I don't mean dressing up like Gandalf and slaying Orcs, of course, although I'm sure there's a time and place for that. Rather, I'm wondering what kind of things you do in the music world. Even in the old days, keyboard players had a tendency to wear a lot of hats. Today, with gear like the Montage that can do so much, you need an even bigger hat rack. And that's before you add DAWs to the mix.
Some of the things are obvious, like live performance, working as a studio session player, being the musical director for a church and that sort of thing. But those aren't the only paying gigs out there. A friend of mine used to do a lot of arranging work for bands, writing charts, doing copy work / transcriptions, and then there's also scoring for picture / tv / multimedia /etc. as well as other licensing gigs.
There's also the geek side of the house, as a lot of musicians I know are also accomplished audio engineers doing tracking, mixing and mastering. And then of course there's beat making and the modern definition of being a producer. I still don't have a solid definition for that one other than it starts with a guy and his DAW, add some people, maybe some instruments, maybe more DAWs, and you have a song. But there seems to be a lot of work for that kind of thing.
There's just a ton of ways to make money with music these days, and that's before you get into making music just for the fun of it. So I was wondering, what sort of things to you guys do with your musical talents and all that incredibly powerful gear?
I'm an amateur musician and do it for fun in my spare time outside of my main job (which is electronic engineering) and I do various things, listed below in order of how important they are to me. Hardly any of them make money, but that's not why I'm doing them.
Playing the (pipe) organ, mainly for fun (so learning repertoire and having lessons, etc) but also sometimes in church (just deputising for people I know from time to time) which - when it happens - pays quite well.
Playing keys in an amateur rock and pop band. Not so much nowadays since my last regular band disbanded about 2-3 years ago. Never was a money-spinner compared to playing the pipe organ in church, was just for fun.
Accompanying various friends who sing and play solo instruments, mostly on the piano. Just for fun, by and large, though I have done it in a recital setting a small number of times.
Music composing, arrangement, production, etc. This is where Cubase comes in. Again, just for fun.
General messing around in my music room - playing, improvising, sound design, exploring my gear, etc, etc, This probably accounts for 50% of my musical hobby time so I'm not sure that it should come last!
Well, here's a fun story: I'd been unofficially assistant manager to home keys dept (I helped out with pro keys too once that assist manager left) for about 15 years, then nearly a decade ago they'd made me officially the assistant manager to home keys. Then a week later, they said "we just found out that you've been telling the drum manager what drums to order for the last dozen years" (I had to.. he was slammed with 20k guitar skus) so upper management turned around and said "that's your job now, too".
:p
I am not even a drummer (like I'm awful at drumming. I can do some impressive looking fills and hi hats, but at the end of the day, the reason I gravitated towards arranger keyboards as I can't keep a stead tempo internally), but I've always been fascinated by the digital kits because their options are so similar to keyboards (after all, both are usually sample based digital reproductions of acoustic instruments).
I also used to teach keyboard playing, singing (both my parents were professional singers in Hong Kong), and even entry level guitar playing, but the Mrs got fed up with how late teaching sometimes would go (and she hated coming home and having a student in our house, plunking away fairly loudly on piano or guitar), so I stopped teaching. I kind of miss it, but I'm also really old and tired now :p
I did *not* pass my ARCT/ABRSM (my wife actually did GR10 piano in RCM, I only did the Yamaha Music school equivalent up to around GR7)
Sounds like Davelet's main gigs were live and church stuff (didn't know you played pipe organ, that must be fun). And I certainly understand general messing around for the fun of it.
Mark, that's what happens when you get caught being competent. When I was in junior high, the next door neighbor was moving, didn't want to deal with the kid's drums, and offered to give them to me. A brand new set of Ludwigs, which back in the 70s were The Stuff. My mother said she'd sell popsicles in hell before that happened (hence the complete lack of drumming skills I possess). As it was, I played trumpet, so I can sympathize with your wife listening to students. It's tedious at best to listen to a good musician practice fundamentals, let alone a beginner.
