...that is intrinsically dissatisfying?
One would almost think so, looking at many of the postings on this board lately. It would seem as though this music either generates feelings of inadequacy in an awful lot of people or it attracts an awful lot who feel inadequate from the start. In either case, these people seem to hunger for some kind of special recognition based on their involvement in this music, something beyond what the music itself has the power to give them.
I'm thinking in particular of threads concerning whether the music is best accompanied or unaccompanied; whether pure drop or progressive is best; whether it's best to know "the dots" or best to deny all knowledge of them; whether some instruments are harder -- and therefore the people who play them more wonderful -- and others easier -- and therefore people who play them are mere bottom-feeders.
No doubt we all have our opinions. And no doubt this message board is a great place to air those opinions, to defend those opinions.
But I often marvel at how much farther people seem to want to take that. It's not enough to say, for example, that I prefer my music done "traditionally." I have to make it clear that anyone who thinks otherwise is stupid, that their music is crap, that their children are ugly and that their dog smells bad. Or, conversely, if I like my Irish music to "rock out," I must make it clear that people who don't like that are old fuddyduddies who undoubtly haven't had sex for 30-some years and who probably soil themselves.
Sure, sure, I know: this message board is much more convivial than Brand X, blah, blah, blah. It's true; I find so many people here just a delight. But when I see people here trying to create generational splits, for example, or people who are clearly sweet, friendly, helpful and apparently wonderful in every way getting strafed for suggesting something unusual -- say using fiddle as a backup instrument, as in a recent thread -- I can’t help but wonder: What is our music failing to give us that is causing us to hunger for more? What is it about the tunes that makes us forget that taste is not absolute? What is it about the activity of playing lovely and fun instruments that makes us want to believe that it is an action that puts us on par with cancer researchers and organ-donors?
Any thoughts?
. . .BUt I can think of a parallel.
If you go to the Harmony Central electric guitar forum, you will see pretty much exactly these same debates played out in very similar ways. Sure, the genres of music, the messageboard names, and the assumed canons of "tradition" might vary in the specific, but the overall issues are comically similar. There are the "old guard" shredders who feel that guitaring reached maturity with Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin, and then peaked in the 80's hair metal phase (Which might be the equivalent of the MIchael COleman era). You get the young radicals who insist that "theory actually hurts muscial expression because it impooses to many rules...." very similar to the whole Dots debate. It goes on and on.
It isn't the music. It's people. They are, on the whole mind you, as a species, nasty critters. Go look at any History of the World. It's almost certainly actually a history of warfare. We call people like Alexander, a nasty piece of work if there ever was one, "The Great."
They stoned George Fox, shot Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ghandi, taxed Thoreau to support a church he did not believe in or belong to and ridiculed Rodney King for wondering why we can't just be nice to each other.
We're just naked chimps. I don't think I'll ever get used to that, but I've come to accept it as a fact.
And, ummmm, thank you for the compliment . . . I think.
The music is essentially pattern making, a very conservative activity by nature. It soothes AND stimulates existential anxiety..... a real double bind. It likely attracts people who NEED it.
A lot of what passes for discussion here is hair splitting for the sake of splitting hairs, at best, and hair splitting as a form of one-upmaniship, at worst. But that's not new--it's been going on here ever since there were more than 3 members, and elsewhere for eons before that.
Thanks Paul for delivering the semi-annual sermon. We've been long overdue.
A very well posed and interesting topic. I generally think the nastiness and antagonism stems from situations when two specific groups of players converge. Those that CAN play, and by that I mean to a high professional standard, and those who are out to enjoy playing no matter what their standard is. There are sessions for both and room for both in ITM and music in general. I personally don't mind those who are prepared to "have a go" and listen to advice when given. What irks me are those players who aim at mediocrity and exceed at it!!! Players who continually make the same rhythmic and melodic mistakes time after time. To quote the MD of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, " You cannot play at playing music."
>It would seem as though this music either generates feelings of inadequacy in an awful lot of people or it attracts an awful lot who feel inadequate from the start. In either case, these people seem to hunger for some kind of special recognition based on their involvement in this music, something beyond what the music itself has the power to give them.<
Very well stated. To me, it is a constant project to avoid this mindset which I find very wearing. I dropped out of a large San Francisco Bay Area fiddle club for several reasons actually, but mostly because it was so exhaustingly performance-oriented. It was also depressing as all get out to see the stage moms doing the same things to their teenage trad wonders as was done to me with classical music when I was the same age.
