how many hours a week do you spend on music?

I am (as a result) officially socially retarded. And happily so, I might add.

there is no overlap between my work and music life.

Unless we're about to do a gig, we do about 4 hours of non-solid (i.e. lots of mucking about) rehearsals.

If I try hard, I seem to get about 4 to 6 more hours a week for writing and arranging and recording, but lately that's the exception rather than the rule.

My professional and creative lives do not overlap any more. It's much better that way.

wha? I know yr wife is an opera singer (right?), but you too?

If I can get a good full day in, that's when I come up with my best ideas, however NEVER get a full day in, ever these days.

It's constantly frustrating. I do do a couple of late nights (8pm-2am or thereabouts) per week, but I can't do anymore than that, because it starts fucking up work.

It's a constant source of frustration.

xpost - for me to do ANY creative work, I need the whole day. Or at least a very long chunk of time (6 hours)

my band practices about 6 hours a week and we've lately been having 2-3 gigs per month. i feel whiny complaining about this since comparatively it's not terribly rigorous, but i end up having 0 time to practice on my own/write things and much less of a drive to do so. especially because i don't write anything for the band that i play in, i feel like i am put way too much energy into the band/social aspect sometimes.

i mean - of course playing with other musicians can be challenging and inspiring, but i grew up playing piano and have a tendency towards introversion so it's hard to give that up.

and, i have a completely unrelated-to-music job and i like it that way...i think.

oh yes.

think about all the great ideas that ever came to you. did you dream them or were you just momentarily struck by something daft and beautiful out in the ether? what is time? the output of an inspired minute obliterates the output of an entire uninspired month. or six months. it's the result not the time spent.

i can throw myself against the wall of a nearly there track for months and it still won't complete. or i can get on with my life, earn some money, do some shit, come back to it for 5 minutes and it will all fall into place very fast. i don't know why this is.

at different times i've done different things. at one point i was way overhead of 72 hours a week but that's the time your dreams become your master, night turns into day, psychosis subsumes reality and it all goes a bit colnel kurtz.

it wasn't very productive working like that you'll be glad to know.

i would definitely do it again though!

I just spent 20 hours in a recording studio though.

I used to play guitar at home for an hour every night but haven't had the time or felt inspired to in a while

p.s. secretly i'm in the same band as gbx (this has come out once before)

She is the professional who has actually studied and gotten a degree; I am the semipro who's taken some private lessons and worked the connection angle to get into professional choruses (the church choir we sing in is all pro, as is this opera chorus, and we used to sing with the all-volunteer Tanglewood Festival Chorus, who sings with the BSO and Boston Pops; if you scan the archives you'll find some random "SEE DAN ON CABLE TV!" threads floating around).

And yes, I'm basically doing all of this now because of Lin Warren's influence on my life in high school.

And, also, Danjer: JAMZONE is spelled with all-caps. We went over this at the meeting.

But last week, for example, I had three gigs with my main band, which meant eight sets and a lot of driving.

Producing a record: 50 or so.

No life for me.

but otherwise:
probably about 6-7 hours a week with the band, unless we have a show coming up in which case more like 10. though i share a room with the other primary songwriter, so there are a ton of unaccounted-for hours we spend in the room together where one of us ends up working on something and the other helps out. that's like all the time though so it's hard to keep track.
as for solo stuff, i'd guess i normally spend about 10-15 hours a week on it. mostly just dicking around and coming up with new ideas that never get fleshed out, but it keeps the creative juices flowing

Spent about 3 or 4 months (actually being honest, probably more like a year) only thinking about music and being depressed, musically. Unfortunatly I'm on a classical music course, so they weren't too please about that.

Recently I've been playing about 4 or 5 hours a day. Which is annoying, because I'd also like to devote that amount of time to my C-Sound/Reaktor work, practising drums, learning piano properly, working on my DJ sets, writing some new tunes, and everything else under the sun.

I've started balancing things much better these days, found talented, likeminded people to play with, only got one proper band thing going, the others are all improv things, which being in leeds is handy. We have a nice improv scene here.

My main problem is I can constantly hear my classical guitar teacher, in his darth vader like drone, "tom you must practice 6 hours a day and you will be amazing" thus constant guilt.

Ah well, im young, and will probably give all this up in a few years.