Journal ~ Paul Blackburn

Paul's News

22) How To Buy A Guitar
Monday, March 26, 2007, 2:40pm
This article answers the need of those who are buying a guitar for the first time for a beginner student, and specifically for students of ages 6-12. This information is difficult to find, because most books about guitar presume that the student is an adult or teenager, and only guide students in buying adult-size guitars. With more and more pre-teen students beginning guitar, this article will guide parents and teachers in selecting an appropriate instrument. Teenage and adult students will also find important insights into buying a first guitar in this article as well.

The first thing to consider in buying a guitar is how easy the instrument is to play. It is best to start students on guitars that are easy to play. Pre-teen students face numerous challenges in beginning guitar. They are not as physically coordinated as adults, and lack the finger strength to press strings down on difficult guitars. Placing another challenge, in the form of a difficult guitar, on top of these, will discourage even the most self-motivated student. There is a suburban legend in the guitar teaching community that states that starting students on bad guitars is best, because they’ll develop more strength, and they’ll appreciate a quality guitar more when they purchase one. This is completely false. Any advantage which might be gained in terms of strength development or later appreciation of quality are irrelevant if you can’t keep the student playing long enough to get another guitar!

The primary factor affecting ease of playing is the size of the instrument. Nothing will hinder the student more than a guitar that is too big. Do not presume that the student will “grow into” the guitar. A beginner guitar is a small investment (expect to pay $70-$90), and purchasing another after the student has grown will not empty your bank account. Student-size guitars come in four sizes: 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, and full size. The 1/4 size is extremely small, and would serve only students under the age of 6. As it is difficult for many reasons to train students at this age on any instrument, but particularly on guitar, most people will not be buying a1/4 size guitar. The 1/2 size is appropriate generally for students ages 6-10. The 3/4 size will serve most students age 10-13. The ages I give here are generalizations, though. What’s most important is to place he guitar in the student’s hands and judge then if it’s the proper size.

Beginning students ought to practice sitting, so your primary consideration is how the guitar fits the student when it’s on his or her lap. The student should be sitting in a chair with feet flat on he floor and their thighs horizontal to the floor. If the chair on which he or she is seated doesn’t allow this, then find a chair that does. Place the guitar on the student’s right leg. The waist of the guitar is the narrow part of the guitar’s body, and the waist should fit comfortably on the student’s thigh. Have the student place his right arm on top of the bout of the guitar. The bout is the large, round end of the guitar. The student’s right hand should easily reach the soundhole (the round hole in the front of the body). When the student stretches out his or her fingers, the fingers should actually stretch to the end of the neck, where the fretboard meets the soundhole. Next, have the student hang his or her left arm at their side in a relaxed manner. Have the student lift the left arm straight up from the shoulder, bending the elbow while lifting. The student’s left hand should easily land right on “first position”-that is, the student’s hand should be able to fit around the neck of the guitar at the spot where the head of the guitar and the neck come together. If either the left or right hands are uncomfortable reaching either of these places, then the guitar is too big.

The next consideration is what is called the “action” of the guitar. The action is the distance between the strings and the neck of the guitar. That is, a guitar with high action means that its strings are very far from the neck. Low action means that the strings are very close to the neck. The action should NOT be high for a beginner. This makes pressing the strings down with the fingers of the left hand very difficult. If he action is too low, then you will hear a buzzing noise from the guitar when the strings are being played “open” (that is, when they are played without pressing the strings down on the neck)

For all pre-teen students I require a classical guitar (and I strongly recommend classical guitars for beginning teen and adult students as well). For young students, the classical is the best choice for several reasons. First of all, the shape and body of a classical guitar are designed to fit a person’s body much better than those of a steel-string guitar (also knows as a folk or dreadnought guitar). Steel-string guitar bodies are designed in shape and size to get the loudest sound possible out of the instrument, but are very uncomfortable to play. Second, the neck of a classical guitar is shorter than that of a folk guitar. Classical guitar necks end at twelve frets, while in most (but not all) cases folk guitar necks are fifteen frets long. A longer neck requires the student to put the left arm and left hand in a very uncomfortable position to reach first position on the neck (there are other sizes and shapes of steel-string guitars, but they are almost never available for students, and are extremely expensive because they make very few of them). Third, classical guitars are strung with nylon strings, which have two advantages over steel strings. For one thing, it’s much easier for a beginner student to get a good quality tone out of nylon strings than steel strings. More importantly, though, is that steel strings are simply a pain to press down. A beginner’s left hand fingertips will hurt very badly for several months when using steel strings, because it requires a long time for calluses to build up. Pre-teen students’ skin is still soft because their bodies are in a period of development, and it’s extremely painful for them to play steel strings. Steel strings are also very difficult to press down because they are simply heavy. A beginning student will not be discouraged or be hurt by nylon strings. Another suburban legend among guitar teachers is that it’s better to start students on steel strings, because it develops their calluses better and makes their fingers stronger. If the student’s teacher has this philosophy, you should seriously consider finding another teacher, because he or she most likely knows nothing about teaching pre-teen students.

