1.   Flaussing (makes my dentist happy)

2.   Catching up on email

3.   Exercising

4.   Cooking

5.   Balancing my checkbook

6.   Tapping my foot in time with a steady beat

7.   Repetitive guitar exercises

If you think about it, there are probably a whole list of tedius things you can get out of the way while you are watching television, which really don’t require a whole lot of concentration.  One reason I like to spend time practicing guitar in front of the television is because my mind is not locked into play mode.  I can really slow things down and work on those finger exercises that would otherwise be absolutely boring to do, if there wasn’t something else going on in the background to occupy my mind.  The pay off is that I get in a good half an hour to hour’s worth of quality practice, which helps out to improve my playing tremendously.  Plus, by distracting my mind from the guitar while I learn to play many of these patterns, I’ve noticed that it becomes far more natural when I go to execute the exercise in a real situation.

If it weren’t for practicing while watching television, I probably never would have put in the time to learn how to pick tap entire scales.  It was one of those two handed exercises that I really wasn’t all that great at starting out.  But, over the course of a month or so, working diligently in front of the television, it just began to feel more and more natural.  Today, I can pick tap my way through scales and runs that are just mind blowing.  And what is great is that you can do things like that too.  So, instead of wasting your time just sitting in front of the television, start using that time to make subtle improvements to your abilities as a musician while you are watching your favorite show.  You won’t believe how time well spent adds up to huge rewards in just a few short weeks.

Your band might have a creative sound and a lot of talent, but if you don’t have a solid marketing strategy, you aren’t likely going to be getting outside of your mother’s garage anytime soon. The first step to developing a sound marketing strategy is to do a little basic market research. Although it is helpful to have a manager and a team of promoters to help market your band for you, chances are you will probably have to learn to do a lot of this leg work for yourself until you can afford a team of professionals to take over the bulk of this part of the music business for your band. In the meantime, understanding your local music industry is an important step towards a more successful music career for the members of your band.
Mastering your local music industry starts with evaluating who your band is and what venues you should be playing in. So, getting your hands on a basic list of venues in your area that host live talent is a good starting point. Often there is a local area publication for most cities that makes this information publicly available. From here, you need to isolate the particular venues in your area that hire bands for gigs that play your type of music. Once you have narrowed the choices down to a list of appropriate venues, then you will want to start visiting these venues and take some notes on what it takes to get your band hired. You will also want to take notes on what goes on in each venue. Who is the owner, who works behind the counter, who are the regulars, is it a rough joint, and which nights are scheduled for live shows etc., etc., etc.. It’s helpful to keep a computer profile on each establishment you would like to play in for your personal reference. Remember, you are not just an entertainer, but you are also a business person and a representative of the venues that hire you. And if you want venues to hire your band again and again, it is a good idea to learn to interact professionally and competently with both the staff and the patrons. So, you might have a computerized listing that looks something like this.

Name:
Joe’s Night Club

Location:
3974 Spikeheart Lane
Atlanta GA, 34091

Phone:
770-335-CLUB

Owner:
Joe Prescott” JP@Joe’sclub.com

Staff:
Jack Taylor: Door man
Jimmy Joseph: Bouncer
Jeff Daily: Bar Tender

Regular Patrons:
Andrew Mills: Amills@aka.net
Kate Lemon: Katelem@riverside.com

Comments:
Joe does not advertise gigs and expects bands to do their own advertising.
He seems to be more pleasant if you return his calls promptly.
He mentioned that our pres kit didn’t look very professional (We will want to check into that).
Live bands play every Tuesday and Saturday nights.

Jack says that Joe doesn’t always pay bands what he promises.

Andrew likes it when we play Satriani covers (Remember to throw in a couple next time).

Kate is a big Rush fan (We don’t know any Rush tunes, but maybe we should learn one and add it to our third set).

As you learn more about a venue and the people who frequent it, it is useful to update your information about that establishment. Of course, you will learn through trial and error how much information you really need to keep on hand about a venue, but the more you know the easier it is to avoid problems and insure that things go smoothly when you perform. It also helps when you make the necessary improvements to your band, which both improves your professional image and often works to impress the guy responsible for hiring local talent at the venue. It’s little things like this that other bands fail to do that will give you the competitive edge. Knowing that Andrew likes Satriani covers, for example, helps you to immediately improve your image among your fans, if you give them what they want. Remember, people like Andrew and Kate are paying to see you play, so in part keeping them happy can go a long way towards improving your overall job security, if Joe sees that you keep his regulars satisfied and returning from week to week.

