Work-life and making music.

[2pauluzz2]

I’m wondering what kind of jobs you guys have, and how you balance your life in a way that gives enough room for being creative. The reason I’m interested is the following (and I think many can relate):

--
I’ve been producing electronic music since I was about 16. I’m approaching 28 now. Most of my ambitions have always been music related. During my studies I moved from a small town to a bigger city, then abroad to a bigger city. After I graduate with a generic BBA I had a hard time finding work. I grudgingly moved back to my home country, then spent about nine months looking for work. When I finally landed a job I was happy to be able to move on with life.

Now two years later I’m at a point where I’ve come to realize that trying to build a career in this big corporate that I work for is a joke. It might work for some, not for me. The job isn’t fun, it’s draining, I’ve stopped progressing, and worst of all – it’s just too much to combine with sitting down to make music. Sure I can work for some hours, but I can’t ever sit down for 8 hours anymore just working on something.

At some point I even convinced myself I should let go of silly old dreams and focus on living an adult life. I said goodbye to making music. Luckily, music didn’t listen.

I’ve now decided to create a different life for myself with room for being creative again. I need that structural time/space, but I also need to be able to eat and pay my bills. The upside is that my current job has paid for some studio equipment, so I am now content with my setup.

This includes finding a new job working less hours and more human interaction, moving to a different city (less expensive hopefully, closer to family and some friends). It’s likely that this will get me less pay, but that’s a fair trade in my book.
--

Who has been in a similar situation, choosing for what you believe in vs what is common in society ? (regular job, buy house, get kids etc.)
What kind of jobs did you have/do you have that combine well with your desire to create music?
Have you ever had regrets for taking this route?

[re:dream]

Thanks for opening a very interesting topic!

I have always wanted to make music but chose early in life for an academic career. Often wonder whether it was the right choice. It has worked for me in some ways - I have been fairly successful as an academic & hold down a fairly demanding but still rewarding job - but it means that time for making music is constrained.

In my field, it is very easy for work to swallow up everything. I run a small research institute, so in addition to doing my own research I have to raise funds, do endless admin, supervise students, deal with organizational dynamics... Most of my colleagues are complete workaholics and seem to have few other things that take their time and energy other than the day job. So my first challenge has been to learn to work smart as well as hard, and to learn how to make sure I get the essentials done plus have time for myself and my partner.

I don't have kids, so that makes things easier in some ways.

As for making time and space for making music, it is a never ending battle ... Some things that make it do-able:

- I have Live on my work laptop as well as on my home computer, and sync them via DropBox. This means that if I have half an hour to kill and I am far away from my music room, even at a conference or at an airport, I can open Live and work on some tunes

- Being very focused about music. Every night that I am not at my girlfriend's house, I am in my music room. Music gets priority above all but the most important social engagements. I make sure I set aside a whole day or morning for music at least two weekends a month. It means I see a very little of everyone except my closest friends, but that is the trade I make.

- It is a huge help that my girlfriend supports my music making addiction and loves my music. She's never made me feel that I have to choose between her and the music. (A good thing, too )

- Making effective use of my music time when I do have time. Dylan's Ill Methodology course has been incredibly helpful for me - in particular the distinction between 'night-time' sessions (when you are tired, not really focused, and can invest time in playing with sound design, experimenting with effects, and generally getting familiar with your sound palette) and 'day time' sessions when you make music in a focused and concentrated way.

- What I struggle with is finding time to practice. I wish I could put in an hour a day on keyboards. I am moving into a shared home with the GF later this year and it will be easier then, as I will not be commuting between different homes all the time.

- Instead of fighting time, make time work with you. I am not looking for instant success. But over the years, I know my music making ability has slowly grown. I started with electonic music in 2006 - that is 8 years ago, and have been focusing on it seriously only in the last two or three years. I feel I am only now getting the hang of it. I realized the other day that it will probably be five or six years more before I have attained the level of proficiency that I want. That's cool.

- Part of that is also knowing the power of habit. If I want to get somewhere in time, what I need to be aware of is what my habits are. What are the things I do every day? I know that half an hour of keyboard practice every day will over time make a huge difference to my playing. I will not notice it in a week. But I will notice a huge shift in six months. Just keeping at it.


Most importantly, don't waste time on the internet.

