Talk:Musician

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Musician is within the scope of WikiProject Music, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to music. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

See Talk:Instrumentalist for rationale for merging Instrumentalist article into Musician article. --- RobLa 20:40 Nov 16, 2002 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] What about Academics?

I agree with this articles all inclusive approach and attempt to describe various differences between each perceived variant of musician however I must expresses the following preference: A section should be dedicated to musicianship scholars or one who has achieved academic mastery under strict training and assessment either privately or through an academy etc. Such schools (off the top of my head) as the Conservatorium of Music here in Sydney have graduated famous performers of our time. I remember students were majoring in music at high school preparing for university etc. Without advocating how any “musician” should feel about their contribution to the joy of music I feel recognition should be given to music scholars who’s dedication to mastering the science in order to facilitate the art (their own, another’s) would other wise be taken for granted. Respectively, musical graduates do not necessarily creatively express anything from within themselves through music but by examination in the very least possess skills that could have made a massive opportunity to a creative without the means to communicate complex musical arrangements or even simple once. It frustrates me that most people won’t know what I’m talking about. Not their fault I suppose. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.2.125.128 (talk) 18:58, 28 November 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Clever, Inappropriate Paragraph Removed

I took this out:

However, musicians, at least insofar as their human manifestations go, can be distinguished from other creatures that create melodic sounds by their insistence on producing such sounds even when there is no clear reason for them to do so and even in the face of compelling reasons to cease such activity in favour of dealing with crises affecting their personal survival. In other words, even when no reward or likely advantage is to be obtained by the performance of "Brown Eyed Girl" or "Mustang Sally" in a bar full of losers, a musician will, nevertheless, perform such composition or other "song" requested by any audience even as his (or her) girlfriend (or boyfriend) is being wooed by the bartender and/or all his/her belongings are being carted off to a disposal site and/or staff of such establishment are telling him/her to "stop now!". (See also, "guitarist" and "singer" and "homeless person".)

- on the grounds that it is not encyclopedic. It is rather witty and clever and made me smile a bit but I don't think that is a genuine reason for it being in here. Maybe its author would like to reword it into something more suitable? And to be fair some of the humor is a bit old - not such a bad thing but we have all done the homeless joke a bit too much in the past. Maybe a NPOV look at why some people see musicians that way? Otherwise I think it should stay out.

Anonymous grumbler.

More humour for serious musicians - Zigger 17:32, 2004 Mar 28 (UTC)

Should all the links pointing to [[Bassoonist]], for instance, be changed to [[Bassoon]]ist? I can only think of one instance where the playing of the instrument is unusual (Contrabassoon), however it wouldn't amount to much more than a stub, and should be probably merged into Contrabassoon anyway... Dysprosia 08:00, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Famous

I think a famous one is Ray Charles. --Patricknoddy 20:14, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)User:Patricknoddy --Patricknoddy 20:14, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)User talk:Patricknoddy

[edit] Not encyclopedic enough

This article is, in my opinion, not written in a very encyclopedic manner. The paragraph exhibiting its author's negative additude towards bad pop music is very un-equanimous (not that I disagree about its contents.) cool-RR

I removed the paragraph:
  • A special exception must be made to so-called "performers", for example Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera. As they sing other peoples songs, dance other peoples choreography, achieve their popularity solely due to good looks, and require the help of an auto-tuning device in order to sound remotely acceptable. As a rule of thumb, as the ratio of 14 year old female listeners to other listeners approaches 2 or more, it becomes increasingly unlikely that the performer in question is actually a musician.
If that paragraphs contributor would like to re-add that information please provide sources which express your opinions. See: Wikipedia:Cite sources and Wikipedia:No original research.
I tried to add some of the terms used in that para to the article, such as "performer". Hyacinth 04:33, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)


[edit] On the other hand...

