Your occupation vs. your music style

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Mbo
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 05:10 PM

Well, I don't have a job exactly...I'm a college student studying Art--Communications Art--in the subfield of Graphic Design. With this I'd like to do more computer art than anything else. I also have a work-study job at the university as a "computer lab monitor," but have eclipsed that, and now have become a computer technician of sorts. I've always been good with computers, but still have a ton to learn in that field. I play guitar most of all, and some years of classical guitar training, but also do folk stuff; I've played violin for 4 years now, and am OK I guess, I make less mistakes if I can play slow airs; and now I've taken up the beginning stages of the bagpipes. I write music mostly: tunes, and music for song lyrics (I am "lyrically impaired"). I'm not sure if there is a direct connection between my "job" and my music. Art is creative, and so is music--but it's also very technical at times, as too is computers, and I did rather well in music theory classes. However, I am not very good at math. In fact, I hate it! The most technical subject of all, I cannot master! Very strange.

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: lamarca
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 04:18 PM

I am a scientist - I do very exacting work in molecular genetics that involves both hand-eye coordination and the ability to think logically and make connections between bits of data. I can't play an instrument to save my life - at least not any better than picking out a simple melody line. No chords, no moving left-hand accompaniment to a right hand melody, nada.

However, I can memorize and sing long ballads, and absolutely delight in doing so. I remember absolutely useless bits of trivia, characters' names from novels, who I heard sing a particular song, what book was on the coffeetable last week (and why isn't it still there? Where did I set it down 5 minutes ago?)

My musical "style" is singing songs with a melody that grabs me, and that have interesting, non-repetitive lyrics. I don't learn a lot of chorus songs, so I'm always at a loss in group sing-alongs where the emphasis is on communal singing.

I don't know how this fits in with your theory, Joan - I do precision stuff at work, but my "precision" music involves wordplay rather than instrument play...

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: InOBU
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 03:54 PM

For your survey:
Ex sailor, ex boat builder, ex photo journalist, ex lawyer, current judge in an American Indian court, play the Uilleann pipes in an Irish/Celtic band. Larry

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Easy Rider
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 03:44 PM

I'm a software engineer, and I play fingerstyle country blues and folk guitar. Programming languages and music are both "Formal" languages, according to the Chomsky hierarchy. It seems that musicians make good programmers.

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Hasek
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 12:27 PM

Dear Rick, Don't lose your lunch............it will end up on our Lake Ontario shores...................however,my occupation is a Financial Sales Manager and I love Contemporary folk of Bruce Cockburn, Utah Phillips story and history folk , The Weavers content and vocals and the all rolled into one walking troubador folk of his own : Rick Fielding . Mike S.

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Joan
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 12:20 PM

Interesting input.

Guess none of us are entirely one-sided in the ways we approach music. Just seemed to me that analytical thinkers tend to gravitate toward tunes that require precision and technical proficiency, and others of us are drawn toward ideas and words. I'm definitely a word and story person...I also write. But in the car, I get so distracted by words, I always put fiddle tunes in the tape deck--makes the car go better than gasoline.

Joan

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: JedMarum
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 12:07 PM

I am very aware of how my musical efforts have enhanced my other professional endeavors ... and vice versa. As a young man, I worked a variety of day jobs and spent my real energies pursuing my musical works. In those days I learned, in addition to developing my music and performance craft, Sound Reinforcement equipment, band or people 'management', and some level of business skills. When I moved into the corporate world these valuable skills helped me manage big projects, large teams of people, nerve racking problems and creative solutions. Even big, complex computer systems (my professional area) are not much different from large complex sound systems. Computer programs are very much like songs or musical scores. Programming staffs are very much like a group of talented musicains trying work together as a band. To me, many of the lessons learned in one area are directly applicable in the other.

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: MMario
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 11:46 AM

so you can pipe yourself on board?

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: SpitWhistle
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 11:41 AM

Skipper of a nuclear submarine... pennywhistle player in Irish band... the crew really wonders about that sometimes!

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Sean Ruprecht-Belt
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 10:48 AM

Joan, et al. Over the years my occupation has swung from one extreme to the other. I've been a working musician, an actor, a retail worker, and am currently a business analyst for a large IS department at a big corporation.

