Your best musical advice in one post!

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Marion
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 01:38 AM

Whatever your instrument or skill level, know how to play Happy Birthday, and keep it memorized.

Marion

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: WyoWoman
Date: 29 Dec 01 - 02:28 PM

Or not. But at least you'll have the satisfaction of having done what you do with compete integrity -- also an important tip.

ww

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: GUEST,Bert
Date: 29 Dec 01 - 02:21 PM

Remember, When you get up on that stage that YOU ARE THE GREATEST. That's right, it doesn't matter how good the others are. You are singing YOUR song the way that only YOU CAN. There's no one can do it quite as well as you can so give it all you've got, they're gonna LOVE YOU.

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Cappuccino
Date: 29 Dec 01 - 02:12 PM

Yes, that's good, Wyo. Be welcoming of others... yes, I like that.

- Ian B

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: WyoWoman
Date: 29 Dec 01 - 02:08 PM

Learn songs you love, regardless of where they come from or whether they fit in the "right" genre. Then make them your own. Don't try to categorize yourself, don't categorize others, and don't judge people who like different kinds of music than you do. It takes all kinds to make a musical world. But don't go to a bluegrass jam and try to impose your jazz licks on the rest of the room. Find (or create) a jam that's a good fit for you and don't be self-righteous about your music or technique or instrument. Be welcoming of others, even if you can outplay or outsing them, hands down.

WW

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: mzkitty
Date: 15 Dec 01 - 03:26 AM

To me, the most important tool I possess as a musician is an open heart. Keeping it open, (a vunerability of sorts), allows me to be in touch with the soul and emotion of the music...

Understanding that underneath all the outer "packaging" that seems to seperate people, our basic feelings and emotions are the same.

So many people don't have the ability...or luxury...of expressing and releasing those emotions as we musicians do. I suppose it's not "safe" in a lot of the busniss world to show true feelings. So, real, honest, heartfelt emotion and response begins to be buried under layers of "conditioned" reponse...("How are you?"..."Fine...and you?" ...."Fine.....").

A heartfelt song can magically link others to a feeling again...allowing themselves to be safely led through emotions of a memory and/or experience they'd forgotten about. A very private thing, indeed, but I'm sure you players have seen it...felt it. A noisy person in the audience might suddenly quiet down, close his/her eyes, and you can FEEL them with you. Sometimes it's a smile....whatever the signal, WE know it.

Talent, practice and all the tricks of the trade have their place..we certinally need them all. But, there is nothing more important to me to have onstage than an open heart. People can feel the difference...and they'll return again and again. They may never even know WHY they come back...but that doesn't matter. (Just in case you don't get what I'm saying, picture Andy Williams singing "Like A Rolling Stone"...are you grinning?? Get it???)

One more thought concerning the open heart "tool" ...it helps in keeping our own emotions and feelings healthy and sometimes even balanced! Which gives us a head start right from the beginning of even the most impossible of shows.

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From:
Date: 14 Dec 01 - 08:10 PM

My best piece of advice is for singing. I grew up in the sixties, and I wanted to be Roger Maguinn. I'd sing in that high register and sound awful. my dad was listening to me one day and said " Why don't you sing in your own voice?" I,of course, looked at him with my best "hopeless square" stare and went on warbleing. It took me years to understand what he meant. My voice is much closer to Mr. Cash's than Roger's. I started singing from deep in my chest in my normal range and the diffence is incredible. Be yourself, sound like yourself. Mike

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: pattyClink
Date: 14 Dec 01 - 03:54 PM

Good post Frank. I just learned the other day about Irving Berlin's lack of skill in music theory/playing. He literally had a piano made that would allow him to play in the one key he could grasp and with a crank transpose the sound up or down to the appropriate key to be heard. This is a guy who produced a lot of truly memorable songs, made a colossal fortune, and wound up beloved by a couple generations. Even if you don't like his stuff, just imagine what would have happened if he had instead been easily intimidated.