Beyond the bars and parties, there are also key music industry professionals who are involved in other aspects of the music industry in your area. Sound engineers, producers, radio announcers, and the like. You should make it a point to keep tabs on these individuals as well in your informational data base. You never know when you will need the services of a competent sound engineer, or when going out of your way to greet a radio announcer will have that announcer talking positively about you on their show the next time they are on the air. Building solid contacts and getting free advertising like that is all part of what is involved in mastering your local music industry.

The first step to generating good sales starts long before you ever have your CDs and shirts manufactured.  You have to ask yourself some honest questions.  Would you buy your own t-shirts?  Would you buy your own CDs?  Or, would you feel gypped if you got home and realized the t-shirts are thin and frail and the sound quality on the CD just isn’t all that great?  If you rub your fans the wrong way early on in your music career, it’s only going to be a hundred times harder down the road to convince these customers to buy from you again.  The rule of thumb is to never sell a customer a product that you wouldn’t be happy with spending your hard-earned money on yourself.  So, when you have your CDs and t-shirts manufactured, make certain that the products you are having manufactured are good quality products.  You might be able to get by with selling poor quality products once to your loyal fans, but in a weak economy it’s really not such a great idea.  That is to say, unless you just don’t care about the future of your music career or the reputation of your band.

Once your CDs and t-shirts come in, you should take a sample of your products home and enjoy them.  If you are going to sell t-shirts and CDs, get to know these products intimately.  It’s much easier to talk about products you yourself use than products you are unfamiliar with. Get to know the song order on your CD by heart and be able to intelligently talk about the artist that created your artwork, logo, and the picture on your t-shirt.  When your fan can see that you take your product seriously, it motivates them to take you and your product seriously.  If they get the sense that you don’t care about your product, they will not be motivated to care.  People are more apt to buy your product, when they see that you care and you are enthusiastic about it.  The idea is to help them to share in the vision of your band to the point that they not only want to buy your products, but they want to go tell their friends to buy your t-shirts and CDs also.

A lot of bands make a huge mistake in leaving some unknown person around the product table to sell items for the band.  Your fans don’t come to your gigs to talk to people they don’t know.  If you are standing by the CDs and t-shirts, you can have a profound effect on the number of sales you make as people make their way to where you are standing.  When they get there, you pick up a shirt and/or a CD and start getting your products into their hands.  The longer you can get a person to hold a product and relate to that product emotionally, the harder it is for a lot of people to let the product go–especially if there is the added emotional experience of getting to meet a band member.

You are always going to run across fans who are a tough sale.  They have money in their pocket, but they just aren’t the type to part with money easily.  Even though you are in business to make money, it is important to recognize when it is worth it to take a small loss on a product for a loyal fan.  If a fan feels like you treated them fairly and made a small sacrifice to pump their enjoyment level through the roof, chances are they will be willing to attend more gigs and buy from you again later when you come out with your next CD.  People often remember acts of kindness.  And if it is someone like me, I’d take that CD home and go brag to all my friends how this cool band gave me this awesome deal on a CD last night.  So, taking a small loss like that, just to make the sale, isn’t always such a bad idea.  Another benefit to doing this is that when people see that others are buying your products, it sometimes motivates them to want to get in on the action too. Sometimes the mere perception that others value your products and are willing to pay real cash for them is enough to convince the onlooker to follow suit and pay full price.  So, when you go to take a loss, precalculate how many CDs you will need to sell to insure overall that there will turn out to be a profit by the end of the night.  Work all this out before you even get to your gig so that when it comes time to negotiate sales, you won’t hesitate or doubt yourself.  Signs of hesitation and self doubt when negotiating a sale can often be a huge deal breaker.  You want to come off selling with confidence, not looking weak and sheepish.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that running a deal is a good way to sell multiple products at once.  For example, you might make it clear to your fans that the first 10 people who buy your CD get a t-shirt at half price.  It’s just another way to invest in your fans in order to get them to invest in you in return.  Again, you want to work the figures out ahead of time so as not to make it too difficult on yourself to pull a profit over all by the end of the night.  With a little experience, you can pretty much gage how to run a good deal and move a lot of product at the same time.