[slatepipe]

i'm involved in the corporate world too, but i guess my job must be a bit different to yours as i personally don't find it draining at all.

i did a degree a few years back in sound art as i figured it would be an interesting way of stimulating my apparent creative side, and i was kind of stuck in a rut at the time too. i freelanced as an audio visual technician in the corporate world of london while studying and i kind of found that the two separate fields (corporate av and sound art education) tended to stimulate each other for me.

i realised that if i was going to be an artist of any sort then it wasn't going to happen quickly, if at all, and so i needed to have a regular job in order to pay the bills so i carried on with the audio visual freelancing and then got taken on full time by an AV company. i get to work in a lot of interesting buildings in london and through studying sound art i gained an appreciation of the acoustics and spaces in and around these buildings and i started to use this appreciation to inform the music that i make. i also noticed that a lot of similarly minded people work in the audio visual field and so i have struck up friendships with them and have worked with and collaborated with some of them along the way.

i've also found that if you're friendly and open towards people whom you work with then quite often they turn out to be fairly amenable to letting you use the equipment that they have in their big corporate buildings for my own purposes instead of what they're usually used for (overblown powerpoint presentations)

i've made quite a few pieces in this vein over the last few years - check out my website and vimeo and soundcloud if you want

my missus is currently stimulating her artistic side too, though photography is her thing, not sound.
we haven't got any kids either though - i can appreciate that if we did then it would be a very different story as regards time spent making music and whatnot. but we adopted a cat earlier this year, he's pretty cool, deaf as a post since birth which is pretty lucky for him i guess, considering the racket i make on ableton in the flat

[stringtapper]

I have always wanted to make music but chose early in life for an academic career.

This is exactly why I went into the academic music world.

That and the fact that I don't know how to do anything else or really even care about anything else.

[Tarekith]

There's trade offs to both ways of doing it for sure. I did the corporate thing for 15 years, and while it was definitely a bit soul crushing, having steady work at good pay looks a lot better in hindsight at times . Insurance, good pay, working with generally clued up people, plenty of money for gear, house, food, etc.

I don't regret for one minute leaving to pursue a career in music, but every bonus of that way of living has a downside too. If you can live with a little uncertainty and are good at self-motivating, then I say it's worth a try. Happy to answer any questions if you have them.

[aisling]

I remember telling my pop when I was 21 that i'd probably commit suicide if I don;t "make it in music", not because I am depressed, but that the thought of not being able to live my dream made me wonder why bother....

I am turning 45 soon. I never "made it", I had some close breaks, but never was able to open the real doors....
While I have college degrees, for many years I resisted joining the "real world". I painted houses and tended bar. Then I had children in my early 30's and did the mr. mom thing while my wife brought home the bacon. The period of raising small kids took me away from music for a a while, I just did not have any inspiration or motivation, despite keeping up with gear, music technology, and such, I just had to much on my plate. Eventually, I realized that I also had another calling, and that was healthcare. I became a registered nurse.

Fast forward, I have a satisfying occupation that I help people, and that I get decent compensation. I was able to buy a house and have funds for music gear..... Eventually, the muse found me again. These days I have a lot of inspiration, though not always the time I wish. But it's ok, I see the world from a different place. My only slight "regret," is that as we get older and complicate our lives, it get's a little harder to network and make new music connections. I came up in the band scene, and find my self nostalgic for collective creativity vs the solo producer thing. I also miss playing out live. I have had some pretty decent gigs in my early days. Playing live is the most intoxicating experience there is. I hope to get back there soon.
Life is an unexpected journey with many twists and turns. Not all who wander are lost.

[Tarekith]

Well said.

You can be a happy musician and producer without having to live that life all the time. In many ways, it affords you the freedom of time, and the the ability to really hone in on ideas for as long as you want.

I hear you on playing out though, it is addicting and it does get harder as you get older. Even making a living doing what I do, I have to constantly balance what is good for my business, and what is good for me as an artist. I can't remember when it was, but there was a definite turning point where I wanted to focus on the mastering thing more than the artist side and playing out.

Interesting the twists and turns a career can take in this field

[Oppenheimer]

I don't know how to do anything else

Nerds generally don't know how to do much

[jestermgee]

Threads like this are a good chance to see that most of us are in the same boats. The stories above are similar to my own.

I started getting into music pretty much from when I was born. I was always playing with the home stereo and by the age of 6 started to discover how to connect things into the mic input other than a mic.

