everyone is better than me

Russell Letson

I've been playing guitar with some attention for 65 years now, and while there have been times when I worked at it--as in, sitting down with a tab or a chart or listening to a recording and making an effort to get it right or mastering a techique--for most of my life making music has been playing music. In both senses of "playing"--producing it and having fun and taking pleasure at the that activity. For around 25 years, a kind of stage-fright condition made it a solo experience (wife, cats, and close friends might get to eavesdrop), but the year I turned 50, a friend kept inviting me to sit in at his informal restaurant sessions with his pals, and I gradually got over my shyness. A couple years later, we were doing regular play-for-food gigs, and I started going to summer workshops, and I've been playing and singing in public ever since.

And it's the rarest of gigs or even jams where I'm the best player in the room. (And I'm vain enough to think that I'm a pretty respectable general-purpose picker.) That's just the way the world wags. In my official playing-out life, I've always been the other guy, the accompanist, the support player. And I find that pretty much as satisfying as singing lead on a tune (though I pretty much never take an instrumental solo unless it's a fingerstyle arrangement). Maybe it's my adopted-Minnesotan attitude: adequacy is sufficient, and I'm pretty adequate.

My point of this: while practicing technical skills is undoubtedly important to a tradition such as jazz or flamenco, much of playing music is play, which is to say, it's activity undertaken because it is rewarding in itself. For me, a crucial recognition at age 50 was that as much as I enjoyed the experience of mastering a particular piece or bit of technique, there was far more joy in the social-artistic experience of making music with others, with or without an audience or payment. (Though an audience certainly adds a bit of oomph to the experience, and even a sandwich is a nice reward.)

Buco

You do yourself the best. As simple as that. Goes for us here, goes for the best of the best.

One morning, at Django in June during morning warmup I was facilitating, during one of the songs, I forgot which, one of the guys either skipped the solo or was very hesitant during his turn. I asked him about it and he commented something like "I have a hard time finding what to play". I asked the group to repeat the chorus of rhythm and asked the guy to play whatever comes easiest to him, regardless of how simple and blah it might seem to him (it took me a very long time to start doing that myself). This time his playing had a groove, a storyline if you will and there wasn't a struggle in his playing. And after we ended the guy was like "huh...", as in I actually played that, lol. People were commenting how it sounded good and everyone was sincere, at least they sounded sincere.

That kinda describes "it's in the ear (eyes) of the beholder" saying well as well as you do yourself the best.

Of course you can't just rinse and repeat forever. You need to constantly push yourself and try what you can't or think you can't do (keep it fun though). But this is in the practice room. Until the new becomes familiar. And of course you should take risks while playing in public. But it should always or the majority of the time be you. And then in order to get better all you need is to tell yourself "fix what doesn't work".

paulmcevoy75

I definitely used to do the "x is so good, why should I even try thing", but now I recognize it as being a really kinda lame argument. To me making music is a basic human ability. Like walking or cooking food or expressing love.

You'd never go "Sam Farthing walks so much better than I do, why should I even try walking". You walk because you need to get to places you need to go. Likewise, you play music because it's an essential part of being a human being. I feel fairly confident that 800 years ago we were all musicians. 2000 years ago even more so. It's part of surviving.

I think the issue is when you're like "I want people to like me as much as they like Sam Farthing". That's the thought that fucks everything up. It points to you taking your attention away from the thing you should be focused on (the music you're making with your hands) and putting it on something you have zero control over (how much people respond to your music).

I totally fall into this sometimes but it's a huge trap. I've taken most of a year off of playing with people and playing out, which felt in a way pretty cowardly but I've made a lot of progress in that time in how much I enjoy what I'm doing.

But ultimately I think the trap is in trying to make music for other people to enjoy...you need to enjoy the process of doing it yourself.

But that's a joke people make "X is so good, why should I even try". I think if you find yourself making that joke, you should stop. It's a joke but I think for many of us, it is about a true feeling that we have, and instead of giving voice to it, we should correct our mind to the "X is so good, it inspires me to try to get some of that goodness".

For me now, when I hear someone really good, I don't think that I can't achieve what they achieved, I wonder if I want to sacrifice as much time, money and energy as they did to achieve something similar. I don't think there's many musical problems that 8 hours a day of focused practicing for 6 years won't solve, but I can't give that. I might be able to do 14 hours a week though.

paulmcevoy75

Making guitars has been interesting. I'm really interested in what I'm doing. There's things other people do better than me (in particular, fancy wood decoration) and I'd love to get better at that. But ultimately I'm not comparing my guitars to other people's guitars (ideally anyway). I'm trying to make the best guitar I can possibly imagine. Other people's ideas and guitars are absolutely inspiration but I'm not trying to be or please someone else, I'm trying to make the coolest shit I can make.

I hope that I can do that musically too...please myself and make stuff that I enjoy.

littlemark

Some of the best players are often displeased with their own performances, even if the audience loved it. I think the reason is, they know what they WANTED to play, and didn't, or couldn't. But the audience doesn't know what was in their mind. Only what they heard.

