Questions to Ask a Musician
Questions for a working musician, whether you are learning from one, talking after a gig, or deciding which questions to ask musicians in an interview for a podcast, a student paper or a local magazine. They cover how they practise, theory and playing by ear, where songs come from, playing with other people, the best and worst gigs, and how the money works. For the formally taught, there are interview questions to ask a trained musician about lessons, sight-reading, auditions and what the training left out.
Want questions from the whole vault instead? Try the random question generator.
The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
What instrument did you start on, and who taught you?
Why ask it
A plain opener that gives you their lineage. Self-taught players and conservatory players describe the same skills in different vocabulary, and knowing which you are talking to changes how you read every later answer.
What did your practice look like at the start, compared with now?
Why ask it
Beginners assume experts practise more. Usually the hours went down and the precision went up, and hearing exactly how tells you what to change about your own hour.
On a normal day, how long do you actually play, and how is that time split?
Why ask it
Ask for the split, not the total: warm-up, technique, repertoire, improvising, listening. If the whole hour is playing pieces they already know, that is worth noticing too.
Is there a drill you still do that you learned as a beginner?
Why ask it
The exercises that survive twenty years are the ones that work. It also quietly tells you that fundamentals are not something advanced players graduate from.
How much theory do you use in a normal week?
Why ask it
Answers range from constantly to almost never, and both can be true depending on the setting. Push for a concrete example, since a session player naming chord charts is telling you something a general answer would hide.
What is the fastest way you know to learn a new piece?
Why ask it
Look for a sequence rather than a virtue: hands separately, slow with a metronome, last bar first, structure before notes. Answers that amount to repetition mean they may not have thought about method.
How do you practise something you are bad at without losing patience?
Why ask it
This is the real bottleneck for most learners, not talent. Useful answers are small and specific, such as a fixed number of repetitions or ending a session on something that already works.
How do you know when you have learned a piece rather than memorised it?
Why ask it
The tests people use are revealing: starting from any bar, playing it slowly, playing it after a week off. If they have no test, they may be relying on muscle memory that fails on stage.
How do you build time without a metronome?
Why ask it
Internal time is the skill non-musicians never think to ask about and bandleaders hire for. Expect subdivision exercises, playing along with records, or years of drumming on a steering wheel.
Walk me through learning a part by ear, step by step.
Why ask it
You want the actual procedure: find the lowest note, find the bass line, guess the key, slow it down. Players who do this well usually cannot explain it until asked to narrate it.
What did a teacher tell you that only made sense years later?
Why ask it
The delayed lessons are the deep ones, often about relaxation, listening, or leaving space. Ask what changed to make it land, since that is the part you can look for in yourself.
What formal training have you had, and how many years of it?
Why ask it
Trained can mean a conservatory degree, graded exams, a church choir, or ten years with one private teacher. Get the specifics early in an interview, because everything they say later about technique sits on top of it.
What did that training give you that you could not have picked up alone?
Why ask it
Reading, a technique that holds under pressure, and a teacher who caught problems before they set are the usual candidates. If they struggle to name anything, that is an answer too, and worth a follow-up.
What did you have to learn on the job that no teacher covered?
Why ask it
Improvising, playing from a chord chart, working with a microphone and chasing their own bookings all come up. The gap is different for an orchestral player and a jazz graduate, so ask which room exposed it.
How well do you sight-read, and how often does a job depend on it?
Why ask it
In pit bands, sessions and church work, reading at sight can decide who gets the call, while some touring players go years without a page in front of them. The answer places them on that map.
Tell me about an audition or exam you still remember: what did you play, and how did it go?
Why ask it
A trained musician can usually name the piece, the panel and the bar where it wobbled. It is a story with stakes, which an interview needs after a stretch of talk about method.
Do you still take lessons, or play for someone whose ear you trust?
Why ask it
Some professionals keep a teacher, or a colleague they play for, long after the certificates are framed. Who that person is, and what they last corrected, shows what the musician is working toward now.
When you listen for pleasure, can you switch the analysis off?
Why ask it
Training teaches people to hear intervals, voicings and tuning whether they want to or not. Some miss listening the way they did at fourteen, and some say the detail is the pleasure.
What bad habit took you longest to unlearn?
Why ask it
Almost always something physical or rhythmic that felt fine at the time: gripping too hard, rushing fills, ignoring the left hand. Hearing it now may save you the same detour.
How do you look after your hands, ears, and voice?
Why ask it
Hearing damage and repetitive strain end more careers than lack of talent. A vague answer from someone who plays loud rooms nightly is itself the warning.
What do you do about nerves in the ten minutes before you go on?
Why ask it
Look for a routine rather than a philosophy: breathing, a specific warm-up, avoiding the room, eating at a fixed time. Players who say they are never nervous are often describing a routine they no longer notice.