I really just want to have a drink and play a tune among like-minded sorts. Partly it's because I work hard at my job and don't need more stress. But partly it's because that sort of attitude worked out so badly with regard to classical music. I didn't pick up a violin for nearly 25 years because I was so soured on the whole scene. If there were less of his mindset at work, I'd have my fiddle out and about a whole lot more than I actually do.
I don't really have an answer. But actually I think posing the question and talking about it is constructive.
I've been in and out of online forums since pretty close to the beginning of such things (you'd think I'd be better at it by now) and I think there are at least two or three doctoral dissertations worth of research in trying to understand how people relate online. It's sort of like driving in traffic. We're removed from direct, natural contact with the other people and we don't go through a phase of introduction and getting acquainted, so we make assumptions and leap to conclusions and communicate with horn honking and finger gestures.
It's a lot more civilized than that online, but enough of the distance is still there so that we misinterpret, over-react, offend, get offended, etc. And then there's the whole thing about how typing at a keyboard is different from talking - very different for some of us. It takes extra effort to be polite online. Or, more accurately, it takes more effort to avoid being impolite.
I'm probablyn ot making any sense, thereby illustrating my point.
I just like making the music with friends. I went to a friends house the other night and introduced his family to ITM. He played a guitar, his son, just learning rolls, played a 5 string banjo, and 11 year old daughter played a (yes) ukelele. We played for hours (I wrote a book of chords for about 150 tunes that is easy for anyone to play). They loved Havest Home and Egans Polka and the rakes of mallow. They loved the songs that seem to be hated here and wanted to play them over and over and over. It was a delight to see such enjoyment. So what it wasn't session material...there were friends, instruments, and a new found love for tunes they never heard before. THAT's what I like about the concept of sessions. When it goes beyond this, my heart glazes over.
There will be always great musicians. I will buy their CDs. I will go to their concerts. I will tune in to live365. But that is not what I go to sessions for. I go there for friends and fun. I am impressed there by friends helping friends, giving them a chance to play along by slowing down, playing tunes they will know.
This is the first message board I've participated with. The thing I found appealing is that you can talk about one of your favorite topics with people from all around the world -- amazing. You can also discuss something that you don't normally discuss because you're actively doing it rather than discussing it -- like sessions. But at the same time there's something awkward about it because your talking with people who have a wide range of experience -- or very little -- or none -- and they're often coming from completely different mindsets based on that. (You're also sometimes talking to people that you later realize are teenagers or something.) People also bring a wide variety of baggage into the discussion that often has little or nothing to do with ITM. Combine that with the egos that many musicians have and it can be a powder keg ready to explode at any moment.
I have no suggestions for solutions, but I do continually reexamine my own contributions to see how I’m expressing myself. This medium has a great advantage in that you can review what you’re about to say before you say it, but what’s missing is all of the other subtle communications that go hand in hand with a face-to-face conversation. People can easily misconstrue what other people are expressing in here because of that. The best thing is to reread what you’re about to respond to whenever possible... and your own comments as well before you post them.
I've been around several online forums, and they all share these sorts of interactions. As others have said, it's easy to misconstrue what someone says on an internet message board given that we are denied the benefits of body language and inflection. Also, if we didn't argue about the nitpicky details, what would we discuss? The virtue of having a discussion board is that you have to discuss things. If we all agreed, threads would be very short and boring. Boards like this lend themselves towards arguments.
Not to mention that trad musicians, like any other group that engages in a detailed and relatively isolated activity, become terribly opinionated. The debates about using dots, accompaniment, or session etiquette or anything else we have here are no more heated than what you;d see amongst horsepeople debating any training or horse management issue, like whether or not certain bits are useful training tools or cruel and unusual punishment (for example). Probably tamer here, as most trad music people seem less egotistic and narrow-minded than many horsepeople I have met.
As for the music itself, I play it because I love it and go to sessions because I love sharing it and enjoy the socialization part as much as the music. So long as egos stay more or less out of it.
A few thoughts ...
There is something intrinsically weird about most modern music-making. As culture has fragmented, traditions have drifted fre from their geographical moorings and everyone has been alienated by the misapropriation of culture and tradition by the ravenous beast of capitalism.
In a world where rich white boys study tablature in order to mimic Robert Johnson, where virtuoso bluegrass pickers turn simple and beautiful mountain music into fiendishly complex and all-but impossible to play (or listen to) showmanship, and where Ireland seems full of Japanese ITM afficionados who play more proficiently than their hosts, is it any wonder that people behave oddly? All culture is fair game to anyone now, no-one ever overtly asks if White boys can play the blues, but the old cultural ties are still there under the surface. So, in the case of Irish music, people deny the learning process, people suggest that they may have Irish links they don't, people seek any form of authenticisation they can grab.
