I want to thank Nigel for stepping in to institute some grown-up behavior with a banning policy. I am saddened that he has to spend his time to police the forum to ensure its success.

I started to read a post on SZ and saw comments like “you should be embarrassed to post that”, “my beginning students play better”, and I understand why “You” believe it sounds better.

I have played professionally for over twenty-five years and have many years of formal music education starting in grade school and continuing through college as a jazz and classical piano major at Temple University in Philadelphia. Twenty years after college I still study with a private teacher today for classical piano and I am considering reconnecting with a jazz pianist I worked with many years ago. I take music very seriously. There will always be better players than me that I can learn from. With all honesty, I have heard the musical posting of some of the more vitriolic commentators on SZ and I can play circles around them. However, I would only make comments to help them improve.

I say all of this not to brag, but as frame of reference of my background and experience as a musician. In all of my dealings with the many musicians that played better than me that I have been fortunate to learn from I always found them to be humble, constructive, and respectful of my efforts to contribute and improve as a musician. The reason I joined SZ was because I decided to buy an arranger keyboard to be able to explore different genres and sounds and wanted to seek out people with more experience than me in using the instrument. I ask questions to learn, and offer answers and suggestions where I can. Have fun, but be respectful.

So, to build on Nigel’s unfortunately necessary banning policy let me add my lesson on:

How to comment on someone’s music

1. Start positive and be specific
If you are going to comment, first comment on some of the positive aspects that you heard and be specific. “That was nice” or “I really liked that” were guaranteed ways to get yelled at by a professor in college. “I liked the groove”, “I thought your choice of instruments were good”, “I like how you changed backgrounds during the piece” are examples of being specific. Specificity of positive comments set the foundation for specific comments of thing to improve. Unspecific negative comments “it creeped me out”, “it was wrong me” shows the commentator lacks the knowledge of what to actually do to improve the performance. If you can't be constructive and specific don't bother.

2. Be respectful of the effort and know when you are correcting vs. opining
It takes ego to be a successful musician. You need confidence to play and you leave yourself available to potential praise and vulnerable to criticism by sharing your music. Be clear about stating fact versus opinion. There are times that things can be wrong; but unless you are critiquing a classical performance, more often then not you may just disagree or not like it. That is an opinion. Musicians don’t like to hear there is something wrong about their performance. However, they should appreciate and respect comments of what you believe you heard and your opinion on how to improve.

3. Be respectful of the person
Finally, I would like to add a comment to those you like to think they “say it like it is and the truth can hurt” on the internet. Only comment online the same way you would to someone in person. If your “say it like it is” style is disrespectful, I look forward to Nigel implementing his ban policy and hope that you can learn from the experience.

It’s just music, enjoy it, and share it.