AngelRho
Veteran
Joined: 4 Jan 2008
Age: 48
Gender: Male
Posts: 9,366
Location: The Landmass between N.O. and Mobile
02 Dec 2013, 2:24 pm
Misslizard wrote:
ArrantPariah wrote:
Misslizard wrote:
Sounds like a plan,don't forget the drugs. 
You missed the fine print.
The Fine Print wrote:
REMEMBER, WHILE EXTREME INTELIIGENCE HAS SOME NEGATIVE ASSOCIATIONS, EXHIBITING THESE TRAITS WON'T MAKE YOU SMARTER!
The fine print was all in capital letters.
I saw it.But some of the negative things are FUN,to a certain extent.
Exactly right. Too many people too preoccupied with fun to actually go to work.
The problem as I see it is that we're taught to have these high and lofty goals that we never take the time to assess whether these "goals" we get from parents and teachers really are the goals we want for ourselves. Someone who spends most of his day playing video games isn't going to make it even as a small business owner, much less a lawyer or a surgeon, or even a general practitioner MD. So I think it's unreasonable to expect someone who only cares about playing video games to set high, lofty, and admirable goals like those.
On the other hand, put the same guy in a visually stimulating environment where he can collaborate creatively with others and pay him for workable ideas or making something--kinda like how you can build in Second Life and earn money doing it--then you've got something. Or teach him how to make video games, or how to do 3D digital modeling or animation, or graphic design… All of a sudden you've got a couch-potato gamer who now has the ability to exploit a local independent market and potentially make it big-time. People like that could make a killing off inexperienced gamers like myself whose exposure to gaming is playing Gears of War MAYBE an hour every other day (I just play campaigns and against bots…no online playing). But, even better, this guy can sell his friends in order to spark interest and get something substantial off the ground.
I see nothing wrong with that, btw. I'm aware that music just isn't that important to most people as it is me, yet there is a pretty broad consumer base for a wider variety of musical styles than any other time in history. What are the needs, i.e. who is my audience? Well, there isn't much GOOD new instrumental stuff that caters to the over 60 crowd. Church music is my thing, and I hear more complaints than I'd care to about how awful church music is and how we never do traditional hymns (which is a lie, but that's the complaint). Meet the consumers where they are: We need more traditional music. Well, I can PLAY traditional music. I can record a CD. I SHOULD be able to sell at least 30 units per (unpaid) gig. If I can do at least one evening performance a week and at least one, say, bridge club a week between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I've well-exceeded my break-even point. It's HARD work, but that's just what it takes in fame-or-famine fields like music and video games.
What helps make all the hard work worth it is if the process is stimulating and fun. Getting paid to write and perform music; getting paid to create and play video games… For some out there, those are dream jobs. It's just hard to actually GET a job in an already-established company that deals with those kinds of things. Someone like me isn't going to get picked up by a big publisher. I have to be able to promote my work, demonstrate my marketability, and THEN call up the labels and say, "Hey, I'm making a killing doing this in 3 states. You think this has national potential?" Either they pick me up and I make it big, or I take my money and fund a national tour all by my lonesome. If I do well outside the big labels and management, I get to keep ALL the money and it's their loss.
So even when you have a lot of negatives, like drug use and the like, those kinds of things can be channeled into something productive. If you spend a lot of time binge drinking, take up bar tending. You KNOW what tastes good and gets people trashed while not making them sick--now all you gotta do is make your passion entertaining to other people. You like smoking pot? Move to Colorado and see if you can start a weed vending machine service. Think you'd enjoy manufacturing meth but don't want to burn down your house doing it? Get your pharmacy degree and start your own compounding pharmaceuticals business. Not exactly the same, I know, but you're into drug dealing AND manufacturing, baby! And it's legal!
Anyone can turn negatives into positives, and you don't even really need THAT much intelligence to get started. You just have to want it bad enough to do something about it, AND be honest about what you really are willing and not willing to do.
02 Dec 2013, 2:46 pm
AngelRho wrote:
Sure, that's fine. But people who build, say, megacorporations never work in a vacuum.
There are a large number of things I don't need people for. For example, I'm really into creating electronic music--and by that, I mean other-worldly kinds of sound sculptures that probably nobody but me is interested in. Fine. I compose music for myself. I'm not here to win any awards, I just enjoy making music.
However, if I want to turn music into something I can make a living at, I can't work alone. Sooner or later I'm going to have to write, record, and perform arrangements that other people will like. I'm too much of a space cadet to do that, although I do have a little bit of a clue as to what people like. Sooner or later, I'm going to have to rely on someone I trust to tell me what it is people want in an instrumental album and what I could put out there that will most likely sell. I need someone to help me assess what's hot out there--because I'm the anti-trend guy--and give me advice as to what I should do about it. When I sit down to record, I'm going to inject a lot of myself into the musical arrangement, so it's not lack of originality that I'm trying to sell. It's all ME. But I can't sell ME if I don't know what people are buying. And I won't know what people are buying unless someone tells me.
