Beware the Thick Black Line

Consider for a moment the following bits of wisdom:

• At a wine tasting: “We only drink merlot”
• From an online ad for a 16-inch cymbal: “I won't play it 'cuz I only play 18 inch crashes”
• And how about this morsel from years ago: “There’s no place for the saxophone in jazz”

It crops up all the time: the invisible, immovable line that divides the acceptable from the unacceptable. There’s nothing wrong with setting some standards and adhering to them, but sometimes a well meaning guideline morphs into a thick black line that is not only arbitrary, but may be ill-informed, ill-advised, inconsistently applied, and perhaps all of the above.

Now before I get too involved in this, I must confess that I too only play 18" crash cymbals ... except for a couple of 17-inchers that are among my favourites. I don’t much care for 16-inch cymbals either, but the one on my practice kit does the job. Hmm ... I guess if I’d had some hard-core rule in place, I might never have given those cymbals a chance.

Aside from such rules sometimes being arbitrary, they are too rarely re-examined as things evolve. I’m sure glad nobody listened to that early jazz theorist who, I think we all would agree, was pretty clueless about what the sax meant to jazz. Unfortunately, zealots often get it wrong.

Creating a standard and making it an absolute can cut you off from opportunities. The fellow who only plays 18” cymbals is missing out on a lot of great sounds. Moreover, he may not be matching his equipment to the needs of the music.

Rules help us to manage our lives day-to-day, but they need to be re-examined from time to time. Situations change and sometimes so should the rules.  So what do you do when you find a rule that is too restrictive or at odds with your reality? Maybe it should be revisited to see if it needs an update. Or perhaps it's no longer relevant and it's time to toss it aside completely.