Please excuse the double post, but I just finished reading "White Night", the ninth book in the "Dresden Files" series and I came across a quote that really struck a chord with me (no pun intended) that I felt deserved its own post and belonged in here:
"I started playing. Beautifully. It wasn't a perfect performance, a computer can do that. It wasn't a terribly complex bit of music. My fingers didn't suddenly regain their complete dexterity, but the music became alive. My hands moved with a surety and confidence I usually felt only in bursts a few seconds long. I played a second piece, and then a third, and every time my rhythm was on, and I found myself seeing and using new nuances, variations on chords that lent depth and color to the simple pieces I could play, sweet sadness to the minor chords, power to the majors, stresses and resolutions I'd always heard in my head, but could never express in life."
It mostly stuck out to me so much because of the "It wasn't a perfect performance, a computer can do that." and then the "but the music became alive" bit. I've known a lot of good musicians who become too obsessed with perfection in their playing (which isn't even completely possible) that they stop having real passion for what they do, they forget why they liked it in the first place, it just becomes about being good or being the best and nothing else, and eventually I stopped enjoying hearing them play even if they were very skilled because their playing was too mechanical, there wasn't any feeling or life when they played. I'd rather have listened to someone who obviously still loved playing and was able to put feeling and life into their music.
Improving your music on a technical level obviously has it's place, there's more you can do and play and express when you have the skill to back it, but it's important to not loose sight of why you started playing and loving music in the first place.
Maybe there are some people who it always was just about being technical skilled, and not about the art or the expression or feeling, and there's nothing wrong with that if that's what you want out of it. I just find it sad and disappointing when a musician who once had a love of love and passion for what they did looses it for the pursuit of perfection.
I mean, being able to put life and feeling into your music, like the quote says a computer can play something technically perfect, but putting life and feeling in music is something only we can do. It's why live performances are so magical. You get to see and feel and hear that life and feeling and passion first hand. It's great, more than great, it's wonderful.
A music teacher I had in high school once said what's so great about music and really any of the performing arts is that they're a living, breathing art form. No two performances are going to be exactly alike because humans can't perfectly replicate everything from another performance, something no matter how minuscule is going to be a little different or off, but that's what makes them alive and great and a great thing to be a part of.
