What keeps you going with music?

[Cornflake]

Yesterday I played the guitar and sang to the plants in the backyard for an hour. I really enjoyed it. I fell in love with the sound of my D-18 all over again. I found myself wondering if I should get a set scheduled and go play for people again. I didn't feel much impulse to do it.

Today I was talking to a friend who used to play a lot for audiences, and I realized why I don't feel much urge to perform any more. I never enjoyed playing solo, although I've done it. To me, rehearsals with my friends in the group were the best part of it. That, and getting the songs I wrote heard, were my main motivations. I'm not writing any more. I'm not interested in playing frequently enough to justify weekly practices with a group, unless I was a backup player, and I'm not good enough at any instrument for anyone to want me as a backup player. If I played a set of my old songs, I'd get maybe fifty more people to hear them, and I'd have to practice a lot to get to where I needed to be. The effort-to-reward ratio doesn't pan out.

A lot of you are still playing a lot. What are your motivations? I'm really curious.

[Doug]

I can't not do it.

As to performing being as I'm a entertainer not a musician, if there is no one out there you aren't entertaining.  It's kind of like teaching but you don't get to give them homework.  

[lar]

I keep performing because I don't seem to be able to stop.

I did stop for around 20 years when my kids were young and I was chasing my career. I picked up my guitar several times a year and performed once in a while. One day I realized I was very unhappy. There was something missing in my life. I finally decided that it might be performing.

So I found an oldies rock & roll band that needed a bass player. I've been performing more or less steadily since then and now I work for a living so I can afford to be a musician on the weekends.

I did do solo work for a lot of years and I never did like it much. It's far better to have a partner to talk to when no one shows up at the gig. And I'm not a good enough player or singer to be all that interesting by myself. It's much easier and a lot more fun to have a partner.

[patrick]

I used to watch Irish musicians playing almost compulsively when together and I used to wonder if it was really all that much fun sitting around playing music with your friends all night long.

Having tried it, it is.

Most of the "performing" I do is in playing at sessions in bars or at parties. Other than that, we do some appearances at old age homes around March 17. Still drives me.

[RickW]

I just like to play. I like to improv, write, and arrange. Serious noodling. I am enjoying challenging myself now, trying to make myself into the player I always felt I could be. That motivates. Right now, I can barely play, because it's so loud in here, and I'm getting antsy.

Going to get out and play with some people. Just for fun, jams and such. Have not done enough of it in my life.

[Chesapeake]

It's a triumph of hope over experience.

[millring]

It's my least rational pursuit and one in which, no matter how much practice I do -- breaking it down into parts and analyzing it or de-mystifying it -- it seems to always keep its magic. It's just romance. Nothing else in life affects me like music, and I feel lucky to be able to immerse myself in it -- and not just as an observer, but as a participant.

Lots of folks dream of performing. I dream more of sharing. If given a choice between playing on a stage or playing in a song circle or jam, I'd take the latter every time.

I also relate to the sentiment in these two songs.

[millring]

Sept 29, 2014 20:30:06 GMT -5 Chesapeake said:

It's a triumph of hope over experience.

Wow, while I was trying and failing to say what I meant, you did it in seven words.

[Resolve]

What keeps me going? Me?...who had no idea how to even hold a guitar 10 years ago and lip synced the obligatory "Happy Birthday" song at parties? Me...who many of you know from the AG forum as one who wondered the best way to finger a G chord? It's because I found music...and then once I did, I wanted "this"...SOOOO badly it consumed me.

It still does. Consumes me. Like a fire.

Unfortunately I wasn't 20 or 30 or even 40 when the match was struck. I'm keenly aware of "time" and having to make decisions based on how to make the most of it. That's a very different paradigm than I'd have taken if I'd realized this passion earlier in my life's continuum. Even though I've gone after this with what my guitar teacher called a "hell's dogs at your heels" approach, I can't make up for the fact that I don't have decades of "music" in my quiver.

Soooo..now I try to balance my exuberance of what I've found I can do musically with my very clear sense of what I can't do, with the goal of coming out at the end of it all with some reason to "keep going".

