Is It Important To Play A Little of Everthing?

I interviewed a young musician this week and he plays everything. Many a young musician has told me “I play a little bit of everything” when I asked them their instrument. Not a few, but many over the twenty one years I have been running a music college. They mean it as an accomplishment and I am supposed to be awed like their friends are when they tell me this. I am not awed. A very few people can actually excel and adequately perform live music on many instruments. They are savants, outliers, creative people engineered by God. They are awesome.Most people who play a little of everything do exactly that - they play a little bit on each instrument. Now, they may have a bit of talent in following music and some natural rhythm - enough to cause non-musical friends to encourage them to play multiple instruments on stage nightly - but they do not play these instruments like people play them, usually. Again, some real multi-instrumentalists exist, but not because you can play guitar AND bass AND keep beat on drums. I can do that. Averagely. And I did this week at American Studios. I played each part of the percussion parts on a fun worship song and layered some good things with my sometimes new found skills. I played the Steinway piano on one song and discovered some new parts in there because of the sound.I do enjoy the variety of infinite sound combinations in how you perform every instrument, which is a nuance a lot of people do not get to appreciate without experience hearing it so precisely in a recording studio. Precision is what makes the studio player a rarity rather than an averagely. So, play on, people, as average as you like, but sometimes you don’t actually “play everything."#kensteorts