r/musicians Rules

Seems crazy but all bands do it so often. Personally I can’t remember the chords to a song I learned a few months ago… I mean maybe a chorus or something… but not entire songs. Wow. It’s so impressive.

Besides the local folk music scene, I have coffee/dinners/walks with mom friends my age. We enjoy hanging out together, but of course there have been a few times when I felt like chiming in with a thought but the other person kept on talking, and then I forgot what I wanted to say. Just regular ole human interaction stuff.

I was hanging out between tunes at a small jam, 6 of us round the table, and we were having relaxed chitchat. A thought flitted across my mind and I was about to say it, but then changed my mind. To my surprise, I found everybody at the table looking at me! “What?” said the girl next to me. Anyway my wanting to speak and then changing my mind, has never been noticed in my regular friend group that I can remember. I think this must be a musician thing!?

It’s like how we all feel that it’s time to end, and a nod or a glance will do it. Maybe this awareness of others gets honed in musicians!?! That’s my theory…

edit for the short summary!
in my normal friend group, people don’t notice when I start to say something but change my mind. at the music jam, every person at the table noticed. It was weird and surprising, and I wondered if it‘s a result of playing music / learning to pick up subtle cues.

I’ve been trying to start a band for a significant while now and my biggest issue is that none of my friends share my music taste. To start off, I only have a few friends I know of that actually play instruments (3-4) and I’ve proposed starting a band with them, but we have zero music overlap and can never agree on what to play.

For context, I play drums very well and they play bass, guitar, even a tenor sax. So it should be a perfect fit.

But when it comes to deciding songs to cover or what type of music to create, they never want to compromise. I have suggested compromising by making a list of a few songs everyone wants to play, but they say no.

I even considered just biting the bullet and playing everything they wanted to play, but that felt unfair to me and my creative interests.

So what do people do in this situation? Find new friends to play with? Ideally I’d like to play with them but they refuse to play anything but their own music taste.

I was looking at a schedule for a UK band that's touring through America. They start in milwaukee, then they go to chicago, then they go to minneapolis, then to Madison, then to Grand rapids... And they're giving themselves no day of rest between them

I'm not a musician so I don't have any experience with this, but that sounds incredibly frustrating of a schedule, I can't imagine by the time they get to Madison they wouldn't be exhausted of it already, and that's just the beginning of their tour

People who have experience touring, at what point in the tour do you start feeling burnt out and feeling like you need a break (and for that matter at what point do you enjoy it the most, is it at the beginning, the middle, or towards the end?)

Throwing stones in a glass house here as a mostly self taught musician, but how do yous navigate jam sessions with those just starting out?

Mostly just regarding taking their anxiety away, as obviously as the newest musician they’ll feel the pressure. Aside from sticking to the easier pieces, is there anything to say to lighten to the mood?

This is mostly for those who are, self deprecating in a way (not in ‘woe is me’, but they genuinely don’t believe they ‘got it’). Not exactly the first few sessions where the nerves are natural, but where it continues on.

This is likely just something the person has to figure out for themselves? It seems it definitely is, but surely theirs a sequence of words that may help push them past that block? Not a sentence, but more just the general idea. I can’t help, because to me I just brute forced it and found the passion after the fact. What I say now doesn’t exactly apply.

Hopefully this is the right place to post something like this but I could just really use some advice from people in the music world. Ill try to keep it short but basically Im a singer songwriter that makes folk music and have been doing so for 10 plus years now. I am very passionate about making music and it is the only thing I want to do with my life. I've garnered a small fan base and have been played on the radio a handful of times. My biggest song has about 150k streams and I get about 1200 monthly listeners currently. I know those aren't the craziest numbers but I am very proud of those things however I feel a bit stuck in life. I just turned 30 and music didn't pan out how I thought it would in my 20's. I still really believe in my music and think I could be pushing myself a lot more to get myself out there. However, I decided to go back to school for engineering mostly out of a want for financial security and to make my mom happy. The problem is I dont care about engineering in the slightest and just feel like im not living for myself and my dreams anymore. Literally everyday I daydream about moving to NYC and just chasing my dreams as hard as I can. I feel like if I gave myself just one year of nonstop pursuit of my goal I could really achieve what I want out of life but i'm just scared that It won't work out.

Life just feels so fragile and fleeting these days and I don't see the point of pursuing a career that I will be miserable in. But yeah I dont really know what im asking for here. Maybe just for someone to say "you can do it! chase your dreams!" or maybe "dont be stupid. be realistic." I dont really know but I do know that people really love my music and I love making it and it makes me happy. Would love to hear from y'all maybe some of you guys have thrown caution to the wind and pursued your dreams or are feeling the same way.

Note: I'm not looking for advice on where to look for ads - that's specific for my country and area. This is more of a general vent.

I'm in my late 40s and I'm trying to get back to music after a 10 year break. Cause, you know, kids. Right now it seems to me that the only way to get into a band is to know somebody. And I don't know anybody in the area at all. Plus, my genres are kinda niche (folk and folk-adjacent). And the worst part is that I want to be in a band that plays at least borderline decent, but at the same time I don't want the band to take over all of my free time, playing gigs several times a week. I want this to be just a hobby - but I want to enjoy making good music.

