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The Value of Learning to Play Guitar – a conversation with world class guitarist Jonathan Taylor
11 Plays20 days ago
Jonathan Taylor has won praise from audiences, critics and fellow musicians around the world. The Philadelphia Inquirer described him as "America's Leading Classical Guitarist"
You can see why on his YouTubechannel.
In this episode of the Abeceder Work Life Balance podcast, Rest and Recreation Jonathan describes how he became a guitarist and the impact that learning a musical instrument has had on his life.
Jonathan talks about the process of learning, and how his need to learn more crafted personality and behavioural traits that made him stand out from his peers.
The more Jonathan learnt, the more he wanted to learn, and the more confident he became.
Whether you are a music love or a player, you will find this insight into the mind of a maestro enlightening and understand the wide-ranging benefits of committing to learning a new skill.
Rest and Recreation is made on Zencastr, the all-in-one podcasting platform, on which you can create your podcast in one place and then distribute it to every platform.
Zencastr really does make making content so easy.
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr visit zencastr.com/pricing and use our offer code ABECEDER.
Thank you to the team at Matchmaker.fm for introducing me to Liam. If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests or if like Keith, you have something interesting to say Matchmaker.fm is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made. Use our offer code MILW10 for a discount on membership.
Travel to California
Jonathan Taylor is based in California USA. Members of The Ultimate Travel Club can book travel to California or anywhere else in the world at trade prices. Use our offer code ABEC79 to receive a discount on club membership fees.
Visit Abeceder for more information about both Michael Millward, and Jonathan Taylor.
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Being a Guest
If you would like to be a guest on Rest and Recreation, please contact Abeceder.
We recommend that potential guests take one of the podcasting guest training programmes available from Work Place Learning Centre.
If you have liked this episode of Rest and Recreation, please give it a like and download it so that you can listen any time anywhere.
To make sure you do not miss future editions please subscribe.
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abeceder is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think!
Until the next time, thank you to you for listening.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Promotion
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencaster. Hello and welcome to Rest and Recreation, the work-life balance podcast from Abecedah. I am your host, Michael Millward, the managing director of Abecedah.
00:00:18
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, rest and recreation is made on Zencaster. Zencaster is the all in one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and Google. It really does make making content so easy.
00:00:44
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencaster, visit zencaster.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code ABACEDA. All the details are in the description.
Guest Introduction: Jonathan Taylor
00:00:56
Speaker
Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencaster is for making podcasts, we should make a podcast, a podcast that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading, and subscribing to.
00:01:10
Speaker
As with every episode of Rest and Recreation, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Today's Rest and Recreation guest who I met on matchmaker dot.fm is the guitarist, Jonathan Taylor.
Jonathan's Musical Journey
00:01:27
Speaker
Jonathan has recorded more than 32 albums and is based in California in the United States.
00:01:35
Speaker
It's been a long time since I've visited California, but the next time I visit, I will book my travel with the Ultimate Travel Club, because that is where I can access trade prices on flights and hotels and everything else. There is a link and a membership discount code in the description. Now, enough about me and my ambitions to travel the world. Hello, Jonathan. Hello. Very pleased to meet you.
00:02:01
Speaker
Thank you very much for agreeing to be a guest on Rest and Recreation. I'm very much looking forward to finding out more about Jonathan Taylor, the guitarist, and sort of how you became a guitarist. But first of all, please could we start by you explaining a little bit more about who you are and those 32
Discipline in Music Mastery
00:02:19
Speaker
albums. um When I was about four years old, I had a grandmother ah that was a silent film organist, and so she was playing around the house. She is important in the sense that she, in that era, I was raised by a Victorian, shall we say. ah She was born in 1887, and she played
00:02:42
Speaker
all over the Pacific Northwest, all of California, all over the USA actually, doing the Orpheum Circuit silent films, worked with everyone you know, Charlie Chaplin, Lon Chaney Sr., Man of a Thousand Faces, she did many, many gigs with Harry Houdini.
