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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000031.txt from 2005/01

From: Jim Katz <jimkatz@-----.ca>
Subj: [DR-L] Why do musicians hate themselves??
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 15:43:23 -0500

This is a wonderful topic, and an all-too-common problem. We are tough on
ourselves for any number of reasons. Low self esteem is epidemic in our
society, and as a teacher of psychology and sometimes therapist, I have
rarely found a person who did not admit to some feelings of being worried
about being somehow worse than the average person at his or her specialty.
I think one reason that musicians are especially susceptible is that we are
surrounded with excellent recordings of perfect (or perfected) performances
of our material. We can hear examples of perfect tone and excellent
performances at the push of a button. Live performance is always going to
have flaws and seem lesser by the unnecessarily critical comparisons we are
foisting on ourselves.

There ought to be a rule if you must compare yourself to a recording, it be
an unedited live recording, at least. I feel much better about my
occasional fluffs this week since hearing the live broadcast of the Vienna
New Year's Strauss concert where a trumpet forgot a repeat and went blithely
on for a few notes! Didn't ruin a thing for me!

Jim

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