TromboneChat

So I'm sure this has been discussed but i couldnt find fresh relevant info. Pre covid I was a freelance trombonist for several years. However due to the pandemic, our line of work has been decimated with no end in sight. I have thrown in the towel, ive started doing repairs here and there for side money but I think I'm retiring as a trombonist. With that context, heres the question I have for you guys. Is it worth keeping a positive outlook? Am I ever going to see the day where musicians get together and jam at the local bar's open Mic? I guess what im saying is it worth expecting things to go back to normal in the coming years? How have the rest of us been getting by? I just really want to believe I didnt spend my time building a career in music in vain. Any advice helps, thanks.

Same boat, same questions.

If I'd wager a guess, it will become more normal once the vaccine becomes more widespread than the virus. Somewhere around summer, autumn, winter or spring. So many "normal" people are also longing to get out again, and they probably miss us all just as much as we miss them.

DorseyRosolino wrote: ↑Sun Jan 31, 2021 1:05 pm So I'm sure this has been discussed but i couldnt find fresh relevant info. Pre covid I was a freelance trombonist for several years. However due to the pandemic, our line of work has been decimated with no end in sight. I have thrown in the towel, ive started doing repairs here and there for side money but I think I'm retiring as a trombonist. With that context, heres the question I have for you guys. Is it worth keeping a positive outlook? Am I ever going to see the day where musicians get together and jam at the local bar's open Mic? I guess what im saying is it worth expecting things to go back to normal in the coming years? How have the rest of us been getting by? I just really want to believe I didnt spend my time building a career in music in vain. Any advice helps, thanks.

Q. Is it worth keeping a positive outlook?
A. Yes. What do you have to gain from a negative outlook?

Q. Am I ever going to see the day where musicians get together and jam at the local bar's open Mic?
A. Yes. Time marches on. Things change.

Q. Is it worth expecting things to go back to normal in the coming years?
A. Yes. Time marches on. Things change. You do what you can to survive. No point in killing a dream. Nobody honestly said life's easy. Life's an adventure, and with adventure comes danger. Miracles happen.

I preface my remarks my saying I'm a habitual optimist...

Please keep a positive outlook...this will either pass or become the new norm...either way, the demand for good entertainment will soon get us working as musicians again, even if that forum ends up changing. I hold out hope that this will begin to change sooner than later...in the mean time, use your imagination an reach out to your contacts with proposals for how you could safely entertain and draw customers...we may need to be willing to change from the traditional venues.

My amateur prediction...The better vaccines only take a few weeks to work and are highly effective but there will be enough anti-vaxxers, free-dumbers, "concerned" moms, low-information idiots, and intentional misinformation trolls out there to stop this from being deployed widely enough and fast enough to prevent new vaccine-resistant variants from having fertile ground to spring up and be spread in.

A problem that could be done and over by this spring won't be.

But why do you have to give up the trombone?
Most of us here play knowing there will never be a bar that wants us to appear in it.

I'm not sure there will ever be a return to pre-covid normal, but I also don't think this means things won't get better. The economy will be impacted for years, which will necessitate changes in the way funding is approached, flying will probably be very different (right now it's logistically almost impossible but extremely cheap, I suspect it will become normal again but prohibitively expensive), impacting our ability to travel for work, distanciation measures and masks are here to stay for quite some time I thing (much longer than a few months or a year), changing the way we rehearse and perform, and affecting programming. But different doesn't mean worse in every respect. I think those who stick to it and are willing to adapt and be flexible will still have work.

I expect Max and Rob are both right. I just got my first Covid vaccine dose yesterday, so am generally feeling optimistic about my own health - but I also fear that that there will be enough who don't get (can't or refuse) vaccines that this virus and/or its variants will be around for quite a while, putting a substantial damper on a fully open economy.

Will there be a time when we are packing a suitcase and won’t throw in a few masks?

This is an interesting read:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resour ... eline.html

Things will be back to normal eventually. Pandemics do end when enough of the population is either vaccinated, immune for other reasons, or dead.

Doug Elliott wrote: ↑Sun Jan 31, 2021 5:46 pm This is an interesting read:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resour ... eline.html

Things will be back to normal eventually. Pandemics do end when enough of the population is either vaccinated, immune for other reasons, or dead.

Yes, even the terribly contagious 1918 flu virus eventually ran its course (after a tremendous number of deaths) in spite of no available vaccine.

