For the past three and a half years, I’ve been (very slowly) learning how to play violin. This morning, I started thinking about how music-making is like journalism.
For one thing, we are all born with an innate music-making ability, but not everyone puts in the effort needed to become a musician. We’re all born (or at least socialized) with story-telling abilities, but not everyone becomes a journalist, either.
Some other similarities:
• It’s much more fun when it’s done with others. Playing with others draws out your best and exposes you to new ideas. So do good newsrooms, even those with only a couple of people in them. Experimenting with support always feels freeing.
• It is (relatively) easy to become borderline competent on the violin; getting beyond that takes hard, repeated work. It’s the same with journalism.
• Understanding and being able to truly play music requires a grasp of underlying principles: scales, musical structure, timing, rhythm and so on. Journalism has it’s underlying principles, too, such as solid grasp of writing effective sentences and understanding of structure.
• Playing the violin relies on “proper” technique, but if you watch enough of them, you’ll soon see that the idea of “proper” technique is different in every player. There are differences in the way bows are held, in arm positions, in the way the strings are attacked. Journalists, too, bring to bear their different strengths and ideals in applying the techniques of the trade.
• There are exceptional violinists whom I adore and try to learn from. Most journalists I know feel the same about exceptional journalists.
• The only way to get better is to practise. How do you get to the NYT newsroom? Practise.
• Every piece is a practice piece, even if it’s in performance. As a music-maker, you are always learning. Everything you learn, whether it’s alone in the practice room or on stage with others, goes into the memory bank. Same with journalism: it’s lifelong learning through repeated practice, whether it’s the interview, the draft, the published piece.
• Finally, there’s always some purist who will watch you play and tell you you’re doing it all wrong. Same with journalism, although in most cases it’s not a purist, it’s a reader.
How about it journalist-musicians? Anything to add?
Tags: journalism
[...] rather quiet this last six months or so, but when there is a post, the quality is astounding. This time he equates journalism with playing the violin. And I can’t agree more. I play two instruments myself, trumpet and French horn. I loved [...]
Alex:
I love the idea of online musical collaboration. f it can be done from journalism, why not music-making?
GR:
I just zipped over and read the post comparing Twitter and a band. Great post.
Mark
This is a great post. I love both journalism and music, and enjoy the connection you made. I wrote a similarly post a couple weeks back on Twitter and The Band – after watching my nephew’s high school band in Wisconsin. http://bit.ly/2Qpjn1
Thanks
I think exactly the same. As a musician for a longer time than i’ve been a journalist, i always approached both areas quite similarly, and you sum it up brilliantly. As a matter of fact, i’ve been wanting to start an online collaborative music project for journalists for a year now (i even thought about developing the idea for the Enterprise module at my MA), and try out some collaborative tools and different “business” models, since the news and the music industries are going through major changes. If i ever get to do it, i’ll let you know ;)
And if we strike the wrong note, it’s not a mistake, it’s jazz.
The 10,000-hour figure, which I first came across in Daniel Levitin’s book This is Your Brain on Music, relates to mastery. You can get really good at something in many fewer hours than that. The good thing about any of this is well you’re practising, you’re also doing it: you don’t have to wait until you’re a master or even really, really good to pursue either music or journalism.
I found your post really clever as I am in constant pursuit of try to learn more and faster. I find it interesting to understand how others learn (and why some people can learn faster than others).
Your ability to draw parallels between seemly different activities is very smart.
From what I read, again and again, it’s practice – and a lot of it – that makes the difference.
Some feel (Malcom Gladwell for one) it’s the 10,000 hours rule: it takes 10,000 hours of practise to be considered really good at something. I’m not sure about that but it’s interesting nonetheless.