As to the musical arrangements themselves, I'm good at coming up with grandiose, megalomaniacal, aggressive ideas that I know get MY heart pumping. But those ideas aren't always going to work musically, and the most dangerous part is they might actually be a turnoff for a lot of people. I might think I've got the next 9th Symphony, but if my wife is shaking her head on that ONE NOTE that I insist is the key to the whole composition, I'm afraid I'm going to have to change it. It's not because my wife has the same musical education and background I have; she doesn't, she just likes to sing with the radio, has had little in the way of formal training, and all that compared to me and my master's degree in music composition. What she IS, though, is a fresh set of ears who isn't connected to the project in the same way I am. If she doesn't like it, chances are a lot of people aren't going to like it, either. I need her to stay objective, and getting advice/input from others mostly helps improve things.
Another example: I composed for a pianist and a string quartet several years ago. I probably should have shopped around for a better ensemble, but these guys seemed really good for what I wanted to do. After rehearsing a particular movement with them, it was brought to my attention that movement was unplayable. It hurt my pride to hear that. However, if I wanted to get this work performed, I was going to have to rewrite that particular movement. I was able to preserve a lot of the musical ideas I wanted to present, it was done very well when they performed it, and I was able to rewrite it on the hour and a half drive back home. Given that this was to be performed at a wedding, I couldn't afford having my ensemble goof it up, so I felt it was better to listen to good advice from string players who really know what they're doing (I'd never written for strings before that, and my thesis doesn't count).
Big CEO types have to come up with a vision for their business that serves as the model for how the business is run. I want THIS product, I want it to cost THIS much to produce, and I want to sell at THIS percentage profit. Someone at the head of a corporation has bigger fish to fry than to haggle over design. That's not his job. The business he founded exists to do exactly that. He came up with a product, he designed it, he sold it. It made megabucks. He came up with new products, designed them, sold them. Made 10x the megabucks. Time passes. Technology moves forward. The same products have to be upgraded to continue sales. So he hires designers, carefully explains to them what he wants and how he did what he did…now we need MORE and better. Make it happen. Let me see what you come up with by the end of next week.
Things seem to go well, but the products aren't selling. Why is that? Products have cycles. People are moving away from those products because there's a newer, cooler way to do things. So what do we do? Hire a guy who knows how to follow trends and can really take OUR products to a whole new level or invent something that meets public demand. We need people with ideas while we provide the expertise and resources to get the job done. What we can NOT do is try to do this alone.
Most small business start out as just one guy providing a service. I play keyboards and teach piano lessons. I'm just one guy. That's all I can do, aside from recording some backing tracks. I can haul my own, small PA system and set up for gigs.
However, I don't get that many gigs. I play with a couple of bands, do some church gigs, and that's about it. If that ever changed, I'd have enough money coming in I could hire a guy to get me set up, run sound, and play all my tracks for me. If things were going really well and I could do better by bringing in more performers, I might hire some university music department kids to come in to gig with me. And who knows? One of them might be the next up-and-coming composer/arranger. If I have someone I hired on my team who is as much about the creative process as I am, I think it would really suck if I made my ensemble all about ME. If I "discover" some poor guy who just needs a break, I'm going to do everything I reasonably can to keep him because I know we're going to make a lot of money. Not only that, but if I'm gigging a lot and writing arrangements, I'm probably going to be exhausted. I can tell this guy: Look, here's what I want, and I just don't have enough time to do it anymore. If I write lead sheets, can you just sort of take my notes and write out full arrangements for us? That'd be swell, y'know!
You can do bigger things with a bigger team. If all you do is, say, knit scarves and sell them on eBay, you can likely handle it on your own. There's nothing wrong with that. But…think about that…if you use eBay, what you're doing is outsourcing your point of sale. You aren't working alone. You're employing a service to help sell your knit crafts. You're basically accepting someone else's idea for selling a product when you use their model. You're effectively hiring them because eBay takes a small amount of the purchase price at auction close. I wonder if the guy who invented eBay worked alone...
Actually, what you describe sounds more like team work and critiquing than goal sharing and I've had art classes, I know all about critiquing a project so one may learn and grow, become a more skilled artist.
Goal sharing is fine with people you trust. If someone is going to just bring you down and cold up your goals, you should not share with them imo. Do not cast your pearls before swine. Find supportive people
02 Dec 2013, 3:10 pm
02 Dec 2013, 7:33 pm
