While visiting family back in Nashville over Thanksgiving, I met up with a good friend from college who I haven’t seen in a few years. As his massive dog mauled me for kisses, we caught up on what’s elapsed in that time period.

We both have music degrees. We’ve both played professionally. This guy is one of the best I’ve ever worked with on his instrument—he’s just ridiculous.

These days, he’s working in another field and playing mostly at church and a gig here and there.

He said something I thought was very unintentionally profound while sharing about a gig he had recently. I may quote this inaccurately, but the sentiment is the same.

“I was playing a gig recently, and realized as I was trying to play something, I had reached into my bag of chops so many times, there were no more chops to grab.”

I’ve been mulling on the truth in this story ever since.

As musicians, we spend our formative, high school, and college years constantly putting into the “chop bag.” Every hour practicing, playing with different bands, every recital, every school gig—it’s all putting into the chop bag.

But what happens when you’re getting paid to play, you’ve “made it”, and you’re playing music (usually the same music) every day but outside of that you don’t have the time or desire to practice?

No more chops.

The more you’ve worked, the more you’ve practiced, the more naturally talented you are, the deeper your bag of chops. And the longer it takes to notice when there are no more chops.

I myself am guilty as hell of reaching into the chop bag time and time again without refilling it. As a ballet pianist, I have a repertoire of at least 100 pieces/songs/excerpts that I rotate through, some more than others depending on the type of class and teacher I am playing for. Sure that’s a lot of music, and a lot of playing in a given day/week/month but it’s like driving home to the same place you’ve lived in for your entire life. You go on autopilot. You don’t necessarily have to think too hard about what you’re doing….until something happens. Then you reach into the chop bag to get through the gig, class, or situation and everything is fine.

Then you reach in again.
And again.
And again.

Until suddenly you realize you can see the bottom of the bag. Fast passages get sloppy, dynamic range gets smaller, tempos become unsteady, performance less certain.

Then it’s time to refill the bag if you want to stay sharp. For me refilling the bag is spending some time with the first 20 exercises of Czerny’s Op. 299 and my old school metronome. Then moving on to his Op. 740 for something a little more challenging.

Refilling the bag is adding new music to my ballet repertoire (look for future posts on this). Refilling the bag looks a little different for everyone but the sentiment is the same.

You can only reach into the bag so many times before there are no more chops.