What do you think the biggest problem is in learning or participating in music today?

[Tricky-Loops]

Has anyone seen my

Creativity?


I was staring out of my window, it was gray, cool and wet outside, same as the weeks before, and when I came back to my computer, my creativity wasn't there anymore!

[Jace-BeOS]

Problems? Dunno about everyone. Here are MY problems:

I never learned notation and never will. I get the concepts; it just doesn't turn into music in my brain. I have dyscalculia (including dyslexia & working memory deficits). I can't learn via rote memorization (I still don't know most multiplication tables). Learning music theory seems to be impossible with my deficits.

Every instrument teacher I've tried focused on teaching via reading and rote memorization. I got nowhere with formal stuff. My learning style is kinesthetic (learn by doing & repetition - yes, rote memorization is repetition too, but if there's no relevancy to me in the action of it, I cannot store the info; meaning matters). No teacher has presented anything that works for me. I stopped looking (no money anyway).

My parents blockaded my art & music interests; they were afraid i'd become an antisocial homeless wandering musician like my uncle. I had to do everything on my own. Learned with crap tools, by doing things badly, and finding incrementally better ways to do things.

I think my grandmother bought me a $50 Casio keyboard as a kid. I recorded my noodling on tape. Had I kept going in that direction, I might've gotten to be a keyboard player (though my dexterity has greater limits than the average person), but my parents figured I should "do it right" if I'm really interested. They sent me to a piano teacher and the whole "reading notation problem" happened. Plus, you can't practice piano on mini keys. Frustration stopped me and no encouragement was to be found from family. To this day I'm told "you didn't seem to be driven enough to really make it anyway". Thanks for the nurturing.

I had demanded my parents buy a computer. Luckily they saw that as a potential for jobs, and luckily my Casio had MIDI . I added an MPU-401 MIDI card to the family PC. Didn't do much with it for lack of good software, but learned about MIDI & sound cards from Sierra On-line (games).

Later, I found tracker music on a BBS. I searched for an editor (felt ripped off to have a PC while other kids had Amiga or Apple IIgs). When i bought a 486 and downloaded MOD Edit 2.0 from a BBS, I started dissecting other people's mods. Finally my musical creation took off. Boy was that an awkward environment to make music in. No MIDI either. But trackers "taught" me lots about sampling and making music... via trial & error.

When Sound Blaster AWE32 arrived, I went back to MIDI. i bought an Alesis QS8 because it could load samples, but it was clumsy so I used presets and got comfortable with full size keys. Little progress for years. When the Internet and faster computers arrived, things got a lot better. Fast computers and cheap soft synths saved the day with sound sources and "instant recall" of projects all "in the box". Started learning synthesis technique from there. Trial & error again, plus the magazines you guys mock

I attained moderate comfort with keys from years of fiddling, but can't play much beyond simple improvisation (barely both hands). I rely on sequencers to make music from my head or record improvs, feeling like I'm not a "proper musician" . I've read countless articles, struggling to get better at the production end. I self trained my voice against my favorite musicians and am decent.

I've come a long way, but I'm not as productive as I should be. Lots of shit gets in the way:

1. Physiological: there's brain damage from psych drugs. I'm off them but the damage is done. It's hard to overcome impulse control & self-censorship. It was the reverse on drugs (no impulse control; my postings between 2007-2010 show it). Fine motor skills: I always had tremors, & poor hand-eye coordination/dexterity, but it's worse now. So too is tinnitus, body temp regulation, & sleep disorder.

2. Heat. Summer sucks . My equipment is on the 3rd floor; it's either horribly hot, or noisy from window AC i run to keep my gear safe. Hot MacBooks are worse in summer, too.

3. Other people's NOISE (i live in an old row house with perfect sound transmission). TV, radio, talking... hell I can even hear neighbors sneeze. A shit ton of vehicle noise (just off a main thoroughfare). My borough actually has a "no drums" regulation. People can drill and bang on our shared walls & foundations, cars and motorcycles can drive around with illegal exhaust mods & booming sound systems, car alarms can wail away uselessly, and insanely loud construction can go all day from 6:50am. But me make noise? Risky! I can't get peace from the noises of others but they sure will fine me for trying to block them out with loud music. Plus AC noise in summer.

4. No local musical buddies to interact or collaborate with. I love collaboration. I've done some collaborative fiction writing through the Internet, but music doesn't work that way for me. I don't know how others do it. Finding compatible tastes, huge files to xfer, incompatible software setups, fear of plagiarism, etc.

5. Other minor/moderate annoyances: sleep problems causing fatigue, my tiny laptop display, no sound treatment in studio room, tinnitus, no money, depression... Musical work itself is also irritating (annoyances of tools and my physicality). I still do it all alone with no help. I struggled to get where I am and it hasn't made me feel powerful or confident. Just exhausted and worn out (especially looking at how my employers repeatedly abused me). Effort in my music projects does pay off with a sense of accomplishment when I get things done, but by the time I call a piece "finished for now", I wish I had some pro engineer to turn the work over to for proper mixing. I'm sick of doing everything myself. Instead, i post it on SoundCloud, make an announcement (here & Facebook), and get the occasional comment. There's no positive feedback loop to keep me going. It's usually weeks or months before I "complete" another piece.

