PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Here's how the restaurants and bars feel about musicians...even when they do pay them.

We are talking about people who hack their way through Mustang Sally, not professional symphony players who perform Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. That is not even an apple to apple comparison, but do whatever you like to make you feel right and that you "won". My life doesn't change either way.

These discussions are not about extremes. They are about club level people hacking out a side income. The same way that by definition if someone pays you one dollar to perform you are a professional, saying that because someone can play an instrument makes them a musician may be your interpretation based on the literal definition.

You may not agree, but to say I am wrong....? I said it was MY OPINION. How can MY OPINION be wrong? It doesn't have to be your opinion. If you want to think that someone who can make sound from an instrument is a musician, then call the trained monkeys at the zoo who can bang a mallet on a drum musicians as well.

Frank Sinatra did not play an instrument. (Somehow that is the first name people throw into the mix when the cover/original debates rage.) By my definition, Sinatra was not a musician. He was a vocalist, and my favorite vocalist of all time. I have unlimited amounts of respect for The Chairman. He did not write, and he did not play. Making his living in the music business does not make him a musician. It makes him an entertainer. (See "respect" above.) The crooners who performed standards are apples and oranges from the local club hackers who play the 3 chord wonder songs because they require less skill than songs that actually maybe throw in a minor somewhere along the way. We ALL know the kind of players I typically refer to, those who do NOT work at the craft, those who do NOT care about the music, those who do NOT have the proper respect for it and just want to make their $75 and a bar tab at the corner bar. THAT group is NOT musicians.

"The way" to enter my circle of who I call musicians is to write songs, record them, play them out, and fall on your face enough times to make you work harder at writing better songs. Take those songs on the road and play them in Peoria. Work your way up to the "tour bus and t-shirts sold at the arena shows" level.

I fail to see how the chef vs cook analogy is off target, though frankly I don't care if anybody agrees or not. As I capitalized earlier, it is MY OPINION. My criteria is based on the creativity side, not the performance side. I say again, for now the 517th time, anybody can learn to play an instrument if they are willing to put in the time and repetitions. Playing an instrument is essentially muscle memory. If you play that major scale on your guitar neck 5000 times per day, eventually you will be able to play it fast and clean every time. The same is not true for the creative process. Every song is different. There is no muscle memory involved in songwriting. (Though some pedantic clown will likely point out that the brain is indeed a muscle.)

This reminds me of a college literature course I once took and had a professor mark wrong a test question that asked for my opinion. How can an opinion be wrong? If what you are looking for it for me to puke up YOUR opinion and say it is mine just for a grade, you will be waiting a really long time.