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You keep mentioning Wes.
Part of this "formula", at least for the greats like Wes, is that they were endowed with a large measure of talent out of the gate. Sure they worked hard at it, but they already had a large aptitude/talent for it to start with. That cannot be discounted. For most of the greats, music came easy for them, at least in the beginning. People are simply innately better at certain things, it's just the way they are wired. IMO, that's what separates the greats from the rest. I'm not saying you HAVE to be innately talented to "make it"... there's tons of hard work and sacrifice too of course... only that the ones withOUT the innate talent will have to work harder and make more sacrifices.
That fact that Wes worked a day job and had several children proves to me he must have been innately talented at music/guitar to begin with, as no mere mortal could do what he did and become a legend at it.
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07-27-2023 06:47 AM
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I disagree completely. He started when he was a kid, plenty of time to build chops playing with his musical brothers.
Originally Posted by ruger9
I think we romanticize what makes a musician great and it's simply practice. Wes practiced more than you do, he found the time and he practiced more, he focused harder. Same with all the greats, they just tried harder. It's music, it's not that complicated. It's not Hadron Collider physics.
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I tend to agree with your POV here much more than the innate talent POV, but it isn't as black and white as either of you implied. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Instead, it is degrees. E.g., some people have to practice twice to three times as much as others, to make the same progress. To get to that next level.
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A lot of good advice here; I read the whole thread, but quickly, so apologies if someone already said this: if you don't try to follow your dream, you'll always wonder what would have happened if you did.
If you have not read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, check it out. It talks about how folks who achieve stunning success often are steered towards it early in life. No musicians in the book, but interesting examples from sports and the life stories of Bill Joy, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and others showing that they found themselves in situations that guided them towards their life's achievements early on.
It's as easy as fishin', you can be a musician,
If you can make sounds loud and mellow
Get an electric guitar, chances are you'll go far
If you get in with the right bunch of fellows
"Takin' Care of Business" - Bachman Turner OverdriveA lot of truth in that lyric ;-)
Outliers is the book that posits the often-quoted-out-of-context "10,000 hours" metric. It's not that you put in 10,000 hours at something and then are automatically great at it. It's that the people who are great at something have typically put in 10,000 hours at that something by the time they are 20 years old. Jobs, Joy, Gates... all geeking out on computers from their early teens.
Don't take this to mean that you can't achieve your goals if you weren't born in the right place to hang out with the right people. It's just a really interesting book showing that conventional ideas about how to achieve success are not always correct. The title of Outliers comes from residents of a village in Italy who lived long, healthy lives despite doing things traditional medicine frowned upon: eating lots of butter, cheese and wine ... you could be the next outlier unless you talk yourself out of trying to achieve your dream.
So, good luck with your quest, just go for it. FWIW you should have no trouble finding another IT job. But three years is a long time in the IT world, so consider keeping your skills up with a part-time job while you pursue your creative goals.
HTH
SJ
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thank you so much for the encouragement. and believe me, i was thinking at 22 'im too old! pat metheny was 18 already and recorded BSL!' but im mad to even try and compare...comparison is the thief of joy... ive squashed that way of thinking.
regarding outliers, there's this other book called 'the dip'. its about if you should just quit or keep going. i probably need that book, haha. i think with outliers, doesnt he talk about mozart? i thought the thing was actually quantity over quality or something..
at 36, i am old by comparison to outliers...but it depends what level of success i suppose. i believe in music there are some late bloomers (andy summers?), that chick that plays slide...ugh, forget her name..pop/blues singer/guitarist...anyway
regarding Wes, its maybe kind of dumb but I really admire that guy man. maybe im putting my need for a male role model on Wes, but i just really respect his whole thing. not just the guitar playing, but i picture him as a loving family man, hardworking straight ahead kind of guy that provided for his family. and he was immensely successful.
but theres two sides to every story. im part of the Wes montogomery group on fb, and they posted that documentary of his recently. Wes had a terrible phobia of flying (as I do!), to the point he would drive literally across the whole country. this burned him out. a few days or week? before he died, his doctor told him, you gotta stop man youre health and blood pressure is horrid...something like that...we all know what happened after.
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Yes, we definitely disagree there. There are thousands of musicians who practiced their asses off for years that never reached the greatness of the greats. And I'm not talking about in-the-moment popularity, I'm talking about long-term admiration and respect many years down the line. Some people are simply better at certain things, it's innate ability for starters... and practice only amplifies that ability. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
It should come as no surprise to anyone who has studied the human condition that some people are simply built to do certain things better. You can't turn a long-twitch muscle person into an olympic sprinter, as short-twitch muscle people are simply built better for that activity.
