Deep Questions to Ask a Musician
For interviewers, podcasters, students and anyone curious about how music actually gets made. Twenty questions on how a song starts, what practice looks like on a normal day, dry spells, bad gigs, criticism that turned out to be right, and what playing has cost.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What was the first song you learned that made you want to keep going?
Why ask it
A specific song is a much better opener than a question about when they knew, which most musicians have answered a hundred times. The answer is often unfashionable, and admitting that tends to relax the conversation quickly.
How does a song usually start for you: a lyric, a riff, an accident?
Why ask it
Offering options gets a concrete answer instead of a description of creativity in general. Most people have one dominant route and one they wish they used more, and the gap between the two is where the interesting material sits.
What are you working on right now that is not finished?
Why ask it
Unfinished work is where people talk honestly, because there is nothing to defend yet. You also learn what stage stalls them: the second verse, the arrangement, the decision to let anyone else hear it.
What does your practice actually look like on a normal day?
Why ask it
Ask for the real version, including the days it does not happen. Honest answers involve boredom, timers, and drills chosen years ago for reasons they no longer remember, which is far more useful to a student than a philosophy of practice.
Which of your own pieces do you still like, and which do you avoid playing?
Why ask it
The avoided one usually has a story: it was written about someone, it was a hit they resent, it exposes a limitation. Asking both halves in one breath makes the second easier to answer without it sounding like a complaint.
What is a technique you spent months on that nobody notices?
Why ask it
Musicians know exactly what invisible work went into their sound, and are rarely asked. Answers are precise, about breath, timing, pedalling, a left-hand shift, and they tend to be the most quotable thing in an interview.
How do you know when a song is finished rather than abandoned?
Why ask it
Nobody has a clean rule, so you get an actual method: a deadline, a listener they trust, the point where more editing makes it worse. Anyone who claims certainty here is usually describing how they wish they worked.
What do you do when nothing comes for weeks?
Why ask it
Better than asking about creative blocks, because the timeframe forces specifics. Listen for whether they keep working through it or stop entirely, and whether the dry spell frightens them, which many will admit if you do not rush past it.
What has your instrument taught you that you did not expect?
Why ask it
The answer is often about temperament rather than music: patience, tolerance for repetition, how to fail in front of people. Musicians who have played for decades usually have something here they have never quite put into words.
Who could you not have done this without?
Why ask it
A teacher, a parent who drove them, a bandmate, someone who lent them an instrument. The answer names debts rather than influences, which is a different and more revealing question than who they admire.
What changed in your playing after your worst gig?
Why ask it
Everyone has one and most enjoy telling it, but the second half turns an anecdote into insight. Watch whether the change was technical, or about preparation, or about how much they let a room's mood affect them.
How do you handle the gap between what you hear in your head and what comes out?
Why ask it
Almost every musician lives with this and few are asked about it directly. Answers reveal whether they have made peace with it, still fight it, or have learned to work with what the instrument offers instead.
What do you listen for when you hear other musicians play?
Why ask it
This exposes their actual values, which are frequently different from what they say they admire. Some listen for time, some for tone, some for whether the player is taking any risk at all, and each answer explains their own playing.
What do you leave out on purpose?
Why ask it
Restraint is a deliberate craft decision and rarely discussed. Answers cover notes, effects, whole sections, and sometimes an entire technique they can do well but consider a crutch. Beginners find this the most useful thing in the conversation.
Which criticism turned out to be right?
Why ask it
Conceding a point is harder than describing how they cope with feedback, so the answer tells you more about them. It also usually comes with the name of the person who said it, and how long it took to admit they had a point.
What has music cost you?
Why ask it
Straight and worth asking once trust exists. Answers cover money, hearing, relationships, missed events, years of financial precarity. Musicians are often eager to discuss the cost because interviewers usually only ask about the rewards.
How do you feel in the ten minutes before you go on, and afterwards?
Why ask it
The two halves rarely match, and the second is less discussed: the flatness after a show can be harder than the nerves before it. Concrete answers about rituals in that window are more informative than any general remark about stage presence.
What have you had to say no to in order to keep playing?
Why ask it
Reveals the trade-offs behind a career that from outside looks like a series of yeses. Answers include jobs, cities, security, and occasionally other kinds of music they would have loved to pursue but could not afford to.
What do you want someone to feel at the end of your set?
Why ask it
This asks about intent rather than reception, and the answers are often surprisingly modest: less alone, awake, willing to try something. Musicians who cannot answer at all tend to be describing a set built around what they can play rather than what they mean.
What would you tell someone starting now that nobody told you?
Why ask it
Save this for the end, once they are warmed up, or you get platitudes. Good answers are unglamorous and practical: learn to record yourself, keep the contracts, protect your hearing, be easy to work with.
Interviewing a musician
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before and during
Listen to the work first, including the early work
Being able to reference a specific track, and something from before they were any good, changes the entire tone of the conversation. Musicians can tell within two questions whether you have actually listened.
Ask about process, not meaning
What does this song mean gets a guarded answer, because the meaning is usually private or already stated. How did you build it opens up freely, and the meaning tends to arrive on its own inside the answer.
Let them play if they offer
Demonstration is often easier than description, and a technique shown in ten seconds explains what five minutes of talking cannot. If you are recording, plan for this rather than treating it as an interruption.
Follow the technical detail
When they mention a tuning, a room, a piece of gear or a lucky take, ask about it. The specifics are where enthusiasm lives, and it is where the answers stop sounding like a press interview.
What kills the conversation
Comparisons to bigger names
You sound like a well-known artist is heard as being told they are derivative, even when meant as praise. Describe what you actually hear instead, in terms of the sound rather than the reference.
Asking about income sideways
Insinuating questions about whether they can live off it are grating. Asking directly what has had to be given up, as this list does, gets the same information and treats them as a professional.
Making it a lesson request
Interviews that quietly turn into free tuition, or into a pitch for your own project, end early. Keep those requests for the end and make them explicit.
Talking over the answer to show you understand
Completing their sentence about theory or gear removes any reason for them to keep explaining. Let the pause sit, even when you know where the sentence is going.
Adapting for who you are talking to
- Session and orchestral players: ask about serving someone else's music, and about sight-reading under pressure
- Songwriters: ask what they cut from the final version and why
- Teachers: ask what most students get wrong in their first year
- Amateurs and hobbyists: skip the cost and career questions, keep the ones about practice and dry spells
- Young players: ask what they are listening to now rather than about influences from before they were born