I never teach a beginning student under the age of 12 on an electric guitar. Electric guitars are made to be played standing up, and even then are designed so poorly in terms of shape and size that the student will not be able to play them. While it’s true that electric guitar strings are easy to play, this is only because companies string them with very light, thin strings. This is no advantage over a classical guitar. If a young student has advanced to the level of playing rock, jazz or blues, then I recommend a Fender Stratocaster shape body, because this is without doubt the most comfortable of al electric guitars to play (with the exception of hollow-body electrics. Hollow-body electrics are great instruments, but are used mainly for playing jazz, and it’s rare for a pre-teen student to be so interested in playing jazz that it warrants investing in a hollow-body). A classical guitar (or at the very least, a steel-string guitar which fits properly) is the best choice for a beginner, because it’s important for the student to understand how to produce a strong, clean tone on the instrument. Electric guitars allow the player to change the tone with controls on the guitar and amplifier. This leads to a player not understanding the most basic element of playing any musical instrument-how to achieve the best, strongest, cleanest sound possible.

When buying the guitar, go to a locally-owned music store, if there is one available in or near your town. Department and big-box stores like Target and Wal-Mart do sell student size guitars, but these instruments are of extremely poor quality. They break easily (I once had a student whose Wal-Mart First Act guitar broke in half just from being picked up. The neck fell off the body of the guitar!), and there is no repair person at the store to fix the instrument or provide any kind of follow-up customer service. These stores also only sell steel-string guitars. These are not instruments that are meant to be played, only to get money from you quickly. At a local music store there will be a salesperson who will help you find the right instrument for your student. Even the least competent salesperson at a local music store knows more about guitars than a department store employee. While some large chains are opening stores in new locations, such as Guitar Center, you will get very poor customer service there. The sales staff turns over frequently, meaning that if you need to bring the instrument back for some reason, you most likely will not even find the person there who sold it to you. The staff is also interested primarily in selling you a poor-quality instrument at the highest price possible, and then getting rid of you. Many people may live in areas where a local music store is not available. If this is the case, then you may want to order online, following the above guidelines that I have provided as best you can. I have had good luck with Valencia guitars, which are made in 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and full sizes. They are available locally in Rochester from Bernunzio’s Stringed Instruments, and can be ordered online from a variety of places.

Hopefully this guide will give you a starting point for purchasing a quality instrument. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with me through the information on the “Contact” page of this website.

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21) 2006 In Review
Friday, January 19, 2007, 6:30pm
Once again, Rochester’s Jazz Festival brought top-notch talent to town and once again had no effect on the music scene for the rest of the year. This summer’s festival means I’ve finally been part of something cool and legit long enough to see it become a waste of time. The after-hours jam sessions at the Crowne Plaza are now overrun and overcrowded with both patrons and performers. Hey, I know that nepotism makes the world go ‘round, but enough with letting the Eastman kids on stage, OK? The sessions have lost their spontaneous and informal vibe, and with those went the fun. No knock against Bob Sneider and his group, nor against the Crowne Plaza-it was simply bound to happen. I’m just glad to be able to say, “I was there when...”

Kodaktown has seen some new places open. The armory on Main Street is now a regular concert spot, mainly showing rock. There’s now a venue called, well, Venu which specializes in out-of-town jazz players, and the Café Underground Railroad is bringing jazz and blues to the west side on West Main. Daily Perks is aiming higher for performers, and Beale Street has opened up a second location. It almost seems like we’ve got a jazz and blues scene here. Not that you’d know it from the local press, who seem frighteningly obsessed with middle-class teenage girls playing acoustic folk. I expect better out of the City Newspaper. The Democrat & Chronicle is just toilet paper, and The Insider is that piece of toilet paper that gets stuck to the bottom of your shoe. Thanks for nothing, y’all.

