If music is not your profession, why not?

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

If you are not a professional musician (or in some related field, e.g., recording engineer) I am curious to know why not. 'Splain yourselves! (Clearly some of you are professionals, so, if that is the case, this does not apply to you!    )

As for me:

1. I hated practicing (piano, sax or any of the instruments I play/played), especially when I was younger. Now,  I enjoy practice more and am less fixated on the final result. Honestly, I enjoyed listening to recordings and going to concerts far more than practicing.

2. I don't think I have a great amount of musical talent. Maybe "talent" as such is an illusion (e.g., according to people like Malcom Gladwell), but I never felt especially gifted, as if my performances would offer much over the competition.

3. I know the career prospects are extremely limited, unless one wants to teach, which I did not.

4. I didn't want to turn my passion into a chore which I would get sick of.

5. Science (biology) is my other great interest, and that won out in the end.

Anyway, those are my reasons. What are yours?

[nathanb]

Reasons #2, 3, and 4 from your list are my reasons. I guess I feel like I hate practicing too sometimes, but only when it feels pointless (which it doesn't when you're feeling particularly talented and driven).

[(poco) Sforzando]

A very good question. After discovering music at roughly age 11, I was convinced throughout my high school years that I was going to become a composer. I did in fact write quite a good deal of music, and when it came time to apply for college, I had a portfolio of mediocre compositions that may have been a tad less inept than my competitors' mediocre compositions. Be that as it may, I was accepted as a composition major at both the Eastman School of Music and the Oberlin Conservatory, class of 1970, and I decided to go to Oberlin.

I took a leave of absence after a semester, and returned for one semester the next year. Somehow the entire experience while I was there was devastating in ways I don't think it would have been today. I didn't feel I was learning anything from my composition teacher, I didn't feel my ear training or skill in counterpoint was strong enough, I didn't know what idiom I wanted to write in, I wasn't the most proficient pianist and played no other instrument, but I suppose what it comes down to was a crisis of nerves.

In many ways I felt I had a pretty solid historical and theoretical foundation, and I could have pursued a degree in musicology. But at the time it seemed that if I couldn't be a composer, I couldn't do anything professionally with music at all. In a sense this was probably a good decision, as a career as a composer is well-nigh impossible unless one has something like a university appointment. So instead I took my degrees in English, taught college for a while, gave up on academia after losing a close tenure decision at a not very distinguished New Jersey college, and finally entered the business world as a technical writer specializing in accounting software before retiring two years ago. But this career gave me enough time to keep attending concerts, buying CDs, and writing generally insignificant comments on the Internet.

[Ken B]

A very good question. After discovering music at roughly age 11, I was convinced throughout my high school years that I was going to become a composer. I did in fact write quite a good deal of music, and when it came time to apply for college, I had a portfolio of mediocre compositions that may have been a tad less inept than my competitors' mediocre compositions. Be that as it may, I was accepted as a composition major at both the Eastman School of Music and the Oberlin Conservatory, class of 1970, and I decided to go to Oberlin.

I took a leave of absence after a semester, and returned for one semester the next year. Somehow the entire experience while I was there was devastating in ways I don't think it would have been today. I didn't feel I was learning anything from my composition teacher, I didn't feel my ear training or skill in counterpoint was strong enough, I didn't know what idiom I wanted to write in, I wasn't the most proficient pianist and played no other instrument, but I suppose what it comes down to was a crisis of nerves.

In many ways I felt I had a pretty solid historical and theoretical foundation, and I could have pursued a degree in musicology. But at the time it seemed that if I couldn't be a composer, I couldn't do anything professionally with music at all. In a sense this was probably a good decision, as a career as a composer is well-nigh impossible unless one has something like a university appointment. So instead I took my degrees in English, taught college for a while, gave up on academic after losing a close tenure decision, and finally entered the business world as a technical writer specializing in accounting software before retiring two years ago. But this career gave me enough time to keep attending concerts, buying CDs, and writing generally insignificant comments on the Internet.

Interesting, danke.

For me it was never an issue. Never could sing, and didn't really discover music until I was 16, and then classical when I was 17. A little boast now. When I was 20 after a concert I was chatting about the performance and some passages of the Bartok 5 with the leader of the string quartet. Finally he asked me what was my instrument. I said none and that I couldn't even read music. My gf vouched for this as she was just teaching me the rudiments. He looked stunned and after a bit said sadly  "you'd have made an exceptionally fine musician."

[amw]

1 & 2. But 2 is probably affected by the fact that, as a result of 1, I never practice. Someday I hope to start practicing despite hating it and find out whether I actually do have any musical talent.

As for composition I've attempted to compose all my life and at this point have basically accepted that it'll never happen, and once I'm out of university, I will probably never put another note on paper again. Or at least not for a very long time. The only thing I've ended up really wanting to compose is very poor pastiche imitations, so maybe I'll become a musicologist and write completions of famous composers' unfinished symphonies or something lmao

The main thing holding me back seems to be extreme perfectionism and just being overly pushy and ambitious, if I'm honest. I'd never be satisfied being an average pianist or composer. If my piano playing is not up to the level of, say, András Schiff's, or if my compositions aren't every bit as good as Beethoven's, absolutely no point, as far as my brain is concerned.

