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Deep Listening

I often tell my students to “listen deeper”. The more you practice, the better you get IF you are listening to what you’re doing. It starts out simply – listen to your tone, your intonation, your rhythm. The more you listen, the more you hear aspects of your playing that are possibly not what you intended. You carry this further into dynamics and phrasing and articulation. There is no end. You can always listen deeper and hear more things to improve. And then you carry this out into the world and you notice more of the world around you – the tone of someone’s voice, a color in the leaves, a bird call you never heard before, the sound of a bicycle going past your house.

But enough of that – there’s always the Deep Listening Bot on Twitter to stir your imagination.

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Social Media? Onward!

tl;dr

Yes, I’m leaving Facebook and I want my 1000+ friends there to know how to reach me and to let me know how to find them. So – the short version first:

Email: If you don’t already have my email you can write me via this form. When I reply you’ll have my email and I’ll have yours! It’s an even trade. You can also request my phone number, too.

Upcoming performances: If you just want to know where I’m playing then check this page periodically. I try to keep it updated!

Newsletter: For a very sporadic and short email newsletter that lists some of my more interesting performances and maybe even some other interesting stuff (probably no jokes) you can sign up here.

Blog: Not a true “blog” but I do post about things that I think are of interest right here on this site. You can click on the “Categories” or “Archives” drop boxes at the bottom of any page to get an idea.

Social Media? – sorry, you’ll have to read to the end to find that out!

The rest of it….

I joined Facebook in 2007 and before long had over 1000 followers – over 90% of them musicians I had either played with in the past or was currently playing with. Most of them found me – I would only occasionally seek out new “friends” on the platform. There were a few high school classmates, no college friends, and only a handful of family members. In the last couple of years a few non-musicians in the community who had heard me perform started following. 

All in all it was a nice community of folks – I think in all those years I only “unfriended” 3 or 4 people who were posting such senseless stupid stuff that I couldn’t imagine why I would want to associate with them in any way. Oh, and one person who must have spent her entire days playing games on the platform and sharing them in her newsfeed. There were the obvious fake accounts that tried to friend me that I declined. But that was the extent of the people problems. It was nice to get little slices of life from far away friends and old acquaintances – even their favorite recipes and cute cat pics. I can’t really say that I saw any benefit to the marketing aspect of having a FB account as an artist and the “pages” part was even worse. Very limited interface and the audience reach is pretty abysmal unless you pay them money and friends who have tried that route had nothing good to say about it. So, for me it was just the social aspect that had any benefit. 

No, the reason I have left is the platform itself – and the people who run it.  I don’t need to rehash all that’s been in the news about the privacy breaches and the censorship and manipulation and the sheer arrogance of the founders of the company. And those are just some of the facts of life in our corporate controlled country. There aren’t always easy alternatives to doing business with an evil company or entire industry but Facebook is by no means a necessary evil. I think no further explanation is needed here. 

So, this is just to let my friends and followers know that I’d love to stay in touch and I’d love to be able to let you know what I’m up to if you’re interested. The basic contact info is at the top of this post. But I am still active on some other platforms – not much but some. And things could change but currently, if you want to find me elsewhere:

robbielink on Twitter  – It is what it is and sometimes it’s actually useful. 

robbielink @ minds.com – not for the faint of heart. Uncensored, unfettered. You have to learn how to filter out the stuff you don’t want to see (it’s not hard) but there are amazing visual artists on there. Not so easy for musicians at this point but it’s all still a work on progress and a great community of people. I can pretty much guarantee you won’t find anyone you know on there and most folks use pseudonyms. 

robbielink at Patreon – Oh, joy! At some point in the very near future you’ll be able to contribute to my well being and happiness! Page not ready yet but check in at some point in the future. I mean, do you know how much bass strings cost???

OK – I hope to be hearing from a lot of you in the near future. Peace,

Robbie