I really haven’t been keeping up with this blog much for the same reasons that I still haven’t completed any of the new, shiny video games I bought with my hard-earned adult money: I’m too busy living an active and fulfilling life in order to do fun things anymore.
Finding the balance between child and adult me is the key to true happiness now.
Seriously though, I have been fortunate enough to be working full-time as a music educator in addition to having quite a few musical projects outside of my day job to work on. Last December marked it to be about a year since I began being active on the local music scene and really started gigging with regularity. I’ve had countless, interesting experiences within that time and have learned a great many things during that period that really only hit you properly when you’re in the real world doing real things. I’d like to share five of those things in order to help out people around my age who are looking to maintain an active musical life in addition to trying to hold a stable, regular job.
…or if you’re an older person who has already gone through the dance of life but really enjoys laughing at younger people struggling.
#5 - Improvisation is the Most-Valuable Skill I Picked Up in School
One of the biggest struggles I dealt with while still in music school was the balance between classical and jazz studies. In my studio, it was expected that the jazz-focused players not only study classical music but be just as good at if not better than the classically-focused players. Sure, you could argue that the performance side of my studies would imply that you can be super-flexible and play any style of music at the drop of a hat because that’s-what-you-signed-up-for-so-stop-whining, but classical music and jazz music are both very deep, very involved forms of music that take a lifetime to truly master. Squeezing two lives’ worth of mastery into one college period is quite an undertaking.
One of the biggest struggles I dealt with while still in music school was the balance between classical and jazz studies. In my studio, it was expected that the jazz-focused players not only study classical music but be just as good at if not better than the classically-focused players. Sure, you could argue that the performance side of my studies would imply that you can be super-flexible and play any style of music at the drop of a hat because that’s-what-you-signed-up-for-so-stop-whining, but classical music and jazz music are both very deep, very involved forms of music that take a lifetime to truly master. Squeezing two lives’ worth of mastery into one college period is quite an undertaking.
Retired people have all the money and all the free time to master everything.
Having been working frequently at the musician game in the real world, my studies of jazz improvisation have been the most essential to me in terms of being able to take on a wide variety of projects and be able to function well in them. Were you really into working on a single three-movement piece for five months before you perform it? Many musicians have never seen a sheet of written music that they understood in their entire lives, so you better be able to play a cover by ear quickly or make something up that fits. Want to hook up with this wedding band and learn 500 tunes in two weeks so you’re ready to start working with them? Unless you’re a musical genius who can hear a song once and play it perfectly without much practice every time after, you’re probably going to be winging some things here and there.
The skills and strategies I learned in music school when it comes to improvising in music have given me a decent enough ear to figure out a part if I’m not handed one on a piece of paper. They’ve given me the flexibility to listen to types of music I’ve never played before and to figure out how I can fit into it. They’ve given me the knowledge that fitting within a musical genre can be much more important than blasting everyone away with your fancy jazz licks. Speaking of jazz…
#4 – No One Knows What Jazz Actually Is (Including Me)
The skills and strategies I learned in music school when it comes to improvising in music have given me a decent enough ear to figure out a part if I’m not handed one on a piece of paper. They’ve given me the flexibility to listen to types of music I’ve never played before and to figure out how I can fit into it. They’ve given me the knowledge that fitting within a musical genre can be much more important than blasting everyone away with your fancy jazz licks. Speaking of jazz…
#4 – No One Knows What Jazz Actually Is (Including Me)
Pictured: Any Jazz and Blues Festival (when there’s only blues)
This is one that you get warned about in music school, but you don’t realize the extent of it until you’re out and about, Sauerkraut (I enjoy rhyming things randomly as well as assigning strangers nicknames). On the surface, if I see any event marked as a “jazz” event (festival, jam, or any other musical gathering you can think of), I would expect to go to it and to hear jazz. However, many times what people call jazz is just anything that isn’t heavy metal, straight-ahead rock, or classical. The biggest offender of this is blues-rock at a “Jazz and Blues” Festival. I’ve gone to events hoping to listen to some live jazz by performers I’ve never heard before, but I’ll instead get a 12-bar blues done in a rock style with a country twang blasted at me for however long I stick around.
