Is there an age when you will give up making music?

my life has fragmented and i'm busy on lots of other stuff now, but to echo the rhetorical Dr C. - am i past it?

When that band broke up, I Gave Up Music, again, and resolved never to be in a band again. And here I am, at 35, with a new band - my bandmates are all younger than me, so they're still finding new and exciting - which helps me recapture the fun and the freshness myself. I have more of a background writing/producing role now, while the girls go out front and dance about and do the pop star stuff. But even though it's a young person's game, I can't and don't want to give it up.

My songwriting has matured, too. I finally have the technical ability and the resources to create the sounds that I have always heard in my head.

This is all very cool and inspiring. I don't want to give up, personally, but sometimes I just feel like it's a weird fixation that's just kind of a hobby.

I think this is just a matter or sales, though, not that older artists have nothing to contribute.

At any rate, as far as when to hang em up, that 18-34 window only applies for the pop world, I think. It really depends on your audience and how they perceive you. Like the Ying Yang Twinz couldn't do "Wait (The Whisper Song)" in their 40's or 50's on account of them being leering old men. (I have a theory that they'd have really raspy, old-man voices in their 60's though, and that's when they'd make their comeback.)

I think the key is to adapt. You wouldn't want to be playing the same venues for 20, 30 years. And obviously your material is going to change over the years and you will likely, if inadvertantly, cater to an audience closer to your (future) age.

totally. when you get on a stage you 'only' have to be perceived as authentic. singing 'o woe she dumped me' teeny tunes in your late 30's/40's would be a bit creepy and incongruous.

let's get this straight, we're talking about about making music and getting heard, not about hitting a mass market demographic and being The Next Big Thing.

But at the same time, I sometimes wonder: why does a 32 year old care about releasing music anymore? It is highly unlikely that it will shoot me to even minor stardom and, even if it did, there would only be a few years before I was 40.

it's a tricky one. personally i've sacrificed any notion of a 'normal' nuclear family alpha provider type life for my art and i will continue to do so for the rest of my days.

however, if my whole life was music i would have probs topped myself by now, because being 'a failure' in society's terms and being an educated cunt of sound mind leeching off the state 24/7 for my art would be an unedifying place to be in my late 30's. i speak here strictly for myself.

i'm lucky enough to have another line of fairly specialised work that i'm good at (and passionate about) which cushions me from those disappointments to the degree that i truly couldn't give a flying fairy whether my *ahem* world class opuum ever receive the attention they deserve. i'd love it of course but it doesn't materially alter my trajectory. my love of music is unconditional. (tried to find a less Heathcliffian way of saying that but fuck).

to me the question is skewed. we all make our choices. most of us make music because we have to. it just depends where our sights are set.

I don't understand this question. It's like asking someone if there's an age when they'll give up knitting or painting or writing or whatever. If you enjoy it, who cares. Let it go.
so otm darin. I mean it's just what you do. that's it. Besides, the music I make now is WAY better than the crap I made as a teenager, or even at 25. I figure once I'm 40 I'll have a few memorable albums and a handful of oddball fans scattered around the globe and I would be a happy man with that. Anyway, don't despair dhm! growing old is actually fantastic. I think our 30's are going to rock.

** there would only be a few years before I was 40**

**they're still making music now just approaching 40, but they are washed up in some ways.**

I love the way that you folks talk about 40 as some kind of cut-off age where EVERYTHING GOOD STOPS! You're instantly redundant, artistically invalid and so, so, OLD!

I have some news. Shocka, folks - it's not like that. Or at least I didn't notice. Maybe I'm deluded, maybe I'm a laughing stock (get him - still plugging in his tele and plinking away on the keybds at the age of 44, yes 44!!), but I couldn't give a shit. Actually I don't have the luxury of giving a shit, because I CAN'T STOP!

i'm 26, and been trying to form a band for several months now. i've been posting on craigslist and so many responses from various instrumentalists have come from people between the ages of 35 and 50. I'm not trying to make it in the business, and neither are they. I think it's these older people who have a better understanding or realization of how things work and where they stand in it than younger kids who think they can make it big. anyway, that's sort of ramblin and doesnt say much :)

i dont think there's any age i'll stop. the process of becoming a better musician and songwriter is recursive and has no end in sight, and it's an end unto itself, why give it up? i can see myself as an old man writing music in the same way i do now. Maybe i'll spend less time as other priorities creep up, maybe sometimes i'll spend more time. it's just been getting better and better.

josh otfm lock thread

OTM but at the same time i'm barely 20 and i've already thought about just giving it up for good

Learned over the past 5 years with friends who also picked up their instruments for the first time.

You want to talk weird.. we played the riff from Ramble On for 3 hours straight... yelling "that was awesome" after each 15 minute loop session. We played for 7 hours straight. We sucked.

When we came of out of our studio room, the studio "dudes who hang out in the office" were all laughing at us.. couldn't believe that we were there for so long.. the wall were dripping with heat...

Fuck your age!!

Yah, we went through the phase of asking ourselves what are we doing... we will never be famous.. but we LOVE IT.

Our band is called Rubbernutz and we played our first gig last year..rock/pop simple chords ... All originals. got a call 2 weeks later from the bar asking if we'd headline...

You never know!

Now I'm jamming the funk!! Learning new grooves just for fun..with a new band...
I'm 36 yrs. old.