Regardless of the genre, I get very excited watching musicians of very genuine quality perform. I have been fortunate enough to see some that have had a huge impression on me. I have seen Pat Metheny, Chris Thile, Herbie Hancock amongst others and there’s something about seeing musicians of this level perform that always interests me.
Many of the performances mentioned above were ones that I attended with fellow musicians and, thinking back on those experiences now, what’s interesting to me is how we all seemed to go through a similar process during and after those shows. First of all we would all be inspired by what we saw. Next we would talk about how much we aspired to be of the standard that we had witnessed. Then finally would come the most significant stage of this process. We would, often without knowing it, decide on a mindset with which we would proceed our musical studies. I saw many people who looked at these great musicians and thought “look what hard work can achieve. It’s great to see that reaching this standard is possible. I’ll go practice”. All too often, however, I would find myself being on the other side of this fence. I would be the person saying “look at what (insert great musician) has achieved. They have done so because they are a genius. I’m not. I could never get there”.
