datamusicata

Good Enough. So I’m lying in bed in Tampa, Florida reading a Carl Hiassen book and I can faintly hear this saxophone playing. It sounds really good and it goes on for over an hour. Then my friend Gloria knocks on the door and I tell her to come in, whereupon she asks me if I can hear that sax player. Turns out he is her neighbor and a very well regarded player in the Tampa area, gets all the first calls and plays with some great bands in the area. And he’s still practicing while we’re talking. He does it for another hour and then takes a break.

This is the inspiration for me to get up and play my guitar for an hour or two before I finally eat something. And it gets me to thinking about an acquaintance of mine who was talking to me about my playing. He was giving me some gracious complements about how I do guitar orchestrations instead of just strumming the songs. I told him that I appreciated that and that I always thought that is what everyone should do when they perform. He said that he was mainly a song writer and that he played guitar good enough to get his songs across.

Good Enough.

Wow, it stopped me in my tracks then and it came bouncing back as I listened to the dedication of the sax player next door. If you are going to play at all, why not be the best you can possibly be at it? Why just settle for being adequate, ...or less?

How many times have you been to an open mic, or even a concert and heard people who are supposed to be good giving just enough time to their instrument to get by? What does that say about the artist? What does it say about the character of the artist? Think about yourself. What does your playing say about you?

Yes, there are gifted people who can simply excel with seemingly little effort, but I suggest to you that you do not actually know how much time and energy and commitment that they put into their craft. And if you give enough time and effort to your craft it transmogrifies. It turns into art. Why not go for it.?

You can say that you will never be Eric Clapton or Van Cliburn or whomever, but what does that have to do with who you could be? You compete with yourself. Where were you last year as an artist, a musician, a composer, or what ever your chosen field of endeavor is? Where are you now? You should be better this year than last year.

I am better than I was last year. I know, I’ve heard the recordings of my live shows and I am improving. And the most amazing thing about improving is that you get fired up to continue improving and the more you work the more you improve. It’s a fantastic spiral and it is ultimately more rewarding than anything else you are doing, I promise.

There is also the fact that the spiral goes upward for only so long and then you hit a plateau and it seems like you are not improving because the growth is not obvious or overt, but I promise you that it is continually going on and if you hang in there, you will have another one of these spurts, these spirals upward.

Good enough? What a sad thing to say. I am good enough to get across what I do.

I don’t want to play with those folks. I don’t want to share the stage with those folks; or collaborate with them. And most of all, I don’t want to have to hear them up on stage just being “good enough”. There is NO good enough. Repeat after me...there is no good enough. Remember that and please keep practicing.

Fight ear pollution.