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"there's more talent out there now than there ever was before. " No there isn't really - totally the opposite. The number of professional musicians has droppe

by jariel 6y ago

"there's more talent out there now than there ever was before. " No there isn't really - totally the opposite. The number of professional musicians has dropped dramatically over the decades. In the 1920s-1950s 'musician' was a 'job'. Then the phonograph became big, the number dropped by 90% then over a few more decades another 90%. It's no longer an occupation, it's just a hobby. There are tons of people who take 'fine arts' at Uni etc. but they're not necessarily that good, and very few of them will be able to work in the field and develop careers. 'Orchestral' even on big albums is all fake, it's just to easy to do and too expensive otherwise. 'Creative' yes, a lot of that, but have a look at the Billboard 100. It's 'audible creativity' but all made by algorithms, it's more 'art' than it is 'music' in some sense. The other issue is that the bar to entry is lower as well, so for every 'extra genius' we get out of that 'open process' there are also 1000x more posers, fakers, people just making arbitrary sounds and it's harder to wade the the noise. 'The system' used to do that for us i.e. the musical community would 'find' the talent generally. There is no 'system' now, just YouTube. Thanks for they Polyphia link though.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
> The number of professional musicians has dropped dramatically over the decades. This is completely orthogonal to the question how much talent there is. The fact that less people can make a living doing something that doesn't require any capital investment, just time and skill, doesn't have any real direct impact on how many people get really good at it. "It's just a hobby" is a weak put-down, and really doesn't apply to thousands of people who play instruments at incredibly high levels of skill, even though they do not do so for a living. Certainly, it's going to help development if you play more (for whatever reason). But I don't think that you can claim that only way to get to be "that good" is to be a paid professional. There are many musicians whose early work as a "professional musician" was just a side gig anyway, and they didn't play significantly more than dedicated "hobbyists". The spread of music education (public and private) and the dramatic drop in the real cost of musical instruments has exposed way more people to the possibility of playing music. Sure, most of them will be in the middle of the bell curve, but this process has (1) lifted the absolute height of the bell curve (more people) which (2) means more people over at the right-hand end of the curve.
- jariel 6y ago
  Not orthogonal. Being a pro means you can practice all day, you get to work with other working musicians, you grind away doing gig stuff which really expands your chops. I agree music is accessible in a different way today, but kids used to grow up in musical families, and there were a lot of them. My entire, large, family plays music. And played together. Tons of people used to play piano, guitar, fiddle, it was not inaccessible or elite. Instruments have been cheaply available for decades. Also - time. People are constantly busy these days and hugely distracted. Eddie Van Halen literally got good by spending years and years alone, isolated in his room practising. So while that has nothing to do with pro/not-pro, it's definitely a cultural artifact.

by jariel 6y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

> The number of professional musicians has dropped dramatically over the decades. This is completely orthogonal to the question how much talent there is. The fact that less people can make a living doing something that doesn't require any capital investment, just time and skill, doesn't have any real direct impact on how many people get really good at it. "It's just a hobby" is a weak put-down, and really doesn't apply to thousands of people who play instruments at incredibly high levels of skill, even though they do not do so for a living. Certainly, it's going to help development if you play more (for whatever reason). But I don't think that you can claim that only way to get to be "that good" is to be a paid professional. There are many musicians whose early work as a "professional musician" was just a side gig anyway, and they didn't play significantly more than dedicated "hobbyists". The spread of music education (public and private) and the dramatic drop in the real cost of musical instruments has exposed way more people to the possibility of playing music. Sure, most of them will be in the middle of the bell curve, but this process has (1) lifted the absolute height of the bell curve (more people) which (2) means more people over at the right-hand end of the curve.

jariel 6y ago
Not orthogonal. Being a pro means you can practice all day, you get to work with other working musicians, you grind away doing gig stuff which really expands your chops. I agree music is accessible in a different way today, but kids used to grow up in musical families, and there were a lot of them. My entire, large, family plays music. And played together. Tons of people used to play piano, guitar, fiddle, it was not inaccessible or elite. Instruments have been cheaply available for decades. Also - time. People are constantly busy these days and hugely distracted. Eddie Van Halen literally got good by spending years and years alone, isolated in his room practising. So while that has nothing to do with pro/not-pro, it's definitely a cultural artifact.