2/13/25 Need Two More Ears?
Most people don’t realize that two ears are not really enough. I mean, they are pretty amazing, when you think about things like how you can tell exactly where a sound is coming from and stuff like that.
But there’s a musical version of becoming “smell-blind.” We can become selectively deaf, where we somehow stop hearing our intonation, or how our bow is actually moving the string.
So, it helps to have some independent ears paying attention.
It’s not that we’re not paying attention, we’re just busy imagining what we want it to sound like, audiating, rather than what it actually does sound like. The sound is getting to our ears, but our brain is busy. It sounds more or less like what we were imagining, so we are OK with that.
The problem is that we are too close to ourselves to really tell what we sound like. We need some objectivity.
Because it takes a lot to be competitive in the music world. You have to be on your game. And any working musician knows that means:
• Looking good
• Playing good
• Being Pro
Which means getting your act together—getting the gear you need, the clothes you need, the tunes you need, the practice time you need, etc etc.
There are lots of capable musicians out there getting great gigs. And all those busy players are taking action to get those gigs—writing emails, calling phone numbers, etc.
If you’re not doing that, maybe ask yourself why not? What is holding you back from picking up the phone right now and making that call?
For a lot of us, it comes down to not feeling ready yet. So, the first action is to take ourselves seriously and get ready.
It’s the confidence of having someone other than ourselves give us that reality check—someone we trust—that knows our playing, maybe works through some stuff and gives us the thumbs up. Those extra ears gives us the confidence to say, “Yes, I’m ready right now and I’m going to send that email.”
Sometimes our ears can play tricks on us, so it’s good to have someone else who you can trust to tell you what they hear.