I don’t think of music as a competition.

Even in the earliest days of playing music, I loved the idea of just finding ways to make sounds and play melodies so much that I don’t think I ever even really thought about where I stood in relation to other musicians.

I do remember being very proud to have been named to district band my first year playing an instrument (clarinet) in 4th grade. Coincidentally the same year I was put in the gifted and talented program. (Things were apparently good for Kid Schizo in the 1982-1983 school year.) But I don’t know that I thought of it as me fighting to be better than my peers in the band at school. I think I was just trying really hard to figure out how to read music and apply it to the fingerings I hadn’t quite mastered on the Bb clarinet.

School band wasn’t meant to be for me, though, because the following year I moved to northern California and I never stuck with it because the band director/teacher at my new school was an asshole who made me hate it.

I never stopped trying to make music, though. I had a toy ukulele that my parents got me that I’d always noodle on, and eventually I got a little Casio keyboard so I could create on my own terms. Just me and music. Even when I had a friend who was more advanced than me, I didn’t see it as trying to get better than him, I saw it as a way to learn.

Once I got to high school, and guitar entered the picture, I started to associate more with people my age who were learning how to play, and I became more aware that this sort of competitive attitude was a “thing”. That people in music were essentially doing the same thing we did in sports, “I’m better than you…” That’s not really how I’ve ever thought of music or approached it, but it was there.

The differences in ability level of the musicians I’d meet became something I noticed all the time. I was constantly comparing where I was to where they were. I don’t remember doing it in a competitive way, I think I was just a judgy twat. A Dunning-Kruger-effect-addled judgy twat.

You see, you don’t know what you don’t know. This is VERY powerful when it comes from moving from beginner to intermediate as a musician. When you make that jump, you really think you have a leg up on the beginners and are starting to be something special. But you have no damn idea how lame you actually are, because you can’t know that. You haven’t learned how to perceive it. That ignorance-fueled hubris was definitely a solid part of my development between the ages of 19 and 23. But then I grew…

And almost all of the “I’m better than that guy” shit started to melt away completely. Because I started to be around guys I was most certainly not better than, and I realized that I had a LOT to learn. And that was humbling and awesome and would set me on my path for the rest of my musical life.

Finding a way to make those competitive urges work in a positive way – as fuel and inspiration – is the only thing that makes them valid for music.

I don’t know I’m the best person to make such a generalized statement like that about these urges, because I have an inherent bias against them. Competitive urges are BAD for me. You see, I’m never more of a dick than when I’m playing a game of some kind. I can’t stand losing. In team sports, individual sports, board games, video games, whatever – I want – no, NEED to win. If I had ever applied this to music, I probably would have quit a long time ago, because I hate that aspect of my personality. I like to be a kind and good person, and that’s incompatible with me fueled by competitiveness.

Perhaps that’s just me and you can handle it. Well, good for you.

Either way, using those competitive feelings to yield positive results is the best thing. In my old Jacksonville band Slaphappy, we had our “friend bands”, the most prominent of which was Big Al and The Kaholics. They also were the most similar to us, so it was very easy for us to think about them as a rival as well (even though each band always recommended the other when they couldn’t do a gig). We made each other better by trying and failing various things, and supporting each other so we could both learn what worked and didn’t work with our similar audiences. It was a competition, but a very friendly one. And mutually beneficial.

If you get in a situation where someone blows your doors off, either by being a superior player or a more engaging performer, use it as an example of a path you can take, instead of being envious and trying to drag them down because they’re your competition.

(Speaking of the envy/dragging people thing – that’s a blog for another day. I’m not sure why musicians are so keen on this sort of behavior, but it would be super nice if they’d just fucking stop it.)

I find myself to be competitive in the sense that I always want to beat my last performance and continue to be awesome. It’s now been 355 days since my last show in front of a real, live audience. The bar has never been set lower. I just want to play.

Hopefully the band will figure out a time to practice next week so we can keep some forward momentum, and hopefully these immunity numbers for COVID-19 keep getting more promising as the vaccines get out there so we can get our asses back on stage with our people. I miss live performance more than I ever have missed anything relating to my music.

Y’all take care – Texans keep staying strong because we fucking have to – none of the dipshits in government seem to give a crap about fixing anything long-term. My love and warmth goes to everyone suffering because of the avaricious swine that run our energy grid and energy companies. And a big FUCK YOU to the governor, senators, and representatives who aren’t doing JACK FUCKING SHIT for Texans who are hurting.

Mask up, distance yourself, talk to your loved ones on video chat, give your immunized mom a hug if it’s been more than two weeks since her second dose of the vaccine. Black lives matter.

Peace be the journey!
TMS