Everyone's a Critic: Student Edition

Toby demonstrating how much you really know about other people on the internet.




I am a member of the viola internet group and thereby recieve regular email digests of the most recent posts & discussions burning through the international viola community. Sometimes you learn stuff. Just last week I asked them to suggest some works I could play with a local choral arts group and they totally came through with things it would have taken days to look up on my own. Plus, I got the insider lowdown on what's worth playing: priceless.


But, like anywhere on the internet where two or more gather in the name of some esoteric interest, the viola list is periodically subject to being extremely lame. There's always one monkey, who throws some crap and starts a regular crapdisco. This weekend somebody found a random YouTube posting of a violist's recital and assumed because she was dressed formally and has her own website that she's a pro. It took some digging to see this girl was actually a student, and there's no way to weigh the intention or impact of the flurry of (mostly negative) comments. This got me thinking about netiquette, and specifically that a person's motivation is what is most noticably absent when they hit that send button.

Of course this blindness isn't limited to the internet. This is exactly what makes me nervous about recording anything for public consumption. How sad is that? I already know there is no perfection, but I have hopes of making something I can be proud of, and it's hard to accept that not everyone will like it. Some of them will likely be pretty outspoken about it. I don't want to let fear of that prevent me from creating what I can.

It's funny that I will happily pay a friend $50 an hour to criticize me because it helps make me better, but I cringe to think of accepting it for free from hundreds of violists all at once.