A profound thought

[oleorezinator]

If you want to see the other extreme of this sentiment, hire a lawyer for a legal matter. Chances are you'll be charged for some boilerplate form letter in the back-and-forth procedural stage that is the Nth iteration of the same document, but you'll be charged as it it is the first time such a thing was printed. If book publishers applied this same logic, then a copy of War and Peace would probably cost you tens of thousands of dollars, euro, pounds, etc.

Exactly. I get amused when "what goes around comes around" and someone like an experienced plumber hands a (medical) doctor a bill for fixing his pipes...and the doctor says, "how do you get off on charging so much just for a house call?"

EX-ACT-LY! Which is why the mcdonald's land guy should pay mcdonald's land fees and doctors and lawyers should pay doctor and lawyer fees. The sliding scale, it's only fair.

[Lorenzo]

In my analogy of the plumber and the doctor, I was safe because Richard could have been either one. The moral of the story was whoever charges a lot should also be prepared to dish it out. (ditto on the Mc guy, Oleo)

[Brazenkane]

I've been making my living as a musician for 28yrs now. I would never explain to a client about "my passion" for my music. Firstly, I don't think they'd care at all, and 2nd…I'd hope that should their thoughts ever venture in that direction, it would be implicit in the fact that I'm playing for them. However, passion is not the point IMO. I love to play, they simply pay for my time, spent before, during, and getting home.

[MTGuru]

I didn't mean to offend anyone. My apologies if I did.

I don't think you've offended anyone, Richard. But your post does open a can of worms by initially presenting a very complex topic in an aphoristic way that I'd actually call more superficial than profound. So it's not a surprise that people are interested in digging a bit deeper.

[Richard Katz]

Shouldn't have used the word "profound" hey?

Maybe shouldn't have posted at all.

Touchy group.

Oh well, peace to all anyway!

I think I 'll stick to asking for advice from now on.

Back to playing the pipes.

Richard

[john]

what richard said originally reminded me of what they often say about olympic athletes getting up to train at 5am each day before school for years and years before their triumphs - learning music takes dedication but i don't think it involves a great deal of sacrifice

[MTGuru]

Shouldn't have used the word "profound" hey?

Just remember ... Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey was a comedy routine.

[pancelticpiper]

A musician... is delivering a service. You wouldn't hear someone who comes to plaster your walls, do your plumbing or replace the timing belt on your car going on about their passion...

In my experience 'the general public' does put musicians in a different category.

There are endless examples of this over the years. One is the woman who called to hire a piper friend of mine for a party. When he quoted her $200 she was flabbergasted. The woman knew the piper was a piping teacher and immediately asked how much lessons cost. When told $25 she said "well then, I could come down for a lesson or two and do it myself!" My friend got a big laugh at the absurdity and cluelessness of it. Put together all the lessons he had taken as a kid, the summer piping schools he'd attended, his decades of playing at hundreds of events, his lovely vintage pipes worth thousands of dollars, his immaculate kit which cost over a thousand dollars (a kilt alone being around $500).

A lawyer contacted me to pipe at some lawyer gathering, but balked at $200 and hired a student of mine for half that price. What would he say to a client to balked at his price and wanted to hire a person still in law school? The student didn't have the sound I have, the kit I have, and only knew a couple tunes.

I was hired for the Ellen show. Ellen wanted to be seen at the start of the show walking out on stage playing a tune on the pipes. First she had the Property guy get a bagpipe from a prop shop but of course it wasn't in working condition. The Property guy realized that the only way to get a working pipe was to get one currently being played by a good player (smart man, that guy!)

So I come down to the studio, and some assistant says to me "show me how they work, and I'll show Ellen." Amused by the cluelessness of this, I strike up the pipes and play a bit of a tune. The assistant says "I think you're going to have to show Ellen yourself." I'm then ushered in to The Presence and do the same thing in front of Ellen and then hand her the pipes. She makes a couple honking sounds and then says in a disgusted tone "this isn't going to work" and walks away. The assistant says to me "I tried to talk her into hiring a bagpipe group so she could march in with them just pretending to play, but she insisted that she wanted to play the bagpipes by herself." (Smart man, that guy!)

Now, Ellen wouldn't think that she could perform surgery or write up a legal brief or rebuild her transmission after a one-minute lesson, but she imagined that playing a musical instrument was that simple.

I work as an artist and people will often ask "did you ever take an art lesson or is it just a natural talent?" They're amazed that I have an art degree, and that all of our artists have art degrees, and that we can tell by looking at a single piece of a prospective employee's work whether or not they've had formal training. The analogy I've used is a court trial where one of the people gets up and starts talking... it will be quickly apparent to the judge and the other attorney if the guy hasn't been to law school and is just faking it.

The different ways 'the general public' perceives the 'nature versus nurture' thing in regards various professions has always fascinated me.

