Thank you you managed to say concisely what I was trying to say above in too many words 
Great musicians can be performers and/or composers. Some people are both, some not.
“Hey @Acecrusher and @Donny I feel your pain. I’ve gotten real pissed on here a few times. I am trying to stay out of a lot of stuff. I know I am aggravating and that causes smack talk. I will say that I don’t respect the YouTubers that play to the Original Album track. That is kinda lame.”
Hey Hanky, I can assure you that I, for one, certainly don’t find you aggravating. Thank you very much for your sentiments but I can assure you I am not in pain. Yesterday, somebody felt that he had the right to attack me personally on this forum, which up until that happened I had always seen as a forum for adults who are serious about music and don’t litter Troy’s forum by posting random drawings. Until yesterday I had never seen a forum member make a personal attack on another forum member. This forum had always struck me as a forum for people who are serious about guitar playing and have the class and maturity to know that if you disagree with someone’s opinions, the correct response is to counter the argument he makes to support his opinions with an argument with which to support your own opinion. resorting to making cheap personal attacks instead, for whatever reason - even if that reason is the person doesn’t know how to form a rational dissenting argument to the original argument put forth - is unacceptable.
Someone who was posting here yesterday felt otherwise. he seems to feel hat apparently class and manners aren’t necessary to co–exist with others in civilized society. I had to let that person know he was wrong. and that unprovoked personal attacks, and unprovoked is the key word there, are unacceptable in a civilized forum in which we all must make an effort to treat others as “comrades in axes” as Troy succinctly put it, so as to make this forum a place where guitarists of different tastes and opinions may all participate and get the greatest possible benefit out of the experience of interacting with each other here.
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"I understand the sentiment. We live in a society where we have been taught (brainwashed would be a better term) that competition is a “good thing” and that we should embrace and participate in competition.
I remember, when I first started playing I made progress fast, and suddenly I was “better” than all my guitar playing friends. This was often emphasized. In a competitive culture we are comparing and judging constantly."
Hello nitro1976, Soory to get back to your post so late. By the way, is your screen name a reference to the 80’s band Nitro with Jim Gillette and Michael Angelo?
Your post raises a philosophical issue, which interests me since philosophy is a great interest of mine. You are correct in stating “In a competitive culture we are comparing and judging constantly.” However, comparing and judging our not a byproduct of our culture being competitive so much as they are simply a necessary component of any rational human society.
You may ask “Why are constant judging and comparing a necessary component of any rational society”? The answer is that we wouldn’t be able to live rationally without doing those things. Humans are the only animals who are unable to survive using only instinct. For us to survive, we must use our minds in a logical, rational manner. Lacking the necessary instincts to survive and thrive on our instincts alone, our only reasonable option is to survive by using rational thought.
Comparing and judging are the results of using our minds rationally. When choosing a home, we must compare the options available to us to be able to judge which would make the best choice for a home. When buying a car we must compare the cars available to us within out price range, compare their attributes as well as their less desirable characteristics to form an overall opinion of which car we judge to be most suitable for our
needs. When choosing a mate there are likely to be several potential mates all competing for us to choose
them and at the same time, there are likely to be several potential suitors all competing for the affections of each of those young maidens, each trying to “win the competition” by trying to convince her that he will provide her with a better future than any of her other suitors would be capable of providing. This puts her in the position of comparing the attributes of each of these men and by comparing all the positive and negative attributes
which they possess, she is thereby able to make a judgement as to whose proposal to marry she will accept.
So you see, being competitive, constantly comparing, and constantly making judgements are not the result of some evil brainwashing scheme. To the contrary, comparing and making judgements are the logical results or rational thought! To refuse to compare and make judgements would be to decide all available homes within our price range will be equally suitable to us, all the cars within our price range will make an equally intelligent purchase, and any available young maiden would make an equally suitable wife! To live our lives that way would be absolutely disastrous, if it would even be possible, which I seriously doubt because of the fact we are rational beings capable of logical thought and I am glad of it!
Hi Ace, you made some interesting points. First about my screenname, I have been using it for years, the Nitro part comes from a computergame I used to play when I was 14. The 1976 part is my birthyear, so unfortunately it’s not related to shredding, that would be cool.
About our philosophical argument, you are right in that we need judgment to function. The problem is the different meanings the word “judgment” can have.
You can judge if the street is safe to cross. But you can also judge someone on the color of his skin.
So if judging is “right or wrong” depends on the context. Everybody has preferences. So there is automatically judgment involved when you have to choose between things.
What I am opposed to is the winner-loser mentality. That there can only be one winner and the rest are losers. This is clearly taught and enforced in our culture, just look at sports.
When “winning” is the goal, there is also something as “losing”, and if you put it that way there is only one winner and the rest are losers. The funny thing is that people are not even using the winner-loser system correctly.
