How
to Make a Financially and Personally Fulfilling Career
Playing
Guitar – Part 1
By
T. D. Clark
A big what
up to everyone out there in cyberspace and welcome to my 1st column
here at Shred Academy! My name is T. D. Clark and I am full time
pro guitar player for those who aren’t familiar with me, and I
am going to discuss how to make a financially and personally fulfilling
career playing guitar over the next few weeks, so here is the
first installment.
1. Know your instrument! You need to know your
theory, chord and scale applications, song structures etc. I would
suggest getting the Guitar Grimoire series to round out your education.
I would also highly recommend learning songs from all genres of
music from Pop to Rock to Jazz to Latin to Classical, whether
you like it or not, because every style has something you can
learn from and that can help your playing grow.
2. Determine what you want to do; perform, teach,
create your own music and sell it on CD or for download, make
works for hire music for TV/Cable, demo music products, score
for film, make instructional DVD’s or perhaps all of the above.
3. Create goals! One thing musicians are great
at is being creative. Another is being goaless LOL! Most musicians
think they will be found with their band jamming at some club,
or in their bedroom for that matter, sign a massive record deal
and live happily ever after! Well with the very few exceptions
this doesn’t happen. You need to set goals of what you want to
accomplish in a time frame and work hard to make them happen.
4. Execute goals! For Example; say you want to teach.
First determine how much your time is worth versus what the surrounding
community is willing to pay for lessons. Call all the local music
stores and figure out how much they charge, then go to every high
school, middle school, coffee shop, music store etc and put out
ads selling your services.
Or say that you want to make music for film. Start watching as
many films in that genre that you can and begin to write as many
song/loop ideas as possible. Then look on the internet for companies
that make films and contact them all! Get as many people to listen
to your muisc as you can. Do not be afraid to cold call anyone
no matter how big! Remember if they listen to your music there
is a possiblity they may not buy it. But if they never hear it
they will for sure not buy it.
The overall picture here is quit watching TV/ playing video games
and start making phone calls, flyers, getting contacts from the
internet. Remeber it is called the Music Business for a reason!
Next time, more useful tools to help you get more infromation
on the inner workings of the Biz
T.
D. Clark