Go into a doctor's office and you'll see framed on the wall some documents related to the doctor's training. We would think it absurd if a doctor told his patients "You know, I just have a talent for being a doctor!" The public perception is that schooling equals competence, though we all know that two people can sit in the same classes for several years and one person end up being great in their field and the other person being mediocre.

At Disneyland there are a number of extremely good musicians. They've all got music degrees, some of them Masters, some of them Doctorates. From time to time one of the musicians will leave to take a teaching post at a university somewhere. Yet when they're playing they don't have their framed degrees on the wall behind them! And the sign on their dressing room door says "Talent" as if they popped out of the womb knowing music theory and having tens of thousands of hours of lessons and practice and schooling under their belts. The public perception is that talent equals competence.

When the various allied forces had stunning military success in the first Iraq war (Desert Storm) I'd often see military people interviewed being asked to explain the enormity of the success. They all had the same answer: "We have the best training and equipment in the world." I never heard any of these generals say "You know, I just have a talent for war." But any student of the American Civil War knows that the generals on both sides had the same training (nearly all being West Point graduates) but there was a stunning disparity in competence displayed by various men. Clearly 'talent' was at least as important as training.

I don't know if this is a 'profound thought' but it's something that 'the general public' takes for granted, that some fields of human endeavor are things of training, others things of talent.

[Richard Katz]

Well stated Richard.
You said exactly what I was trying to say.
Thank you!
I had the same thing happen on a St.Patrick's Day years ago. A young college student came up to me and asked is she could play my pipes. I said "no" of course but she insisted. So, I told her she could blow the air into them and I would play. After trying her best for a couple of times, she said "I can't believe these things are so difficult!" She learned right there that playing isn't an immediate talent but takes years to perfect.
I am also an artist with a BS degree in Graphic Design and Illustration and I couldn't agree with you more.
Richard

[Lorenzo]

There are endless examples of this over the years. One is the woman who called to hire a piper friend of mine for a party. When he quoted her $200 she was flabbergasted.

If we're only talking about $200, that isn't much at all. I'd say it's not out of line with other services rendered, that were mentioned above, which also have deep investments, although an experienced and reliable plumber will certainly have a great deal more than a $500 kilt or even a $8,000 set of pipes (no pun intended) I thought maybe we were talking about an exorbitant fee charged for playing for parties, performing on stage, or studio-time. I see no issue here.

[MichaelLoos]

Public acceptance and perception can be very funny indeed...
Over the years I've had a good few phone calls which basically were
"My wife fulfilled a long time wish of mine, she gave me a bagpipe for present! That's the most difficult instrument of all! Now I wanted to ask if you would give me one hour's lesson..."
In the beginning I told them that they are not going to learn to play it in one lesson - apart from the fact that the precious gift was most likely Pakistani junk and most probably not in working order - lateron I recommended to buy a piano instead, which they can certainly learn within half an hour, if they allow one hour for the world's most difficult instrument.

[Driftwood]

You wouldn't hear someone who comes to plaster your walls, do your plumbing or replace the timing belt on your car going on about their passion and the parts of their soul you're taking from them.

That's true. But they have a tendency to talk about everything else under the sun if you give them the chance!

[pancelticpiper]

Over the years I've had a good few phone calls which basically were
"My wife fulfilled a long time wish of mine, she gave me a bagpipe for present! That's the most difficult instrument of all! Now I wanted to ask if you would give me one hour's lesson..."
In the beginning I told them that they are not going to learn to play it in one lesson - apart from the fact that the precious gift was most likely Pakistani junk and most probably not in working order

The most absurd call I've ever got was on Christmas Day a couple years ago. A guy had just been given the "precious gift" you speak of, and wanted me, over the phone, to explain how to assemble and play the things. I explained that in person an experienced piper could get any set of pipes up and running in a few minutes but that it was impossible to do over the phone. I didn't want to further burst his bubble by telling him that his pipes were a worthless Pakistani IOS (Instrument Shaped Object).

Well maybe that's not THE most absurd call I've ever got. There was the woman who called and said "I'm looking for a bagpiper for my event. I called the Fire Department and they said none of the firemen were available."

I felt like saying "So, when your house is on fire are you going to call the Musicians' Union?"

About the single lesson thing, it's surprising how many people take one lesson and think that they then 'know it all' and never come back. Funny, I never see these people playing anywhere, later on.

[mike delta]

Hi Guys,
There is always the "exception to the rule" of course as this very talented first timer/total beginner demonstrates. He is obviously a "genius". Where have I been going wrong all these years?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL-8UhxjNts

Mike

[TheSilverSpear]

It's everywhere. I regularly get novice riders who think I can get them competent enough to ride their totally green/mostly unbroke horse that they shouldn't have bought in a couple lessons. Uhhhh.... ain't happening. At least badly played bagpipes aren't 1000lbs of flight animal with its own brain, so nothing horrible will happen to you (at least not until the neighbors/roommate/significant other gets fed up).