When Music Won’t Soothe the Savage Breast

A former student of mine posed the following question:

When making music doesn’t even cheer you up, what do you do?

As musicians, we turn to music in difficult times, typically expecting it to get us through them. What we need to understand is that the music we make is an expression of our emotions at the moment, and as such, will serve as some kind of release. Expecting it to always cheer us up is unreasonable because the release that music affords us may be of an entirely different nature. And as much as we would like to believe it, music does not hold all the answers.

At times like these, turning inward to things like prayer or outward to some form of focused physical activity can supply what does not come from music. For me, when all else fails, I go to the batting cages and hit balls to the point of exhaustion.