The past lives on and we are judged by it
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I have great concerns about the past and the records of my past.
The internet is littered with records of me and I wince when I see them, I was so inept as a player in those days.
This site has comments I have made in the past some were worth making but some have not stood the test of time, and I apologise for them.
Before the internet people only saw us when we presented ourselves and as we grew and matured and improved people and audiences only saw us at our most developed and matured on the day they saw us. Unless we released a track a single or appeared in a movie where we had the opportunity to make it the best we could at the time.
In the studio we rarely simply play and publish and be damned whatever we play warts and all.
In movies we might make one take 5 takes 10 takes or a hundred. Only the best makes it onto the screen. That is the way it should be.
And when we released a track we could make sure that we showed ourselves well. If you come in late you do it again if you hit a wrong note or sound like a strangled cat you do it again and make it right. Then you cut a disk or a cd or a whatever.
Now instead the public publish whatever they record and then we have a record in perpetuity that will live forever of whatever they recorded and they dont care if we sound or look good.
I and many others appear on the internet having had no opportunity to reject poor sound poor playing poor cinematography.
I have worked in the studio and we spent time polishing and refining until we sounded the way we wanted, until we sounded professional.
A short clip of us taken without our knowledge or consent then published on a facebook page and then published widely or a home movie made with poor sound quality suffering from neglect or incompetence of the movie maker lives on now forever.
Am I to refuse to appear in public until I have fully developed and matured my playing and always sound great, waiting 20 years before venturing out in public in fear of being condemned forever.
We get better until we die and each performance is a snapshot of where we are, how inconsistent we are, and if we ate gorgonzola unwisely before playing and suffered with limp lips because of it.
I am far better now than I ever was as a student player, but must I be judged for once being a fool with a horn who mostly sounded like a braying goat.
The internet is a great teacher, a good school and assistance in so many ways, and yet it is also a great leveller and a bloodthirsty destroyer of careers for there is no controlling it or avoiding it.
I love the internet and I hate it, I wish there was a time machine where my present day self can travel back to my earliest days and show the world what I would eventually become.
We musicians start out as the worst example of what we can be and become over several decades the best we can be. Must we live forever with our worst and always be judged for it.
All we can really say is Que sera sera whatever will be will be and suck it up. Be the best we can be on the day and let the chips fall where they will.
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My junior high band director told me I’d never be any good as a trumpet player, and after fighting the instrument for about 58 years, I’m beginning to think he was right…
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I was asked to provide a flugelhorn background to a Brazilian vocalist written by her brother. The mix just did not sound right (I will post it later). But during that same session, a friend at the session made an impromptu recording of a duet between the guitarist and myself. Sometimes the unplanned, and spontaneous events turn out to be better then the rehearsed and planned session.
Here is the impromptu event:
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Here is the recording I was hired to play:
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Thanks guys
Dale My respect for you grows as a fellow sufferer and we suffer a lifetime of doubt and unhappiness.
I think Dizzy said it best
Some days you try and nothing works and the horn wins. Other days you try and you win. This goes on and on and then you die and the horn finally wins.
But we are hooked like any other addict we are addicted to those monumental highs and those indescribable lows, so we keep repeating the same behaviour and always hoping for a different outcome.
I am deeply saddened by my apparent insanity.
Are we any better than the fool who tilts at windmills or the deluded one who thinks he is Napoleon.
But I do believe we are also like gladiators. We create ourselves a little more each day forging our skills in the furnace of constant hard practice, hammering ourselves against the anvil of repetition and hard work until we are forever changed and made the better for it.
I love the respect of my fans and of course the money when it appears and that justifies my hard work but these when all said and done prove to be transient and shallow.
Strangely it is the bouquets I have received that mean more to me as a sign of pure love for what I have created and delivered than the accolades and the money ever could, and this makes me humble to think that such a simple bunch of tubing with a little attitude and perseverance has the power to move the soul of the listener so profoundly.
Dr Go
You have achieved all that I strive to attain, and I hear the beauty in your playing that reveals a lifetime of effort that has made your playing so effortless.I feel lucky to share the beautiful madness with you both and all the other lunatics nutcases and crackpots who inhabit this wonderful corner of the web.
Long may we suffer.
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I would heartily disagree that "warts" are bad. Why can we not accept that we are human, fallible but capable of development? A recording of a live concert by a school band, symphony orchestra or church choir is a time document - showing various realities and triggering honest memories. That is far more "valuable" than pimped material where we would like to portray ourselves as superheros.