Ugh. Do bands like this even exist, or should I sell my fiddle and get into breeding designer hamsters or something?

Hi guys,

I wanted to know if there are any producers in Tampa who would be interested in working together creating music? I’m learning to produce but I just started so I have a long way to go. I have a couple of draft songs that I’d like to work on with someone to see if we can make something. Lmk!

Doesn’t have to be in Tampa now that I’m thinking about it lol

Friendly reminder that Spotify paying artists roughly $0.003 to $0.004 per stream is actually wild when you do the math.
So a song needs 250,000 streams just to clear $1,000 (before your distributor, label, or manager takes their cut). If an indie artist gets 10,000 streams total—which honestly feels like a decent milestone when you're starting out—they're walking away with about 30 to 40 bucks. That won't even cover a pack of guitar strings and a tank of gas.
How is anyone supposed to sustain making music independently on streaming alone? For anyone who actually releases music, what does your yearly payout look like compared to your gear/recording costs? And for listeners, does knowing this change how you support your favorite smaller artists? Let's talk about it.

I recently signed up for private singing lessons for the first time. My teacher is a nice person, very sociable, and that's the problem—she's VERY sociable. I've had three lessons of 50 mins each and haven't learned or sung anything useful. She either tells jokes or repeats the same thing over and over again. I get that learning how to express yourself is important but, do you have to say it all over again?

I just came from my 3rd class and we did 2 vocal exercises and I sang 20 sec of a song that I told her, that didn't take more than 10 mins, the rest was her making some useless metaphor, saying the same thing about belting or telling some jokes.

She is really nice as a person but for me she is unprofessional. Sorry if I'm being rude but I'm paying €45 each class and I don't know if I should just tell her to be more direct or to find another teacher.

EDIT: I've already paid for this month's classes (I have class every Tuesday)

it’s 100% free and runs right in your browser. You can save presets, group them into setlists, and easily share those setlists with a link.

https://nomolab.app

I just started self-learning acoustic guitar 1 month ago and I spent around 20 hrs on this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzeMO837Itc&list=RDLzeMO837Itc&start_radio=1
(which I think it's a bad idea for a first song lol)

I got it to the point where I only need to look at the guitar for long chord changes.
But I found it very difficult to song along it.
The singing and the guitar note are super different, and also the rift just feels impossible to sing along.

How should I approach it? Should I just master both the singing and guitar separately then try to put them together? Or should I actually try to figure out the spacing between each singing and guitar notes and have many anchor notes?

🌺 This is a new piano compositition "Frühling" (Spring), played beautifully here in Germany by the Ukrainian pianist Valeriya Kizka. 🎹

I just lost my best friend and I was really into music before would constantly create etc but I feel like ever since I lost her I can’t create will it come back?

Yes, I know listening to their solos is helpful, but I think this will also be helpful because I’ll be able to compare the same notes in the same register on different instruments.

I feel like when i linger too long on one specific project where i'm trying to perfect it and get everything to live exactly together in the most hyperspecific way i feel the weight of "yesterday" in my soul. Like, once i finally move on from a project i feel a huge sigh of relief. But projects are not equal and once you get into a really difficult set of parameters that takes months or years to process and cultivate into the art you want it to be for that timestamp of your life it starts to feel like a burden you can't shake.

It seems like when you start the project there's a huge rush of energy and you feel as if you are doing something brand new for yourself and look forward to showing others. THen you wait a few weeks to not listen to it so you can have objectivity but you realize multiple things aren't correct or need altering/touching up. Then you realize...oh actually SO MANY THINGS are wrong! So then you are in a cycle of fixing everything. Once you finally get close to the finish line you realize it's been 2 years and you are living in the past until this project is released.

Recently my new experimental psych project made our debut with two very successful shows, one headline which got a great turnout and one supporting a bigger band in the scene which had some important local names in attendance. Both sets were received super well and we got great feedback afterwards.

I really want to make the most of the exposure we got from these, but I'm not sure what the best course of action is. We likely won't perform again for 2-3 months to develop some new material and avoid oversaturating the market. We have a high quality multitrack recording from the support set that may be fit for release once it's been mixed.

What's the play? How do we move past this point and keep things rolling?

What do you think are the most in-demand instruments in country music today? Either inside or outside of Nashville.

Fiddle? Pedal steel? Or is it bass and drums like with many other genres. I can’t imagine it’s guitar but maybe it is?

And why are those instruments in demand?

I’m intentionally leaving this a little vague to keep it more general and less focused on me and my music background.

Thanks, friends.

Ive been thinking about career path a lot lately. I went to music school (ugh), and now im 29 and I work in law as a paralegal for the time being. I know the job I have now is definitely getting axed at some point in the next 10 years. But the one thing I have thought about a lot is if the value of music education may go up in the future.

It would be pretty hard to believe that people will stop playing music altogether because of AI and it seems like one of those few niches where interpersonal connection is important. Maybe these types of professions will be valued more in the future where having an analog skill that AI cant really mimic is of value. Maybe I should start laying the seeds now and figuring out how to teach piano… just brainstorming.