Ya know... Something that happened with the advent of the intersnet is a massive migration of people thundering into facebook and youtube who really want to say stuff. I would imagine they hope it's something meaningful that expresses their importance in the grand scheme. It's a natural enough response to a platform. Put a stage in the middle of a field and eventually there'll be a bunch of people standing on it trying to look like they belong there. When I was a kid hanging out with my uncle he would sometimes take me along to the bar where he was playing to hump gear and help with set up before the bar opened. Sometimes it was at the cabaret my Dad managed. I'd stand there on the stage looking around the bar with an important look on my face as if I was looking for some errant piece of equipment, but really I was just absorbing the vast size of this dealio. Surely the coolest of all the dealios. The Music Dealio is so huge they build a stage for it. (see my last blog "Dealio denial without Drawals" for more on what a dealio is.) Standing up there with a few 250 watt pars on, the smell of stale cigarettes, perfume, and sweat all combining into unique scent that you only get from a cabaret before it opens. Staff running around setting up the bar and wiping tables, all good looking and cheerful. I could wander over and refill my coke from the coolest coke squirty thing ever and get ice from a big machine and even put a lemon wedge on it if I wanted. To a kid who doesn't see the reality underneath, it was awesome. The reality of bar fights, throwing up, waking up with a screaming hangover, realizing you fucked up, comes later. The cabaret during the day at nine years old was all promises of glamour and beauty. The journey from then to now sure has blown the magic to smithereenies. Mind you, even with the scent long gone from the smoking ban and the novelty of pop from a gun completely faded, after many bleak depressed hangovers and dawning horror of major fuckups and further confirmation of a life wasted, I still kinda dig the vibe of a bar before it opens. But I digress. The thing that made music such a big dealio is you had to work really hard to obtain said dealio. To chase music meant sacrificing a lot of things people take for granted. House, car, family type stuff. Chasing music meant endless hours of scales and bleeding fingers. What's happened is the Great Unwashed have realized they can pretend to have a dealio without doing any work or having to suffer through the hours of boring. One merely has to have hope and blinders. Not just for music either, it's anything that one might put out there hoping it makes them special or interesting. Blogs for instance. Ha. Yeah shut up. No peeking around the blinders, it took me hours to get them into the exact right position. I'm good looking too. It's a natural endeavor. Interesting people get laid more, thus fulfilling one's deepest ancient instincts. The hard part is realizing you're just not interesting enough to attract a mate ever, and in fact you bore people to tears with your endless drivel. You might should hit the back button, it doesn't get any better, but I do go on. The net has given us the platform to find out we're all just people standing on a stage with little to say. The net blows the blinders off your head exposing how interesting you really are via complete indifference. I also suspect the net's cruel treatment of a fragile self image is part of what drives people to clock towers and elementary schools armed with uzis. Give me interesting or give me death. I regret that I have but one life to give to my bloated ego. So how does this apply to music you might ask? Well shut up and I'll tell you. We all know hard work gets us to where we want to be. What the net has done is given us a false view of how much work goes into it by showing only the one's who didn't have to work for it. Endless three year old drummers, people with no arms shredding with bare feet, and just plain extremely good players. The net result of this blitz is we come to believe you either have it or you don't and we give up. There's some good news though. It's all bullshit and all you need is to want it and not give up because it's hard. The one's who come by it easily are way rare, like one in a thousand players. The rest of us have to work for it. Here's the big secret about early natural ability: After 10 or 15 years everybody else catches up to the prodigies. They don't keep getting better, they just get there quicker. Plus they usually go off into jazz or classical. That's because music has little to do with abilities, and often prodigies are just more coordinated than most. Music is endless years of frustration punctuated by rare glimmers of hope. I've been playing for 30 some odd years and I still haven't got it. Once in a while I catch it, but most of the time I drop it. I never actually got any better, all that happened as I improved is I heard more flaws in other guitar players. I didn't get better at it, just everybody else got worse. So there's the measure of your playing. When everybody starts to suck you know you suck less than before. You don't set the bar, you drag it down to your level. What I'm sorta heading to is don't sweat any of it. The reason behind improving at your instrument or voice is you'll be better able to emote your music. Playing well adds to your arsenal of tools to emote with. It's definitely worth doing, just know it doesn't help anything at all. You'll still suck hard even when you're great. Most players set the bar by how fast they can play and how much they know. Players practice to get better at playing. Practicing doesn't make you better at music, it makes you better at playing music. With practice you can go fast and play surprise left turns and all kinds of great stuff, but it isn't what music is about. If that were the case then shred would be king. In fact shred has never been popular with anyone except other shredders and a few confused metal heads. This is what levels the field for all players and singers and writers of music. This is why many less agile players write and play good music. Niel Young, Leonard Cohen, and a million others, even the Rolling Stones, are not particular good players and singers. There's no denying they've created some of the greatest music out there ever though. And I may as well go off on a rant here. This is also why so many players of the loftier styles like jazz and classical are always so snooty about the whole thing and have that look on their faces. They can teach and play but they're no better than anybody else. They did the work and got the degree yet they still suck as much as anybody. They're a tad pissed about it. The only other option to admiting suction is to just buy their own bullshit and think they actually are better than everybody. Hence the look. There are of course many exceptions to that statement. Way many, but that look tweaks my psycho parts. In fact, all of the previous whack'O'blather is not always true. There are way many exceptions to everything. Next week I'll talk more about why it is that technically lesserly proficientists are often better than experts, and why you suck more than ever. That's right kiddies, it's The Learning Curve of Doom.
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