I relate a bunch of learning concepts across disciplines to how I learned music. The guitarist Wayne Krantz captures the essence of my approach to learning things so well in the below explanation of his book, An Improviser’s OS.  Replace “guitar” with “spanish” or “graphic design” or “brick laying” - the point is that mastery through repetition and patterns facilitates expertise at the expense of creativity and authentic presence within your discipline of focus. Find the spirit of improvisation in your craft, where your skills adapt to uncertainty and become living tools rather than dead memories.  When you identify what you depend on and break it, it unlocks fresh ideas.

What is this book?

It could be:

“A discipline; a long-term method of mastering the guitar”

However:

‘a discipline’ implies something ritualistic; uncreative

‘long-term’ implies that nothing can be accomplished in the short-term. For something to inspire it needs to give some degree of consistent gratification from the start

‘method’ implies a closed system: dead, sterile

‘mastering’ implies finality. There is no end to the development of a musician with an active imagination

‘the guitar’ glorifies an object. The instrument itself is of passing importance. What we do with it is the thing of meaning

music is a thing of meaning

This book is an improviser’s Operating System

Its basic premise is that pattern playing can ultimately limit the growth of one’s skills as a creative improviser

Since most of us rely heavily on patterns to find notes, alternative means of finding notes must be used to overcome our pattern dependency…