Funny how things go...

[dunlustin]

" people can become too obsessed with being good at something"
Oh yes!
I was once accused of being a 'dabbler.'
They thought it was an insult....

 

[JeffJetton]

I sometimes think people can become too obsessed with being good at something.​

Well, I think it's usually fine for someone to aim for excellence in their own endeavors at least (while keeping their nose out of other people's).

But yeah, it is interesting how music--or really art in general--is so often seen as something one has to be "good at" in order to deserve to do it. There are so many other areas where this same goofy idea never applies... I'll never get a job at a Michelin-starred restaurant, but I'm still allowed to cook dinner most nights. I'm a mediocre chess player at best, but no one's ever told me I should give up playing. Your typical neighborhood 5K race is almost entirely people who won't wind up on the winner's podium at the end of it.

Even worse is when the player cultivates that mindset for themselves. How many people, when you tell them you play an instrument, respond with "oh I used to play [fill in the instrument] when I was a kid, but I gave it up because I wasn't any good." What a shame.

I have not shared what I normally play, which is traditional Scottish music on a Stradella bass accordion. [...] However, maybe I will...​

As a fan of traditional Scottish music on a Stradella bass accordion, that idea certainly gets my vote!

 

[OuijaBoard]

A couple of years before the pandemic I started playing PA and CBA with a traditional Scottish fiddlers orchestra in my area that also includes other instruments. I joined after many years of playing in one of my chief genre obsessions, traditional Irish, which I've played at times on those instruments as well as bisonoric button accordion and concertina. I started up with the Scottish to have a setting to play in free of the deafening noise of the pub settings where unfortunately Irish sessions tend to occur.

For Scottish playing I continue to adhere to the aesthetic I learned and respect in the Irish world, which is that the Celtic traditional genres are chiefly melody music. Loud bass chords and crashing Stradella bass vamping are unwelcome and also hideously intrusive as well as aesthetically ugly in that context. The epithet "session-wrecker" is not infrequently employed about oblivious PA players. There is a lot of stigma and hostility to unisonoric accordions in that subculture, but it is like dog poop left on your front yard by passersby. The fault is with the owner, not the animal.

Stradella basses are great for waltzes, tango, oompah, klezmer, much Balkan. But they are horrid in the traditional Irish setting. Now, Irish "showbands" or some of their Scottish equivalents, those settings could differ. But traditional sessions or traditional ceili dancing . . . . leave the Stradella rhythm and any chord noise at home.

 

[JerryPH]

Well, I think it's usually fine for someone to aim for excellence in their own endeavors at least (while keeping their nose out of other people's).

As a fan of traditional Scottish music on a Stradella bass accordion, that idea certainly gets my vote!

Hard yes to both for me!

 

[saundersbp]

For Scottish playing I continue to adhere to the aesthetic I learned and respect in the Irish world, which is that the Celtic traditional genres are chiefly melody music. Loud bass chords and crashing Stradella bass vamping are unwelcome and also hideously intrusive as well as aesthetically ugly in that context. The epithet "session-wrecker" is not infrequently employed about oblivious PA players. There is a lot of stigma and hostility to unisonoric accordions in that subculture, but it is like dog poop left on your front yard by passersby. The fault is with the owner, not the animal.

That made me smile, and I couldn't agree with you more: stradella bass is seldom a good friend of these great tunes.