Azalin wrote:anniemcu wrote:You know, by *your* standards', most people are bad players. So, should they not participate at sessions? Is it only the perfect who are allowed to play in public? Thank goodness no. If it is a tin whistler's competition, certainly the best of the best should come out and the rest should step back and listen and watch.
I personnaly believe that you should be playing in a session where most players are about your level. I would personally never join a session where Mary Bergin is sitting, because I would destroy the wonderful, advanced, thoughtful, tasty phrasing she has, and other players of her skills and experience has. I am smart enough to understand this, and to understand that sometimes one should listen and learn. I also believe that if you can't bring something to a session, you'd better not play. That's harsh, but that's the way I
feel it.
I will also be very pissed of is some beginner or average player starts playing in a session where I'm playing, where the subtle stuff I'm trying to put in the music is drowned under some else's unskilled playing. Two weeks ago there was a couple of times I was playing with awesome musicians, and I just went in the
zone. I would completely forget about who I was, where I was, I could close my eyes and feel the music through me, feel the music around me, feel the love for the music and the joy, I would play and do incredible stuff I never did before, I'd feel so close to the other musicians in the room. At one point, some newbie sat down and started playing, and the feeling I had just blew up, and we all looked at each other in puzzlement. Snobbish? Maybe. In love with well played ITM music? More likely.
You can call me snobbish for being that way, but if you had seen but I have seen, sessions with top players being destroyed by beginners, and people who were listening just being pissed off and turning off their microphone and leaving the session, you'd unserstand.
Obviously, we value different things.
I *would* join that session, if I weren't intruding (I'd ask). and I'd do my best at the time, coming away exhilerated at best, embarressed at worst, but richer either way.
I welcome newbies, our session welcomes them. We don't require 'top billing' status for anyone - even the best of us. Sometimes it's incredible, sometimes it's mediocre. .. it's almost always fun and we learn *with* eachother.
Now, if I, or any other member of the group was looking to focus entirely on becoming the best in the genre, we'd either be somewhere else, or working hard to learn enough to get somewhere else... that's a different focus all together.
I can tell you that I've met a good number of top players in several catagories through the years, and very few of them are pompus or arrogant, (those that were, usually matured out of it asthey grew up). They are as likely to take a few minutes with a newbie as not, and they know that they didn't get there by *only* playing with people who were lots better than they were. They did when they got the chance, you bet, but they don't all forget where they come from. I've been told by quite a few people, better by far than I, that 'hey, I was where you are once'... and that is more encouraging than 'don't bother kid, you'll never be good enough', or 'go away, you're not good enough for us'.
And yes, I have had those etherial moments when everything clicks and heaven itself drifts down... we can't hold it for long, and, IMHO, we don't have the right to tell others they can't have any of it.
This is like arguing religion... 'my way is the only right way'... thank goodness that has never floated well, or we wouldn't have anything more than clones of previous players, and we'd all still be playing rocks and sticks...
