What would you have done differently...

[ZigZagWanderer]

...if this website had been around when you were first starting out in music? I didn't find this place until maybe 5 years ago--I don't know when HC got started and built up a community, but I guess this question applies to the older, pre-internet crowd.

 

If you had been a teenager or 20-something who wanted to make it somehow in the music business, do you think you would have paid attention to the advice you would have found here? To the extent that it would have altered your music path?

[soundwave106]

 

If you had been a teenager or 20-something who wanted to make it somehow in the music business, do you think you would have paid attention to the advice you would have found here? To the extent that it would have altered your music path?

 

 

Even back when I was young, I knew that a music career (at least as a pop artist) was a very rough road.

 

I now know that there are careers that could work. For instance, if you are very talented, at the top of your game, classical / session / touring musicians are more stable. But you got to know your chops. That takes a lot more practice than I probably would've wanted.

 

I didn't know just how many pop artists do this as a hobby / part-time job / semi-paid vacation -- way more than I realized. I've met very few full-time musicians.

 

I think that my path would've been very similar. I never seriously took music as a feasible business path.

[richardmac]

 

Even back when I was young, I knew that a music career (at least as a pop artist) was a very rough road. I now know that there are careers that could work. For instance, if you are very talented, at the top of your game, classical / session / touring musicians are more stable. But you got to know your chops. That takes a lot more practice than I probably would've wanted. I didn't know just how many pop artists do this as a hobby / part-time job / semi-paid vacation -- way more than I realized. I've met very few full-time musicians. I think that my path would've been very similar. I never seriously took music as a feasible business path.

 

 

You just saved me the time of typing my own response. I feel the exact same way.

[T. Alan Smith]

Great topic ...as I think of this often.

You bet your ass I would have learned from being part of the HC community in my 20's. I was sadly arrogant in my teens and early 20's, but by my mid 20's I was a sponge. I often wish I had HC to set me straight back then.

[Matximus]

Woulda dumped that no-good girl who made a monkey outa me. I was the last to learn she was balling just about every guy she could when she went up to that fancy school in New York. I was such a tool!!

 

This clearly doesn't have any thing to do with music. But the same philosophy applies: We'd all make different choices if we could go back again. But that's life. Also, I learned enough from that broad that I have never again hooked up with a lousy cheater....Probably did me a favor in the long run...

[daddymack]

this is a classic shoodawoodacooda...I found HC in the late 90s, basically looking at the old OLGA files to glean some low hanging fruit and save my having to write out stuff other people had already done. Back then, internet associations like forums were not on my list of things to do. Obviously that has changed...

But the point is of course, I would have taken advantage of any resource available ...I did in my youth, and I would again. However, back in those days the prevalence of drugs,easy sex, and a far more 'open' social structure in the music biz created an entirely different perspective than we face today. Apples and cormorants.

[Nijyo]

 

this is a classic shoodawoodacooda...I found HC in the late 90s, basically looking at the old OLGA files to glean some low hanging fruit and save my having to write out stuff other people had already done. Back then, internet associations like forums were not on my list of things to do. Obviously that has changed... But the point is of course, I would have taken advantage of any resource available ...I did in my youth, and I would again. However, back in those days the prevalence of drugs,easy sex, and a far more 'open' social structure in the music biz created an entirely different perspective than we face today. Apples and cormorants.

 

 

Ah, OGLA. I still, somewhere, have old Maiden tabs I printed off of UseNet (also the alt.fan.iron-maiden FAQ from like, 1992).

[Synonym Music]

I couldn't have done anything differently. I was 20 when I found Harmony Central. I haven't changed my career plans one bit, either... If anything I found greater resolve.