I have learned that all along I should have learned fewer songs but sang them more. Don't be intimidated by what other people can do, just polish your little gems and share them, few as they might be.

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: GUEST,Chip A.
Date: 14 Dec 01 - 03:51 PM

I don't have enough sense to add anything but I'm getting a lot out of this, so...........refresh!

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Crane Driver
Date: 13 Dec 01 - 04:01 PM

1) The only way to be a good musician is to be a bad musician- if you're not playing, you're not getting better.

2) After you've played badly enough, you'll start to play tolerably. After you've played tolerably enough, you'll start to play well. And so on.

3) If you can't play well yet, you haven't played badly long enough. Play badly some more.

4) Talent isn't given, its bought. You buy it with bits of your life, that you'd otherwise have frittered away on something worthless, like earning a living(!)

5) You've got to want it enough to give something else up for it.

6) You've got to believe in yourself as a musician. If you haven't time to practice today, at least pick the instrument up and hold it for a moment. You're training your mind to see you as a musician.

7) Listen to the sort of music you want to play. Immerse yourself in it, and it'll come out in your own music.

8) It doesn't matter whether you want to play for your own pleasure or for an audience - enjoy what you're doing.

9) Don't try to make a list of 10 items when you can only think of 8.

Andrew

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: GUEST,Singout
Date: 12 Dec 01 - 07:50 PM

Wow! What great advice. I am a new (54!), beginner. So much in the above I can relate to. The right hand is actually harder to learn (strumming) than the cords! And a song can get boring, I notice, if I don't try to vary the strumming some.

Funny, having no talent, but a love of music, I was thinking that when the song sounded odd, that the cords must be written wrong. Hmm, hard to believe I could be off key! The F gives me a lot of trouble. In some songs, I can match it, but in others, I can't hit it at all. Now I need to take voice lessons! Actually, today I happened on some songs that are perfect for my voice--so much easier to sing. I'm not quite up to changing the cords yet. Also today I found a one-chord song (D). Yep. "Green Green Rocky Road." It's a good one to practice strumming with. If I ever have an "act" I will start it with my one-chord song, then go to "Drunken Sailor" (2 chords, D & Em). Show the audience that anyone can do this!!!

Thanks for "listening" and for the great advice! Penny

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Justa Picker
Date: 12 Dec 01 - 07:12 PM

Feel, is inherently more important than technical prowess. (I cite B.B. King as one example.)

If you are blessed with both, consider yourself one of the "chosen few".

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 12 Dec 01 - 06:53 PM

1) Take chances. When you have a song down to perfection, try changing inflections, progressions, etc. Don't be afraid to screw up! Its better to make mistakes while pushing the envelope than it is to yawn while playing it safe.

2) Record your performances. It will give you an element of objectivity that will help you improve tremendously.

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 12 Dec 01 - 05:01 PM

When I was a little person, my Mother always used to say,"Don't pick it, it will never get better". Well with the guitar just keep picking, and it will get better, I promise.
Failte.....Jock

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: GUEST,Frank
Date: 12 Dec 01 - 02:12 PM

One of the most important things I've learned as a musician is that you need to learn to trust yourself above anybody else in the world. Your instincts will be better than any advice you can get although it pays to listen and take some in but not to the point where it interferes with your own inner voice.

With every rule about music, there is someone out there to break it. That's because they followed their own instinct about what to do first. If Django had listened to other guitarists instead of developing his own talent regardless and because of his handicap, it would have been a great loss to jazz guitar.

I don't believe that there are any real musical "whores" out there. Everyone in music has a different reason for doing it and if they follow their own "inner voice" they find a way regardless of what they play. One person's "whore" might be another's inspiration.