Now, here is an added little bonus.  When you see people buying t-shirts, pull them aside and have someone else there to take their cell phone and offer to take a picture with them in their new band t-shirt. It makes them feel good because you are willing to give them something to talk about at work the next day  as they show off the picture they took with you to everyone else around the office.  Again, just more free exposure for the band.  And when other fans see that you are willing to do that, they will want to buy a t-shirt and get their picture taken with you too.  It’s little things like that that leave your fans feeling good and wanting more of the experience your band has to offer as it increases your product sales in the process.

For some, the road to new creative discoveries is long and frustrating. I remember after playing guitar for many years that I hit a rut that kept me grounded for two years.  I would play and play but nothing really new and exciting seemed to jump out and grab my attention.  To make matters worse, I began to get board with practicing the same stuff over and over again.  In all honesty, I became so board i put my guitar in its case and ignored it for nearly a year.  Sometimes a person will put an instrument down and never pick it up again.  Fortunately, I got to a point where I started missing the feel of my strat.  So, one day I pulled it out of the closet, plugged it in, and cranked the amp.  I noticed that it didn’t feel quite so stale to run the neck like it used to.

Now and then, I find myself being plagued by a creative rut.  It isn’t uncommon for me to put my guitar down for a week or so to clear my head, but I no longer take these super long breaks from playing.  Rather, I’ve developed other methods for handling creative defficiencies.  One thing I find really works well is to intentionally pick up a style of music to listen to that I don’t normally listen to.  To be a real musician, you have to be able to handle and appreciate music outside of your normal comfort zone.  The ability to learn to appreciate types of music beyond what you normally work with is a means to new ideas and perspectives on music.  Sometimes the mere attempt to fuse ideas from a style you aren’t so in love with with a style that you really like can lead to moments of pure creative genius.  Once I rigged my harmonizer and an old distortion pedal up to give me as close to a violin sound as I could conjure up and from imagining what it would be like to play my guitar more like a violin, I learned a whole new approach to bending notes that I now slip in to my normal playing from time to time.

In its essence, creativity is the art of experimentation.  You experiment because you are searching for something new to add to your unique playing style.  Sometimes you just have to push the envelope before you will come across an idea or a technique that no one else has exploited.  Those who spend time actively expirementing with new sounds and new approaches to playing or writing end up uncovering a lot of hidden treasure to add to their arsonal along the way.  Nowadays, I am constantly thinking up new things to experiment with just to broaden my horizons.  I mean, hooking picks to a drill bit?  Who would have ever believed it would work? 

Another great avenue to explore is to work with different artists. This can be a point of contention between a lot of musicians and their bands.  Lots of times people feel somewhat betrayed if you go off and play with another band for a while.  But, the reality is that musicians who get this kind of exposure to a variety of other people who approach music from different angles end up having far more to work with when it comes to expressing their creative talents.  So, you should be clear about your intentions with the band you are with before working with other musicians if you believe this could become a potential problem.  I constantly look for musicians who are just a bit better than I am to work with, because this gives me an opportunity to trade off ideas and still feel like I can keep up.  Where if you try to work with someone who is too far ahead of your abilities, that can sometimes be an awkward collaboration for both parties involved.  You simply need to decide if you are looking for a person to be your instructor or if you are looking for someone to learn along side because they are close to your playing level and their creative efforts are leaning in the same direction as yours.  Sometimes this second type of person is better than hiring a person to be your teacher, because you learn by doing in a more intuitive manner rather than by being told what to do by someone more experienced.  Both approaches have their advantages though.

In some situations, all it takes is a change of environment to inspire me to pump out new ideas.  One time it got so bad I started taking my acoustic to the beach just to put myself in a new setting.  So, there I am out on Clearwater beach in Florida and it’s like 1:30am.  The sound of the waves, the nice breeze, and the darkness all played a role in pushing me to explore new chordal relationships and connections.  In the first hour I kept having those aha moments that made me more and more intimately aware of ways to get from one point to another in a couple songs I was writing.  Those insights probably wouldn’t have come so easily if I had continued to allow myself to stagnate in my old environment.

