Let’s listen to a song, watch it expand, and then understand what the artist is doing. Here’s George Benson’s version of Donny Hathaway’s “The Ghetto,” with Joe Sample on piano.

Now, here is musician and teacher Rick Beato breaking down George’s work, because if we don’t know how artistry works, we devolve into believing it’s some kind of magic. It isn’t, and it is not. The magical part happens in the brain of the patron. The artist, meanwhile, is simply applying increasingly complex tools he or she learned.

It feels like musician mumbo jumbo, and I suppose, to an extent, it is. But photographic techniques are mumbo jumbo, and so is painting and poetry and literature … until you learn them, then it all becomes easy.

So click off the computer, pick up an artist’s tool, and get to work. You’ve magic in you, and it needs to come out.

P.S. If that wasn’t enough “Ghetto” for you, here’s Donny showing how it was done.