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Episode 6 of the Art of Composing Podcast. In this episode, we look at what it takes to find a mentor and how to get the most out of the experience.

What is in this episode:

• Finding the ideal mentor.
• Four strategies for receiving the ideal mentorship.
• Cultivating your social intelligence.

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http://patreon.com/artofcomposing

Resources and Links Mentioned in this Episode:

• Mastery by Robert Greene

Episode 6 Take Aways

• Anyone wishing to master a field must go through years of deliberate practice. This practice can be maximized by having a wise mentor guiding the process.
• Finding a mentor can be a little difficult though, so you need to make sure you are actively seeking one, and not just hoping for it to happen.
• Make sure you bring something to the table as well. Most people are happy to pass on their knowledge and expertise, but realize that they are more than likely busier than you, and so you can help simplify their lives by bringing your unique skill sets to the relationship.

Once you have found a mentor, utilize these four strategies for the ideal mentorship:

1. Choose the mentor according to your needs and inclinations. Have a clear understanding of where you want to go, and find a mentor who can help you get there.
2. Gaze deep into the mentor’s mirror. Be willing to accept your mentor’s criticism and difficult tasks. They will help you grow.
3. Transfigure their ideas. Don’t just passively accept everything your mentor tells you. Make their ideas your own by wrestling with them, changing them, rephrasing them, and even discarding the ones you don’t agree with. This usually happens later in the relationship.
4. Create a back-and-forth dynamic. Finally, realize that you too have a contribution to make to your mentor, and they can learn from you.

In the end, both of you are people, and you have the opportunity to build a life-long friendship with like minded individuals that is mutually beneficial. Don’t take that lightly.

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of the art of composing podcast. As I said in the introduction, this podcast is all about learning to compose music.

Well what does that mean exactly? Well I want you to understand not just the technical side of composing, which we will talk about in future episodes, but I also want you to understand the emotional side as well. What kind of emotions are you going to be feeling along the way? What are the big mistakes that you can make on the pathway to composing? How do you master the subject?

You see, the pathway to mastery is fraught with danger. Many people never succeed in mastering anything in their life accept causing trouble for themselves and others.

How do you avoid this fate?

In this episode, we’ll look at two more factors in mastering music composition.

These are – finding a mentor and learning social intelligence.

This episode will be the final in the series on mastery. As most people who listen to this show will more than likely be in the apprenticeship phase, I don’t yet want to focus on what to do when you reach the creative/active phase and eventually mastery. I’ll leave that for the future.

For now, let’s get on to the featured content.

Featured Content

So you’ve chosen your life’s task. You’ve decided you want to be a composer. And you’ve begun your apprenticeship. You’re choosing the more difficult paths because you value learning over money and you want to keep expanding your horizons.

You are trusting the process.

But you come to a point in your apprenticeship where you realize you need some guidance.

You need a mentor.

So what is a mentor?

Well a mentor is a person that has been through the journey, in one way or another, that you are going through yourself. The difference is they are much further along in their journey. Hopefully they are masters themselves, but they may not be.

Robert Greene states is very clearly in his book Mastery:

“Understand: all that should concern you in the early stages of your career is acquiring practical knowledge in the most efficient manner possible. For this purpose, during the Apprenticeship Phase you will need mentors whose authority you recognize and to whom you submit. Your admission of need does not say anything essential about you, but only about your temporary condition of weakness, which your mentor will help you overcome.”

So a mentor is someone whose authority you recognize and to whom you submit. This is someone you look up to, whether it is a composer, or just someone that seems to have their act together.

Going back to my early college days, I started school with many hopes and dreams. I basically had two main focuses in life – music and ROTC.

For me, music was my love. I loved listening to it, thinking about it, trying to figure out what made it work. ROTC on the other hand paid the bills. So I effectively had two masters in my life, which led to some tension and some major life directional changes. But I will get to that in a little bit.

