“The Beatles made better recordings than you’ll ever make on worse equipment than you’ll ever use.”
John Campos
My recording teacher at Western Michigan University had a way with words – he surely put things in perspective in this oft-repeated line.
It’s true – just as it’s true that Mozart wrote better operas than you’ll ever write with a fraction of the resources you have, Picasso made better paintings, Einstein made a bigger impact on physics, and so on.
What do we do, then? We can’t give up just because we’ll never live up to the bar set by the greatest geniuses.
We are, most of us, not called to be the greatest geniuses. We are called to contribute the best we can to this grand tapestry. If it means we’re one-hit-wonders instead of 27-time chart toppers, or write a few good choral pieces instead of 41 symphonies, or paint beautiful dog portraits in pastel instead of Guernica….that’s okay. It’s better than okay. Because our contributions, collectively, will outperform the contributions of any one genius.
The Beatles may well have made better recordings than you’ll ever make. But they’ll never make the recordings that you make.
Make your art. Let someone else worry about the geniuses.