One method I use quite often that i find to be rather interesting and fun to play around with is expressive communication.  Either I imagine that I am trying to use my guitar to speak to the audience or I imagine say the movement of an object such as an animal and try to describe it with music.  At first this can seem like a strange way to approach new ground in the creative realm.  But it pulls together a lot of your musical skill as you learn to paint your way around a song with musical phrasing in an attempt to convey what you feel when you think of a cat on the prowl or a forest filled with trees swaying in an intense wind. Or, maybe you are trying to convey a dancing flame flickering about on a candle.  Whatever the object of your focus happens to be, it helps to set your mind in the mood to forge new ideas by giving yourself a theme of sorts to work with.  Of course, these are simply a few of the techniques I use to help myself move through a creative slump.  So, I hope this inspires you to pick up your talent where you last left off and use a new approach to get the creative juices flowing again.

Every week I look forward to that two or three hours that I have set aside to work on the things I want to work on.  Things that will make me a much better musician.  Sometimes it is time spent pulling the metronome out to work out any timing glitches creeping into my playing. Other times it is examining the shape of a scale on the fretboard to see if I can find some new slick arrangement of notes to incorporate into a run.  Sometimes it’s just time I spend looking up articles written by other musicians to find out what is going on in the world of guitar.  You never know when some hot shot is going to come out with the next revolutionary technique that helps to further separate the pros from the amateurs.  And it is useful to be up to date with new techniques and approaches, because every little bit that you learn can enhance your ability to play.  It can also make it easier to more efficiently contribute to your band when it comes time to move beyond cover tunes and into writing your own original pieces.

When putting a personal practice session into your weekly schedule, it is a good idea to have a sense of what you plan to work on.  A lot of guys know that it is important to set time aside to do this, but they don’t have a clear sense of what they should be doing with their time. Consequently, their personal practice sessions aren’t very productive. What I find works best for me is to keep a notebook filled with techniques I want to work on, concepts I want to learn more about, and music I want to listen to.  Any time a new issue comes up, I write it down in my book.  Before long, you find that you have a rather exhaustive list of ideas to both research and incorperate into your playing that wasn’t so readily at your fingertips before you started taking notes.

The most important things to take note of are areas where you know you are weak.  Working out the trouble areas in your playing will benefit you as a musician more than anything else.  For me, it is more often a simple matter of slowing things down and getting in the habit of executing a technique or run correctly.  It’s a lot of hard work to advance your own playing and work out your own glitches, but the reward of meeting your goals is worth the effort expended to hit the nail on the head.  So, if you want to be successful as an aspiring musician, make sure to set aside time for your own personal practice sessions every week.

Creative Megalomania

Is the person who assigned themselves the leader over the band a complete megalomaniac and control freak?  If so, it is usually a waste of time trying to remedy this problem.  You have to ask yourself an important question in situations like this.  Do you want to spend more time working on perfecting your creative potential or playing therapist to other band members being abused by an idiot who doesn’t respect anyone’s ideas but his/her own?  Or, if you are being a control freak, is it really your goal to destroy your band in an attempt to wield power over others?

There is nothing professional or healthy about a band being bossed around by a control freak.  It is generally a good policy to make for the door as soon as you realize that you are in this type of situation. Most bands like this are doomed to failure before they even play their first gig.  So, before you decide to join a new band, it is a good idea to spend some time asking the members how they like being a part of the band in question.  If you find that the members consistantly complain that one of the other band members just takes over and causes lots of problems, you may be inheriting a lot of unwanted issues to deal with. So, make sure you get to know the people and personalities in a band before you agree to be a part of a group that spends more time insuring its failure rather than insuring its success. 

Practice before You Party

We all like to have fun, but an unfortunate problem in the music industry is that some people party to the point that it ruins not only their career but the careers of everyone else in the band.  When another members addictions prevents them from showing up to practice or gigs, it only makes them a liability to everyone else involved.  It’s far more beneficial for everyone in your band if you all agree that practice comes first.  I much prefer to work with people who do not have substance abuse problems than with people who do.  You never know who is going to get you entangled into their problems and people who are involved in over indulgence usually bring the worse kind of problems around.  And more often than not, they are willing to get you entrenched in their problems and not help you out after the damage is done.  So, the question is do you want a music career or do you want to be sucked into someone elses problems and addictions?  If you want a music career, then make sure practice comes first and that everyone in your band is clear about that.  And the minute someone decides that their addictions come first, get rid of them because they are really saying that the band doesn’t matter.  Rather, all that matters is their own selfish desire to indulge at the bands expense.

