Social Scrooge Stage OK?
People want me to go out to jams, but I insist on going home to practice on weeknights (weekends I can practice during the day). It seems to me that if you go out to jam all the time and don't pay your dues at home alone, you'll end up a schlock player. What do you think?
I'm not sure that one has to be at the expense of the other. Like Winslow said, it needs some balance.
If you want to ultimately play on stage, time on the stage is critical. Not just for learning to play with others, but knowing how to recover from mistakes. I've seen newbies freeze up like a deer in the headlights over a simple mistake, lose their place in the song, and either stand there looking like their dog died or literally went running off the stage in terror. Every musician screws up - in every show. You probably don't notice when you see them because they've learned how to manage the mistakes and move on - without missing a beat in most cases.
Another thing you'll get is the experience of learning from the veterans. I've taken back up chess recently after many years. I've become determined to try to get better once and for all. Earlier this week, I listened to an interview with a well-known Grandmaster in the sport, Maurice Ashley. He made a comment that if you want to get better, you should make it a practice to play people way out of your league. Let yourself get pummeled, and in some cases, embarrassed. I think the same thing applies to music. If you really want to improve, you need to spend time with the silverbacks - one of the true values of this site BTW.
Practice at home - but get as much stage time as you can. Without the mix, you'll ultimately simply be a very good harmonica player at home.
Great food for thought guys! Thank you.
It's a balancing act.
If you never spend time in the woodshed, you may find yourself stuck on a plateau and never improving or freshening up your chops or ideas.
But if you never come out of the practice room, you may never feel the full connection of making music as an interaction with others, or get that fire going of in-the-moment spontaneous combustion that can sometimes kick your playing up to the next level.
And there's the middle ground of jamming with others but not in public, which fosters musical interaction with other players without having to put on a show for an audience.
I think that most of us can benefit from all three. it's a question of finding time and committing to all of them.
Everyone has some form of resistance to one of them - dread of the boring drill of practice, or of the potentially nerve-wracking experience of being exposed to an audience, or of the intimacy of having to relate to other musicians and maybe even compare yourself to their skill level. So overcoming those resistances and breaking through to experiencing the benefits of each of these venues of musical activity is alos part of making it happen.