Accountability

Yesterday, I went to the library and worked for most of the day. Althought I wasn’t productive 100% of the time, I did manage to get some stuff today. However, today was probably the most unproductive day I’ve had in a long time. Everything I’ve tried to fix before kind of just appeared in this one day–wasted a bunch of time, more than I even wanted to waste. Procrastination’s a b*tch man.

Productive Thinking

We’ve all thought it at some point: perhaps it’s watching a guy zoom by on a skateboard, perhaps it’s watching someone throw a frisbee for the first time, or perhaps it’s even looking at piece of modern art. We’ve all thought: “wait, I think I could do that too. It doesn’t look THAT hard.” And then, when we finally try it, we quickly find out that it is a LOT harder than it looked, which at that point we think: “damn, well duh that’s why it was impressive in the first place, but man, they just made it look so easy!”

This happens to me all the time–as I’ve gotten older, I’d like to say that I’ve gotten better at that, but that’s probably not true. Even just a year ago, I watched my friend scoot around on a penny skateboard–it seemed rather straightforward, and I’ve ridden Ripstick boards before. How hard could it be?

I found out precisely how hard it could be when I landed on my ass a few seconds later.

Or when I tried to throw a frisbee for the first time, put a spiral on a football, hit a ping pong ball with any considerable force, or…yeah the list goes on for sports. Professional athletes can make any sport look effortless, but, as anyone will attest, many of these sports are actually difficult for beginners. Even Tom Brady probably couldn’t chuck a football 20 yards well on his first attempt.

So, on the other day, when I was listening to “No Shima” by Josh A. (I found it from TFBlade’s outro haha) and I began to think to myself: “rap doesn’t seem THAT hard,” I caught myself.

The reason why the thought popped into my head in the first place was because I was comparing it to conventional music–you know, musical artists that rely on god-given, out of this world voices or extremely technical mastery of musical instruments. In contrast, rap, at times, sounds just like…talking with extra steps. Yet, with no practice, I’m positive that anybody would fail hilariously at trying to rap.

Coming from a musical background, I analyzed the technical aspects of rap–yes, rap does not rely primarily on the physical qualities of the voice, but good rappers have uncanny voice control and rhythm. To illustrate this with a more relatable analogy, consider a trumpet player. A common beginner mistake that is often harped upon during lessons is that rhythm is much more than simply playing notes at the right time–not only does the trumpet player have to start the notes on the right beats, but also has to control the shape of the note throughout its duration and end it on precisely the right note. Imagine what would happen otherwise–you’d have long notes being started on time but cut off abruptly, and short notes hanging over much longer than they should. It’s just sloppy, and, in my experience, is one of the biggest things that seperates a good musician from an amateur one.

People may argue that the key difference between a trumpet or singer from a rapper is that sound quality for the former is much more important. The greatest singers/trumpet players of all time are able to produce unbelievably high-quality sounds, often with their own unique, personal flavor. However, I’d argue that in rap, due to the fact that voice quality isn’t a huge differentiating factor and the technical nature of rap itself, magnifies the importance and, by extension, the difficulty of rhythm control. This is why Kendrick Lamar and Migos are making big bucks from rappping and any average joe with time and dedication to practice rap probably cannot do the same.

There are a lot more interesting ideas surrounding why things can look “easy” but turn out to be the exact opposite, but that’ll be reserved for tomorrow’s post!