Realizations for 2009

Hope you all had a Happy Holiday Season, and a very Happy New Year!

So for 2009, I have made a resolution not to make any new year resolutions, for fear of breaking them in the near future out of laziness or forgetfulness…

Sometime late last year, or early this year, I read a blog entry from Bay Area bassist Jeff Schmidt on his Myspace page called: Not sucking Donkey Balls Isn’t enough for success. It includes a video of Malcolm Gladwell interviewed by Charlie Rose. Basically the gist of it is that in order to master something you need to do it for about 10,000 hours under the right circumstances… Watch the video and you’ll understand…

Also, last year, I was pondering selling my bass rig in order to get something smaller and less cumbersome to move around, and to get some cash back… Well that sort of happened, but not really… I ended up selling most of my pedals that I don’t use… So I’m left with the following:

Barber Electronics Launch Pad Boost Pedal (my preamp)
QSC PLX 1804 (power amp)
Dr. Bass 1580 (speaker cabinet)

Let me preface this by saying that my band Har Ik Zehr played a show on December 26th for some sort of Paki Cultural/Political Event in Long Island City, Queens… We had to bring all of our equipment, etc… We were promised a 30 minute set, but were cut off after not even the end of our 2nd song… Anyways, we as a band decided that this show never existed… But I came to the realization, that my amplification set-up is fine, it sounds good, it’s a little bigger than I’d like, but it sounds great, and is loud enough for most venues…

Also, to go off on another tangent, I had dinner with Yves Carbonne and his wife last night in NYC… It was so nice to actually meet him in person, and to see how passionate he is about music…

So anyways, more about Yves later… But I’ve come to realize that more gear, even better gear doesn’t make you a better player or musician… More life, more practice, and finding yourself and your own musical voice/style make you a better musician… So, to make a long story short, I better get on with those 10,000 hours of practice…