The Duty of a Musician

Musicians are artists.  An artist creates, and inspires. Artistry requires mastery of skill and knowledge.  Creativity imagines original ideas. It often seems that musicians in the modern age are regurgitating riffs, melodies, phrases, and chord progressions.  The call for originality, imagination, and creativity could not be more prevalent in this day and age.  Even re-arranging music, instead of outright composing it takes skill.  In the modern-age, there is a fascination with the same chord progressions in gospel music, the same beats and melodies in modern pop and other genres, and similar riffs as well.  Musicians have a duty and responsibility to create art, and must use our imagination to create originality, unless we are actually performing somebody else’s music. If we are not, and come out with and profit from music that we put our names to, then we must insure it has our signature originality or if it is an arrangement it has a distinction from the original artist’s version.  Musicians also have a duty to spend time on perfecting and cultivating their craft.  This takes time, effort, work, and intentionality.  I will be posting more blogs about specific “how to” discussions with respect to certain topics such as how to practice and perfect your craft, how to learn a variety of genres and use various mediums to learn music.  We also have a duty to communicate and teach these things to future musicians.

I welcome your discussion on this important topic, as we discuss the “duty of a musician”.  What other responsibility do you think musicians should have? Do you believe we should have a “Code of Responsibility and Conduct” when it comes to the music industry?