The work is never easy, if the product is to be considered worthwhile. Just because the barrier to entry has been lowered in some respects doesn’t mean that your standard has to be lowered. In fact that precisely the time you can set yourself apart from the crowd by raising yours. Paul Masson was/is still correct re: product completion. The only thing that we know that we can count on is change. Just because musicians made money using a certain model for decades does not mean that model will continue ad infinitum. Bach, Beethoven and countless others made a musical living a certain way as a product of the times that they lived in and well right or wrong we are living in an era where by and large folks are not going to by $16.99 CD’s nor is there enough room being made at traditional radio and the math doesn’t work out at streaming for many to even subsist on quarterly performance royalty statements.
But one thing is for certain if the work is done and I mean real work: the til it hurts, I’m falling asleep but let’s go one more take, the I hear deficiencies in my art and I need to work on them until I can solve them type work… when that type of work is done and it meets real talent (I don’t mean high school talent show talent) I mean the type of talent where you gaze upon it and tell yourself I can’t do what they are doing, because what they area doing is amazing for whatever reason… most if not all of the above mentioned issues remove themselves. Why?
The reason that the issues are removed is because when the work and the talent and the output line up you become attractive. Not attractive in the manner we always associate with that term, attractive like a magnet where you pull people toward you, they want to follow you to the next show etc., etc., No hype. No “roll-out”. None of that overblown gob that gums up the internet seemingly every 15 minutes, I mean the people came out to hear what you do and based upon that experience they are now “attracted” to you.\
I’m done for now, but make sure you check out what Dave Grohl has to say in the above video. Sage advice.
Ivan Orr is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, performer, and writer. A native of Charlottesville, Virginia Ivan was involved with the forming and nascent days of The Music Resource Center as its first Program Director. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Music, Ivan currently resides in Richmond, VA where he maintains an active performance and production schedule while serving as the Music Editor for Grown Folks Music, a position he has held since 2010.