00:02:59
Speaker
Uh, you know, can you imagine, you know, the organ dude and you know, he's going to die because he's locked in the tank and chained and the, the drama, the mellow drama of it. can't Can we just, can we just explain when you say your grandmother was a silent movie organ player,
00:03:20
Speaker
Can we just explain to people who perhaps haven't been to a cinema and seen a silent film? They're a bit different to a blockbuster, aren't they? vari Very Very big difference.
00:03:32
Speaker
What would happen in the cinema would be that there would be the silent film, so there is no nothing on the film, no sound whatsoever. And the job of the organist, and in some cinemas it would be a pianist, was be to play music that reflected what was happening on the screen and portrayed the emotion and the drama of what was happening on the screen.
00:04:01
Speaker
And so she would be playing around the house at four. I had a little ukulele. I tried to pick out tunes. Then at 10, my aunt bought me a guitar and I became very serious. I say I became a man when I was 14 because I realized that I had to actually learn the damned instrument, which is very different, which is very different than the aspiration of I want
Adapting to Digital Music Trends
00:04:26
Speaker
girls. I want to be popular. I want attention. That's a whole different world.
00:04:30
Speaker
And you want to, as I say to people, when people say, oh, you improved that piece, I go, I never improved a piece in my life, I improved myself. The notes are already there. I may have a more erudite interpretation of that, but all I'm really doing is burnishing into me skills and opening up worlds that are going to be, what should we say, communicated in a way to the public and to the listening public or live, whatever. And so it's a very different focus in life. yeah What does it teach you? Discipline. Six hours in a chair. No, I don't do that anymore. I don't need to. It's irrelevant. I probably play 40 minutes to an hour a day. I don't need to, you know, have, I already learned those skills. So my grandmother, and I'm saying that because I believe that
00:05:28
Speaker
As I said earlier, it's 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration, as Edison used to say. And yes, people have talent. I have perfect pitch, so that's a mutation of the silly in the ears. So I'm more accurate
Inspiration from Music and Role Models
00:05:44
Speaker
in reading what that is. I think I mentioned to you I was tested. I was a test subject of the great physicist ah who discovered the neutrino Harold Rains and they tried to test how, what are the limits of the ear, the mechanism of the ear. So they would try to try being in a little booth and they try to trick me. Jonathan is this
00:06:08
Speaker
an F or an F sharp I said it's neither it's in between it and they were trying to bend the note to trick me right to say well he can only hear half steps not chordal tones so you're asking about development I did that I knew in the 90s that everything was going digital so unlike other players and analog is a better and warmer sound but that's not the way it worked I'm not wearing a powdered wig ah like back in George Washington's day. I'm i'm in my own ah time period. So I knew Yasha Heifetz wouldn't record digitally because he said, you know, it's too cold and metallic and that. And he's right. On the other hand, that is the way things are going, just like streaming now, right? Yes, you have to keep pace with the technology.
00:07:02
Speaker
You grew up in a musical household. Yes. ah There's a ah genetic element element of... Maybe. Who knows? Who knows? That's speculative. yes Yeah, that's speculative. And my mother had no musical talent whatsoever than my grandmother did, but my mother did.
00:07:18
Speaker
It's speculative to say that a musical talent could be a genetic attribute that somebody might have. And maybe it's not even one percent. Who knows? i mean this isn't Yeah, and this is an argument that you know maybe never concluded or solved or settled.
00:07:38
Speaker
There's, but you grew up in and and a household that had music with adults who were involved in music. And it's sort of like, people will say to me, you know, if you can't see it, you can't be it. So if you don't see a role model of someone who looks like you, who's connected to you in some sort of way, and you can form a connection with them, you might think,
00:07:58
Speaker
I haven't got any musical talent. I've never played a musical instrument. I don't know anyone who plays a musical instrument. What what hope have I got of learning how to play any musical instrument? right If I don't associate it with me, regardless of how much I might want to do it, if I don't associate that activity with me as an individual, it's going to be more difficult to start.
