Music has been a huge part of me getting better mentally the past few years, but I’ve found pretty much nobody is that interested in hearing me play, and I’ve further noticed that nobody is interested in hearing anyone play anything outside of music they’ve already heard a gajillion times the exact way they’ve heard it a gajillion times, and that does not interest me at all.

Doesn’t hurt that I play mostly French and Spanish songs in the United States (guitar, naturally).

I’ve been to a few open mics. The “best” one was just really cliquey. Another one was really isolated was just heartbreakingly isolated–that is, people would sit at their tables, go up and play, and then sit down again alone at the tables, and maybe someone might come up and say, “nice set.” Why bother?

I also haven’t run into much possibility for collaboration. Everyone once in a while, I might run into sax player, but basically everyone is playing guitar or maybe keyboard and just wants to play and sing solo, unless they’re dating someone that wants to sing. I keep dabbling in clarinet and lap steel just so I can eventually have something else to offer musically, but don´t know who would take me up on it.

Music used to be a social pursuit, I understand, but I’m kinda coming to grips with it being an almost absolutely solitary pursuit at this point. Like, I don’t think about performing anymore, I just play for myself, and it just makes me a little bit sad.

Any ideas or suggestions?

  • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    I think most of my music is popular somewhere, just not locally.

    Tell you what: if I find an Peertube instance to host, I’ll start recording stuff.

    I was big into Leo Kottke for the longest time, but one of my musical struggles is that I’m not musically gifted enough to straight-up copy anyone yet, nor am I sure I even want to. My ear is just getting good enough I can transcribe vocal lines, and maybe some day I can do some Sidney Bechet solos, but once I hear a second note, I completely lose the thread.

    I was able to get my hands on some Kottke tabs and learn it that way, but I just feel like a huge phoney because I can’t actually hear most of what I’m playing and I’ve mostly forgotten how they go at this point.

      • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        Nice! I have a whole rant about the music education system. I think most “educated” people just learn to read music exclusively, then they "graduate"to “jazz” and suddenly they have to improvise when they can’t even play by a simple melody by ear. No problem, says the education system! We will teach them all the RULES of improvisation! Two years into jazz programs and students are just spitting out scale after scale after scale and the teachers are BEAMING with pride because of EVERYTHING that student has LEARNED!

        “This student is masterfully mixing dorian and mixolydian modes here.”

        “Because they can hear them in their head and it’s effecting an emotion they’re having or is it because they know they are playing from a ii minor to the dominant fifth and just randomly playing notes from the modes?”

        “It doesn’t matter.”

        Thing is, teachers have to teach something to get paid and convince students to keep paying them and to convince administrators to continue to hire them. “Play what you hear and practice hearing every day” is something anyone can tell you, but so many people HATE hearing that because it is SCARY to face how fucking terrible you are at music when you get started. And it’s scary because we’ve convinced ourselves that music is about TALENT and that if we don’t have talent, we’re fucked.

        And the reason we think its about talent is because the music education is not designed to teach you music, it’s designed to teach you to play an instrument and to READ music. And what’s worse, music education viciously selects for people who’ve already managed to teach themself music, that is to say, “If you can teach YOURSELF music, then you can join our music program.” But music programs don’t see it that way. Instead of saying, “Why isn’t this student getting it?” they’ll say, “well, that person just has no aptitude.” And where would they have gotten the aptitude from, deafly note reading scale after scale after scale all day long? The system is DESIGNED to fail students, and then BLAME the student!

        Anyway, my life changed when I decided to never look at another piece of sheet music to figure out a song and just play by ear, so that’s what I try to do every day: just find a melody somewhere, usually one that I already can sing, and pick it out on an instrument.