marksmith
Active Member
What a fascinating thread, with a plethora of mixed views.
I cannot comment directly on Sunday's result, other than the expected names appeared in the results frame. Fairly predictable.
As people on this site know, I never post anominously, or shy away from having controversial opinions, a fact that does little to win friends at times!
Those of us that say it how we see it, tend to attract the strongest responses, as our points often question the established practices and norms, which some may find non-pc or 'uncomfortable'.
My own junior experiences of adjudication (solo contests etc), allows me a minor insight in to the mindset of both competitors and adjudicators.
Firstly, there is no avoiding the fact that we all recognise sounds and styles of individual performers, even within a group or band. We are a fairly tight knit community, after all!
Personal opinions will always exist about what an adjudicator 'expects to hear', often influencing preparation and choice of music etc.
This is up to the adjudicator to reinforce or dismiss, to allay any doubt.
The prime objective is to place the best performances in rank order, but only in your own opinion! This has to be accepted by all involved, it is a matter of trust that no individual biases influence the outcome.
At the solo contests that I have adjudicated, many of the competitors are old friends, ex-playing buddies or past 'rivals' from my own playing days. Does this ever affect my decisions? Never!
They have to trust my integrity and respect my reasons for placing them where I have, always summed up before announcing the results.
If I struggle to separate two players, both being equally musical and technically correct, then it has to be my enjoyment of their performances that makes the difference, most definitely subjective. Will everyone agree with me? Probably not, that really is how it needs to be, trust me.
We are forgetting how to trust one another in modern society but it is a fundamental foundation on which we successfully co-exist.
The result on sunday was maybe a difficult one to rank for the adjudicators but we need to trust that it was made with both honesty and integrity on the day. Otherwise, why bother competing?
I cannot comment directly on Sunday's result, other than the expected names appeared in the results frame. Fairly predictable.
As people on this site know, I never post anominously, or shy away from having controversial opinions, a fact that does little to win friends at times!
Those of us that say it how we see it, tend to attract the strongest responses, as our points often question the established practices and norms, which some may find non-pc or 'uncomfortable'.
My own junior experiences of adjudication (solo contests etc), allows me a minor insight in to the mindset of both competitors and adjudicators.
Firstly, there is no avoiding the fact that we all recognise sounds and styles of individual performers, even within a group or band. We are a fairly tight knit community, after all!
Personal opinions will always exist about what an adjudicator 'expects to hear', often influencing preparation and choice of music etc.
This is up to the adjudicator to reinforce or dismiss, to allay any doubt.
The prime objective is to place the best performances in rank order, but only in your own opinion! This has to be accepted by all involved, it is a matter of trust that no individual biases influence the outcome.
At the solo contests that I have adjudicated, many of the competitors are old friends, ex-playing buddies or past 'rivals' from my own playing days. Does this ever affect my decisions? Never!
They have to trust my integrity and respect my reasons for placing them where I have, always summed up before announcing the results.
If I struggle to separate two players, both being equally musical and technically correct, then it has to be my enjoyment of their performances that makes the difference, most definitely subjective. Will everyone agree with me? Probably not, that really is how it needs to be, trust me.
We are forgetting how to trust one another in modern society but it is a fundamental foundation on which we successfully co-exist.
The result on sunday was maybe a difficult one to rank for the adjudicators but we need to trust that it was made with both honesty and integrity on the day. Otherwise, why bother competing?