I showed up to school and was put with a counselor who would guide my class choices. Was this a mentor? Well, yeah, kind of, but in reality, even though he was a great guy, he taught Organ, and we just didn’t really have any need to meet up much. On top of that, we had no mutual interests, and our personalities were pretty much worlds apart.

There was also another teacher though, my trumpet teacher, who I did have regular meetings with. Weekly in fact. And we seemed to get along.

On top of this, I enjoyed talking with him, and he seemed to care about my direction in school.

As a freshman in college, this was great. I felt that I finally had someone that was going to show me the way. My mentor-protege relationship appeared to be off to a good start.

Now I was lucky in some sense. Going to college, I was basically setup with a mentor automatically. And you inevitably spend a lot of time with that mentor. It just so happened that my teacher was also teaching another class I was in. So I saw him for lessons, and for class. And there was also a tendency for the musicians to hang out with their same species, so I would be in the music department quite a bit, and converse with him throughout the day.

Things were starting off on a good foot. I felt like I was learning.

Once again to quote Mastery:

“What makes the mentor-protégé dynamic so intense and so productive is the emotional quality of the relationship. By nature, mentors feel emotionally invested in your education. This can be for several reasons: perhaps they like you, or see in you a younger version of themselves, and can relive their own youth through you; perhaps they recognize in you a special talent that will give them pleasure to cultivate; perhaps you have something important to offer them, mostly your youthful energy and willingness to work hard. Being useful to them can build a powerful emotional connection to you over time. On your part, you also feel emotionally drawn to them — admiration for their achievements, a desire to model yourself after them, and so on. Mentors find this immensely flattering.”

But if you don’t have the luxury of having a mentor paired with you by a university, there are a few things you can do to help yourself find a mentor.

First, and foremost, you need to start getting involved in your local composing community. This means finding events, meeting people and generally putting yourself out there. There are plenty of ways to find these events.

For instance, meetup.com may have some cool groups to join, or there is always facebook. Look for concerts being given by community colleges or larger universities.

If you are just a million miles from civilization, you may have to turn to online groups, but this is the least preferable.

Once you start going to events like this, chances are you will meet other composers that are further along in their journey than you, and many are willing to help you out. In fact, it’s my experience that most people want to help others succeed.

But you have to also bring something to the table. But this shouldn’t be a problem for you. Yes you, the diligent apprentice. You’ve been acquiring skills that have the potential serve your mentor well.

And it’s not just musical skills they will be looking for. In fact, they probably won’t be looking for those. No, they will be looking for organizational skills, energy, and the ability to help them simplify their lives.

So specifically what does this mean?

Well, be prepared to help them organize their files or music. Maybe you are preparing a score for them, or just cleaning up their office.

Heck, you may be making coffee or taking their clothes to the dry cleaners.

To quote from Mastery again,

“Almost all Masters and people of power suffer from too many demands on their time and too much information to absorb. If you can demonstrate the ability to help them organize themselves on these fronts to a degree that others cannot, it will be much easier to get their attention and interest them in the relationship. Do not shy away from anything menial or secretarial. You want person-to-person access, however you can get it. Once you establish a relationship, you will find other ways to continually hook them through their self-interest. Try to see the world through their eyes and ask the simple question of what it is they need most. Keeping their self-interest involved will only enhance any emotional connection they feel toward you.”

To get back to my story. Looking back, I did not offer anything to my mentor. I didn’t help make his life simpler. In many ways, I made it harder. I didn’t like the pieces I was being given to play, but instead of bringing it up with him, and finding a constructive solution, I just wouldn’t practice. This caused frustration for both of us.

On top of it, he would prescribe me certain types of exercises that I just hated playing. They were meant to help with my breathing and relaxation, but they were just boring.

The problem was – I felt I knew what I needed. I didn’t submit to my mentor. And that is a big no-no. In fact, it should have been a red flag for both of us. If I wasn’t submitting to my mentor’s guidance, then really, he wasn’t my mentor, he was more like an obstacle.

Ideally, he would have seen this, and explained why this mentor-protege dynamic wasn’t working, and moved me to someone else who I did click with.