My musical style and taste, however, has remained pretty much constant for three decades (Yikes!). I play a lot of old time music on banjo, guitar and dulcimer with a healthy dose of Delta and Piedmont-style blues thrown into the mix. The only significant change over the years has been that the balance started out heavier on the blues side and has lately leaned more to the old time side.

I'm not sure what conclusions (if any) may be drawn from this, but would be interested in hearing any and all theories.

- SRB

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Pete Peterson
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 10:29 AM

Gargoyle, your compliments addressed to me, I suspect, were meant for Lloyd61. I accept them warmly because i too have done my best to raise a family (three daughters) and the last woman-semester of college is about to be PAID FOR and I can rearrange my priorities to do more for myself. On the musical side, while one of my friends has divided musicians into the "stringers" and the "singers" I find myself not wanting to choose, but more on the side of the singers. I CAN play tunes for 4 hours and have done so, but the more memorable sessions are the ones with good stories told or re-told.

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 10:01 AM

I cannot play an instrument,or read music, but do love listening to people play; my brother plays viola, recorder and piano (where I get my love of classical music from) And (no surprise to anyone)I love sea shanties and folk music. I did sing in choir, and do love comic opera but not a lot of the serious stuff. The best memories I have of England are the times I spent in local pubs listening to people play, and singing with them. I saw John Renbourn and people like Archie Fisher and John Tams, when they were much less famous than they are now..... Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Mudjack
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 09:49 AM

Industrial Maintenance Electrician..... Sing first, secondly play instuments to accompany the singing. I don't try and annalyze what it is I'm doing, Just do it for the love of doing it. Fixing industrial breakdowns and playing a breakdown. Oh! I guess there is a relation
Mudjack

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: WyoWoman
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 09:34 AM

Cute, Kendall.

I'm an editor and writer. I love songs that tell a great story. I especially am drawn to stories of courage and valiant people standing up against the "machine." Sometimes I find I just need a heart-breaker of a love song, but mostly I'm more attracted to political or sociological songs.

However, I like listening to just about any kind of music at least a little, and have extremely varied tastes. I have a real passion for people and am almost always interested in how people do things, or how they have done things, and in the amazing collaborative process music and community represent. (Choral singing is my favorite team sport.)

WyoWoman

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: kendall
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 06:28 AM

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Llanfair
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 05:37 AM

In my experience, it has nothing to do with occupation or which side of the brain you use most. People who sing tend to concentrate on the words, with enough instrument playing to accompay themselves. People who do not consider themselves good singers, right or wrong, concentrate on becoming good musicians.
There are exceptions, of course.
I'm a retired Social Worker, left handed, but play the guitar right handed. Can do everything except write with both hands equally.

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: JenEllen
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 01:25 AM

I'm a lefty that plays right handed, just how I was taught. For me, the question is fairly oppositional. My work is scientific. I deal with blood, guts, lives, microscopes, smears of things that would make your socks roll up and down....and I love it. Helping animals get back to their thing is what I do every day, and with a smile. The fact that perfection and repetition is demanded is part of what makes the work so enjoyable, you know when you've got it right. I am exactly the opposite musically. I cannot bear to play the same piece, exactly the same way, over and over. I like to hear the goofs and stories, and I feel that music allows others to express the same feelings. Don't say it's a repressed desire to see things spread their shimmering wings and fly away, I'll vomit, and then I'll have to get the microscope out...

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: El Jefe
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 01:21 AM

In my former life I was a corporate clone...coast to coast commuter...Auto industry..factory rep( High Line European Manufacturers and Japanese) and management training at the national level...23 years..... since 90 making unusual and obscure painted funiture and folk art from immigrants to the US and Canada...ie Doukhobor, Ukrainian, Shaker, Quebequois..etc.. Play guitar and mando a bit..been messing about with button accordians (diatonics) for a couple years,,, Jefe

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 01:11 AM

I am unemployed but my main ouccapational interests lie in computers and admin with some degree of computer orientation.

Musically I am far more into melodies than words and my biggest interest is in celtic dance music.

