delusions of grandeur

Last night, I wrapped up ten years of teaching in the California community college system. The thing I have loved the most over my tenure as a community college teacher is the engagement with my students. At times, I think I learn more from them than they do from me.

Case in point – my students threw me a little “going away” shindig last night, involving a meet-up at a local gelato place and then a show at a local bar. The gelato was fabulous, the company was great, but the local bands featured at the show left a bit to be desired. This didn’t bother me in the least, having played in my fair share of dive bars over the years with support from various bands of dubious musical ability, and so I “tuned out” the noise and focused instead on conversation. However, not all of my students in tow had the same reaction. This morning, I received an email from one of these students asking, “Why do these guys spend all this time rehearsing material only to sound so crappy live?...it really galls me that music is being presented so poorly.” Wow. Now there was some food for thought.

The question posed here – to me – is one hell of a big can of worms. To sum up, why are there so many musicians out there that just don’t realize…that they’re terrible? This is my take, based on ten years of teaching, and many, many years of experience as a professional musician...

In life, and in general, many people make themselves out to be more important and more talented than they really are. It's kind of hard to stomach the fact that there are six (plus) billion people in the world, and that frankly, in terms of one person/one life, we don't really matter all THAT much in the grand scheme of things. We, however, innately want to feel important; we want to have something "special" to contribute to the world to make our mark. There’s nothing wrong with this – it’s only a natural human desire. But there are people who take this to an extreme and consequently become completely delusional about how important they are, or how talented they may be.

It's not exactly the easiest thing in the world to realize: “Well, hell, I might not be THAT good at whatever it is that I'm doing...” It becomes much easier, then, to blame someone else for something that goes awry in order to avoid this very self-realization. In the case of musicians, this blame tends to get placed on things like a crappy PA system (which may or may not actually be crappy), a sound guy not mixing things right, someone in the audience causing a distraction, having a bad cold so the performer can’t sing up to par, and so on. The classic example of this phenomenon is one I’ve experienced in teaching voice students. I always require my vocal students to bring some kind of recording device to a class, coaching or a lesson. The frequent reaction students have, upon hearing their voices for the first time, is: “That can’t be me. I really put my heart into that! Must be a bad microphone.” To which I invariably respond, “That IS you. That is what YOU sound like. Has nothing to do with the microphone.” Harsh, yes, but this is reality. Simply having a passion for singing does not make one automatically a talented vocalist, let alone be able to match pitch.

I have been teaching lessons (piano, voice, along with composition) since I was about 15 years old. It's amazing what you see as an instructor. People really, really think a lot of times that they have this innate talent, simply because they love music, especially when it comes to singing (how else can one explain those horrific American Idol audition episodes?). Years ago, I had a student who was completely tone deaf enroll in one of my choirs. It was an advanced chamber choir and I had to let the poor guy go, because he was SO off with his singing – both pitch-wise and in terms of rhythm – that he threw the rest of the men's section off. It was completely distracting, and there's absolutely no sugar-coating how bad it was. I felt terrible for the student, and tried to break the news to him in a gentle way. I called him into my office privately and said something like "I think you need to take some basic ear training before you'll be totally prepared for this class…I’d love to have you re-enroll in the future once you have the basic skills down.” Although I was gentle, I was direct – what was I supposed to do? And unfortunately, the news wasn’t received well. I was told that I was “prejudiced” and that the only reason he had pitch problems was because of the “pus in his sinuses.” Really?

I have so many stories like this. It all comes down to: it's just hard to admit when one has a shortcoming. Eating a slice of humble-pie is one of the hardest things I think to do.

And so that explains a lot of terrible bands that continue to go out there and attempt to gig – there are indeed people who really THINK they are contributing something to the world while they are completely delusional about their abilities, or lack thereof. And when their "talent" is challenged by someone who is trained or educated, they tend to blame some sort of external entity.

So what does one do in a case like this? I think the most we can do is approach life - and other aspiring musicians - in a humble, non-judgmental manner...best thing to do in this case is to have compassion for people like that, because the "wake-up call" is going to hurt bad enough on its own. Believe me, as a teacher, this has been one of my toughest challenges. I've had some people in classes that are dead-set on becoming musicians...that have absolutely NO innate ability whatsoever and that continue to not be able to keep up with the class despite paying attention and taking notes and meeting with tutors, etc. It’s heart breaking to see this kind of thing. What do you say to a person like that, as an instructor? It's hard. People have to learn their own lessons...the hard way...because most of the time, they're not going to believe you...

And in the meantime, pick which shows you attend wisely!