Learning To Box

You can learn a LOT about boxing by watching Rocky 1-5, watching a few fights on HBO and playing Mike Tyson’s Punch out.

By the end of all that you know a lot…relative to knowing nothing at all about boxing.  

But now you’ve hit a ceiling. One more viewing or Rocky isn’t going to make a difference…the only way now is to go and box.

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Drop me an email: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

Compelling People

Compelling people make compelling artists.

And there’s lots of ways to be (or become more) compelling.

If you think about yourself metaphorically as an old stereo system: It’s not about adding or taking away knobs on the stereo, but knowing how to adjust the ones that are already there.

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Drop me an email: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

Playing For A Bad Audience

Yeah there’s such thing as a bad audience.

But that doesn’t matter to you.

Your job is to go out there and have a great show with great material and be a professional.

You go out on stage because you have a great show, not to see if you’re going to have one.

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Drop me an email: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

Some Things About The Road

Conversations in the back of the van are different than ones in the front.

Musically, the music is only as good as the drummer.

Backstage is special.

The singer gets way too much credit and also not enough credit.

A good pair of boots has been known to lift not only the feet they’re on but the room they’re in.

If you only have to touch your gear for the ninety minutes you’re playing it, be extra thankful.

Yes it’s hot in here but I’ve been waiting a long time to wear this jacket.

When coming off the road there is both letdown and resolve.

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Drop me an email: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com

Cumulative Score

The GPA you graduated high school with was a cumulative average of all four years. So every year it became harder and harder to bump that thing up. Senior year, when you’re finally understanding why this score might be important, is the year you have the least effect on it. The further into high school, the more stuck your score is.

This is not the way the music business works.

Because it doesn’t matter how many misses you have, a hit redeems everything.

If you’ve struggled for a long time, failed a lot, been way up and way down, put out mediocre music…you are not stuck. It’s not about cumulative…it’s about: how good is your next thing?

And the next thing doesn’t have to care about what came before it.

ie. It’s as if you’ve been a D student forever and all you need is one A+ to graduate with honors.

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What You Have

What do you have and what do you really have?

Yeah you have twelve songs but when you play them for people or in front of people how many of them connect…how many do the thing you were hoping for?

Don’t play songs because you have them, play them because they do what you and the audience are hoping they’ll do.

That’s what you really have.

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Drop me an email: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com