Then There Was Music
As musicians, we often hear phrases like this:
"I couldn't learn to play an instrument if I tried."
"I'm completely tone deaf."
Or perhaps the more degrading "Why would you want to be a musician? They don't get paid well."
I'll get back to that last phrase in a moment, but let's address the first one.
"I couldn't learn to play an instrument if I tried." Let's be fair here. There really aren't many things that you can learn to do without trying. When I first starting taking piano lessons, I was sure that it was going to take me months just to remember the names of the keys on the piano. But within just a couple weeks' worth of practice, I learned them and since then have moved on to other topics.
Now, I've been playing piano for nearly four years. There are still times when I think I'm never going to learn how to play this whenever I come to a particularly difficult part in a piece of music. But I work through it and carry on.
"I'm completely tone deaf." This one makes me irrationally angry. A good ear for music isn't necessarily required to be a good musician, in my opinion. While I've played piano for a few years, I'm just now getting to the point where I can almost properly identify a note just by hearing it. It's gonna take time, just like anything else that we learn.
I like to think of music as another language entirely. Some people enjoy learning foreign languages such as French, German, or Spanish. I love other languages as well. Music is another language. Just as you wouldn't expect to pick up a book on French and suddenly know the entire French language, you can't expect music to be the same.
And now, the worst thing any musician will hear innumerable times throughout their life.
"Why would you want to be a musician? They don't get paid well." Let me explain to you a thing. Anyone who has ever taken music professionally knows that musicians can get paid very well. After all, we paid someone for all those music lessons and those lessons weren't cheap. And guess who that someone we paid was. Ah! A musician! Well, you really wouldn't expect to take music lessons from someone who knows nothing about music, now would you?
I'm not exactly sure where the whole "Musicians don't get paid well" phrase came from. I'm sure it originated when jobs for musicians were scarce and the pay wasn't very high. Even though professional jobs for classically trained musicians are still sometimes hard to find, they're out there somewhere in that big, great world. Sometimes it's hard to get accepted into a symphony or what have you, but there's a job out there for you.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that when you enter into the world of musicians, it's really a whole different world. It's hard for non-musicians to understand, I think. There's almost another spoken language that musicians use to communicate that is hard for other people to understand. That's all I have to say for now, I think. But who knows what the future may hold?
In other news:
Happy Halloween month!
"I couldn't learn to play an instrument if I tried."
"I'm completely tone deaf."
Or perhaps the more degrading "Why would you want to be a musician? They don't get paid well."
I'll get back to that last phrase in a moment, but let's address the first one.
"I couldn't learn to play an instrument if I tried." Let's be fair here. There really aren't many things that you can learn to do without trying. When I first starting taking piano lessons, I was sure that it was going to take me months just to remember the names of the keys on the piano. But within just a couple weeks' worth of practice, I learned them and since then have moved on to other topics.
Now, I've been playing piano for nearly four years. There are still times when I think I'm never going to learn how to play this whenever I come to a particularly difficult part in a piece of music. But I work through it and carry on.
"I'm completely tone deaf." This one makes me irrationally angry. A good ear for music isn't necessarily required to be a good musician, in my opinion. While I've played piano for a few years, I'm just now getting to the point where I can almost properly identify a note just by hearing it. It's gonna take time, just like anything else that we learn.
I like to think of music as another language entirely. Some people enjoy learning foreign languages such as French, German, or Spanish. I love other languages as well. Music is another language. Just as you wouldn't expect to pick up a book on French and suddenly know the entire French language, you can't expect music to be the same.
And now, the worst thing any musician will hear innumerable times throughout their life.
"Why would you want to be a musician? They don't get paid well." Let me explain to you a thing. Anyone who has ever taken music professionally knows that musicians can get paid very well. After all, we paid someone for all those music lessons and those lessons weren't cheap. And guess who that someone we paid was. Ah! A musician! Well, you really wouldn't expect to take music lessons from someone who knows nothing about music, now would you?
I'm not exactly sure where the whole "Musicians don't get paid well" phrase came from. I'm sure it originated when jobs for musicians were scarce and the pay wasn't very high. Even though professional jobs for classically trained musicians are still sometimes hard to find, they're out there somewhere in that big, great world. Sometimes it's hard to get accepted into a symphony or what have you, but there's a job out there for you.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that when you enter into the world of musicians, it's really a whole different world. It's hard for non-musicians to understand, I think. There's almost another spoken language that musicians use to communicate that is hard for other people to understand. That's all I have to say for now, I think. But who knows what the future may hold?
In other news:
Happy Halloween month!
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