Monday has dragged into almost Tuesday now.
I have returned from the dollar store with a can of cat food and a bag of bath salts. Lavender infused Epsom salts; chicken and crab flavored food.
I came so close to spending $9 on a package of 5 jigsaw puzzles, 500 pieces each.
Then I thought about the laptop coming and the Mardi Gras coming and thought "When am I going to have the time to sit and put together jigsaw puzzles?"
I decided, around 10 PM that it would be good for me to go out and play tonight.
The weather is still unseasonably, blessedly warm. Having at least some money coming in each and every day seems to be the prescription to a lot of woes.
But, a half hour later, I thought about the prospect of spending about 3 hours to make less than 20 bucks, and how valuable time off from busking can be.
I have a new TV that I'm still exploring, the laptop is on the way in the mail; I have a stack of books that I am in the middle of reading each of; I have plenty of guitar exercises to work on. Some of them, I have had for almost 30 years. There are some things that, once they are on your plate, there is no need to look for alternatives; you will be chewing for years. Guitar instructors wouldn't make a living if they peeled off a few sheets of scales and chords and etudes for the student and told her; take 20 years to really master these, then come back; I'll give you some more advanced stuff.
I'm about to either order Hal Leonard's Jazz Guitar book, which uses jazz standards as study material, or "Mastering The Guitar," which I also looked through at the library, where it has disappeared out of.
I looked at small amplifiers that run on batteries. I'm thinking of using a microphone just to add a bit of effects at the Lilly Pad; but turning it up to a reasonable level would allow me to play at certain spots on Royal Street which have been good for other musicians who are amplified.
They go out expecting to make at least a couple hundred bucks every night, rather than just when any particular rich tourist comes along, such as I do at the Lilly Pad.
The excuse that my music isn't "mainstream" enough for Royal Street is just that, an excuse. The musician has to expect to sit there and watch one dollar bills painstakingly pile up, until such a point that, yeah, you might have made 80 bucks, but the sun has already gone down....
 |
| The way I'm feeling... |
I came so close to spending $9 on a package of 5 jigsaw puzzles, 500 pieces each.
Then I thought about the laptop coming and the Mardi Gras coming and thought "When am I going to have the time to sit and put together jigsaw puzzles?"
I decided, around 10 PM that it would be good for me to go out and play tonight.
The weather is still unseasonably, blessedly warm. Having at least some money coming in each and every day seems to be the prescription to a lot of woes.
But, a half hour later, I thought about the prospect of spending about 3 hours to make less than 20 bucks, and how valuable time off from busking can be.
I have a new TV that I'm still exploring, the laptop is on the way in the mail; I have a stack of books that I am in the middle of reading each of; I have plenty of guitar exercises to work on. Some of them, I have had for almost 30 years. There are some things that, once they are on your plate, there is no need to look for alternatives; you will be chewing for years. Guitar instructors wouldn't make a living if they peeled off a few sheets of scales and chords and etudes for the student and told her; take 20 years to really master these, then come back; I'll give you some more advanced stuff.
 |
| About $17, or one hour busking, per ounce |
I looked at small amplifiers that run on batteries. I'm thinking of using a microphone just to add a bit of effects at the Lilly Pad; but turning it up to a reasonable level would allow me to play at certain spots on Royal Street which have been good for other musicians who are amplified.
They go out expecting to make at least a couple hundred bucks every night, rather than just when any particular rich tourist comes along, such as I do at the Lilly Pad.
The excuse that my music isn't "mainstream" enough for Royal Street is just that, an excuse. The musician has to expect to sit there and watch one dollar bills painstakingly pile up, until such a point that, yeah, you might have made 80 bucks, but the sun has already gone down....
I thought you were going to work through the full Mel Bay guitar course?
ReplyDeleteAn amp could be a very good idea. If you can feed a backing track, like off of any sort of MP3 player, and your guitar you may really have something.
I saw this with a guy who busks locally with a recorder, yep, one of those flute-y things. He got a set-up for backing tracks and it not only made him sound 100% better, he also told me he was making 100% more. Then all that shit got stolen - he put his backpack down in a coffee shop and didn't watch it for a moment. I hope he can get a set-up put together again.
Yeah, it probably got stolen by someone who was just as happy to put him out of business and bring him back down to skeezer level, even if he just tossed the thing in a dumpster; probably someone who tried to skeeze him and only got 50 cents from him and was going to teach him a lesson about that....
ReplyDeleteI may be a bit jaded on that subject, given the environment I'm in...
I'm truthfully just barely above homeless myself, and one thing I do is **never** socialize with anyone homeless around here. I'm probably more cautious about them than the people with cars and houses and all those things that less and less people actually have these days. In other worse, as you go down, the class-divisions become even more ironclad.
ReplyDelete