Thanksgiving week is upon us and I was just thinking about how thankful I am to be a musician and for all the incredible music that we have available to us. It’s really a great time to be a Live Musician with all the fantastic technology available to use in the creation of new music. The digital age has given us the ability to build affordable and extremely powerful digital audio workstations. Computer and audio interface hardware is very affordable and there are some fantastic software packages that give us unprecedented control over our music. It really is a great time to be a musician so here are some things I’m thankful for to celebrate this Thanksgiving.
I’m thankful for all the great musicians that came before me. Everyone from the first native drummers to Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and all the great classical composers. I’m thankful for the American bluesmen that created one of Americas greatest styles, the blues, which of course led directly to my genre, rock-n-roll. I’m thankful for all the great Jazz Musicians that brought technical playing on modern instruments to all new levels. I’m thankful for my guitar playing heroes like Jeff Beck, David Gilmour and Pete Townshend. All of the heroes of Rock-N-Roll have given us such great examples of where we can go with our art. I also love how young musicians just keep pushing the skill level higher and higher.
I’m thankful for modern recording technologies giving us the ability to experience so much great music. I take for granted that I can turn on the radio and choose from dozens of genres of recorded music to listen to. My MP3 player is loaded with thousands of songs that I can listen to any time I want to. The recordings are getting better and more detailed as time passes and I’m thankful to be in the thick of it.
I’m thankful to have such a great group of musicians to play music with. I have a lot of musician friends and we make some excellent music together. I’ve got a lot of recorded music that I’ve made with other musicians that I hope will last long after I’m gone. I’m thankful to have a band that will get up onstage with me and bring an audience to its feet and fill the room with good music and good times.
I’m thankful for the fans of live music that come out to hear my band play. There’s nothing as great as having people come up to you after a show and tell you how great you played. It makes all the hard work and preparation worth it when you see how happy your music makes other people.
So I’m wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving this week and I hope all you musicians out there can remember to be thankful for being part of the best of all the arts, music!