Plenty of excellent musicians work day jobs to put food on the family table. So where do they go to meet their music community?
Being a full-time musician is a dream that rarely comes to pass. I’ve written about music-related jobs that keep you close to the action, and how more and more musicians are working in the music-gear industry, but that’s not for everyone. Casual players and weekend warriors love music as much as the hardcore guitarists who are bent on playing full time, but they may have obligations that require more consistent employment.
I know plenty of excellent musicians who work day jobs not to support their musical dreams, but to put food on the family table. They pay mortgages, put children through school, provide services, and contribute to their community. Music may not be their vocation, but it’s never far from their minds. So where do they go to meet their music community?
A good friend of mine has studied music extensively in L.A. and New York. He’s been mentored by the pros, and he takes his playing very seriously. Like many, he always had day jobs, often in educational situations. While pro gigs were sometimes disappointing, he found that he really enjoyed working with kids and eventually studied and achieved certification as an educator. To remain in touch with his love of music, he plays evenings and weekends with as many as three groups, including a jazz trio and a country band. Not actually worrying about having a music gig that could support him in totality has changed the way he views playing out and recording. He doesn’t have to take gigs that put him in stressful situations; he can pick and choose. He’s not fretting over “making it.” In some way, he’s actually doing what we all want, to play for the music plain and simple.
Another guy I know has played in bands since his teens. He’s toured regionally and made a few records. When the time came to raise a family, he took a corporate job that is as about as far away from the music business as you can get. But it has allowed him to remain active as a player, and he regularly releases albums he records in his home studio. His longstanding presence in the music scene keeps him in touch with some famous musicians who guest on his recordings. He’s all about music head to toe, and when he retires, I’m certain he’ll keep on playing.
“Seek out music people regularly. They’re hiding in plain sight: at work, at the park, in the grocery store. They sell you insurance, they clean your teeth.”
I could go on, and I’m sure you know people in similar situations. Maybe this even describes you. So where do we all find our musical compadres? For me, and the people I’ve mentioned, our history playing in bands and gigging while young has kept us in touch with others of the same ilk, or with those who are full-time musicians. But many come to music later in life as well. How do they find community?
Somehow, we manage to find our tribe. It could be at work or a coffee shop. Some clubs still have an open mic night that isn’t trying to be a conveyor belt to commercial success. Guitarists always go up to the stage between changes to talk shop, which can lead to more connections. I like the idea of the old-school music store. Local guitar shops and music stores are great places to meet other musicians. Many have bulletin boards where you can post or find ads looking for bandmates. When I see someone wearing a band T-shirt, I usually ask if they’re a musician. Those conversations often lead to more connections down the line. Remember, building a network of musicians often requires persistence and putting yourself out there. Don’t be afraid to initiate conversations and express your interest in collaborating with others.
Of course, I’m lucky to have worked in the music sphere since I was a teen. My path led to using my knowledge of music and guitars to involve myself in so many adventures that I can hardly count them. Still, it’s the love of music at the root of everything I do, and it’s the people that make that possible. So whether you’re a pro or a beginner, seek out music people regularly. They’re hiding in plain sight: at work, at the park, in the grocery store. They sell you insurance, they clean your teeth. Maybe they’re your kid’s teacher. Musicians are everywhere, and that’s a good thing for all of us.
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Big guitar-building workshops keep it clean, and so can you!
Developing good, clean workshop practices will help you save time and money.
Who doesn’t like a sweet, sustaining, saturated guitar sound? I know I do, but I also love a clear and full clean tone maybe even more. Dirty or clean, to me a guitar sounds like a million bucks when the tubes are glowing and the playing flows. But most of the time I’m in the workshop making lots of dirt, and I don’t mean the overdriven amplifier kind. Making guitars can be a dirty business. Carving wood, plastic, and steel into a majestic instrument creates a lot of mess, and eventually you have to sweep your way clear.
Half a century ago, a mentor passed on this advice: The best way to clean up a mess is to not make one in the first place. Maybe this sounds quaint, but I assure you that it is good for business—any business. It doesn’t matter if you make pedals, guitars, amps, or even music, mess is money down the drain. Not only that, it’s a psychological strain on you that saps your energy and makes you careless.
When I worked at Fender, I was part of a team that was charged with revamping departments for efficiency, safety, and worker well-being. I can’t say that we made a huge difference, but I learned a lot that I could apply to my own shop and a host of other businesses. One thing there we didn’t have to fix was cleanliness. Despite the gargantuan scale of the enterprise, all of the factories are incredibly clean, especially considering the amount of materials that get processed. It reminded me of the race cars and shops of Roger Penske, who understood that a clean, organized workplace sets the tone for excellence. It’s also difficult to pinpoint problems when areas are cluttered, and you can’t see what’s going on clearly.