I don't know what is left brained or right brained but for usless information, I am a left hander who plays right handed.

Jon

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Barry Finn
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 12:19 AM

Left side, right side or middle side, I've always worked with my back & hands (he's says as he crawls up the stairs to bed) in what's considered a fairly dangerous trade & always play hard (until I got the sickness - old age) at things just as dangerous & the songs I love the most are the rough & tumble, roaring till the morning comes songs, of hard working poor people & poor hard work, like most of the people I knew in my youth. I think it makes me much more the gentleman that I am today, I also play the Bodhran in the same fashion, simple, primitive & warring (forgive me, ha ha, I couldn't resist). Barry

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Little Neophyte
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 11:04 PM

Joan, my work seems to be a blend of qualities. As a dietitian my work is technical. As a nutritionist my work is more like being a psychologist.
My personality prefers to be the one listening rather than the one speaking.
If I were part of a theatre group you would find me working on the costumes & props rather than being an actress on stage.
As for the banjo, I am interested in developing my skills as an instrumentalist. In my heart, I feel being an instrumental player reflects my true nature.

BB

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Gary T
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 11:04 PM

I like to sing songs that grab me in some way (my musical mission--singing songs that don't get heard enough). I strum guitar chords for accompaniment, in fact was motivated to learn guitar because none of the other players I ran into knew the songs I wanted to sing. I have no interest in learning to pick. I occasionally learn a new chord to enlarge my capability to sing certain songs in certain keys. I don't consider myself a true guitarist, rather a singer who strums chords.

My profession is auto repair (mechanical, not body). I can be very technical and precise in that. I'm afraid I don't fit the suggested profile.

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: sophocleese
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 11:03 PM

I stay at home, or have for the last few years. I sing ballad type songs and play recorder. I like melody first in any tune and then the words. Only recently have I started to play an accompanying instrument, guitar. I'm learning. Its opening a whole new area for me. I am married to a man with perfect pitch and a degree in music who can pick up any instrument and make a decent sound emerge from it. He exists within the landscape of music whereas I carefully follow paths through it. He sings cheerful songs and funny songs, because that's what his family sings. I sing solo laments, and have done since I was a teenager. I am prone to depression. Does this help?

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 10:46 PM

Astonishing. Mr. Gargoyle can be so devastatingly hurtful and cruel to other human beings a few minutes ago on another thread ("Very much OS...") and here, he's just "one of the folks". I could lose my lunch!

Rick Fielding

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 10:22 PM

I don't think there's a connection between occupation/interests and musical taste, for me at least. I've been doing the same type work for almost 30 years (information systems), and my music has changed dramatically. There were years when all I played was classical music on the piano. Nowadays I do mostly bluegrass on guitar and fiddle, with vocals. Sometimes mindless traditional tunes, sometimes heavy lyrical messages.

Most of the people I work with listen to pop radio. My husband is an engineer, but he's the only banjo player in his company.

Maybe the more likely connection is between occupation (presuming certain skills and aptitudes) and musical aptitude rather than musical taste.

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: _gargoyle
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 10:20 PM

Dear P.P.

NEVER !!!regret that your priorities were "in the right place".....

Anyone, that has placed family....second....and not first .....has severly missed the meaning of life.

If your great-grand-father, THAT HAD a family, did NOT have a family, neither of us would be discussing this today....

As far as I am concerned, the GREATEST of all.... God-the-Almighty's....admonition's was "Be Fruitful And Multiply" .....you completed your part.

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Susan A-R
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 10:12 PM

Hmmm, I eat. I eat food, gobble books, ingest music, self-indulge in harmony, melody, swimming, friendships, but then the eating and the feeding blur, that's the best stuff when the music/food/friendships feed and are fed by me. Thanks Gargoyle.

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: _gargoyle
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 10:11 PM

Dear PETE....

Thank heavens there is a LLLOOOONNNNNNGGGGG weekend coming up......You have expressed things I never could say...and I sincerely hope the long-weekend is enough to experience them in.

AMEN BROTHER!!!!

