985plowboy
Poster Extraordinaire
But understand that if I wasn’t good enough for you in your prime, I damn sure ain’t interested in you on the decline.
Run away dude.
Fast.
So you're a musician?
- Thread starter azureglo
- Start date
Run away dude.
Fast.
Thankfully, by 1982, disco had waned. Jackie was a talented and versatile singer. She sang Grace Slick, Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Donna Summer, Chaka Kahn, and many more. There were a lot of great female singers on the radio in those days, so we played to our strengths. I did the male lead vocals, but Genesis was out of my range.
chulaivet1966
Friend of Leo's
Howdy t....
Although I've played drums/percussion/guitar since 1970 my actual live working band days were only from 1973 to 1980.
During those years I would have referred to myself as a musician.
Now, if asked, the above is how I would describe myself.
Just a guitar player that likes to write songs. (one who'll never be known and having a non-existent fan base)
Calling myself a 'musician' would be a self-indulgent overstatement implying I'm something more than I really am.
Back to it....
So what if you like both, and have worked your butt off learning the ins and outs of both guitar playing and computerized music production?
PS. Paragraphs next time please.
band name alert
loudboy
Tele-Afflicted
"If I had to play 'Jimmy Crack Corn' five times a day, I'd have jumped off a bridge, too."
I think the five marriages would be a stronger deterrent.
Short "wake-up call" encounter. Late '70s - "My Brother's Place" in Warner Robins, GA. Went home with a red-haired, green eyed bartender. The next morning, she said she wasn't on birth control, "But don't worry; you won't have to marry me."
. . . the Hot/Crazy Scale comes to mind.
It wasn't supposed to be this way, but every important relationship I've ever had has been with someone I met at a show. But then I wasn't doing much else...
Call it, "musician's tinder."
I like what sax player/composer/jazz era raconteur Paul Desmond said about how society girls liked to dally with musicians, but would usually end up with richer, more well-heeled members of society:
"It ends not with a whim, but with a banker."
Call it, "musician's tinder."
I like what sax player/composer/jazz era raconteur Paul Desmond said about how society girls liked to dally with musicians, but would usually end up with richer, more well-heeled members of society:
"It ends not with a whim, but with a banker."
For me, almost the opposite. There was one ex-GF I met at a party where I was playing, but the others I've just bumped into here and there.
4pickupguy
Doctor of Teleocity
I’m not musician currently, I’m sober….
Peter Graham
TDPRI Member
Absolutely. I've even heard of people who use electricity being called musicians. Can you imagine? Like you say, pressing buttons isn't music, but there they are, tapping their pedals, dialling in their amps and furtling with their pickup selector switches. And how many Marshall stacks, greasebucket tone controls or packs of flatwound 9's can one find in nature?
Real musicians are people who can coax a tune out of a shell or a cunningly whittled bit of antler. Engaging with the natural world to produce real music, which should ideally be about essential human experiences such as love, longing and being dragged off to fairyland on a flying chariot drawn by griffins.
WingedWords
Friend of Leo's
A quote from The Stranger:
"Mr. Lebowski, he called himself "The Dude". Now, "Dude" - that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. "
Same goes for "musician" in my book and especially oh especially "poet"!
"Mr. Lebowski, he called himself "The Dude". Now, "Dude" - that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. "
Same goes for "musician" in my book and especially oh especially "poet"!
azureglo
TDPRI Member
Bit of thread drift folks, this was really about how music affected our social lives not getting into the DJs versus guitarists debate, each has their merits. Be kind to each other folks, please?
That said I just found this wonderful meeting of music and computers sent to me by a classical cello playing friend... might go to the next UK Comicon current squeeze is badgering me to go to with her if this lot show up.
That said I just found this wonderful meeting of music and computers sent to me by a classical cello playing friend... might go to the next UK Comicon current squeeze is badgering me to go to with her if this lot show up.
Charlie Bernstein
Doctor of Teleocity
It depends.
The way you're framing the question, it becomes: Is a virtual musician a musician?