Rock music doesn’t suck as badly as it used to. Seriously! Oh, there are plenty of inadequate bands out there still, don’t worry, but we’ve seen real talent from new and old performers alike. System Of A Down and Disturbed released albums with lyrics that don’t insult our intelligence, dealing with political issues. Mars Volta and Tool displayed real technical proficiency on their releases (John Frusciante’s good guitar work with The Mars Volta almost makes up for that garbage he’s been playing on the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s last couple). Avenged Sevenfold showed that real old-school metal is marketable today, and stands in contrast to the wannabe rappers who have polluted the airwaves since the late ‘90s with their fake attitude and pathetic musicianship. Ironically, just as rock is giving up on rap and going back to real skill, rap continues to show no interest in raising itself to a higher level. Legit musicians The Roots still have more cult appeal than mainstream acceptance. All you hip-hoppers-I know you aren’t lacking in talent, but you’re doing your best to convince us real musicians that you are! Want to be more than a modern-day Jim Crow minstrel show? Learn an instrument and take voice lessons.

Why is a whole radio station owned by a car dealership? What’s more, how did they manage to find music to play that’s even worse than what was already on the radio? A particular Syracuse-based dealership that will remain unnamed because they deserve no further publicity (as a native Central New Yorker, I’d had enough of them BEFORE I moved here!) paid for all the air time on 107.3 FM. Broadcast radio is scraping the bottom of the barrel for content and advertising because its audience is abandoning it. This is partly due to satellite radio, although that hasn’t taken off the way it was predicted. Lots of new cars come equipped for it, even come with subscriptions included, but millions of Americans are like me, driving used cars. Mine still has a tape deck in it. Radio used to be the primary place people learned about new performers, but the web is now that forum. Plus, when even cheap MP3 players hold hundreds of songs and shuffle the tracks, radio has a hard time competing. The players give the radio experience of random tunes, but without commercials, and with a play list that the owner knows he’ll like. Broadcast radio will keep getting worse, and then really bottom out. What’s the future for local stations and local content? Look no further than jazz stations like 90.1 FM in Rochester and 88.3 FM in Syracuse. Both started streaming over the web a few years ago. Eventually, they’ll possibly give up broadcasting because the web offers cheap transmission without the FCC baloney-but by the time that happens, the FCC may already be regulating the web. We’ll see.

In my personal case, 2006 was the best year yet of my career. My students have been absolutely kicking butt-they’re playing in recitals, getting into school ensembles, preparing for the NYSSMA competition, performing in church groups, joining bands, writing songs, and learning rock, blues and jazz. I played in a great rock band last summer and played some awesome jazz gigs. My playing is better than ever, and keeps improving. I faced a potential career-killer when the guys at the music store I’d taught at over two years went absolutely nuts and tried to force me out. My students and I moved to a private music school, and that has worked out even better. Thank you to all my students, to the awesome people in Stronghold and the Artisan trio, St. John Neumann School and Vince Ercolamento for making 2006 so great.

(P. S. Atlas Music-I was only one of the teachers who left and took their students with them last year. That’s because you don’t know your heads from holes in the ground and subject teachers, students, their parents and customers in general to the kind of derision, neglect and outright hostility and abuse that only emotionally stunted, deranged, nose-picking, I-Get-Drunk-Starting-At-11am-Because-I'm-Pitiful brain donors could conceive of. Wise up.)

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20) How Government Fails Musicians-Part I of II
Friday, December 8, 2006, 5:35pm
Part I of II
Rochester’s upcoming Renaissance Square project is a current local example of the bait and switch the government uses to appear as though they care about the arts. Rochester media is abuzz with updates on the project, which is a mixed-use performing arts facility to be built downtown. Interviews with politicians and supposed representatives of the local arts community are typically self-congratulating. Sadly, the project and the theories it’s based on are unrealistic and ludicrous. Government always fails when attempting to pump life into a city’s arts scene. This isn’t because government can’t help the arts, but because the methods are preposterous and motivated not by any actual desire to help the arts, but rather by a desire to put money in wealthy friends’ pockets at the expense of local taxpayers and performers alike. Government agencies and task forces fail completely because they simply barge ahead with poorly designed, poorly thought out projects without ever examining what has ailed the arts scene in the first place. If they took a close look, they’d realize that local arts, local business and local economy all have the same needs and will benefit from the same solutions. Regional, state and federal government alike must realize the problems and then fashion the solutions to fit them.

This first essay describes why Rochester’s music scene has collapsed, insofar as government negligence is related (see the article "TV vs. Live Music, and the winner is..." for an examination of the cultural changes which have harmed music scenes). The second essay details the solutions government must utilize to change the trend.

