Posts Tagged ‘bobby ricketts’

The saxophone sound & music of Bobby Ricketts is connecting with a growing audience numbering in the tens of thousands, around the globe… live! Over the past couple of years, Bobby has risen from being “one to watch”, to becoming one of the most exciting, dynamic, contemporary instrumentalists on the international scene today.

Bobby Ricketts is an official Yamaha EU Artist, an endorser of Roland Keyboards and DPA Microphones, a musical director for television, the Creative Director of The Dar Jazz Event, and the initiator of The Band Doctor feat. Bobby Ricketts Music Development Seminars conducted at Tanzania House of Talent in Dar Es Salaam.

.

Literally ages ago back in analog times, I used to sit with a drum machine, a keyboard and a 4-track recorder working on ideas for new tunes. One day I came up with a really cool riff and put it on top of an even cooler beat. It was funky, in a quirky sort of way. I excitedly played it for one of my musician friends then looked at him with great expectation, waiting for his approval. “It’s weird”, he said. “Where’s the downbeat?”

So I dropped the idea, and began working on something else. About 6-8 months later while cruising in the car, radio blasting, I suddenly heard my riff – it was on a track with Prince called “Sign o’ the Times”…

Now I’m not saying Prince stole my idea, I’m just saying we both tapped into the universal groove pool and happened to grab the same riff. The difference is, while Prince ran with the impulse and refined the idea into a platinum-selling song, I let it go because my bud didn’t approve. But I learned an unforgettable lesson:

Have faith in the value of your own ideas.

If it was good enough for Prince, then it was good enough for me… Don’t let others stop you just because your ideas might seem “weird”. Maybe I wouldn’t have refined my idea into a platinum hit, but I can pinpoint the exact moment of when I began to have confidence in my creative impulses to the day I first heard “Sign o’ the Times” on the radio.

I sat up with one of my artist friends a while back giving a pep talk about the creative process using this very same example. “Maybe I’m just not an artist”, he said. “You choose whether or not you want to go down that road” was my reply – and I continued on, saying how important it is to also trust your intuition, follow through on your ideas, and if what you come up with doesn’t produce an outcome to your satisfaction, then you simply keep “digging for the gold” until you reach the desired outcome. It’s a painful, sometimes excruciating process, but the sum of “failures” along the way eventually lead to the art, discipline or craft of being able to create whatever it is you set out to do, at an increasingly higher level until all that moves and inspires you to create also begins to move and inspire the people who experience what you do.

Just thought I’d put that out there… now back to work.

;-) B