Why You Have to Love It

There is a question every young musician has to answer honestly, and the sooner you answer it, the better off you will be.

Do you actually love this?

Not "do you like the idea of it." Not "does it impress people at school." Not "did someone tell you that you were good at it." Do you love it the way you love your favorite thing in the world — the thing you would do for free, the thing you come back to even when it frustrates you, the thing that feels like yours?

Chip McNeil has been playing saxophone since he was around eleven or twelve years old. Before that, piano. He still plays both. His father taught him to play and kept playing himself until he was 91 years old. His mother sang until 94. Music was not a hobby in that house. It was a life.

"I consider this instrument my favorite toy," he says. "Like the first little toy you had when you were a little kid that was like, yeah, I love this thing. I'm never going to give this up. That's the way I feel about this every day. The best part of the day — anytime I can play my horn."

That kind of relationship with your instrument does not happen on its own. It gets built over time, through listening, through playing with others, through watching your heroes up close and feeling what it means to give everything to a single sound. McNeil sat close enough to Elvin Jones to feel the energy coming off the stage. He watched Sonny Rollins. He saw Sonny Fortune. Those moments did not just inspire him — they kept him going when things got hard.

Because things will get hard. There will be days when the phrase you are working on sounds wrong no matter how many times you run it. There will be sessions where everyone around you seems further ahead. There will be moments when you wonder whether you are cut out for this.

And that is exactly when the answer to the question matters most.

If you have to talk yourself into caring, do something else. That is not harsh advice — it is honest advice. Your teachers are investing real time in you. That time is not infinite. If the passion is not there, no amount of instruction is going to manufacture it.

But if the answer is yes — if you know in your bones that you cannot imagine walking away from this — then nothing is actually stopping you. You just have to show up. Every day. With that thing you love most in the world in your hands.