Baring your Soul

www.goodaboom.com

I've recently begun publishing some of my music on a site called GarageBand. Its a bona fide site for the promotion of bands and musicians, with an advisory board chaired by Sir George Martin, no less. I've also been fortunate in receiving 2 track of the day awards, and a number of favourable reviews. The review system generates a chart, and its all cleverly set up to encourage you to review other bands material.And thats when things can get a little stickyI've received a couple of killer reviews, likening my music to "swimming around in the contents of someone's gut" and "aw! this is boring!...the band makes me cringe!"
Now, they are small minority, the rest of my reviews, I'm more than flattered by, but why is it that the odd bad one punctures our self esteem so effortlessly, that we deflate in moments?
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I'll tell you why. Its because as songwriters, we bare our soul. Even if the subject matter is not always drawn from real life experience, the nature of drawing on the depths of your being to create a piece of music leaves us vulnerable and undefended. Then we put our work out there, naked, for the world to gawk and point at. Some would say you need to develop a thick skin to deal with this, but then I think you would lose something essential to the creative process. I need to feel elation when someone gets what Im trying to do, and if the price of that is misery at the few brickbats that come my way, well, I guess I'll pay it.
I've given a few bad reviews on Garage Band. I'm guilty of forgetting there's a human being at the other end of the line who has to read my criticisms. Now, I always make a point of thanking the reviewer if they've given me a good, or even unfavourable yet insightful review.
Today, I got a message from a guy whose song I reviewed a few days ago.

No matter how harsh the comments are, I feel the song is better for it. Thanks again.
Dominik

I had made many suggestions about how he should change the song, I didn't pull too many punches. He wrote to me to tell me he'd acted on a few of my comments prior to putting the song out on a new CD. The CD is to help the children of fallen American Servicemen. Dominik was a big man to take the criticism, and a big man to make this CD. It's worth baring the soul sometimes.