my gf is an Irish Dancer, she was doing a promotional competition and they had some "world class" accordian player volunteering but the woman could not play the music at the correct tempo
my gf said that they had the metronome set at the right tempo but the woman kept speeding up after she started making it impossible to dance to
i said "it sounds like shes not a very good musician if she cant keep tempo regardless of the music"
my gf says " shes a world class musician its like trying to make a classical guitarist play rock music, it will be hard for them"
i was like " wtf are you on? classical guitarists laugh at most modern rock music and its simplicity they should have no trouble playing it"
now she wont talk to me cus apparently im an insenstive noitall who makes no sense.

am i wrong or is she?


help me out here ><

Music isn't a contest, it's a form of artistic expression. There is no good and bad, only an experience. Only those who fail to express themselves accurately are inadequate.

She's right in a sense that this person may be a beautiful expressionist on their instrument but they may have been the wrong choice to perform the song for the dance. I would say Scotty Anderson is a world class player. This guy cant read a note on a sheet of staff paper though:

ok well this is not the case
this woman could read music and play it well she just could NOT keep tempo
if you cant keep tempo how can you claim to be a good musician?

Lots of solo performers are like that. They're so used to playing with themselves, they're not used to communicating with other musicians or an out sourced tempo. But when they play by themselves, their tempos can move since they know where everything is going. In an ensemble or playing to backing tracks this would suck though.

Ultimately, it's best to be able to do anything with music. Play in any key, play in any time, be able to move in and out of the tempos/key signatures and get outside the box. At the same time, it is widely accepted in the music world/business to be a one trick pony.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is, this person who was supposed to be playing for this dance gig may make beautiful accordion music. Maybe thousands to tens of thousands of people love to hear them play and dance and drink to their music. You can't argue with that. At the same time, if this person who is loved and enjoyed by many has a poor inner clock, they should not have been picked to perform the songs for the dance.

Ability is not a measurement of expression.