Be Professional

Immaturity may get you somewhere with the drunken fans that hang around the club where you gig.  But, when it comes to building relationships with other music industry professionals, make sure that they don’t walk away thinking your band is a bunch of immature morons.  I’ve listened to a lot of interviews by bands who are unsigned and struggling to make it, and it is no wonder why they are struggling.  In a lot of cases it is because they never took a good look at themselves in the mirror or listened to themselves talk.  It’s a good idea to have a friend with a video camera sit your band down in a nice setting and help you to develop some interviewing skills.  A little polish on the brass doesn’t hurt to prepare you for the real inspection.  This way, when you do speak to someone who has some clout in the music industry, you might actually impress them enough to want to take a risk on helping your band get the funds it needs to get your music career off the ground. 

It is important to be sure to watch your own home interview videos and to take some notes on where you could personally work on making some improvements.  If you have difficulty with public speaking in general, you can always look into groups like Toastmasters to help you develop the skill of speaking well in front of other people.  It’s a good skill to have even if your music career doesn’t pan out as you had hoped. Also, pay attention to your body language.  Don’t have a retarded look on your face and try to look somewhat interested even if you aren’t. Fans tend to relate better to musicians who show that they are having some degree of fun.

Know your Band’s Financial Status

It’s always a good idea for the members of a band to set up a regular meeting to go over the books.  Whoever is keeping your finances in order should be able to provide every member of the band with a statement of how the band’s money is being spent.  You don’t want to find out months down the road that your hard earned money walked right out from under your nose and went into someone else’s pocket when it should have been going into your pocket.  You also want to be clear about the financial terms.  If a certain portion of your earnings is supposed to go to the band fund to insure that you can replace equipment that breaks or to work on your tour bus, then you want to be fully aware that that is where the money is actually going.  Nothing gets a potentially successful band into more trouble than when the members ignore their duty of staying on top of the finances.  This is one of those areas that will cause more bickering and fighting among band members than you want to believe.  Mismanaged money can destroy a band from the inside out so fast it will make your head spin.

Goals and Deadlines 

It is always a good idea to write out a list of goals and state some expected deadlines to help insure that more of your time is spent working towards real progress than wasting time.  When all the band members are on the same page and know what is expected of them, it helps to keep your band operating like a well-oiled machine.  It’s also good for morale when the members of a band see that everyone is doing their part and that the band is actually meeting its goals from the standpoint of working together as a team.  Again, this sort of formal structure and team work just adds to the overall professional look of a band.

Dealing with Criticism

You could be the best musicians on the planet and still there will be critics and disgruntled fans who will simply bad mouth you every step of the way.  The more you let criticism get between you and your success as a musician, the worse it will be for everyone in your band.  It is often a good idea to sit down with your band and make sure that any negative press will be met with a positive attitude.  The more maturely you handle negative press and critical fans, the easier it will be to put such criticism behind you and move on to what is important.

Dealing with Hardship

It never fails.  No matter how prepared you think you are, something is going to pop up that puts a strain on the relationships in your band. It could be the death of a fellow band member, a tragic accident that severs three fingers off your guitarist’s fretting hand two hours before you open for Ozzie, or your wall of amps might take a tumble causing thousands of dollars in damage.  It’s not a matter of if it will happen but more a matter of when it will happen.  So, you should start to mentally prepare yourself for these sorts of problems early on and be ready for when they strike.  Who knew that your pyrotecnics team would burn down the venue you were playing at killing three people in the process and injuring many others?  It’s publicity like this that can ruin a band even at the height of its career.  But, if you handle things professionally and as mentally stable as you can, it makes your chances of working through hardship like this much better than if you panic.

In closing, it is up to you to make a list of problems to watch out for for yourself.  These are just some of the more obvious problems that can happen.  And it would be nice if I could provide you with an exhaustive list of all possibilities, but unfortunately there are too many to mention here.  But, if you take the time to get together with other members in your band and do the necessary brain storming to cover your bases, you can do a lot to insure that your band will exude a healthy atmosphere for all its members and for your fans as well.