Fifteen or twenty years ago, I picked up a guitar in front of a teen high-tech geek, a big Britney fan, and played for a minute. He stared while I played, then when I stopped he said, in wide-eyed astonishment, "You mean you do it in real time?"
Craziest thing he'd ever heard of. As far as he was concerned, I wasn't a musician. I didn't know how to write code or work software or download plug-ins — and I used my hands to manipulate strings!
Was he right? I don't know. Personally, a well-tapped antler sounds more musical to me than Vangelis does.
But I frame the question differently. If you make a living making music, you're a musician. If you're a dentist who plays the piano, you're a dentist.
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Peter Graham
TDPRI Member
Good points.
All joking aside, I'd argue two things. Firstly, whether or not A is a musician is somewhat subjective. You may have a different and equally valid view but, to me, someone who makes music is a musician. That might involve writing incredibly complex atonal modern symphonies or it might involve chuntering over a single, droning chord. It's all music.
Someone who makes a living from making music is a professional musician. A dentist who makes music is therefore a musician.
This brings us to point two, which is all about self identity. Identity is 'nested', meaning that we all have lots of identities. Our ivory- tapping dentist may well identify as a musician in certain circumstances. And as a dentist in others. And a woman in others. And an Italian in others. And all four in others. And so on. Whether other people accept those self-identifications is a different (and very topical) question, but what I hope most of us could agree is that identity is fluid, multi-faceted and complex.
Thus my earlier joke. To say that music composed on a computer is not music or that people who create it are not musicians is to unreasonably constrain the definition of 'music' and 'musician' and to seek to define it instead as 'things I approve of.' Let's get real here. If Robert Johnson was alive today, is it more likely that he would be wearing a 1930s suit and playing 1930s music on his guitar, or that he would be a rapper?
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The Eggman
TDPRI Member
All my social encounters are musically related and generally involve other musicians or people with such inclinations, because I am neurologically incapable of engaging in any meaningful social interaction with people with whom I have little in common for any extended period of time before I just run out of things to say.
On the flipside, I met one drummer who I couldn't connect with on a social level at all - musically? that was fine, I really rate him very highly as a drummer. but he wouldn't hang out in the same social circles and it was really really hard to keep a conversation going with him. First I thought it was just me, because it usually is! but then a load of other musicians said the same thing. It's like he's a drummer with the personality of a builder or a mechanic, and all his friends seemed to be the builder/mechanic types who exist in a totally separate social bubble to all the 'musician' types...
...Maybe he feels as out of place among musicians as I do amongst everyone else?
On the flipside, I met one drummer who I couldn't connect with on a social level at all - musically? that was fine, I really rate him very highly as a drummer. but he wouldn't hang out in the same social circles and it was really really hard to keep a conversation going with him. First I thought it was just me, because it usually is! but then a load of other musicians said the same thing. It's like he's a drummer with the personality of a builder or a mechanic, and all his friends seemed to be the builder/mechanic types who exist in a totally separate social bubble to all the 'musician' types...
...Maybe he feels as out of place among musicians as I do amongst everyone else?
Charlie Bernstein
Doctor of Teleocity
Yes, indeed. Well he might!
There's an old story that novelists like to tell young creative writing students:
A famous writer (I don't remember whom, and it doesn't matter) was at a cocktail party gabbing with a brain surgeon.
The doc said that when he retired he planned to write a novel.
The writer (who had bitten his tongue — shredded it, in fact — in too many similar conversations) blurted, "What a coincidence! When I retire, I plan to operate on someone's brain!"
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archetype
Fiend of Leo's
My brother-in-law told me that when I apply at the unemployment office I should tell them I'm a poet.
Charlie Bernstein
Doctor of Teleocity
Neurologially incapable? Since you have no trouble talking with other musicians or writing coherent sentences and paragraphs, it sounds more like you're just a textbook introvert.
Me, too, and most of my jobs required me to talk a lot with all kinds of people. So I learned to keep some boilerplate questions handy and try to listen to the answers.
It got me through just fine, even when it wasn't fun.
After that, Coronocaust isolation was heaven.
