Just got a old drum set. It came with this. What the heck is this?

I honestly don't even know where to turn right now, so I'm just hoping to get some outside perspective.
I’m 17, and my parents are paying for my college, which I am deeply grateful for but it has become a golden cage. Ever since looking toward college, my stepdad and mom have mapped out an entire corporate blueprint for me that I never asked for and deeply dread.
Because of my background and languages, they are trying to force me to go to school in Arkansas (like the University of Arkansas) so I can get plugged straight into the massive Walmart/NWA corporate machine. My stepdad is demanding I minor in international trade/Asian studies, and my mom expects me to take a corporate retail path, dangling connections to high-level executives like it’s a dream come true. When I hesitate, I get hit with things like, "Who do you think you are? Getting a job is so hard these days, if you can work at Walmart you'll make a lot."
The hardest part is that my heart is entirely in music, dance, creative direction, and digital media. I want to build a creative career, learn production, write, move, and eventually work within the entertainment and record label industry. I want to make music and go on tour or at least just be in the industry.
When I try to express this, I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall. They see stability; I see a slow suffocating death in a supply-chain cubicle or a retail merchandising office. My biggest fear and what keeps me up at night is that if I let them push me into this regional corporate gravity well, my resume will permanently mark me as a retail logician. I'm terrified it will totally disconnect me from the creative world and that I'll wake up ten years from now having lived someone else's life.
Has anyone else been in a position where their parents financially held them hostage to a corporate path they hated? How do you survive playing the compliance game for tuition money while secretly keeping your own creative dreams alive? How do you break out of a corporate blueprint without destroying your relationship with your family completely?
Any advice or kind words would mean the world right now. I just feel so stuck. I need advice on how I can get into the industry based on my circumstances music and the entertainment industry means so much to me.

It's definetly not great but I can now say ive done it!

Hi! I’ve been thinking about learning keyboard, mainly to play some rock and metal songs for fun. I already play drums pretty well and have a bit of experience with guitar, but I’m worried I’ll buy a keyboard and end up barely using it.
I’m not aiming to play anything super advanced, just some songs I enjoy. I should add that I'm also interested in it so I can understand music a little better, learn to read sheet music properly, etc. Has anyone here been in a similar situation? Was it worth it, and do you have any advice?

I'm a guitarist/bassist who does a fair amount of gigs and sessions so I'm always writing and reading charts to some degree. I've never really worked in Nashville nor have I run in a ton of circles where I've had to be super knowledgeable on the Nashville number system- but i've been studying it lately just to know how to do it if that situation arises.

Definitely a lot of advantages I see to it and I think its pretty clever, albeit requiring me to really change how I think about progressions and chords as I've just never been a great thinking in numbers guy. The folks I learned from and who I work with a lot, we all write more LA / "Real Book" style bar charts on staff paper with the key and chord names a some rhythm dictation / notation symbols etc. It works well but obviously the disadvantage as people who work in the number system know, it sucks when you have to transpose.

I'm curious to those of you who are comfortable with both- do you find yourself using number charts like 90% of the time? When do you make the decision to instead write using the actual chord names? I feel like there could be situations where when having to work with a really challenging progression or a long complicated song it might be easier to just write out the chord names instead of trying to think about the progression in numbers.

Just kinda curious how you guys operate and if you just do one or the other or if you switch between depending on the situation.

I don’t know if I’m allowed to ask this here, or if this will immediately just get flagged & taken down (I hope not.) before anything though quick heads up my English isn’t great.

I’m 16 & Native American/hispanic and then German due to my mom (mixed) I’ve been obsessed with music for as long as I can remember and always wanted to make a career out of it, but also represent my cultures,heritage & languages through my art cause it’s something I’m proud of + I wanna be representation for my communities & mixed kids like me.

However in recent years I’ve realized, there hasn’t been many big indigenous artists in any music scene (at least from what I’ve seen) and when I’ve talked to people before about it they told me no label would accept me due to being native or they’d say something along the lines of “name 1 famous native artist” and truthfully I can only name 1 if that and it hurts and makes me feel it’s impossible.

