Dropped My Pick…

The following is an illustration of the point I made in I Trust Myself And Keep Playing, which was,

“I am the least qualified person to judge my own playing because, by definition, I cannot be objective!"

I rarely drop my pick, but at 17.29 seconds into a Bob Marley song, I dropped my pick.

Dropping my pick is so rare, I’ve gotten out of the habit of having a spare within easy reach. Even so, I dropped my pick.

The looper was recording. The livestream was streaming. I had to instantly think about several things at once and make some decisions.

1. The first decision was whether or not to stop the song and start over after recovering my pick from the floor. I decided to not stop almost instantly. The show must go on!

2. I had to think about what I had to do to recover the time and maintain the feel without a pick.

3. I had to decide whether or not to keep the looper recording. Would the sound and the feel I was achieving without the pick serve adequately as a backing track for the solos? Not to mention the fact that the looper had recorded the glitch when I dropped my pick and so would play it back during the solos! I decided I would keep the looper recording.

4. A second later I decided to transition the looper from record to playback at the end of the first chorus, cue the sax player to solo, at which time I could quit playing and recover the pick from the floor so I would have it for my solo later.

5. All while continuing to play without the pick AND not screwing up the vocals!

Numbers 1-3 happened in a split second. Literally. Less than a second.

But to me, at the time, it seemed like forever. It felt like a major fuckity-up, a train-wreck recorded for playback by the looper while live-streaming for all the world to see.

The next day, I went to my feed to review the stream and see how bad it was, and possibly delete it from my Facebook page.

Once again, this is the latest lesson among hundreds, maybe thousands, of incidents over the course of my last 50-plus years of performing; my immediate feeling and perception of the issue was totally inaccurate and thus irrelevant to the reality.

I don’t think the sax player even noticed.

Based on my experience and training, I ignored my feeling, trusted myself and kept playing.

There was a very slight break in the time, and the tempo was slightly slower for a couple of bars until I adjusted to the absence of the pick.

It wasn’t so bad; see for yourself. I dropped the pick at 17.29 seconds, between the words, “get together:”

The lesson here? Don’t judge yourself while you’re playing. You’re the least qualified. If you just can’t help yourself and make a judgement anyway, ignore it.

You’re the least qualified to judge.

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