How do you cope with people not caring about your music?

[CityPickn]

Originally Posted by raysachs

I play music for my own enjoyment, fulfillment, to keep me planted in the moment, for the endorphins, etc, etc, etc. When I used to play for people a lot (in my youth - decades ago), I was mostly playing electric blues and blues rock stuff with other musicians. It was fairly easy to play,to enjoy, and to keep a room full of people dancing. It was fun for everyone, it was no great accomplishment, and I didn’t give them deep musical substance to still be chewing on the next day. If I enjoyed it in the moment, and if anyone else enjoyed it the moment, that was great, fantastic, wonderful. In the moment.

These days I play for myself, I sometimes play kid’s songs for my baby granddaughter, and occasionally if friends or family are around when I’m playing, they’ll hear me as a few minutes of background music. My wife hears much more of my playing than she probably wishes she did, but she’s very loving and understanding about it, knowing how much enjoyment I get out of it.

I would no more expect any of them to recognize, much less care about, some section of a song or guitar solo that I felt like I really nailed, than I would get excited about their golf games or or the finer points of their bridge games, or if they got a nice raise at work. If someone very occasionally says “that sounded nice”, I’ll take the compliment as the good manners and friendly encouragement it was probably meant as. No more, no less. If my wife occasionally mentions the great flow she got into on that day’s NYT crossword, I’ll say something nice about it and will mean it, but I won’t remember the great day of puzzle solving she had by the next day. And she won’t give a second thought tomorrow to the song she heard today, even if she liked it!

My playing really doesn’t matter to anyone else. Why would it? Everyone has their own thing(s) that hopefully puts them in the moment, gets them out of their heads, etc. I’m glad they do and hope they really enjoy them, as I enjoy playing music. I’ll offer them friendly encouragement too, but the finer details are for THEM to enjoy. I rarely if ever care about the finer details of their activities and would never expect them to care about the finer details of what I do for enjoyment. I’m kind of surprised that the OP or anyone else would expect such attention to the details of their music from other folks. I hope THEY take great satisfaction and enjoyment from it, but looking for public acclaim if you’re a hobbyist, not an accomplished professional, is more than a little unrealistic IMHO. And even for accomplished professionals, the vast majority of listeners are in it for the momentary entertainment, not the great artistic achievement it might be on some level.

As the great Bobby McFerrin once sang, “don’t worry, be happy”! If YOU enjoyed something you play today, or played last week, THAT’S the victory! Take it, take your own private little victory lap, revel in it in the moment or maybe even revel in the memory of it a day later. But, good lord, don’t expect anyone else to get the same satisfaction you got from it!

-Ray

That was pretty depressing. Everyone, ultimately, is just by themselves.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by CityPickn

That was pretty depressing. Everyone, ultimately, is just by themselves.

I don't find that depressing at all. Does raysachs seem depressed?

That is, music has a double role: both social and personal.

Historically and culturally, everywhere, music has always been a social art. I mean, all art is social, in that's it's various languages of communication, of ideas and feelings that words can't express (or can't express as neatly or clearly). What music says to us is not things we can express any other way.

But those things can have a kind of personal therapeutic function, as well as their social group function. I sometimes play guitar for the same reason other people might smoke a cigarette. I.e., it's like an addiction, but one with no bad side effects!

At the same time, I strongly believe that ideally music is a communication system between people, especially groups of people. It promotes a sense of community, it underlines what we share with people we don't know - it helps us belong.

So, if you're finding people are not responding to your music, that's a break in the communication channel somehow. It's unlikely those people just don't like any kind of music at all, at any time, so the reasons could be any of the following:

1. You picked the wrong moment, when they had other things on their mind, or were simply not in the mood to listen to music.