-Local music has died out hand-in hand with locally owned businesses. Musicians require locally owned, one of a kind clubs and restaurants to perform in. A chain business does not hire musicians of any kind, much less a local one. The purpose of a chain business is to provide the precise same experience in Henrietta or Brighton as one finds in Des Moines or Peoria. This requires an exact duplication of services, right down to the music piped in by satellite over the speakers. If a customer sees one performer in Rochester, and another in Boston, it disrupts the chain’s efforts to create that uniform experience. Only local businesses hire musicians, and they do so precisely because their survival depends upon their uniqueness. Government’s efforts to support local businesses are a complete and total failure, mainly because they work on a flawed model of big-investment/big return. Government offers incentives to large companies under the mistaken belief that those businesses will create large numbers of jobs. Rochester’s economy is proof of the stupidity of this approach, an approach that has come at the expense of effort on behalf of local business.

-Music scenes depend upon foot traffic and numerous businesses clustered close together in downtown and neighborhoods. As businesses and residents have left urban centers, the audience for musicians has dissipated and dispersed. Neighborhood residents support neighborhood businesses in ways that suburban subdivisions don’t remotely approach. The success of Johnny’s Irish bar and the Merchants Grill in the Culver Ave. neighborhood are proof of this, and both places hire musicians regularly.

-Rochester’s local economy is a disaster. While the middle class remains in affluence in the suburbs, and immense wealth is enjoyed by the boards of directors of Paychex, Xerox and so on, poverty and debt have afflicted the lower and working classes who live in the urban center. When money is tight, luxuries aren’t consumed. Sadly, music is one of the first luxuries to go when money is tight.

-Suburban sprawl has created dispersed affluence. The worst-case scenario for a music scene is when the most affluent consumers, who can afford the luxury of live music, live nowhere near the venues. This is precisely what began 50 years ago when sprawl started in post-WWII America. Sprawl has had catastrophic effects on the urban center, and the music scene is one of the victims.

-While crime is a major problem in the city, it is the perception of crime that is equally devastating for the city. A suburbanite’s chances of getting killed in a car accident are far higher than being shot on a city street coming out of a club after dark. However, the delusional paranoia that afflicts the middle class prevents them from supporting city businesses. So long as the suburbanites perceive the danger to be greater than it actually is, they will support the music scene less and less.

-Local music is a part of local culture. Local culture thrives in neighborhoods where residents have close contact. Rochester has suffered the horrible problem of a shrinking county population that has simply moved farther and farther out away from anything resembling a neighborhood.

-The dispersion of the population hasn’t just diluted local culture, it has caused it to be replaced by mass culture. When people don’t have neighborhoods to build culture, they get it from TV, radio, film and at the mall. The perception is created that local musicians are inferior to famous ones. Worse yet, people begin to perceive that there simply are no local musicians.

-Musicians thrive living in neighborhoods around other musicians and artists, which mean healthy city neighborhoods. However, a kind of real estate stagflation has set into Rochester and similar cities. Housing prices have increased, and rents have increased as a result. However, wages have stayed the same and often dropped for musicians and all working people. Upstate New Yorkers like to laugh at expensive cities like San Francisco and Boston and console themselves with thoughts of their supposedly higher standard of living. However, wages have also increased in those expensive cities. With a higher cost of living and lower and less frequent pay, artists and workers are in a far worse situation in Rochester.

-The stagflation also limits the musician’s ability to get a start. Like any entrepreneur, a musician requires capital to begin and see through the first vital years of operation. Lower wages and higher costs put a pinch on every entrepreneur. The only likely candidates become those whose families are already so affluent they can support the musician. The talent pool on the music scene is being depleted severely because the number of musicians who can realistically practice their craft is dwindling.

-There is virtually no oversight of the local music business. Performers work almost completely without contracts, leaving them at the mercy of venue owners. A venue owner operates with one single purpose-maximize his return by shifting as much financial liability onto vulnerable people. This means that musicians have gigs cancelled without notice and without compensation, and when the owner stiffs them on the pay after a gig, there’s no recourse. Without a written contract, there’s no proof that an arrangement was ever made, and no legal recourse is possible.

-The aforementioned stagflation, as stated, means that only those with excess capital can realistically perform regularly. This means that the amateur with a good paying job not only has a great advantage over the professional, the amateur is now the predominant performer in Rochester. The amateur can undercut any professional by performing for no pay, and constantly does so. There is no way for a professional to compete with people who will play for nothing. Period.