Dizzy Gillespie played the trumpet all wrong. He puffed out his cheeks (a no no in trumpet pedagogy). Louis Armstrong sang technically all wrong. (Didn't know music theory either) He rasped his way to glory. Woody Guthrie sang simply, the way he wanted to and wrote songs that would never have found their way into the conventional songwriting mode. Dylan couldn't sing, play very well, wrote the way he felt and is magnetic as a performer onstage and wound up with an honorary music degree from Harvard. Does this tell you something? Irving Berlin wrote many of his great songs without knowing how to read or write music. He could only bang on the black keys of the piano and had to call in trained musicians to help him find the right chords to his songs. (He heard them though). Some say Kenny G can't really play very well. Oh yeah? Who cares? Charlie Parker wasn't a great reader either. He didn't know how to talk about music theory, he just invented it by listening to his "inner voice". Bach broke every rule he ever created. Pete Seeger played the banjo pretty much by ear although he had some musical training but didn't study with anyone. He also sang wrong by holding his head up so you could see his adam's apple. Some singers have terrible diction (not Pete) but they are successful anyway. You might say, "well they're all geniuses. They can do it their way". Well so can you.

There are some who never played a musical instrument, sang or did much formally with music but they had musical talent and listened to themselves and made more money in the music field than many trained musicians. They became publishers, songwriters, producers and therapists.

Get a teacher if you think you need one but the best teacher is you. Listen to what you need and go for it. The rest follows. I bet my life on it.

Frank

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: harpgirl
Date: 12 Dec 01 - 01:36 PM

...KC, that tip about following the bass line to know when to come in is VERY USEFUL!!! One never knows where a lead guitarist's fancy licks will take one, so to speak!! Thanks! hrpgrrl

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: GUEST,Coyote Breath
Date: 12 Dec 01 - 01:08 PM

This was something I got from someone else, not advice but a comment. I was figeting about waiting to go on at an "open mike" at the Poison Apple in Chicago back in 1966. There was this young guy up on stage singing something boring or perhaps being boring when he sang I don't really remember. I was standing next to Mississippi John Hurt (I was so engrossed in myself and my annoyance that I hadn't noticed him) He could see that I was annoyed and agitated and that I wanted that guy up there to get on with it and get off the stage so I could do my thing. He smiled this wonderful smile, cherubic smile, and said "He sure is having fun". Things changed for me at that comment. I suddenly realised that if it wasn't fun it wasn't worth it and if it WAS fun, then nothing else mattered. I was humbled and enlightened at the same time. So my advice (given by others in other responses to this thread but worth repeating)

Have FUN!

CB

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: GUEST,Les B.
Date: 12 Dec 01 - 12:49 PM

Wyo Woman makes an excellent point about knowing the KEYS of the songs you're going to do.

I would add that often the key in which you learn a new song in the secluded privacy of your home is not the key that will work best when you sing out in public, especially if you're not using a mic and really having to project to be heard.

I generally find I need to go a step or so higher - like from C to D, or G up to A, to keep from "bottoming out" when singing the lower notes. I think your voice box tightens up with the slightest bit of nervous tension.

Sometimes it's taken me two or three jam sessions to find a workable key that will make a song really ring out.

This of course also means you have to know the song in alternate keys, or capo up if you're accompanying yourself on a capo-able instrument -- strangely it's frowned upon to do so with mandolins and fiddles !

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 12 Dec 01 - 12:38 PM

Too many good things to compete with, but I'll throw one off-the-wall suggestion.

Be very conscious of your hearing!

Sound levels needed to project to an audience are often high enough - at the stage - to be harmful to performers. Sound levels frequently used - at least around my area, are loud enough to injure the audience.

Loss of hearing is common among concert orchestra performers, and I know a number of acoustic guitarists who show significant loss just from years of playing. You can't avoid it all - it comes with age, but you can protect yourself from the worst exposures.

Earplugs can be an option when you can't avoid exposure, and they can be quite inconspicuous; althought the best are somewhat expensive. Most modern concert orchestra performers use them. (And, I'm told, most of the rockers.)

John

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 12 Dec 01 - 12:14 PM

Amen Jerry! Many folks were simply scared off right from the get-go, with relatives and friends telling them they couldn't sing, (or couldn't play sports, or looked funny, or were too dumb for...)

