July 2, 2011 editorial: comments

Dear Fellow Audiofanziners!

So it's been a while since you've seen an editorial from me in your weekly newsletter and with good reason:  I've been busy having a baby of all things!  Yes, this can happen to you too one day!

I'd like to open my back-to-work editorial with a funny piece I recently read which claims that Musicians are Stupid.  Now we are all familiar with this stereotype:  you can play a guitar and hit notes like the supreme reincarnation of Eddie Van Halen but you can't perform simple tasks like balancing check books or remembering who is the current president (both of these things are arguably unimportant to serious musicians).

Still I would argue that while we are 'stupid' for embarking on a musician's career, which guarantees some kind of struggle and frustration in realizing one's passion, some parts of our cerebral cortex are much more developed than say, a banker's, and moreover it takes a certain kind of engineering to:

• Convince others to join your band and play your tunes
• Tune instruments by ear
• Convince club owners to let you play
• Convince your family that music IS your career
• Know 1000's of songs by heart
• Learn music theory, even if it's not formal
• Figure out how to use DAWs and record with computers
• Hold a respectable day job

And the list goes on.  So like the article says, at the end "we are not that stupid".

Have a good weekend!

Chater-La