Moments of Total Musical Immersion (Or, How I Earned the Title "Crazy")
Hello, this is VoiceLid Jazz Guitar. For this weekend's post, let's set the guitar down for a moment and talk about the simple act of listening. We often ask, "How many hours do I need to practice to get better?" But perhaps a more important question is, "How deeply am I listening to the music?" Today, I want to share a few stories from a time when I was so immersed in music that people literally called me "crazy," and explain why those moments became the most vital fuel for my musical growth. I'll share this in my own voice, just as it comes to me.
The Power of Obsessive Listening During my mandatory civil service, I had earphones in constantly. I would walk around singing along to the guitar solos—not just the notes, but every nuance, every rhythmic hiccup, every bit of phrasing. At a team dinner, a colleague finally pulled me aside and said, with deadpan seriousness, "Please, do yourself a favor. Stop singing things that aren't songs." There's another story. My parents were out of town, and I had friends over. I put one of my favorite CDs in the living room stereo, set it to repeat, and we all eventually fell asleep to it playing over and over. The next morning, a friend looked at me, completely drained, and said, "I thought you were genuinely insane. I hate that song now because I've memorized every single note against my will." These episodes might have seemed strange to others, but for me, they were a form of practice as crucial—if not more so—than any time spent with the guitar in my hands. I once witnessed the great drummer Kenny Washington perfectly sing a John Coltrane solo, note-for-note, with the exact intonation and feel. He's a drummer. That level of immersion, that obsession, is the only real "cheat code" in music.
The Unspoken Prerequisite Deep listening isn't about filling a playlist. It's a way to practice music during all the moments you aren't holding your instrument.
• Internalizing Nuance: When you've heard a solo hundreds of times, the player's breath, the attack of their pick, the subtle depth of a bend—it all gets burned into your subconscious. When you finally pick up your guitar, you're not just playing memorized notes; you're recreating a sound that lives inside you.
• Building Musical Intuition: You begin to anticipate where the harmony is going, what line might come next. This isn't theoretical knowledge; it's an embodied, intuitive sense of musical gravity and logic.
The Attitude So, when people ask me how many hours they should practice, my real answer is this: become obsessed. Listen to the music you love until your friends and family beg you to stop. Listen until they tell you to stop singing solos in public. When the music becomes a part of you in that way, your playing finally becomes your own. The attitude of a true musician—one who puts their heart into every single note—is born from the depths of their listening. This weekend, I invite you to pick one album you love, put on a pair of headphones, and do nothing else but listen to it from start to finish. For more inspiration and stories from the journey, visit me at VoiceLidJazzGuitar.com.