Sometimes I work with students who are terminally shy or simply haven't a clue what music's all about.....except that something tells them they wanna do it. I'll bust my ass for that person, 'cause I already know something that they may not yet be aware of: and that's that with a seemingly tiny accomplishment (like learning Skip to my Lou with two chords) comes a quantum leap of confidence. Having your own music for the private times, and some confidence for the public ones, is a pretty good combination.

Ahhh, forget the 'one post" thing, lets drive this sucker into the ground!

Rick

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Cappuccino
Date: 12 Dec 01 - 08:45 AM

The important point that Spaw made about piano was * seeing * things. You understand why chords are the way they are when you see them on a piano keyboard... you might take years of looking at a guitar fretboard to see any relationship between the C and D shapes!

- ian B

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 12 Dec 01 - 07:42 AM

Marty D: Rick did say, "Ahh, maybe two or three." I'd just like to say a word for people who love to play, and will never be any good. These posts seem to be very performance oriented, and that's fine. I had a friend of mine in college who really wanted to play guitar and sing, but had no ear and a terrible voice. He could clear a neighborhood of dogs with one line of a song. But, he really wanted to learn to play guitar. He asked me if it was stupid of him to want to play for his own enjoyment. We all should be playing for our OWN enjoyment, First. I not only encouraged him to buy a guitar, I gave him lessons so that he could play it. He made Alfalfa sound like Pavarotti, but he had such fun playing and singing! And, he was a good man... he never shared his "talent" with others. And never got any better.

This post is for all who will never be good enough to stand in front of an audience. Jerry

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: WyoWoman
Date: 12 Dec 01 - 12:09 AM

Hear and see and feel the perfect song in your head, then keep at it until there's no wobble between what you hear in your mind and what you sing out into the listening.

Come down on top of the tone instead of craning to reach up to it. This way you won't sound thin and flat and you'll have a better chance of actually nailing the pitch.

Recognize when you're in the wrong key and be willing to stop the song and get it into a key you can actually sing.

Listen to the bass. You can figure out your entrances easier listening to the bass than to the lead guitar.

KNOW YOUR KEYS ... If you're going to sing with musicians and you don't play an instrument, know at least the keys in which you sing your favorite songs.

Have charts. If you want someone else to play for or with you, do them the honor of having words and chords written out so they aren't made responsible all the time for figuring out what's going on in the song. some of this is ok, but a little goes a long way. ...

ww (who has made every stupid mistake you can possibly make and speaks from experience)

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Amos
Date: 11 Dec 01 - 07:15 PM

1. A long long time ago a wise friend of my parents advised me to be "in" the song I was singing -- meaning to actually immerse yourself in the time and place the song portrayed. This lends remarkable conviction and passion to songs, especially those that are built on strong images of past times.

2. Singing -- when you are stretching a syllable, stretch the open vowels, not the consonants -- this makes the sound carry and have anopen tone to it. Dylan's nasal tones (ths is mah sonnnnnnnggggg) are a marked contrast to this guideline,, and I've never heard anyone compliment his singing voice except for its built-in passion (see rule 1 above).

3. Learn triads (tonic, subdominant, dominant) all over the map when you are learning to play a guitar. Then play with ways to transition from one key (e.g., D-G-A) to the other (G-C-D, for example). Then add sevenths and minors. Bear in mind you can play the vast majority of American folk songs, blues, cowboy, calypso etc with just three or four chords so throw yourself into it and have fin.

4. Do what Rick says above for your right hand.

5. Find the perfect person in the back row and sing out to 'em. Look them right in the eye. It will help win the whole audience.

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: GUEST,The Duck of the Irish
Date: 11 Dec 01 - 02:03 PM

When you get a chance to play in front of an audience, it's important to play a song you know very, very well. Don't try to play the song you are working on, or the song you want to play the most(you will blow it). You may be bored with it, but you will probably get thrugh without messing up (which will set you back, and embarrass you). So play it safe, and start with what you know best!

