Well, it seems to me such aggressive disapproval is pretty transparent hostility. It says way more about that person than you, for sure. If it were me, even knowing that, I would still feel hurt, hurt that there are people like that out there.
Thank goodness you didn't let it get to you. On Jan 16, 2010, at 4:18 AM, <[1][email protected]> <[2][email protected]> wrote: Ed, Right after I came out with my Hurel album, I received a private email from someone who regularly contributes to this list. This was one of the first comments I got about the project. In the rudest, most brusk manner, this person told me A) What an awful job I had done with the repertoire B) How could I be so thoughtless as to use synthetic strings? C) I was being irresponsible to the repertoire and instrument by even presuming to have such a wretched recording out there D) I should just hang it all up right then. This was from someone who was definitely informed about the lute, but constructive criticism it was not. Who knows? Maybe the guy was totally right about all those things, but he knew very well that I was a young guy and that this was my first recording. I knew that the album wasn't perfect, but felt that I had accomplished something just by doing it. Fortunately, it hasn't brought me to too many tears. (I wrote him back a message politely thanking him for his insights.) I don't believe this individual would have ever had the guts to make these statements in an educated public forum. I say again - for those who don't want negative comments on their videos, disable the comment feature on your account. (I believe so few do this because they secretly crave the positive comments.) If you do keep the comments, you have the option of deleting any you find offensive. Chris --- On Fri, 1/15/10, Ed Durbrow <[3][email protected]> wrote: From: Ed Durbrow <[4][email protected]> Subject: [LUTE] Re: constructive critical commentary To: "LuteNet list" <[5][email protected]> Date: Friday, January 15, 2010, 6:03 AM On Jan 12, 2010, at 9:08 AM, David Tayler wrote: I appreciate it when people point out mistakes, but it has to be handled well. For example, there are some videos where people are playing something twice as fast or twice as slow, double or half timing. Now it is obvious in this case that the player is not aware of it, and one *might* send a personal email alerting someone, or then again, not! If I had a glaring error I would probably take the video down and be grateful, or in some cases if it is just a wrong note I would leave it up and say, hey, I played a wrong note. That exact situation happened to me. I had a video up on the ning lute page playing a fantasia by Huwet. I got this comment from Miles Dempster. I very much enjoyed your performance of the Huwet fantasia, played with panache and understanding! This is has been one of my favourite pieces for a long time, and there are a couple of things that interest me about it that might interest you too. Just in case you haven't noticed them.... 1. There is most likely a mistake in barring/flags in the original at bar 35. The theme appears to be played at twice the speed, when in fact it probably is meant to be played at the same speed. 2. Bars 38-43 (with the repeated rising figures) seem to have the main theme hidden in them - Eliott Chapin pointed this out to me. I will send you my own edited version which reflects the above. Best wishes, Miles Dempster I hope you don't mind my putting this up, Miles, if you are reading. I just wanted to show an example of constructive criticism as it should be done. In fact, after playing the passage as Miles suggested a few times, I was sold and took down the video. Couldn't stand listening to the old way anymore. Oddly, I was inspired to learn the piece when I heard a famous player read through it at a master class. He played the bar twice as fast too. Ed Durbrow Saitama, Japan [1][6][email protected] [2][7]http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ -- References 1. [8]mailto:[email protected] 2. [9]http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ To get on or off this list see list information at [10]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html Ed Durbrow Saitama, Japan [11][email protected] [12]http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ -- References 1. mailto:[email protected] 2. mailto:[email protected] 3. mailto:[email protected] 4. mailto:[email protected] 5. mailto:[email protected] 6. mailto:[email protected] 7. http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ 8. mailto:[email protected] 9. http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ 10. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html 11. mailto:[email protected] 12. http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/