One result of this is that the standard of playing spirals ever upwards, aother is that the scene splits into experts, Wannabees, Session-fodder, no-hopers etc.
This is typical of the contradictions to be found here. And that's a compliment, I like contradictions. A big long involved thread complaining about the fact that we are always complaining.
And before this posting falls into agreement and withers away, I'd like to take umbrage:
"You cannot play at playing music."
What? Why the hell do think it's called "playing music"? If you find yourself not "at play" when you are "playing" your music, why do it. There should be no music in your primeval hunter gatherer part of your brain. It shouldn't exist in the same parts as self determination and survival. Music is the visceral, the whimsy, the flights of fancy. You need to "play" music. If all you do is "work" it, then you are sad, sad. And you have my pity. (as Buzz Light-year said to Woody, after Woody tried to explain to him that he wasn't a Space Ranger after all, just a child's play thing)
So much of what goes wrong is to do with careless use of language.
Some people, when they mean "I don't peronally like the sound of (instrument X)" choose to say "(instrument X) sounds crap". Unfortunately, these people fail to realise that in this cyber session, where communication is of necessity slow and devoid of facial, bodily, or tonal expression, this careless use of language is only unhelpful and inflammatory.
In the thread above, tassiebodhran seems to tell us that the trouble comes about when people of different mindsets come together in mutual intolerance - but then goes on to berate those who are in a different mindset from his(her) own - apparently displaying the opinion that people who do it differently from his(her) way are "irksome".
Now it's possible that this is a neat wind up - if it is then well done, but it needs a smiley.
Or it's possible that I have completely misconstrued what is being said.
Or it's possible that all those of us who choose this music as a form of "play" have been told that we are "irksome" and, by inference, probably a bit stupid.
If it is the latter, then . . . . . . oh dear.
I think I'll stick to playing at playing music - I didn't take it up to be the best, I took it up to join in with friends. I have worked my way above crap, into mediocrity. Mediocre will do for me.
the fact "that the standard of playing spirals ever upwards" was meant as an example of a largely positive aspect of change. Though, as in the case of bluegrass and old-tymey music, better is not necesarilly better ....
I agree Ottery. And there is no harm in reminding ourselves that there is no correlation between standard of music/musicianship and difficulty of music. As some blue grassers and, indeed, trad speed merchants seem to think
>
What? Why the hell do think it's called "playing music"? If you find yourself not "at play" when you are "playing" your music, why do it.<
thank you, michael gill.
Music is just invaluable to me as a stress reducer and an antidote to the terrible and ridiculous things I write on my steno machine all day every day. (You would not believe it, you really wouldn't, but that's another thread if not another forum.) That seems to me as fine a reason for playing as it is to make a recording, thrill an audience, or record a wildly successful CD.
Is there something about this music...
Is there something about this music...
...that is intrinsically dissatisfying?
One would almost think so, looking at many of the postings on this board lately. It would seem as though this music either generates feelings of inadequacy in an awful lot of people or it attracts an awful lot who feel inadequate from the start. In either case, these people seem to hunger for some kind of special recognition based on their involvement in this music, something beyond what the music itself has the power to give them.
I'm thinking in particular of threads concerning whether the music is best accompanied or unaccompanied; whether pure drop or progressive is best; whether it's best to know "the dots" or best to deny all knowledge of them; whether some instruments are harder -- and therefore the people who play them more wonderful -- and others easier -- and therefore people who play them are mere bottom-feeders.
No doubt we all have our opinions. And no doubt this message board is a great place to air those opinions, to defend those opinions.
But I often marvel at how much farther people seem to want to take that. It's not enough to say, for example, that I prefer my music done "traditionally." I have to make it clear that anyone who thinks otherwise is stupid, that their music is crap, that their children are ugly and that their dog smells bad. Or, conversely, if I like my Irish music to "rock out," I must make it clear that people who don't like that are old fuddyduddies who undoubtly haven't had sex for 30-some years and who probably soil themselves.
Sure, sure, I know: this message board is much more convivial than Brand X, blah, blah, blah. It's true; I find so many people here just a delight. But when I see people here trying to create generational splits, for example, or people who are clearly sweet, friendly, helpful and apparently wonderful in every way getting strafed for suggesting something unusual -- say using fiddle as a backup instrument, as in a recent thread -- I can’t help but wonder: What is our music failing to give us that is causing us to hunger for more? What is it about the tunes that makes us forget that taste is not absolute? What is it about the activity of playing lovely and fun instruments that makes us want to believe that it is an action that puts us on par with cancer researchers and organ-donors?
