[Harp-L] Calculating Cumulative Stage Time Pianos vs. Guitar vs. Harmonica

[JOSEPH LEONE]

I think this is a GREAT post and quite appropose to the subject matter at hand. 
So..over the years of playing I tried to extrapolate the stage time in a way that made sense to ME. Remember, it's all about me. lolol

So lets say you have a gig and there are 3 45 min. sets. I figured that the instruments played in the following rates.
1... keyboard.    all 45 min.
2... guitar.      39-39.5 min.
3... drums/bass   about same
4... sax/clarinet 34-34.5 min.
5... muted trumpet 26 min. (always muted..it's a dance band, lol)
6... harmonica.   23 min. (remember it's a niche addition)

I don't think stage time is a necessary criteria. Good, but not exactly necessary. To me, at least, it's a matter of how much TIME a person spent on learning/practicing.
I always felt that a person wasn't paid for their performance. They should be paid for their effort.

While a lot of musicians have told me that they tried harmonica and couldn't 'grasp' it, a chromatic is much easier than a guitar. And a bit easier than keyboard. Why? Because those instruments require more than one application of body functions. Chromatic is just breath..and slide.  ~(8^)x

smo-joe


> On 06/16/2025 12:17 AM EDT Emily Keene <esalisburykeene at xxxxx> wrote:
> 
>  
> As a multi-instrumentalist who played music for money for over fifty years
> (and was actually paid to play most ot those instruments), I have no idea
> of the "right" way to calculate stage time on any given instrument.
> However, these three things I know to be true-
> 
> 1. One never forgets the lessons one learns under stress and on stage.
> 2. At one time or another I have used EVERYTHING* I've ever learned about
> making sounds (both "good" or "bad") in playing at least one other piece of
> music.
> 3. While it might not something that fits into a formula, musical knowledge
> is, in general, cumulative.
> 
> * Though as a fiddle player, one spends an enormous amount of time trying
> NOT  to make such noises, one of the best paying gigs I ever got was for
> playing on a commercial for a large corporation trying to convince people
> that whereas Mother Nature had left the land they extracted resources from
> a desolate wasteland, this corporation turned a former hellscape into a
> verdant wetlands teeming with wildlife, including (I don't know much about
> birds) a heron-or maybe and eagle flying majestically out of the wetlands.
> Somewhere, from out of my memory, I was able to retrieve the knowledge of
> how to make an awful squeaking noise reminiscent of a bird flying out of a
> wetlands.