I’ve loved music my entire life. Being a pastor’s kid, I’ve been surrounded by it. Another thing that I’ve been surrounded by is gardening. My paternal grandfather worked wonders with African Violets, Begonias and more. And that was passed on to my dad, who always planted a summer garden, along with flowers. That was passed on to me as well, and gardening is a passion of mine too. So how is music making like gardening? Well, I’ve come up with a few ideas. 

 

Making Music and Gardening Require Patience

This is a fairly obvious point, isn’t it? You can’t just plant a seed in the ground, wake up the next morning, and your plant is grown! The same thing applies to making music. To excel, you have to take the time and be patient as your skills develop and grow. Just as plants need sun, water and nutrients, musicians need encouragement, practice and time to gain confidence.

Making Music and Gardening Require Work

It will take not only time, but work to grow your plants. If it’s a drier season, you’ll need to water. You may need to prune to bring on more growth. With making music, the work is practice. Not only efficient practice, but effective practice. This requires time and effort to figure out where the challenging spots in the music are and then working to fix those problem spots. 

Making Music and Gardening Require Eliminating Things

When plants are growing, weeds and pests can bring about disaster. Weeds can fight the plants for nutrients, and the pests can eat, damage and even destroy the plants. As a musician, what do we need to eliminate? The obvious answer would be mistakes, but another thing we don’t always discuss is eliminating distractions. Music requires a deep and total focus, and our world around us is great at distracting us. So silence the notifications, give yourself a quiet, uninterrupted (as best as you can) space to practice. 

Making Music and Gardening Will Have Mistakes

Growing plants will not always be perfect. Seeds may not always germinate like we want, cuttings may not grow, something may be off with the nutrients in our soil. There will be mistakes. And that’s how you learn and improve with your plants. Music will have mistakes. Our goal, yes, is to eliminate or minimize them. But the reality is that nerves in performing can bring about things that we may not be able to control. One of the things that I regularly tell people is that as I’ve grown as a musician, I’ve learned how to hide my mistakes. 

Making Music and Gardening Bring About Beauty 

Flowers are beautiful. Whether that’s a rose or any other flower, there is a visual beauty that comes from seeing flowers in the world. Music beautifies the world. Maybe not in the visual sense that flowers do, but the beauty that comes from a piece of music that touches our emotions and we connect to in a deep way is beautiful. 

 

 

Making Music and Gardening Nourish Others

There is nothing like eating a tomato, cucumber or anything grown in your garden. The fresh from the garden taste cannot be matched! And it brings about physical nourishment through all of the time, work and effort. Music nourishes our spirits on a deep level. When we’re happy, we can find just the right song to keep us happy and bring us joy. When we’re sad, we may need a song that helps to reflect our feelings as well. It nourishes us in a way that mere words cannot.

 

 

So what are your thoughts? Are these ideas a stretch? What other analogies can you make? Comment with your thoughts.