We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful David Nevue. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with David below.
David, appreciate you joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
That my life has taken this path has been a surprise. I never expected, really, to make a career of music. Sure, as a 1980’s teenager, I loved music and dreamed I might someday play in a rock band, but playing the piano as a career wasn’t a life goal or even on my radar. If you asked my 18-year-old self what I wanted to do in life, I would have said I wanted to become a professional writer of words, not music.
I started composing for piano right around 1984, my freshman year of college. I was inspired by pianist George Winston, who played music unlike any I’d heard before; melodic, songlike in structure, but not classical or jazz. I was completely taken by his style, and with his work as inspiration, I began experimenting with writing melodies of my own.
However, my artistic energy was, at that time, mostly devoted to creative writing, and that, mostly poetry. I had the idea to write a short story and compose original music at the piano to go along with it—a soundtrack of sorts. So I started writing songs, like musical paintings, to follow along with each chapter of my story idea.
My senior year of college, I performed one of those, a piece called “The Princess,” at a college-wide talent show. That was the first time I’d played as a “solo pianist” in public. I didn’t have a lot of confidence, but that night, I performed that composition, then asked for “any three notes” from the audience and improvised a little melody on the spot.
I won first place. $50 bucks. My first money made as a piano player!
The seeds of “what if?” were planted that night, and after college graduation, I continued building on my story idea and writing music for it. Eventually, I’d written 11 pieces and thought to myself, “What now?” Naturally, the next step was to record them.
I asked around, found a local recording studio, went in, and recorded those 11 tracks. That became my first album, “The Tower,” released in 1992.
I performed my first full concert, an album release concert, in the fall of ’92 at my home church.
After that, I continued composing, just for the fun of it. Three years later, in 1995, I released album #2, then in 1997, album #3, and in 1999, album #4. It wasn’t until album #4 that I started thinking, “Maybe I can make a career of this!”
David, How did you get your start in the music business, and what do you think has contributed to your success?
In the mid-1990’s, I was working at a software company called Symantec in Eugene, Oregon. The internet was, at that time, still a newish thing, and most people weren’t all that tuned into it. For my job, I was on the internet all day long, providing customer support on CompuServe, AOL, and the Symantec BBS. This was not long after Mosaic, the first web browser, was released. I had a front row seat to this new “www” frontier, so in the evenings, I was writing and composing my music on the side, building web sites for Mosaic, and coming up with creative ways to draw attention to my music. As the public’s awareness and adoption of the internet grew, more people found my work. My marketing approach was this: wherever people are going online, whatever they’re searching for that’s music or piano-related, put my music in their path. People searching for sheet music would find me. People searching for information about pianos or piano lessons would find me. People searching for my piano hero, George Winston, might find me too.
By 2000, I was making as much income from my online business selling music, sheet music, and my book on music marketing, as I was from my job at Symantec. That’s when I decided to take the leap. I saved up a year’s salary, quit my day job, and started doing music full time in 2001.
That was 23 years ago, and that leap of faith was the best, most amazing leap of faith I’ve ever taken.
In terms of what I think has contributed to my success and perhaps sets me apart, three things come to mind.
First, one of my most predominant musical “gifts” is an ear for melody and melodic hooks. That, and the emotional content of my music, touch on the keys, and expressiveness, strikes listeners as unique and recognizable, or so I am told. This isn’t something I “try” to do, or manufacture. I’m just being “me” at the piano, writing songs I like, and fortunately, a lot of other people like them too. I’m grateful for that, because I don’t know how to play the piano any other way.
Secondly, there’s a spiritual element to my music, in that when I am at the piano, whether performing, writing, or recording, I ask for God’s blessing on my work. God gifted me with the ability to do this, so I offer the fruit of my work back to Him in thanksgiving. My hope is that the music I play encourages and comforts others, all the while drawing them near the grace, mercy, and peace that are found in Christ. While I am aware, of course, that not everyone who listens shares my faith in Jesus, I believe the Holy Spirit is present in my work and is an active participant in delivering it to the ears of whoever needs to hear it.
Finally, I strive for excellence and I am tenacious. Everything I release is my “best work” at the time. In other words, I never reach a point where I say, “This sounds good enough,” and then release it “as is.” Once a piece goes public, it represents that work forever, and I’m cognisant of that. So I won’t release a recording until I know it’s the best I can perform it. Beyond that, I never give up. I think one of the reasons I have achieved as much as I have over these last three decades is because I have kept at it, pushing through all the mental, emotional, and business obstacles that have come my way.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I’m sure you’ve heard recording artists say that their success became “real” to them the first time they heard their song on the radio. For me, that moment came the first time I attended a piano recital and heard students playing my compositions. It was startling, but wonderful, to hear my melodies played by others with different modes of expression, emphasis, and phrasing. I smiled real big that day!