Pictured: Not a jazz band.
This doesn’t always apply, but it happens frequently enough that if you’re interested in going to a live music event marked as “jazz” in order to listen to jazz music, definitely check out the performers ahead of time to make sure that they’re playing the specific style of music you’re picturing yourself stylishly bobbing your head to while sitting at a table alone with a single lit candle. While there isn’t anything wrong with playing, listening to, or enjoying blues-rock, it’s not for everyone. I fall into that “not for me” category.
Although it did make me think…what IS jazz? I had a jazz history course in college where the instructor challenged us to define it comprehensively, but it’s much harder to do than you would think. There are so many genres that fall under the “jazz” umbrella, it can sometimes be difficult to really know what you’re talking about if you (even correctly) label someone as a “jazz musician.” Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, and Michael Brecker are all jazz saxophonists I enjoy, but they play very different kinds of jazz in very different ways. A band I play with might do a song and refer to it as “jazzy,” but when is something just swinging and when is it swinging in that certain way that makes it jazz?
These are the questions. Other questions may include…
#3 – Free Gigs…to Play or Not to Play?
Although it did make me think…what IS jazz? I had a jazz history course in college where the instructor challenged us to define it comprehensively, but it’s much harder to do than you would think. There are so many genres that fall under the “jazz” umbrella, it can sometimes be difficult to really know what you’re talking about if you (even correctly) label someone as a “jazz musician.” Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, and Michael Brecker are all jazz saxophonists I enjoy, but they play very different kinds of jazz in very different ways. A band I play with might do a song and refer to it as “jazzy,” but when is something just swinging and when is it swinging in that certain way that makes it jazz?
These are the questions. Other questions may include…
#3 – Free Gigs…to Play or Not to Play?
This guy’s actually asking Bruno Mars to give that football back to him because…
Bruno Mars was not paid to play at the Super Bowl Halftime Show last year. Some of my musician friends may have already known this, but the big-time musicians who get asked to play the halftime show don’t get paid for it. Well, the infamous “they” who run all things belonging to The Man claim that the performers get paid in publicity, but seriously? You’re going to pay each of the players more cash in a year than normal people (like myself) might ever make in their entire lives, not to mention it being an event that has millions of dollars floating around, but you’re not going to pay the musicians for a service that is one of the defining characteristics of the event?
Not that these pop stars generally need financial support, but it’s the principal of the matter. They certainly don’t need the exposure, otherwise they wouldn’t have been asked to play in the first place.
Sadly, “pay-to-play” is far too common on the local music scene. I am extremely thankful for the gigs I get that pay fairly, because most of what I’ve done so far has been either for free or involved me paying out of my pocket (travel cost, time, gear, etc). Even musicians who have made a living on performing their whole lives are feeling the pain now, guys who are quite literally masters of what they do often getting nothing in return for their life’s work. A lot of places will say that the exposure the musicians get is compensation enough, but unless you’re giving me the level of exposure the Super Bowl would give me, you should at least pay for my parking and maybe one drink.
Not that these pop stars generally need financial support, but it’s the principal of the matter. They certainly don’t need the exposure, otherwise they wouldn’t have been asked to play in the first place.
Sadly, “pay-to-play” is far too common on the local music scene. I am extremely thankful for the gigs I get that pay fairly, because most of what I’ve done so far has been either for free or involved me paying out of my pocket (travel cost, time, gear, etc). Even musicians who have made a living on performing their whole lives are feeling the pain now, guys who are quite literally masters of what they do often getting nothing in return for their life’s work. A lot of places will say that the exposure the musicians get is compensation enough, but unless you’re giving me the level of exposure the Super Bowl would give me, you should at least pay for my parking and maybe one drink.
To be fair, you can’t put a price on the memories brought on by that free second ticket to Six Flags.
As a drummer friend of mine says frequently, “I don’t do this to get rich, but I certainly don’t do this to be taken advantage of.”
Bruno Mars really put on an awesome performance. You can check it out here if you missed it.
NOTE: The rough draft for this blog article was written before Superbowl 2015. Though I don't sports often, I did watch part of it to take in all of the musical aspects. I found Katy Perry's performance to be very well-representative of her music. Colorful, but lacking actual substance.