What do you listen for when you record yourself?
Why ask it
Recording is the cheapest teacher, and the answer tells you what to listen for in your own playing: timing against the beat, dynamics, note endings, breath. Most learners only hear mistakes.
What is the difference between playing well alone and playing well with others?
Why ask it
Ensemble skill is largely about volume, timing, and leaving room, none of which practice rooms teach. Expect an example of a technically strong player who was hard to play with.
How do you follow someone else's lead in a group?
Why ask it
This is the mechanics of listening: watching the drummer's hands, the bass player's neck, a breath before an entry. It is teachable and rarely taught.
If you had to rebuild your playing from nothing in a year, what would you do?
Why ask it
A thought experiment that reorders their priorities out loud, usually cutting most of what they were taught. What they keep is the syllabus you should be following.
What do you say to a student who wants to quit?
Why ask it
Teachers hear this at predictable stages, and the good answers are diagnostic: unclear goals, a piece too far above level, or practising alone for too long. Any of those may describe you.
What are you still not good at, and what are you doing about it?
Why ask it
Ask last, once trust is there. A working musician naming a specific weakness and a current exercise for it is the clearest demonstration of how the craft actually progresses.
What was the first song you learned that made you want to keep going?
Why ask it
More specific than asking how they started, and it tends to produce a title and an age rather than the origin story they have told a hundred times.
What is the hardest thing you have learned to play, and how long did it take?
Why ask it
This gets a measurable answer and usually a demonstration. The timescale tends to surprise listeners, which is exactly why it is worth asking in front of anyone who thinks progress should be fast.
What are you working on at the moment?
Why ask it
Asking about current work rather than past achievement gets you a live answer instead of a rehearsed one. It also gives them the option to talk about something unfinished, which is where the interesting detail usually is.
For someone hearing you for the first time, which song should they start with, and why that one?
Why ask it
Whoever reads or hears the interview wants a way in, and this hands them one in the musician's own words. The pick is often not the best-known track, and the reason is the part worth quoting.
How do you describe what you play to a relative who has never heard it?
Why ask it
Asking for a genre gets a sigh. Asking how they explain it at a family dinner gets a sentence they have had to practise, usually funnier and clearer than the official one.
Which of your songs changed the most between the first version and the one people know?
Why ask it
A before and after gives an interview a concrete scene: the tempo that was halved, the verse that was cut, the bandmate who suggested it. If a demo survives, ask whether you may play or quote a few seconds of it.
Is there a song you wrote that means something different to you now?
Why ask it
The song stays put while the person singing it gets older. They can talk about how they have changed without being asked a direct personal question, and they choose how far to go.
How does a song start for you: words, a riff, or something you hear in your head?
Why ask it
Writers tend to have one reliable entry point and know it. If the answer is that it varies every time, ask about the most recent one specifically, since a single example beats a general description of a process.
What do you do on a day when nothing comes?
Why ask it
Answers divide between people who keep working through it and people who leave the room. The specifics are the usable part: a time limit, switching instruments, transcribing somebody else.
What do you do with an idea that is good but will not become a whole song?
Why ask it
The answer reveals the actual working method: a voice memo folder, a notebook, or nothing at all. Many players have hundreds of fragments and a system for revisiting them, and that system is more instructive than any advice about inspiration.
How long does something take to go from an idea to a version you would play for people?
Why ask it
Ask for a real number on a real song. The gap between writing and being willing to perform it is where arrangement, self-editing, and nerves all sit.
How do you know when a song is finished?
Why ask it
Most musicians have a rough test: it survives being played to one person, it stops changing, or a booking decides for them. No two people answer this the same way.
When you play with other people, how do you decide who plays what?
Why ask it
Arrangement decisions in a small group are made partly by ear and partly by hierarchy. Asking how it gets settled reveals how the band actually functions when nobody is watching.
What happens when someone in the band wants to take a song somewhere you do not?
Why ask it
Creative disagreement is the main reason bands end. A specific example, and who gave way, tells you more about collaboration than any answer about communication.
What did you learn from playing with someone much better than you?
Why ask it
Puts collaboration in concrete terms. The lesson is usually about listening or holding back rather than about technique.
How do you run a rehearsal without wasting everyone's evening?
Why ask it
Working musicians have firm opinions here. Listen for an agenda, a rule about who can call a stop, and how the time splits between new material and repairs.
What do you do when you make a mistake in the middle of a song?
Why ask it
Professionals almost universally say to keep going and that audiences rarely notice. Ask for a time it happened and what actually gave them away, which is usually the face rather than the note.
What is the best room or crowd you have played to, and what made it work?