But, part of the rigidity of a school, is this kind of thing doesn’t happen that often. If you change, you risk dropping that class for the semester – which actually happened in my sophomore year, when this came to a boiling point.

The main point was, I didn’t offer him anything in return, so he probably held back much of his true mentorship from me. It became a sort of adversarial teacher-student relationship, instead of a synergistic mentor-protege relationship.

Now it’s important not to demean yourself. If all your mentor asks you to do is get coffee and do their dry cleaning, and you don’t get anything meaningful out of the relationship, then it may be time to move on. But you also have a responsibility to make it worth their while.

That is why Robert Greene gives us four strategies for receiving the ideal mentorship.

These are:
1. Choose the mentor according to your needs and inclinations
2. Gaze deep into the mentor’s mirror
3. Transfigure their ideas
4. Create a back-and-forth dynamic

1. Choose the mentor according to your needs and inclinations

This mentor-protege relationship will probably be one of the most important in your life. And that is why choosing the right mentor is key.

Your mentor may have a deeper influence on your future than you are consciously aware of, so the wrong choice can be disastrous. You could end up taking on attitudes and ways of working that are contrary to what you want to accomplish or even just contrary to who you want to be.

Don’t just go for the first mentor that comes your way. Have the guts to say if the mentor is the wrong fit, and to move on to someone else. Sure they may get their feelings hurt, but ultimately, it will be better for both of you.

In selecting a mentor, you will want to keep in mind your inclinations and Life’s Task, and the future position you envision for yourself. The mentor you choose should be strategically aligned with this. If your path is in a more revolutionary direction, you will want a mentor who is open, progressive, and not domineering. If your ideal aligns more with a style that is somewhat idiosyncratic, you will want a mentor who will make you feel comfortable with this and help you transform your peculiarities into mastery, instead of trying to squelch them. If you are somewhat confused and ambivalent about your direction, it can be useful to choose someone who can help you gain some clarity about what you want, someone important in the field who might not fit perfectly with your tastes. Sometimes part of what a mentor shows us is something we will want to avoid or actively rebel against.

Remember: the Mentor Dynamic replays something of the parental or father-figure dynamic. It is a cliché that you do not get to choose the family you are born into, but you are happily free to choose your mentors. In this case, the right choice can perhaps provide what your parents didn’t give you — support, confidence, direction, space to discover things on your own. Look for mentors who can do that, and beware of falling into the opposite trap—opting for a mentor who resembles one of your parents, including all of his negative traits. You will merely repeat what hampered you in the first place.”

No looking back, I still kick myself for not pursuing a mentor that aligned with my life’s task.

In fact, I knew that I didn’t want to play trumpet professionally. I wanted to compose, or at least at the time, I knew I enjoyed music composition and theory much more than performing. But my lack of understanding about how to pursue that really meant that I was destined not to succeed.

One other problem I faced, was the main composition teacher at the school chose my freshman year for sabbatical.

None the less, choose your mentor carefully, and don’t be afraid to end the relationship if it is not working.

2. Gaze deep into the mentor’s mirror

Once you’ve chosen the right mentor, the next step is to have them push you. By definition, your mentor should be at a higher level than you, and most likely will have had to go through much pain and difficulty to achieve their level of mastery. A true mentor will use this experience to push you to do things that you would otherwise not do.

And these things may be out of your reach. For instance, your mentor may ask you to compose a symphony, knowing you will most likely crash and burn. But the point may be to show you what you need to learn, and not necessarily destroy yourself esteem.

You have to be ready to take hard criticism, attempt difficult tasks, and develop discipline. That is all necessary to become a master.

Once again, let me quote the book:
“Masters are those who by nature have suffered to get to where they are. They have experienced endless criticisms of their work, doubts about their progress, setbacks along the way. They know deep in their bones what is required to get to the creative phase and beyond. As mentors, they alone can gauge the extent of our progress, the weaknesses in our character, the ordeals we must go through to advance. In this day and age, you must get the sharpest dose of reality that is possible from your mentor. You must go in search of it and welcome it.”

