Batting One-Thousand

It’s silly for a baseball player to focus on hitting 1.000 for the season, to be a perfect hitter.  If that is the one focus, the one singular goal, they will live in constant disappointment…which has a tendency of leading to less hits and more disappointment.

On the other hand, if a baseball player understands that hitting just .400 will be wildly helpful to the team and help the team win lots of games and probably win themselves a lot of batting awards on top of it all…the player will be much less concerned with the imperfection…the fact that sixty percent of the time he’s failing at getting a hit.  The player isn’t focused on whining and complaining about missing sixty percent of the time because the forty percent success rate is just that…a success.

It’s a matter of focusing on greatness rather than perfection.

Perfection says when you step up to the plate you need to get a hit ALL the time.

Greatness says you need to step up to the plate and get a hit THIS time.

Perfection is great.

But greatness is rarely perfect. 

Step up to the plate with everything you have at that moment in time.  And then do it again and again.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

What’s Behind The Vault Door?

I was at a show this weekend at an old bank that had been converted into a venue. One of those banks the size of Grand Central Station, beautiful marble floors and massive columns…probably built sixty or seventy years ago when everyone had to actually go to the bank.

Downstairs there was a bank vault door. It looked like a door out of Mission Impossible.  A giant round door, five feet high and it was open so we could see it was two feet thick.

Two feet thick! It seems like that would have been a great place to keep the money, behind two feet of solid metal.

It was a very cool, very intimidating door.

So in order to have broken into the vault, you would have had to get good at chiseling your way through two feet of metal.  If you wanted to break through and obtain the riches behind the door, your adversary was a door that was impossible to break through.

You would have had to hammer and saw and scrape your way through the door…

Or…

You could find the combination.

See…now you’re not fighting two feet of metal any more, but working to discover the sequential numbers that will completely negate the impossible strength of the metal door.

If you have the combination, the door is meaningless.

If all you’re focused on is the door, it retains ultimate power.

We’re now in an era in the music business where there’s a doorman next to the door handing out combination codes to the ones willing to take their focus away from the door.

I can’t tell you what’s waiting in the vault for you, but I know you find out what’s behind that door.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Finding The Right Guitar Tone

How do you decide on the sound for the guitar solo when there are millions of possibilities? 

By already having practiced giving weight, value and commitment to your decisions.

There’s always going to be more sounds to try…but the trick is knowing when to stop trying and start moving on to the next work.

This doesn’t only apply to guitar solo tones.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Nightcap 15

The older I get the more the song Bitch becomes my song…mainly the first line of the chorus.

I still don’t really understand how Ocean’s 11 did what they did.

I was ordering something from the Home Depot website and got on their live chat and asked for 15% percent off…I got 10% off instead…thats pretty good.

If you see me around and the song She’s So High by Tal Bachman comes on, watch my left hand, I will absolutely be subtlety air guitaring that solo.

I was driving behind a brand new corvette in my definitely-not-a-corvette, and a red light was coming up and we both had to stop at it.

**Sorry for the language on that first one mom and dad.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Don’t Be So Precious

Don’t be so precious.

Just try it. 

Test the waters.

It’s not going to ruin you.

For some of the stuff you’ve been considering, trying and failing just doesn’t make that big of a difference…or any difference at all.  But trying and learning something is a definite.  And the idea might even be a wild success.

Release the music. Take a trumpet player on the road.  Wear those boots for the photoshoot.  Write with that person. Change the green room food rider. Let the guitar player do that interview on his own.

In and of itself it just doesn’t matter that much…but it matters A LOT because it’s been on your mind and what’s on your mind matters.

If you’ve been thinking about it for a while…try it.

Don’t be so precious.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Want What You Want/Do What You Do

You want what you want but do what you do.

It’s amazing the size of the chasm that can exist between what we want and what we do.

We have big dreams, maybe even a vision…but do we really truly put ourselves in the position to realize/receive it?

Some people don’t know what they want and don’t know what they’re doing.

Some people think they know what they want and are oblivious to the fact that “thinking they know” as opposed to “actually knowing” creates a deficiency of spirit that will greatly limit any action taken.

Some people know what they want and think that knowing is enough.  Arrogance leading to inaction, yielding the opposite of the desired result.

Some people know what they want and it sinks deep into their brain, which turns into an amazing amount of doing…both consciously and subconsciously.

Some people don’t know what they want and take great action in pursuit of the knowing…which they will turn into even greater action.

*I’m sure there’s more types of “some people”, but these are the types I’ve encountered lately.  Both in the world and in the mirror.

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com