The Trivial Pursuit analogy of creating a successful career as a jazz musician.....
...taken from my notes on The Jazz Manifesto Chapter 6 "The Musicians and their Careers"
After pondering other models and analogy systems to delineate what it actually means to have the "whole package" as a successful musical artist, I have landed on an idea that the process is metaphorical to what it takes to win at another game-- Trivial Pursuit.
Despite occasional short term appearances to the contrary, we can't really succeed in the long term if we are only good in one category because its about a balance of qualities and skills. We succeed when we manage our attention and direct our effort toward developing abilities where we are weakest.
I developed this trivial pursuit based depiction of a balanced skill set because this kind of visually organized system easily communicates to us in a simple and direct manner the systematic, insightful and vital information necessary to facilitate the further development of successful careers as musicians.
So here are some brief descriptions of the six categories of skills and abilities:
#1 BLUE - TALENT : Seemingly the most obvious quality of them all. Just like all the other skills we will discuss you certainly can't get ahead without some kind of talent. Most likely our innate ability was a major factor in our initial decision to pursue a musical career. However, we need to realize that talent simply isn't enough on its own to make us successful. We all know people blessed with major amounts of talent that aren't working and we also know people who we are less talented than others who work all the time.
#2 YELLOW - DRIVE : This skill could have perhaps have been called practice, but I feel the word "drive" connotes a certain additional emotional intensity to improve ourself that is intrinsic in succeeding beyond just going thru the exercises or rigors of practice alone. Drive is all about our relentless pursuit of improving ourselves as individuals and continually developing our musical talent into a concrete art and an applied craft. Drive is most simply the emotional impetus that moves us to actively pursue a quest towards mastery. Drive is all about whether we work to keep or improve our chops, or work on our sight reading or make time to transcribe solos, and whether we make time to sit down and write new compositions or memorize the charts for music we play regularly. The reason why so many musicians careers plateau out is because they simply don't have the drive to keep pursuing their development as instrumentalists and composers thru further musical education and diligent practice.
#3 ORANGE - VISION : Describing the specific aspects of the skill of artistic vision is difficult because they are most certainly mercurial and deeply subjective. Vision is also contemplative and reflects how the musical artist views his own relationship to his instrument and the music as both a speaker and as a facilitator. Vision is ultimately about communication cannot be simply described as originality, imagination or creativity. Vision in this context is much more akin to the subject of rhetoric and how the intention and skills of the individual are successfully directed towards using phrases and emotions to convey their "message" and "statement" towards their intended audience. We all know musicians who have successful careers simply making their "message" as entertainers and their "statements" as interpreters of the art form. An artist's abilities either may or may not directed towards originality or a creative exploration of new concepts or they may be prioritized towards conveying their personal or social message. The point here is to understand the distinctions between the two aspects of artistic communication and to realize that our Vision must contain both a deliberate message and refined statement if we truly wish to succeed.
#4 BROWN - AMBITION : The development and pursuit of this quality is perhaps the most critical of all the categories. Ambition is being self-started and moving forward with determination and perseverance in developing and refining the business aspects of our careers. Ambition is also about cultivating a sense of visibility and recognition for ourselves and getting out there to be on the scene even when we aren't working. Ambition is directed communication and what we have working for us when we pound the pavement, make cold calls, send out press packages, and invest time and resources into the marketing and promotion of our image and abilities for the betterment of our careers. Ambition isn't simply being possessed of lofty goals and big dreams. Ambition is being relentless in our pursuit of success and networking effectively to assemble all the pieces we need to actualize our careers. We can't just rely on our talent to see us thru, and rest on our past achievements in the hope that the world will seek us out to offer us work. We need to have the Ambition to go out and try to make things happen for ourselves.
#5 Green - ACUMEN : Intuitively this seems to be the skill set that is most unrelated to music directly. Acumen is the ability to have right knowledge of operating principles and a clear sense of mission in our business environment allows us to be organized and prioritized to make insightful and shrewd career decisions. Every musician is actually running a small business so for musicians to be successful they need to have right knowledge of how to structure and focus their business activities in the music industry. Acumen is a practical understanding of principles and how to best to put them into action. Acumen is concerned with planning, communications, organization, professional courtesy, accounting, as well as the development, promotion and marketing of our musical product/services towards our intended employers and audience.
#6 Pink - Presentation : This skill set goes well beyond the various considerations and aspects of personality and stage presence during live performances. Presentation is concerned with the charisma, thoughtfulness and professionalism we put into every aspect of our work. If actually we want to have a successful career in our chosen profession then we need to be able to demonstrate that we know what it really means to be a professional. Simply excelling on your instrument isn't enough and we need to accept that how we come off to the people around us will ultimately make or break us in the long run. We may be able play great music but if we are difficult to deal with, immature, rude or unprofessional chances are people eventually won't want to hire us to play in their group or give us a gigs at their club or sign us to their record label. In this regard, perhaps we can all benefit by paying closer attention to observing the following five P's of professional conduct and the way we portray ourselves as being prompt, prepared, personable, polite, and patient.
Conclusion: This is just a brief and incomplete outline of the basic skills. Further exploration can reveal the way that six abilities can be arranged into two basic skill sets of three abilities -- the first of which concerns development and exploration (#1-3) and the other one dealing with matters of organization and expression (#4-6). Additionally we can also meditate on organizing the six categories into various alignments of complimentary pairs. For example, Vision (1&6), Insight (2&5) and Communication (3&4). The possibilities are endless but most important thing to do with this information is to have fun with analogy and to try taking an accurate measure of ourselves to subsequently focus our attention on developing the weak parts of our game so we can become more successful.
