If we talk about market goals, we must primarily look at the source of our efforts - and that is the demand for the music we produce and play. From this point of view, I would not see it as rational to set goals in the form of determining an exact and specific number of songs that we want to play. In my opinion, the goal should be correctly defined as follows: 40 most requested and most popular songs. Then there's the question of whether you must sing the songs yourself, or at farmers' markets people sing them and you just accompany them. In that case, it is necessary to know how to play the melody; people can already handle the words. It also makes a difference if you are a solo accordion player or if you play with a band. I personally have been a solo player for a long time, and my way of playing follows from that. Once I started playing with a band in the last few years, the situation changed fundamentally, and I have to relearn a large part of my repertoire of songs because I have to adapt my playing technique and instrument to the band. I have to say that re-learning songs that one knows by heart is much more difficult than learning completely new things. Well, and now with the topic "market" we also get to direct fixed costs: that is the cost of maintaining the instrument (in money) and our time required to practice new songs. If you enjoy the songs you practice, you can basically consider the time spent practicing them as a hobby. However, in my case, for example, the songs that are required of me (folk songs) are not the works that I enjoy playing (classical and jazz). In this case, I can also talk about my time spent practicing folk songs as an expense, because time is money. And finally, there is risk management. If I have to play at the farmer's market and the weather forecast is wet and rainy, I will not take a high-quality accordion (I would be sorry for the rust on the reeds) of course, but a lower-quality accordion that is a little heavier. A “little heavier” means I'm about as tired after two hours of playing it as I am after four hours of playing my lighter accordion (of course, I play stand-up). So my point of view is that if I didn't enjoy it and I didn't intrinsically love playing the accordion (=
), there wouldn't be enough money to make me do it…
…that's my two (euro)cents from central-eastern Europe...