I do believe that there is some reasoning behind seperating performers from musicians. Obviously the above paragraph was written in a completely biased manner, however, if one were to talk to the vast majority of actual musicians out there (The ones we all make homeless jokes about), they would be appalled to be lumped in to the same catagory as "performers". Would there be any way of proving this to be the case? I think that's the more difficult question...

Anonymous Time-Waster

As a musician, I can certainly agree with being "appalled" as you say, but bad music is still music, and bad musicians are still musicians, so there's really no reason to keep the separation. Lip-synching is a different kettle of fish. --Wahoofive 07:26, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Major Cleanup

I reworded and slashed out a bit of this article in the hopes of bringing it up to writing standards. Although not by any means a fully comprehensive entry, I believe this article now meets Wikipedia writing quality standards, and, if no objection is made within a few days, I am going to remove the tag. That said, this page still needs a lot more content, preferrably with sources. The parts I completely removed:

"culture-specific. Think, for instance, about your own concepts relating to "the heavy metalist"; "the folk musician"; "the DJ"; "the sarangi player"; "the female drummer"; and so on."

"It should be noted that although in many cases the name of the player is made from the name of the instrument + "ist", it does not work for all instruments. Trumpetist for example is nonsense. There are also widespread differences in the acceptability of some of these terms: for example percussionist is in general and uncontested use whereas violist is not."

Candybars 10:40, 5 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Rapper?

Would rappers qualify as musicians? They make music, even though the majority of them are not instrumentalists. How about rap producers? They make beats on software/drum sequencers (for the most part, some use studio musicians or are themsevles instrumentalists).

I'm curious as to why rappers are left out of the page for "musician"

NJlo 12:13, 21 August 2006 (UTC)Rappers are not musicians, neither are singers!

[edit] For the external links

I think TheIdealMusician.com also applies...they just have it all and it's all about musician!

The site has such a massive structure that musicians can get/do anything from a/z...i really think it should be listed.

Patrick N.

[edit] Are boy band members musicians?

Sounds rather stupid, but they do kinda sing... mirageinred 22:38, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amateur vs Professional

This is a very narrow and unfair description. There are many musicians who consider themselves professional, belong to professional organizations such as ASCAP, but who also hold non-music "survival" jobs. The lack of full time music employment does not make them "amateurs." According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 40% of musicians work part time. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos095.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 15.251.169.69 (talk)

At least the two sentences purportedly defining amateur musicians should be taken out. All musicians play in their own style, not just amateurs. The applicable definition of "amateur" from the American Heritage Dictionary is "A person who engages in an art, science, study, or athletic activity as a pastime rather than as a profession." I will make a preliminary change. Seb144 (talk) 23:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Definition of a musician?

I'm not sure that this page really properly defines what a musician is. I think the first few lines and bullet points can be replaced by this line: "A musician is a person who participates in musical activity, such as playing, singing, conducting, or composing."

This then includes all instrumentalists, vocalists, conductors, composers, and leaves scope to include more academic fields of music like musicologists - it would be silly to say that a musicologist isn't a musician, yet the current definition doesn't make this distinction clear.


I also take issue with this statement: "The concept of the musician and the status of the musician in society varies from culture to culture."

This doesn't bother to explain exactly how the status of musicians varies from culture to culture and is therefore frivolous. It also doesn't allow for the fact that musicians can have different statuses even in the same culture - for example, a boy band could be very popular, with an adoring audience, while in the same culture there might be a "classical" composer struggling to make a living.


This statement, "Both singer and instrumentalist can be improvisers, who create new music in real time," is perhaps worthy of its own subsection in order to expand on the idea, such as including the fact that the singer and instrumentalist can also not be improvisers, reading from music. Currently I believe that this is only implied by the article.


Finally, I don't think that the whole list of bullet points is needed. It is well sumarised by the "usage notes" section.

If nobody has any objections, I might begin to implement these changes.Cosmicpanda (talk) 03:08, 6 January 2008 (UTC)