Making a Living with the L1®

Making a Living With the L1 by Cliff Henricksen

Introduction

When I was a full-time musician playing in restaurants and clubs in the early 1970's, I and everyone else doing the same were making $50-$100 a night playing in bands, 4 or 5 piece. I also played in a rock and roll duo with a big PA, singing drummer who occasionally played left-hand Rhodes bass. It was a musical circus, sounded good and we made even more money than most individually. My musical colleagues all nod in agreement to this level of income figure. It is a very good indication that live music is dramatically devalued since 1972. This makes me very sad, and it is indeed a "sad situation".

Today, club gigs pay about the same and the better or perhaps more "connected" players (the ones with long-time local connections) might get $200. Party, wedding, bar mitzvah, corporate and the like gigs will pay more, but they always have. Such gigs require production rivalling big pop concerts (including costumes, sets and big sound systems), a wide variety of musical styles and typically require pro-level performers who often are required to travel extensively. On these shows, original music is basically out of the question. In general, it's rare that a musician in 2006 can make a respectable living simply by performing music in local venues. It seems that inflation has passed most musicians by, indicating that the services of musicians have declined steadily since the 1970's. Why would this be? Here are some possible reasons:

1. Musicians have played so loud that audiences have been bludgeoned into staying away, home, going to church, going to the movies or generally seeking more pleasant entertainment.
2. The proliferation of amplified musical equipment and instruments has expanded so greatly that there is an ever-growing community of musicians who will do anything to get a gig, including playing for free. And so, the market demand for performing musicians and performing bands is totally swamped by the growing availability of bands and players. This forces wages down.
3. Musical artists, like all artists, are generally not business-minded by nature. They don't think like business people for the most part because they mostly think about music, its composition and its performance. I forget the "right brain" and "left brain" explanation of this. And so, artists and musicians in general make bad business decisions, or simply accept the wages that are offered them.
4. Triple system amplification tends to make all bands sound similar, so that any artistic excellence is lost in sonic clutter created by this. Thus, a "great" band can't really demonstrate their excellence. The triple system tends to make all bandsj playing in small to medium venues sound alike and thus it seems to lump all bands as "mediochre" or "annoying" because of excessive levels presented.
5. Most musicians today seem to have other employment, because they can't support themselves playing. This contributes to wages going down.
6. The American Federation of Musicians was once a powerful force in helping musicians acheive an honorable wage. Today it is almost nonexistant, other than for very high-profile work such as Broadway plays, symphony orchestras and movie film score work. I may even be wrong about this.
7. Bands playing original compositions seem to be doomed to a life of scraping for gigs that pay nothing, unless they have some kind of recording that is distributed by legitimate means (a "record lable", whatever this means in 2006). Popular bands playing popular music will occasionally trick an audience by inserting their original into a set. But if it is announced ("...and here's one of our original tunes..."), the audience mostly gets glassy-eyed and bored.

On the other hand, here are what I believe are facts about live music:

1. Humans need music, almost like they need oxygen. They will be very unhappy without it, in general.
2. Humans respond very positively and in a fundamental way to good, soulful and touching music played live by experts with excellent-sounding equipment. Every human knows good music and good sound quality. This is easily proven by the volume of sound recordings purcahsed every day worldwide. Therefore, excellent live music is probably very valuable to most humans. I belive it is seriously undervalued.
3. From personal experience, I know that the L1 system is the first commercially-available live music concept that allows musicians to "live in the mix" that they deliver to an audience. I know as a musician that it dramatically improves any ensemble's experience onstage and it contributes dramatically to improving ensemble performance and the regularity of it. I know that with this system and expert musicians, a superior performance is both encouraged and demanded and the sonic delivery of this performance is unprecedented in its excellence.

And so, now that the system has been available for over 3 years, I believe that its use should contribute to musicians' wages if they are willing to play correctly and serve any audience with what they want. It should set any ensemble apart from any others using conventional equipment. It should separate those who can play from those who can't, simply by exposing every note that is played, for better or for worse. It is my belief that the L1 system makes live amplified music far more valuable that it was in 1972. And so, it follows that musicians' wages should surpass those of 1972, only in 2006 dollars (5x or 6x higher, plus).