What a Frustrating Music Session Taught Me

A Moment of Frustration

I turned off my keyboard and felt frustrated.
A thirty-minute session completely wasted.
Or so I thought.

I was in the early stages of arranging an original song for piano.
I came to the end of my session and I felt like I’d made no progress whatsoever.
I’d failed to move the track forward. 

What does this track want to be?
What’s missing?
Why doesn’t this sound good?
What do I need to do?

I’d hit a wall and I felt confused and deflated.

The Self-Doubt

As I often do, I took a few moments to think about my thinking.
And it wasn’t pretty.

My mind was a flood of thoughts like, “I don’t know what I’m doing,” and, “I’m never gonna be able to do this.”

These thoughts quickly became feelings. 
And I was feeling incompetent. 
Not good enough.

It’s pretty deep, but a 30-minute music session (something I love doing), ultimately led me to feel unworthy. 

So the real problem here isn’t about a single session feeling slow, it’s about how I reacted to it.
A reaction of fear and self-criticism.

***

This got me thinking… 
Do I want to react like this every time progress feels slow? 
Do I want to allow these negative voices to dictate how I feel?

Thankfully, my answer was a resounding, ‘No.’
So here’s what I’m doing about it.

Expectation Management

Let’s start by getting objective.
Progress is rarely linear. Some days are full of momentum and some are full of roadblocks.
It’s no different when making music.
This is to be expected.

I’ve come to realise that if something is to be expected, then it also needs to be embraced. 
Not fought against.

The thing is, there was a very obvious reason for why I struggled through that particular session. 
I’d literally only just recommitted to making music regularly again.
I was in my first week!

So why on earth was I expecting the experience to be smooth and seamless?
Being brutally honest, it’s because my expectations were wildly unrealistic:
I’d neglected the craft for a decent chunk of time (see last week’s post), and minimal progress is what you get when you don’t practice regularly. 

You’re slower. 
You forget things.
Not much feels automatic.
This is normal.

Cue the reality check:
I had no right to feel competent because I was out of practice.
You get what you deserve.

Frustration is a Signal, not a Judgement

After having a quiet word with myself and adjusting my expectations, I was able to explore the deeper reason for getting frustrated in the moment.
The frustration was trying to tell me something.
It was a signal.

The frustration was actually helping me become aware of a specific lack of knowledge and skill.
In the context of the project I was working on, I’d found a bottleneck.
An area where I didn’t have sufficient knowledge and skill for things to feel frictionless.

So while my original reaction was to judge myself with labels of incompetence and thoughts of not being good enough, the simple reality was that I’d identified a specific part of the music-making process which needed improvement.
A lack of ability in the present is not an indicator of your future potential. 

With a little patience, and a willingness to pay attention to your weaker areas (and strengthen them), you have everything you need to grow.
This is the work of learning. 

• You uncover things that you find hard.
• You actively look for the information you need to make these things easier.  
• You then apply this new knowledge until the things you found difficult become more automatic.

This is literally how you get better at anything. 
Don’t be impatient. Don’t try to take shortcuts.
Instead, note your challenges and actively seek to overcome them.

So when you next get stuck, notice the frustration, and see it as a helpful guide shining light on the next little path you need to walk along.
Be grateful for the feelings of frustration.
Your body is literally communicating with you, making you aware of areas of skill you could develop.

Use those feelings to direct what you do next.

Just-In-Time Learning

Have you ever watched a YouTube tutorial but then never applied what was shown in the video?
I’ve been majorly guilty of this in the past, and sometimes still am.
Passively watching videos about the skills you’re trying to improve is not learning.
It’s entertainment.

You get a dopamine hit when you watch something related to your creative hobby.
You find it interesting, but the dopamine doesn’t last long.
Unless you do something with the information, you’re simply entertaining yourself.
Procrastinating on doing the work, some would say.

To prevent wasting your time and actually start learning things that you ‘need’ to learn, make your learning project based and just-in-time.
For the context of this post, I’m defining learning as: 

The process of seeking and applying new knowledge to build skills that lead to specific results.

Project-based learning means you only learn the things that will help you complete the specific project you are working on.
The learning serves the project.
You’re not learning for the sake of learning.
It has a purpose.
It helps you get things finished.

Just-in-time learning is where you learn things as you go.
As soon as a gap in your skills becomes apparent, you go and fix it.
You do this by seeking the knowledge required and applying it.

Again, this gives your learning a purpose.
Bottlenecks become learning opportunities.

You don’t need to put off finishing anything creative until you’ve ‘learnt everything.’
You don’t need to master a big curriculum first.
What you do need is to set a project, define what finished looks like, and get to work… 
Learning as you go until you complete the project.

As a quick example, at the moment I’m working on a 4-track piano EP which I aim to finish by March 31st, 2026.
The source of my earlier frustration came from getting stuck in the arrangement process.
I was pleased with the musical ideas I’d written but was struggling to sequence them together in a way that made sense to my ears.

With this bottleneck now identified, I know what I need to learn in order to move my music forwards.
This week I’ll find a few piano songs I like and analyse their arrangements.
I can then emulate these arrangement structures and apply them to my own songs.

Problem solved.

***

I’m aware that slow sessions will happen again because there are always new levels to reach. 
This is actually exciting.
So next time frustration comes knocking, I’ll be welcoming it with open arms.

What story do you tell yourself when progress feels painfully slow?

---

Thanks for reading,
Ian