Decided to start a thread on this because I don't want Scott to feel in anyway this is directed at him. I thought a clean thread on this topic might be more productive.

My take on criticism is this...

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Now, as the target of large regular doses of both good (from my audiences) and not so good (from the Wife/teen age daughters) criticism, I hope I've arrived at a healthy place with all of it.

When I get criticism, I also evaluate the source. If my audience of little old ladies goes on and on about how good I am...that's great, but I consider that different from a peer vocalist/kb guy who says my chord changes on "fill in the blank" were creative and tasteful.

Neither is MORE or LESS valuable to me...but they tell me different things. The little old ladies who are thrilled with my performance confirm for me that I've played the right material...in a respectful and tasteful way and made my audience happy. That's huge...Doesn't matter to me if I'm playing a restaurant or a locked down, memory care unit. My job is to entertain. If I've been entertaining, then its all good.

One thing that I've improved upon is accepting criticism from my band members. Now, not surprisingly the feedback increased dramataically right after I got my first Tyros. I understood they felt threatened and much of their feedback was baseless. However, my sax guy is a great reader of the audience in terms of knowing the right song for the right moment throughout the night. When I started with the band many years ago, I'd screw song selection so bad you wouldn't believe. I also had to admit I had some feelings of intimidation around this guy because he had been playing in Dayton for over 30 years, whereas, I was new to this scene. At first he'd make negative comments about a song I'd called up which really weirded me out. After a couple of nights of this I told him that I appreciated his input...that his ideas were good ones. But the way he was communicating it to me was disrespectful. So, rather than just blow him off...I asked him to get his ideas across to me in a different way. Since then, he gets with me before we start and alerts me to any special tunes that would work well. We rarely have any problems any more because we've been together for almost ten years.

I don't recall anyone posting any feedback of a critical nature of any of my work that's available on my web site...

(www.billcorfield.com)

I sure can, lol...

Every song available has some flaws to it. No question about it. From the oddness of the Tyros 1 harmonizer to some EQ recording issues on a few tunes, etc....What they're intended to do is provide a listener with the general idea of what I sound like. I don't perform any song perfectly. There's always something that I could have done to make it better, more interesting, etc...

To close, I think all Musicians should welcome feedback...but understand that so much of is dismissable. (sp?) Consider all of it for sure, but no matter if its great or bad...I can't get too worked up about it. I do what I do...I like it most of the time, as does my audience...so I'll keep fixing things as I discover them but try and keep the comments at arm's reach...