#2 – People Expect Magic to Happen
Imagine that you’re the head of a construction company. You have a client who wants your crew to put up a new shopping mall off the nearby highway. What are some things you’d like to know in that situation? I’d imagine you’d like to know where the building should go, how big it should be, what kind of budget you’re working with, when are you allowed to start building, when do you absolutely need to be finished by…you know, things that let you do the basics of your job.
Bruno Mars really put on an awesome performance. You can check it out here if you missed it.
NOTE: The rough draft for this blog article was written before Superbowl 2015. Though I don't sports often, I did watch part of it to take in all of the musical aspects. I found Katy Perry's performance to be very well-representative of her music. Colorful, but lacking actual substance.
#2 – People Expect Magic to Happen
Imagine that you’re the head of a construction company. You have a client who wants your crew to put up a new shopping mall off the nearby highway. What are some things you’d like to know in that situation? I’d imagine you’d like to know where the building should go, how big it should be, what kind of budget you’re working with, when are you allowed to start building, when do you absolutely need to be finished by…you know, things that let you do the basics of your job.
There’s no “I” in “Team,” but you sure as hell better have some blueprints.
I can’t tell you how many times that either myself or a band I’m playing with has been “hired” for a gig but isn’t given a complete set of details before the show starts (if at all). One of the best/worst examples of this type of situation that sticks out in my mind was a marathon I was supposed to play for in a city that shall not be named to protect the innocent. The setup was simple: the band would be one of several that would set up at various points on the route that the runners would follow. We would play as people ran by for the event. It wouldn’t pay, but it was quite literally forced exposure of the then-new group to potentially hundreds of people in a captive (though passing) audience.
A bit like this, only the marathon runners were in the car, and we were the monkeys, metaphorically-speaking.
I never did find out how all of that went. After weeks of asking where we would set up and where we should park and unload our equipment with no response from the people who booked us, the band drove all the way out to the city in question just to find out that the event apparently only existed in the minds of the one contact we had. This one contact conveniently wasn’t in charge of parking on the day of the event, so, after finally responding to a phone call, they gave us the number of the person who “was.” The phone number was that of a local radio station who had no idea what marathon I was talking about. Also, an acquaintance who was working as a police officer in the town had never heard of it (although apparently there was a Beer Festival that would be going on later in the day that sounded quite interesting).
When it’s five minutes before you’re supposed to be playing, and you’re beginning to question whether or not the gig even exists, you bail. We bailed and had a delightful brunch at a diner on the way home. I did get a voicemail later apologizing for the confusion and asking me to call them back to figure out what happened, but I never called them back. I don’t know what magic was supposed to happen, but apparently I didn’t have a spellcaster in my party that day.
When it’s five minutes before you’re supposed to be playing, and you’re beginning to question whether or not the gig even exists, you bail. We bailed and had a delightful brunch at a diner on the way home. I did get a voicemail later apologizing for the confusion and asking me to call them back to figure out what happened, but I never called them back. I don’t know what magic was supposed to happen, but apparently I didn’t have a spellcaster in my party that day.
…or kneel at the correct random dead end until a tornado came along to whisk me away to the correct location.
Date. Time. Location. Parking availability. Compensation (if any). How compensation is being distributed (if there is any). What type of music. Any special requests. What gear is already there. What gear needs to be brought. Who the main contact is for the musicians. The music doesn’t just magically appear and disappear. It’s a job that requires basic information to be able to function. Information is one of the most powerful things in the world, especially considering that…
#1 – Networking is Your Number One Priority
I can’t stress this one enough. It literally is who you know. You can be the most technically-advanced musician to have ever lived, but if you don’t have anyone to play with or anyone who will hire you to play solo, you’re being technically-advanced in your room (and not in the fun way). You can be the most promising young educator to walk all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed into the world, but that job is going to the nephew of the previous teacher in the position that you want. You could be a great musician and have your stuff together in a week or less, but you’re not getting the gig if there’s a six-hour bus ride involved and you’re a jerk.
