The question is, “How would you classify a musician to be a ‘professional’?”

In my growing years, I saw a variety of bands here and abroad. The ones I call professional are those who made their musical talents their life’s major (and sometimes permanent) source of income. These are the people who futher developed their talents with more educational enhancements as well as memberships with professional organizations, music studios, movements or societies.

I fully agree with the article writer’s viewpoints. As an experienced musician myself (during my younder days in Maasin, Cebu and Manila), I can vouch that a lot of local bands can use some professional coaching in terms of word pronounciation (especially English), diction, microphone distancing, instrument volume and tune, public performance and etiquette. Meanwhile, band management should also continuously and proactively engage as receivers (listeners) of their band’s performance through proper control of volumes of respective speakers, proper tones of each equipment, and ultimately, proper distancing of players and instruments from the listening public. All in all, area acoustics, loudspeaker orientation/arrangement and angle, and proper equipment isolation come into play to ultimately implement an effective delivery of the intended music – for listening pleasure and entertainment.

During my time, we maintained sound technicians who continuously tracked and monitored the speaker volume output from our instruments and microphones. His job was to listen to our performance at a distance and occasionally make adjustments to our amplifiers (base, mid-range, treble, tone, tremolo, reverb, echo, distortion, etc.) as our gigs went through the given performance time frames.

The gist of my discussion here is ,I think, the article’s indirect message. My two cents worth…

Besides, Bisrock and the songs of Jose Marie Chan and the likes are different but they are all music.

Don’t consider rock, alternative rock, and ballad the same because each of these kinds of music has its own characteristics.