Why ask it
The answer is often not the biggest show. Listen for what they credit: the sound in the room, an attentive audience, a band that was locked in. It tells you what they are actually chasing.
What is the worst gig you have played, and what did you take from it?
Why ask it
The disaster stories are both entertaining and instructive, and they usually contain the practical lesson: bring spare strings, check the power, do not trust the house monitor.
What is the strangest place you have ever played?
Why ask it
Every gigging musician has this story loaded and ready. It is a better opener than asking about their music because it puts them in storyteller mode instead of promotion mode.
What is the smallest crowd you have played to, and did you still do the full set?
Why ask it
The number is entertaining, but the follow-up is the real question. Whether they played the whole set to four people tells you what kind of band this is.
What goes wrong at gigs that the audience never notices?
Why ask it
This is the good stuff: dead batteries, wrong keys, a bass player counting silently through a whole verse. It also shows how much of a performance is quiet crisis management.
What is the most requested song you refuse to play?
Why ask it
There is nearly always one, and the reason is either principled or petty. Both are entertaining, and the refusal says more about them than their setlist does.
What does recording do to a song that playing it live does not?
Why ask it
The two forms pull in different directions: a recording is fixed and heard closely, a live version breathes and can be repaired in the moment. Musicians usually have strong views on which one a given song belongs to.
How do you tell whether a criticism of your playing is worth listening to?
Why ask it
Look for a filter rather than a feeling: whether the person can play, whether two people said the same thing, whether it points at something specific and fixable. Anyone who takes all criticism equally is either lying or miserable.
Who do you listen to that would surprise people who know your music?
Why ask it
More productive than asking about influences, which returns the names already printed on the press release.
What is the best show you have been in the audience for?
Why ask it
Musicians spend a lot of time being watched and rarely get asked what watching does to them. The answer is often from before they played at all.
How much of your income comes from playing, and where does the rest come from?
Why ask it
Many working musicians teach, do session work, or hold an unrelated job. Asking plainly is more respectful than assuming either poverty or success.
How do you decide what to charge for a gig?
Why ask it
Concrete, and rarely discussed in public. Listen for whether there is a floor they will not go below, and what makes them break it anyway.
What part of the business side did you have to learn the hard way?
Why ask it
Answers commonly involve contracts, splits between co-writers, and being paid late. The specifics matter to anyone about to sign something themselves.
What has playing taught you that has nothing to do with music?
Why ask it
Broad, so it works better once a conversation is warmed up. Answers tend to concern repetition, patience, or reading a room full of people.
What do beginners spend time on that you would tell them to skip?
Why ask it
Answers tend to be pointed: buying gear instead of practising, learning fragments of many songs, avoiding the metronome, never playing with other people. This is the single most useful question for anyone starting an instrument.
What would you tell someone deciding whether to try this seriously?
Why ask it
Musicians rarely give an unqualified yes. The conditions they attach to the answer are the part worth writing down.
What question are you tired of being asked, and what do you wish people asked instead?
Why ask it
It works late in an interview, when it reads as curiosity and not as a complaint about your own questions. Then ask the one they name, right there, and let them answer it.
Getting Real Answers About the Craft
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
When to ask
Craft questions: not right after a show
Straight off stage, a player is drained and being pulled in five directions. The light questions, about strange venues and the requests they refuse, are fine once the gear is packed, or in the van. For anything about method, ask for ten minutes at a rehearsal, a lesson, or over coffee, where they can think rather than perform.
Say what you play and where you are stuck
A musician who knows you have been at it for two years and cannot get through a barre chord change will give you a specific exercise. Asked in the abstract, they can only give platitudes.
Bring your instrument if you can
Most of the useful answers to technique questions are physical. Being able to hand it over turns a five-minute explanation into a thirty-second demonstration.
For an interview, pick fewer than you think
A musician with a soundcheck to get to will not sit through this whole list. For a twenty-minute interview choose eight or so, open with one that has a story in it, such as the strangest place they have played, and hold the money questions until they have decided you are not after a headline. Listen to their recent work beforehand, so you are not spending their time on what a search would have told you.
How to get past the polite answer
- Ask for the last time they did the thing, not what they generally do
- Ask for numbers: how many minutes, how many repetitions, how slow
- When they name a concept, ask them to show you one bar of it
- Write it down at the time, since practice advice evaporates within a day
- Try one change for two weeks before asking anybody else anything
What not to ask
Whether talent is real
It leads to a conversation neither of you can settle, and it lets them off giving you a method. Ask what they practised at your stage instead.
Their opinion of your favourite band
It burns the time you have and often ends somewhere awkward. If you want their listening habits, ask what is on in the van.
Gear before technique
Equipment questions are the easiest to answer and the least useful to you. Leave them until the end, when you have something to fit the gear to.