Music combines the flow, cognitive balance, practice and dedication, everything humans crave to mentally succeed.  A good music ritual, whether it’s 20 minutes a day or 10 hours will help the fast paced mind find peace and the slow mind wake up.

I found music late in life, at 27.  I had been gifted instruments in my youth but none had stuck, I was simply too ADD, focused on action sports and wasn’t ready for what was about to come into my life.  Fast forward over a decade and the quest for the perfect sine wave found me.

As an action sports athlete, injuries happen. Throughout life I have regularly been hospitalized and taken months to recover due to high speed encounters with trees, metal and stone. Each Injury takes a toll on our body and mind. When we’re focused on physical activities it becomes impossible to find success while injured, until you find something new, that low energy calling.

For me it was a borrowed classical guitar that lit the fire. I had a blown out knee, the surf was firing and all I could do was learn this fretboard.  I did not have the mental focus to take lessons or dedicate my mind to the instrument yet so I just started playing. Start with rhythm, simple patterns then learn chords, scales, and eventually pieces of music theory like the circle of fifths.

Most athletes love their sport for a couple reasons, one is the plan, we have to plan our line, know how to apply our body language to action and from there, improvise.

Music is very similar when you come at it with a freestyle perspective. You learn the moves, you start to hear the right notes and eventually you can just tap into how you are feeling inside (your heart body and soul) and play that way.

After learning some basic guitar I started acquiring random small instruments, a kalimba, flutes, hand drums and furthering my rhythm. Eventually I made the step towards a keyboard as I’ve always wanted to play piano.

After acquiring quite a few instruments , you have everything you need to practice as a musician, once you understand how chords and scales translate across instruments you can play with others or start producing your own music which is a whole chapter in itself.

I know this is not hyper detailed instructions on how to do this but my aim here is to aid others unlock the musical side. We all have it, if you can hum a tune you can write a song, it just takes practice. If you want to dive deeper, below are links to more tutorials, apps to aid progression and great instruments to start with.

Here are some links to get started, simple instruments that won’t break the bank but will build the good times.

Classical guitar
Mini keyboard
Hand drum
Akai drum pad