View Poll Results: Do you play as a job or as a hobby?
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teach and gig during twenty years to earn some money and I always feel like a newbie, damn, so many things to learn from music !
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09-02-2022 07:37 AM
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I hung up the dancing shoes many moons ago. I knew I'd never be a good teacher, wouldn't like studio work and gigs suddenly dried up in the mid-to late 80's.
That was it for me as far as being a 'pro'.
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I'm definitely a passionate hobbyist, I have been paid plenty of times for playing, but worse, I have not been paid for playing too.
Last edited by GuyBoden; 02-28-2023 at 12:30 PM.
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Happy amateur here...
Last edited by DestinyT; 05-04-2023 at 06:48 PM. Reason: addition
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"What do you get for not rehearsing?"
"You couldn't afford it. You see, if we don't rehearse, we don't play, and if we don't play, that runs into money."
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Its only when you get paid to stop playing
You got a problem ....
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Ex-pro, now a serious hobbyist. I'm also a pro bluegrass flatpicker.
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Tell that to these guys...
Charles Ives - Insurance executive
Hugo Alfvén - Forestry inspector
Anton Arensky - Professor of Mathematics
William Billings - Tinsmith
Elliott Carter - Professor of English
Edward Elgar - Solicitor
Alberto Ginastera - Inspector of Secondary Education
Philip Glass - Cab driver
Charles Koechlin - Professor of Mathematics
Felix Mendelssohn - Lawyer
Olivier Messiaen - Ornithologist
Modest Mussorgsky - Government clerk
Maurice Ravel - Flight engineer
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Naval officer
Franz Schubert - Schoolteacher
Jean Sibelius - Legal intern
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Phonetics researcher
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Law clerk
Antonio Vivaldi - Priest
Carl Maria von Weber - Royal secretary
Iannis Xenakis - Civil engineer
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Philip Glass: "While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of TIME magazine, staring at me in disbelief. 'But you're Philip Glass! What are you doing here?' It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. 'But you are an artist,' he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish." Love that quote.
The main problem I see is how distracted one could become gazing at a kitchen sink whirlpool and getting inspired to mentally compose a rather busy passage, and just standing there, lost and absorbed. Any ensuing dialogue with the customer concerning parts and VAT is going to be somewhat surreal. Such is life.
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Ardent amateur here, playing music solely when I feel like it. I practice at home, and play weekly at jam sessions (blues, bossa, funk, jazz). Also dabbling on oud.
Like several have noted, my hands ain’t what they used to be, so I gave up building chops and focus mostly on learning tunes for jam sessions.
There was a time long ago when I was on the pro road. Out of high school back in the 80s I studied a couple years at a music conservatory, which landed me a guitar scholarship that involved playing in a college big band. I was in a wedding band, too, and did club dates. But by the end of the 80s I got tired of the lifestyle so gave up playing and sold all my gear.
Spent the 90s studying world music and traveling, picked up an MA and PhD in humanities and social sciences along the way, and have been a university professor for 25 years.
After settling in Japan, found the guitar again about 10 years ago, strictly as a hobby. Jam sessions put me in touch with local jazz pros and sat in on some hotel gigs, just enough to remind me why I didn’t go that route. Once asked to go on tour with a sax player but politely declined.
Now nearing mandatory retirement age, and winding down my university career to make room for the next generation, I’ve returned to studying and traveling. A happy hobbyist on guitar, I’m nurturing a thing for hard bop.
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For most of the naught’s I made my living from music. I was paid by promoters, record companies, and producers.
That said, I never was asked to play a note. Mostly I haggled over contract terms or tried to resolve disputes.
I guess that makes me a pro! ;-)
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"Maybe that's not for me to say, they only pay me here to play."
F. Zappa, "You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here?", 1966
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Amateur. My wife and I used to gig together playing mostly original folkie Americana stuff, I guess you’d call it. I only mention this because we discovered that there was usually (almost always) an inverse relationship between the gigs we enjoyed and the ones that paid us best.
We’ll eventually play live again, but it won’t be for the money.
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I guess I’m saying that “good music” and “good money” tend to keep their distance from each other. Not always. But almost.
The well paying gigs were the ones where your job was to be the wallpaper or elevator music for people who were not listening. Which is great if you like doing that.
But I generally like those “pick two” formulas. My favorite from my years working at advertising agencies was: Good, fast, and cheap. Pick two.
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Been pro for a dozen years (on and off, and those were, I think, my happiest times) between 1986 and the early 2000s. (Also worked studio sessions in 2014) but all along couldn't keep up with "the rest of life": my parents' and sisters' severe illnesses, my own issues, including tendonitis for six years, other disgraceful events, inheriting my father's business including debts, and still trying to sell/solve it, my marriage, parenthood, although the latter two events were happy (though obviously not always easy) ones, etc. etc. etc. ...you name it!. For me, not being able to focus on my music at least 80% is a bit like having 80% less oxygene for my breathing (can any of you fellow forum members relate?). The conclusion I gathered (right or wrong, I don't know, anyway, based on personal experience): if you want to be a fulfilled musician you better treat music as a "vocation" (which, I think, it is) and be like a "music monk", i.e. 100% dedicate your life to music and giveup most of the rest... unless you're generally lucky, in life... I mean: really lucky.
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After a 11 year long career dating back to my high school days and ending in 2020, I realized the business side of music, networking, looking and fighting over gigs, the internal infighting in the music scene I worked in had eventually destroyed my love for playing guitar. I stopped playing altogether for almost half a year as I retired towards the end of 2020. It wasn’t until the end of 2023 when guitar started to become fun again. I don’t ever see myself going back into professional music ever again as I enjoy teaching English far more than playing guitar. I started a YouTube channel to give advice to the younger generation of musicians looking to go pro so they can learn from the mistakes I made, life after retirement, and various videos of me playing post retirement.
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The difference comes from of how you get paid or not.
Some pros say that hobbyists and pros are the same if the music is good and well played.
On the other hand pros say that hobbyists are killing the profession because they sometimes get the job because they are "cheap".
Sometimes they are professionals because they can't do something else even if they don't play so well.
Some amateurs become pro very late when they are ending their regular career and they play good and know what they want to play.
It's never too late, sometimes it's too early and you have to play things you don't want to play.
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Started out on the career path decades ago, but realized the gigging lifestyle wasn’t for me. So I quit it and made a living elsewhere (tertiary education).
Now a happy amateur having fun with music when I feel like playing out. While approaching mandatory retirement age (in Japan), I’m also cultivating social relations through live music to keep active once I retire from working full time.
But I am sensitive to the tension between career and hobby when it comes to competing for gigs.
Most of my playing out is “pay to play” at several local venues that hold regular jazz jam sessions. They also hold concerts by career players, for which tickets are sold. So there seems to be room for both, self-entertainment for the hobbyists and entertaining others for the career musicians.
The lines between the two seem to be pretty clear, at least in my limited experience here in Japan, but there’s also some overlap.
Last week a career bassist on tour stopped by one of the jams and paid to play with us, while jam participants later paid to see him play at his gig at another venue.
Ultimately, IMHO, both might be needed to keep live jazz alive, which relies on having a social scene that cultivates reciprocity.
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