The term “musician” is about as broad as the term “doctor.” Sometimes when people find out that I work in a coffee shop after stopping here (this website), they begin offering suggestions as to what I should be doing. Teaching band, percussion, saxophone, composition, or any of the other things I know about is the idea I hear the most often. Then some performance ideas follow. Private lessons gets thrown in there generally.
It’s not that I don’t like getting suggestions. I love it! I’m just not qualified to do any of that. It would be like asking someone who speaks Spanish to speak…I dunno; what’s a language that’s like Spanish that’s not Spanish at all…Portuguese. Sure.
Most musicians can teach what they do. Some musicians learn to teach everything a little bit; that’s where you get your band teachers. But for the most part, we musicians do one very specific thing and focus on it until it either doesn’t work out as a career or it does.
Unlike many other industries, there are no vast established companies in need of qualified music composers. People like me learn what they learn, and then find a way to make money with it on their own. In other words, we start businesses. This website is that business for me. That business for a pianist might be accompanying various educational groups or playing in clubs, weddings, and private parties. Each musician has an inventory of skills that they have available, and we use them to build something useful.
The idea that musicians should go all the way through the educational system and then become teachers is unsustainable. That is unless we plan on having many more teachers than we have students. Some of us are just going to have to do something risky.