2. If they did happen to be in the mood for some music, you were playing the wrong kind.

3. If they were in the mood, and you were playing the kind of music they wanted to hear, you were playing it badly, or not in the way they were expecting. (You might have been playing well, but in a way they considered inappropriate stylistically. E.g., playing a rock riff on an acoustic guitar without distortion or bass and drums backing. Or just too quietly. )

4. You were playing in order to get their appreciation for your skill, without being sensitive to their mood (their readiness for music) at all. I.e., your reason for playing was, essentially, to show off your accomplishment. (Sometimes - see point #2 - displays of virtuosity are exactly what some listeners like to see and hear, over and above any other musical content.)

5. You were assuming that music that means something to you means the same thing to those listeners. (It might sometimes, but maybe not at that time.)

6. They are people who like music - perhaps even the very song you were playing - but they only like it when they hear it on recordings, and/or when it's played by professional musicians. I.e., they are fools, idiots who believe amateur musicians should just stop wasting their time and leave it to the pros. (I.e., this goes with point #3. but point #3 is your fault - at least partly - and point #6 is their fault, entirely. )

[Alex&r]

Sorry you've had this experience CityPickin', it sounds rubbish.
I do think it's either a bit mean or lacking in empathy not to recognise or be dismissive of someone else's passion and hard work. It might also be that people simply don't know how to respond or are preoccupied in the moment.
I guess it can be extra hard when people you are close to do this because it can feel tangled in the inevitable messiness of relationships.
I think it takes a great deal of courage to put oneself out there with an artistic endeavour because it's making yourself vulnerable although even a negative critique made in good faith can be cool because it shows someone has engaged with and given recognition to your work.
Our own tolerance for this kind of thing goes up and down with the weather as well. What's hurtful one day might not register on another. Hopefully we brush these setbacks off with time.

[DungBeatle]

Be happy you can play. Not all families care about it. I feel very lucky, both my wife and daughter are musicians and they listen to everything! I feel sorry for them
~Bob

[catdaddy]

CityPickn- As you can tell by the number of responses you've gotten, this is a topic that hits home for a lot of us musicians. I've been playing guitar for more than 50 years, and have experienced everything from apathy to applause, and to be honest, far more of the former than the latter.

Someone in this thread mentioned that they maintain an expectation of indifference from people who are listening to them play. This pretty much coincides with my adopted attitude when I play for people of expecting the worst but hoping for the best. I doubt that there's a musician anywhere who hasn't experienced serious disappointment after performing their best. It's tough to swallow at the time, but it can motivate and with half a century of playing in my rear view mirror, I can assure you that there will be times that you'll find listeners who'll appreciate your music and will let you know. Just stick with it and don't let the buttheads get you down.

Here's something that I was witness to many years ago that illustrates the point, and might give you a fresh perspective and some optimism: In (circa) 1970 I attended a Rolling Stones concert at a 12,000 seat arena in Pittsburgh. The opening act was a young and little-known James Taylor who performed a solo acoustic guitar set. To my horror (I knew who he was and had heard some of his music before this), he was booed off of the stage after no more than 10 minutes. It was the wrong audience (and the concert promoter should have realized that) and no matter how good JT was that crowd had no tolerance for anything he played. Imagine people booing 'Carolina In My Mind'!! As we all know, in spite of that disaster of a performance JT managed to persevere and become a musical icon.

Hang in there! There will be better days for you too!

[rmp]

I'm sorry this happened. I know the feeling.

I'll be some place with a guitar, (house party, cook out.. whatever,) everyone there are friends who knows I play, so they will hand me someone's guitar and say "play something"

Within 10 seconds of that moment, they will often start talking to someone else like nothing is going on.

So, it's been a long time since I've actually "played" when asked Just as a frame of reference, I've been playing for 50+ years, there's not much I can't do on a guitar..

But it just comes down to a simple fact.. Most people who are not musicians do not get at all, what's required to do what we do. There are some who are not musicians who DO get it. I don't know how they do, but some how they do.

But most people nope.. no idea the effort you put into to that song.

zero, zip, nada...

take pride in what you've done, and keep moving forward

[bizango1]

I became very serious about my playing and singing and songwriting in the last ten years and those who hear me say I should be playing out for money. I played a couple songs for my elderly parents and put everything into it.

