8. Perform For Charities Because They Will Work Super Hard to Get an Audience For You
This one is one of my favorites. An attorney I work with who actually has a Bachelor’s in Music related to me a few months back how she missed performing and would like to put on a concert.
She struggled with the idea of having to put together an audience – it can take quite a lot of effort to fill up a room of people if you don’t regularly perform!
So my suggestion to her was simple: put on a concert sponsored by a charity.
This is a super good suggestion because most charities already have an active, built-in audience. They can do the promotion for you and get people to come to your show. This benefits both you and the charity; the charity wants to invite as many people as possible in order to solicit donations, you on the other hand get to play for a bunch of people while not having to spend one penny promoting the show.
Pretty resourceful of you, wouldn’t you say?
All you have to do is show up, play, and mingle with the audience afterwards.
Performing with a charity also helps with how people see you – doing a show with a charity promotes a positive image of musicianship in your community, and all the concert attendees will be naturally interested in you since you will be the focal point of the event.
At the charity, you can work to increase your success by selling CDs, merchandise, or simply exchanging names. You can choose to get the contact information of people at the show, exchange business cards, or even ask people to sign up for a mailing list if you have one because you most certainly have one.
Oh, and by the way – my attorney friend went with the Dana Farber charity – she filled the concert hall seats up so much that some people had to stand at the door to watch.
7. Become An Unreal Sight-Reader: Here’s Why…
One of the best ways you can increase your success as a musician is to make yourself available for studio recording sessions.
Believe it or not, essentially every single recording studio operator has a black book of numbers and contacts of musicians. This is not only the summation of what is probably his entire client book, it is also a personal index of performers that he can call upon at any given time for any given paid session.
So should you get to know recording studio operators? Of course.
But at the end of the day, who do you think gets the most calls from the recording studio operator himself?
Right – the person who can sight-read the best. That’s because most musicians in recording studio sessions never see the music before they are in the actual studio. They have to be able to nail the music with near-perfect execution on the first try.
For many classical musicians, sight-reading a popular music track might sound easy compared to your Mozart and Stravinsky excerpts. Without question, from a technical perspective, the excerpts are usually not too challenging in some popular music genres.
That said, sight-reading jazz, rock, or other styles requires a completely different interpretation than classical music; in fact, it can sometimes throw off even the best of players. So, get good at sight-reading many genres and you will find yourself frequently called upon for studio sessions. From there, you will find yourself likely inundated with a number of other great opportunities.
With great sight-reading ability, you will be seen as a valuable resource of musical ability – I absolutely guarantee it.