Any thoughts?
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by cuchulain54
Re: Is there something about this music...
An excellent question. . . . not that I have any particularly brilliant answers.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by wormdiet
Re: Is there something about this music...
. . .BUt I can think of a parallel.
If you go to the Harmony Central electric guitar forum, you will see pretty much exactly these same debates played out in very similar ways. Sure, the genres of music, the messageboard names, and the assumed canons of "tradition" might vary in the specific, but the overall issues are comically similar. There are the "old guard" shredders who feel that guitaring reached maturity with Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin, and then peaked in the 80's hair metal phase (Which might be the equivalent of the MIchael COleman era). You get the young radicals who insist that "theory actually hurts muscial expression because it impooses to many rules...." very similar to the whole Dots debate. It goes on and on.
The manners and the music are better here though.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by wormdiet
Re: Is there something about this music...
It isn't the music. It's people. They are, on the whole mind you, as a species, nasty critters. Go look at any History of the World. It's almost certainly actually a history of warfare. We call people like Alexander, a nasty piece of work if there ever was one, "The Great."
They stoned George Fox, shot Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ghandi, taxed Thoreau to support a church he did not believe in or belong to and ridiculed Rodney King for wondering why we can't just be nice to each other.
We're just naked chimps. I don't think I'll ever get used to that, but I've come to accept it as a fact.
And, ummmm, thank you for the compliment . . . I think.
KFG
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by KFG
Re: Is there something about this music...
The music is essentially pattern making, a very conservative activity by nature. It soothes AND stimulates existential anxiety..... a real double bind. It likely attracts people who NEED it.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by JNW
Re: Is there something about this music...
A lot of what passes for discussion here is hair splitting for the sake of splitting hairs, at best, and hair splitting as a form of one-upmaniship, at worst. But that's not new--it's been going on here ever since there were more than 3 members, and elsewhere for eons before that.
Thanks Paul for delivering the semi-annual sermon. We've been long overdue.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by Will Harmon
Re: Is there something about this music...
A very well posed and interesting topic. I generally think the nastiness and antagonism stems from situations when two specific groups of players converge. Those that CAN play, and by that I mean to a high professional standard, and those who are out to enjoy playing no matter what their standard is. There are sessions for both and room for both in ITM and music in general. I personally don't mind those who are prepared to "have a go" and listen to advice when given. What irks me are those players who aim at mediocrity and exceed at it!!! Players who continually make the same rhythmic and melodic mistakes time after time. To quote the MD of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, " You cannot play at playing music."
Jeremy.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by Tassiebodhran
Re: Is there something about this music...
Amen.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by Tish
Re: Is there something about this music...
... to Will's comment, that is.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by Tish
Re: Is there something about this music...
>It would seem as though this music either generates feelings of inadequacy in an awful lot of people or it attracts an awful lot who feel inadequate from the start. In either case, these people seem to hunger for some kind of special recognition based on their involvement in this music, something beyond what the music itself has the power to give them.<
Very well stated. To me, it is a constant project to avoid this mindset which I find very wearing. I dropped out of a large San Francisco Bay Area fiddle club for several reasons actually, but mostly because it was so exhaustingly performance-oriented. It was also depressing as all get out to see the stage moms doing the same things to their teenage trad wonders as was done to me with classical music when I was the same age.
I really just want to have a drink and play a tune among like-minded sorts. Partly it's because I work hard at my job and don't need more stress. But partly it's because that sort of attitude worked out so badly with regard to classical music. I didn't pick up a violin for nearly 25 years because I was so soured on the whole scene. If there were less of his mindset at work, I'd have my fiddle out and about a whole lot more than I actually do.
I don't really have an answer. But actually I think posing the question and talking about it is constructive.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by cathrynb
Re: Is there something about this music...
I've been in and out of online forums since pretty close to the beginning of such things (you'd think I'd be better at it by now) and I think there are at least two or three doctoral dissertations worth of research in trying to understand how people relate online. It's sort of like driving in traffic. We're removed from direct, natural contact with the other people and we don't go through a phase of introduction and getting acquainted, so we make assumptions and leap to conclusions and communicate with horn honking and finger gestures.