They fell asleep.

[raysachs]

Originally Posted by CityPickn

That was pretty depressing. Everyone, ultimately, is just by themselves.

I’m sorry you find it depressing. I don’t in the least. Everything about playing music is a gift I’m enormously grateful for. Playing music with and for other people can be wonderful - I did a fair amount of it in an earlier part of my life. When I played with other people, they really listened because you have to listen to play effectively with others. When we played for other people, the ones who came to hear us had made a conscious decision to come out and hear some music and they listened, but not THAT closely, because it was also a social occasion and they might have been drinking, talking, dancing, etc, which can result in only cursory “listening”. Even dancing, which is directly related to and involved with the music, doesn’t require much listening beyond basically feeling the rhythm and then interacting with whoever you’re dancing with.

But even the biggest musical stars, who play for thousands of listeners on a nightly basis, spend much more time playing alone than they do with or for others. If they didn’t love it for its own sake, to the point that they’d rather be making music than doing almost anything else, and for huge chunks of time, they’d have never gotten good enough to play for all those people.

So, by all means, play with and for others when you have the opportunity and an interested audience. But understand, your PRIMARY audience is gonna be YOU the vast majority of the time. If you can enjoy it on that level, welcome to lifetime of musical enjoyment! Enjoy the moments of sharing your music with others, but unless you’re one of the rare musical genius / superstars, your music will never matter to anyone else near as much as it matters to you.

I don’t find any of that depressing - I’m just enormously grateful to be able to play music at a level I enjoy. That’s the meat. If others occasionally enjoy it too, a little bit or a lot, that’s just the gravy. You can live without the gravy, but you gotta have the meat (or the vegetarian equivalent)…

Another little aside. I’ve been, at a couple different points in my life, a pretty darn good photographer. I have a good eye for images and the technical skills to make the most of the images I see. I’ve had other photographers who I have enormous respect for really admire my work. Friends and family members loved my stuff, loved getting prints as gifts - they showed a level of enthusiasm you can’t fake. I burned out on photography after just a few years each time. I found it so involving that I couldn’t just walk down the street, or hike in the mountains, and just enjoy the view. I was ALWAYS framing images in my mind. It got exhausting and the only way I could get past it was just to stop. Entirely. Cold turkey. My last bout with photography ended about four years ago after a very creative and fulfilling seven years of it. As a musician, I aspire to be mediocre. I’m way better than I could have hoped when I started 45 years ago, but my limits have always been FAR more profound than my gifts. Nobody who played ever told me I was particularly good at it And yet I never seem to tire of it. I had a long layoff when life was too busy to put enough time into playing, but whenever I’ve been able to play, I’ve absolutely LOVED IT, almost every second of it. People loved my photography - I got great feedback on it. But I ultimately gave it up twice, just because I didn’t like doing it anymore. I’ve gotten minimal positive feedback on my music, but I love doing it, in all of my flaming mediocrity (on a GOOD day)! If other people’s appreciation and approval were what drove any of it, I’d still be doing a ton of photography - I even made some money at it. And I wouldn’t be playing music. But I love playing music far more despite my clear lack of talent for it. So I play music pretty much everyday, mostly for myself. As for photography, I take the occasional family snapshot with my iPhone. Gotta do what you love!

-Ray

[Mr. Paul]

I've got guitars hanging everywhere and my experience is that if someone does not ask me to play something, they won't pay much attention if I do.

We have a group of friends that get together for regular song circles, that's pretty much the only time I'll play for others unless someone requests it ... which does not happen all that often.

I've experienced the conversation starting 10 seconds into my playing and am pretty careful to avoid that ever happening again.

[TRose]

To the OP,
I’m sorry you have experienced this difficult and frustrating reality. I hope you can find contentment in your music.

