Practice Thoughts | 09: The MANY Different Kinds of Musicians (Patreon)

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Hi Everyone,

In this Practice Thought, I'm talking about different kinds of musicians. Why? To be encouraging! Let me explain:

Many of us have grown up with very high (and very specific) standards for what it means to be a musician. Often, when we compare ourselves to famous musicians, we think "wow. I will NEVER be like that." In my case, I actually thought "yikes, that sounds too intense for me."

In my head, the only kind of musician I could be was the frontman of a band, writing and performing all my own music, showing all the musicians that played with me what parts to play.

I've since learned something important: that dream is not my dream. There are many many many different ways to be a musician and make money. You do not HAVE to be on stage performing to be a musician. You do not HAVE to write songs or sing.

In this video, I walk you through a wide variety of different ways people have used their musicianship to make money.

You'll always be a happy musician if you focus on the things you enjoy, and this video is an effort to encourage you to find, explore, and pursue the areas of musicianship you enjoy. Also, you have permission to dislike aspects of musicianship that you may have previously thought were core requirements of musicians.

This video is in NO way an exhaustive list of the ways you can monetize your musicianship. If there is a specific aspect of musicianship you love or even an aspect you've been clinging to that you don't really care about, let's talk about it on the community forum. What kind of musician do you really want to be?

ALSO: Economically, we're in a weird time for music. It used to be a bit easier to make a living performing and selling albums. I included musicians that are making a living as a way to legitimize these different, more subtle paths but musicianship is complicated and right now in 2021, the path to being a career musician is arduous and risky. In my opinion, this makes it even more important to focus on the aspects of musicianship that you love, because you're less likely to get burnt out. Focusing on what you love might even lead you to develop new musical and economic avenues for income. If you have any thoughts on the subject, feel free to share those on the community forum as well.

P.S. If you're wondering about the background of this video, I was experimenting with green screen. I intended to do more with it, but I'll have to save that for another video. I'm always trying something new around here because it's fun. In the future, I have ideas to make use of this technology in some engaging, educational ways, but for this video we ran out of time!

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