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Someone plays better than you?

Do you:

  • A. Get motivated and practice.

    Votes: 291 60.5%
  • B. Throw up.

    Votes: 9 1.9%
  • C. Sell your instruments and take up painting.

    Votes: 5 1.0%
  • D. Call up Tonya Harding and arrange for a good old-fashioned kneecapping.

    Votes: 34 7.1%
  • E. Drown your sorrows in a bag of baby carrots and ranch dressing.

    Votes: 59 12.3%
  • F. Buy more gear!

    Votes: 83 17.3%

  • Total voters
    481
Most players are better than me. It doesn't motivate me to do anything but enjoy their music. I'm motivated to practice because I want to be a better player, not because I feel like it's a competition.

There are times, however, when I see someone who is so good that I start to wonder if I could have gotten to that level had I applied myself full-throttle when I was young. But it's pointless to wonder, so I tuck those thoughts away and just keep working to become the best player I can be today.
 
Saw a young Japanese / Asian girl on youtube the other week playing a 6 string bass.... she was amazing
did it make me upset? Nope
did it make me want to practice more? Nope
did it make want to sell my gear and retire? Nope

I just thought she was a bit of a freak, then went back to watching porn....which is something I AM good at LOL! :smug:
 
F. Don't care

Honestly, it doesn't bother me. At a show, nobody has the slightest idea what I'm doing. I used to get compliments all the time after playing the AC/DC version of Baby Please Don't Go. I told them "That song is so easy that you could do what I just did." They didn't listen.
Now, I do watch people I realize are really good and see what they're doing. If I can, I might ask them what strings they use, make some small talk. I won't say it doesn't light some small fire under me, because to a degree, it does. But overall, I just want to enjoy the show.
 
Even though I am a man of stubby, fat, slow fingers and limited music theory knowledge, and a self-taught bassist, and even though I want my bass to sound kind of like Jimmy Bain’s on the Dio hits, I listen to the local jazz/blues/R&B station a lot because that’s where I hear a lot of bass players who are better than me, and I find it inspiring.

I don’t always dig the clean, tweeter-equipped 5-string tones I hear there, but I usually hear some killer drums and bass grooving within a few minutes of tuning in...patterns that would not occur to me otherwise.