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Comment by maxklein | Hacker News Reader

When I was younger, I used to look down on musicians. I saw what they were doing as not being on the same level as being an engineer, because engineers were more clever than them. I figured they were born with some talent, and all they had to do is play their instrument.

Now, I realise that they practise more than I do. It's even tougher for them, because there is no easy way to judge how much better they have become. And they have to do all that they do with people constantly judging them.

Engineers, scientists, mathematicians - we have it real easy. Our talent is an easy one to develop, it's an easy to make money from, and it's easy to get good. Artists & Musicians who manage to be successful have achieved a lot more than engineers who manage to become successful.

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My favorite band--Dream Theater--was formed at Berklee College between three ambitious instrumentalists. Two of them, John Petrucci and John Myung, spent their high school days fanatically devoted to practice (before applying to Berklee together). During that time they had an agreement with each other to practice their respective instruments six hours a day, and if they hung out in the evening it was with the understanding that they'd finished their six hours practice.

Like Derek, John and John finished their Berklee education early, but in their case it was by recruiting the rest of their band and dropping out to get started. That was in 1985. Their first major commercial success (in the sense that applies to progressive metal bands with cult followings) was 1992's Images and Words.

> Two of them, John Petrucci and John Myung, spent their high school days fanatically devoted to practice (before applying to Berklee together). During that time they had an agreement with each other to practice their respective instruments six hours a day, and if they hung out in the evening it was with the understanding that they'd finished their six hours practice.

Source? (Not that I doubt what you're saying. I want to read more from where that came from)

It's on Wikipedia, but they also mention in it a lot of their documentaries and stuff, like on their live DVD's where there's usually a disc 2 about it.

thanks.

I briefly double-majored in Computational Physics and Music Composition. I failed out of the music program, but was able to beg for C-'s to count for my General Ed.

I like to think I chose the two hardest majors in the school, but the music major was two orders of magnitude more difficult for me. I'm sure there's people for whom the opposite would be true, but I think an attempt at objective ranking would put the music degree as harder than the physics.

I majored in computer science, with classes in math, physics, linguistics, etc... but also spent about a year majoring in music. In my opinion, the music classes were harder, and I had been playing music since I was 6. It's intense stuff. It really is like a form of applied mathematics, and you have to not only understand it on paper with your eyes, but hear and understand it with your ears.

Mastering the basics is hard enough... being able to apply this knowledge creatively takes it to a whole other level.

True, there are people constantly judging a musician, even people who have no understanding of the art; however, when a musician is really really good, all that practice pays off in big ways (full stadiums, fame, riches). The best programmers of our age are not celebrated with even remotely the same amount of fervour.

Additionally music is recognized as a legitimate, serious form of artistic expression. Complete strangers can have deep conversations over people they've never met and techniques they don't understand. If you bring up programming as an art form, a lot of people will just laugh. Start talking about closures and their eyes glaze over.

Having a brother who is a musician taught me this one early :) now he's at university I barely see him any more he practices/plays so much.

The effort he puts in just to graduate each year is more than I have put into my entire career so far (including uni)!

I like to think that musicians and engineers belong to completely different groups of people where the majority of each group lacks the ability to pursue that of the other group; like a musician would find it difficult to go into engineering because of a lack in mathematic ability (or something along those lines) and a engineer would find music difficult because of the particular set of abilities it requires.

One thing though is that the barriers of entry into each category is different, music requires a lot more time and devotion and going on to make money can be more difficult because you aren't hired just by the fact that you have a bachelors concentrating in music.

I disagree somewhat with your final statement. As long as we're talking about a creative job, it's not easy no matter what. As a scientist/researcher, you have to be every bit as creative as an artist or a musician, IMO.

This is somewhat true of engineers as well, but you can certainly get an engineering job where you don't need to exercise your creativity.

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