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My name's Davie Scott, I'm a songwriter and a performer with my group The Pearlfishers.
I've made 7 albums with them and produced tonnes of records with other artists, I've
written some music for film, TV, radio, I also make programmes about music for BBC Radio Scotland.
I've worked as a Community Music Practitioner - I'm your portfolio career person right?
[laughs]
And now I teach on the Commercial Music degree at the University of the West of Scotland.
The qualities that people need if they want to have any kind of career in music, or indeed
any of the entertainment of media worlds are the qualities of commitment, talent -
talent is really important you know? We shy away form that sometimes, but you can develop talent
okay? And you can work on that.
But commitment, if you're not prepared to go the extra mile to turn up early, to make
sure you've got everything you need for the gig, to make sure that you deliver every time
- forget it.
The best bits about working in an educational establishment, no doubt about it, is working
with students because what you've got sitting across from you in a class or in a seminar
or whatever is a bunch of people who are incredibly excited about music
and being able to help these people realise their dreams, or some of their dreams, or
find new dreams or define what their dreams might be, that's the thing, that's the really
exciting thing about it.
I think the wrong thing to do would be to try and say to somebody that 'this is an easy
thing to do, awh it's cool you know, you just go and rehearse, you write some songs, you
go on tour blah blah blah, it's really hard - the work is hard.
and unfortunately because people invest their work with dreams, okay, right?, they pin their
hopes on their work - so work becomes a big part of your life right? Then when it doesn't
work out people get broken hearts.
But the thing about that is you can always turn that into something else. We need to
be able to teach our students, for example, how to turn a disappointment or an unexpected
result into a positive thing and there are ways to do that.
In music you have to learn how to turn those disappointments into something that's really
positive, something that's really strong and something that's lasting.