Thank you Chris to make a humanistic post. I will first confess that I still don’t know the role I play in this place, witch avatar I should endorse ( as almost everybody apart from loving and be loved) I touch almost all arts ( it will prevent me to become a virtuoso for sure) but music is the art that push me to highest state, the art that have open the secret door and montage is actually the unique tool that can bring me to music live, take me out from my bubble cave studio, allowing me to not be only a composer. I wish my role would be to brings emotions, offering a journey to people ( that is a very basic and universal role for the artist). Because of his infinite plasticity and organic rules, music for me is the best tool for breaking boundaries. One of my obsession is to break the boundaries between modal and tonal music, both have advantages and disadvantages . Modal music and naturals temperaments push to the summit the feelings and emotions of the degree in a scale and their interactions, what there is in between. Tonal music tend to destroy the character of the degree but brings complex architectures that can take you away to the sky like a gothic cathedral. Synphonic modal music is an interested hybrid way to explore but not easy to manage if you want to use powerful natural temperaments. I think my role is to be an explorer for sure, but I would like to bring it to music live and becoming a magician, that should be the Role, I am working on it.
ChrisDuncan wrote: Mon Oct 28, 2024 12:19 am
Mark, that's what happens when you get caught being competent. When I was in junior high, the next door neighbor was moving, didn't want to deal with the kid's drums, and offered to give them to me. A brand new set of Ludwigs, which back in the 70s were The Stuff. My mother said she'd sell popsicles in hell before that happened (hence the complete lack of drumming skills I possess). As it was, I played trumpet, so I can sympathize with your wife listening to students. It's tedious at best to listen to a good musician practice fundamentals, let alone a beginner.
to the entire paragraph!!!
Yes, in the 70's, nothing beat a Ludwig set! But man they're slow; we ordered a Vistalite 5 piece kit for a friend of mine... ETA was 7 months, but it never arrived and after a year they discontinued it. Friend then left town, and they *finally* got production running again after that :p It just wasn't meant to be. (well, the new price was also 7x what we ordered at originally!!!)
These days, I'm contributing keyboard parts to our music ministry and play along-side acoustic piano, guitarists, drums, trumpet, flute and viola (depending on who shows up). I'm the old curmudgeon and for some reason they listen to me. I'm trying to help the next generation(s) get established.
Back in the day, I played rock, R&B and funk, sometimes in tiny, tacky bars.
You all know about my blog, so there's no need to sell that, again -- pj
I have gigged in covers bands from "pub rock/function" to "tribute"
I have gigged my own original music
For both of the above, I create backing tracks - either linear or looped
I record my own original music
In live bands I am responsible for lights
In live bands I am responsible for videos
In live bands I am responsible for fixing everything that is broken or getting connections going, because I am the only one ever in any band I have been in to carry spare leads, adapters, DI Boxes, cable testers, soldering iron, tools, beer mats (excellent for levelling kit on uneven floors!), etc.!
On top of all that, I hit a birthday with the numbers six and zero in it last week, and probably over the next five years will start tapering my main career downwards. With the free time that will bring, I am thinking of setting myself up to write music to request or license my own music as library music. I am not expecting to make a fortune out of that, but anything as a supplemental income in retirement would be a bonus, and I am thinking with my professional hardware and software setup I can get pretty much any sounds that anybody would want.
I'm intimately familiar with tiny, tacky bars, as well as the kind where the majority of the crowd shows up on a Harley. And bonus points for anyone helping the next generation.
Derek is the stereotype when other musicians think of keyboard players. They're the geeks, the ones who read all those technical manuals and fiddle with that complicated gear. So naturally they should deal with lights and video, because you know, it's complicated.
They're also, it would appear, the ones who show up adequately prepared for Murphy's Second Law of Live Performance.
Cool that you're thinking of licensing and composition for supplemental income. Seems like there should be a lot of opportunity in that area. I just had a birthday with a 6 and a 7 in it (in that order, thank you very much), so I can dig it.
I think you hit the nail on the head there, Chris, in that by the nature of the instrument, we tend to be slightly more technically savvy/nerdy.
In terms of being prepared, that is more the ex project manager in me, being well used to "what if" risk assessment. I.e. what can go wrong on stage and how do I dig myself out of it, especially with a multi keyboard rig with a computer in the middle!