The Journey of Learning Music
00:08:22
Speaker
can you and form a connection with it. But it also may be that it didn't matter that it it was an internal, you know, that I was there in my home. It may be that I believe most musicians learn by ear first. That's not always true. Some people learn how to read music. I didn't until I was like that.
00:08:41
Speaker
ah and But at first I'm learning, you know, by ear. And it may be that somebody just hears music outside of their home or that and connects with it. Why is it that at 16 I went to see Segovia at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown LA and saw, the ah heard that polyphonic beauty coming out. He doesn't need four members of a group. He's got it all contained there in a, you know, a Bach invention.
00:09:08
Speaker
And why is it that that I sat there and wanted to become that? Not only did I love the beauty of the music, but the technical mastery, the ah aspiration of it. Why did I connect in that way? And people ask me that. And my response is, I haven't got the focus.
00:09:27
Speaker
tea I go, I guess a psychiatrist says you can't analyze yourself. No, you know, we have blind spots. So why did I do that? I don't know. I loved it. Yes. you know But that became an inspiration. You see some you hear something that you love and inside I want to be that I want to I want to experience what it's like to create that music. Absolutely. I can tell you that one of the parents once said to my mother or my grandmother, I don't remember, that he's the only kid in the neighborhood that has discipline. And, you know, I was like 10 years old or 11 years old at the time. And so what did it teach me? It taught me to stay on task, whatever that means. It could be the same with a great athlete or a soldier or anybody or a physicist, whatever it is. So that um there's a theory that man was able to raise himself
00:10:26
Speaker
because he delayed gratification. And that caused the brain to not just, you know, pleasure monkey, right? That you're not just a pleasure monkey, you found a way to delay the gratification for what became higher good.
00:10:43
Speaker
Yes. So I suppose what we've got is a situation then a where somebody said, I want to play a musical instrument. And what you're saying is you delay gratification, which is actually today's modern world. I'm constantly being told that people don't have the patience to learn new skills. They want to be told it very quickly. They want ah Just tell me what I need to know now to do this bit and then tell me the next bit. But what you're saying is that if you're going to learn to play a musical instrument regardless of which one it is.
00:11:18
Speaker
you're going to have to accept the fact that it's going to take time to
Music's Impact on Life and Well-being
00:11:22
Speaker
learn it and you have to delay the gratification until you have reached a point where you're saying, yeah, now I can play this instrument. You don't have to be, a you know, are you, you're heeding menu in type of violin player or whatever, or, but Even a little bit, just what you're saying, Michael, even a little bit will push you into a world that is going to expand you in some dimension, probably ones that you can't even, uh, that you can't even identify the blind spots that a person has. You may not even know why you are getting better, but you are because you, as the British would say, slog on, right? Or, you know, stiff up her lip and carry on.
00:12:10
Speaker
Well, the stiff upper lip would come in when things aren't going quite so well. You just... Oh, that's right. Yes, that's right. Sorry. I crossed my metaphor. The stiff upper lip is where things aren't going well, but we don't get upset about it. We don't make a scene about it. We just sort of say, okay, it is what it is. Let's let's put it right. sure right The slogging to, it's, you don't really, a slog, it's a long slog. It's going to take a long time to learn something. And within that learning,
00:12:46
Speaker
There will be times where you do have to apply the upper stiff upper lip because things haven't gone quite so well. Things can be very frustrating, but learning is a frustrating process. And the more that you learn, the more complicated and more difficult it gets, because like you're saying, you want to do more. you've you I've mastered that bit. Now I want to play this next bit. I'm sure there must have been when when you started a piece of music that you thought,
00:13:15
Speaker
i'll ah I'll have cracked this when I can play that part that piece of music. That's exactly right. And I can tell you something that is part of human nature. I can pretty much play any piece that was ever written. I just learned the Grand Hotel by um Francisco Tarega. That's like the big virtuoso piece. I've done the Grand Overture. that the ah Mozart variations, you know, tons of the Chacon by Bach, tons of these big, big pieces. There was a moment a couple years ago, and I think it was the Granados piece I was listening, and I was listening to it. I go, I'm going to learn that. And all of a sudden, my brain thought, how do I do that? Now, that's very funny when you think Yes, because I know I can that there's a part of me that knows I can do anything. But there was a part of the crepkin just for ah a New York minute just for a nanosecond that said, What? How do I do that? Yeah, and, and, and it's and I analyze that myself. I said, my god, of course I can do that.
