Thread March 26, 2016 editorial: comments

The “Glamorous” Life of a Musician

I’m sure you’ve had this happen: Someone asks you what you do, you tell them you’re a musician, and they say something like, “Oh, it must be so glamorous.” And you think to yourself sarcastically, “You don’t know the half of it.”

There are plenty of adjectives that can describe what it’s like to be a musician, but unless you’re a super-successful recording artist, “glamorous” probably isn’t one them. Sure, we get creative satisfaction from playing, but it frequently comes at a price. We have to put up with crappy working conditions; late hours; long drives; malevolent, exploitative and larcenous club owners; playing to empty clubs; being squashed onto tiny stages; enduring subpar sound systems and grumpy sound engineers; driving in bad weather; and lots of other indignities that would never be mistaken for being “glamorous.”

And then there are the health hazards musicians face: Thankfully, one of the worst ones, second-hand smoke, has largely been eliminated by the anti-smoking laws that have been in place around the country for the last decade or so. I remember before those bans were enacted, musicians had to put up with a perpetual cloud of second-hand smoke (supplemented in many cases by first-hand smoke), doing who-knows-what kind of damage to their bodies as they worked. Back then, when I came home from a gig, not only did my clothes and hair reek of smoke, my gear did, too.

Although it’s not as dangerous as second-hand smoke, one hazard that we still face is excessively loud volume. We have ourselves to blame for that to a large degree, as we’re the ones who keep turning up amps, asking for more monitor volume, or bashing on drum kits. But as I’m sure you’ve experienced, it’s pretty difficult in an onstage band situation to keep the volume from getting out of hand. As a result, we have to choose between continually exposing our ears to damaging sound pressure levels or wearing earplugs that can turn a gig into the musical equivalent of showering with a raincoat.

There is a potential solution available to the decidedly unglamorous problem of overly loud stage volume: wireless in-ear monitors. We just finished a three-part series about them, which talks about what they can offer, and the practical considerations. Unfortunately, because there is some initial investment required, and in-ears represent a fairly radical change in the onstage experience, many musicians are hesitant to even consider them. I’m hoping that will change, and that was one of my main motivations for writing the articles. Musicians can’t control most of the not-so-glamorous conditions we regularly encounter, but monitoring is an area in which we can improve things in a positive way.

So what about you? Would you ever consider switching over to in-ear monitors?