Hello Ken
I feel the need to answer this one carefully and fully as I am completely in empathy with your needs, feelings and problems! This one is an important problem indeed. I am sorry you are in such a dilemma Ken. I have suffered much for the same reason for a long time, till I decided what to do with it musically, it may not be the best way for everybody else, but this is not the point. But the general idea it is.
I know this is the situation of many talented people like you. People that could be giving a lot from themselves to the world if completely dedicated, full time, without worrying about money or anything else... People that LOVE music in a superlative way.
By the way, I don’t think that everybody that is dedicated to music is really a musician. I think musicians are exclusively those that have this
“magic” inside themselves, which is rarely found. I think you have this spark within yourself as I could appreciate from some of your best works; now this spark needs some wood to light up and really glow high, otherwise it gets atrophied, just like muscles and organs if you don’t use them.
All this coming and going in our lives searching all the time to
“match” the market with respect with what we feel and like, trying to get a living, very unfortunately pulls out of us a lot of energy, time, and also… our enthusiasm. You are, as a final point, drained from inspiration and drive because you feel like crap… having so much to give, and nevertheless giving so little...
That way we become sort of a “
pressure cooker” full of music vapor that want to release but that it can’t… You know to yourself that this pressure must go somewhere; you need to do something with these strong feelings ore you’ll become a bitter personality. You need to channel it somehow or you will be feeling worst and worst as time and years goes by. Of course, I’m not talking about making some music you don’t like just to earn some money. I’m talking of moments of extreme joy with the music MOST identifies who you are, moments of strong emotions of fulfillment and completeness, communication with other musicians and people around to such an extent, that you feel an blast of fantastic energy that makes everybody feel alive, sort of “
life is worth living today”. Then, when you go bed you feel so rewarded that you say: “
I could die tonight and everything would be just fine”. That kind of moments I’m talking about!
Music is all about emotions, and your emotions must be sound enough for you to compose good materials, otherwise you have not the fuel you need to make fire! A life of struggle against the market makes of you an empty person musically. That happens slowly, but you become that. Ask so many good musicians that have not resisted the fight… they will tell you exactly that…. If… they are capable of accepting the truth. It is hard to accept that you have given up, isn’t it? Most people give up, that’s the problem.
Let it start with some realistic facts Ken, even if we both hate them… We know that to restore to health an injury, you need to discover it and then accept it, accept that you are ill. If you cannot accept it, the healing process will turn to be a searching pathway forever but without finding the cure, unless you comeback and accept the illness.
The only way to cut through this endless situation about music and living, is being painfully honest with oneself about the REAL possibilities of the market and what we want to do, because we tend to see things as they are not when strong wishes tint everything with the color “you” want to see things. You see them red, but they are green, and there is such a concern that you can hardly accept they are in fact green. When this exercise is done (it takes at least a few months of inner investigation for sure), then you will find the inner strength you need to succeed over anything you have chosen to do.
I don’t think any given link posted here to selling music pages will help you in the way you need to be helped Ken, because it is not a matter of contacts or good luck, to my understanding at least. I think it is much more a matter of making strong, definitive
DECISIONS about what we want to do with our musical lives, and FOCUS your energy to ONE single output, until you achieve it completely, independently of the money we are going to earn or lose. If you want something hard enough in your life, you must be ready to pay its price!
One of the hard facts is that the market of selling music is collapsed of good music made by hundreds of frustrated musicians that compose to please the needs of the market, and they have big studios full of gear, so much they could burn some without realizing something is missing. The market in the other side, don’t care about your conceptions, ideas and understandings, even if you reach a superior compositional standard nobody else can offer. They need just products to match their projects and sell. These musicians attached to the market, slowly become market-fulfillers or music-providers if you like, but not
COMPOSERS in the sense that they compose what they feel, independently of anything else that conditions their freedom of feelings. Their music is in jail, prisoner of the market, and never comes out as it has been given perpetual prison by the judges, i.e., themselves! And like in prison, beloved ones comes to see you in weekends, stay a couple of hours and that’s it, just like when you play a couple of hours something you like, and then go back to the black box of always.
