Where Should We Spend The Most Time?
Hi everyone, I hope your 2009 is off to a great start!
Believe it or not, my main professional “resolution” for 2009 (after more score study!) is to work more with this blog. There are a lot of great minds out there and I want to learn as much as I can from you as well! Seems simple right? Here goes:
When I first started writing much in the 1970’s a musician’s job was still reasonably well defined. If you were a songwriter you wrote songs. If you needed a lyricist, you found someone that specialized in that aspect. If you needed an arranger to put the song together, you hired one of those too. The song probably needs to be recorded so you would find an engineer, a producer and the players to play the music (if you weren’t in a self contained band). These are all specific roles that musicians filled. This certainly was the tail end of the old “studio system” where everyone went to “work” everyday and just played, wrote or recorded what was planned for that day. Music historians would probably say that the “golden age” of the studio system was over with by this time, but certainly there was still plenty of evidence of it (go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_system for more info).
Fast forward to 2009. The business is quite different now and the more YOU can do for a client (and do it well and on time), the better your chances of working with said client – one stop shopping! This leads me to the following:
When studying to be a very competent musician (not to mention a great musician), how do you balance the realities of the business of music (”jack of all trades”) with trying to be a better player, a better engineer or a better writer?
I find this in my own classrooms here at Berklee. I know as an educator and a professional writer that to be good at any ONE aspect of the music industry you have to submerse yourself in that one aspect for awhile. Practice, practice, practice, right? Devote yourself 100% right?
Well…..how do you devote yourself 100% to learning orchestration (or playing or production/engineering or songwriting etc), when you feel you need to also spend 100% of your time learning these other aspects – not to mention staying on top of (and simply learning for the first time) various pieces of software?
Any thoughts on how you approach this very real issue?
All the best!
Jerry
