When you swing your legs out of bed, throw on a pair of jeans and head for coffee, are you rich or poor? Well, neither. Most of your day is neither. When you sit there watching TV it matters not whether you're sitting on fancy ass furniture or on a beat up couch, you're still neither rich or poor. When you have the basics like a place to stay and wheels to get you around, maybe a cell phone or some other gadget, bigger dough makes a bigger pile, but it's more or less the same pile. One gets used to fancy shit and there's little difference between fancy shit and regular shit after you've had it for a week or so. For those of you who don't know of our pal Schrödinger, he was the one who theorized that if you don't look, things can be either way simultaneously. He did it by threatening a cat or something. Look it up. Hencely, if you use a Schrödinger's money box to pay the rent, there's a 50/50 chance it'll be full of cash when you open it. Mind you, there's only a 50/50 chance as long as you don't open the box. If you open it the assumption is that because you didn't put money in there in the first place, it will of course be empty. Enter Occam's razor, which says among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. So the way to pay rent with an empty box is to not assume anything. Then in theory you should be able to pay the rent every second month. One might think that not having put any money in the box means it's a safe assumption the box will be empty. If you don't assume it thusly that's less assumptions. Hence if you put Occam's razor in Schrödinger's box with zero assumptions, the box may be full of cash next time. I've tried to explain this to Long and Mcquade but they assume I'm an idiot. They just don't get my more holistic approach to making payments. Buncha concept ruiners is what they are. Mind you, with zero assumptions there as much chance there's a cat in there as money. Can't pay L&M with a cat either. I know I tried. I cleared myself of all assumptions hoping they'd accept a cat as payment but they have a rather major assumption in that regard. Ruiners. So what in the by golly heckorama does this have to do with music you might ask? Well shut up and I'll tell you. Your chances of paying the rent with music are about the same as with a magic box. If you decide to chase any type of artistic endeavor as a method of paying rent or L&M you'll need to work the logic while at the same time completely ignoring the entire thing. Think of the concept as the point of a spear and the logic workarounds as the weight of the shaft. Then you can skewer yourself to the wall once a month. It's a skill I've honed to a fine point of utter denial over the years. If you decide to chase any type of artistic endeavor as a method of paying rent you'll need to learn how to think hard about it while at the same time completely ignoring the entire business. Music sucks as a life path. The ups and downs are at times massive. Especially with original music. One needs to put 100% into a life path and if you choose music you'll need to be smart about it or wind up searching through an empty imaginary box looking for rent money. One time we hired a keyboard player for a gig at the old Windsor scuzz bar in New West. The dude had just jumped off the plane from Toronto where he'd played at the Juno's main stage. On TV and the red carpet, the whole flaming woohoo. He looked a tad stunned through the gig. He's still scrabbling around town gigging weekends. Many players around town have done some pretty major gigs. Our drummer this weekend has played in front of 80,000 people and toured the world playing. Ups and downs are cool but mostly it's downs. I've played on TV a few times... hey here's a clip, http://www.cbc.ca/absolutelycanadian/docs/2015/06/27/murray-porter-heart-of-the-eagle-1/ Hey I'm the guitar player. Hey come to think of it... We're at the Fairview at Broadway and Oak this Friday. Come say hey. Here's the actual key to success in music. Learn how to play, then be prepared to play anything anywhere anytime. By that I mean learn how to read music, then learn how to play all styles. Play cover tunes or whatever you can, because the main thing is to play a lot. It's not terribly complicated. When you're playing, and I mean playing anything, you're getting better at it. Playing something you don't like is every bit as valuable to your playing as only playing what you want to. As you progress you'll find all styles, from death metal to country, all use exactly the same concepts and methods that make music what it is. When you understand what makes the difference between one and another you become a better player and writer in your chosen style. Playing crappy music doesn't taint your groove, it makes you better at it. The act of playing something boring is actually good for your playing. The basic mechanics of playing become second nature. You cement the groove in your brain and have a solid foundation to build from. This is what separates the amateurs from the pros. That long boring time spent building a foundation of natural skill. Playing outside your chosen genre can be boring and even downright disgusting at times, but you still get better at playing. The standard method most people use instead of hard work is to write a few tunes, record em, then hope it's great and some magical fairy dude will propel you to stardom. The trouble with this theory is it occasionally works and the glorious tale is loudly proclaimed and spread to the farthest reaches of the kingdom. It's like buying lottery tickets, you always hear of the winners but it's never you. Personally, I buy my lottery tickets used. They're way cheaper and your chances are pretty much the same. The Big Myth, the propellant that sends all these discovered dweebs to stardom, is talent. This is not true. There are literally millions of very talented people out there releasing thousands of CD's every day. Youtube gets like a billion uploads per second of people caterwauling into horrid cam mic's hoping to bypass the whole thing and be discovered. Getting rich from music is like winning the lottery, it doesn't actually ever happen, but it's a wonderful way to get through the hours spent in the drudgery of a day job waiting to die. Waiting to die is of course the essence of dayjobbery. Stacking time playing crap is infinitely better for your playing than stacking time at a day job. The second part of being a financially successful musician is to always be ready to drop everything and jump. Life usually gets in the way of dropping everything to hit the road when an opportunity arises. Having a life often gets in the way. Kids, jobs, wives and girlfriends, car payments, any number of things will screw your kick at the can. Then there's professionalism, whether it's because you're a rock diva or can't get to the gig on time, alcohol, dope,... all kinds of crap can stop your progress to the big time. Tragically, becoming a great player or writer and keeping a clear vision is frantically hard. So my best advice is ignore it all and have fun. A successful song is one people like. Strive for that and have a good time along the way. BTW, I have a magic box for sale. It works great as long as you don't open it.
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