A Music Analogy

I play the guitar in a church band.  I’m not very good.  One year we were playing Christmas Carols in a Shopping Centre and one of our number was a keyboard player we borrowed from a big church.  He was the quintessential artist.  He was a twenty year old music student.  He could play anything he heard and he read at sight.  Not only that but if we had the music written in G he could transpose it to D flat (or anything) in his head and play on in that new key.

 

I’ve said he was the “quintessential artist” but that could be artist as technician.  I don’t really want to make a case that a technician is a better artist than a person who is not technically proficient because my own art akin is to my guitar playing.  Mind you I can play in any key – given a capo and a place to stand.  I play the guitar how I like it – a little bit country and my art is the way I like it too.