3. Transfigure their ideas.

Beyond just taking their criticism and accepting their ideas, you also have the responsibility as you progress through your mentorship to remake their ideas in your own way. Don’t just take their idea and stop there. Take their idea, wrestle with it, break it apart and put it back together. Make it your own. If you don’t make this a habit, before you know it, you’ll just be a copy of your mentor, and eventually burn out, being eclipsed by the light of your own mentors capabilities. As Leonardo da Vinci said, “Poor is the apprentice who does not surpass his Master.”

This is not just a matter of originality. You must have the ability to get distance from your mentor so you can judge their ideas with rationality. You are not just following blindly. You are following with a purpose.

4. Create a back-and-forth dynamic

In most cases and in most interactions, the mentor will be your teacher, and you will be the student. This makes sense. But as you progress, you will also find that your mentor, if they are open to it, will learn lessons from you. Your unique perspective offers something they don’t have – a different point of view from their own.

Never forget that you too, no matter how long you’ve been pursuing your Life’s Task, have something to offer. If after a time, you find that there is no back and forth, give and take relationship going on, you will either need to start asserting yourself more, or take a look at whether its time to leave.

Looking back at my own mentorship in college, I really didn’t do any of these, and both my teacher and I paid for it. The relationship was rocky.

I certainly didn’t accept his criticisms or transfigure his ideas. In fact, I really dismissed them, being fooled by my own vanity into thinking I knew better.

And there definitely was no give and take.

This all came to a head my sophomore year, when I had purchased a mouthpiece for playing in the jazz band without consulting him. He basically found out, and was very upset with me. To be fair, I should have at least told him about it. But either way, he wrote a letter to several high ranking people in the school, including the academic dean, and several heads in the music department complaining about me being a discipline problem. I never saw myself as a discipline problem, and my ROTC department sure wasn’t having a problem with me, so the letter didn’t really hurt me academically in anyway. But it certainly hurt emotionally. And what did I really know, I was 17.

After that, we had an argument, and I never really talked with him again. I switched majors to history and the rest is well… history.

I think it goes without saying, it was not the ideal mentor-protege relationship. But there was no reason it had to end the way it did. If either of us had sensed the poor fit, we could have found a better way to move forward.

This leads to the last part of today’s discussion.

Social Intelligence

Once again, Robert Greene said it in a very succinct way:

“Often the greatest obstacle to our pursuit of mastery comes from the emotional drain we experience in dealing with the resistance and manipulations of the people around us. If we are not careful, our minds become absorbed in endless political intrigues and battles. The principal problem we face in the social arena is our naïve tendency to project onto people our emotional needs and desires of the moment. We misread their intentions and react in ways that cause confusion or conflict. Social intelligence is the ability to see people in the most realistic light possible. By moving past our usual self-absorption, we can learn to focus deeply on others, reading their behavior in the moment, seeing what motivates them, and discerning any possible manipulative tendencies. Navigating smoothly the social environment, we have more time and energy to focus on learning and acquiring skills. Success attained without this intelligence is not true mastery, and will not last.”

As humans, we possess two key intelligences which allow us to see patterns in people’s behavior and deduce their motivations – empathy and rational thought.

Now, due to being born relatively weak, we humans need to rely on our parents for survival. This can be a good thing with parents that care, as it allows the child the opportunity to develop their brain and body without worrying too much about the dangers and struggles of life.

But it also leads to something called the Naive Perspective.

Naive Perspective

The naive perspective is the consequence of looking at the authority figures in our life through an idealized lens. These could be our parents, our teachers, and even our friends. We view them as stronger, smarter, more capable and more selfless then they actually are. As we get older, we start to see this view is not true and can actually exaggerate their negative qualities.

The key is to neither idealize or demonize, but to understand people as they really are. This takes time and deliberate focus. The apprenticeship phase of your life is the time that you must shed the naive perspective.