As far as the bar for putting stuff on YouTube, we are simply feeding the beast. Like with social Media in general, "weak content" prevails, not because of lack of talent, rather because of lack of humility. I have no trouble rubbing that in peoples noses years later. A CD passed around to friends and family would have been enough but wanting to be a movie star clouded our common sense.
It becomes even more problematic when we try to help the misguided by critiquing the posts. Then the excuses start and those in a position to help are attacked for misunderstanding the purpose behind publishing.
Nope, I say our recordings are what they are and bad decisions are no different. If our first posted recordings are weak but we show incredible growth, we are good model roles. If our performances stay weak but we continue to post, we learn something about that person. Also not a bad thing. Black and white lists are available for most forms of social media.
The choice has ALWAYS been ours but the results involve others whether we like it or not. -
Well structured comment and correct as far as it goes but you entirely miss my point.
We are not talking about my publishing recordings and taking responsibility for those recordings which I publicise at the time.
We are talking about passers by making recordings of practice sessions they happen to hear in the distance when I am working on the problems I have in my playing.
I liken this to those recordings of Chet Baker who was practicing in his prison cell and were made by unscrupulous music publishers who sat outside the prison wall with recording equipment.
Chet had no knowledge of it he made no money from them and as far as Chet was concerned he was just working on his technique
Chet had no idea they were there, he was practicing what he was working on. We dont practice what we are good at and sound great at we practice the things we are weak at if we are diligent. Then at length we improve and eventually sound good at those areas.
Chet had no control over what was recorded as I have no control over passers by recording my practice sessions and then publishing those recordings without my knowledge or permission.
They dont care if I sound awful, its practice for me, all they care about is their facebook presence. In fact I would go further the worst I sound the happier they are to publish because it sounds comical to them and their followers.
It is pretty disgusting when you think about it.
In some rare cases I was asked if they can record me and I told them no you may not and they tell me they are not recording, but they record me anyway. This shows the truth of what they do. They are immoral and liars. They simply want to use people.
Would you ROWUK be happy as a teacher for a passer by to record your personal practice sessions where you are working on a weak area in your playing and you fail repeatedly at a difficult phrase you are trying to master.
And then your failures in your practice sessions are published widely on the internet as ROWUK playing his trumpet. This would reflect very badly on your reputation as a teacher, and suggest that ROWUK is incompetent to possible future students.
If your failures which we all have and work on are published widely on the internet you get a reputation as a failure and your students will then evaporate because students want to study with a teacher who can play well.
My practice sessions and failures are published and I am judged on those.
I do not publish any of my own performances.
Sure I have appeared on stage, with bands, and before politicians, and in movies.
My performances I have always been told are great, but my practice sessions and my failures during practices are published without my knowledge. They are where the warts are.
Yesterday I practiced a difficult piece faster and faster pushing it way up above 220 beats per minute practicing until I failed and had great fun doing it.
But people record this kind of stuff and then edit out the good playing at 220 beats and below and publish the 300 plus beats failure because it makes them laugh and I appear again on the internet as a failure with a horn.
And you cannot argue that these recordings stay on the one facebook page I have seen the recordings being passed around freely.
I stand by what I said, I am recorded during practice sessions and I have no knowledge and no control over what they do with those recordings. They dont know that I was practicing something I am bad at and they dont care, they do it for likes on their page.
Would you be content for Chets failures to be published as Chet Baker playing. Dizzy said some days the horn wins, so he clearly would not have wanted a cd of Dizzys failure days to be published, Dizzy wanted Dizzys successes to be published.
ROWUKS failures are not to be celebrated and published for all to see, ROWUKS successes are to be celebrated and rightly you are a talent as a teacher and a player.
I sound great in Live performances because I work hard on my poor areas and make them great, but those great performances do not appear on the internet.
My practice sessions and failures in those sessions and my earliest practices where I sounded really bad are the recordings that people see of me.
We all sound bad when we practice the things we are bad at but why is it ok for the general public to publish all our failures that we suffer on the road to becoming great.
Look at it another way.
I am famous I have been told many times I am the best trumpet player in the North of the country I live in. That is of course complete nonsense I know it is nonsense and I know I am pretty low down in the skills area as a player.
Why do people believe I am the best trumpet player they have ever heard. I have been called Maestro many times.
They believe I am great because of one thing alone. I only show the things I am great at. Live audiences never see my failures I present greatness because I refuse to show anything other than greatness.
That is how you do it when you are in control of what people see. You protect your reputation and grow it if you can.
What I am saying is everyone carries a mobile phone, around 50% of people with phones record me and probably most of the members in here are recorded without their knowledge or control, and they do it underhandedly and in secret and they do it while we practice if they can hear us.
They then publish those very poor recordings of our practicing because these instruments carry a long way.
