Advice for starting a career in music?

Other than just being damn good, seems to me it's important to know your niche.  Steve Vai got an audition (and later a job) with Zappa after simply sending him a tape of his playing.









Edited by Atavachron - March 02 2009 at 19:06

dont call your band prog metal 

Yeah i've gotten a lot of auditions through videos of me playing and just showing off my skills.

darkshade wrote: dont call your band prog metal

We don't really    Metal / Progressive / Other www.myspace.com/myridreflektion

^Micky's just bulsh*tting you, I think . .. 

If you want to be a professional musician, as in studio musician, a hired hand, you have to have alot of breadth and depth, and be able to give people what they want instantly. If they say they want country, you can do it, if they want 5/4 jazz, you do it. You have to know theory, have a great ear, in short, be a complete musician.

Learn & appreciate between your friends & family liking your music, and it actually being good enough to be liked by total strangers who will pay money to see listen to it or see you play live.
And if you can't attract attention beyond that first group, it may or may not mean you're no good. It does mean that you have to take a serious look at your music, or listen, rather ...

Sometimes i just feel like i'm wasting my time in high school when i could be going to music college or working to pay for college.

My drum teacher works at a music store and has about 8 students a day all paying 50 dollars each and he makes enough money to pay for all his bills, and he got his GED and went to a 1 year program at McNally School of music. And looks for bands during the summer.

I like and am good at teaching and already teach out of my house, so I could do that or just work at a regular job to make money, take my GED and SAT and then start applying to music colleges with a video of my playing or audio file, which many music schools take for applications. Then i could take out student loans to pay.

But i will be learning piano because they do usually want you to have a secondary instrument usually piano.

hawkcwg wrote: Sometimes i just feel like i'm wasting my time in high school when i could be going to music college or working to pay for college. My drum teacher works at a music store and has about 8 students a day all paying 50 dollars each and he makes enough money to pay for all his bills, and he got his GED and went to a 1 year program at McNally School of music. And looks for bands during the summer. I like and am good at teaching and already teach out of my house, so I could do that or just work at a regular job to make money, take my GED and SAT and then start applying to music colleges with a video of my playing or audio file, which many music schools take for applications. Then i could take out student loans to pay. But i will be learning piano because they do usually want you to have a secondary instrument usually piano.

Finish school and make a career in music plan B rather than plan A.
A lot of people end up in severe financial ruin because they didn't do their homework on the music business, weren't in the right place at the right time etc and had no backup plan like a good education and a stable day job to go to.
As everyone else has said in this thread, actually earning a living to give you a good standard of living playing music is pretty rare.
Some guys have done it and still do it, but even then the people that 'make it' are making about as much as a school teacher at most.
And even for those that 'kinda make it',  they have day jobs, or they have things like investment properties or whatever to make up the extra dollars to ensure they can afford eat each day.

Heh, when I was young 16-17 like you, I was full of these dreams too dude, don't worry, idealistic and all.
But you get older (hell, I'm still fairly young at 20 though), you start doing your research, you find out what kind of money musicians really earn for selling records, doing gigs etc and I realized it really wouldn't be worth the trouble trying to make a living playing music.

As a 20 year old, I've decided I want to get into guitar teaching instead of trying to make it in a metal band and even then I can't be sure how steady the wage would be and hell, will people will still be playing guitar in 30 years time or will the guitar become a relic of the past, effectively rendering me out of the job?
I'll start slowly at first since I already have other employment right now, meaning I would limited to teaching on weekends or Fridays, but it's a start.
You mention your drum teacher charges 50 per hour which is about 75 AUD over here.
He must be a lucky guy and a real good teacher to charge that, because most music teachers would be charging 25-30 over in the US.

Sure, as a guitar teacher, I might never have the chance to tour the world, will never have a few thousand adoring fans across the world, wont get to do all the cool things touring musicians do, but on the other hand, chances are I'll get to eat everyday, wont have to go through all the stressful details of touring because touring ain't glamorous nor is it easy for anyone, and it's especially harder for those who aren't that big, so if you still have that misconception that you expect to go on the road and have it easy, lose that thought.
The lack of sleep, the being away from friends and family is going to take a toll on you and having spoken to guys that are in fairly sucessful metal bands with endorsement deals and what not, they have all pretty much told me it's not an easy life by any stretch of the imagination, but for the good things it does bring them playing music, they were willing to make the sacrifice to get there.

Want to get into music?
Think about it extremely carefully.
Don't get into it now if you don't have to. Wait until you've matured a little, at least over the age of 21, so give yourself a few years, finish school first, before you commit yourself to it and even then, just goddamn hope things are gonna run smooth eventually.