Re: [Harp-L] Subject: Who decides who is Bad or Good?

["Planet Harmonica" <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > I suppose if there's a question in all of this it's this (for anyone  to
> > answer):  Who told you - or how did you find out YOU were a good
> > player?
> >
> > Elizabeth

I don't consider myself a good player. I'm sure I can stand up to a good number of people who do consider themselves good players, but I don't consider myself a "good" player. Not in the sense of the word "good" that I envisage anyway. I have too great a conscience of how good I could be given work, time, dedication, etc.

That being said, of course, peer feedback is an important element of assessing your own playing. It is not objective feedback though, so you have to keep that in mind. Constructive criticism, in my book, is always better than direct praise.

There are more objective ways to assess your own playing. The easiest one is to settle on a challenging exercice, and record yourself playing the same exercice every week. After a couple of months, listen to the first and last recording in sequence. That will give you an accurate assessment of your own ability and progress.

Meeting and listening to other harp students is also an important part of assessing yourself. Knowing that you could "do that" or not, as it were, allows you to set some goals and identify areas of improvement. I wrote a small text a few months back entitled "The Long Road" that I posted here and on my weblog (direct link http://harmonica.typepad.com/harmonica_ramblings/2004/10/the_long_road.html) You might want to check it out, it relates to this whole "how good am I" thing.

Finally, I'd like to add that I have been writing reviews of albums featuring harmonica for the last 7 years (on http://harmonica.typepad.com and on www.planetharmonica.com) and I feel that there are some elements that may help define what "good" playing means, but not what "musical" playing means. Bob Dylan and Neil Young are objectively bad players by any technical standard of the diatonic harmonica. And yet most often their use of harmonica in their music is more musical than the use of many pro harp players in their own music, at least to my ears...

Hope this helps, keep up the faith !

Ben FELTEN
http://harmonica.typepad.com