-In the last 50 years there has been a shift of people’s leisure pursuits from cultural activity to consumption of goods. The government has encouraged this shift as a way to subsidize business. Every Christmas season, for instance, the government carefully tracks the amount of money consumers are spending. After Sept. 11, George W. Bush begged people to shop at the mall to help the economy. Too bad he didn’t say, “America needs your help. The economy needs your help. Go see a local musician play in a restaurant tonight.”

-The government has staked the health of the economy on goods consumption on the false math that consumption=local jobs. This was true only during the post WWII period when the bulk of consumable goods were manufactured her in the U.S. Cities like Rochester boomed during this period because local workers had plenty of disposable income, and the music scene benefited from this. Starting in the 70s, businesses starting outsourcing their work overseas. The effect on the economy has been a disaster for those workers who depended on those jobs. Now, goods consumption benefits workers overseas, not local workers. For rust belt cities like Rochester, it’s been nearly a death sentence for the music scenes, as local workers have fewer jobs and worse pay, and thus less cash to spend on music and entertainment.

-Urban center governments like the City of Rochester are burdened with subsidizing the growth of other municipalities. Every time a new subdivision or shopping center is built outside the city, Rochester’s resident’s pay for it through county taxes. We subsidize their increased police protection through the county sheriff, we pay for county road access, extra exits on the highway system, and the water system expansion. An economically damaged city like Rochester can barely afford its own expenses, much less pay for someone else’s. As long as the city has this burden, it cannot focus its resources on the local businesspeople, and musicians included.

-When businesses move to the suburbs, it raises costs for musicians. We live in city neighborhoods and require a low cost of living. But when Wegmans, the grocery store chain, closes 3 city stores in the last 6 years while expanding further into the suburbs, local musicians must now travel farther for those goods, as for every other good or service which has moved to the burbs. More travel equals higher cost of living.

-Dispersal of business and residents, which is actually funded by the government, is then used by the government to justify cutting funding for mass transit. Mass transportation is infrastructure that keeps the cost of living lower for musicians who utilize it, and also for people who would see shows who would then have more disposable income. Car culture has made life for musicians more expensive.

-Health care costs have risen for everyone. As entrepreneurs, musicians suffer a lack of options. NY State offers Healthy NY, one of the better programs in the U.S., and it is available to any sole proprietor. But for $110/month, you get little more than catastrophic coverage. This is pathetic compared to the benefits offered by big companies, and makes music a less feasible, less desirable career option.

-Civic projects like Renaissance Square are themselves part of the problem. These take valuable resources away that could be used to actually help performers. Worse yet, it gives politicians a free pass to do nothing for performers, because it helps them appear to be taking action, when in fact they are making the problem worse.

-Like any entrepreneur, musicians face a host of problems at retirement. Years ago, when the cost of living was lower, having a pension or retirement plan was not as important, because personal savings could be a reliable way to see through old age. Now, the lack of options, beyond IRAs and 403bs for the self-employed, has driven musicians into other careers.

-The real estate bubble has drastically increased the debt load for Americans, leaving them with less money to spend on entertainment. The government itself encouraged this bubble with low interest rates for loans and mortgages.

-Although assistance is available from all levels of government for certain local businesses, government focuses only on those companies that are buying property. The subsidization is primarily through no-interest loans and property tax credits. This does nothing for musicians who, like web designers and private contractors of all sorts, don’t purchase extra real estate for their businesses. The effect is that virtually no government assistance exists for musicians, other than the paltry stipends available to the best friends of the local arts and cultural councils.

-Local corruption and cronyism could be overlooked in the go-go 1950s, when graft and theft took a proportionally smaller piece of the total pie (simply because wealth per-person was proportionally higher). In an era of tighter budgets, it’s crippled local economies. The aforementioned cultural councils are already poorly run and under funded, but to make matters worse, money is doled out not in ways that actually help music and arts scenes, but simply as rewards to family members and loyal political allies. Worse yet, local budgets are harmed more than ever by the corruption and graft which happens between government and corporations. The County of Monroe Industrial Development Corporation (COMIDA) exists purely for the purpose of giving property tax breaks to friends of the Republican majority in the county government. Alarmingly, NYS’s Empire Zones have been drawn up based on cronyism, and now subsidize the moving of business OUT of economically depressed areas into the suburbs!

-Legislation like the Taft-Hartley Act have crippled to ability of workers to organize into unions. The AFM is a pathetic shell of its former self. In Rochester it primarily represent the classical musicians in the Rochester Philharmonic, and doesn’t at all represent the interests of musicians who play in clubs and restaurants.