[Ken B]

If you are not a professional musician (or in some related field, e.g., recording engineer) I am curious to know why not. 'Splain yourselves! (Clearly some of you are professionals, so, if that is the case, this does not apply to you!    )

As for me:

1. I hated practicing (piano, sax or any of the instruments I play/played), especially when I was younger. Now,  I enjoy practice more and am less fixated on the final result. Honestly, I enjoyed listening to recordings and going to concerts far more than practicing.

2. I don't think I have a great amount of musical talent. Maybe "talent" as such is an illusion (e.g., according to people like Malcom Gladwell), but I never felt especially gifted, as if my performances would offer much over the competition.

3. I know the career prospects are extremely limited, unless one wants to teach, which I did not.

4. I didn't want to turn my passion into a chore which I would get sick of.

5. Science (biology) is my other great interest, and that won out in the end.

Anyway, those are my reasons. What are yours?

Made way too much as an underwear model.

[NikF]

I always wanted to play the piano but that was never going to be a starter in my family. However when I was about 13 or 14 I told my music teacher and she offered to provide me with lessons from a pianist and a percussionist. She added that if I applied myself she could eventually get me a job working with a piano tuner. So I studied percussion for a while but then left school (and home) when I was 15, after spending the previous year getting up at 04:15 every morning to deliver milk before school in order to afford a used SLR. Photography was always going to win as a profession.
A little later I was advised to have a hobby outside of photography and so I started training as an (amateur) boxer. The rest of my leisure time was devoted to socialising and that left no time for anything else, and so playing the piano was forgot about.

e: I'm quite sure that there's a list of attributes required in order to be a professional musician and that I wouldn't have possessed many of them.

[Jo498]

If I had started a few years earlier both listening to classical music and playing an instrument (I played the clarinet for a few years but started only at 16 after I had fallen in love with classical music and was not very gifted) I might have thought about music journalism or musicology. But it is hard to make a living in those fields and many others would have had a head start. (Connections and social capital are everything in this field.)

[marvinbrown]

  Having taken piano and clarinet lessons for many many years in my youth I would never admit to myself that I have NO TALENT whatsoever. To come to terms with that fact, to accept that fact is just too much for my fragile ego to bear. It is also in my nature to resent that which I am forced to do, as in a profession.  I guess that would be my answer then. Believe what you want, I'll just keep denying the truth to myself as it is so satisfying.

  marvin

[Madiel]

My mother told me that music was something you only did if you weren't any good at anything else. And I was good at other things - very high grades at school - and worked out that I could still do music without pursuing it in the professional/academic setting. So I went and got 2 other degrees.

Mixed in that was probably an element of that worry that making it my job would mean it was less fun and I could get sick of it. Who knows. As it is, I find it pretty well impossible to get through a single day without music exposure, but the type of music varies considerably.

[Karl Henning]

My mother told me that music was something you only did if you weren't any good at anything else.

Well, what should I say for myself ...?

[NikF]

Well, what should I say for myself ...?

"And it's all cool  " ?

[Mirror Image]

Music has been a huge part of my life and has given me so much pleasure, but one of the main reasons I never pursued a music career would perhaps be the fear that this passion would turn into something that became a chore or something that just wasn't fun anymore. I've played the guitar for 22 years and there are many days I get bored with it or feel that I just can't play anything anymore, so I simply put it down. Listening to music, on the other hand, I never get tired of and, in fact, actually motivates me to come to places like GMG to chat about this passion of mine. My band teacher in junior high said I had a lot of potential (I played percussion), but also mentioned that two things I lacked to become an even better musician was a lack of focus and, most of all, a lack of discipline. I just never felt good enough to pursue a career as an instrumentalist. I just didn't have that kind of drive it takes to become proficient. I wouldn't mind working part-time in a CD store or something, though, because I can talk about music all day, but even the idea of becoming say a musicologist or something along these lines didn't really appeal to me.

[Sergeant Rock]

Although I've loved all types of music, including classical, since I was five or six years old, and I played saxophone, clarinet and a bit of flute in high school (won the Sousa Award my senior year...more for popularity than musical accomplishment), it never once crossed my mind to pursue a career in music. Since I never considered it, I have no reasons for not choosing it 

Sarge

[Karl Henning]

(won the Sousa Award my senior year...more for popularity than musical accomplishment)

You were fortunate at that tender age to learn the actual criteria for awards 

[Karl Henning]

Phone call for you, Sarge; I think the name was Dudamel?...

[PerfectWagnerite]

Simple, no matter how much I practiced or how many times I changed teachers my playing didn't get better, nowhere near professional level. Also my ears and musical memory aren't good.

[Madiel]

Well, what should I say for myself ...?

You should thank my mother for eliminating some of the competition. 

[Karl Henning]

More good music is a great problem for the world to have;  and if you write bad music, you are no competition of mine 

[Rinaldo]

I wouldn't be able to pay the rent.