There will be more pandemics in our future; perhaps we have (re-)learned a lesson from Covid-19 to better and timelier respect and control them.

On the hopeful side, last night my 89 year-old mother said that the thing she misses most is live music. So there are audiences waiting for it to return.

On the trombone trivia side, she knows Ray Anderson. They live in the same area and met at local parties and events. I’m sure she is looking forward to his local gigs.

I'm not an optimist (I stubbornly believe I'm a realist, but my optimist friends look at me sideways when I say it), but I believe that we will return in the coming year. With luck in the first half. People are finding ways to include music in live events, which mostly include recordings and outdoor performances for smaller crowds.

The vaccine is the key, and regardless how many people try to deny the effects of the vaccine, and regardless of rampant media and internet scaremongering, we're going to get past this.

I'm a little bit anti-social, and even I personally have a hard time abstaining from hugs and hand shaking. So I can't imagine what other more sociable people are going through. If the vaccine doesn't fix this, I think at some point our fear of the virus will succumb to our fear of losing touch with other people. Some are obviously there already.

My amateur hobbyist thoughts are below. There is no bar in Indianapolis that would want me to play trombone, although I was playing hammered dulcimer at the IU Cancer Center pre-pandemic and never caused an evacuation.

Is it worth keeping a positive outlook? Absolutely. There's a lot of social science research about the role of resilience in recovering from hardship and thriving afterwards. Some of that resilience comes from natural aptitude, but an awful lot of it can be cultivated. The positive outlook will impact your ability to keep your eyes open for existing and new opportunities.

Will the world ever return to normal? The post-pandemic world will not be the pre-pandemic world. In my profession (aerospace engineering), the forecasts are that airline traffic will not be at 2019 levels until at least 2024.

Will your career in music have been built in vain? No, even if your path takes a different direction for the near (or far) future. I started in Controls engineering, went to work for a fuel cell company (this was early 2000's when the Hydrogen Economy was going to save the world from fossil fuels), watched half my colleagues get laid off when the fuel cell industry tanked, and moved to Indianapolis a little over ten years ago to work in aerospace because it was close to my wife's family. I am now doing stuff (program management coordination) that I never would have predicted. But I can also see how what I'm doing was shaped by those experiences.

Here's a good blog post from a friend of mine who is also a freelance trombonist about how he is choosing to cultivate resilience: https://richarddole.com/2021/01/02/2020 ... ead-to-21/

bwanamfupi wrote: ↑Sun Jan 31, 2021 7:56 pm Here's a good blog post from a friend of mine who is also a freelance trombonist about how he is choosing to cultivate resilience: https://richarddole.com/2021/01/02/2020 ... ead-to-21/

This reads like a menu of nutritious food for thought.

Doug Elliott wrote: ↑Sun Jan 31, 2021 5:46 pm This is an interesting read:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resour ... eline.html

Things will be back to normal eventually. Pandemics do end when enough of the population is either vaccinated, immune for other reasons, or dead.

And/or the disease mutates enough that it is either less contagious or less dangerous.

This was interesting:
https://www.history.com/news/1918-flu-p ... adly%20and

Musical tastes do evolve over time.

Check out this photo of a university accordion orchestra:
https://images.app.goo.gl/dLh3mXZFy3PRuSQ99

Apparently these were popular. There were commercial accordion schools with hundreds of students.

Thinking out loud. I suspect the changes due to a combination of COVID and natural evolution will impact the amateur more than the pro. The opportunities to play will probably require a higher entry level of skill.

I'm not sure the humble no-audition community band can survive. When I look around our area, I see wind ensembles composed of mostly elderly white males, playing for captive nursing home residents. As I was growing up these groups played regularly for more general audiences. Now that COVID has interrupted this activity it may not return.

The jazz and big band scene will probably return, but not all of us play at that level.

I'm an amateur, not directly involved in any professional music at all. I think live music will return, but not quickly enough to save a lot of careers. My thoughts are that many musicians may have to change career. While we have not had a major pandemic ( in the UK) for many years, we have had a few severe recessions (70s and 80s) that resulted in many lost careers (including for me) in other sectors, and having to start over in something else. I think the same will apply, in live music and also in other sectors like hospitality.

I think we can stay positive though. Other opportunities will come up. The pandemic will pass, even if some behaviour will change, but we will get back to playing together again some day. Just not soon enough for everyone to keep the same job.