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19) What Government Must Do For Musicians-Part II of II
Friday, December 8, 2006, 5:35pm
Part II of II
Here are the actions government can and must take to assist musicians. The solutions not only benefit musicians and artists, but most other members of society as well. There are certain people who these solutions will not benefit-primarily corrupt politicians and the contracting companies who benefit from no-bid contracts for the construction of civic projects. As they have plenty of airtime through mainstream media, however, you already know their opinions.

-Limit suburban sprawl, period. County and state governments have to change the ridiculous zoning and permit processes which allow Monroe County, the population of which has been shrinking for 30 years, to permit the continued construction of housing and businesses outside the lines of the urban center. Only when the bulk of a metropolitan area’s population lives in the city center will we see the return of foot traffic, intact neighborhoods and a demand for mass transit. Only then will we see local culture, and thus music scenes, return.

-Offer incentives like tax breaks to encourage people to relocate to the urban centers.

-Improve urban education. Suburbanites perceive their school districts to be superior to those of the city. Sometimes it’s true, and usually it isn’t. However, this perception has compelled people to move out the city. Only when city schools are so obviously superior to those of the surrounding municipalities will people reconsider where they buy their houses.

-Have real crime reduction in the city. We get the usual ineffective tactics like curfews, and hear meaningless words like “initiatives” and “task force”. We hear from the usual useless politicians, religious leaders and “community leaders” whenever there’s a crime spree. What if these people all shut up and actually did their jobs?

-Stop subsidizing businesses that move overseas. Here’s the typical scenario, one that has played in Rochester for a long time. A business says, “If you don’t give us tax credits, we’ll move to China next year.” The city gives the business a tax credit. The company says “Thank you.” Then they move overseas anyway. The Detroit auto manufacturers are only still functioning because the federal government has poured research and development subsidies into them, and yet they still move plants to Asia and Canada. Time to stop feeding the hand that slaps you.

-Encourage cultural consumerism. The government encourages people to consume goods with days of no sales tax. It regularly releases reports of consumer confidence, which is the index by which the gov gauges how likely consumers are to spend their money on goods. The media unquestioningly reports the press releases that state that low consumer confidence is bad news and that high confidence is good news. Why not an index gauging people’s expenditures on cultural attractions? How about plans to encourage them to go see cultural events like music or visit art museums?

-Build mass transit. Give musicians, who have limited incomes, an affordable means to get around town. Leave everyone else with more disposable income to see musicians, and lower the demand for oil so the price drops, thus making mass transit even cheaper. Only makes sense.

-Universal health care. Period. The arguments against it amount only to saying that wealthy and upper middle class people can have unnecessary surgeries and not wait on a list for it. Universal care is practical, cost-effective, exists in every other developed country besides the U.S., and would even the playing field between self-employed careers like music and corporate careers, making music a more attractive option.

-Stop building the civic projects. There is absolutely no demand in Rochester for a theatre the size of the one in Renaissance Square. None. Zilch. Niente. Rien. Nada. It won’t even contain a theatre appropriate for Garth Fagan Dance, which was one of the selling points of the project in the first place. This is pathetic and obviously corrupt.

-Last year American oil companies posted record profits. Not just record for themselves-they garnered larger profits than any other industry ever in history. And yet billions of dollars in federal subsidies flow into these companies, even hidden in bills to reconstruct the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. Come on. Cheap oil has allowed the car culture that killed cities and killed music scenes.

-Levy tariffs on imported goods from nations with unfair labor and environmental advantages over the U.S. Protectionism? Sure, just like every other country in the world exercises. When local workers are better employed, the music scene benefits.

-Discourage real estate speculation and debt building by raising interest rates. When people aren’t spending their money to the tune of record debt, they’ll have more left over for entertainment. The real estate bubble was created partly by the federal Reserve setting low interest rates. The bubble was credited with keeping the economy going, but what really happened was that the affluent that could afford to gamble in the market got richer, and everyone else got more debt.

-If necessary, urban center cities must separate from the counties that surround them. We simply can’t afford to support the suburbs and solve our own problems at the same time. Form a separate municipality and let the middle class fend for themselves for once.

-Directly subsidize rent for home-operated businesses (such as musicians), just like the government already hands out property subsidies and tax breaks to businesses which own property.

-Disband COMIDA, investigate the majority parties (Dems in the city, Repubs in the county) and expose their rampant corruption and nepotism.

-Change legislation to encourage unions and the organization of workers. Musicians obviously can’t count on anyone else to look after their own interests, so it’s time we do it ourselves.