Don’t obsess over your own emotions, or how you think people are perceiving you. Instead try to focus on how others perceive the world. Listen to the way they speak and the needs they project. If you have the ability to really understand someone’s emotions and empathize with them, you will be able to win over just about anyone you meet. And not just win them over in a superficial, charming kind of way, but in a deeper, more meaningful kind of way.

Beyond this, taking your focus outward will hopefully lessen any kind of turmoil or problems you are going through.

To get back to my story from college, if I had taken the time to try and empathize with my teacher, focusing on what he was saying and the way he acted, I may have been able to diffuse any potential problems that were coming up. With better communication, we could have identified the differences in opinion and probably seen that it would be best to part ways in a more amiable way. I should have entered the mentor-protege relationship with a more realistic picture of who my teacher was, and left with less animosity.

But I was focused on me. My fears, my problems, my goals and my desires. I did not have a mindset of mastery. As another teacher bluntly told me, I was being sophomoric. I had a naive perspective.

You will have problems in life. You will have falling outs, and fights, and struggles with mentors, colleagues and family. If you look at this through the lens of reality, with an attitude of supreme acceptance, then you have a much better chance of going through life with much fewer problems. Realize the dark side that all people have – including you and I – and then accept it and move on. This will only come by cultivating your social intelligence.

Summary

So let’s recap what we talked about in this episode.

Anyone wishing to master a field must go through years of deliberate practice. This practice can be maximized by having a wise mentor guiding the process.

Finding a mentor can be a little difficult though, so you need to make sure you are actively seeking one, and not just hoping for it to happen.

Make sure you bring something to the table as well. Most people are happy to pass on their knowledge and expertise, but realize that they are more than likely busier than you, and so you can help simplify their lives by bringing your unique skill sets to the relationship.

Once you have found a mentor, utilize these four strategies for the ideal mentorship:

1. Choose the mentor according to your needs and inclinations

Have a clear understanding of where you want to go, and find a mentor who can help you get there.

2. Gaze deep into the mentor’s mirror

Be willing to accept your mentor’s criticism and difficult tasks. They will help you grow.

3. Transfigure their ideas

Don’t just passively accept everything your mentor tells you. Make their ideas your own by wrestling with them, changing them, rephrasing them, and even discarding the ones you don’t agree with. This usually happens later in the relationship.

4. Create a back-and-forth dynamic

Finally, realize that you too have a contribution to make to your mentor, and they can learn from you.

In the end, both of you are people, and you have the opportunity to build a life-long friendship with like minded individuals that is mutually beneficial. Don’t take that lightly.

Outro

Thanks again for listening to the art of composing podcast.

If you like the show, leave me a review in iTunes.

As usual you can find the show notes at artofcomposing.com/episode6.

I’d like to also take this opportunity to tell you about how you can support the podcast. I have signed up for a new system called Patreon. You can check it out at https://www.artofcomposing.com/patreon. That will forward you to my Page on patreon.com, where you can pledge your support for the podcast.

Patreon is a really great system, similar to kickstarter, but slightly different. You choose an amount that you are comfortable pledging for each podcast episode created. You also decide the limit. So let’s say you want to give $2 an episode, but a max of $10. Then every time I put out an episode, I will receive $2 from you, charged at the end of the month, but if I start going crazy and put out 30 episodes, you would still only be charged a max of $10. You have complete control.

It’s a great way to support me and I am hoping it will give me the opportunity to have more time to make more podcast episodes.

I also put in some incentives. If you pledge $5 per episode, I will give you a direct shout out on the podcast. And if you pledge $20 per episode, I will actually compose a piece of music for you, to be premiered on the podcast.

In fact, I have already had 1 person pledge $20, so be listening for that in the next episode. There are only 19 of those left, so get em’ while they’re hot.

If you still have questions, just go to artofcomposing.com/patreon. Patreon is spelled P-A-T-R-E-O-N.

There is also a link in the show notes, as well as in the sidebar of my website.

https://www.artofcomposing.com/patreon

So until next time, I wish you luck in your journey towards mastery.