Discovered this letter to a former student, written by Max Alper, in the Spring 2023 issue of Klang Magazine. Interesting read.
Streamfarming, algo-boosting, and paid bots have become quite profitable industries if you know where to look. If companies like Spotify can’t make a profit and are propped up by shareholders, how should you be expected to earn a living using their platforms unless you find a way to game the system? Do you have 20 smartphones lying around, per chance?
Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student
This photo accompanied the article.
I am surprised but not really. But what I do know is that I don’t want to play that game.
Alper writes:
For an artist, choosing to not engage in self-promotion via streaming or social media platforms is in and of itself an act of protest.
:-)
>The third and final general category of musical career I’ve encountered, and the one I’ve found myself in for some time now, is that of the Dayjobber.
It’s interesting, and quite sobering to think of this in retrospect after 40 years of “dayjobbing.” In my specific case it did start off as a “supplementary” function to make up for financial shortcomings in the music business. I never had “a hit” … being an unlucky progressive Jazz musician will do that. Although as the years march on, and the dayjobbing colleagues (many, many of whom are also progressive Jazz musicians engaged in dayjobbing themselves) encourage one another over lunch in the new multimillion dollar cafeteria on the corporate campus:
“…. been really thinking of going back to school and getting an undergrad degree in EE…” then a few years later, “… been really thinking of going back to school and getting a graduate degree …” then a few more years “investigating a PhD in semiconductor physics …” The corporation will give you a 25% pay increase every time you get a credential like that in addition to any other pay increases that accrue to you for whatever corporate based obscurities obtain. So … why not? Seems like a good deal. They are paying for it. What the hell? The point being- the cost of entry is 0, friction is low. You have built in tutors to help if you encounter academic difficulty. Its’ a pretty easy path all the way through. Many musicians already have the same cognitive skill set that promotes success in engineering anyway.
BUT … as time progresses … music and being a musician fades from foreground to background in such a subtle way that the fade very nearly cannot be detected in real time, only in retrospect over the span of 40+ years; the musical pursuits you started with as an idealistic young person just fade ever so slowly to dark.
NOT writing this out of regret: it was what it was … choices were made. It’s just a bit … melancholy … after reading something like this as one entering their 60s … because the writer makes it seem normative and normal. By his lights a third of all musicians fall into this meta-category … which they probably do, but at the other end of this path … sort of … meh … being assiduous is more paramount than his narrative would indicate.
There are many variations of that story. I remember a musician telling me he had joined a cover band so he would have an income, hoping to write some original music and to eventually quit that band. Then he got car payments and a mortgage and he knew that he couldn’t quit because he would have had to start over from nothing. The cover band brought in enough money to pay for the lifestyle he had gotten used to. So there was a musician, working as a musician, melancholy because he was playing covers instead of original music. (Obviously not a Jazz musician! They play plenty covers.)
I think I wrote about my moment of facing a choice, when I was offered a scholarship for a banking college and decided to quit my bank job and get work as a bike messenger instead. I might have done really well in the banking world. I would probably be more financially secure. OTOH I might have health issues from sitting so much. :-) I would also be a completely different person now.
We arrive at a fork in the road. We pick one direction or the other, based on whatever moves us at the time… We might not even know WHY we picked that side. And we won’t know the result of that choice for decades. Life happens and feels a lot like a video game, doesn’t it!
There is nothing stopping you from recording your music now. I hope you are doing that. Didn’t Dave Holland have a solo upright acoustic bass album in the 70’s? ECM? My brother used to own it. Hey, I found it, Music from Two Basses, with Barre Phillips.
Record the melancholy feeling when it surfaces. Might be lovely to listen to.
>(Obviously not a Jazz musician! They play plenty covers.)
Yeah … we didn’t play a tremendous amount of repetoire from the body of “Standards” or “Tin Pan Alley” … more to do with Brand X or Zappa. (I didn’t do this on upright: I also played fretless electric – still do). There were about a half dozen that we played that would fall into the “Standards” repetoire: playing changes and all that.
>I would also be a completely different person now.
You probably would be. I know when I look back on my 20 year old self, juxtaposed with my self today … I don’t think they would even like one another were they to meet. But I suspect you are of the opinion that you made the right choice (?). I have to say … honestly that I really don’t have any idea if I made a right choice. No idea.
>We arrive at a fork in the road. We pick one direction or the other, based on whatever moves us at the time…
My “fork” … at least as it **seems** in retrospect, was such a gradient. Very analogue … so gradual. I honestly cannot say, I “picked” something one day … it just seemed that there was a very … very gradual evolution taking place. In a book you turned me on to which I am currently reading, “The Things We’ve Seen” by Agustín Fernández Mallo, a recurring theme is, “It’s a mistake to take the things we’ve seen as a given” which is attributed in the book to Carlos Oroza. I take this to be a metaphor for my “fork” in the road and has very good explanatory power over how I got where I am now.
>There is nothing stopping you from recording your music now. I hope you are doing that.
Yes, I am doing that. It is very kind of you to hope that. Very appreciated. Most of that is not “jazz” … though … I have kind of turned into a J.S. Bach fanatic.
>Didn’t Dave Holland have a solo upright acoustic bass album in the 70’s? ECM?
He did! It’s called “Emerald Tears” … I love that record! Most of the formative bassists I encountered in my teen years who were influential on me were upright players: especially Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Dave Holland and Ron Carter. I guess the primary exception to that would have been Percy Jones from Brand X.
Yeah, Dave Holland did a fantastic version of “Solar” by Miles on that recording. I learned that one note for note. I wore the vinyl out. Also the first cut: “Spheres.”
>I know when I look back on my 20 year old self, juxtaposed with my self today … I don’t think they would even like one another were they to meet.
I suppose the rock, worn smooth and round after spending centuries in the river, would not be recognized by its former self. Where have all your ridges and edges and sharp corners gone?!?
>But I suspect you are of the opinion that you made the right choice (?).
I don’t know about *right* choice. In terms of fascism there is a right choice, a clear no. There are many other such examples, but when it comes to careers and other life choices, it becomes very opaque, doesn’t it. It is so easy to step into this or that stream, by choice or simply because the wind blew that way, and then to suddenly discover one has arrived in a completely different area than one expected.
I still get such a thrill out of making music. Sitting down and discovering an idea and running with it, modifying it, playing with it, getting lost in it… that’s all I ever wanted to do. Yes, I do believe that I made the right choice.
>My “fork” … at least as it **seems** in retrospect, was such a gradient. Very analogue … so gradual. I honestly cannot say, I “picked” something one day … it just seemed that there was a very … very gradual evolution taking place.
A lot like the rock in the river. :-)
>Most of that is not “jazz” … though … I have kind of turned into a J.S. Bach fanatic.
That sounds very interesting to me.
>It’s called “Emerald Tears” … I love that record!
Just looked it up. Great cover, too!