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: marty D
Date: 11 Dec 01 - 12:38 PM

Can I do a second one? Two years ago Rick browbeat me into learning about the musicians who originally made the songs that I wanted to play. Good advice. Now I have something to SAY before I sing a Carter Family or Doc Watson song. Impresses my friends no end.

marty

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Les B
Date: 11 Dec 01 - 01:42 AM

A couple of things come to mind: When you're nervous about doing a song or tune, pause for just a moment before you launch into it and really mentally focus on "locking on" to the proper tempo. I find most of my screw-ups have come from rushing into a piece, and, rushing the beat. Of course, if you start too slow, you can always speed up during the performance :) !

I also think that while you can practice at home until you think a piece is perfect, it's never going to sound the same twice in public. All you can do is get comfortable with it -- and then listen for, and enjoy, the odd little twists and turns the Gods of Sound have decided to lay out for you that day.

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Bert
Date: 11 Dec 01 - 12:50 AM

Claire, you're right, with modern mikes you can do that and get away with it 'cos most of them nowadays come with overdesigned blast shields. Try it both ways with the mic you are using and see which you like best. But don't just get right up close and shout and think that you're doing great.

An example of 9/8 time! reminds me of a Callers Club (UK) meeting I went to once and someone asked for examples of different times. Tommy Cavanagh stood up there with his accordian and using Irish Washerwoman as an example, played it first in 2/4, then 3/4, 4/4 and 6/8 times. Bloody amazing!

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 11 Dec 01 - 12:30 AM

Ask for advice! Don't worry if you think it's a stupid question. Good musicians are almost always generous with their knowledge

Most recent "stupid" question I asked? (to a fiddler) "Would you give me an example of 9/8 time, and how do you like your accompanist to phrase it"?

Rick

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 06:39 PM

Claire

I think the best way to attack the mike can depend upon the type of mike and on how you sing. That is great advice about learning how to use it.

Rob

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From:
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 06:24 PM

So many great things have been said on this thread. Here's a couple more non-genre specific ideas for you to chew on...

1)If you are going to perform, practice is not enough, you need to play out. You need to do it again and again and again until you have had a ton of experience, made a ton of mistakes, learned to rely on your band or support them, learned to enjoy recovering from the goof as much as pulling off the perfect song.

2) Yes, learn to use your mike, (singing into it, not across it (sorry Bert). Your sound depends on the full use of the microphone. Buy a good one while your at it.

3) Work on the chat: Introducing your song or set of tunes is the thing that brings the audience with you. Set the stage for the song with as few words as possible, but the tone of what you say brings the audience into the material before you even start. A little bit of me falls in love with my audience each time I perform.

4) Performing well means revealing yourself and that makes you vulnerable. Never ask for feedback right after a show. Always, enjoy the moments you reached someone or had a special moment just in your own self.

Of course, there are so many more tiny things, and they change all the time. Isn't that the joy of playing music and performing?

Claire

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: LR Mole
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 01:28 PM

Trust the muse: she's bigger than you are. That's why they call it "music".On the other hand, you have to be ready.

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Kim C
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 01:09 PM

So that means we're all half-whores, then? ;-)

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Midchuck
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 12:44 PM

One good tip from Dick McCormack:

A performer who performs only for the audience is a whore. A performer who performs only for himself - for some abstract ideal of what he wants to create - is a crashing bore unless he's a genius. And almost none of us are geniuses.

You have to split the difference to give a good performance.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 12:42 PM

If you make a mistake, ignore it, keep going. The works especially well when combined with Harpgirl's looking and acting happy.

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Francy
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 11:54 AM

Sing For The Song.........Frank of Toledo

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Fortunato
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 10:55 AM

Guest, Big Daddy. Great quote!

Reminds me of the advice we used to give musicians new to the club scene in DC:

1"Never, ever eat the fish sandwich at Eddie Leonard's Sandwich Shoppe."