It's a lot more civilized than that online, but enough of the distance is still there so that we misinterpret, over-react, offend, get offended, etc. And then there's the whole thing about how typing at a keyboard is different from talking - very different for some of us. It takes extra effort to be polite online. Or, more accurately, it takes more effort to avoid being impolite.
I'm probablyn ot making any sense, thereby illustrating my point.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by Bob himself
Re: Is there something about this music...
Let's have a nice group hug, and then play a few tunes.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by oldstrings
Re: Is there something about this music...
I have thought on this a lot lately.
I just like making the music with friends. I went to a friends house the other night and introduced his family to ITM. He played a guitar, his son, just learning rolls, played a 5 string banjo, and 11 year old daughter played a (yes) ukelele. We played for hours (I wrote a book of chords for about 150 tunes that is easy for anyone to play). They loved Havest Home and Egans Polka and the rakes of mallow. They loved the songs that seem to be hated here and wanted to play them over and over and over. It was a delight to see such enjoyment. So what it wasn't session material...there were friends, instruments, and a new found love for tunes they never heard before. THAT's what I like about the concept of sessions. When it goes beyond this, my heart glazes over.
There will be always great musicians. I will buy their CDs. I will go to their concerts. I will tune in to live365. But that is not what I go to sessions for. I go there for friends and fun. I am impressed there by friends helping friends, giving them a chance to play along by slowing down, playing tunes they will know.
I like playing at playing music, I guess.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by feardearg
Re: Is there something about this music...
This is the first message board I've participated with. The thing I found appealing is that you can talk about one of your favorite topics with people from all around the world -- amazing. You can also discuss something that you don't normally discuss because you're actively doing it rather than discussing it -- like sessions. But at the same time there's something awkward about it because your talking with people who have a wide range of experience -- or very little -- or none -- and they're often coming from completely different mindsets based on that. (You're also sometimes talking to people that you later realize are teenagers or something.) People also bring a wide variety of baggage into the discussion that often has little or nothing to do with ITM. Combine that with the egos that many musicians have and it can be a powder keg ready to explode at any moment.
I have no suggestions for solutions, but I do continually reexamine my own contributions to see how I’m expressing myself. This medium has a great advantage in that you can review what you’re about to say before you say it, but what’s missing is all of the other subtle communications that go hand in hand with a face-to-face conversation. People can easily misconstrue what other people are expressing in here because of that. The best thing is to reread what you’re about to respond to whenever possible... and your own comments as well before you post them.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by Phantom Button
Re: Is there something about this music...
I've been around several online forums, and they all share these sorts of interactions. As others have said, it's easy to misconstrue what someone says on an internet message board given that we are denied the benefits of body language and inflection. Also, if we didn't argue about the nitpicky details, what would we discuss? The virtue of having a discussion board is that you have to discuss things. If we all agreed, threads would be very short and boring. Boards like this lend themselves towards arguments.
Not to mention that trad musicians, like any other group that engages in a detailed and relatively isolated activity, become terribly opinionated. The debates about using dots, accompaniment, or session etiquette or anything else we have here are no more heated than what you;d see amongst horsepeople debating any training or horse management issue, like whether or not certain bits are useful training tools or cruel and unusual punishment (for example). Probably tamer here, as most trad music people seem less egotistic and narrow-minded than many horsepeople I have met.
As for the music itself, I play it because I love it and go to sessions because I love sharing it and enjoy the socialization part as much as the music. So long as egos stay more or less out of it.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Is there something about this music...
Dont know about horsepeople, but there is as much horseplay and leg-pulling goes on here as in the pub. It is all a larf.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by geoffwright
Re: Is there something about this music...
A few thoughts ...
There is something intrinsically weird about most modern music-making. As culture has fragmented, traditions have drifted fre from their geographical moorings and everyone has been alienated by the misapropriation of culture and tradition by the ravenous beast of capitalism.
In a world where rich white boys study tablature in order to mimic Robert Johnson, where virtuoso bluegrass pickers turn simple and beautiful mountain music into fiendishly complex and all-but impossible to play (or listen to) showmanship, and where Ireland seems full of Japanese ITM afficionados who play more proficiently than their hosts, is it any wonder that people behave oddly? All culture is fair game to anyone now, no-one ever overtly asks if White boys can play the blues, but the old cultural ties are still there under the surface. So, in the case of Irish music, people deny the learning process, people suggest that they may have Irish links they don't, people seek any form of authenticisation they can grab.
One result of this is that the standard of playing spirals ever upwards, aother is that the scene splits into experts, Wannabees, Session-fodder, no-hopers etc.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by Ottery
Re: Is there something about this music...
