I've Seen People Not Have Careers Because Of It | John Patitucci | What Is true Musicianship? 

Hey good luck man! Keep doing what you love when you can, i think that makes life most best (bad gramnar there but it says what i mean really i think!:)

That was my experience as a muso too. Being reliable and respectful is always better than being a virtuoso and a jerk.

Spot on. I cant work with egotistical players no matter how accomplished they are I prefer a band of decent people.

You are right, & it's a shame that you have to give this advice to ego-kids who can't HEAR what's going on.

Well said. Like I tell my students: “Talent is an excuse for the lazy”

Lol!

👍 if we give math 5% the left over 5% could go to jammin 😃

not just showing up... showing up on time!

So...give 120%!!

A lot is just common sense...& not showing up on time is a deal breaker. I mean, c'mon! Just heard JP say how important it is to have rhythm. Amen.

@@jazzpunkJohn's statements prove that common sense isn't so common.

really ? So you know him?

Never heard of him being unapproachable...

@@jrosner6123 Well, now you've learned something...

Yes it looks so wrong! Even 4-string or the ugly semi-hollows he's into now!

??

As a guitarist and a singer

Let's not hesitate here to point the finger at guitarists. Throw rocks at me anyone, I shall stand by my remark.

Wanna get a loud guitarist to turn down? Stick a chart in front of him. (Oldie but a goody)

@@fredericlinden LOL no, not pointing any fingers....hahaha

@@jazzpunk The tried and true..! : )

Lol!

If that's a crack at Chick and Stanley, John doesn't swing it that way. He's pretty forthright about being a Christian.

naah, That's just an excuse for not being successful and then blaming others.

Uhhh….

wtf

@@gligorpecev5199 It is OK Guys there are Drinks and T-Shirts to be sold, get back to work.

What are you talking about bro

@@Junglesmells Thank you for your consideration.

I could turn my amp up to 10 and put my guitar in front of it, but this comment resonates more.

Not anymore, because he had work ethic ;)

Not really. Children learn their craft in order to become superstars as adults, leaving no time to develop proper social skills and overall responsibility like other kids do. Even if they started later, everything gets funnelled into their work. Never underestimate a human being's ability to lose parts of themselves. We're all flexible like that.

Wrong! Many Jive musicians and non musicians can't showup for work on time!😊

Why ? A great example is Hendrix - he was a great player but chaotic on the business side !

Yes this is going to be a real problem. It is going to happen simply because 95% of people who buy music, don't care if it's being played by a real person or not. It's like the McDonalds effect, nobody cares about where the food comes from or how it's prepared, or how utterly crap it actually is, it's cheap, it's quick, and it's functional in satisfying their need for a quick fix. Music is becoming exactly the same. It's only the 5% of real music lovers who actually care about the difference.

It's a real shame that we'll likely lose the ability to perform music the old way and no one will even care, but what's even worse is that those devices we all carry that track our every move and have the capability to monitor every spoken and typed word, every facial expression as we watch influencers... that will have an intelligent watcher behind it that never sleeps, gets bored, or needs paying. No more polling a thousand people to make it manageable for humans to correlate that info. Knowing exactly what people are into, and what they respond best too is gold dust to advertisers, but if you can sell people coke, you can sell them political ideology. AI is going to be the ultimate influencer that can poll every single person, modify the content, note the response, then rinse and repeat until the perfect propaganda state is achieved on a person by person basis. And that person will think they arrived at their opinion via their own free will. That's a mighty lot of power right there. No wonder billions are being invested.

@@simonsimon325 Yes you are completely correct in your observations. What seems to happen with ANY new technology, is : it is never used for the purposes of pushing or improving lives, it is purely to make as much money as possible. Everything is driven by money and profit these days, and AI will serve as a way to make even more money.

It seems very probably. Yes

​@@DjNikGnashersyes

Good eye. We missed that didn't we?

Translate "career" with "making a living", ideally for decades. If you want to make a living based on your musicianship, then these skills are mandatory.

@@marcblum5348 Well, they wouldn't hurt, but then, by and large, they wouldn't HELP either . . . because the opportunities for "making a living" in music are extremely limited!😢

@@mrtriffid Disagree on "they wouldn't HELP either". If you miss'em: good luck and keep your day job.

