Music creators don’t need masters

Do you need a master?

When I went to music composition school, one of my teachers told me: -” You always seem to be trying to figure out things on your own. It would help if you had a master, all of us had a master”-

I’ve had many teachers and mentors throughout the years, but I never had a master. In other words, I didn’t have a musical role model to follow or a clear image of what kind of musician I could become.

This insulation happened not because I wanted to, as I did look for a role model, especially in the early years. The problem is I never felt comfortable following any of my teacher’s footsteps, as it felt inauthentic. I think this implicit non-belonging also resulted in that no mentor wanted me to be their disciple either.

After developing my creative musical path without masters, I believe it’s wrong to claim creative musicians need one. The master-disciple model is an excellent way of learning a craft, but ultimately I think it is an outdated one to develop as a creative musician.

The master-disciple tradition: Advantages

The master-disciple model has a long tradition in music and, until these days, is still a common way in which musicians develop their craft.

Having a master has many advantages. The most important one is that they can help you avoid the problems others have encountered before. With meticulous guidance, they prevent you from reinventing the wheel every time you face a new challenge in your learning process. This guidance saves you time, energy, and prevents you from reinforcing bad habits. For example, if you’re a performer, they can correct the position of your hands and body, give you feedback on your tempo, or correct the phrasing of your melodies. If you’re a composer, they might provide you with feedback on instrumentation, timing, harmony, or form.

Whatever your musical craft is, a good master will give you the necessary feedback at the precise moment when you’re ready to absorb it. Learning in this way results in a much faster process. For this reason, the master disciple-model works well if you’re trying to become a highly-skilled performer in a discipline with a significant tradition, like playing traditional instruments, singing, or composition in a specific style.

Another less obvious advantage is that a master might be able to see in you things that you can’t or don’t want to see and help you bring your hidden talents to the surface. In this sense, they can be real career guides. They might see, for example, that your voice fits a repertoire better than another. They might notice you have an excellent sense of harmony, or good taste for arrangements, and set you on a particular path in which you work on your strengths.

Finally, one of the more practical advantages is that a master can help you out finding a professional path. The old saying “She/He who leans against a big tree will always find shade” is very real. Music is a very network-based career, so a master’s connections and leverage can help you out getting you on track.

The master-disciple tradition: Where it falls short

Even though working with a master might help you polish and learn skills faster, developing on someone else’s frame of reference has disadvantages. As a general rule, in music and life, any advantage or shortcut comes at a cost.

The main shortcoming of learning with a master is that, in the long run, you end up limiting your ability to figure things out creatively. Reinventing the wheel might be very impractical, but it has enormous learning value. The process of figuring things out is a skill in itself, and needs practice and nurturing to grow. When you learn with a master, the development of this skill suffers, as you rely on established methods and become self-aware of doing things differently. On the contrary, when you continuously figure things out because you need to, creative problem solving becomes second nature.

This skill has a lot of value when transitioning into creative maturity, or the moment you start finding your musical expression. You’ll have better resources to put different musical elements together and materializing your vision. I think that ultimately if you keep reinventing the wheel, one day, you’ll come up with a wheel nobody has ever seen.

Some believe that you need to perfect tradition before being able to transform it. Especially in music, most famous composers and a lot of successful musicians of our age learned in renowned schools, grew their craft in specific locations, or learned from particular masters. Yet, they still managed to create an authentic musical language. There might be some truth here, but I think these cases are more an exception than the rule. I believe that if you don’t exercise the creative muscle from an early stage in the process, you won’t be able to find your voice, no matter what your musical school is. By the time you master tradition or your mentor’s craft, it could be too late to detach yourself from it.

Becoming your musical self

Taking your path is harder in many ways. It will take a longer time to both develop your skill set and establish your style. You’ll bounce around and feel your music doesn’t belong to any musical category. There might be a lack of opportunities with the musical establishment (academies or the market). The hardest part of this process is that success might come much later than you wanted, in a way you didn’t expect, or perhaps never at all.

In spite of this, there will be many satisfactions and a sense of profound realization. You’ll learn from different people, not closing yourself to a few streams of knowledge. You will profoundly and regularly inspect your motivations, tastes, and the state of your skills, growing both as a person and a musician in the process. Most importantly, you’ll remain open to change and continuously willing to learn and improve.

If you create music because it comes out of you, or because you can’t help it — then having no masters is the best way to find your authentic voice. It can be painful and slow, but it’s worth it. After many years all the different elements will mature and find their place, and you will create something unique and yours. You’ll get to experience the creative fire of the gods.