For example, let’s say a child won a chess tournament. We call him “the winner”, but technically he is a “loser”, because he would lose to a grandmaster.
In my opinion it would be much better if a competition would be viewed not as who is better and who is worse, but more like a test of your current abilities.
That is much more true to what it actually is and much more constructive. Instead of classifying coming in second as “inferior” or being a “loser”, you would just see it as a test and objectively observe what needs to be improved and what is working fine.
In music it holds even more true, because everyone argues about why soandso is “the best” guitarist, but unless you define and agree upon measurable criteria, there is no way of deciding who “the best” is.
But again, I know what you mean. If you want to become a session player, and the producer will have a choice out of 10 different players, you’d better be the one that is “better” ,in his eyes at least, than the rest.
There is no other way when you do things for money. Because money has been made to be scarce, you will have to compete for it.
What I meant in my original post is that I see music as a fundamental thing to be healthy and happy, and what I noticed is that because people feel that they are “bad singers” or “could never be famous” they give up on their musical abilities altogether. I think that is a damn shame and that the competitive aspect certainly plays a negative role in it.
Because when you play music or you want to sing, you should enjoy it first and not feeling that you are competing with Yngwie or Bieber.
So I think we both have a point, I just see it from the point of the amateur and general well-being, you see it from the cut-throat environment of the music business.
Amen.
Hey Nitro, Nice post. I see where you’re coming from. it doesn’t contradict the points I made. You’d agree we all compare and judge when choosing a home, a car, and a wife. Of course in the case of the wife, she is also comparing and judging us. So we are in competition with the other men who are interested in marrying her.
I truly like your point about the singer who gives up what could be a promising future as a singer, even if it’s just as a hobby, singing with a band that is a group of friends who get together in someone’s basement a couple times a week and play music together. Maybe they play the occasional keg party or local club date.
When you write of the ideal being seeing what is wrong as in “what needs improvement” rather than making someone a loser to another singer who performed better on the day of the audition, I have a thought I think you may like regarding that. Maybe what you’re talking abut is that regarding the musician, especially the musician who doesn’t have aspirations for a career in music, instead of being in competition with others, maybe the best way to put it is that the singers should be competing primarily with themselves, trying ti outdo their previous performances so rather than become a winner or a loser, they compete with themselves to become the best singer they can be.
On a different note, I have a concern regarding our economy. Our economic system in The USA has always been capitalism and I’ve always been of the belief that capitalism results in competition between businesses to provide the best product for the lowest price. The winner is the consumers. Until recently anyway it has worked extremely well and it’s no wonder we are a country of immigrants. That’s because so many people have been disgusted with their countries’ governments taking a huge portion of their paycheck in taxes, much higher taxes than we have here. Countless immigrants have moved here in pursuit of The American Dream our capitalist economic system has made possible. Yngwie Malmsteen is a great example of someone who claims his success could never have happened anywhere else but in The USA. He had to leave Sweden to make it as a big rock star.
The problem I see arising as of relatively recently is that the biggest companies drive all the medium and small size companies out of business. While our country was in an earlier stage of its growth, there was plenty of room for large companies, medium sized companies, and even the small mom and pop family owned small business to co-exist. More and more though, I see the large companies like Wal Mart building these gigantic stores with prices so low due to savings by buying their goods in bulk, that no medium or small stores can compete with Wal Mart.
What does that mean for our future? Whereas there used to be good opportunity for a man or woman to own a small or medium sized business, and as owner, make a nice standard of living, as the gigantic Wal Marts of the business world swallow up the medium and small sized companies, we’re entering a stage where instead of there being a nice amount of owners of medium and small businesses making good money by being their own bosses, now the Wal Marts will run them out of business, forcing once proud, happy business owners to go to work for the massive corporate stores in only medium or even low level positions where they only earn fraction of the income they made when they were business owners themselves. This results in a tiny amount of business owners who are incredibly wealthy, and then a huge lower class of people making minimum wage or just a little better than minimum wage as they are forced to go tow work for the people who ran them out of business. This basically wipes out the middle class so that all our country will have left is a tiny but incredibly wealthy upper class, and a massive working class who make so little that they just barely get by living paycheck to paycheck without even enough savings to be able to handle a crisis such as their roof springing a leak and having to pay for a new roof or their car breaking down and needing to buy a new engine.
Regarding competition and society:
People are social animals. Viewing every activity as a zero-sum game can have broader consequences. If a primitive human constantly “out-competes” his tribemates to get the best piece of meat from the antelope everybody worked together to hunt, it won’t be long before his tribemates get sick of his bullshit and band together to turn him into dinner.
I’m also reminded of this video about competitiveness and martial arts training:
Couldn’t agree more, Ace. 
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