Football

A lot of people I know give me surprised looks when they find out that I'm a football fan. I guess that's because classical musicians (well, at least classical string players at any rate - brass players are a different breed) don't tend to watch much in the way of sports, let alone American football. And yet, I've been a football fan most of my life.

The first football game I can remember watching was the Redskins/Bills Super Bowl in 1992. I actually had to go look up what year that was, but I guess that meant that I was eight years old at the time. For some reason I was cheering for the Bills. I think it's because I liked their bright blue and orange uniforms. Also, it may be that, through some coincidence, they were the team I ended up watching through the playoffs, as opposed to their counterpart.

I definitely have to credit my father with sparking my interest in football. He always had the games on on Sundays, although until that specific year I don't recall if I ever noticed. He always had a lot to say about the games that I didn't understand; he'd call "holding" on plays where no flags were thrown by the refs, or talk about "poor coverage" (he still never seems to notice "good coverage"). To this day, we always watch football together when I come home, of course provided that it's football season.

Further cementing my interest was the fact that a few years later, two Wisconsin teams ascended to the top of the sport, the Badgers making the 1994 Rose Bowl and the Packers making the Super Bowl twice, in 1997 and 1998. Kids who had never talked about football before were suddenly obsessing over the sport, and for the first time I actually knew the names and positions of various players who weren't the quarterback.

I always relish the start of football season, even during years (like last year) where I haven't had consistent access to a television. Even without seeing the games, one can follow them through various sports writers, and read about all the on- and off-field drama. I know it doesn't really mean anything, and I know it's just a bunch of overpaid mammoth prima donnas trying to maul one another for the chance to carry an oddly-shaped ball over a white line, or perhaps kick it through an over-sized tuning fork. I get that. And I still love it.

On standards vs realities

So recently, a couple things happened that made me think a while on the issue of having high standards in everything one does vs the realities of music-making for a living. To a freelancer, tis is a very important issue. I long ago resolved never to accept a take on a recording that doesn't meet at least some base quality level, that base level being quite high. The problem is, often when doing gigs/recording sessions, a fee is agreed upon beforehand, and then the session takes however long it takes. Obviously, a gig that operated by the standards laid down by the musicians union does not work this way, but most of the gigs I end up doing don't follow those guidelines.

The simple reality is that in most sessions, there is little to no rehearsal; sometimes, you are asked to find other musicians to play with, and sometimes they are chosen ahead of time by someone else. What this all adds up to is that sometimes your ability to get a solid take can be severely hampered by an incompetent musician; or, sometimes, the music is quite difficult, and even with a strong group of musicians a really excellent take may simply be out of reach.

What this can add up to is the idea that to reach the standard I set for myself, I would need to do a LOT more work than I'm getting paid for. Some artists understand this concept and behave accordingly. Others abuse it, most likely not due to any maliciousness, but just because it hasn't crossed their mind. A few examples:

I have worked with the band Emanuel and the Fear for quite some time now (will be three years as of this November). Emanuel is very careful to never schedule unnecessary rehearsals. Sure, the band could be tighter and more in tune if we rehearsed once a week, but the reality is we aren't getting paid enough for that, and so we settle for what we get by rehearsing only very occasionally. Because everyone in the band is a pro, the result is still at a very high level, but it certainly could be better. But it's a necessary compromise.

About a week ago, I played a Cuban music session with a string quartet. The music was exceedingly difficult, and we only had one rehearsal to put together three songs. We were paid quite well for the job, and the level of all the musicians involved was quite high, and so of course no one objected to spending all day in the studio. That being said, if the engineer and artists who we were recording for had insisted on perfection, we would have been there all night as well, and to be honest probably wouldn't have had a better end-result. I'd say the end result was quite good, but I know everyone left some blips in the takes that we'd like back.

Lastly, I recently did a session for a Brooklyn indie band who are friends with a colleague of mine. This was an unpaid session, which I agreed to do partly because it was my friend who asked me, and partly because I'd heard a lot of good things about the project. Also, it was just supposed to be background string tracks for a three songs, so I figured it would take at most two hours. I was dead wrong. We were at the studio for about six hours (including a dinner break), mainly because the band and the recording engineer were nitpicking every little thing. So the end result was at a very high standard, the sort of standard I'd normally like to shoot for in any session. Except, again, it was unpaid.

This bothered me quite a bit. I sort of feel it common sense that if you have a group in for free, you don't insist that they nail everything perfectly. I can honestly say that I sympathize with and admire the mindset, but there SHOULD be a law in music as immutable as, say, the law of thermodynamics. And that is that you can either have top notch strings on your album, or you can have free strings on your album, but not both. And the next time I'm asked to do something like this, I'm going to set a hard time limit ahead of time so they know what my expectations are. It's just bad for business to give your very best work and not get paid.

And then, to end on a happy note, sometimes you go into a session and find nice, well-written, not-too difficult charts, top-notch music to play over, excellent musicians to work with, and a decent paycheck. I've had two sessions like that this summer, both with the same group of people at the same studio. Hopefully, they hire me again.

3 years in NYC

It has been just over 3 years since I first came to this city; of those, two were spent in the relative safety of "being a student", and the third has been spent in the "real world". So here are a few observations and lessons I've learned in that time.

1. New Yorkers are not NEARLY as rude/obnoxious/annoying as they have been portrayed on TV and in film. Obviously, with so many people crammed together in such a small space, you inevitably will run into plenty of assholes, but no more than anywhere else.

2. It's not so bad being one of the only white people on a given block. I mean, I didn't think it would be, or else I wouldn't have spent 2 years in neighborhoods where I was distinctly a minority, but it was nice to see it confirmed. Heck, I didn't even speak the same language (Spanish) as most of the folks living nearby, but it didn't seem to ever bother anyone.

3. If a subway pulls up to the station, and the cars that pass by you are full but the one that stops in front of you is empty or nearly so, something is wrong with that car. Either the air conditioner isn't working, in which case it will be well above 90 degrees, or it smells terrible, for one reason or another. I learned this one the hard way several times.

4. Versatility and openness to trying new things are two of the most valuable traits a musician can possess. If I didn't know how to improvise, or hadn't had the guts to try busking, I definitely would have had to get a real job by now.

5. An AC is a necessary component to surviving a typical New York summer. Last summer was far cooler than normal, and I was not in New York the previous summer, so this one caught me quite unprepared.

6. Speaking of community, finding one is another necessary component to survival in a place where neighbors never say hello.

7. Provided you're not one of the wealthy types who has a nice midtown apartment with a doorman and can afford to take a cab everywhere, NYC will teach you how to tolerate pretty much anything. Everything one ever has to learn about survival (well, obviously not moose-skinning, but I think you get my meaning) can be learned here. I think the Onion summed it up best.

8. My perceptions of myself as an artist changed radically when there was suddenly this imperative to pay for basic things like rent and food. It's not that I no longer love my job. It's just that as the motivation changes, certain realities become apparent. For instance, I'm now far less tolerant of extra rehearsals being scheduled, or people asking for unpaid work, or people whom I'm getting paid to work with being less than fully professional. Or people not understanding that I am only doing such and such a gig because I'm getting paid, not necessarily because I care even a bit about the project itself (sometimes yes, sometimes no). I'm not so good at pretending to care.

9. I still am not sure how I feel about New York. It is a place where I have been able to get the sorts of musical experiences I never knew I needed, and to study with a brilliant teacher while I did it. It's also a place where it's hard to feel like one is making any progress, at least financially, and sometimes professionally as well. It's a place where people go to find their dreams, and where many have those dreams dashed. Can't live with it, can't live without it, as the saying goes.