Is it true?Can you play everything with a Strat?

Re: Is it true?Can you play everything with a Strat?

wahwah said:
They see their profession, as do I, as a form of service, and not necessarily as only a means to their own personal satisfaction. Ironically, in this, they are deeply satisfied. These are the true professionals. We understand that people need music, and we have refined our skills in order to provide it to them in a vast array of styles and formats. Herein lies the deepest satisfaction of all.
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I work for a produce distribution company, certainly that qualifies as a 'form of service.' People have to eat and keep their strength up if they're going to be able to listen to music. I have refined my skills accordingly to be a part of such an enterprise. Most of us (and I don't want to go out on a limb and say 'all') are involved in providing some sort of service to the public. In some cases it even involves providing occasional musical entertainment for people who don't know any better than to sit and listen to us. But by God, at least my company sees that they have something to eat while they're doing it. :14:
 
Re: Is it true?Can you play everything with a Strat?

blueman335 said:
Absolutely. The full time musicians I know range from so-so to extremely talented. Why are the better ones not well-known? Probably has something to do with some of the decisions they've made along the way, maybe a few stumbles, and a lack of luck. Maybe they picked the wrong band members, manager, or genre. The public can be very superficial and fickle. Substance abuse and personal dilemas take their toll too. Some of success is due to being in the right place at the right time, more than talent. All I'm saying is that for every player that's able to make a comfortable living in music, there's probably a thousand who struggle. As you pointed out, there's not enough opportunities for everyone, just as the vast majority of guys with sports aspirations don't make it to the major leagues. And the many thousands who do struggle (music or sports), talented as they may be, are the ones we're most likely to know personally (it may be different in your circles). If they're happy, are they 'failures' if they just get by financially? I'm just commenting on what as I see personally, just as you are. Most of us aren't in the music business and don't see what life is like on the inside.
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The best definition I've heard of 'luck' is, "where preparation and opportunity meet." Opportunities may arise, but if the preparation isn't in place, there may appear to be no luck. Preparation can take many forms and entail many factors. For example, I've known very talented musicians who had the unhappy knack of rubbing people up the wrong way. They managed to annoy fellow bandmates, producers and musical directors until they were ultimately considered too difficult to work with, and lost their place to the next guy waiting in line for an opportunity, of whom there are always many. Others squander their opportunities with some of the things you mentioned, like drug and alcohol addictions and other personal problems that make them a liability, when consistency and reliability are so important to maintaining a positive profile. The same forces that can send a player into an upward spiral of expanded work horizons can, in their negative aspect, bring about an avalanche of lost opportunity when a reputation goes bad. Word of mouth, and the old adage that you're only as good as your last gig, combine to make for rapid potential movement in either direction.

With regard to your question of happiness, failure and just getting by financially, I think it depends very much on the attitude and value set of the individual. It's my opinion that if someone is happy and getting by, I would struggle to see anything in that that could be described as failure. I would be more inclined to describe someone who is wealthy and miserable as a failure, but that is only by my personal criteria and value set. Society tends to think otherwise, as is evidenced by the number of highly successful celebrities whose lives are apparently miserable, and who are lauded by the press and admired by millions. In your characterisation of some professional musicians as you saw them, they were just getting by, but were miserable doing it. Some would say that they have succeeded by virtue of the fact that they have sustained a career as musicians, but I would be tempted to ask "at what cost?" As you can probably tell, I tend to rate happiness high on the scale of criteria for my definition of success.




Cheers........................................ wahwah
 
Re: Is it true?Can you play everything with a Strat?

Jessie's ghost said:
I think we easily lose sight of how little variety other instrumentalists have compared to guitarists. Ask someone who plays the flute, violin, banjo, piano, cello, French horn, pipe organ, etc. Ask them how many of those instruments they own. Ask them how many a player of such an instrument needs. I bet the conversation doesn't go how it goes when a friend or family member asks one of us the same questions.
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there's plenty of guitarists who have just 1, but like you pointed out, there are many more multiple guitar owners than flute players with 20 flutes.

However, most good gigging sax players double on at least more than 1 sax type and flute/piccolo, which to me is more impressive than a guitar player who wanks the same stuff on 50 guitars hanging on the wall. I know far more stagnant wanker guitar players than total wanker horn/other instrumentalists as well, but that's another topic.

About the teacher thing, it's all about making a living. Most guitar teachers I know are fairly well known on the local gig circuit as well and can really let rip. They hold performance degrees and are the go-to players for tons of local events. 'Big name famous guitar PLAYERS' get there with lots of luck, skill, and tons of good marketing choices.
 