I have been recorded maybe a thousand times and published widely without my knowledge.
There are days where I discover a dozen recordings of me practicing. I have people in Australia USA Canada Denmark Germany Russia England France and a dozen other countries who have made recordings of me without permission.
Yesterday 3 people recorded me that I know about and I know there will be several that I dont know about.
There is no control over this, we musicians are not in control of our public face as long as the intenet exists people have phones facebook accounts and thousands of friends that they publish their life to.
Facebook accounts have a thirst for new material and we musicians are one of the sources.
There are 7 billion people on the planet, I might be on a million facebook pages by now, and you may be too without having any knowledge that this is happening,
The difference between us is I know it I am aware of it happening. We are recorded everywhere now and we have no idea it is happening until we run up against it.
How can we avoid this.
Should we give up all practicing, should we practice in a soundproof room so that we can make sure that only performances we are in control of make it onto the internet.
This is the issue and the reason for this post. It is a huge issue for all musicians and it is growing.
It is not that I have published unwisely, I have published nothing, it is that people are making recordings of my daily life my practicing my failures in practice and then publishing what they have recorded.
I am not a student asking for advice making poor recordings and publishing them and then bleating about how poor they are.
I am human I am bad at some things good at some things and great at some things. I present to audiences things I am great at I practice on the bad things to turn them into good things and eventually into great things.
But
People insist on making recordings of all that I do and publishing everything they hear, and that means publishing my faults clams and split notes.
We have no control over any of this and it is wrong, but we must live with it.
And if you do not see this happening then you may need a rethink.
Apologies for sounding very strong on this but I see it as the single most destructive thing for music today.
Do Orchestras or major bands allow smartphone recordings of performances practice sessions, do teachers allow the general public to record their students during a lesson.
Publishing everything in life means exactly that. And we suffer the consequences.
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@Trumpetb everyone has recordings they wish were not public - and sessions they wish had been recorded LOL - it's the risk we take for the sake of trying to make good music - I'd we waited until we are perfect before recording anything we would not have any recordings - including the good ones! Keep making music and keep recording it!
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It's a frustrating thing with tge modern world. Any monkey can pull out a phone and film my big band. The mics on these things are very unforgiving, exposing intonation and tone issues simply not heard live. Sometimes its stinkin hot, band members have had a long day, 4-5 subs yet, out comes a phone and it's posted on Youtube the next day. I just tell my band members to try keep this in mind and keep working on maintaining your best. Its all we can do. If people want to criticise us then as you said. Que Sera..Haters gonna hate.
Love trumpet. Saved my life. -
Apologies this will be another long one
@robertwerntz great attitude and my respect to you you know the reality of a performing professional.
@a-j-trumpet that is the truly the reality the frustrations of the modern world, the recordings made with poor equipment that we have no control over are pathetic and yet these we have to live with.
But to both of you while agreeing that both you guys know exactly what is going on and have a clear knowledge of the problems we face,
I would repeat myself that the unpalatable truth that I object to and want to warn members of is the modern habit of recordings made of us in secret with unsuitable equipment of our playing that is not a performance we have rehearsed but are instead our worst practice sessions and are published without our knowledge.
Several times I have been recognised by members of the public and they said to me oh I saw you on the internet and they mention me being viral or facebook or some other widely published social media recording of me and all recordings made on mobile phones without my knowledge or permission.
Some people have made a great deal of money from secret recordings they have made of me that went viral and they were monetised. And I got nothing from it but a bad reputation.
It is a form of theft that destroys the victim.
I want editorial control I want to make sure that recordings of me are recordings of me playing well and entertaining, not selected highlights of me messing up during practice or during rehearsals.
"Oh wasn't that funny ha ha ha give my page more likes everybody and I will show you more musicians messing up".
It is underhanded unreasonable and immoral.
Many is the time I have been told that these pathetic recordings will make me famous, my reply is always, I already am famous go away.
They think that making a very poor recording of me failing in practice sessions will somehow make me anything other than a figure of ridicule.
We professionals need good press and good recordings that honestly reflect our abilities and the quality we deliver to audiences on stage.
In short we need to let people know the quality of what they can expect to hear if they pay to hear us.
We work hard polishing our abilities and our acts until we give close to perfection when and where it counts, and then we discover some sneaky individual has illicitly recorded us on a bad day in a practice session and published those poor and unmusical practice sessions.
It is like supermodels being photographed by paparazzi at the beach when they have no makeup no hair no great outfit and they look comical and pathetic, then these semi abusive images are published globally with evil comments, look at ugly old whatshername pretending to be a model.
They make sales the public gets to laugh over their breakfast paper the TV stations and Tv commentators get an item, then they all move on but the supermodels career is forever harmed.
