What kind of player are you?

  • play at home
  • play with band/friends occasionally
  • play with band/friends regularly
  • play live gigs
  • play live on social media
  • post music on social media
  • pro sessions player
  • pro touring musician
  • signed artist

0 voters

It’s multiple choice.
How do you feel currently, interpret that as you will.

Is this a “currently” type of question? If so my submission is the first one. If we are allowed to use years past, I get to check more boxes :slight_smile:

As a teenager I was fully expectant that I would be a professional or semi-professional guitarist. I put in the hours.

Coming to the conclusion that I didn’t actually want to do this for a living was one of the most difficult decisions of my life. It was also a tremendous relief.

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How do you feel currently, yes.

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Same here. I entered, for the first time in my life (and hopefully the only time) a state of depression when I threw in the towel around 2009. Mostly because I put so much time into it and had no backup plan. Looking back though, if my luck would have been different I would have been miserable as a touring and recording artist. Well at least the touring part. Recordings were and are a blast. So life’s journey does deal out blessings in disguise, occasionally.

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I started playing very late in life, there was never a question of making it a career. Not in India where I live, to make money in this business, and there is a lot of money to be made, you have to really sell your soul the the devil’s junior janitor. Soul crushing.

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I would take off the “pro” from “pro touring musician”.

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Polls get locked after 5 mins, damn!

Well if the definition of “pro” is “You get paid for what you do”

I can definitely say, from experience, that it’s possible to be a touring musician but not be “pro” :slight_smile:

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Yeah I’ve definitely toured at a loss before lol.

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Then I guess those times…you weren’t ‘pro’ either lol You know I love your playing though, buddy :slight_smile: You’re good enough to be pro regardless of the dictionary definition

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This honestly still bothers me to this day. I was also gearing up my life for this. Part of me still wishes I could. The other part knows how difficult it was, and that I’m older now, and simply have different obligations than I did then.

I did get to do this for a bit in my life though, and I’m thankful for it.

My goals have reduced down to just making music again and potentially finding others.

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Sorry to hear that. FWIW, you definitely play well enough that you could have made a living at it. I think in many ways it’s just luck of the draw.

That’s good. Honestly, the little bit of it I did, I couldn’t stand. It’s weird I didn’t know that about myself much sooner. I was getting burnt out throwing every penny I could spare at doing the band thing with no end in sight. Besides that, I was really starting to hate playing live. It just wasn’t even fun anymore. A couple of non-profitable regional tours sealed the deal for me. And I wasn’t delusional thinking we’d strike it rich and end up on MTV cribs lol (showing my age a little there haha). I just wanted to make a living doing it, that was it. We got nowhere near that.

I guess it all worked out though. I met some really cool people along the way, learned all sorts of neat things about the industry and through it all learned some decent-enough-for-non-crap demo recording and mixing skills. I don’t have time for that any more but it was probably my favorite thing to do musically. So I wouldn’t have those good memories if I never tried/failed at the band thing.

Oh and the lead singer in the band helped me get my foot in the door of the software industry, since he was graphics guy and had a decent job doing that. That’s been a huge plus for me. Even that took quite a while to pan out though, but it all gets traced back to my pro music efforts. Silver linings and all that.

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My story is pretty much on par with yours. At some point I felt that time was against me on it and that I should start looking elsewhere. It didn’t mean I had to stop making music, it’s just I couldn’t rely on it being an income. The hustle was too much for very little payoff, and wasn’t worth taking whatever short term shit job you could find in between. I felt also a lot of the people I was in bands with were beyond delusional megalomaniacs. At a point you start to despise everyone you are stuck with in close quarters for long periods of time, and I remember feeling pretty miserable in some of those tours. It was a bad head space to be in.

Of course I look back on it with fondness, but I did realize my interests in life transcended only music.

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I grew up in a residential school, being stuck with the same people year after year, took some art to keep your sanity, I think I was 8 when I joined and like 17 when I finished. I took two years for the emotional rollercoaster to settle, after that no amount of toxicity could perturb me. You pick up a few tools along the way to keep your sanity.

Maybe a band is a lot more intimate and lot of egos get trampled upon. If you’re around jaded members, they have a way to bring you down though, and every now and then it can get to you if you drop your guard which tends to happen, we’re not robots. The best thing I learned is to look at the bright side of any situation cause the ugly will always emerge eventually. You seem to have handled it well, just hang on to the good stuff, use the bad stuff to update and strengthen life strategies :slight_smile:

Since I graduated from the Conservatory (where I studied Jazz/Latin) in 1989 I earned a living in making/teaching music.

I was involved in all kinds of things.
From wedding gigs to accompany famous artists like: Sir Cliff Richard, Joe Cocker, Paul Carrack, Anastacia, etc…
Doing tv-shows, like for instance guitaplayer in the band of The Voice Of Switserland.
Doing studio jobs and making a CD with my own compositions, which you can listen to here:

I also play keyboards (started as a kid on the piano) also live with bands.

For about 1.5 years wr did a live studio project recording 8 tracks with the one and only Steve Gads on drums where I played the Fender Rhodes piano.
It was a real fun pop/jazzy/funky project.
The project is called DUCHAMPS featuring Steve Gads. Everything is on YT.
Here’s an example:

I also teach a bit depending on how much I am doing other projects.

Unfortunately, since COVID-19 came allong, it has become much, much harder now to earn a living in music… I am 61 years already and realy don’t know what the future will bring…
Slowly jobs are coming in but is al very, very unsure.

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I have a lot of friends that play live and some that tour or have toured in recent years, and some of those friends I wrote music with or am planning some side projects with. I don’t have any desire to tour even if I get really solid, polished material together that people like. I have a stable career and touring does not seem appealing at all.

I do have a goal of trying to build an online presence and I have interest in video editing and friends that are trained/work in video production. Basically my short term goal is to hit some very difficult covers of Becker, Loomis, Yngwie etc. and maybe some more popular stuff for bursts of attention and get more serious about producing content and coming up with ideas for segments/gimmicky ideas to market. Then I’d like to bring on other musician and artist friends that are interested and try to build something out. One thing I’m good at is consistently pumping out ideas and not worrying too much about them being perfect, and I’m not shy (I was as a kid, but now not so much) so I feel like I have the right combination of traits to take a crack at it. I also like teaching.

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As much as I loved playing with people, I hated playing gigs in front of people. I’d be anxious to the point of throwing up, every time. Not played a gig since 2013.

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I thought that’s what drugs and alcohol were for.

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They are indeed! The problem with that though, they work too well …:joy:

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