2"Yes Root Boy Slim did do that, but he's Root Boy and you're not."

3"If you're going to be a musician and work the clubs in this town, don't bother with the marriage and the divorce, just find a woman you don't like and buy her a house, it'll be cheaper."

Regards, Fortunato.

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: A Wandering Minstrel
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 10:19 AM

1) Practise whenever you need to for as long as you want to

2) Stand back from the microphone

3) Volume, vibrato and "grace notes" are a poor substitute for hitting the note

4) never lean your freshly tuned guitar against the bar/wall/fireplace

5) Sing and play from the heart

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: MMario
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 10:08 AM

I'll agree with CarolC;

Not that you shouldn't strive to improve, and should always try to do your best - but in the oft repeated words of a director of mine "Dare to Suck!"

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Kim C
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 09:55 AM

Play from the heart and don't sweat the small stuff.

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Steve in Idaho
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 09:49 AM

I can't play the piano, the only string names I know for sure are the big and little ones - E I believe - and my ear is my guide. If I'm playing in a group of the folks I play with we only play as fast as our slowest player. And I thnk our music is exceptional.

If we do decide to tear up a piece - really fast - then the slower pickers usually chord along or set it out and smile at the fun -

Timing and practice - only answer -

Steve

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: harpgirl
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 09:24 AM

...well, yes...blinding the judges with the glint of silver jewelry by Don Meixner does help!!!!

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 05:34 AM

"A moving target is harder to hit" and "have a car outside with the engine running".
RtS (never deterred by lack of talent)

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: alison
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 12:29 AM

Enjoy what you are doing... and find others you enjoy doing it with.... *grin*.... it makes the practicing seem worthwhile......

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: GUEST,BigDaddy
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 12:18 AM

A fellow musician once passed along two peices of advice that were given him by Bo Diddley. "When you go out on that stage, keep your billfold on you. If you leave it backstage you may not see it again," and "When you walk offstage at the end of the show and they're giving you a standing ovation, don't wait too long before you go back out there. They might be gone."

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Dec 01 - 12:00 AM

Can't emphasize enough what Spaw said about piano.

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: marty D
Date: 09 Dec 01 - 11:23 PM

Harpgirl said "I know it wasn't my technical skill. But I looked and felt happy and that's why I won, I'm sure!!"

Find a teacher like that. You'll be glad you did. I've taken lessons in the past from teachers who rarely even smiled, let alone laughed. One was so obviously only concerned with getting my money and watching the clock that I finally had to ask him "do you actually CARE whether I ever learn to play"? He looked puzzled and said "what you do with the information is YOUR business." He knew a lot about music (though I don't think he ever actually entertained professionally) but very little about people.

Shop around. A (qualified) happy teacher will probably be a good teacher. A miserable one will definitely NOT be good. Thanks to advice from Mudcat I found an excellent teacher over a year ago.

As a therapist, I know that to be effective, I have to either like my client or find them interesting enough that I might one day like them.

marty

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: DonMeixner
Date: 09 Dec 01 - 11:20 PM

No, It was a nice shiney silver bracelet blinding the judges.

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: harpgirl
Date: 09 Dec 01 - 10:59 PM

The thing I found lately that helped me in performance was I decided to project the JOY I feel being able to play music.

With three cords from the Pete Seeger banjo book on my $25 dollar banjo and singing two of my favorite old timey songs, I won First Place in Beginning Banjo at the Florida Old Time Music Championship!

I know it wasn't my technical skill. But I looked and felt happy and that's why I won, I'm sure!!

Subject: RE: Your best musical advice in one post!
From: Mark Clark
Date: 09 Dec 01 - 10:48 PM

Dead Horse mentioned this in a good list of tips but it can't be overemphasized... Play with other people. Work out arrangements, play parts and get the timing down to a professional level. Even if you don't intend to perform with others, learn to play well in an ensemble. It will do a great deal to improve your musicianship, your ear and your timing.

      - Mark