It isn’t a competition

Music making.  It isn’t a competition, though you can make it one.  Sure, you can try to top the skills of another musician but most serious musicians are more interested in being better players for the reward of being able to play what you want, not to outdo someone else.  In fact, I generally see more respect in musicians for other musicians than in other groups of people.  We tend to be more healthy in attitude when we see someone better than us.  Maybe it is because we know how much effort it takes to achieve proficiency in an instrument.  We admire someone’s tone because it, to us, reflects some of who they are.  Watching someone tear it up on an instrument makes us want to try harder.

Making music isn’t a race or a game where an end is in sight.  No, music making is a journey without end and yet, with amazing sights and sounds to take in along the way.  Like life, there is always more to learn with no end to what can be achieved in music.  The best thing a parent can do is to allow their children the chance to become musicians.  While having goals like getting a spot in the school band or even entering a contest are fine, they should never interfere with the simple goal of making music for the sake of making music.  Do what you love because you love it and everything else will fall into place from there.

One of the coolest things about music is that it can’t be measured.  Is Steve Vai a faster and technically more proficient guitarist than Eric Clapton?  I think if we are analytical about it we’d have to say ‘yes’.  But, who has sold more records, touched more lives and had the longer career?  Clapton.  However, neither really matters, probably even less so to Steve Vai and Eric Clapton, because both of them don’t do it for those reasons and I suspect both of them totally respect the other’s ability.  In music you can be Keith Richards or Yngwie Malmsteen, Frank Zappa or Lawrence Welk, Brittney Spears or Elizabeth Frasier and in the end, it’s all good.

Bob Campbell at CMusicshop.com