Theres never been a better time to be a guitar player

Greatape

OilCityPickups said:

Greatape said:

p90fool said:

OilCityPickups said:

bertie said:

p90fool said:

Of course the beginner gear is better now, but the pay is also crap. 

My first year as a teenage gigging guitarist breaks down as;

£50 a night each
 

fuck me -  loading it in..................  I started getting money for gigs in about 1981,  we'd be lucky to get £50 for the band down in sunny debbun.................. tho it was small town stuff to be fair, and still being in school I wasnt really in it for the money, just the fame        (and other fringe benefits !!!)

But I bet you wen't playing the St Bernards Waltz, the Gay Gordons and the Valita ...

Neither was I, it was mainly blues/rock type stuff with a bit of prog thrown in. 
To be fair though, although I was 17 years old it wasn't a teenage band, the other members were all in their 30s, so I guess they'd done all their hacking around school halls for a tenner years before I turned up. 

I never actually gigged with other teenagers so don't really have any idea what that would've been like. 

This in itself seems to have gone away - young people doing an apprenticeship almost with older musicians. 

People in this thread have observed that there are many resources on YouTube to learn from, but that doesn't teach you ensemble playing. I'm sure the evisceration of state music education and directed ensembles therein is a big loss. 

The other issue I see is that the fall of the local music shop has left age groups of musicians more segregated than they ever were before. My old home town music shop that I worked for in the 70s, Tom Tailor Music , Was as much a meetup space for musicians of all ages as it was a shop. Tom the owner made a big thing of the musician's notice board ... and also used to suggest guitarists he'd heard in the shop to bands who needed members ... as teens we'd hang about all Saturday morning ... or afternoon to sound out who was doing what with whom. 
Join My Band  is a lot less personal!!!  

Absolutely this. And for the remaining ones, pressure of the modern cost of doing business prob means they want the public in and out more quickly. I appreciate that the old, somewhat -shambolic approach to running a business was unsustainable in the modern world - but I do miss it. 

DuploLicks

Decent article from the Beeb on the struggles of venues these days. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68624032

Kurtis

There does seem to be a hell of a lot of bands and musicians creating music if you look at things like Spotify.

Some might say too much! 

guitarjack66

Musical_Mystery_Tour said:

OilCityPickups said:

I bang on about it, but Finland is more or less my second home. Helsinki or Tampere or any one of the larger towns/cities today has the sort of music scene we had in the seventies ... venues all over the place, new bands everywhere. Town councils have a totally different attitude to music ... they see it as 'essential art' that needs space to flourish in. Even small bands doing original material tend to tour - of course the fuckwits who gave us Brexshit have seen to making that more difficult for our UK musicians to do that - but at least we can drown our sorrows in pints of wine.  

I suppose the issue is ... there has never been a better time to be a guitarist, but it's coincided with the country going to ratshit :-) 

Yup, Tampere is a great town, I seem to recall it used to be referred to as the 'Manchester of Finland' or some such, because of its history of being an industrial centre and how that has affected its modern development which has many parallels with the actual Manchester in th UK, wherein it has developed quite a recognisable music scene. And like Manchester 'oop north' here in Blighty, I've had plenty of good nights out in both cities. Just hang on to your wallet, in both places!

What an insult...to Tampere that comparison is!