Having an Objective View of Your Abilities

TAE said:
Had no idea that was your "Day Gig" Bob. One of my local keyboard influences / hero's since I was pup has been one for just about the same amount of time.
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yeah, it's an interesting job ......... I had built up a huge customer base in BR and did 3-5 a day 6 days a week.
I know that sounds hard to believe but I had 2500 churches on my account list and about the most I can do is around 900 a year so I was always snowed under.
And, of course, a LOT of repairs added to the time.

I don't tune so much in Florida ..... it makes my hands hurt and they can even cramp up and not hold a pick or even work at all and playing is vital to my life.
So when we moved I didn't try too hard to build a new client list plus that takes a piano store as a base of operations and with piano sales being so low, any tuners are pretty protective of their diminishing accounts.
So here I only do a few a month .... but in BR I was probably the busiest tuner in the nation.

Most I ever did in one day was at a factory piano sale and I did 9!

I do kinda miss my customers though ..... you'd only see them once a year but you became friends and I had interesting customers ..... I even had one from Hiroshima whose grandmother was an atom bomb survivor.
I tuned Huey Piano Smith's piano ..... I was Nick Saban's tuner ..... Governor Edwards ..... that guy that shot and killed the exchange student on Halloween .... ..... a large list of intersting folks.
I do miss that.
 
One of the confounding factors is that it is your brain and imagination that tells you what you are hearing, not your ears . . . something sounds good because you want it to, not because it is.
it's got to be this way because that's how I want it to be, and I refuse to accept that an alternative may be better.
 
Often Go off key, lose control over my voice, understand what I want to hear and get but can’t make it real aka can’t sing the way I understand it should be sang. That’s me .
 
Looking for someone is is willing to be brutally honest about my singing. If I'm bad, you'll save me from heartache and embrassement.

---------- Update ----------

My biggest fear.
 
Does this hit home.

I will not get into a very long, drawn out anecdote, but my ego was put into check many, many times in many places and situations. When I thought I had a handle on something, I did not. In the end, I did not know anything, because I was not making much of anything. Even though I thought I was.

fast forward to today.

Starting from scratch. Bought some gear. Consumer level gear. With fantastic software. However, no fancy software will do doodldy dirt without experience and know-how. I have some idea from the hobby over the years, but I cannot tell you or myself if I have a tin ear yet. I love listening to music, and singing, but that does not mean I can sing or make music. I cannot do either, yet. I can just show you my awesome new plugin. LX480 Complete? Yeah! Slap that on the credit card!
 
Hi there,

I completely understand where you're coming from. I think it's really important to have the right gear for the right project, and to have a well-treated room. However, if you don't have a good ear, none of that is going to help you. I think it's important to develop your ear and your musicality so that you can make the most of whatever equipment you have. I hope that makes sense!
--
Jason Hook. Audio Enthusiast and Software Developer
Remove or Isolate Vocals from any Song 👉 https://www.UnMixIt.com/
 
Like with most things that take skill, playing and recording take practice and patience. Natural ability also helps but I see folks wanting to record music without putting in the work and are looking for the fast track.
 
There was a study about self assessment that came out essentially saying that it take just about as much ability to know if you are good at something as it does to be good at it.

This means that if you are completely hopeless at something, you lack exactly the things you need to know that.
 
Farview said:
There was a study about self assessment that came out essentially saying that it take just about as much ability to know if you are good at something as it does to be good at it.
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So true. They werent good enough to recognize I was better than they were.

Not sure about objective views. Im totally awesome on all the instruments...Im the best.
 
Of course that same study also found that people who were good at something would underestimate how good they were and people who were not good at something would overestimate how good they were.
 
Join the Spice Girls. As a 50 Y/o man..Makes sense in todays gender blender world. Stop discriminating.

Yeah, the people who can play have the confidence.
 
The study isn't about confidence, it's about self assessment. You can know that you are really good at something while still underestimating how good you are.
 
Farview said:
The study isn't about confidence, it's about self assessment. You can know that you are really good at something while still underestimating how good you are.
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Whoa. So I am even better than I thought I was..crazy man.

I invented the electric guitar in 1978. Too far?
 
I think I have an objective view of my abilities - relative to creating music and home recording.

I'm a very mediocre guitar player and still learning to walk when it comes to home recording. Like a lot of jokers - I have some really cool gear but am still learning how best to utilize it. :-)
 
As a home recordist, I am covered for gear; don't feel any need to buy or change anything.
Where the discipline and self-understanding comes in, is in two areas, IMO:

1. Practice: spend the time necessary to really learn to play better. It can be tedious, but it is what gets you there.
2. Play, in some form, with someone better than yourself, preferably a pro. You will learn quickly where you are at by comparison.

A learning experience:
Recently I did a recording where I ordered drums on-line from a professional player, sent him click and bass lines and got a good result.
He wrote me back and tactfully suggested I needed to tighten up my bass playing as I wasn't always in the pocket on the song...

I had something high-quality to compare with in connection with my own song project, and he was right; I needed to re-track.
If you compare yourself only to yourself, you lose real-world perspective.

C.
 
My ears are shot. I was thinking of buying a good set of monitor speakers then asked myself, why bother, they are not going to make any difference anyway with my ears. I never really did any recording, that was left up to people I knew. Since I moved a year and a half ago, and being a loner, I don't know anyone here and the music scene is almost nonexistent for anything but bluegrass and country, so I haven't met any musicians to hang with or work with me. Trying to mix on my own for really the first time I see just how difficult it is. I never really listened to the mix, just the song if you know what I mean. Recently I have been listening to the mix instead of the song. Being old school it is mostly classic rock. The difference between the engineering between lets say, Stones, Beatles and the Moody Blues is striking. The Moodies mixes are really muddy and not very good comparatively speaking. I have heard better mixes from the 50s. If I were one of the band members, after listening to my mix, and say Sgt Peppers, I would have insisted the record company find another engineer. I know most bands under contract at that time had no say in who was running the studio and hiring the engineers but I don't know how the Moodies manager and the studio execs put up with it? As far as ego goes, as a performer, I learned long ago that there is always someone bigger and badder just around the corner and to keep it in check. As a musician I know I am middle of the road and if anything maybe a tad above average. As a singer I am below average. As and engineer I have no clue yet. I think I am a fairly good songwriter and arranger but that also is open for debate. As far as those monitors go, maybe I will buy a good set if someone comes into the picture who has good ears and knows what they are doing. As far as mixes go, I have heard plenty of mixes from the fifties that beat most of the mixes that come out of home studios so I know it is not the gear per se. Of course that is subjective and just an opinion. I will add a question here, how does one know they have a well treated room? I see the old clapping trick, listening for echoes and such but are there any tried and true methods. Identifying a real bad room seems fairly easy?
 
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