There’s a lot of musicians around here that like to call themselves, “musicians”. Are they really? With my own playing, I never considered myself an actual musician. I just play for the love of it, a hobby kind of a thing. I never considered myself a professional, but that is the goal that I want. I someday, want to be considered an actual professional, if I keep practicing and learning. How can you tell if someone is not an actual musician that they say they are? I’ll go down with the list here…

• They don’t understand music theory –If you talk to other musicians about music theory, like what notes are there in a chord or a scale, key changes, etc. They don’t understand what you’re talking about and they get lost in things.
• They don’t have a good ear, in other words, not good at improvisation – You jam with the musician and they don’t know what the hell they are doing or what you are doing, they just stand there watching you, trying to figure things out.
• They don’t have a good sense of timing and rhythm – There are too many that don’t play in time.
• They don’t have professional enough music gear – I’m not talking about piece of shit instruments you get from a trading store or yard sale. I’m talking about expensive gear you get from the music store or catalogs. If you want to be a respected musician, having the best sounding gear is important.
• They don’t have enough musical influences – A professional musician would know a lot about their favorite band or artist they look after. They would learn as much as possible about music. You must know your shit. Not just liking the bands in the mainstream, you also must know a lot of underrated bands/artists that not many people know about.
• They don’t know more scales than just the minor pentatonic scale – Professionals would know a wide variety of scales. From modes to unique scales nobody’s ever heard of.
• They don’t jam with as much musicians as possible – A professional musician would have LOTS of experience jamming with a variety of musicians all over.

I could keep going with the list but you get the idea. I’m trying to work on all these above, so I can hopefully one day be considered an actual musician.

Kev