Beyond the obvious advantages of keeping things organized, there is another benefit created by keeping things clean, one that I’m surprised that more shops I visit (and see in videos) don’t understand. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to stop making your product and clean up. When you’re buried in debris, straightening up is time-consuming, and time is money. When you determine your cost per unit, whether it’s guitars, amps, or even rehearsal time, do you factor in the hours you spend cleaning up? It may not seem like much, but it can really add up. Regardless of if you own a shop or are in a band, if you create a tangle every time you work, the time you spend undoing it is time you could have been with your friends, family, or doing anything else.
A well-designed work area that reduces clutter will save your health and save you money. You don’t have to be a big organization to justify some basic cleanliness improvements like a good dust-collection system, either. It doesn’t have to be a huge investment. There are a slew of affordable mobile dust-collectors/vacuums with adjustable arms that can be rolled from task to task.
"When you determine your cost per unit, whether it’s guitars, amps, or even rehearsal time, do you factor in the hours you spend cleaning up?"
Stop blowing dust off your workbench or machinery onto the floor—picking it up later is like throwing profit away. Everybody benefits because cleanliness improves efficiency that reduces passing unneeded costs on to your customers. Over the course of a year, cleaning up 60 minutes a week adds up to almost seven days’ worth of time you could be using for something better, and who doesn’t want an extra week?
I’ve found that if you build cleanup time into your daily routine, it reduces stress as well. It’s important to create procedures that promote a constant state of improvement and order. After a gig, pro techs have a mandated way of breaking down and stowing gear that avoids confusion when the next setup happens. Daily routines of maintenance and cleanup catch problems before they stop the show or cripple production. If you habitually clean the spilled beer off your cables and amplifier, you’re making it easier for yourself in the long run. I know this all seems pretty obvious to some of you, but I’ve learned from master Kaizen practitioners that there’s always a higher level to reach for. If you are a one-person shop or a weekend warrior musician, those steps can really make a difference.
I suppose the reverse is true for me. If I apply this multi-tiered improvement regime to my guitar playing, I’d probably be a lot happier with my proficiency. An old dog can learn new tricks, and that’s exactly what I mean to do. So when I step on that distortion pedal, it will be the only dirt I deal with.The author standing next to a Richardson gunstock lathe purchased from Gibson’s Kalamazoo factory. It was used to make six necks at a time at Gibson in the 1950s and 1960s.
Keep your head down and put in the work if you want to succeed in the gear-building business.
The accelerated commodification of musical instruments during the late 20th century conjures up visions of massive factories churning out violins, pianos, and, of course, fretted instruments. Even the venerable builders of the so-called “golden age” were not exactly the boutique luthier shops of our imagination.
Most likely, the majority of the workers who toiled in those facilities were not necessarily end users of the product. But despite the preponderance of private-equity interests at the top of the music-biz food chain, there have always been musicians down in the trenches.
Today, if you’re employed in the business of creating musical gear, more than ever, you are likely to be a musician. A positive shift in consumer attitudes about small brands, often operated by musicians, has added to this as well. With many players thinking that building pedals, guitars, or amps is a dream job, I thought I’d share what I think it takes.
In many ways, building gear is very similar to being a musician. In the beginning, you have to learn any way you can. You might go to school to get an introduction to machining, electronics, or woodworking to get a leg up. There are instrument-building schools as well, but be advised that you may be only learning one way to do something—their way. An alternate route is to learn from a successful person or enterprise—and I don’t mean viewing videos. When I am asked about how to “get into the business,” my advice is to find a job working for a reputable, successful company that is doing what you like, and stay there for at least three years and learn everything you can. I didn’t do that, but sometimes wish I had—it would have saved me a lot of misery. I learned on the job but luckily had two secret weapons: massive curiosity and the willingness to admit when I didn’t know something.
It takes a bit of an ego to succeed at most anything, but I know firsthand that it can also hinder your progress. A little knowledge can be dangerous. There’s a delicate balance between being confident and being humble enough to shut up and take advantage of the information that’s right in front of you. Arrogance seeks to surround itself with people who will lick boots, but smart people aren’t afraid to work in the shadow of those who are more accomplished. There have been numerous studies that show that when college roommates are chosen at random, the roommate whose GPA is lower will often study harder and raise their own average by a significant amount. The old saying goes something like: You can’t learn anything if you’re the one doing the talking.
Similarly, if, as a musician, you play with people who are better, you have to step up as opposed to just coasting along. It’s humbling to be at the bottom, but humility can be the best way forward. I’ve taken a lot of entry-level jobs at machine shops and factories, and the education served me well. The best advice here is to show that you are eager to learn, not how much you know.
“When I am asked about how to 'get into the business,' my advice is to find a job working for a reputable, successful company that is doing what you like, and stay there for at least three years and learn everything you can.”