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Didn't mean to imply that innate talent is all it takes- I agree there are degrees, hopefully I made that clearer in my last post. Originally Posted by jameslovestal
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Oh... you are talking about admiration and popularity. I think that's just luck, even more so today. Originally Posted by ruger9
You can't practice taking the right gig or meeting the right person to help you move ahead in the business, or having a dad put half a million dollar investment into your PR firm....
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As I said, I'm NOT talking about in-the-day popularity; I'm talking about admiration still, after decades. Luck has a little to do with the greats, but not much IMO. Kenny Burrell isn't admired today because he was lucky. Or Grant Green. Or Johnny Smith. Or Joe Pass. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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We are splitting hairs, but for all the guys you mentioned there were Joe Nobody's who didn't live in NYC, Chicago or LA and never recorded anything. The greats we don't know. Originally Posted by ruger9
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I can sympathize with this all a lot. I'm entering my late 20s, I work as an engineer by day, and I'm fortunate enough to be married to a wonderful woman who is very understanding of my passion for music. I started when I was 13 and have pretty obsessively practiced ever since (3 hours every day at some points). Again because of how incredibly understanding my wife is, I'm still able to practice for 3 hours 3-4 days a week.
I continually think about leaving engineering for music. It would be all objective metrics be a bad decision haha. But as life progresses, I advance in my career, and my wife and I start a family, I see time becoming an enemy in keeping up with music the way I want to. And I simply like music more than I'll ever enjoy engineering.
I was really into the modern prog metal scene in high school and college, and I listened to a lot of interviews with Misha Mansoor from Periphery, who has a really brutally realistic take on music (which as an engineer I really appreciate haha). Basically, music will make no money and you have to approach it that way. Gigs don't pay, streaming means recordings don't pay. All the markets are totally saturated with talent. I know you said you don't care about money and have a pretty safe buffer at the moment, but if this would really be sustainable you need some kind of income. But you have to start a musical endeavor with the understanding that you will probably lose money on it, but do it anyway out of passion.
However the internet age means new opportunities to springboard music into side opportunities. Misha treats Periphery (a very successful band by all measures) as a passion project, but he uses the platform he's gained from it to market his other businesses, guitar and audio engineering products. You can see this happening in the jazz world too. Mike Moreno and Jonathan Kreisberg are both at the top of the jazz guitar world, but both of them have online lesson programs (that I would guess pays more than gigging).
But even to get to the point where you can have a successful side gig based on your music requires a lot of grinding. So I agree with whoever said you have to be all in. That doesn't necessarily mean quitting your day job yet. If you aren't using all the free time you have work on music, start there. Quitting your job to have more time won't help you unless your problem is that you need more time, not that you aren't fully using the time you have. See where you can take things doing that, explore what other financial avenues you could use to make it sustainable, and if you're seeing some success then consider taking the next step.
That's my plan at the moment. I spend a lot of time practicing, but I don't play out very often, just the occasional jam. I plan to spend the next few years playing out as much as I can, at least one jam a week, and trying to make connections that will maybe lead to gigs. From there maybe get my own gigs. Hopefully get some students. Also be working with new media as much as I can. It would be a long road to get to where I could comfortably quit my day job, but it's a road of doing what I love to do.
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admiration and popularity is a tough one. someone can be really good at something and never get respect from peers or even society till centuries later, in extreme cases.
an obvious example? i think is galileo. lots of mathematicians - were just trying to figure out answers to problems, but society at the times had no clue what they were about (at least from what ive read). another one, james maxwell.
music as well. wasn't chopin basically considered average at the time or something? i think moreso some classical musicians.
thing with music is that its such a show thing and most music now days does not try anything new so it becomes all about selling records as opposed to exploring new concepts or ideas. no risk, just desire for fame and fortune...which is human i suppose.
i think the fast twitch slow twitch thing is true. many guitar players i enjoyed, when i did some digging on them, were athletes minimally in high school. im sure theres exceptions, or it could just be anecdotal but thats what ive seen.
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agreed, this is the conclusion i came to the past few weeks. i need to dedicate all or most time outside work to my music, no more time wasting. no excuses. Originally Posted by BreckerFan
these songs probably speak to some of us:
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Indeed Mozart is in Outliers, pp 40-41,42. Sorry, I forgot about that mention, which is brief compared to the long discussions on other examples. Originally Posted by jaguarguitar
The points made are that despite being a prodigy (some people are wired for certain activities) his childhood work was unremarkable: he was a "late bloomer" compositionally.
Good luck, and thanks to all the other forum participants... a lot of interesting perspective in this thread.
SJ
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