By 12 I had figured out how a potentiometer worked (from the paddles of an atari) and built my very first DJ mixer (2 channels in mono) from an old atari and some junk around the house. DJd my first back yard party at 14 and had built several more mixers by the time I was 16 where I finally got a real mixer for a birthday.

By this stage I had built my own DJ setup using old amps from second hand shops, old speaker boxes and whatever I could find to connect into the system (CD players, tape players, record players etc). By this stage (1996) I started to discover programs like Fasttracker and found what I wanted to fill my spare time with.

I work as a manager and technical support in a larger corporation nationally in Australia selling electronic security and automation equipment. Not music related at all but I have kept pace with my hobby which I started doing because it was fun and filled the boring hours.

I have kids, full time job, active outside life and a massive host of hobbies from woodwork to gaming to automated system design stuff. I manage to get involved in any projects I can where my hobby can be of use (such as film and arts projects, birthday parties, weddings etc) and I still do the odd DJ gig (last week I was at a wedding but not really DJing, just supplying the gear).

I have a very understanding partner who even allows me to use the biggest spare room in the house as my play room. I have often thought I should give it all away and focus on my kids more or something but when I listen back to any of the hundreds of tracks I have created,m even the bad ones, I am instantly taken back to the time when I made it and it's a reminder that though I don't treat it serious or dedicate my life to it it is part of who I am and it is no different than someone who chooses to read or paint or even rebuild a car. It is a pass time that is creative and gets my brain working. It will never make me "rich" and I may not always be focused to finish everything I start but it does make me happy.

One thing I would like to add is that it is perfectly fine to just walk away from it for a bit. I really have only just started to get back into experimenting again because I have kind of taken a 12 month break to focus on kids, family and friends. I'm only ever on the forum at work and I have spent most my time in Live just tidying things up and learning more about the instruments I have without focusing on creating anything new or trying to really finish anything off.

At the end of the day like anything I think that Life is just a constant journey of finding balance for everything. There really is no reason one cannot do anything. Just depends if you can balance the wants and the needs in life and as I get older it does start to become clearer what I do and dont want to be doing. Music is still up there and most (such as the OP) may think they just don't have the desire anymore but a creative mind never switches off completely.

[crofter]

I've been self-employed for the last 40 years so I've always had the flexibililty to go off gigging as and when required, I'm 60 now and don't want all the traveling so I only do local stuff which isn't much where I live, driving home at 2 in the morning in winter, never again.

[2pauluzz2]

Great to see so many lengthy replies already (Excuse my typo's in the following post- it's a long one and I'm writing this at work).

I have been fairly successful as an academic & hold down a fairly demanding but still rewarding job - but it means that time for making music is constrained.

The big difference with my situation is that my day job is not rewarding. It took me a while to realize that though. I hope to use that knowledge now to work on a new situation with a nicer job, and especially a lot more reward from that 'passion' of mine called music. I say "nicer" job instead of what I envisioned when I was still studying; a "career". The difference is in that I've now accepted that I can be content with a job that is rewarding because of having nice colleagues, because of being able to help others, because of human interaction -- instead of the incentive being achievement and progress. I can live with knowing that most of the pursuit of reward and progress will come from creating music (although I know the risks involved with expecting your art to give you all that, since that can create stress too).

Most of my colleagues are complete workaholics and seem to have few other things that take their time and energy other than the day job.

That's the case in my company as well and I can totally not relate to that. The funny thing is that when I had difficulties finding work right after my studies, I took a part time job to support myself working for an art institution. The situation there was the total opposite: a lot of people there couldn't care less about the job they had to support themselves- that would annoy me thinking about how many young people I know are struggeling to find work.

I am not looking for instant success. But over the years, I know my music making ability has slowly grown. I started with electonic music in 2006 - that is 8 years ago, and have been focusing on it seriously only in the last two or three years. I feel I am only now getting the hang of it. I realized the other day that it will probably be five or six years more before I have attained the level of proficiency that I want. That's cool.

I agree 100%, though I sometimes still find myself feeling like I'm on a timeline - a bit like womens biological clock. It's good to realize that success in the long run is what we should be focussing on. Success being the ability to create music in a way that is fulfilling.

Most importantly, don't waste time on the internet. "

Absolutely true. My studio mac does not have internet for this exact reason. It's a simply step to make but a valuable one.

i'm involved in the corporate world too, but i guess my job must be a bit different to yours as i personally don't find it draining at all.