-Government economic report is basically outright lying. For instance, unemployment numbers from the U.S. Dept. of Labor Count anyone who has any job, whether 60 hours a week or 1 hour a week to be employed. The result is that the government has always deceived the population by saying that our unemployment is lower than that of Canada and Europe. Simply not true. These other countries numbers reflect what’s called “functional employment”, which is employment with benefits and of sufficient income and hours to be considered full-time. When you cut the part-time employees out of the U.S. figures, we have the same rates as the rest of the developed world. Right now, U.S. figures consider any musician, even one who gets one gig a month, to be employed. That’s as misleading as you can get, and unless everyone knows the real numbers, nothing can change.

-The government must expand its outdated and misleading paradigm for evaluating economic heath to include spending on small business and culture. Economic growth, for instance, uses as its primary indicator new home building starts. The more new houses are being built, the better the economy. This is simply untrue. Monroe County has seen continued building of new homes, but its overall economy is dying, and the arts economy is gasping for air. Rating economic health based on goods consumption only encourages people to support workers in other countries. The government must realize that the economic benefit is far greater when a small business or artist or musician is patronized because the consumer’s money stays directly in the U.S., even in the local community. When a consumer buys a good from Wal-Mart, the majority of the profit goes overseas, with less than half returning to the U.S. at all, and far les to local economies. The musician lives locally, and so 100% of the profit not only stays in the U.S., but also is directly in the local economy.

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18) How To Be A Musician
Thursday, November 16, 2006, 12:05pm
In the art room at the school at which I teach guitar there hangs a popular poster: “How To be An Artist”. If you’ve seen it, you know it’s thirty or so nuggets of advice written in a multi-colored scrawl which somebody thought looked care-free. Sadly, it gives no useful wisdom on how to actually produce art. Instead it trots out the tired stereotypes associated with creative people. Here are some of the most useless: Invite Someone Dangerous To Tea. Plant Impossible Gardens. Play With Everything. Do It For Love. Refuse To Be Responsible. Make Little Signs That Say “Yes!” And Put Them All Over The House.

Any real artist knows these are ridiculous, so why the clichés? It’s a non sequitur: artists are often unusual people, so being unusual makes you an artist. This is completely backwards. Artists see and hear things uniquely, which makes them creative. It may also make them unusual, but not necessarily. Also, being unusual doesn’t make one a successful artist. The engineering world is full of weirdos who don’t know Monet from Manet, and can’t carry a tune in a bucket.

Here’s my own list of instructions on how to be a musician. It doesn’t include any ridiculous clichés, and it’s probably a little more useful than the poster.

“How To Be A Musician”
1) Work hard. Music is one of the few areas in life where hard work directly leads to results. That may not create financial success, but it makes it one of the most rewarding careers.

2) Practice your skill 6 days a week. There’s no substitute for logging hours with the instrument in your hands, pure and simple. Watching TV? Noodle a bit. Sitting around? Improvise some blues. Play in the park or the subway. You don’t have to practice hard every time you play. Just play.

3) Take breaks. 7 days a week is stupid. Your muscles need time to recover, and so does your sanity. There needs to be one day a week that you don’t even pick the instrument up. What little progress you make on that extra day will be rendered useless by the cost to your sanity or the longevity of your muscles and joints. It’s called the law of diminishing returns.

4) Study with a good teacher. Nothing will bring you up to the next level like quality private instruction. Nothing will waste years of practice like being misled by an idiot who thinks he or she knows more than you. Know what you want to learn, do some research on teachers in your area, and go with the best you can afford.

5) Find a way to market your product. The best businessperson wins, not the best player.

6) Find your niche. No matter who you are, there’s someone in your market better than you-that is, until you become so good at one thing that nobody else can compete with you. Your phone number should be the first one people call for your specific style or approach.

7) Study the masters. Think you’re the best? You haven’t listened to enough players. Find out who established the sound and style you’re going for, and then copy them, and do so shamelessly.

8) Think about your music constantly. Standing in line at the store? Ask yourself how you would play something. Think about the sound you want to get.

9) Visualize and “audiolize” constantly. Some people call it being a space cadet, but there’s nothing better than to run scales, visualize fingerings and improvise in your imagination. Just because you don’t have the instrument with you while you’re sitting on the bus, or on the plane en route to a gig, it doesn’t have to be unproductive time. Practice in your head.

10) Discuss your music with other musicians. Test your ideas in the forge of public discourse. You’ll get even more great ideas once you articulate your thoughts to someone knowledgeable.

