If you are a part-time musician and are wondering if it is possible to succeed as one, the answer according to experts is, Yes! Veterans in the sphere believe that it is possible for you to succeed as a part-time musician on your own terms. But in order to achieve success, you have to be persistent, resilient and tenacious. So, how do you continue to make music even when you are busy doing another job?
You carve out the time for rehearsals, studio time and probable tours on the days you are off and during breaks. You make sure to schedule in advance your creative days when you can play without interruptions. You have a tracking system to mark your progress. And finally, you get out of your comfort zone and start performing.
Tips for Succeeding as a Part-Time Musician
Focus on Your Goal To Succeed
There is one thing that creative people especially musicians fail at. It is called goal-setting. They do not take the time to pinpoint what they want to achieve and neither sit down with a plan of getting there. If you are a part-time musician you definitely cannot dedicate your whole day to your music and you have limited time to work on what is your true passion. So it is necessary that the time you spend on music is real quality time.
Without a goal, you will be lost and without a plan, you will be wasting your years just playing aimlessly. Whether you are a songwriter, composer, session musician, music teacher, sound engineer or beatmaker, you need to chalk out a successful career path for yourself. For this, you need to identify opportunities to build a steady base of clients and later on fans.
Do Not Be Afraid To Fail
Do not beat yourself up for not knowing everything that you need to in this sphere. You will learn eventually. Do not hold yourself to standards that are too high as then you will fail and be disappointed often. Instead, become humble, go out there, and do not be afraid of making mistakes. The fact is that one can never gain knowledge that is enough. Just give your performance your very best. Forget about doing things the right way and the wrong way as everything is a matter of perception. You will achieve clarity and find focus over time.
Just remember that failure is nothing but a mechanism that transmits feedback and tells you what can work for you and what will not. As long as you simply utilize that feedback to improve yourself and your techniques, no failure is too big to overcome.
Document Your Journey and Make Accounts Public
Recording your journey as a part-time musician can help you immensely and it can help others too who can draw inspiration from your experiences. What’s more, doing so can also enable you in creating new opportunities for yourself and building an audience for your music. Having a social media presence today for any artist is necessary. When you share your experiences over social media, you eventually begin to grow a following of steady fans and can even attract clients and make more sales.
However, you will be dedicating a majority of your time to your music so just a small amount of time remains for social media networking or building your website. Therefore, the key is to keep things simple. You can publish or write a blog or even record a quick audio or video post about what you are working on and post it on YouTube.
Build Your Network Using Strategy and Intention
You can choose the platform you want whether it be Twitter, Instagram or Facebook and then start connecting with people in a genuine and authentic way. Just publish something daily about your music and show up in that way. Be real and add value to people’s lives through your posts. It will keep you on top of people’s minds.
Most importantly, don’t try to sell yourself as it won’t get you anywhere. Instead, just have conversations and the best opportunities will come your way. But you have to be prepared to take up these opportunities.