A similar thing might be happening with you. Buco, liked what you posted, but maybe it's not what you wanted.

billyshakes

So much good content on this thread. From the moment it was posted, I was going to reply to @Jangle_Jamie that everyone can't be better than you because I am certainly not as talented as the stuff you've posted! Then I read all the supportive comments and the notes about self-deprecating musicians, etc. Looks like I was right there with you all.

Perhaps @Phil comes closest to how I feel when he said "I don't [play] because I'm happy, I'm happy because I [play]!" I've said that more times in my life than I can count. And I know that no matter how busy my life is, or how tired I'm feeling, or how little I want to leave my house to go to a gig, when I'm up there making music with my friends, I'm completely happy. I count myself incredibly lucky to play with the great musicians that I do.

Jangle_Jamie

Yes. I too am lucky - lucky I play guitar or any music for that matter. A classical guitar teacher moved to my village when I was 12 years old, and he started a little group. Thank goodness I went (thanks Mum for pushing me at times) and thank you to Pete Constable for teaching me guitar all those years ago. He died years ago, but I owe him everything as guitar playing is so important. Ok, I was a bit of a slow learner, and there were many years where I just played a little and did other things. I wonder why I never imagined I could play gypsy jazz, after seeing The Django Legacy on British tv all those years ago. I had no idea about anything like that. Sure I wanted to play like them, but it never crossed my mind that I could at least try. It took a trip to Samois in 2004 and then the purchase of a Gitane D500, to get me started. Even then I never really got stuck in! Oh well. I'm reminiscing. Thanks for all the supporting words, anecdotes and nuggets. The longest I've been without guitar is probably about three weeks. It took a while for me to get my fingers working again! I agree though, that stepping back for a few days or perhaps even a week is a good thing every now and then.

Anyway, I played in the pub this evening with a mate, and I think we sounded good, and most importantly, we were smiles and joking, and trying all sorts of fun stuff out, and that surely gets the audience smiling too.

ethanwm

There are so many great comments and philosophies shared in this thread. Everyone has their own relationship with this stuff, and reasons why they came. A pleasure to read, thanks Jangle_Jamie for kicking it off.

I've always liked the language metaphor. When I got into this, I figured I’d be like someone learning a new language and that any success by any metric would be greatly aided by an ability to fail unbothered.

And thanks to the backing tracks of Martin Gioani, Denis, Clément R. (and many more), we can get some of these failure reps alone.

But what the public failures teach us that the stakes are, in fact, as low as we’d like them to be. Because we need to butcher “bon-joor” a bunch before we can say it right.

As someone who started this style “late” — don’t we all, right? There are people who think 16 is late — failing safely is something that requires getting back into a mindset we haven't used in a while. And for me, at least, having small goals or waypoints has been a convenient ways to lessen the stakes and to also redefine success — making sure I eat the proverbial elephant one bite at a time.

Like speaking another language, my goal was to be able participate in a conversation. Starting by playing a solid pompe. There is only one Sam Farthing (a true king). But I’ll be damned if I didn’t have a terrific time pomping as Sam did his thing, and we made something together that I was stoked on, despite the ghastly choruses I took.

The next goal after a decent pompe is to participate more. Get through the chorus inoffensively. The next, to make it melodic and to incorporate more Django language (chords! tremolo! whatever!). A solid long-term goal is simply to be good enough to just hang. To know the rules and play a little pickup basketball. To have a conversation in French about something basic.

Before it was a social media thing this music was a social thing as much as anything else. And, of course, it still is. Jazz Manouche can be commodity music, a vibe that fills the air, evoked by our learned Django guitar language. It's not usually poetic, and it doesn’t have to be! Maybe a great goal is to be like the endless SRV/Mayer clones and be able to play commodity Django. You can even get paid for it sometimes. Unbelievably, I have.

Then maybe the next step is to up the speed. Play "outside." Transcribe some difficult things and try own them enough to use them.

Then, maybe, you do end up entering the realm of poetic playing as the commodity licks give way to something truly creative.

Sorry for dropping 450 words, folks, but if this isn't a safe space, I don't know what is!

arimail

Hi, Jamie! I've got a LOT of thoughts around your post, but so many have already said so much – so I'll keep mine "short":

I've long since learned that the worst you can try to do is impress other musicians. It's an excercise in futility, really. Try to impress yourself instead.

I find that trying to be the best version of myself brings me joy and self acceptance. With this, I mean that if I tell myself to do something (like practicing a certain guitar technique), and I do it – great! If I tell myself to do it, and I don't – I feel bad, because later on, I KNOW that I could have done better.

I studied music, and that means constantly being surrounded by all sorts of skills, levels and personalities – competing with them all is pointless. But, enjoying playing with, and learning from them, wasn't.

My family are all musicians (my mom is a singer and composer, fairly famous in Norway), and so I've had the great fortune of being able to air all of my musical worries and other thoughts around music at home, always. But you can find that in fellow musicians, and I commend you for airing these thoughts. I believe this will make you grow as a musician.

I hope you'll feel better soon!!

-Ari

Buco

@voutoreenie can I give us more detail about the lessons with Antoine and 30 minutes connection? Frequent breaks taking shows up over and over as a very important aspect of practice. Koran Agan said you should take a short break every 20 minutes or so. Newsletters I receive from Noa Kageyama mention it too.

I don't do a good job at it. I just don't want to peel myself off from the instrument when I sit down with it.