00:14:21
Speaker
ah right You know, when you reach a certain level, you know what the hell you can do. So it's a very interesting psychological little twist there. Of course I learned it and played it. fine Yeah. But that, that element of doubt is like the adrenaline. It's the stage fright. It's the bit that makes you, gives you the focus, makes you want to do it a little bit more. I've got to prove to myself before I can prove to anyone else that I can do it.
00:14:50
Speaker
That's right. yeah And I want to also interject this. I have never had stage fright in my life. So I know that people are like that. And, you know, I have colleagues and I was yesterday, I was having lunch with my buddy who's an LA opera um performer for 40 years or 30 years or that. And we were college buddies and we were down San Juan Cabo Strano having a nice time. And, uh,
00:15:14
Speaker
He, you know, had the same type of discipline. We used to win awards. I would win the composition award. He won the golden era award, you know, in the college things. And so, but getting back to your idea about ah discipline or about how to open up worlds, you don't have to become excellent.
00:15:40
Speaker
just even a modicum of success in that will push you further and it may have, ah yes what should we say, a crossover into something else, right? i'll tell you I'll tell you an interesting thing. I know this is true with me. I'm interested in physics. I'm always looking at like lectures by Richard Feynman, the Caltech
Interdisciplinary Benefits of Music
00:16:06
Speaker
lectures, the Harvard, you know, these different lectures that I love and they're helped me understand different aspects, of many different types of physics, particle physics, many things, furniture, whatever. And I know that I'm so ignorant in some of it that at the first exposure I have no idea what's going on. And then with repeated exposure all of a sudden I find a new relationship
00:16:35
Speaker
with that subject. So I think that's true of any human being, no matter what it is, if you're learning how to make a spear, if you're learning with a rock or carving it, or you're learning you're looking at the ground and you're going, is that a metal? Can that be forged? I think it's true with any bit of information or perception that a human being has.
00:17:02
Speaker
What you're saying, though, is that you have to persevere. If you want to learn a musical instrument, regardless of what level you want to play at, you have to persevere. And it's a bit like golf, I suppose. No matter how good you are, you can always be a little bit better. Absolutely. Even guys like Tiger Woods, you know, go through periods of, you know, not playing as well as, you know, other times.
00:17:27
Speaker
From what you're saying as well is that this, the analogy with the physics lectures is that when you're learning a musical instrument and like when you're watching the lecture, your level of understanding increases and then you form a different type of relationship. And I'm getting the feeling that there is, you know, you learn a musical instrument and then there's almost like a knock on effect into other aspects of your life. And For someone to start out at any age learning a musical instrument, I'm thinking that there's there must be the similar type of knock-on effects, the comment that your neighbour made to your your parents about you being 10 years old, but the only one
00:18:10
Speaker
with any discipline, and that was attributed to you learning a musical instrument. How does that work? This person has discipline. That's the sort of thing that learning a musical instrument could, although it's frustrating whilst you're trying to learn it, might actually have a very positive impact on people's ah mental well-being, for example. It has to be. It has to be. Inch by inch, everything's a cinch. yeah ah How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
00:18:41
Speaker
ah People say, what do what do you do? I go, drops in a bucket, drops in a bucket. It's never the big, you know, I can't i can't believe these people that buy the lotto tickets. Because I go, what is that? 30 million to one that you're going to win it? And they want the big payoff. Most of the time when they win it too, they lose the money because they don't know how to manage the money.
00:19:01
Speaker
Right. They come from a certain background and they never studied, you know, but I'm going to put it in a money market. I'm going to, you know, whatever. Jonathan, I would love the opportunity to learn how to manage that amount of money sure if somebody would buy me the ticket. um A winning ticket, always.