At the end of the day for one such as me there is very little evidence that I have any reason to keep going. I hardly can play my instrument. Heck I never even thought that "singing" was something that went hand in hand with playing guitar until over a year into the endeavor. I never wanted to sing. There is no "training" behind this voice of mine and if not for my partner's encouragement I'd never do a fragment of what we're doing now. Every bit of my DNA screams "Thou are not worthy".

But this is the time to set aside self doubt...and all the sane reasons for it. I think of the quote often that asks "If not now, then when?"

When? Now.

[Dub]

I do it because I have to. Not for any rational reason, I just have to.

I too had many years when my guitar didn't get played much. I was so busy with family and career I tended to spend time on those things and took my guitar out only often enough to sort of remember how it worked. And when I did get it out it took hours to make friends with it again.

But one thing I've learned… whether you're a single or a band member, you need to perform regularly if you want to be good at it. You need that pressure and the audience response to get beyond just playing the notes.

Not counting Idiot Jam, I've played maybe four or five open mic sets in my entire life. I much prefer a paid gig. Not necessarily for the money but because there is competition for the gigs. It keeps you focused on what you're trying to present and tightening things up. I think we grow more as musicians when we're performing regularly. And besides, it's a helluva lotta fun.

[Village Idiot]

I play guitar on and off, sometimes heavy, sometimes not for weeks. Right now I'm playing heavily.

My motivation doesn't come from the idea of playing out, but from getting my hands to do things they haven't done before, with the approach that it's the brain that needs to be trained, not the fingers, and that motor memory sending messages to my fingers is the key, which turns it into an unconscious thing. Kind of like finding the bathroom in the middle of the night easily with no lights on. You just know where to go, because you've lived there a long time, and your brain tells you when to turn. With that approach, for me, playing becomes less of practice and more of a zen experience, and I can play the same thing over and over with no one around for a couple hours.

And that approach, which I adopted just recently, has made me a mediocre guitar player. So take what I've been saying with a large grain of salt.

[drlj]

I play every day. Sometimes for hours. I am never satisfied and I want to learn something new every day. I usually do. I have played for others, recorded original music for a small time cable TV show, and done solo and duo type of playing. I enjoy playing fills and leads behind someone else. Millring and I seem to blend together pretty easily. We seem to know each other's style and can anticipate what the other will do which makes for some fun playing. I remember we were playing something once at Front Porch Music, where we used to meet for long jam sessions, and a guy listened to us do a song and complimented us on what a great arrangement we had of it. I don't recall what the song was, but it was the first time we had played it together and it was 90% improvised on the spot. Maybe John will recall what the tune was.
I have been giving some lessons to a young guy I used to work with. He is in his late 20's/early 30's and is new to it all. I find it very enjoyable to sit there with him for a couple of hours every now and then and watch him just absorb the stuff I do and the music I suggest he listen to. It is very gratifying and it keeps me on my musical toes. He is really taking to it and I helped him get a couple of guitars that he really loves. He has two little kids and sings them to sleep every night.
I don't play as well as I would like to but I ain't bad and it gives me a lot of enjoyment. I look forward to picking up the guitar every day. I love guitars. I love how they feel, sound, and smell.
I hope those feelings never go away.

[Deleted]

A chap needs a hobby or two.

[epaul]

I like playing, I like performing. I like solo, I like being part of a duo, and I liked being part of a band.

And, just recently, I have started to like just sitting down with another guitar player and jamming. I am not very good at it, as I just don't know the fretboard well enough to express what i hear in my head, but, a start is a start. It began to click with me at Idiot Jam when I was away from the main group doing some no pressure jamming with Todd. We had a little trouble to begin with, but, it was like magic when we figured out that we should both start out in the same key, and then just stay there. It wasn't anything fancy, but, for three or four measures, it was a little bit of magic.

Now we are thinking about re-establishing our duo act, work up a song or two, perform at some Indian Casinos for big bucks, and from there, who knows? I wouldn't mind getting a gig on one of those Caribbean cruise ships. That would be cool! And I know Todd doesn't care much for flying, but, I could see us doing the Acropolis thing with that Yani fellow. We could even watch ourselves on TV during a PBS pledge drive. That would be super cool! Normally, those things are kind of boring, but if it was you on the tube, well, that would kick up the old interest meter.

