Re: Perils of live/The extension of the Keaggy thread

[Steve Sandberg <stevesandberg@earthlink.net>]

Title: Re: Perils of live/The extension of the Keaggy thread

Wow, glad to see my questions about live looping/improv have stimulated such an interesting thread.
I've gotten a lot out of the discussion - most of all the feeling that what I'm going through is just the nature of the beast, and the encouragement to keep at it.
As far as the professional/amateur discussion, I try to keep my "beginner's mind" in music, and try not letting being a "professional" get in the way of my music-making.  Several years ago I decided to separate my money-making ventures in music from  my "artistic" ventures, and it's been quite good for my head.  When I do paid work (these days mostly in TV/film scoring), I consider I'm doing a service for a client and try to provide them with something they can use.  I try to be as creative as I can and to have as much fun with it as I can, but realize that I'm being paid to support the project.  
This has freed me to get into studying raga, and recently looping, which I basically do for my own joy (although I can see how the looping will infiltrate its way into my scoring work).  So I don't care about making money from live gigs -- very freeing!  Doing "artistic" stuff on my own also keeps me very good about accepting feedback from clients on projects, because I don't have much ego about getting anything in particular into any particular score -- I have another outlet for that.
I love the definition of "amateur" as someone who does art for the love of it -- I hope I always keep my amateur status.