Re: Is it true?Can you play everything with a Strat?

blueman335 said:
I work for a produce distribution company, certainly that qualifies as a 'form of service.' People have to eat and keep their strength up if they're going to be able to listen to music. I have refined my skills accordingly to be a part of such an enterprise. Most of us (and I don't want to go out on a limb and say 'all') are involved in providing some sort of service to the public. In some cases it even involves providing occasional musical entertainment for people who don't know any better than to sit and listen to us. But by God, at least my company sees that they have something to eat while they're doing it. :14:
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Yes, definitely. I don't see any difference between that and providing service as a musician, other than the form it takes. It is the same principle for a musician as it is for a plumber or anyone else who sees their work as service. I think many musicians fall foul of an inherent egocentric dysfunction that has them clamouring for attention, (Ouch, just hit a nerve in myself, hope you guys reading this are ok) and they can easily forget or never realise this concept of service. I strongly believe it is the most powerful motivation to keep anyone in work, musicians included. Over the decades, all of my initial motivations have either been fulfilled or have proven themselves to be worthless, in some cases both. Providing a service seems to be the only motivation that makes things flow with relative ease.





Cheers........................................ wahwah
 
Re: Is it true?Can you play everything with a Strat?

wahwah said:
Providing a service seems to be the only motivation that makes things flow with relative ease.
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+1. Music's in a vacuum without an audience. Nothing gets you playing your best like an enthusiastic crowd. Everybody leaves feeling good.
 
Re: Is it true?Can you play everything with a Strat?

wahwah said:
In your characterisation of some professional musicians as you saw them, they were just getting by, but were miserable doing it. Some would say that they have succeeded by virtue of the fact that they have sustained a career as musicians, but I would be tempted to ask "at what cost?"
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I know some of both. Extremely talented players who are happy making one or two hundred dollars a gig. They deserve way better venues than that. Maybe they don't want to travel, or don't want to deal with the hassles and egos that go with putting together a full band (as they did in the past). They're happy to be making music and covering the monthly bills.

One guy I know has struggled for the 6 years I've known him (in his younger days was hired by a couple bands for world tours). Great player, but difficult in a band context, and has made some questionable career and life decisions. Always in a state of crisis and frustration whenever I talk to him. He's taken a lot of gigs he's hated to play, and turned down just as many when he desparately needed the cash.

I recently read Frank Zappa's autobiography (great sense of humor), and he certainly had his share of problems getting players who were both reliable and would learn the material. Music was his destiny, and it was a constant source of joy and headaches.
 
Re: Is it true?Can you play everything with a Strat?

Quencho092 said:
…most good gigging sax players double on at least more than 1 sax type and flute/piccolo, which to me is more impressive than a guitar player who wanks the same stuff on 50 guitars hanging on the wall. I know far more stagnant wanker guitar players than total wanker horn/other instrumentalists as well, but that's another topic.
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That was kind of my point. With guitar, it's too easy to fall in love with the hardware, I think, and that draws in and sustains a lot of people who aren't necessarily in it for the music, who aren't natural musicians, or who don't have the discipline to do a whole lot with it. (Like me.) They become hobbyists, for the gear aspect. Like the guy who has some expensive sports cars, but they mostly sit in his garage. He'll wash and wax them on a Saturday morning, then in the afternoon he'll take his wife out for ice cream in one of them.

It's a pretty different kind of guy from the guy who has maybe two fast cars and is always out there racing one of them on the track or the drag strip.
 
Re: Is it true?Can you play everything with a Strat?

and that just goes with the territory of everyone getting their gratification in different ways. For me guitar is a meditative medication for my down time, without it I start losing my mind a bit because doodling on the fretboard or pushing myself to learn things keeps my mind stable. Otherwise the bowls get cashed more often and I'm eating pizza while watching sports on my down time.

I go through phases of gear obsession, acquisition, wood shedding and learning like crazy, landing in a rut, gear obsession, repeat. As long as I'm not blowing every penny on gear and I sell the stuff as I get tired of it or phase it out for other items, the gear component certainly keeps me engaged.

I heard a local player tearing it up recently on a strat through a twin, and that ignited my GAS to fix my fender amp. That liquid but edgy attack that gushes through clean with some reverb is quite addictive and universally awesome, I'm fighting the urge to relapse to single coil-dom but hopefully that mini hum neck will keep the gas at ease.
 
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