So, all in all, yep!




\

[Tamarack]

I agree with Chesapeake -- its a triumph of hope over experience.

For someone who has owned guitars for decades and never gotten beyond "advanced beginner"

Mostly because it's fun. And addictive.

Making music connects a person with the rest of the musical universe. With a fascination with striking strings and getting pleasant tones out of a resonating box, I have something in common with generations of guitarists and composers.

[TKennedy]

I was in folk/bluegrass bands pretty much continuously since I moved to Alexandria in 1977. I mainly played banjo and finger style guitar and loved it.

Around 2002 I got Focal Dystonia in my right hand and after many specialists and treatment realized there was no cure and that I'd never play banjo or finger style guitar again with any real facility which was all I knew how to do. I was really down and felt like hanging it all up and selling my instruments.

There were some dark days but one of my friends got me interested in jazz/showtunes kind of stuff and I also got to know a retired jazz guitarist from Milwaukee who took me under his wing. I could play with my thumb and although the dystonia got in the way, could flat pick to some degree.

Also about that time a friend and I were asked to put together a band for the play "Always Patsy Cline". We thought that would be a piece of cake, three chord country stuff. When we got the score the changes and keys were the real thing that the Nashville session guys used for the original recordings and our jaws dropped. Except for a few songs, not a cowboy chord to be seen and it appeared she liked to sing mostly in Ab, Bb, Eb, etc. with half step modulations in most songs. All closed position jazz chords. We dove in and it forced us out of our old comfort zone.

These things got me really excited about the guitar again and I can't wait to play every day. I am lucky enough to be in several groups including our Patsy show and although probably the worst player in each of them I'm getting out several times a month in front of people and loving it. Every now and then there is a rare time where everything gels on stage and magic happens. I live for those semi-annual moments.

[Marshall]

Sept 29, 2014 20:30:06 GMT -5 Chesapeake said:

It's a triumph of hope over experience.

Ha, ha. Yeah, that's a good one.

I go up and down on it. I love to write. I love to sing. But there's no real audience for what I do. I horn my way in at open mics and Idiotic Jams so I can have some outlet for all this product I invent. And there's some small satisfaction in it when a person comes up and says they really enjoyed what I did. But mostly at open mics and jams everybody is interested in their own thing and not all that receptive to anything beyond their tight personal interest.

People my age don't go out anywhere anymore. Certainly not to listen to music. (And if they do they only want to hear the same stuff they've been listening to for 40 years.) Youngsters do, but are only interested in other youngsters. I've even seriously considered busking, just to reach out and grab some people.

Performing is actually a great joy, . . . , and a great disappointment.

But the process of writing and perfecting a song takes me on a joy ride like nothing else. When I'm in the flow I feel like this thing will change the world. But when it's done it's more like the tree in the forest.

[aquaduct]

I think for me it's primarily been that I've always been good enough that I'm allowed to participate. That, and I'm too stupid to be scared. My biggest asset has never been amazing musicianship, it's that someone else can look over with panic in their eyes and say, "Play something!" and I will.

I've also never really had an "artist" view of music. To me music is more like a team sport. There's never any idea what's going to happen ahead of time and the thrill is watching it unfold around you in real time.

There's also a certain geek aspect to it. I'm into the system design aspect of it. I've got my rig that I've designed and when I'm in the cockpit I'm focused and can make it dance any way I want. It's a lot like the thrill of riding motorcycles, you against the world without any time to think about anything else.

But given all of that I've been at it long enough that music is a real love/hate thing and if I had to give it up tomorrow I wouldn't lose a minute's sleep.

[Cornflake]

Very interesting answers. I'm reminded that we have a lot of different orientations towards music. Some are more durable than others. I might still find a new niche.

[Marshall]

Oh, I forgot; Injectable Gel for Cheeks. That's really what keeps me going.



(You know, I have to say, that no matter how down-and-out I feel can about music, all I have to do is pick up a guitar and take a spin through a couple of tunes, and it always rejuvenates my spirit.)