Miscellaneous Profile of ages for members of cafesaxophone.com?

What decade were you born?

  • 1930's

    Votes: 1 1.0%
  • 1940's

    Votes: 15 15.6%
  • 1950's

    Votes: 24 25.0%
  • 1960's

    Votes: 31 32.3%
  • 1970's

    Votes: 12 12.5%
  • 1980's

    Votes: 12 12.5%
  • 1990's

    Votes: 1 1.0%
  • 2000's

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 2010's

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 2015+

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    96
Note that the poll is for those who enjoy Cafesaxophone. There could be many members of other ages that don't enjoy it.
I still enjoy CS. But I understand that Rock, R&R, R&B, Blues .... are not so popular anymore. Nothing I can do so much about.
FB groups are particularly useless as there is no structure there.
I had structure on the two FB groups I was running; XXXX RockSax and XXXX Blues & Rock. Private groups for Rock & Roll Saxophonists on different level and for Blues & Rock amateur bands. The problem with FB was all the other **** . The members were hobby players, professional players, music teachers ..... that shared the same interest. Just c 40 members, but less is always more.
 
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The simplest way to get attention is to have a web presence so that a search will find you. The forum mechanism of structured 'conversations' which can be searched is a big asset that is not replicable on other platforms.
The problem is though that Google does seem to not be very kind to forums, or rather the UGC (user generated content) because (quite understandable) most people contributing to not know about or think about SEO (search engine optimisation). So all the off topic, bad spelling, irrelevant thread titles etc. work against being found in search engines.
This is why I sometimes change titles, edit posts and move off topic. We don't do it to be awkward or pedantic, we do it to help keep the cafe in existence.

So yes Google does like structure but forums generally provide a very poor structure.
 
There's little point in saying that we need to be on Reddit / TikTok / Instagram / Discord if you haven't got the people/resources to be able to do it.
Somewhat of topic:
IMHO that would be a mistake.
There's a bit of a The Medium is the Message thing. Fora - that require new logins etc. - are a slightly "cooler' medium than reddit, FB etc. where someone can dive in, ask a question, and move on quickly. Not that the cafe doesn't get drive-by questions nor that long discussions with familier faces don't happen elsewhere; both on balance.
 
Somewhat of topic:
IMHO that would be a mistake.
There's a bit of a The Medium is the Message thing. Fora - that require new logins etc. - are a slightly "cooler' medium than reddit, FB etc. where someone can dive in, ask a question, and move on quickly. Not that the cafe doesn't get drive-by questions nor that long discussions with familier faces don't happen elsewhere; both on balance.
Immediate gratification comes at a cost, that cost often being quality and reliability.
 
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...and they continued to manually email all members and complain about people not reading or replying.
There's an intimation in your comment which suggests this notion is somewhat passe or deserves an eye-rolling, though. I guess I would counter with a really simple question:

is it THAT hard to read emails and reply when they come in ?

Especially in an organizational situation where the dispersal of information and the reliance on decision making and replies is of importance ?
It might seem old-school, but it isn't really too much to ask, IMHO....so in reading your description, I cannot but help to feel that there's an element of undermining based upon a general notion that the immediate (ostnsibly, not in reality) methodology of social media is somehow 'superior'....when, again in the context described, that may be arguable.
 
is it THAT hard to read emails and reply when they come in ?
Apparently so.

Some people complaining that they don't, so a solution was suggested and shot down.

The email didn't need an immediate response, but a reply was needed in time for events, so a simple reminder on social media in conjunction with the email would be help.

As a group of volunteers 2mins to post a reminder made more sense than bickering about it constantly.

There's other similar organisations doing the same so you would assume there is some benefit from it

social media is somehow 'superior'
Not necessarily superior, simply another tool, there are advantages to both email and social media, using the right tool for the job.

This forum is a far better tool compared to social media (IMHO)

From my experience of running a small business, people/customers are lazy and you need to make it easy for them. Gone a little off topic.
 
Been reading here for a few months now as a guest, so maybe I can weigh in on this.

I'm almost in the 0.0% on here - 1998 - and that puts me in an interesting in-between place. (Sax experience - played in high school, now I'm three months in taking it seriously now. I can play the high F, woohoo) As far as my regular life goes, I'm married, no kids, dog and a cat, foreman at a construction company. My parents definitely blessed me by making sure I was surrounded by books instead of just games and TV as a little kid, and as someone who's 25 now, I am at the very end of the people who became a teenager without access to social media. My first cell phone still had a physical keyboard, oooooo.

I'm also at the very end of people who've ever used a traditional forum. Reddit is the limit of text based media for the vast majority of people my age and younger. It's a very rare person in my generation who still looks for text based sites to learn from as opposed to video (not to say I don't use video - Get Your Sax Together on youtube has been fundamental to me as I've been getting back into it).

There definitely is other people of my age finding this forum, but they won't find it until they start to have technical questions about saxophone, their embouchure, technique, sax repair, etc. They'll find it through google searches about specific questions like I did, because /r/saxophone on reddit only tells me that the reason I warble on only the G and G# above the staff is because my horns broken or I only have a student Yamaha and not a Selmer, etc. Reddit forums only lead to negative responses, not discussion - the websites designed that way. Video content is too long for simple answers.

The third problem is that maybe only 1 in 100 people my age have ever touched any instrument. And that ratio is not getting better, it's getting worse, and will continue to do so unless something happens with instrument access for kids earlier than high school. Where I live in Ontario, Canada, no one in public school necessarily touches an instrument until the decide to take their one single art credit in high school in Band, instead of one of the several other art classes. Miss that single year, and you may never touch any instrument except your buddies guitar, ever. Otherwise? No one in heck is ever going to just decide to drop $500-1200 on a student-level instrument that they don't know they'll even like. The pool of possible instrument players is shrinking rapidly - and that's a shame, just from a human fulfillment level.