00:19:18
Speaker
Winning ticket, I always ask for the winning ticket. That's the one you want. What you're talking about is this ability of learning one skill, having a knock-on effect into other aspects of your life.
Emotional Management through Music
00:19:33
Speaker
Positive knock-on effects into other aspects of your life. And part of the example of that is that comment that was made to your parents, but you've experienced this, I'm sure as well, that there could be day, well, I imagine that there are days when it's not going well. The thing that you want to do is then go off and play a guitar and that sort of like helps to improve your mood. you'll mute mood um so So I've come to a stage and I think this is partly because of my musical development where I don't get angry about anything ever. I mean, there's very little that can disturb but
00:20:10
Speaker
me And also I don't have really negative thoughts, maybe a little, a tiny bit, you know, 5%. But what does it mean? It goes, well, you're living on a plane in your brain that is, your relationship to the environment is different than if you hadn't gone through these things. You're removed, but not in the sense of distant, because you can't relate, but on a more enlightened plane. So I think that all those things, why am I, I can be interested in anything.
00:20:48
Speaker
anything, anything that exists. I love it. I don't care if it's different from, I told you, I think on the pre that I would be speaking with the Amazonian Indians when I was playing down there. And of course we couldn't speak each other's language, you know, and, but you can relate to most things.
00:21:09
Speaker
Yes. And that takes us back a little bit to the work that your grandmother was doing in the cinemas, because what she was doing was converting what people saw on the screen into something that was audible, an audio soundtrack to evoke the emotions, the tensions.
00:21:29
Speaker
of what was on screen. So ah there are pieces of music that we associate with particular films, which yeah you the origins of the theme tune for a film started, I think, in that original like musical backing a track to those silent movies. is The theme tune tells you what the film is going to be like because of the way in which it evokes the emotions. It uses the sound to create the expectation of what you are about to see. and Steven Spielberg said exactly the same thing about John Williams' scores for his films. you know He said there wouldn't be the Indiana Jones. Listen to me. Listen to me. Steven Spielberg I know listens to Rest and Recreation and all the other podcasts religiously. He will have he will have heard me say it. Wonderful. He's a great genius. Unsung in many ways since he has not won an Academy, which to me is shameful because incredible genius. Yes, it's incredible films. Made an awful lot of money. That's probably why he hasn't won the Academy Award.
00:22:37
Speaker
the yeah Maybe so. maybe and Or prejudice. You mustn't be too doesn't get too contentious. But what are you're saying is that the music breaks down barriers. Music can be used to evoke emotion, but also to manage emotions as well. And the impact of being a musician has, or being a musician has had a positive impact on your life, because like your parents' neighbors said, you're the child with discipline. And that comes from having to organize the training, the learning, the structure of music. You had something that was very structured in your life, which then had a knock on effect into other parts of your life as well.
Episode Conclusion and Promotions
00:23:28
Speaker
That's right.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah. It has been very interesting to explore the life and times of Jonathan Taylor, one of the world's so most famous classical guitarist. Thank you very much for joining us today, Jonathan.
00:23:40
Speaker
Thank you, Michael. You're a wonderful interviewer. I enjoyed it tremendously. You're a great person. Thank you very much. Thank you. And likewise, you've been very good to me. Thank you. I really do appreciate it. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the managing director of Abbacida. In this episode of Rest and Recreation, I have been having a conversation with the world-class guitarist, Jonathan Taylor. You can find out more about both of us at abbacida.co.uk. There is a link in the description.
00:24:10
Speaker
I must remember to thank the team at matchmaker dot.fm for introducing me to Jonathan. If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if like Jonathan, you have something very interesting to say, matchmaker is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made. There is a link to matchmaker.fm and an offer code in the description.
00:24:31
Speaker
If you listen to music on your smartphone you'll want to know that 3 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data so listening on 3 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3 and the special offers available when you use my referral code.
00:24:56
Speaker
If you've liked this episode of Rest and Recreation, please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abisida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think. All that remains for me to say is until the next episode of Rest and Recreation, thank you for listening. Goodbye.