Reading your story I can totally see how working in a related field can be a joy. Hats off to you

my missus is currently stimulating her artistic side too, though photography is her thing, not sound.

Those missusses are the greatest.

.. having steady work at good pay looks a lot better in hindsight at times . Insurance, good pay, working with generally clued up people, plenty of money for gear, house, food, etc.

Yes, I can see how those arguments are true for someone who's made the switch to full time entrepeneur - that is a switch that I'm not close to considering yet. A steady output is my first goal. I have tried to do music full time for 5 months after I graduated, but the stress that came with the lack of a job / not knowing where to go from there / the foresight of the job hunt, killed all creativity.

So I think that the situation that I should work on realising now, is a job to support me for all the reasons you mention - it takes away the stress of thinking about rent, insurane, food costs -- but one that still leaves time and energy to create music. My setup is about finished (one synth will arrive in the coming two months still) so that takes away the need for making vast amounts of money (sure I can find ways to spend it, who doesn't want to travel and all, but that's not the current goal ).

Happy to answer any questions if you have them.

Thank you- that is much appreciated. I have an evernote archive with a lot of relevant information, both technical and creative, and some of your articles are in there; the timeless tips, 7 quick arrangement tips and your thoughts on inspiration. I think there is an overlooked need for these type of articles since most websites / fora / articles solely focus on technical stuff - so this is my chance to say: thank you very much for that.

Awesome post

This is awesome. Both my parents work in healthcare- my mom runs a 'mamacare' desk in a hospital (breast cancer), my father has been an surgeon's assistant for many years- so I think I can relate. At 27 I make almost the same amount of money as my father does in his 60s (yes that is a sad fact), but they have jobs where they help people day in day out. During my studies I never realized how important that can be. Now I see how friends and family always come to them when someone close has issues, medical or otherwise. That is very valuable.

So I can totally see how your job satisfies you, and that in turn your musical inspiration is fueled by that. Hats off to you sir.

[H20nly]

I'm an I.T. Analyst and Network Administrator at a large clinic... I'm also a full time single parent. By the time I get home at the end of the day, these days, the computer is not calling me like it once did... and neither is the muse. I like to make music, but inspiration strikes me more when some live instruments (and people) are introduced into the mix. There was a time when that happened a lot, but I think that I'm just at point in my life where the inspiration has changed. No matter how much I want that inspiration to move me brightly... I have to let life be. We'll see... no closed books... only blank pages...

[aisling]

I'm an I.T. Analyst and Network Administrator at a large clinic... I'm also a full time single parent. By the time I get home at the end of the day, these days, the computer is not calling me like it once did... and neither is the muse. I like to make music, but inspiration strikes me more when some live instruments (and people) are introduced into the mix. There was a time when that happened a lot, but I think that I'm just at point in my life where the inspiration has changed. No matter how much I want that inspiration to move me brightly... I have to let life be. We'll see... no closed books... only blank pages...

Well the one time we almost collaborated, I was quite impressed with the quick demo you laid down. You have skill and talent, personally, I think more people need to hear it. All the best in creativity and inspiration. I wish we lived closer!

[Tarekith]

Thank you- that is much appreciated. I have an evernote archive with a lot of relevant information, both technical and creative, and some of your articles are in there; the timeless tips, 7 quick arrangement tips and your thoughts on inspiration. I think there is an overlooked need for these type of articles since most websites / fora / articles solely focus on technical stuff - so this is my chance to say: thank you very much for that.

Thank you very much!

[H20nly]

I'm an I.T. Analyst and Network Administrator at a large clinic... I'm also a full time single parent. By the time I get home at the end of the day, these days, the computer is not calling me like it once did... and neither is the muse. I like to make music, but inspiration strikes me more when some live instruments (and people) are introduced into the mix. There was a time when that happened a lot, but I think that I'm just at point in my life where the inspiration has changed. No matter how much I want that inspiration to move me brightly... I have to let life be. We'll see... no closed books... only blank pages...

Well the one time we almost collaborated, I was quite impressed with the quick demo you laid down. You have skill and talent, personally, I think more people need to hear it. All the best in creativity and inspiration. I wish we lived closer!

thanks

the truth is; i kept thinking i was fucking up your beautiful track... i still have it and still sometimes rhyme over it... then i sigh when i close it.