When do you consider yourself a guitarist?

Notes,

Well I actually looked up the definitions of both and here's what I found, so I stand corrected by the strict definition, each requires that you are a performer so whenever you made your first performance you were a musician and if it was with a guitar then you were a guitarist too.<...snip...> I guess the question would be what is considered a performance and I think that would be whenever you played for other people, but your right it really doesn't matter. <...>

I've heard some pretty lame musicians in my day, making a buck at it as well (more power to them).

And I've heard some living room musicians who could blow most professionals away.

But all that is a matter of skill and as you pointed out, not the basic definition.

I strive to be a good musician, while knowing that there will always be a lot of people who are better than I am, and conversely, a lot of people who are worse.

One thing I like about being a musician is that there is always something new to learn and some new sill to acquire. It's amazing that 12 notes can offer so much. I could live to be 140 years old and never have learned it all. Here is a quote from Sergei Rachmaninov that I think expresses it exactly, “Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.”

But the main thing I like about being a musician is performing to an audience. I'd much rather be in the band than listen to the band. Playing music is simply much more fun.

On a side note, are singers and drummers musicians? :lol:

(Just kidding - of course they are!)

IMO, some labels that define what people do have a standard meaning that you can't argue with. There's either a yes/no objective criteria that qualifies you (mother, convict, etc) or some generally agreed-upon test or license (physician, engineer, etc).

But labels that don't fit those two - like guitarist - are subjective. You're a guitarist if you think you are. Some other people may consider you a guitarist even if you think you aren't - or vice versa.

Any of the arts is wide open to subjective opinion. Was Jackson Pollack an artist? Was John Cage's 4'33" a musical composition? Are the works of Dr. Seuss literature?

An essential element of being an artist, in any media, is the ability to create new things, or to reinterpret old things in new ways. And that means we'll never have a hard-and-fast way of defining either artists or art. Is a typewriter a musical instrument? Gershwin thought so, and made it one.

So if you think you're a guitarist, or a musician, you're right. And if you don't think you are, you're still right.

To use an analogy, I always liked Soren Kiekergaard's concept of Christianity - he said that it was inaccurate for someone to say they are a Christian because this implies a perfect and unattainable ideal (at least for common man). He thought it more appropriate to say that one is becoming a Christian, implying a constant process towards that ideal. When I question if I'm a guitarist or a musician, besides the usual things like mood, etc. my answer usually depends on whether I'm being more reflective about how far I have travelled, or how far I have yet to travel, with music. So, I guess since I first got interested in organised noise making, I've been becoming a musician and becoming a guitarist. And I reckon I always will be.