The Professional Musician

It is hard to realize how wide a gap there is today between the professional musician and the amateur/recreational musician.

With the advent of the Music Industry (especially when it went digital) there came a distinct drop in the number of amateur musicians, Instead of everybody getting together and playing a piece of Bach or Beethoven, we buy a couple of tickets on the unholy Ticketmaster and go see a rock concert, or a classical concert for that matter. In this era, the Music Industry's Professional Musician era (which I think is coming to an end), there was also a drop in the number of recreational musicians.

In the early 20th century and late 19th century proper english families children would learn how to play the piano, this status quo was later replaced by the guitar (a more portable and "folk feeling" instrument).

The guitar is an interesting instrument and I feel it has very liberating potential, this potential came at a gradual trickle with the advent of the electric guitar. The guitar seems to tap into the roots that schoenberg and other atonal composers began, by trying to escape the confines of the 12 tone scale and other musical limitations, by directly manipulating the harmonics of its structure (distortion, phase, etc.). This expressivity was bottled to quickly for its lack of relation to the mass (or as Adorno would say it lacks "plug-ability") and therefore a lack of immediate profit, but we see the expressivity being opened back up again in certain artists, such as Omar Rodriguez-Lopes who once stated he uses the guitar only because his audience and musicians can relate to it, and uses a wide array of effects to "make it sound like anything else besides the thing I hate: the guitar"

But back to the amateur musician. One can see the frustrations caused by the idolization of professional musicians pop up in some interesting ways. One of them being Rock Band, this is a sort of immature example because I think it is the Music Industries prayers answered. It keeps people from playing real instruments and keeps people appeased by "playing" like a professional musician in a digital world where everyone can win. BUT at the same time I think Rock Band is a dog without a leash, and is inspiring a small number of musicians for each that it appeases/sedates. We have also spoken in class a great deal about the number of musicians who aren't "playing the game" of joining a label, selling cd's, etc. This is also a frustration of the pop star/professional musician.

Terry Riley's "In C" is a great example of the power of the recreational musician (how much power this is in comparison to the professional musician is a different subject). The piece, however, went largely unnoticed by mass culture as well as "classical culture" at its release. This piece is a great step towards re-establishing the amateur musician, Terry Riley includes the score and his instructions on the piece giving the listener the full ability to play the piece with a group of fellow musicians: