You deserve little to nothing. (This keeps you humble)
You can earn almost anything. (This keeps you ambitious)
You are free to give everything. (This transforms you)
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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com
“If I had the opportunity to go to New York City, I would”
“If I had the opportunity to make an amazing sandwich, I would”
“If I had the opportunity to connect with the people who love my music, I would”
But these statements begin with a false premise, ‘If’.
These are not opportunities that you have or don’t have.
The only question is are you going to take them.
Anytime you venture down the road of ‘I would if I had the opportunity’, it’s important to step back and figure out if you already have the opportunity but you’re just not taking it right now.
You could be not taking it right now for many different reasons, but it’s important to differentiate between what you have and don’t have. What opportunities are there for the taking and which ones you have to build and wait for.
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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com
The other thing about criticism…
You don’t get to decide how the other person takes it.
You might hurt them.
You might hurt their feelings.
You might be invited in to give even more criticism.
If you’re going to give criticism, you have to be caring enough to let your care persist through and after your criticism…no matter how it’s taken.
If you don’t care enough to persistently care, skip the criticism to begin with.
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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com
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
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
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