It’s a good thing I’m learning to play guitar for my own enjoyment. Because unless I’m playing for a very specific group( friends and family members who play ) and at the appropriate time ( when absolutely nothing else needs to be done-for example: dinner is finished, the dishes have been done, everyone has what they want to drink, the fire has been optimally stoked and the dog let out the back door) there are no words of affirmation for the music I make. In my circumstance this is ok because I find learning and playing this music deeply gratifying. So I’m lucky in that way, I suppose. Regardless of the presence or absence of any outside affirmation or encouragement I’ll stick with it.

Of course I encourage you to do the same.

-Tom

[Mr. Jelly]

I'm not sure if this is about you having insensitive friends or about song writing. As far as music is concerned the proof in the pudding is in the audience reaction. If the audience doesn't react positively then you have failed to entertain them. That's a fact. As far as the friends thing maybe you shouldn't put them on the spot to stroke you or reject you. All musicians are not entertainers. If you want positive reactions play upbeat songs the audience knows. If you want to play music that means something to you then you are.

[Bob Womack]

I'm sorry to ended up on the wrong end of what is becoming a regular thing in society. We are surrounded by videos of singers supposedly effortlessly singing and playing that are suddenly tuned out with a commercial message added on top. We are being trained to not listen seriously. I'm reminded of the "Tavern on the Green" scene from Ghostbusters:



Everyone turns to look at the young man in distress for a second and then turns back to his conversation as if nothing is going on. The first time I saw that I cracked up because I've literally seen that happen in New York City!

I've had people ask me to play a piece for them and after the first couple of lines start asking me questions, as if my whole being wasn't being utilized to play this complex piece of music. People have just lost track of what it takes to make music. When I went to the Met in New York to see Andres Segovia, part the way through his performance he stopped and informed a person on the second row that he was simply going to wait until that person's conversation was over. I watch cell phone videos of concerts that people have paid hundreds of dollars to attend, and the crowd is chatting away loudly enough that it is hard to concentrate on the music. I experienced that when I saw Joe Walsh at the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts. The guys next to me were partying away with their beers while I tried to take the music, and my investment, seriously.

So you certainly aren't alone. It is something we as musicians have to get used to. We all have to develop our coping mechanisms. It basically comes down to playing because we love to and ignoring or avoiding bad situations.

Bob

[SongwriterFan]

I've grown used to it, performing at Open Mics over the last year.

But there's almost always at least ONE person in the room who's listening, even if I'm not aware of it at the time I'm performing. But I will hear about it later.

Last week, though, at a new (to me) Open Mic, I had the entire place listening to me for three songs. I could see them listening intently, and even bobbing their heads or tapping their feet with the music.

I closed (as I almost always do) with a song I wrote to my friend after she passed away 2.5 years ago. After I sat down, A gal in her late 20's came up to me and told me how much she loved that song because she had also lost friends. She then asked me if I needed a hug. I'm not sure I did, but I think she did, so I let her.

And experiences like THAT is why I keep doing it.

This is the song I wrote to my friend . . I will have an even better version of it coming out with my new album (first album, actually) in a couple more months.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIeIk_VPlYA

[MrDB]

Many of us have been asked to "bring your guitar" to a party or other gathering. I've done it a few times and stopped doing it years ago for many of the reasons posted in this thread. Get the guitar out, play one or two songs, then most of the people in the room go back to talking, watching TV, etc. So it's just not worth the trouble.

And we all have to remember that people are simply interested in different things. I'd listen to someone that was interested in woodworking, hunting, fishing, old car restoration, etc for a little while but it wouldn't take long for me to lose interest and move on to other topics.

It's just like that with music with other people. It occupies the background while they are eating, cooking, out with friends and most other activities. It's not a passion for them and as a result there is a big difference in their reaction and interest versus ours.

[6L6]

There was a regular some years back at our local O/M who got all upset because people didn't pay attention to him when he performed. He asked me for a candid assessment and I gave it to him:

1) People are here for entertainment. Covers of popular songs always go over better than originals.

2) Play better.

On point #2, I pointed out that when the O/M host played to kick things off, EVERYONE paid attention. He was an incredible guitarist.

Sometimes in life the truth is just not what you want to hear. I never saw the guy again.