#1 – Networking is Your Number One Priority
I can’t stress this one enough. It literally is who you know. You can be the most technically-advanced musician to have ever lived, but if you don’t have anyone to play with or anyone who will hire you to play solo, you’re being technically-advanced in your room (and not in the fun way). You can be the most promising young educator to walk all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed into the world, but that job is going to the nephew of the previous teacher in the position that you want. You could be a great musician and have your stuff together in a week or less, but you’re not getting the gig if there’s a six-hour bus ride involved and you’re a jerk.
Or if you have a weird knack for falling asleep on nerdy businessmen.
I’m not the most social person in the world. I don’t go out of my way to start conversations with strangers. I’m quiet around people I’m not familiar with until I know that they are someone I can be myself around without too much judging. I keep my windows and curtains shut for fear that one day, the sun might actually melt me for daring to show my face to the light. However, I do say “hello” to people and attempt a smile when I see them. I will hold a polite conversation with someone at a show who just wants to compliment me and then talk about the other musicians performing. I will keep my mouth shut if someone makes a mistake to give them the benefit of the doubt that everyone makes mistakes and they’ll fix it next time. I try not to be a jerk.
The point is, it’s not hard to be a decent person, and sometimes just attempting to be a decent person is what will get you a gig over a guy who is just as good (or even better) than you but is someone that no one wants to be around. Go out. Play your shows. Talk to people. Gigs don’t book bands. People book bands.
The point is, it’s not hard to be a decent person, and sometimes just attempting to be a decent person is what will get you a gig over a guy who is just as good (or even better) than you but is someone that no one wants to be around. Go out. Play your shows. Talk to people. Gigs don’t book bands. People book bands.
May the infamous “They” rain $50 restaurant gigs [before tax] upon you and your household.
Image Credit Links:
Concert: http://www.smashandpeas.com/wp-content/themes/smashandpeas/thumb.php?src=http://www.smashandpeas.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/gig.jpg&h=285&w=430&zc=1
Stormtrooper: http://www.enmast.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/how-to-have-fun-at-work.jpg
Old People: http://www.eachmindmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/old-people-laughing-300x225.jpg
Festival: http://russianriver.omegaevents.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/01/Panoramic_942x371.jpg
Country Band: http://www.thesilverados.com/images/bigpic/silverados1.jpg
Bruno Mars: http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/52ec101f6bb3f79973fd68f9-480/bruno-mars.png
Coke: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/06/28/article-2166193-13D6EDC3000005DC-154_306x545.jpg
Construction: http://ak8.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/4694672/preview/stock-footage-construction-workers-look-over-plans-and-discuss.jpg
Monkeying Around: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/07/20/article-1200917-05C68C63000005DC-863_634x414.jpg
Castlevania II: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QAoEOCbGwvU/UyWMpaZFQ2I/AAAAAAAARhU/24a-MKjg68s/s1600/simons+quest+tornado.jpg
Awkward: https://thedailydispute.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/flying-annoying1.jpg
Mystery Man: http://www.beyondblackwhite.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mystery-man.jpg
Concert: http://www.smashandpeas.com/wp-content/themes/smashandpeas/thumb.php?src=http://www.smashandpeas.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/gig.jpg&h=285&w=430&zc=1
Stormtrooper: http://www.enmast.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/how-to-have-fun-at-work.jpg
Old People: http://www.eachmindmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/old-people-laughing-300x225.jpg
Festival: http://russianriver.omegaevents.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/01/Panoramic_942x371.jpg
Country Band: http://www.thesilverados.com/images/bigpic/silverados1.jpg
Bruno Mars: http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/52ec101f6bb3f79973fd68f9-480/bruno-mars.png
Coke: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/06/28/article-2166193-13D6EDC3000005DC-154_306x545.jpg
Construction: http://ak8.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/4694672/preview/stock-footage-construction-workers-look-over-plans-and-discuss.jpg
Monkeying Around: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/07/20/article-1200917-05C68C63000005DC-863_634x414.jpg
Castlevania II: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QAoEOCbGwvU/UyWMpaZFQ2I/AAAAAAAARhU/24a-MKjg68s/s1600/simons+quest+tornado.jpg
Awkward: https://thedailydispute.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/flying-annoying1.jpg
Mystery Man: http://www.beyondblackwhite.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mystery-man.jpg
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