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really enjoyed the meditation on time - (can't wait to see a defense attorney arguing Leibnizian time to a confused jury ;-p) - it had me thinking of the experience of time when playing with other musicians. It's been my experience that professional musicians are trained to agree on time when playing as a collective - whereas when playing with amateur musicians it can be very difficult - leading to the music not gelling and sounding off. And while it could be attributed to insufficient muscle memory and inconsistent personal assessment of timing - there's also the unique agreement that a group makes when it comes to where the "one" is. I remember coming into a jam band where they had played together for years and their collective assessment of the "one" was so far behind where I heard it - it took many weeks of very uncomfortable practice to fit in :-)
We've also been playing with distributed listening parties at musicto - there's something just cool about having people from different continents and cultures all listening to and commenting on a track. Aside from the technical aspects we found that we had to establish some behavioral norms to ensure good discussion - the tendency to "judge" would make some attendees uncomfortable and restricted their contributions lest they themselves got judged too. It's still a work in progress and we will be bringing listening parties back this year as our community grows again - this time applying the lessons that we learned last time.
Thank you for writing one of my favorite newsletters :-)
Your comment made me think of how a group of kindergartners still has the beating of every group of professionals in the spaghetti-and-marshmallow challenge. There's always a need for structure, but sometimes it can be better to just let the teamwork flow and not think too hard about what might work best.
really enjoyed the meditation on time - (can't wait to see a defense attorney arguing Leibnizian time to a confused jury ;-p) - it had me thinking of the experience of time when playing with other musicians. It's been my experience that professional musicians are trained to agree on time when playing as a collective - whereas when playing with amateur musicians it can be very difficult - leading to the music not gelling and sounding off. And while it could be attributed to insufficient muscle memory and inconsistent personal assessment of timing - there's also the unique agreement that a group makes when it comes to where the "one" is. I remember coming into a jam band where they had played together for years and their collective assessment of the "one" was so far behind where I heard it - it took many weeks of very uncomfortable practice to fit in :-)
We've also been playing with distributed listening parties at musicto - there's something just cool about having people from different continents and cultures all listening to and commenting on a track. Aside from the technical aspects we found that we had to establish some behavioral norms to ensure good discussion - the tendency to "judge" would make some attendees uncomfortable and restricted their contributions lest they themselves got judged too. It's still a work in progress and we will be bringing listening parties back this year as our community grows again - this time applying the lessons that we learned last time.
Thank you for writing one of my favorite newsletters :-)
Thanks for the thoughtful response here, Andrew!
Your comment made me think of how a group of kindergartners still has the beating of every group of professionals in the spaghetti-and-marshmallow challenge. There's always a need for structure, but sometimes it can be better to just let the teamwork flow and not think too hard about what might work best.