Perhaps you’ve heard the story of someone who started out sweeping the floor who eventually rose to the top. Maybe in today’s corporate world, where a degree might be considered more desirable than actual experience, this isn’t a good strategy, but I can tell you that a lot of menial jobs afford you a perspective that will come in handy later. Pay attention to everything.
At one job assembling precision equipment, the supervisor asked me to report to the loading dock to fill in for a couple weeks. Instead of grousing about being demoted to a lower rung, I decided to learn how that department worked. I focused on doing well, learning, and gathering information about shipping and receiving. The shipping guys were happy to pawn off responsibilities on the “new” guy. That knowledge helped immeasurably when I had my own business. The very same scenario presented itself in a succession of industrial and creative jobs. In essence, I was being paid to go to school. People will share their expertise if you show respect for it—and that costs you nothing.
Regardless of what you’re trying to learn, it’s a better education to be a wide-eyed small fish in a big pond than a big fish in your own little puddle. The same goes for any job. Start in a position where you aren’t expected to know everything. This is where pride may derail you, but remember, you’re there to learn, and they’ll be watching. The smart money is on doing a great job sweeping that floor without a trace of complaint, because the way you do anything is the way you’ll do everything.
Pickup wizard and innovator Seth Lover, as captured by the author.
Guitarists are always changing pickups. So, what are we searching for?
Everyone knows that tone is in the pickups, right? At least that’s what the prevailing thought seems to be. There must be something to that idea because guitarists are spending a huge amount of cash changing pickups like dirty underwear. Almost daily we hear about a new pickup maker who has “cracked the code” by utilizing materials and techniques that somehow companies with million-dollar R&D budgets missed. I’ve worked with and rely upon a large number of pickup brands, and I truly love a lot of what they produce, but I’ve also learned that it’s easy to get lost in the hype.
For decades, things were different than what we see today. There were almost zero aftermarket choices—you basically played your guitar with whatever pickups it left the factory with. There were exceptions, but musicians, for the most part, didn’t screw around with hot-rodding their pickups. Maybe Les Paul did, but guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Roy Buchanan, and even SRV just played what they had. If they could have accessed the smorgasbord of choices we have now, would the music have sounded better?
The shift in the way guitarists thought about pickups started in the mid 1960s, when players began to perceive a loss of quality in new guitars. Taking a page out of the violinist’s book, artists at the vanguard of musical style began developing a preference for older instruments, in this case those made in the 1950s. (This was counterintuitive to the average player, as the emphasis in the “space age” was always on newer equals better.) And then, just as now, it was discovered that pickups had something to do with that change of course.
The fact of the matter is that for both humbuckers and single-coil pickups, there was no single shift in quality. Instead, there were a myriad of small changes. As with any manufacturing concern, guitar companies were somewhat at the mercy of the vendors who supplied the raw materials. The magnets, wire, and steel that were used in these classic pickups all fluctuated depending upon availability. This fact is what also drives a lot of the hype around today’s aftermarket pickups. We can look back at the multiple changes in magnet composition and wire specification (just to name the two most obvious) to gain clues about how there is no single best-sounding pickup to emulate.
“Guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Roy Buchanan, and even SRV just played what they had. If they could have accessed the smorgasbord of choices we have now, would the music have sounded better?”
Winding techniques are often referenced as the elixir that makes the difference, but once again, there is a bit of myth involved here, too. Most of the blue-chip pickups were wound on automatic machinery built for precision and repeatability, with the emphasis on creating the same result from part to part. Proper wire tensioning was important to maintain, and impedance and inductance were monitored constantly, confirmed to me by none other than Seth Lover himself. The concept of “scatter” winding is seemingly contradictory to this idea. Hand-winding inconsistencies are neither perfectly repeatable or advisable for a factory brand, but it would be the case for smaller shops who could not afford expensive winding machines. Even so, there are instances of Monday morning/Friday afternoon mistakes in the realm of pickup manufacturing. This isn’t to say that a scatter-wound pickup can’t sound great, but winding by hand is practically impossible to do with 100 percent repeatability, which calls into question its value as a selling point.
From where I sit, I acknowledge that certain pickups sound better to my ears than others. The real test is if the supplier can deliver consistency I can count on. The same goes for the big guitar companies. When I was designing for production, there was no latitude for pickups that didn’t meet specification or failed. In today’s market, most guitar makers want to put their best foot forward, despite the knowledge that the customer may swap pickups for their current favorite.
I’m not suggesting that pickups don’t make a difference or that a good pickup/guitar matchup won’t result in an improvement—of course they do. Just because one pickup sounds great in one guitar doesn’t mean it will in another. That’s why I spend a lot of time testing. I’ve heard enough to know that the right combination of guitar and pickup, mated with just the right amplifier, can make magic. Just be prepared to spend a lot of time getting there.