Success

[6StringSling]

How do you measure success as it pertains to you and your musicianship? Do you consider yourself a successful musician based on how you measure that success? Do others view you as a successful musician based upon their own ignorant/media-induced/preconceived notions of what a successful musician is?

 

I don't consider myself successful since I haven't achieved my primary goal which is complete my CD to my satisfaction (or as close as is reasonable).

[jaxn slim]

 

How do you measure success as it pertains to you and your musicianship? Do you consider yourself a successful musician based on how you measure that success?

 

I consider myself a success based on specific tasks that I try to accomplish. I don't believe that there is a point of "success" for musicianship as a whole... not for me, anyway. Although I suppose going platinum would be about there.

 

 

 

Do others view you as a successful musician based upon their own ignorant/media-induced/preconceived notions of what a successful musician is?

 

Probably.

[mstreck]

Like many things, success is relative, isn't it?.

 

I feel successful if I can keep overcoming obstacles or adding to my list of accomplishments - big or small. Kinda like the total opposite of "failure".

[Lee Flier]

My definition of success is making the music you want to make - realizing sounds that give you joy, on record and on stage. And since in my case that sound comes from a group of people, my definition of success would also include finding that group of people and being able to maintain the stability and integrity of the group long enough to reach your creative goals.

 

Anything else - money, fame and all that - is just icing on the cake. There's never any guarantee that zillions of people will love your creative output. The real meat of the matter is the creative process itself and the result, IMO.

 

By that definition, yes I'd say I've been successful. Not that I don't still have other goals for the future... goalposts have a way of moving as soon as you get to them. But that's OK too, keeps things from getting stale.

 

Others may or may not think we're successful if their idea of success means being signed to a major label and selling zillions of records and getting on MTV. But I think a lot of folks around us consider our more modest accomplishments to be successful, and we don't really care what other people's view of the situation is, anyway.

[Hamer_Time]

Like many things, success is relative , isn't it?. I feel successful if I can keep overcoming obstacles or adding to my list of accomplishments - big or small. Kinda like the total opposite of "failure".

 

+1 Same for me. Did I accomplish what I wanted to accomplish. Did I play as well as I wanted to play that night. Did I sing my parts well. Did the crowd respond. Etc, etc. Success is what YOU make it to be. Too many people define succes by the opinions of others, which I guess sometimes is society's version of success, but you should really only worry about one opinion of success; your own.

[WynnD]

How does an artist know when their painting is done? I don't know how to answer that either.

[BlueStrat]

Success is not a single thing for me.

 

I consider some songs I've done to be successful in that they're complete and express what I want to say the way I intended to say it at the time. Some performances have been successful, though I can't think of a single time I've ever walked off stage completely satisfied and haven't seen something that didn't need work.

 

But music performance has a business effort/reward side to it, as well, and that's where the lines get blurred. Yes, it may well mean "making the music you want to make - realizing sounds that give you joy, on record and on stage. And since in my case that sound comes from a group of people, my definition of success would also include finding that group of people and being able to maintain the stability and integrity of the group long enough to reach your creative goals."

 

But for me, that's only half the battle of success. Gaining public acceptance and financial reward commensurate with dedicating my life to any other profession is part of it, too, and for me, that has not happened, and probably never will. So I can honestly say I've had some success, but I've not been successful, because I haven't accomplished what I set out to do.

[Lee Flier]

 

But for me, that's only half the battle of success. Gaining public acceptance and financial reward commensurate with dedicating my life to any other profession is part of it, too, and for me, that has not happened, and probably never will.

 

 

Music just isn't like any other profession and can't be treated as such, or you set yourself up for a lifetime of heartbreak in all likelihood. Luckily (maybe because of living in L.A. and seeing the music biz up close and personal) I figured that out by the time I was 15 or 16. Some people try hard to treat it like other professions but for the vast majority, it isn't that way. Trying to judge yourself or others based on the same criteria as other professions usually results in a faulty judgment and doesn't work.

 

With most normal professions, there's a clear path to success, easily quantifiable results and if you can prove you're competent at it, chances are you can get working and stay working. That isn't at all the case for musicians. There are thousands of great musicians who are never recognized or paid commensurately for their work, there are hacks who become successful on the basis of image or who they know, and there's everything in between. It's fairly pointless to judge yourself based on how much money you make or how much public acceptance you get because there's a LOT of luck involved in that. You have to happen to be the right age and playing the right kind of music that happens to be popular or on the verge of becoming popular at that moment in time. You have to have a great image of some sort, in all likelihood. And you have to have other people around you (management, producer etc.) who understand what you're doing and believe in you and have the money and dedication and savvy and connections to get you heard by lots of people.

 

Even then, especially in this day and age there's no guarantee enough people will hear you or give a crap, when there are hundreds of other people doing what you're doing and quite a few are actually doing it well and appeal to some small number of people that isn't enough to earn the artist a living.

 

So to me, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to tie your success to such fickle things as money and public acceptance. Not that I'm saying to young people not to try for those things, but don't bother if you don't truly love the music and your bandmates and aren't committed to working your ass off for years, probably for "nothing" in terms of money or fame. If it wouldn't be worth it to you to be in that situation, you should probably do something else.

[Ortac]

In the words of Kaiser Chiefs' lead singer Ricky Wilson, whilst filming the video for 'Everyday I Love You Less And Less',

"I was dressed as a skeleton with my head over the toilet bowl and I thought to myself, 'I guess this means I've made it'".

[Roy Brooks]

Success is being happy with what I am doing.