Supermodels should be in control of what people see of them, their looks are their value, and professional musicians should be in control of what people hear of them, what we sound like is our value, if we are unfairly made to sound bad careers are forever harmed.
If I mess up on stage in a performance then I deserve to be reproached or admonished.
But I dont deserve to be reproached or admonished if I never mess up on stage.
We might put 1000 hours in rehearsals to finally sound great for a 1 hour stage appearance, we should not have to see the worst of that 1000 hours published as a comical feature on the internet page of a pathetic individual who has no life beyond making fun on facebook of people they meet.
People should only see that 1 hour of our polished superb performance that they paid to see and that we are paid for and that is where it counts.
If I am learning a new work to eventually appear in my set, I dont want my mistakes made while learning it to be forever used against me.
Libel is defined as "a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation"
Defamation is "a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury".
We are talking about doing things that are damaging to musicians and that are against the laws of Libel and Defamation, but so far it remains unlitigated and untested in law possibly because it is so very common and so recent.
Many see no harm in it or think it pointless for musicians to object. What harm could it do to smear a musicians reputation, grow a backbone mr musician.
But I see a future where musicians dont practice much for fear of it being used against them, they then employ bouncers who guard them against illicit recordings every moment of the day or they simply give up music and take up painting instead or some other hobby where they aren't so easily ridiculed.
We get gigs because audiences want to hear us, they want to hear us because they believe they will hear something wonderful. If all people hear of me is some amateurish sounding recordings full of errors and wrong notes on the internet made on mobile phones audiences will not pay to see me live.
This is my life this is the world to me. People judge me on what they see and hear.
Am I upset about this, of course I am and you should be too.
These people harm our careers and harm our earning power. And they do it simply for internet likes on facebook and that is unforgiveable.
And they do it in secret so it will cost them nothing and they will get some juicy content for their social media page.
It makes people laugh but humour is always based upon victimising someone.
Let us not be the victim here and see our careers go down the toilet for some idiots social media likes.
We create, we create beauty and make the world a better place.
These people who do this are parasites and destroyers of beauty.
Be aware it is happening and protect yourselves from it if you can, for some it may be too late, this bad press lives forever.
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I would not appreciate anyone recording me when I practice. I usually work on exercises and pieces I can’t play (or can’t play very well). That’s a big part of the path to improvement, and is not meant for public consumption. As for the warts recorded in a public performance, one of the guys in our band would say “That’s the beauty of live music.” Many audiences just appreciate the music, and a glitch here or there just shows we are all human. There are also the folks who revel in picking out mistakes, and even if the performance was 99.9% perfect, they focus on that one wrong or out of tune note, sloppy articulation, etc. Unfortunately, I used to be my own worst critic, but now I’m happy if most of what I play is good, and I have a short memory for the occasional wart. My response to critics is, if you can do better, come on up on stage and show me…
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I think we see eye to eye Dale great comment
Thank you
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I do not think that I have missed anything. It is a simple fact that our lives are far more public than we realise and that brings a bunch of opportunities - good and bad.
As far as someone "secretly" recording me and publishing, that would only be a (solvable) problem if my name or picture were attached somehow. Especially in Germany, there are very fast venues to take care of situations like this.That being said, my practice sessions are generally purposeful and I think for the most part it is audibly very clear what I am working towards. I almost never "noodle around". This means if a recording was made without a picture or video of me or my name, I probably would not care. The chance of someone "stealing" my practice work and making money with it is so unlikely, I have never given it any thought.
The idea of a private detective digging dirt up about trumpet practice sessions reminds me of Guy Noir of "a Prairie Home Companion" fame. Garrison Keillor is my hero!
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@Trumpetb theft is agredious no matter the form - what you are referring is the concert version of snatch and grab
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@Trumpetb man if you can catch them in the act (notice a recording on someone's site) send em an eye-opening bill - on the front side, a 'please no recordings' message can't hurt - I think the majority don't know the legalities of intellectual property, but if they are selling it, that's shameful - stuff I play wont make them any money LOL
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This is something we simply must live with and I pay it no mind these days
It is enough that I have brought this behaviour to the attention of the members, dont be surprised when you discover several or several hundred recordings of you littering the internet.
The internet is great and powerful but with great power comes great responsibility.
Social media has made it normal for the public to record their lives and then publish these clips and we are a part of the publics lives.
Andy Warhol has predicted, 'everyone in the world will get a chance to be famous for 15 minutes. Social media made that a reality and the cat is out of the proverbial bag and cannot now be stuffed back into it.
Welcome to the new world.
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@Trumpetb well said