I never aimed at being a working musician. There's no money in it. Especially not for me. I can't perform, except vocals. Since I've no band, it would be me and a playback device. Audiences don't want that, and, frankly, I don't want live audiences. I don't want to join a band just to play covers of songs I don't like in pubs I don't want to be in. Public performance demands lots of practice, scheduling, promotion, and travel. Too much noise in live shows anyway.

I'd consider studio work, but not after hearing about the industry. I'm not willing to play the games. Move to huge city, live in extreme poverty (I'm already in barely tolerable poverty), be a wage slave in day job (with my sleep disorder?? HAH!), spend nights doing social networking, begging, stealing, ass kissing, lying and backstabbing up the ladder of a studio of other lying backstabbers... There are far fewer openings than people looking for jobs. Like computer technicians, music producer wannabes are a penny a dozen. If you don't play social games to get there, you won't get there.

It won't earn me money. The same is true about photography. Used to be a person could make a living on the arts if they worked at it... The arts don't pay unless the product is you AND you're super lucky. There are many excellent musicians, far more skilled than I, going nowhere.

It's a hobby. If a few people listen to my music and like it, great. I care a lot about music, but not enough to suffer more than I do now.

[Jace-BeOS]

PS: spending two hours writing a rant about my problems, on a forum, from within an iPhone, doesn't help me do music either.

[Jace-BeOS]

Neat! Thanks for sharing this

[vurt]

my spinal problems make it difficult to get in to the zone, its either too painful or im too whacked on the wrong kind of drugs.
when i do get going though it can be enjoyable and productive so i shouldnt really complain much. the sad part is i have all the time in the world with no other real distractions or responsibilities, just stupid pain getting in the way.

kids, look after your spine, you only get the one!

[werp]

my spinal problems make it difficult to get in to the zone, its either too painful or im too whacked on the wrong kind of drugs.
when i do get going though it can be enjoyable and productive so i shouldnt really complain much. the sad part is i have all the time in the world with no other real distractions or responsibilities, just stupid pain getting in the way.

kids, look after your spine, you only get the one!

welcome to the club...or is it me who's the new member. I forget. the drugs do that.

[Hink]

over the years I have wrongly blamed many things for getting in the way of making music. Truly there have been things that could be viewed as getting in the way of making music, but then hindsight is 20/20 and looking back it is clear to me that these so-called obstacles were nothing more than life being what it is, life. IMO we need breaks, we need fluctuations in our daily lives and unfortunately there will serious issues in life that will take priority and many of those will be at a time of great stress or loss. But that's life, the gift of being an artist is not a measurement of talent, it's about how your passion helps you to get through these times in life as well as enjoy the finer times in life. I'm thankful for this gift.

I say all the time everything is in cycles and sometimes the artistic cycle drops as other cycles rise, I have learned to not mourn the loss of time with music but embrace the time with other things in life. The music always comes back and when it does it's that's much sweeter for having missed it. You cant miss something if it never goes away and I find I do a tremendous amount of growing during those downtimes.

I guess it's just how you look at it.

That's a great perspective, certainly more matured a view than I was anticipating. I'm definitely too young to have experience-based/broad perspectives, still in the gun-slinger years

Out of curiosity, what were some of the things you blamed for getting in the way, and how did you find your perspective changing to what it is now?

sorry it took me so long to respond to this

I guess I would have to break things down to two parts (wants and needs), originally my post read "things that demand my attention" but I changed it because that is only half the picture ( you can decide which were wants and needs). Naturally being a family man things like the most current is a good example. My other half had surgery Jan 2nd on her elbow and she has no use of that arm still, I have played a bit but I dont play much because I need to be right there for her and I worry. But that is not something that I am "embracing", it's just one of the many tasks that will take priority over the course of life and I will be happy I did later. The same held true in 2005 and 2006 when my dad fell and we moved him in to tak care of him until he passed. I didn't want to have headphones on in case he needed me which he did about every 20-40 minutes. The difference there is I did indeed embrace that, dad needed me, dad raised me, dad was my best friend and to be there for him as he passed was very important for me. (of course it was important for him too)

Other things though I things I dont have to do but chose to do. An example of that is I almost never drink and play guitar. In my band days I we rehearsed at a function hall with a full bar and I never had one drink there. When I was a younger man and single, sometimes going out with my friends would get in the way of those days I planned to stay in and play. As I look back the biggest thing that jumps into my mind is those times were very limited. We were in our 20's, free and having fun and all those days came to an end as we all got married and had children. There would be times when I would be angry with myself for going out and pounding beers with my friends instead of staying home and practicing. Now I look back and am glad I have those memories, I still have music in my life today (to the umpteenth degree) and while I thought then I was wasting my time I really wasn't. In fact had I been too diligent it's possible I could have built up a resentment toward my music.

