Make It Your Favorite Toy

Here is something that does not get said enough: the goal is not just to get good. The goal is to keep coming back.

You can develop excellent technique and a broad repertoire and real harmonic knowledge, and still burn out. You can practice efficiently and show up consistently and still reach a point where the instrument starts to feel like a chore. When that happens, everything else stops working too.

So the last piece of advice from this masterclass is maybe the most important one, and it sounds simple: end every practice session on something you love.

Not something you are working on. Not something you need to improve. Something that reminds you why you started. A tune that makes you feel something. A phrase that just feels right in your hands. Whatever it is for you.

"If you put it away mad, it's like walking away from an argument with someone you care about. You don't want to come back right away. But if you put it away going, 'ah, I still love you' — you'll always come back."

That consistency across time is everything. Sonny Rollins played into his 90s and outlived much of the history of the music he helped define. The people who last are not necessarily the most naturally talented. They are the ones who never stopped finding joy in the thing itself.

McNeill put it plainly at the end of the masterclass: "Make this instrument — your voice — your favorite toy. So you want to use it every day. You want to come back to it with a fresh, fun attitude."

You have to make it happen. Nobody else will do that for you. But if this is genuinely the thing you love — if that question from Part 1 has a real answer — then showing up is not actually the hard part.

The hard part is believing, on the frustrating days, that you belong here.

You do. Keep going.