How To Start A Successful Music Career
by Tom Hess
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Do you need some immediate help on how to start a successful music career?
1. Practice to become a professional musician – Continuously work on improving your musical skills, but before you think, “That’s obvious. Tell me something I don’t know”, there are important things to consider.
It’s not necessarily about learning more techniques, improving your guitar speed or increasing the size of your chord vocabulary. Think about what a professional musician really needs to know and do musically.
Playing your instrument well at home is one thing, but playing well consistently in the studio or on stage is completely different, thus the training and practicing required to play well in those professional environments are also very different.
EARN A LOT MORE MONEY
PLAYING LIVE
EMAIL TO GET ACCESS
By submitting your info, you agree to send it to Tom Hess Music Corporation who will process and use it according to their privacy policy.
Amateurs practice something to get it right.
Professionals practice to never get it wrong.
So the next time you practice your guitar, instead of trying to play something faster or learn something new, focus on playing whatever you can already play consistently well.
Think about a professional guitar player like Eric Clapton.
He’s not a great technical guitar player at all, his knowledge of music theory is probably not vast, but one of the reasons why he became successful in his early days (and continues to be successful today) is because he can play on his own level ‘consistently well’ every night in any environment.
How do you build musical consistency?
Tip #1: Practice under stress.
Play your instrument while standing. Play while walking around. Play with unfamiliar instrument settings and tone. Play with your eyes closed. Practice at slightly faster tempos than you'll need for the show.
Tip #2: Play through mistakes
Nobody plays at 100% during a show. Nobody.
That means:
You'd better practice managing your mistakes.
This means:
Practice carrying on and continuing to play as if the mistake didn't happen. One way to do this is deliberately insert mistakes into your musical parts.
This not only helps you practice playing through mistakes, but also trains you to control your emotions when mistakes happen.
(Note: of course only insert mistakes briefly. After 1-2 repetitions of a part with the mistake, go back to playing it correctly.
Tip #3: Make a list of common things that go wrong during shows and practice them.
Identify the musical parts or situations on stage that cause you to make the most mistakes. Make a list of them. And practice simulating these situations as much as possible during practice. This makes the challenging situations more familiar (and easier to deal with).
In addition to the consistency factor just mentioned, there are other things professionals practice that most guitar players typically don’t implement in their practicing. For example, having a really good ear is something that professional musicians rely on heavily, yet most guitar players don’t dedicate practice time to develop their aural skills.
2. Your Recordings – If your music skills are good and your songs are good it might be all for nothing if your recordings suck.
You do not have to invest huge amounts of money to record in a great studio, nor do you have to invest huge amounts of money in a great home studio (although it's nice), but you DO need the playing on your recordings to sound tight (making everything rhythmically perfect, appropriate dynamic playing, etc.)!
Do NOT make the mistake of thinking, oh this is only a demo, so tight playing is not that critical when making a simple demo... I assure you, IT IS!
Virtually anyone in the music industry today who hears your music will immediately notice if the performance recording is not tight. And if it’s not, they won’t be interested. Why? Because your “demo” is supposed to show others both your songs and your musical abilities.
The assumption will be that if your demo is not tight, then your live sound will be amateurish and putting you in the studio will cost a fortune when you have to play something 500 times to get it right.
So if you want to start a successful music career, you should practice recording yourself frequently in order to make your studio playing as tight as possible.
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3. Your Live Playing – It’s been said that successful music careers are built on the stage.
While not all musicians start a music career this way, it is true that your live playing is a critical component and can make or break your chances of developing a music career.
Record companies want bands that can sell themselves from the stage.
That means when a band plays live people listening should want to actually buy the band’s music, and all other band related merchandise.
It’s a fact that your fans will buy more during and after a great live show than after a mediocre one even if the songs played are exactly the same. The music industry (or successful bands you might like to join) look very closely at your ability to create a great live show experience for audiences.
Most musicians and amateur bands don’t truly work to improve their live performance skills.
Great live playing is much more than simply playing songs while standing (and hoping not to make mistakes)… yet for the majority of local musicians and bands this is all they really seem to focus on when playing live.
4. Where your fans live is really important – If you want to get signed to a major record label, which do you think is better?
A. To have 5,000 fans in your country (or around the world).
B. To have 5,000 fans in your local area only.
The answer is “B”. It is much easier to get 5,000 fans around the country (or the entire world) than it is to get 5,000 fans in your local area.
Everyone in the music industry knows this (including record companies).
If you sold 5,000 copies worldwide of your new album on your own, that is good accomplishment, but if you sold 5,000 in your local area on your own that would be a major accomplishment in the eyes of record labels.
Why does it matter?