11) Hang out with other musicians. Bring CDs and records over to each other’s homes and chill out. You’ll be surprised how much you learn when you’re having a good time.

12) “Borrow” any good idea you hear. OK, steal it, actually. This is how you build your knowledge and skill base, and we all do it.

13) Never be satisfied. One thing that separates musicians and artists from regular people is that we never allow ourselves to stop growing and improving. However…

14) Realize that there is such thing as good enough. Many people have made themselves miserable by second-guessing their performances or tearing themselves down after shows and auditions. At some point, you have to shrug and say “Oh well.”

15) Learn to deal with failure productively. Boxing coaches say that sometimes, losing a match is a good thing for a fighter, because it gives them an incentive to work harder. If you embarrass yourself big time at a performance or audition, admit that it happened. There’s no bright spot. Say to yourself, “I really blew it. And now, I’m going to make sure I don’t that again the next time.”

16) Listen to as many local musicians as possible. Music is a language, and the best way to learn a language is immersion. Even if you live in a small town, somebody is playing somewhere nearby and for cheap. Don’t sit at home wondering why you aren’t learning new things.

17) Work through plateaus. Every player hits a spot during which they aren’t developing. Although people generally look at these plateaus as unproductive periods, we all discover after them a burst of creativity and progress that seems to come out of nowhere. Plateaus are actually incubation periods where your brain and body are developing. Don’t waste your time trying to push harder during these periods-you’ll just be frustrated. Sit back, keep working, and let yourself rise to the next level after the plateau is done.

18) Always find new influences. In sports training, it was discovered that giving athletes a variety of exercises yielded better results than doing the same regimen over and over. The body and muscles adapt to each exercise, so the key to progress is to change the athlete’s routine. A musician’s muscles do the same thing, and so do our brains and imagination. Keep trying new things, or you’ll atrophy.

19) Listen to music in unlikely places. Commercials, kids’ movies, documentaries, etc. You’ll be surprised to find a lot of cool ideas in 5 or 10 seconds of music.

20) Take a week off. Take a few days off. Try something else like painting or hiking or traveling. You’ll lose some skill and muscle conditioning, but you’ll regain sanity, and you’ll be more productive afterward than you would have had you kept playing non-stop.

21) Take your lumps. Boxers spend a lot of time in the ring getting hit before they win a title fight. Play at jam sessions and open mics, and seek out jams with players better than you. You’ll get outplayed over and over, until one day you’re outplaying someone else. But…

22) Know when to stop taking lumps. People’s perception of your playing is important. If you always compare poorly to other players, nobody will be aware of how hard you’ve worked. They’ll only know that you’re not as good as those other guys and gals. Plus, it’s frustrating. There’s taking lumps, and then there’s just getting beaten up.

23) Stand Your Ground. A lot of people will tell you what you do is worthless. A lot of people will try to rip you off. Don’t put up with bad treatment from anyone, for any reason. Tell them to take a hike.

24) Constantly work the fundamentals. Watch baseball on TV and you’ll often hear the commentator saying that the team with the best fundamentals wins. The team that is solid in the basic skills of throwing, hitting, running and catching will beat most teams that have a few stand out players. Likewise in music. You don’t have to be exceptional at everything, but if you’re solid on the basics, you’re worth more than most players. (for the fundamentals, see the link for lessons and look at the program outline)

25) Master consistency. Any suffering Buffalo Bills fan such as myself sees the team perform incredibly well part of the time. They make amazing plays and then blow it with foolish penalties and errors. Whatever level you’re at, produce that level consistently. You don’t have to be amazing to get gigs, but you do have to produce the same quality of playing every time.

26) Don’t be afraid to find a better place. If you’re doing quality work, and nobody appreciates it, it’s time to move on. This could be a small move, from auditioning for a new band to applying for jobs at a different place if you’re teaching. It may mean moving to a town where there’s more demand for what you do. In either case, once you’ve established that you’re doing your job right, but you’re not being rewarded for it, then it’s time to find greener pastures.

27) Find your strengths. Find those qualities about your playing that come easiest to you, and then develop them to excellence. Nobody’s good at everything, but you can be exceptional in at least one area.

28) Build on your strengths, not your weaknesses. Tiger Woods is one of the greatest golfers to live, but he’s terrible at playing out of sand traps. His coach didn’t try to make him great in sand traps. He helped him get just good enough in sand traps that he can get the ball back on the green, which is where he shines. If you spend all your time obsessing about your weak areas, you’ll never get anywhere. Most of our failures come in situations that call on our weaknesses instead of our strengths. Rely on your strengths primarily.

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