Anyways, that's my two loonies on the subject. 25-year-olds represent.
 
Been reading here for a few months now as a guest, so maybe I can weigh in on this.

I'm almost in the 0.0% on here - 1998 - and that puts me in an interesting in-between place. (Sax experience - played in high school, now I'm three months in taking it seriously now. I can play the high F, woohoo) As far as my regular life goes, I'm married, no kids, dog and a cat, foreman at a construction company. My parents definitely blessed me by making sure I was surrounded by books instead of just games and TV as a little kid, and as someone who's 25 now, I am at the very end of the people who became a teenager without access to social media. My first cell phone still had a physical keyboard, oooooo.

I'm also at the very end of people who've ever used a traditional forum. Reddit is the limit of text based media for the vast majority of people my age and younger. It's a very rare person in my generation who still looks for text based sites to learn from as opposed to video (not to say I don't use video - Get Your Sax Together on youtube has been fundamental to me as I've been getting back into it).

There definitely is other people of my age finding this forum, but they won't find it until they start to have technical questions about saxophone, their embouchure, technique, sax repair, etc. They'll find it through google searches about specific questions like I did, because /r/saxophone on reddit only tells me that the reason I warble on only the G and G# above the staff is because my horns broken or I only have a student Yamaha and not a Selmer, etc. Reddit forums only lead to negative responses, not discussion - the websites designed that way. Video content is too long for simple answers.

The third problem is that maybe only 1 in 100 people my age have ever touched any instrument. And that ratio is not getting better, it's getting worse, and will continue to do so unless something happens with instrument access for kids earlier than high school. Where I live in Ontario, Canada, no one in public school necessarily touches an instrument until the decide to take their one single art credit in high school in Band, instead of one of the several other art classes. Miss that single year, and you may never touch any instrument except your buddies guitar, ever. Otherwise? No one in heck is ever going to just decide to drop $500-1200 on a student-level instrument that they don't know they'll even like. The pool of possible instrument players is shrinking rapidly - and that's a shame, just from a human fulfillment level.

Anyways, that's my two loonies on the subject. 25-year-olds represent.
Thank you. You have great insights. One of the reasons I felt this would be interesting is to see how the newer generations are taking woodwind up?

The other thing we need to realise, is that governments have stopped pushing Arts/music and have defended a large amount of school music programs. In my view, music - any form - is part of an individual's culture. By that, what I mean is that if it's not pushed in the early years of school, that side of the learning journey is lacking. It's important for brain development. It is the governments direct responsibility to encourage playing an instrament as part of the curriculum. It's important for brain development. That is where society has been let down.

Then the parents need to encourage it too. That is a story for another day...
 
Thank you. You have great insights. One of the reasons I felt this would be interesting is to see how the newer generations are taking woodwind up?

The other thing we need to realise, is that governments have stopped pushing Arts/music and have defended a large amount of school music programs. In my view, music - any form - is part of an individual's culture. By that, what I mean is that if it's not pushed in the early years of school, that side of the learning journey is lacking. It's important for brain development. It is the governments direct responsibility to encourage playing an instrament as part of the curriculum. It's important for brain development. That is where society has been let down.

Then the parents need to encourage it too. That is a story for another day...

Never got taught any music in school so thanks, at last someone has explained my lack of brain development.
 
Never got taught any music in school so thanks, at last someone has explained my lack of brain development.
"At last"?!
I've got a list I've been compiling of reasons for my lack of brain development; with contributions from teachers, school friends, parents, love interest, the cat, employers, the Guardian health pages...
 
Interesting readng people's comments about music tuition as part of education. I had the opportunity to play instruments at school, and although I went to a state scholl in a less than affluent area, the school loaned me my first ever saxophone. That was a long time ago, but I have two daughters who've recently gone through education in England. Like me, they attended normal state schools, but if anything, had even more opportunity to take up music. In primary school they were both loaned decent quality instruments to try, and the local secondary school provided peripatetic music teachers, instrument loan and had a very well equipped music department, complete with a decent recording studio. So, although in some areas music is being cut back, in others it's still promoted as a key part of the curriculum.

I think music is vulnerable to rhetoric from populist politicians who try to court attention by banging on that "the only way to make [insert country of choice] great again is to focus on STEM". My personal opinion is that is both wrong, and something to be opposed forcefully.
 
Thank you. You have great insights. One of the reasons I felt this would be interesting is to see how the newer generations are taking woodwind up?

The other thing we need to realise, is that governments have stopped pushing Arts/music and have defended a large amount of school music programs. In my view, music - any form - is part of an individual's culture. By that, what I mean is that if it's not pushed in the early years of school, that side of the learning journey is lacking. It's important for brain development. It is the governments direct responsibility to encourage playing an instrament as part of the curriculum. It's important for brain development. That is where society has been let down.

Then the parents need to encourage it too. That is a story for another day...
I've thought about this a lot, and I think high school is too late. Kids even in public school here get the choice between art, drama, and music - the vast majority take art or drama. I think honestly, there not being any exposure to instruments earlier than that for most kids means they don't even think about that. Elementary school music is a joke, no elementary school here pays for a dedicated music teacher, and the days where every family has some kind of instrument at home are long gone. I have two friends who play guitar, and I know one guy at the company I work for (50 people) who plays. No woodwinds at all lol.
 

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