When To Dismiss Criticism

The people who can hurt you can also hurt your feelings.

The people who can hurt your feelings can’t necessarily hurt you.

Hurting your feelings is not the same as hurting you.

The people we love and respect and value their thoughts and beliefs (i.e. the people who can hurt us) need to be invited to speak the truth to us in a way that might hurt our feelings. If your feelings must be hurt for the moment, that’s a small price to pay for valuable life changing criticism. You are not hurt, your feelings are hurt (for now), and you’ll be better for it.

Most of the chippy snarky criticism that hurts our feelings comes from people we’ve never met, from people who we have little to no relationship with. And sometimes we confuse ourselves into thinking they’re hurting us, when really they’re only hurting our feelings.

When we recognize where their power truly starts and ends we can be quicker to dismiss that type of criticism all together.

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

Drummer: Go Crazy

This works a lot…


It’s late in the session, the drummer has done seven or eight or twelve takes of the song.

There’s good stuff happening. Good timing, good groove. But there’s still room for more.

So after all those takes the producer gets on the talk-back and says, “We’ve got a bunch of good stuff. Go crazy on this one.”

And that ends up being the take!


You need the backdrop of the first ten or twelve takes to set up the crazy one.

Before ‘go crazy on this one’ there’s often an elevated sense of trying to get it right. ‘Go crazy on this one’ alleviates that thought. There’s no sense in trying to get it right because the drummer can blame any mistakes on the fact that they were instructed to go crazy. Truly a win win.

***These days drums often get programmed instead of played. Which is great too. But ‘go crazy one this one’ is a  phenomenon that sadly gets lost in the digital shuffle.

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

Album. Single. One-Song

The inner couple rings of fans knew every song on the album. They were who all the songs on the album were for.

But another good thing about the album was that from all the tracks on the album, you picked a single. The message was: while we have an albums worth of songs, look over here at this one specifically. We think you’ll especially like this one.

It’s easier to point something out when on the flip side there are other things not being pointed out. (It’s like when you blur out the background of a picture to highlight what’s in focus. You don’t remove the background, just blur it.)

So when you had a single, it was a good bet that the people who already knew about the band would at least know the single. Even if they weren’t super fans.

The album was known by the inner rings. The single was sure to get to few more rings out from the middle.


With the advent of new singles-driven release schedule it’s important to make a differentiation:

Releasing a single vs. Releasing one song

Releasing a single is: Hey look at this extra special song out of all the other songs. Therefore you can’t always be releasing singles. It defeats the purpose of the highlight.

Releasing one song is: Hey we made a song, here.


Singles and one-songs both have their place and should be fully embraced in the plan. But understand there’s a difference. Singles are better when you have other songs that are not singles. In order to have not-singles you have to release songs that aren’t singles.

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

Double Booking

Let’s be really clear about what double booking is.

Double booking is: not realizing until the day-of that you booked two things on the same day at pretty much the same time. Then you have to make a phone call to one of them, explaining your poor organizational skills and lack of attention to detail.

Double booking is not: having something booked and then something better comes along and in order to gracefully cancel you call the first person and act like you double booked.

Stuff happens. Sometimes you double book, but you don’t have to do the other thing.

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

Getting A Sell Out

If you want to sell out a show you could…

1. Reduce the ticket price on the assumption that the lower the price the bigger the pool of people who will say yes.

2. Find more (or develop more) people who want to pay full price.  

The first one is really attractive because changing the price is easy and will make you feel like you did something. And it might work. But if it does, that starts a domino effect. You’ll always be reducing the price because it’s easy and it worked once.

The second one is much more difficult and it takes a lot longer but it works every time.

The first one is based on a generalization of how the public views money.

The second one is based specifically on how a segment of the public views you.

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

Having The Ace

The thing about having the ace (the one more thing, the unexpected excellence at the end) is that it changes everything that comes before it too.

When you know you have the ace, you yourself become better and therefore your fives and nines and jacks and queens magically become better too.

Aces are few and far between, but if you play long enough you’re sure to get one.

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