A Pro Musician Answers Your Questions About Professional Music

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Is there danger of being too good? Many people say they didn't like Steely Dan because it was too precise, for example, or that slick highly produced works are unauthentic or even worse, sterile.

My own example of this is the Hooters, who started with a *wonderful* 5 song local EP that everybody in Philly heard, it just rocked. And then we were all deeply disappointed when they did some of the same songs on their major debut. They had enough studio time to slick-ify their sound, which just ruined the songs, from our perspective.

Then there's, like, Ben Folds, who is clearly quite talented as a player and yet there's a certain lovely imprecision about how he plays. He tours with a grand piano, which must be a constant tuning nightmare, and yet he throws his stool at it at the end of the show.