Music consists of a few basic elements. Sound, chops, melody, rhythm, structure, dynamics, recording, and a bunch of other stuff adds up to music. Every song focuses on a different element to a degree, and some genres almost completely ignore some elements. Classical focuses on melody and emotional content, yet has very little rhythmic groove. Not a lot of jungle drums in Classical. Other genre's like funk, rap and techno are focused in the opposite direction, all about rhythm. This is all swell and groovy. I notice with the invention of Youboobs and the intersnet a lot of the focus has shifted to skill and chops. There's a whack of players out there burning up the fretboards with their little flying fingies then posting it. This is also all swell and groovy. Players often focus on chops because they're the tools used to create music. Hot licks are the natural progression players go through to become musicians. This is a normal part of becoming a musician. For a few years when you start hopping on stage players tend to chunk through the boring and easy rhythm parts waiting for their moment to whip out their hot licks and hopefully impress the opposite sex enough to have moistened articles of clothing flung at them. Again, swell and groovy. Occasionally even successful depending on inebriation. However, the digital age seems to have bogged music down at hot licks. Sure it's a crucial part of music, but the parts being ignored are no less crucial, and in fact, the missing bits are arguably more important to the creation of a song people like. When producing here in The Room Of Pain much of my job is filling in the missing bits. Back in the day a band of young players could go out on the road and play 5-6 nighters for a few months and come back as musicians. Can't do that anymore. So what makes a player a musician? What happens that transforms a bunch of players into a hot band of musicians when you play 4 sets a night for months on end? Well shut up and I'll tell you. It's not because your chops get better. I mean, they do, but it's not chops that separate the players from the musicians. Music is a team sport. Drummers do fills, guitar and keyboard players do solos, singers do acrobatic vocal exercises and bassists attempt to fill every hole they can with tiny solos into every chord change. At first Everybody more or less does their duty and plays rhythm for the guy soloing or singing. They wait impatiently for their turn to solo, or fill, or flashy something in the chord change or whatever. Nobody wants to hold it down particularly, but they take turns as the song dictates. At first the songs are merely the support system for their moment to shine. You see this a lot at open jams. What happens when you go on the road for a few months is you get so bored playing the same tired old rhythms in the same boring old songs that you can play them in your sleep. You start listening to the band to try and keep yourself awake. That's when you start to hear whats actually going on inside the rhythm. You start to really hear how the timing and dynamics are driving the bus. You begin to work together with them and start tracking the groove. Then you begin to realize the solos are part of that rhythm and start working them into the bigger picture that emerges. The rest of the band will pick up on this and start working with you and usually, you all become musicians. The intricacies of rhythm are more important than hot licks, and solos are entirely part of the rhythm. You become a musician that moment when you start playing with the band. That moment when timing and dynamics and groove become more important to you than hot licks. Hot licks may get a bunch of likes on Facetard, but people don't often download them and add it to their jam, because hot licks are only one small component of many in the creation of music. You see people on Youturd looping, or doing the one man band thing with three strings and a kick/snare setup, record scratching to loops, or shredding, chicken pickin, or slapping out time with their thumbs while they whap harmonics and poke fingers all over the fretboard on acoustics, or whatever. Again, and I can't stress this enough, this is all swell and groovy. Possibly even keenola. But I'll tell ya what tho: a good live band in sync and deep in the pocket will kick the crap out of any thumb thwacking bucket stompin record scratchin quantized loop abusing fret melting pseudo band every single time. And you don't have to be a great player to do it either. The point at which playing becomes art is when the whole band fits themselves into a groove that flexes with the moment and it becomes a shared experience with an audience. When you play WITH the band and the crowd and the room, not AT them. So shut up and listen. You might hear something.