Record labels know that if you can sell 5,000 copies in one location on your own, then it makes sense that a record company could probably sell even more copies not only in your area but in many cities/countries. By having so many fans in one area you demonstrate to the music industry that you have a lot of proven value to offer and their willingness to invest into your music career will go way up!
Although the internet is a great tool for musicians, many artists are focusing on reaching out to the whole world at once and don’t invest enough time and energy into building a valuable local foundation of fans.
Before the internet, bands typically tried to build a strong local fan base around their city. Those that succeeded in this area where most likely to build a successful music career.
But since the internet has opened up so many new possibilities, many unsigned musicians/bands have forgotten the basics which are still very relevant to getting signed to a major record company.
Note: Working with a music career mentor is the fastest way to reach your musical goals and make a living in the music industry. This applies no matter whether you are growing a fanbase for your band or just want to make a good living doing what you love.
Just ask some of the musicians who have been trained in my Music Careers Mentoring Program:
"Some time ago before I joined the Music Careers Mentoring Program, I was kind of wandering in the wilderness… that’s the way that I felt. Been a musician for a long time and certainly the musical side of things wasn’t really a problem. I mean, I can play. I can write good songs. That wasn’t a problem. The problem was, I had really no ideas about the business side of things."
I think maybe when people are younger they really, they only think about the music… they don’t realize that, that being a musician or being in a band or whatever it is a business, and you kind of have to treat it like a business. And you have to have the right kind of mindset.
So I went through the Music Careers Mentoring Program. Completed the program and I feel like that it helped me to have a much greater clarity about things and have a better mindset. And really to be a better person and to learn a lot of things that could apply not only to music but to life in general and how I deal and interact with other people. And that’s helped me a lot how I interact with the people in the band that I’m in. Interacting with my students and it’s really been great, there were a lot of great quotes that came from that program, things that I remember. One of them that’s really affected my life is that it’s not about who’s right, it’s about what’s right. And that’s kind of become one of my mantras that I take with me. And I try to keep that in mind when I’m interacting with other people.
I would recommend the Music Careers Mentoring Program to any musicians out there. And I have recommended it to several musicians. Anyone who’s feeling like they're not where they want to be with their career, or they're not achieving their goals as a musician, because it’s really really great.
Being around the other students of Tom Hess is very inspiring, because I can see that they are also success-minded and very motivated people. They're not getting distracted by things that I would consider negative. They're really people that I believe know how to win. And it’s very cool to meet some of these people, people that I went through the Music Careers Mentoring Program with, or people that I’ve interacted with on the forum. Yeah it’s very cool to finally meet these guys and exchange ideas.
The forum is quite helpful when you maybe having some kind of problem, either on the music side of things, for example if you have questions about music theory or on the business side of things if you're not sure how to progress or overcome certain obstacles in your teaching business. Everybody on the forum is there, and is willing to share their experience and to help people with that.William Edmundson, Chattanooga, Tennessee
"The main reason that I like to be in the Music Careers Mentoring Program is because it gave me direction of what to do how to do it and what I need to do next. It really focused a lot of things that I kind of knew that I needed to do, but it laid out a path for me to follow and it was very focused and concise."
The Music Careers Mentoring Program has elevated my status as a musician where I’ve been able to present myself in a much more professional way as a guitar player, as a musician, as somebody aspiring to be in the music business.
The Music Careers Mentoring Program has had a positive effect on everything related to my career. The imaging part of it, presenting yourself as a professional and therefore being treated as a professional... I’ve gotten an invaluable result from that. Endorsements from manufacturers. the perception of my professionalism. Just even just on a local level. Yeah.
Oh it’s incredibly inspiring. You get to see other people growing with you or either are further along than you and all the things... cool things that they’ve attained... and then you see the other people who are a little behind you in progress in the program and you can see yourself in them and see how much you’ve grown since then.
The forum is a great tool of... it’s interesting because a lot of the times the answers to your questions are right there from your peers... so Tom Hess is accessible, but you can instantly have an answer from just the information that’s already been there on the forum from people who proceeded you or you can have an MCMP person right there on the forum and they might be able to help you out immediately.Mark Turko, Thomaston, Connecticut, USA
What’s next?
Obviously there are a lot of things you need to do to start a successful music career, but this article is designed to get you started now so that you will be in a better position to do the next steps after you have implemented the concepts above.
Here’s a quick summary of action steps to take now:
- In addition to improving your overall musical skills, practice to play ‘consistently well’ with the skills you already have.
- Practice recording yourself frequently in order to make your studio playing as tight as possible.
- Work on improving your live performance skills (stage presence, playing in totally different environments, etc.).
- Build your fan base locally as well as internationally (using different strategies for each)
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About Tom Hess: Tom Hess is a guitar teacher, music career mentor and guitar teacher trainer. He trains musicians how to leave their day jobs and build successful fulltime careers in the music industry.
