I've played alto and tenor saxophone since I was in the 4th grade. I was in concert, marching, and jazz band in high school and college. I haven't really played in any organized group for about 10 years, but I still own an alto, and pull it out every couple of months to blow the dust out and keep the pads in shape, and if I'm feeling exceptionally cocky, I might even drag it to a jazz jam session on the occasional Sunday afternoon or something.
I was also in choir in college, and we did mostly classical choral music. I sing Baritone or bass, depending on the weather, and how hung over I am. :ROFL:
I also play djembe, ashiko, various Afro-Caribbean rhythm instruments, as well as bodhran and tinwistle, and do them all well enough that I've taught drumming workshops.
I've also been attempting to play the mandolin for about 10 years. The operative word there, though, is "attempting".
What has all this musical exposure gotten me? Well, IMO you don't really understand what snare drum attack is all about until you've been doing a solo in marching band on an open field, surrounded by a good-sized drum line in a semicircle. Ten or fifteen snares and a dozen or so toms and bass drums in military-precise coordination, all wailing away in an arc less than 10 feet away from you is a sonic and visceral experience that will be permanently etched into your memory once you've experienced it.
I've had the honor of having Dizzy Gillespie, Leon Redbone, and Lionel Hampton sit in with my college jazz band, so I am probably one of the few people on this forum who can say that I know, without a doubt, what those artists REALLY sound like live, from INSIDE the band...
I've done stereo recordings to 2-track 1/4" tape and 4-track 1/2" tape of classical, jazz and "acoustic" music, so I also have a basic understanding of the recording technologies, and understand how things like different mic's, cables, tape speed, and microphone placement effect a recording's presentation of a performance.
As a musician, I feel that I have an intimate understanding of pace, rhythm, timber, attack and decay, and understand these concepts with an intuitive depth that non-musicians simply cannot have. And this TREMENDOUSLY helps (or maybe harms
) my abilities to enjoy recorded music.
You CAN enjoy recorded music if you are not a musician, just like you can enjoy watching a Formula-1 race if you're not a sport driver, or like you can enjoy watching the America's Cup races if you're not a sailor. You CAN enjoy it as a spectator, but IMO, your enjoyment is fundamentally a speculative and theoretical kind of enjoyment, and at it's base, a form of self delusion, because it is my strongly-held belief that one can never TRULY enjoy something that one does not intimately understand.
--Richard
