Mind your Business: Productive Self Analysis and Community over Competition

When studying music, it’s easy to start concerning yourself with what everyone else is doing. Who got the lead? Who got the solo? And before long music can become secondary, with the primary focus being your constant evaluation of yourself and others. While feedback, competitions, and auditions are valuable parts of a musician’s journey, they can’t be your primary source of motivation.

Extrinsics as a positive

Extrinsic factors (things outside of you) aren’t inherently negative. A competition can motivate you to practice, an upcoming audition can give you a deadline, and a performance can push you to polish your repertoire. The problem happens when recognition becomes your primary motivator. 

If you only practice seriously when it’s time for an audition, what are you doing after? If you only feel successful when you win, what happens when you lose? If you only enjoy singing when receiving affirmation that you sounded good, what happens when you receive negative feedback or no feedback at all?

For the sake of your mental health and sustainability, you need something deeper. The motivation has to come from wanting to understand more, a curiosity of what your voice is capable of, to master what was previously difficult.

Ability to truly self analyze & keeping a business report

The most important skill you can develop as a musician is an ability to truly hear yourself, and not confuse self-analysis with self-criticism. Instead of “I sounded bad”, true analysis asks “What worked? What didn’t, and why? What’s one specific thing I can practice? Am I pushing too much air, carrying up too much chest voice, changing my vowel, raising my soft palate?”

Your business report on yourself should be strategic, measuring improvements in things like increased range, better breath control, improved pitch accuracy, stronger diction, increased confidence, greater endurance, strategic resonance, and musical interpretation. When you’re able to truly hear yourself, none of these things require another person to tell you that you did well.

There’s only one you

It’s a natural instinct to compare, especially in the realm of musical theatre, when others get the roles you’re striving for. It’s almost guaranteed that throughout your musical career there will be someone who dances better, sings higher, belts stronger, or even just looks like the character you imagined yourself playing. Luckily, casting isn’t about finding the one objectively “best” singer, dancer, or actor. It’s about finding the person who brings a certain combination of qualities, perspective, storytelling, physicality, voice, and energy to a particular role.

Two people can sing the same song beautifully, though completely different. One might bring vulnerability while another brings humor. Your performance isn’t just how “good” your voice is, but your entire body, your instincts, sense of humor, personality and perspective. No one else has your exact same combination, and that means you bring something to the table that no one else can. You don’t need to walk into a room and prove that you’re better than everyone else, your job is to show what you have to offer.

If everyone sounded the same, moved the same, told stories the same way, there would be no music or theatre. We need the comedian as much as we need the dramatic actor, the belter as much as the subtle storyteller.

Community Over Competition

One of the most beautiful things about music and theatre is that it was never intended to be experienced completely alone. We learn and become better when we perform with one another, embrace collaboration, and inspire each other. When one of your peers ‘succeeds’, you don’t ‘lose’, and someone else’s light doesn’t dim your own. Some of the greatest growth happens when we stop viewing other musicians as competition, and start viewing them as community. Ask yourself “what can I learn from this person? What do they do exceptionally well? How can their strengths inspire me to continue to develop my own”- without seeking to become a carbon copy of them. 

So learn to mind your business 🙂 Study your instrument, listen to yourself, set your own goals, and document your practice. Celebrate your improvements, and learn from your mistakes or weaknesses without turning them into proof you’re not ‘good enough’. You don’t have to sound like anyone else, or look like anyone else. You don’t have to have the biggest voice, highest notes, or longest resume to belong ‘in the room’. After auditions or performances, don’t ask “did they think I was good”, instead ask yourself if you achieved what you set out to do, and why or why not.

Khadijah Enriquez, B.M., Voice Instructor