step as many times as it takes for the piece to emerge effortlessly. Do this even if it means playing the piece over and over again.
Step Three is an act of courage. It reveals your true abilities. You might discover that you haven’t truly mastered the tunes you “know.” You might even uncover some fundamental gaps in your knowledge and skill.
No problem. Making this discovery is the first step to filling in the gaps. This step is not a test: It’s a gift. “Face your demons!” says Kenny. “Let yourself sound bad! Celebrate it!”
Step Four: Reduce and repeat to mastery
Now it’s time to practice a tune or exercise that you cannot play effortlessly yet. First, enter the Space. Then:
Play the exercise or tune until you make a mistake or leave the Space (get distracted or start making effort).
Take your hands off the instrument, breathe deeply, and return to the Space.
Reduce: Play less of the piece or decrease the tempo.
Keep returning to the Space and reducing until you’ve mastered the exercise or tune — that is, until the whole thing is played at tempo, perfectly and effortlessly.
During Step Four, you might reduce the tempo greatly or play only a few notes at a time. That’s fine. Take frequent breaks and limit your practice session to the amount of time that you can stay in the Space.
Mastering a single exercise or tune could take many practice sessions. Again, that’s fine. Start each practice session at the point you left off during the previous practice session. If you discover that you haven’t mastered what you did during that session, then start the exercise or tune again from the beginning. Stick with one exercise at a time until it is mastered.
Kenny warns us that the ego will kick in during Step Four and demand that you try harder to cover more practice material in less time. Notice these thoughts and let them go. The paradox is that you make more progress by slowing down and playing less. If working through an entire book of exercises or tunes takes you many months or years — no problem. Even though you cover less material, you implement more of what you practice.
“Remember, the greatest musicians in jazz have not mastered most of the things in those books,” Kenny says. “They have mastered a few things and made a career out of playing them!”