Where it doesn’t seem to be widely recognised amongst some young musicians and new bands, musical success is largely born of good social skills and networking. You've got to be 'out there'. Getting out gigging will be building experience and learning the kind of things that matter. How to get your gear in and out of venues at what time? The kind of things people always ask you at the end of gigs, and how much you have to appreciate and respect their interest no matter how knackered you may be! It can be quite complicated and there can be more to the social networking side of your musical progress that there seems so it occurred to me that it would make a good blog entry if I properly assembled my thoughts on this topic and post them here.
I like to think of myself as quite a friendly and sociable person but I must admit that the time I’ve spent working with music (at the level I seem to be permanently stuck at) adversely affected my communication skills and my patience for a short while. I’ve learned how to handle situations better now but like many players I’ve been a young kid in a band, played all the usual dead end gigs in pubs gaining “experience” (which is actually an experience of something nobody actually wants) and since then I’ve played a lot of gigs but because I don’t do “one thing”, the general perception of me as a musician seems to be that I’m a bit of a part-timer and not really got any focus or direction. I get offered work but it’s always on one level and it’s never anything which implies that I’m capable of anything beyond the “better than the average amateur, regular gigging musician”. No matter what I do to try and combat this, like trying to focus all my attention on doing just one thing, I’ve got an additional dilemma of needing to take on whatever work I’m offered to survive! I don’t have the luxury of being able to pick and chose what I do, I have to take what’s put on the table in front of me (especially in the current economic climate). What I have learned though, is that the better connected I’ve been, the more opportunities I’ve been exposed to. If my networking was spread wider, I would be exposed to even more opportunities, and as such it’s worth investing time and research into it in order that you give yourself the best possible chance of succeeding as a musician.
I’ve been sold all the well established promises of tours/ gigs/ record deals/ management etc at one time or another, all of which has come to nothing. Unfortunately this has led me to have little patience with some people who could have potentially been very useful contacts and good for my career. I’ve told plenty of people where to go when it’s looked like I’ve been in a situation I’ve been in before when some people have tried to sell the “big time” to me. The lesson which needs to be learned is how to handle the terminal dilemma of not knowing who is genuinely interested in what you do (and is trying to help you), and who is a time waster. It’s worth having a handful of stock, polite answers for everyone. You never know who it could actually be who’s showing an interest in what you’re doing with your music. Where everything you need to know about playing the guitar you can find on the internet, everything you need to know about how to succeed in music is a seemingly unobtainable pool of very precious information which can only be gathered a bit at a time through the experiences you have on your musical journey. While it’s eluded me for the last 20 years, I haven’t quit because one of the things that I’ve learned is the value of persistence but if I get started on that, I will end up with another couple of pages of text.
