Related conversation here FWIW.
Yeah… for my OGs
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Thank you!
To be honest, It wouldnt have happened without this forum.
Its influenced me so much.
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you don’t want to get musicians involved, that’s where music always starts to go wrong.
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Just to add I have been making music for 20 years, but never professionally.
In a quest to get a decent job I went to uni and learned to be an engineer.
I am now a professional engineer. I suck at it, but I still get paid, however I can post here and discuss music openly at a pretty technical level. When I speak in meetings at work people roll their eyes and look at eachother until I shut up 
I like to think I’m a musician at heart and have been since I picked up a guitar when I was 15.
Accomplishment is over-rated.
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You’re a musician when elderly family members can say, “I don’t understand this.”
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Musicians do things with stuff to make sounds. They occasionally do that with other people in a space together. Sometimes they do this with the intent to explore and other times it’s to communicate something in particular.
There is a sort of interaction happening with the musicians and their instruments, the space and each other. Sometimes the sounds form what may be considered a song. Other times not so much. Either way… they’re still musicians.
There can be vocals, or not. The voice is an instrument. We are all musicians?
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been playing DJ gigs regularly and producing for over 10 years, live shows the last 2 years.
I still have imposter syndrome about being a “real musician” like a traditional one
We make noise. We are musicians. It doesn’t require anything else.
Some good replies in here
Hard to nail it down though, i think anybody that attempts to convey their thoughts/feelings through musical expression is a musician.
However, if you tell somebody, ‘im a musician.’ You better be able to back that up with something beyond the abstract statement
Attempting to refine my first comment
Being really good at making music won’t necessarily make you money
Making money by playing music doesn’t mean you are necessarily good at it.
If an EMP went off tonight and all your gear was toasted, could you still make music? Would you still make music?
Well I beg to differ- if you are a professional musician then yes you need to make money off music. But many good musicians don’t get lucky breaks or make money and are super talented. Me- I do it for pure fun as I have a day job to pay the bills and dislike the excess pressure to perform making music as it feels too much like a job and work.
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sounded like a joke to me 
Anyone who makes music is a musician.
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And those that sell gear are musicians friend
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Yo, call me if you’ve got a deal.
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I remember maybe 15 years ago I had my first real music room set up with my MPC, Juno 106, Microkorg, DSI Evolver. My wife’s friend was visiting with her maybe 5 or 6 year old daughter, who was taking piano lessons. When her daughter saw my keyboards her face lit up and she innocently said, “Play me a song!”. Oh man, I felt like a hack. Haha. I think I hooked the sampler up and let her bang on some drums.
I think my standard response to my music hobby is “I like to mess around with music”.
I’ve played guitar since I was in high school, but have never been a great guitar player.
The last couple of years I have actually been on a quest to finally become a “legit musician” (in my mind). I’ve always had tremendous respect for jazz musicians, but horns and drums are out of the question because of volume restraints. I ended up going with the flute because I love the sound on old jazz-funk albums, and have been taking lessons at a pretty legit music school here in Tokyo. I’ve moved up to the intermediate level (second of three levels), can read music, I do duets with my teacher, and have learned dozens of songs as well as scales, arpeggios. I’m still not there though.
I guess being “a musician” to me feels like fluency and confidence on an instrument and that’s what I’m going for.
I’m fluent in Japanese and I think language is a comparable analogy. If you know a handful of phrases from a guidebook, would you say you speak French? I think for most people, the bar is set at being able to converse fluently (and probably read). In my mind that is what I aspire to with an instrument.
That said, it’s all just words. Call yourself whatever you want. Just be careful when a 5 year old asks you to play a song or two for them. 
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This was the answer I was waiting for.
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you might not be able to play jazz with a handful of phrases, but you could still play punk and the blues
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