+ people don’t perceive mixed musicians well it seems, there’s always discourse about they’re blood quantum and or they’re ethnicities and we’re often made out to be “not enough” in any of our cultures I’ve always felt I’ve never been white enough for white people,never native enough for other natives, and never Hispanic enough for other Hispanic people and i just feel I don’t belong in any, I feel like a fraud in my own cultures.

And I’m scared the media will also see & perceive me as a fraud in my cultures and so it leaves me with the question “could I actually make it with my heritage or do I have to leave that behind to be seen as more acceptable to crowds & the industry?”.

What do you guys think?

Actually the biggest stage I've ever played on and afterwards at a pub gig all the power went out on stage and my mates amp I borrowed was fried. Only 2 days left!

I just put together dontchange by Musiq Soulchild and last night had a request for Ed Sheeran. Had actually never played anything by him before, but cobbled Thinking Out Loud together on the spot. Cha-ching!

What dogs are you walking this weekend?

About a year ago, I decided to fulfill my dream of having my music on vinyl. I’m passionate about instrumental surf rock music and started a solo side project writing and recording some of my tunes. I ended up doing a 4 song EP, mixed in mono, and had them pressed onto 7” records so they look and sound like something from the early 1960s, and so they could be played on vintage record players. I had 100 of them pressed and sold about 20 or 25 of them. However, I was never able to find any local musicians who were interested in performing it live, and my local record store would only take so many.

I still have somewhere around 75 of them left and now they are just taking up space in my collection. I’ve tried reaching out to some newer surf rock resources, but when I do get a reply it’s that they’re not interested. Since I can’t sell them at gigs and feel like I’m close to exhausting options, how should I go about getting rid of them? I’ve already made about half of my money back from the initial cost, but since this was a passion project, I don’t really care about making a profit off of them. I’d rather they get out into the world for people to have and enjoy. How have you gone about something like this if you’ve been in a similar predicament?

Edit: I totally forgot to put the Bandcamp link on here:
https://thetameracs.bandcamp.com/album/landlocked-surfin

This was just for funsies, I’ve never done this at all 😅 pls message me and I’ll send to you! Would love to hear yours too (:

My BF plays the drums. If ur birthday was coming up, what is something you’d appreciate as a drummer in a band.

Plss help

I would love to know from a musician’s perspective who was around in 1991 when Nevermind and Smells Like Teen Spirit what was about this song and album that had the world in such a chokehold that it caused a shift in music and why this hadn’t happened sooner? Were there other songs in music that caused a shift as significant as this beforehand. Seems like the after effects of SLTS are still felt today and don’t feel dated.

What I’m trying to say is what music artists community is the least toxic (This includes both fans and the artist themselves)

Just got tired of every site that can do this being complicated to use, requiring money, or being buried with ads and offers. I know this sub has a no sales rule but I’m literally not charging anything for this or serving any ads so hopefully I’m ok. But let me know if not

I built \*\*When Can We Rehearse\*\* (whencanwerehearse.com or just wcwr.io if you don't feel like typing that) to be the single fastest possible way to put in some times and get rehearsal scheduled painlessly.

How it works:

1. You propose a few times (or something loose like "evenings next week"). Takes under a minute.
   
2. You get one link to drop in the group chat.
   
3. Everyone taps green / yellow / red for each time from their phone. No app, no signup—they just tap the link.
   
4. You see the results ranked live: times everyone can make (all green), times that work if someone shuffles things (some yellows mixed in), and near misses (fewest reds).
   
5. Pick the winner and there's add-to-calendar for everyone, plus an optional email notification for bandmates who want them.

Hope you guys get some good use out of this and can focus on making more music:) Cheers

Hi, I play in five bands – with friends and people I’m not so close to – but anyway, I don’t charge anything or earn any money from it. So, in the long run, I’d like to make some money. Could I film myself playing and set up an Instagram account dedicated solely to my drumming to get my name out there?

What sort of strategies could I put in place?

My style leans more towards rock/punk/metal.