competitive; this appeared to be a bigger worry to the undergraduates than it was for
the professional musicians who had found their niche, establishing careers that
involved a full gamut of musical activities (Table 4).
TABLE 4 HERE
Mitigating factors
Several themes emerged that were interpreted as factors which mitigated the
challenges of making the transition from student to professional (Figure 3).
Accounts from musicians representing all four genres included an emphasis on the
importance of personality factors. A primary theme for all but the popular musicians
was the importance of skills, including musical skills, rehearsal skills and
promotional/organisational skills. The popular musicians, in contrast, gave greatest
weight to the theme of the importance of performance opportunities. The value of the
influence of professional colleagues, in terms of moral support, supportive
performance relationships and belonging to a community of practice, was found to be
a fairly important theme amongst the accounts of all of the musicians, while the role
of luck was briefly alluded to by classical and Scottish traditional musicians (as noted
above, these comparisons are descriptive of these cases only).
FIGURE 3 HERE
Personality factors: As one classical undergraduate musician succinctly stated, “ it S
50% playing and 50% the person”. Several personality characteristics were
identified as being important mitigating factors in the transition into the music
business; these included self-confidence, perseverance, enjoyment of music,
communication skills and high musical standards (Table 5).
TABLE 5 HERE
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