I know he’s into Scientology, but I’ve never read any bad things about him. Care to share ?

first of all, it is talked about quite a bit. I don't know what you mean when you say it isn't. Second, in my experience it's not as simple as you suggest, where someone is supposedly an amazing musician alone and then gets in front of anyone and they can't play at all. The ultimate answer to this problem is experience. If you try performing once and fail miserably due to nerves, and give up ever attempting to perform, then yes you are not cut out to be a professional musician. Not because of your anxiety, but because you refused to try it again, and then again, and then again, over and over until you were more comfortable with playing in front of people. Very few people are comfortable performing something vulnerable like music in front of people right away. Every legendary performer that seems "born to be a star" has a long history usually going back to early childhood of performance experience in a thousand different situations. I'll now share my experience: I have severe social anxiety and always have. I was shy, and had an unfortunate relationship with my parents that was hyper-critical and made me very insecure. I was in abusive relationships as well. As a pretty young kid I learned bass and picked up the basics pretty quick from my brother, and was right away thrown into playing regularly at a church youth group with him (older brother) and his older friends. The stakes were extremely low so it was a great setting to gain performing experience. It didn't even really feel like performing because it was mostly friends, but I remember I was quite nervous early on. Thankfully bass was a good place to start because I could pretend no one could hear/notice me and it was maybe half true lol. The older musicians really liked playing with me cause I practiced a lot at home and they'd throw stuff at me on the fly and I could pick it all up quick. By the time I was in high school I had already gone on a small church tour, played the biggest church events in the city, and performed probably a thousand times. I started playing guitar in high school, and became obsessed and practiced constantly. I decided to go to music school cause I wanted to find some way to be a professional musician. The stakes were much higher, every student is judging you, every prof is judging you and can hear all your weaknesses and mistakes. I was very anxious and struggled to perform well, especially on juries which were all alone in front of a few profs. My guitar prof knew I could play better than I showed, but I just couldn't get out of my head. But over 5 years, I had to perform multiple times a week in musical settings that were constantly changing, every imaginable genre, other students messing up, having to salvage horrible failures together. All great performing experience even though I was still struggling to show my best. There was also very little time to learn the music we'd have to perform because there were just so many classes/ensembles and way too much workload to reasonably prepare. I started playing gigs eventually, and then after graduating I moved back to my home city during covid which was awful. I made some connections in those years and by the end was playing for a couple artists in the city. Met more and more people, more gigs, and now I am very busy with my career and it's amazing. And now the important part. As I've had more and more work with higher stakes, I have had to learn what it takes to play my best no matter what. I struggled the first year after covid with sometimes playing well on gigs, and sometimes just not being able to get out of my head and not doing so great. Not messing up the music bad or anything, just not able to get in "the zone" that brings out the best playing with a band. Remember, I was having this issue at 25 having already performed regularly since I was 12 and gone through a whole performance degree. What I learned eventually is that preparation is everything. If I show up to a gig knowing without a doubt I can crush these songs, my mindset is going to be "just have fun and vibe with the band" rather than "oh fuck I hope I don't screw up that part I know is difficult for me". And the only way to have that confidence without it being fake is to practice that part that's hard so many times that I could do it with a gun to my head, or in front of the whole word and not batt an eye. This is the most important thing I have to say, and really is the answer in my experience. Most people don't realize just how many times you have to play something perfectly until it becomes impossible for you to ever screw it up. Most people get something right and then go nice I've got it. Then they get to the gig and the nerves hit and they crack and mess it up. If they had practiced that part 100 more times even after they already got it right, they not only would have the confidence of knowing they really can play it, but also no matter how nervous they get, their muscle memory would take over. I have been extremely nervous and watched as my fingers totally messed up a part I thought I knew far too many times, but I have also now had the experience of being just as nervous, but watching as my hands perfectly played a difficult part I practiced so many times most people would think I was wasting my time at that point. The reality is, everyone gets nervous. Even world touring musicians. It never fully goes away because when we know the stakes are high our body responds as though it's a survival situation. But just like a combat veteran, they more you're placed in survival situations, the better you get at keeping cool and performing no matter what. Performing is simply hard, and takes a long time to get good at. But you will never perform how you want to if you never prepare 10 times as much as you think you need to. I sometimes have gigs come up where I just don't have the time to prepare as much as I know I'd need to in order to nail everything, and when the gig comes and I inevitably flub a few things, I know longer get down on myself and think I'm not cut out for this life. I simply recognize that I needed 20 more plays of the song and so the inevitable happened. This job is high stakes because you can get fired at any time, and you always need to prove yourself to keep getting called by that person. My "hack" is simply preparation way beyond what most people (or I originally) assume is necessary. It means I spend way too much time working on songs for gigs that pay not very much, but I understand I am in the early stages of my career and that is the reality until I have way more experience and can learn things perfectly much quicker because of all the other similar stuff I've played. Eventually everything overlaps and your chops cover pretty much everything. I know this is the stage where I have to prove myself constantly to get any work, and eventually I'll be playing stuff I already know much more often rather than having to learn 30 new songs a week. Anyways sorry this is long, I hope I've made my point. I still have social anxiety, and I still get nervous every performance. But I've made my dream life work because I've stuck it out and not quit because it was scary, and I feel like my story is a good example because I had an unusual amount of performance opportunities as a child and yet my performance issues still persisted due to how anxious I am and because it took me a while to realize what learning a song well enough to perform it actually means. I've learned you need to play a song probably 50 times perfectly on your own to expect yourself to perform it well, and probably 100 times for you to really know it well and get to the deep stuff like the intricacies of the time feel (I'm not talking about extremely simple songs where that number would be lower).

