Musician to me is a technical term. A good musician is fluent with and able to read music, move between rhythms, and key signatures, identify themes and variations, and so on. On the drive home last night they were playing the children's song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and it sounded just as you remember, a kid pounding on one key at a time no feeling or subtlety or anything. Then a few notes are added. Flourishes and feeling. Minute later you are experiencing a piano concerto. Which it was. Mozart Variations in key of whatever. That's a musician.
There's flavors of musicians, like session musicians, able to play different styles to suit the music, as determined by the writer and producer. There's a great example of this on The Eagle's Hell Freezes Over DVD where Don Henley is struggling to get the orchestra to sound right and says Its the blues, we have to give them the blues. There's players, able to read and play music off a sheet. There's performers, able to put on a show while playing. There's ones who combine all these skills and more.
So the question what makes for a good musician depends almost entirely on what you think a musician is in the first place.
There's flavors of musicians, like session musicians, able to play different styles to suit the music, as determined by the writer and producer. There's a great example of this on The Eagle's Hell Freezes Over DVD where Don Henley is struggling to get the orchestra to sound right and says Its the blues, we have to give them the blues. There's players, able to read and play music off a sheet. There's performers, able to put on a show while playing. There's ones who combine all these skills and more.
So the question what makes for a good musician depends almost entirely on what you think a musician is in the first place.
