The Quest for Excellence.....

mahesh3 · Post by **mahesh3** » 07 Dec 2009, 23:01

Watching artists (young, and old) improve over time is something that all of us look forward to. I am always happy when I can detect a minor adjustment leading to a big change in outcome.

What are the factors in someone with middling talent who builds on a technique, and excels?
Why does a promising artist wither away? Given that artists travel as much, and perform as often, how are they not jaded? When do they learn new things? What are the techniques one uses to jump ahead? How do they ensure their improvizations are noticed? How do they avoid failure? Why do some inspire musical passion amongst their followers, while someone else hardly gets a mention?

P.S. I am going to stick to musical capabilities as a measure of improvement, and not popularity as the measure. There are several artists who continually improve on the popularity stakes, but their music content continues to decline. This aspect will not be the focus of our discussion.

VK RAMAN · Post by **VK RAMAN** » 07 Dec 2009, 23:30

open mindedness, willingness to listen and learn continuously, live and sleep in music, practice, practice, practice will improve musical capabilities,IMHO

Rasika911 · Post by **Rasika911** » 08 Dec 2009, 04:21

I feel that every performer today can sing better quality music than they are at the moment. But this would decrease their ability to appeal to a wide range of audience.
There is definitely a difference between those that pursue music for musics sake and those that pursue to improve their musical 'performance'. By trying to make their music appeal to the mass they resort to little gimicks.
Having said that it is noticable that they do learn new compositions from tapes (sometimes you can even tell which version they have learnt

) and they do experiment with new ragas ect. So their is definitely an effort being made to continue their learning.