If You Run After Two Hares You’ll Catch Neither

August 20, 2021

Proverbs can be a great way to give us simple reminders about what it is we want and how best to achieve it, focus on one goal or path at a time. Whether you're wanting to get better at music composition or develop your career, chasing too many objectives at once can lead you on path to nowhere. Heed this proverb and you can't go wrong!

duos insequens lepores, neutrum capit

Nope the above heading is not a series of random letters communicating a secret message. This year, here in the UK our government announced that State Schools would benefit from learning Latin and turn the children of the UK into middle class young men and women able to share witty proverbs and parables at the dinner table. At the very least the UK will become a leader in the world of philosophy. I thought I’d try and keep up with the young by starting off with my own (Googled) few words of Latin. ‘Duos insequens lepores, neutrum capit’ (no idea how you say it!) it’s Latin for the proverb about ‘two ensuing rabbits’ and that’s exactly what I’m going to talk about. Rabbits!

One Rabbit or Two Hares?

At this point I’m sure this question has crossed your mind, however, what does any of this have to do with music? Proverbs are often composed to reflect the human pursuit of happiness, that society should heed a particular warning or simply be a philosophical message to help you remember how to be a better person or how best to develop and excel in life.

The proverb, ‘if you run after two hares you’ll catch neither’ is a simple reminder for one to stay focussed on one thing. If you go after multiple goals at the same time you’ll find it difficult to accomplish any, if ever! It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set different objectives, just not all at the same time.

If you are anything like me you may have gone to YouTube to find out something specific about Logic, let’s say a rarely used key command. YouTube flickers lovingly into your eyeballs with all those magical little windows singing ‘watch me, watch me stoneymusicman’ (currently that’s my YT channel name), I don’t know about you but the response from me is, of course, since you have such compelling titles, I’ll watch you all: ‘OUT NOW! LABS Ondes Musicales’ and ‘How to Write Drum Parts (for non drummers)’ and ‘Cheap strings library sound better than expensive one?’. Right click ‘Open Link in New Tab’ and off down a rabbit hole I go chasing two hares. The original reason (now forgotten) and all that nice new shiny content teaching me in most cases, not all that much.

The Beauty Of Discovery

I have found myself saying out loud, “what was I coming here for?” because of chasing a new hare the other one has escaped me. Has this ever happened to you? Is it a big deal? I guess not when it comes to things like YouTube, watching stuff randomly can have the benefit of stumbling onto something new that helps stick a dent in your bank balance but on the whole what most you lose is time and if you don’t place much value on losing time then chasing rabbits on YouTube is a worthy pursuit. But what about chasing a career or building up a fan base, or wanting to work in TV or write music for libraries? That’s when the proverb can take on a whole new meaning.

What Happens If You Run After Two Hares?

When I was young my parents, supported the many different things I was into. They might, however see it as financially enduring rather than supporting but either way and although my parents were not wealthy by any stretch they supported and encouraged me to find what I loved.

At that time I think chasing after different interests was good; I was given the freedom to explore and discover what interested me. When I found music and the guitar I chased one hare. That was it for me, focussed, determined and singleminded about being the best player I could, learning as much about the instrument as I could and I still have all the magazines to prove it.

Chasing that one hare worked for me and I believe it has contributed to the success I’ve had in my career, even though it’s branched off into many different directions. Learning and becoming accomplished in one area gradually led to other music opportunities. Catching one hare gave me the chance to go after another and then another and that’s still true today; I’m not done yet…. I hope! It doesn’t matter how you get there, what you music goals are just keep focussed on one thing at a time and other opportunities will present themselves without you having to chase.

Having said the above though, I have had my own moments of going after too many hares at once and it has proven to be detrimental to both my career and my own self worth.

Way back in 2007, before the financial crash, before Brexit, before COVID before Zoom my career as a composer was taking off. I had just completed a string of jobs and I was just about at the point where I could confidently say to myself ‘I’m a professional composer’ (something I still struggle to say even today). Just as quickly as the jobs flowed they dried up faster. For some reason silence fell, no producers making contact or returned calls from Production Mangers I’d previously worked with.

Suddenly, dealing with no work and wondering how I was going to find work again, I hatched a plan. I was pretty good at mixing and mastering and a confident guitar player too so it seemed like a good idea to put myself out there for work while I waited for composing opportunities to arise.

The trouble was, irrespective of how good I was within each of those professions I had less contacts than I did in media. I’d suddenly given myself an immense amount of work to do making new contacts, convincing artists to work with me, working on relevant material that would demonstrate my amazing talents leading to guaranteed work, money and the success I felt had just slipped through my fingers.

How did all that go you may well be wondering? Well, not too well. Running in different directions chasing different disciplines, trying to make contact with completely different groups of artists and professionals simply led to me feeling pretty low about my situation. I will even go as far as saying I felt I had failed? I even started to feel I’d made a bad decision in choosing to follow a career path into music?

Time went on and things didn’t get much better, I even enrolled on a course that would eventually lead to studying law; the number of music contracts I’ve now signed in my life perhaps I should have! I attended one class and remember just one thing from that class “what does politics affect? Said the lecturer. Um… “everything?”.

It didn’t take long for me to realised law and politics wasn’t for me but it did reinvigorate my passion not just for music but for writing music for the media. My brush with the law led me to focus on what I actually wanted, one hare. I pursued my contacts which led to securing a job writing the title music for a show called the JD Set, from there I bounced to strangely another alcoholic drink in the form of scoring the promo for Johnnie Walker all because I focused on one thing, writing music for media

What's Your Unus Finis?

We all have our own stories and journeys to tell. We all have our own successes and failures to bare, goals and ambitions we’d like to pursue. I don’t know what your story is or what your objectives are when it comes to music or even a music career.

What I will say is this: unus finis, Latin for one goal.

Don’t give yourself goals, only a goal; take one step at a time towards that one goal and don’t deviate down a YouTube rabbit hole as you might not come out. For me, when things got bad I immediately thought if I focus on multiple things at once I’ll increase my chances of at least one thing working out, one will stick, surely. I chased more than two hares and ended up nearly packing myself off to law school, which I had no interest in, although having signed a ton of contracts over the years perhaps I should have done, it would have helped!

If you focus on one goal you are more likely to succeed and you never know, if the others are related they may just turn up without you doing any of the chasing in the first place. Even a simple goal like learning scales on the piano, it’s better to start off with one scale. Doing it the right way in different positions, techniques, fingerings, soon enough the more distant harder scales fall under your fingers, focussing on one element at a time or mastering or achieving one goal works.

It’s the very reason I have split be musi courses into Melody Masters and Harmony Unpacked. The way to write better melodies is to learning the different aspects, techniques and discover the possibilities that are waiting for you, it’s a question of being prepared to focus on that one element. Does it mean I ignore harmony in the melody course? Of course not, they all work together but to truly master something you must be prepared to spend the time learning that micro element. Anyone that has completed both Melody Masters and Harmony Unpacked can bring both elements together to write truly inspiring and professional sounding music.r