Do you really what to take this path? If it suits you, well, go for it full-hearted.
But be warned that you will always be playing some good chords now and then the way you feel them, but with the inner frustration that these musical ideas that makes you vibrate so much will never get anyway. You will be having superb ideas perhaps, but they will die in front of you, down there, close to your feet, while you look to the floor and say to yourself: “ups, I have to do the next jingle for the new chocolate bar or I’ll get in trouble, I better get to work”, making a clear division between composing for earning money, and composing for vocational reasons! The first one is just working for you, while the second one is living the life you deserve.
As everybody that wants to actually succeed, you have to choose what you want to do, clear the way to your goal, plan it meticulously, build strong goals and play some serious cards to achieve them.
WHATEVER THE PRICE MAY BE! That demands of you: willpower, perseverance, a big amount of patience and hard work. If you were to gather all the inner deep insights you need to inflame your motivation, nothing will stop you, and you WILL achieve what you have firmly decided yourself to achieve. Perhaps what you chose is not the best in the eyes of outsiders, family or friends, but you will be happy. Isn’t it what we all want in life after all?
I have paid a high price myself when I decided not to work for commercial musical groups anymore, about 20 years ago. I could have earned a high quality life if I signed with one of them for a long period (several years), but externally, materially speaking only. But certainly not musically! I had the opportunity to play with some famous, extremely popular commercial singers, but I said NO, I will not be playing every day this cheesy-shitty-music listening to a singer I don’t like, playing music I don’t like, just for money… Get traveling the world over and over and over again, just for stability. I decided to make music and so I compose constantly for myself first of all, for the fun I have whiting myself. Sometimes it happens this music can be used for making money, sometimes I don’t have a piece of bread but I’m happy with what I do because I feel what I want to feel! I am not saying this should be the choice for you or anybody else at all, I’m just participating you the one that was mine. I decided to sacrifice money for music. Today, I don’t regret it.
Chose what you want to do, and through yourself into it with all the strength you can possibly put, and believe in yourself whatever happens, trust your choice but be ready to follow it till the end, no matters what may happen through the process. Do not change your decision to anything else, unless you have “decided” a change for yourself, consciously. This will open the door you are willing to open to the fulfillment of your musical career.
Conclusion:
I don’t think you need external circumstances to succeed right now, but rather some crude and serious decisions within yourself, and then, the acceptance of whatever it comes with them. In that way external circumstances will match forcefully. You don’t longer fix your eyes into the details of the picture, but in the SUN you are trying to reach. Just get to walk towards it whatever the price, and you WILL succeed. Circumstances will change in the proportion you change your way of understanding life. This is an incontrovertible truth nobody can deny.
I have achieved amazing things through taking strong decisions, and after going through great amounts of pain. Pain that pushed me to decide! Everybody would tell me I could not do it, would advice me otherwise through their traumas and luck of self-confidence, but fortunately for me, I did not listened to them, instead, I have paid close attention to my own heart and his words of wisdom.
Whether you decide to work with music to make some money, or divide your activities in twice: half your music and half money-music-making, or whether you chose to make exclusively your music, whatever the cost, you need to decide it and follow through.
Every path, every decision will have some advantages and some disadvantages, but if you want it all, you will waist your life waiting for something that will never happen to be by itself. If you want something, you have to create it, and you cannot have it all, you have to decide which path you want to follow.
I know I’m not wealthy, but nobody in this world can pull me out of the extreme joy I feel every time I lie down and submerge myself into the sphere of my own music.
I think you have a great talent Ken, I believe in you as a composer!
Here I’m posting a modest gift so perhaps to motivate your own decision, through the result of my own decision. This is music nobody knows, but me, I have never posted it to anywhere. You may like it, you may hate it, I may or may not earn some money out of it, this is not relevant to me, it is my music and it is the air I breathe and the blood that goes through my veins.
Don’t misunderstand me, it would be nice for people to appreciate what you do and earn as much money as possible, of course, but this is not essential if you truly care about music itself.
Link:
http://www.musicaliz.com/The_Greatest_o ... rriors.mp3
Cheers