Over the last two decades, I’ve had many such opportunities to not only attend events where students played my compositions but to follow up, talk with them, and offer encouragement. I’ve also put on several workshops for piano students where I perform selections of my work and then share stories about how I wrote them. The Q&A time after these events is always delightful.
I love opportunities like this, where I can personally connect with piano students. Whether they just want to learn to play for fun, or take the next step and compose their own pieces, to be able to shake their hand, say “great job,” and give them positive and constructive feedback is a wonderful thing. You never know how a few encouraging words can impact a young life, especially if they view you as one of their own inspirations for playing the piano.
I don’t know that anything means more to me, in terms of my career, than knowing piano students all over the world are playing my music. And then, to see artists of all ages and skills—even on different instruments—uploading their performances and interpretations of my work to YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and other media is incredibly rewarding. To realize that my music means enough to someone that they’ll spend hours learning and memorizing it is mind-blowing to me. And I do find great comfort in knowing my music will continue to be played and performed by the next generation after I’m gone.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I had to UNLEARN my obsession with perfection. Not only in the recordings I produced, but also in live concert performance.
For most of my career, I listened “too hard” to my recordings from studio sessions. I’d always find fault with my performance or obsess over mechanical things. I’d do another take, and another, and another, and six months later, come back and do ten more, in hopes of attaining the perfect recording, played with just the right tempo, touch, pacing, space, vibe, and a hundred other intangibles.
The problem with listening that hard is that, after a while, you hear things that aren’t really there!
Perfection is elusive, and dare I say it, imaginary? Even if I felt I reached it, and recorded and released the most glorious take ever, if I listened to that same recording a couple years later, I’d find something lacking in my performance that I didn’t hear the first hundred times I listened to it!
This way of living and striving for *absolute* perfection is, for an artist, completely unproductive.
It’s a road that leads to discontent, depression, anxiety, and self-revulsion. Believe me, I know.
It took me twenty-five years, but I finally came to realize and *accept* that the “insufficiencies” I heard in my recordings, the listener didn’t hear or care about! The far more important thing, I discovered, was to be confident in my gift and to play and perform with joy, leaning into a posture of rest and calm at the piano. Doing that, at its core, is an expression of faith, and if I trust in that, peace and confidence shine through on the final recording. It seems counterintuitive, but there is beauty, and even simplicity, in imperfection. To be imperfect is human. Perfection is mechanical. I’ve learned to be content, and even joyful, in being authentically human.
As to live concert performance, I learned a lesson about over-obsession and worry early in my career. I showed up to play a show at a church in southern California, and the piano was this little spinet that was *really* out of tune. It was so cringe to play. TWANGY! I went back to my rental van about 90 minutes before the show, and I wanted to cancel the concert, especially as people were paying to hear me play! How horrible to charge someone to hear me play that terrible, piano-shaped thing! I sat in the van, praying about it… “God, I have to cancel. I have to!” And I heard this little voice in my head, the Holy Spirit, say to me, “That piano is not the instrument, YOU are. Go and play, as if you are playing for me.” And so, I did. I played the show, kept smiling, interacted with my audience, ignored the sound I was hearing, and performed for the Lord, as if nothing at all was wrong.
After the concert, an elderly gentleman came up to me to shake my hand. He had tears streaming down his face, as he said, “This concert has changed my life!” I looked at him, amazed, and he repeated, “No, you don’t understand, this evening has CHANGED my life! Your music, your words—I’ve never heard anything so beautiful and moving, and it spoke healing to my soul.”
I learned that night that indeed, my sense of “in tune” or “out of tune,” or a “good” or “bad” performance was not important. My perception of reality is not what my audience sees and hears. Many times since, I’ve had what I thought were “off” performances that God blessed incredibly. The important thing is that I just do what I was made to do. I play, and the Holy Spirit comes between me, the piano, and the ears of the listener. I remind myself of that truth before I go on stage, and it takes a lot of the stress and anxiety out of playing for a room full of strangers! I don’t worry about mistakes anymore. I just play.
Now, whether I’m recording in the studio or playing a show, I don’t think so much about playing perfectly. Instead, I aim to create a memorable moment that God can use to bless others. I lean into the joy that playing the piano brings.
Excellence isn’t found in perfection; it’s found in the simple act of making a lasting, and memorable, emotional connection between the artist and audience. If you can do that, that connection might last a lifetime.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://davidnevue.com
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