Steve’s Stuff

I have this wonderful image in my head. People are learning to play instruments, not for a teacher, not because their mother made them, and not necessarily even for public performance: they’re learning the instruments for themselves. They’re home alone making music for themselves only. There are no teachers, no critics, no others to judge them - just themselves and the music. I can’t take credit for the idea - it came from concert percussionist, publisher, and contemporary music advocate, Sylvia Smith. In an interview, she described how she tries to play a little xylophone everyday because she enjoys it. It’s music that no one hears (other than her husband, Stuart Saunders Smith - one of the most important contemporary composers today). It’s not practicing, there’s no goal, there’s no frustration, only the pleasure of creation.

Why don’t we have more people learning to play instruments for themselves? The closest thing we have are amateur guitarists. You’ll find an average of 1.4 guitars in every college dorm room*. Many of these guitarists have the right idea. You find them all over the place, playing songs that they write for themselves, not for anyone in particular - just for them, or a few close friends. They don’t need to be great and they don’t even need to be “good”. As long as they are happy with the sounds they make, that’s good enough.

Unfortunately, todays society tells us that if we’re going to do something, we’d better be amazing at it, or it’s not worth doing. Maybe we’re to blame. The guitar playing college kid is a stereotype that gets a lot of heat because “they suck”. By what standards do they “suck”? If you’re comparing them to Buckethead or D’jango Reinhardt, yeah - they do suck. But who are they hurting? They aren’t posing as professionals, they aren’t asking you to pay them, and they aren’t really hurting anybody.

With today’s overabundance of available media, there’s a constant flow of entertainment . Thus, there’s no need for us as individuals to create - we just let other people do it for us. After all, they come up with better stuff than we would, right? We’ve lost the sense of personal creation and the joy that comes with it. Muhammad from the TASD class understands this. On his blog he writes, “I simply make some noise, but it’s my noise and I love it.” This is exactly what we need more of. Now, lets see about something other than guitar because, seriously guys . . . :-)

*statistics made up on the spot by me.