Practice enough to feed your talent, not your OCD.
I am OCD and now at age 60 whilst i still play my bass as often as possible every day i play for the love of it and in practicing repetitions it is like meditation and with the by product of forming my personal growth in technique
With this approach i no longer suffer anxiety of ‘having to learn something ...
My ocd extends to having a library of bass and guitar books that would take two life times to master ...
OCD is difficult to live with and in my experience manifests in many ways ...through persistence and with support i have figured out some ways to turn a dis advantage into a positive ... other people may disagree but i believe it is impossible to be outrightly free from it,, at best it can be managed ...
The people in the band i am in like my playing and my wife says to me that i am in a better space when i am in a band as compared to isolating at home without an outlet and just sitting in my music room pursuing repetitous practice ...
One problem for me is, with ocd is i feel obligated to justify why i pracrice so much and i quote things like teachers have said at different stages of my life... like practice, practice , practice ... but people like my wife who know me really well see through that ... and she says that i dont need to try to justify it .... she is trained dancer from her earlier life so she has some insight into learning and types abd methids of practice ... so for me hiding behind an unjustified justification is obvious to her ... and she is a great support for me ... albeit i can frustrate her at times ...
Interestingly, my son who plays professionally is not ocd , and his approach to learning is very different to mine and his playing approach also very different to mine ...
He tells me , Dad ... sorry but i just cant sit in a room trying to learn a basic technique going over and over ...
I can only speak for myself and i respect everyone is different , but i feel that being prone to ocd is like a development disorder and impedes learning
I use to believe i was a slow learner because of intellectual capacity, but over the years i have managed to gain qualification on some complex subjects ... over a long period of time ... so what i believe now is that i do have the capability to learn, but ocd as a problem similar to addiction interferes with that
A further problem in suffering ocd is low self esteem and in my case i find it hard to actually believe i am a person with talent ... so in respone to the quote, whilst i would love to feed my talent i have found other ways to cope .,. I now see it more as a meditative type thing.
some of my best experiences is when i close my eyes playing with the band and zoning out to the band and play on auto pilot in response to what i am hearing
This puts me in a position of playing in a supportive approach and slightly behind the beat as compared leading the charge, so to speak
I was in a conversation recently and several non band people i know were saying the bass should lead ... that is not a natural thing for me ...
My son encourages me by often reminding me i am too hard on myself and after coming to our last gig he said the bass sounded great ...
So i work within the acceptance of what i am, and yes i feed my ocd because on some days, thats as good as it gets ...within all of this i understand and accept that i have to take responsibility for ocd, and i do,
Ocd is not an excuse as such
And another i notice is that In spite of repititious practice at home, it doesnt seem to translate into what i play in the band .... i havent figured out why that is , but i have watched a lot if video of my hands when playing in the band and i am not playing things that i have sat at home and dine in repetition ... that probably sounds crazy but i thinks it like what my wife says, that some how i am different when i am in the band space ....
But in my private space , i feed it in that i play every day and it is nothing for me to put in a 6 hour day on the bass when i have a day off work ... one good thing is i was taught well in basic technique in the sense that my form is good enough to have prevented injury ... i sometimes feel a twinge here or there but in the main my approach in technique is relaxed and whilst i suffer ocd to the point of spending hours on the bass, my hands and arms always feel good ...i have needed to work out decent sitting and standing posture though and have had ocd experiences with changing strap lengths to the point of insanity ... but in all of that i basically figured out what works for me and what doesnt ...
I also enjoy seeing bands with live music and i often feel that the better players are not better because of technical virtuosity, but moreso that they look good when they play and everything just seems to fall into place ... i believe that people like that are ,talented , no doubt they work hard and practice ... but its like they have the x factor and the x factor in my mind does not stem from ocd ...
As too how much could i practice, as an ocd person .... all day long and without a sense of effort ....but in that, i dont think its the best way to practice ‘learning something ... and if it does surmount to a form of learning, its the long slow way to achieve it ...
Rossa