Music did cost me one relationship when I was in my 20's, that I now know was for the better. I wish I didn't move 2000 miles away from home just to come home a month later, but even that was good. I came home and stayed with my mom for a couple of months and she no longer lived in my hometown and I met new people to jam with and found myself back in school. So that girl that tried to get in the way of my music was good for me in Many ways.

School (college) got in the way, again that's life and I needed school. I did find some people in school to jam with but most of the time I was home alone with a choice of play or study. Sometimes I made the right choice

One of the biggest things that got in the way, something that I did blame but do embrace now (even though I learned to really dislike it) was working in music retail. I worked for three stores, the first a small store on the outskirts of Boston in a very hip, neighborhood right on the subway. The store rarely had more than two customers at a time and most of them were from Tufts U. Many others were street performers, still I had hours sometimes alone and I could just have a ball...that was good.

Then I went to MARs music which was huge and everything was on display and working, both the small store and MARs were a long ways from my house and I had a brutal commute. At MARs I requested my hours be three 14 hour days (all day thur, fri, sat) and all day Sunday which was 10-5. At first this seemed great because I would have three days off in a row every week, but the truth was after all those hours of hearing and dealing with everything music when I was home I had no motivation.

I went from there to a very large chain (now defunct) in New England, New York and New Jersey called Daddy's Junky Music. I was working at the store 6 miles from my house just over the New Hampshire border (NH has no sales tax so on the weekends we were swamped). I remembered why I didn't like shopping there when I was younger. The constant fighting between salesmen and once again all week dealing with musicians the last thing I wanted to do was play during my time off. All that ended around 2002.

Now I look back at those years and realize how much growing I did with less playing, in order to sell the gear I had to learn the gear. Besides the first store I worked in I typically never sold guitars (but at the last store we had the largest amount of used gear in the world so I bought a lot of guitars for the store). I spent my time with hardware recording, not software, I also was in the keyboard, pro audio and dj department. At MARs I was one of the crew that built the studio we had as well as the 10,000 watt sound stage. All that was great for who I am now, at the time I had never really owned a current computer. I never used a computer for music and when it came to those sales I needed assistance so I learned which changed everything for me.

My daughter will graduate high school in June, many times my time has been eaten up with school conferences, school activities and all that. To make it worse my daughter has some very challenging learning disabilities, many was the time I felt that got in the way. But you know what? I did embrace that (and still do), she goes to a great charter school (note, not a special needs school, mainstream all the way) but I have to drive her and as has been the case since she started pre-school I am crucial. This school I need to drive her everyday, the parents take part in every child's education (not just their own children) and that is what makes this school work. FTR 5 years at this school she is doing amazing and has not been on any meds what so ever, all of it is hard work from her, from the school and from the parents.

In my younger days I liked my drugs, acid, coke and partied hard. You bet that got in the way and surely not something I should not embrace. I quit coke 21 years ago as of last Aug 26th and acid about 5 years before that). I went to so many concerts in the 80's, I still played a lot but there would be gaps and but still good times got in the way of music.

Long before my retail days I was a truck driver often being on the road for several days which got in the way (but then I had a terrible accident I have yet to completely recover from) and before that I was a soldier. There were a lot of things that would get in the way when I was running around being a military man.

Now you may notice I am contradicting myself because I am saying these things got in the way and i said I use to blame things for getting in the way. The truth is those times helped me grow and that growth carried into my music as I grew as a musician. If it wasn't me doing those things surely other things would have come up or I would have found something else to get in the way. Sometimes it was a girl, tbh after quitting the drugs the transgendered side of me took center stage (pardon the pun) and I became the president of the oldest TG support group in the country (that was just before my accident, my accident killed that half of me).

Now at 55 years old, two kids, 4 grandkids, a great woman I look back and realize that these things didn't get in the way. They were things I had to do, some things I should not have done and some things I really didn't like doing. One thing though remained consistent, after the ups, after the downs, music was still there for me. The old expression all work and no play is quite true, I realized from time in music retail that had I been "nose to the grindstone" with my music all the time I would have built up a resentment to music...it would have got in the way of those things I needed to work through. By embracing the good that came from some very hard times I learned appreciation for my passion. I also have the benefit of seeing how things turned out for those who did not keep a balance in their lives, from friends to "stars". Those who quit music, those who died...you know the drill...but at 55 I still get that kick when I play.

Music is the foundation on which my life is built, you can knock the house down and still that foundation will remain. At the same time, during the times my house is strong it does not mean I need to spend all my time in the basement (foundation)...no matter what it always seems to hold strong and be there to support me with whatever endeavor comes along next.

now all together You take the good, you take the bad,
you take them both and there you have
The facts of life, the facts of life.

[Jace-BeOS]

...the sad part is i have all the time in the world...

i hear you. i constantly berate myself for squandering mine.

Much respectful empathy for your spinal pain.

[Jace-BeOS]

Thanks for sharing your story, Hink. It sounds like you've found a point of peace with all that your life has been and all that it is. That's wonderful.