Ramblings From Justin Penney

I'm flighty. I try everything. I play or have played, you ready for this: bass, upright bass, guitar, drums, trombone, baritone, piano, tin whistle, pan flute, cajon, tambourine... you get the idea. In any given day I play bass (both of them), guitar and drums. I've tried drawing, painting, photography, writing, interprative dance... not not really on the dance, I don't dance much.

The only things I feel I have "mastery" of are bass and guitar. I'm not necesarilly impressive on either but I can play anything I want or need to. I can't recall the last time I tried something on these instruments and said I can't. Other than a few esoteric things (super shredders that only play for speed) I comfortably say I can play anything on these instruments.

I'm effortless. I will play in a compromised style to make it harder so that the struggle comes through. I conciously make guitar harder to play when I'm performing. I attribute this to a quote supposedly from Chet Atkins:

Make the hard parts look easy and the easy parts look hard.

When I achieve mediocricy in my other ventures I overlook the work. I've played guitar and bass for 16 years now. Sometimes, especially in high school, I would play 6 or more hours a day. I'm way worse at these than I was at 15 or 16 year old. At that age I could play the shredder stuff, at least on bass. So there's a lot of work in my effortless playing of guitar and bass. I know that, but I forget it. When the last album I mixed wasn't great I'm frustrated at the guys that make them great, they are effortless. When the song I write is "ok" I get frustrated and the great ones.

I just read a forum post by a great recording engineer that talked about practicing. And I had to stop and think about it. He effortlessly makes great soundin grecordings. But he still practicies and advocates just doing things.

In our society it's hard to not be productive. Whenever I record a song I have to think about how it's going to end and where it's useful. Which is a steaming load of crap. I don't have to do that. I just need to do it. Spend the time and get better. The only roadblocks I have are me and the level of committment that I want to put in to it. I just need to pare down my interests.

# posted by Justin @ 11:09 PM