When Music Starts Feeling Like Work

When Music Starts Feeling Like Work

Loosing your feel

Music has always been the place I disappear to.

The place where I stop thinking and just feel.

When everything clicks, it doesn’t even feel like you’re playing. Your hands know where to go, your voice does what it wants to do and you’re completely present in the moment. Those are the gigs you drive home from absolutely buzzing.

But every now and then, something shifts.

Without realising it, you start losing your feel.

Not because you’ve become a worse musician. In fact, sometimes it happens because you’re trying so hard to become a better one.

You start adding new equipment, learning new technology, thinking about your sound, remembering new lyrics, managing pedals, checking levels, making sure the in-ear monitors are working, remembering arrangements and trying not to make mistakes.

Instead of feeling the music, you’re thinking your way through it.

Then there’s the pressure that comes with playing professionally.

Playing songs people expect.

Taking requests.

Trying to read a crowd.

Wondering whether they’re enjoying themselves.

Trying to justify what you’re charging.

Trying to sound perfect.

Somewhere amongst all that, it’s easy to forget why you picked up an instrument in the first place.

For me, I noticed it recently.

I was concentrating so hard on learning to use my in-ear monitors and improving my live sound that I wasn’t listening to the music anymore. I was listening for problems.

Was my vocal too loud?

Could I hear the guitar?

Was everything balanced?

Technically, I was improving.

Emotionally, I felt disconnected.

It reminded me that there are really two sides to performing.

One is the technical side. That’s important. We should always be learning, improving and challenging ourselves.

The other is the part that made us fall in love with music.

The feeling.

Neither one can exist without the other.

Too much feeling without practice and we never grow.

Too much focus on technique and performance, and eventually we stop creating moments that move people.

I had it happen before when I was pushed to perform music people could dance to as a solo artist when my heart belongs to deeper more stripped back solo performances. I had to learn how to honour myself and also bring in thing people were asking for.

I noticed it again when I started playing with a stomp box, at first it was very mechanical since I was adding in a third thing for my brain to do. I had to practice till it was second nature and I could come back to my soul and play from the heart and let the stomp rise and fall with that rather than trying to keep up with a ridged stomp.

I’ve realised sometimes the best thing you can do isn’t practise harder.

It’s to sit on the couch with your guitar.

Play the songs that made you want to become a musician.

Write something with no intention of anyone ever hearing it.

Sing because it feels good, not because you’re trying to impress anyone.

Because audiences don’t remember perfection.

They remember how you made them feel.

And the funny thing is...

The moment you stop chasing perfection is often the moment the feeling comes back.

Maybe that’s what growing as a musician really is.

Learning the skills without losing the reason you started and the reason you connect with yourself and others.

It’s learning how to embrace the foreign and tap into the moment.

Finding your feel again is an act of love and it takes a conscious awareness of what’s missing to let your body remember how to feel again and for it to come naturally.

It’s not ridged practice is practice with the intention of enjoying it and leaning into the feelings that song brings up for you rather than just going through the motions.

Maybe that's just part of the evolution.

Every time we learn something new, we borrow a little bit of our attention away from the feeling so we can focus on the skill.

For a while, it can feel clunky. Mechanical. Like you're playing with your head instead of your heart.

But if you keep practising with intention, eventually the skill becomes part of you.

The thinking quietens down.

Your body takes over.

And that's when the feeling returns.

Not because you found your old self again, but because you've become a new version of yourself with another layer of expression.

Maybe that's what growth really is.

Not avoiding those awkward stages where everything feels unfamiliar, but trusting that if you keep showing up, one day you'll stop thinking about the technique and start feeling the music again.

Every new skill asks something of us before it gives something back.

Sometimes, all it asks for is patience.