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: lloyd61
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 10:10 PM

I have spend the past forty years teaching and Business Computer consulting. During this time I have had a passion to write music. How that I am retired I am just starting to put my music on paper. As I have said before, the biggest mistake was not developing technical skills on my Guitar or Mandolin. My work and family have taken all my time and strength. My priorities were in the right place, but now I have a little for me.

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: _gargoyle
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 10:06 PM

Susan A-R....

You .... precisely.... fit the definition.....(of compensatory recreation) Your first love....your "passion" is "feeding neaurturing".....and therefore, in your "new-metamorphasis" you continue in a similar patern...one is not "compensating" for another...you are only fulfulling your innate chemestry.

As the definition of "RE-Creation" implies.....what do "YOU" do...(in the compensatory theory)to balance out your "Ying" with your "Yang?"

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Pete Peterson
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 09:49 PM

As the old lawyer joke goes, and who created the chaos? PhD. Physical Chemistry, but the son of a PhD. organic chemist and a professional musician (piano teacher, accompanist, soloist and sightreading ten fingers at once!) Fell in love with old time music (with the aid of the New Lost City Ramblers) and never got over it. Worked backwards till I saw Paul Cadwell and learned about Vess Ossman and classical banjo. Then there's all those Stephen Foster songs. . . On one level, old time music is not creative-- on the deper level it is VERY creative because it's so hard to make any changes in keeping with the tradition. Singer-songwriters are things i can usually do without; there are just so many good songs! Then somebody like J.U. Lee comes along and he writes songs so good that I have learned them without trying to.

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Susan A-R
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 09:43 PM

Ah, but Gargoyle, you are not just an observer. I'll think on your theory though.

As for me, I used to work directly with people a lot, supervising, teaching, lobbying. Now I work with things a lot (potatoes, tofu, beans, spices) I am still in the business of feeding, encouraging growth, sending something good out there, and have always loved both the melody and the words of music and songs. I dunno.

Susan A-R

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: MK
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 09:40 PM

I plan and book corporate special events, and the entertainment required for them. Before getting into this line of work, I was a gigging musician and band leader for many years.

I can't carry a tune (vocally) if it had handles on it....so I lean towards playing instrumentals, or accompanying vocalists who CAN sing.

Given that I am a perfectionist by nature, somewhat of a control freak, and mildy obessive compulsive (ie: if I walk into someone's home and see a picture on the wall that isn't quite straight - regardless of by how little it's off, I'll straighten it -ie: and I eat the red Smarties last, and ie: I peel every shrimp on my plate before eating it.)

........Fingerstyle and fingerpicking appeal to me enormously....the busier my fingers are, the happier I am....but I try to be tasty, and as Rick is fond of saying ''Don't show them every lick you know, in one solo or tune."

I enjoy creating order from chaos.

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: _gargoyle
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 09:37 PM

Within the academic field of "recreation studies" there is the "compensatory theory."

Essentially, it boils down to..."opposites attract." The person with a physically strenuous occuptation is more likely to seek passive recreation....the creative person in a repetitive environment seeks out avenues of expression....the individual bombarded by human contact all day, seeks out isolation

As the "soap-opera-lives of the MC's" have played out....(over my four year's observations) this holds true....

Subject: RE: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: kendall
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 09:29 PM

I'm retired from the US Fish & Wildlife service, conservation officer, so, I dont do much. I'm not interested in learning to "pick" because I am a "word" person. (Also a storyteller) this seems to support your theory as far as I'm concerned. Dont get me wrong, I love good picking..but, I am content to leave it to more talented musicians such as, Rick, you Joan (I'm impressed with anyone who can pick guitar in E without a capo) and I like Sandy Patons guitar playing. He never burys a song with a lot of fast fancy picking.

Subject: Your occupation vs. your music style
From: Joan
Date: 29 Dec 99 - 09:22 PM

It's always been a theory of mine that what people do for a living connects with the kind of music they play. For instance, seems that lots of instrumentalists do precision things: mechanics, mathematicians--in other words, more kinda left-brained things. What do the writers, psychologists, artists sing? Probably more interested in ballads, songs with good words--the right-brained word people.

Care to comment? What do you do, and what sort of music appeals most to you?

I've been dying to do some kind of survey about this for age