So on both main boards I gig with, I had a set of emergency patches: Organ, various synth leads (saw based, square based, ... ), string pad, piano, electric piano, etc., that would get me through a gig on a single keyboard. Would it sound as good as everything in full flight as I have programmed for each song? No. Would it get me through a gig? Yes.
Derek wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2024 8:09 am
I think you hit the nail on the head there, Chris, in that by the nature of the instrument, we tend to be slightly more technically savvy/nerdy.
What I find quite interesting is the number of people who are enthusiasts or semi-pro musicians who work in IT.
I am a System Administrator for a Telco company in Canada, and most of the people on my team, as well as other various IT based teams, are musicians to some degree.
I think many musician geeks on this forum, myself included, are also tech savvy on computers and may even work in the IT field to some extent..?
It would be kool if there was an add-on/app in this form whereby you could create a poll in a post to see the percentage of people on here who work in IT..!?
I've found the same thing to be true over the years, lots of techies who are also musicians. I think because tech, especially but not limited to programming, is as much art as science. There's rarely just one way to get it done, and a lot of it comes down to just using the Force.
Of course, like Derek, we also tend to be a bit more on the prepared side. When computers are involved (inside a keyboard or otherwise), paranoia is your friend.
vertig0spin wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2024 3:06 pm
I am a System Administrator for a Telco company in Canada, and most of the people on my team, as well as other various IT based teams, are musicians to some degree.
I think many musician geeks on this forum, myself included, are also tech savvy on computers and may even work in the IT field to some extent..?
I have degrees in electronic engineering and computer science. I am working as System Admin (remotely). I've been to MakeFaire Rome four times with projects designed in our student hackerspace.
I started keyboard playing as first year student in electronics. A fellow student also started classic guitar at the same time. Another friend from the same faculty is also playing electric guitar.
In the company I work right now, two senior developers play violin / guitar (one also sings). Another one plays piano. A former colleague also played guitar, and the guy who got me in the company we were playing keys together early on. We just hired an apprentice for me, a student of computer science, he is playing electric guitar, drums and some keys.
In many of the jobs I've been, the most 'geeky' engineers were also playing musical instruments.
There must be something with music and engineering / computers. Not all musicians are engineers or computer scientists, but I hardly ever met a seriously good engineer who was not also playing an instrument. There is definitely some connection to it.
Yes, I have been in various guises over my career: hardware engineer, software engineer, system engineer, project manager, so a heavy engineering background from simple one man jobs to managing complex multi-disciplinary teams delivering safety critical systems.
How I fell into synths was due to my interest in electronics. When I was a teenager I wanted to know how things like TVs, radios, etc. worked, and my step-dad started buying me magazines like "Everyday Electronics" around the same time as my interest in music was also awakening, but I had no knowledge of synths - you saw bands on top of the pops with "keyboards" and guitars.
And then one day my step-dad grabbed an electronics mag called "Electronics and Music Maker", which was started by the boss of Maplins (UK Electronics company) who was also a synth enthusiast. In this magazine I realised what the bands I was listening to were playing - synthesizers - and there were even plans for you to build your own (I never did!). And there hiding in my plan sight was my future hobby - albeit it was years before I could afford anything, which is why I guess I am more than making up for it now! Why my Step-dad picked that magazine, I do not know - it was probably top of the pile, but it changed my outlook profoundly.
Like Derek, I was massively into electronics as a teenager and bought all the magazines he described and likely others - can't remember the names of them now. In one there was a simple circuit for making an electronic stylus organ - just a simple sawtooth wave generator based on a relaxation oscillator and "played" with a bare wire touching other wires laid out in a keyboard pattern. And tuned with fixed resistors - so not in tune at all! But anyway it stimulated my interest both in electronics and synths. I was already playing the piano and the organ and so managed to wangle my dad to buy me a Yamaha PSR keyboard and later on a TX81Z which I plugged it into via MIDI. I also connected it to my ZX Spectrum and got that to play both using MIDI using a home-built MIDI interface.
Anyway, fast-forward 40 years and I now design analog-to-digital converters as my career and play synths (and the piano and organ) as a hobby.
Contrary to the experience of others above, I haven't actually come across any other musicians in the world of IC design and electronics more broadly.
to the entire paragraph!!!
I'm trying to help the next generation(s) get established.