This is typical of the contradictions to be found here. And that's a compliment, I like contradictions. A big long involved thread complaining about the fact that we are always complaining.
And before this posting falls into agreement and withers away, I'd like to take umbrage:
"You cannot play at playing music."
What? Why the hell do think it's called "playing music"? If you find yourself not "at play" when you are "playing" your music, why do it. There should be no music in your primeval hunter gatherer part of your brain. It shouldn't exist in the same parts as self determination and survival. Music is the visceral, the whimsy, the flights of fancy. You need to "play" music. If all you do is "work" it, then you are sad, sad. And you have my pity. (as Buzz Light-year said to Woody, after Woody tried to explain to him that he wasn't a Space Ranger after all, just a child's play thing)
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by ...
Re: Is there something about this music...
And for Christ's sake, how can the fact "that the standard of playing spirals ever upwards" be a bad thing?
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by ...
Re: Is there something about this music...
So much of what goes wrong is to do with careless use of language.
Some people, when they mean "I don't peronally like the sound of (instrument X)" choose to say "(instrument X) sounds crap". Unfortunately, these people fail to realise that in this cyber session, where communication is of necessity slow and devoid of facial, bodily, or tonal expression, this careless use of language is only unhelpful and inflammatory.
In the thread above, tassiebodhran seems to tell us that the trouble comes about when people of different mindsets come together in mutual intolerance - but then goes on to berate those who are in a different mindset from his(her) own - apparently displaying the opinion that people who do it differently from his(her) way are "irksome".
Now it's possible that this is a neat wind up - if it is then well done, but it needs a smiley.
Or it's possible that I have completely misconstrued what is being said.
Or it's possible that all those of us who choose this music as a form of "play" have been told that we are "irksome" and, by inference, probably a bit stupid.
If it is the latter, then . . . . . . oh dear.
I think I'll stick to playing at playing music - I didn't take it up to be the best, I took it up to join in with friends. I have worked my way above crap, into mediocrity. Mediocre will do for me.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by showaddydadito
Re: Is there something about this music...
Michael - we cross posted. Read Ottery again - I don't see him saying that the upward spiral is a bad thing.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by showaddydadito
Re: Is there something about this music...
the fact "that the standard of playing spirals ever upwards" was meant as an example of a largely positive aspect of change. Though, as in the case of bluegrass and old-tymey music, better is not necesarilly better ....
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by Ottery
Re: Is there something about this music...
I agree Ottery. And there is no harm in reminding ourselves that there is no correlation between standard of music/musicianship and difficulty of music. As some blue grassers and, indeed, trad speed merchants seem to think
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by ...
Re: Is there something about this music...
''music is an unbelievably huge subject . . . ''
i scrabbled for a pen to jot this powerful quote down when it came out of the car radio 4 on my way to work earlier this year
now i didn't get her name, but it was spoken by a jewish cellist who survived the holocaust as a child because she could play a musical instrument
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by lisaniska
Re: Is there something about this music...
>
What? Why the hell do think it's called "playing music"? If you find yourself not "at play" when you are "playing" your music, why do it.<
thank you, michael gill.
Music is just invaluable to me as a stress reducer and an antidote to the terrible and ridiculous things I write on my steno machine all day every day. (You would not believe it, you really wouldn't, but that's another thread if not another forum.) That seems to me as fine a reason for playing as it is to make a recording, thrill an audience, or record a wildly successful CD.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by cathrynb
Re: Is there something about this music...
>Let's have a nice group hug, and then play a few tunes.<
That's the spirit.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by cathrynb
Re: Is there something about this music...
My youngest son (clarinet) used to say "If you don't enjoy it, there's no point".
Just thought I'd throw that in.
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by CoomkeenRon
Re: Is there something about this music...
You have a wise son.
KFG
# Posted on November 22nd 2005 by KFG
Re: Is there something about this music...
"Music is supposed to be fun."
-Mr. Holland
# Posted on November 23rd 2005 by Greg the Piano Tuner
Re: Is there something about this music...
My daughter, of clarinet, said:
"But Dad, just because I'm good at it, doesn't mean I enjoy it."
# Posted on November 23rd 2005 by showaddydadito
Re: Is there something about this music...
''Without music life would be a mistake.''
Friedrich W Nietzsche (born 1844)
# Posted on November 23rd 2005 by lisaniska
Re: Is there something about this music...
Ah, showaddy... a palpable hit!
# Posted on November 24th 2005 by Q