Thanks for sharing. If you're ever near southern Wisconsin let's play a gig!

@@danielnemez3537 I appreciate the essay, it took a lot of effort to read through, because youtube comments are so narrow. While I appreciate your experiences, what has happened to you, how you deal with performance anxiety, and what works for you, only applies TO YOU. It is not as simple as 'stick it out and overcome it' for many people, including myself. I have played guitar for decades, and practiced pieces thousands of times. I can play them perfectly alone, but as soon as I have an audience, or even a camera pointing at me, I start to shake and my mind becomes blank. This is also an issue for many much more experienced and talented musicians than I. One example was Jackson C Frank, and amazing talent in the 1960's, but only recorded one album, and he had to have a sheet around him blanking everything off in the studio, in order to somehow get through it. He couldn't gig because he was so nervous, and died on the streets homeless and penniless. So thank you for the essay but your experience is only YOUR experience and certainly does not speak for anyone else.

god but which one?

@@rinahall I do it for my garden gnomes, they love it, and they all join in :)

@@TractorCountdown 🤣🤣

Disagree. What you're preaching is 19th century romanticism. If you want to make a living based on music, have a family and be a musician at the same time, you have to develop a certain work ethic. Like any other professional.

This is a refreshing take. I love to see it, and totally agree, aside from the work ethic part. Work ethic isn’t tied to ego.(for myself) It’s an extension of my love for music, to better understand and implement it. By work ethic I mainly just mean practice and commitment. I don’t do group stuff or gigs, but when I did in high school I worked hard to make sure I wasn’t a weak link, not just for myself but for the love/sake of the piece. I derived my sense of work ethic from martial arts and applied it to music. It can be from ego, but it doesn’t have to be.

@peterg5383 yes, and? What makes you think all I do is classic rock? Nevertheless, the most successful and popular bands that fill up large venues and stadiums are largely classic rock bands. Trust me, some free form jazz wankers playing bass like a lead guitar are NOT selling out a stadium, I guarantee! I have played full time gigs aboard major cruise ships covering many genres of music. I have played reggae with Jamaicans. Gospel music in African churches. And in tribute bands to Led Zep, U2, Disco/70s, and currently playing to sold out theatres with an Elton John tribute. The only people who want to hear bass solos are other bass players! I’m not there to impress other Muso’s, I’m there to entertain the non musicians who want to hear and sing along with their favourite songs.

Not really sure if this comment is a rag on John Patitucci or Joe Biden. This video was Mr. Patitucci discussing work ethic, of which Patitucci and Biden have in spades. Maybe that’s why they are both successful.

@@zenlandziplineIf Biden is successful, I want to be a loser.

@@Spookdookin that’s fine…you can be whatever you want to be. I would guess most people watching this video want to be, or have interest in, becoming successful musicians. There are probably 50,000 political talk channels on RU-vid. Some people have interests other than politics. I would guess that’s why they are here for this video: it’s not about politics. Why do you feel the need to bring up your political views to the comments section of a video that has absolutely nothing to do with politics? Some people want to get away from that. I understand your side is losing badly, but I don’t think you’re going to change peoples minds about their political beliefs and choices by coming to a video about playing bass guitar and making a childish comment about our president.

Time and groove! 👍🏾