Perils of the Classical Guitar Journey

Mark Elf is a jazz guitarist in NYC. When I was an undergrad, I cornered him and fired a bunch of questions at him about the music business. The following was one of his memorable quotes:

"Imagine this room to represent the entire amount of money in the music industry. You see those three bread crumbs on the floor in the corner? Those represent Jazz."

Ouch. Was it any better for classical guitar I wondered? Eh, no matter. I got accepted into a really good school, I should be fine, right?

I believe it was either (or both) Seth Godin or Hugh Macleod who said that youth tends to underestimate the competition, and speaking of which there is quite a lot of it in classical guitar. There are lots and lots of people doing the same thing, beating down the same doors. It's pretty hilarious. "Gotta get into Juilliard, gotta practice 50 hours a day. Sacrafice seeing the sun! COFFEE!"

The only way that I personally found to make money playing classical guitar that I could handle was to get a doctorate and get a job teaching at a university, and play shows on the side. Sounds pretty sweet right? I could be a professor, I could have my own library, tweed jackets with patches on the elbows, smoke pipe tobacco and say things like, "I disagree." It's not all roses, especially when considering the student debt. Eastman wasn't a cheap place to go to. Worth it, but not cheap.

But what about touring? The Ying String Quartet started by playing very small community centers, building their base of fans slowly. Eventually, they became a very highly regarded string quartet. They even ended up as the quartet in residence at the Eastman School of Music. Not bad. I like their story, because they really put themselves out there, which brings me to my final point: How many classical guitarists are really putting themselves out there? Are they too afraid of making a mistake?

The ones who are putting themselves out there recognize the trouble they are asking for, and they accept it. They accept the fact that they will not make an assured amount of money until later, when they have notoriety. They will make many mistakes. They will be burned quite a few times. They realize that they have a lot of work to do in their careers that equals or exceeds the amount of work it took them to have gotten where they wanted to be musically. But they do it anyways because they love it. Dan Lippel is one of these guitarists.

Dan and I were in a bar in NYC when we were talking about motivation. Dan said this:

"If during your darkest period of life, where everything is going to total s**t, you still feel as if you can't live without your guitar, then it's obvious what you must do.

I agree.

If you are a classical guitarist, and you want to be up there with the best classical guitarists at least as far as notoriety is concerned, do it. Don't mess around, just do it. Get out there, tour, and expect that people will call you crazy. It will not make sense, it will seem like you are hitting your head against a wall. But if you fight for it, it will come.