Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Difference between "serious" and "casual" musicians

Thanks for helping me add a new word to my limited vocabulary.

What about casual and serious web surfers? Why don't we notice we are responding to a 1 time poster (trying to push a link)? It's kind of amusing that the discussion continues because of it

AI chat bots hacking PW world ...

This one does not seem to be a bot, like the other ones yesterday. Still, my prediction goes like this:





EDIT: On second thought, I agree that it's also a bot operating in this thread. Damn clever one, though.

who can earn some money with music is a "professional", otherwise is "amateur"

Anybody who practices everyday at any level can be considered a serious musician.

Between an amateur & professional the divide is straightforward. Someone who makes a living from playing or composing music is a professional. I've met people who play with local ensembles at an advanced level. Some even entered prestigious competitions but they have careers outside music like a doctor or lawyer.

Yea, I was referring to medsakord, not the original poster. I don't think it's a stretch to think it's a grammar school CS project to create a NLG model, based on data here, and have ai chat bots respond to people's posts? That would be fun ;0

The idea of having multiple bots carry out a discussion with each other is highly intriguing, but based on its conversational style, I think medsakord is actually an OpenAI bot, rather than a school project.

Maybe I can ask LaMDA all my piano questions in the future? ... you know, what the definition of sight reading is, haha

Dynamics!

In my view, I decide based on the level of their playing and practice strategy/efficiency. For example, advanced students/players tend to be able to focus for long periods of time, regularly practice over an hour a day, know the difference between playing and practicing, and practice in an efficient manner, honing in very fast on trouble spots and learning/memorizing within say a few days. They know what it means to perform at a concert standard and have a strategy to get there reliably within time constraints.

I don’t agree with this part of your criteria: ‘ they know what it means to perform at a concert standard and have a strategy to get there’. If you really think about the members of this forum, there are serious students at every level but a very, very small percentage that expect to play at s concert standard’. This does not make them ‘non serious’: they are serious about continually learning and developing but without illusions of being eventually ‘concert level’.

Well then, I would consider them amateur. As far as classical music is concerned, that is how I differentiate between 'professional' and 'amateur' in my mind. Well, that does mean that participants in the van Cliburn fall under the 'professional' category in my view, and so does someone who say did piano performance at conservatory and then quit to become a doctor.

Yes, it makes them a serious amateur.

Amateurs can clearly be serious which is what dogperson was saying. The question was not about amateur vs. professional. Any level pianist can be serious.

I was a serious musician ever since I was introduced to classical music by my first teacher at the age of ten, and began practising seriously.

But it never occurred to me to make music my career, because I had all the musical talent of a gnat (or Scottish midge) and almost every other kid I knew who had piano lessons was ahead of me (having started a few years earlier)......though in most cases I eventually caught up and overtook them (though it took years) - because I was a serious musician .

I think it's not so simple. Van Gogh made virtually no money from his paintings. Would you refer to him as an amateur or casual painter?

Playing with it

You can read a score upside down, completely adhere to it, realize that it does not sound like music, and turn it around the right way.

Technically, he was an amateur painter.

The real issue with the word is that it has more than one meaning. It can also mean unskilled, as well as not done for money. For example, if something is described as "amateurish", it doesn't specifically refer to being unpaid, but instead, it refers to level of quality.

The difference between amateur and professional is how much your paid and by whom. Amateur doesn't mean less gifted or skilled.

Casual and serious are not mutually exclusive. Most people, like you or me, have a day job and therefore can't devote hours of our time to practicing, because we have to feed ourselves. Does that insinuate none of us are serious about music? No---we live in a real world and most people don't have the luxury of spending an entire day with our instruments. We'd all be concert pianists if that were the case. Well, not all of us, but you get the point