Dave’s Best of 2008
By David J. HahnA list of the best things I found online and offline in 2008. Happy New Year!
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Recording, Releasing, and Performing Cover Songs
By Cameron MizellCover songs have an interesting place in the musician lexicon. The term cover song originated in the early part of the recording era, when record labels’ distribution was often limited regionally. When a song grew in popularity in one region, competing labels in other regions would record and distribute the same song to cover their region. This same practice occurs today, on iTunes. Some popular bands refuse to sell their music on iTunes. When they release a new album, a cover version of the single will invariably appear on iTunes, often by a studio band.
Cover songs reveal much about artists, from their ability to simply sing or play their instruments to their own tastes in music. For independent musicians, cover songs are usually a way to make money, grow your fan base, and a means for creative expression.
Many of the musicians I know and work with play in wedding or dance bands. They are expected to know a long list of popular tunes, and play them exactly as they were originally recorded. These cover band gigs usually pay pretty well, and perform frequently. Steady, paying work is something every musician needs, and this is one way to get it.
Article topics for the week of 12/29
By David J. HahnHappy New Year! These are the upcoming articles for the week of 12/29. Subscribe to our RSS feed and have them automatically delivered to your inbox or feed aggregator!
Volunteer Opportunities for Musicians
By David J. HahnOk, enough talk about making money as a musician – let’s talk about not making money with your music.
My grandfather played organ, accordion and clarinet for most of his…
160,300 Arts-related Jobs in New York City
By David J. HahnThe AFM Local 802, the Arts Alliance and Cornell University produced a study in 2007 that measured the economic impact of the arts industry on New York State. In New…
Should Washington Give $6 Billion to the Arts?
By David J. HahnThere’s a petition circulating the internet, Facebook, and now Obama’s website Change.gov that is asking for 1% of the anticipated $600+ billion stimulus package to be spent on the arts.
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Broadway show closings liquidate 150 musician jobs
By David J. HahnDecember 22, 2008
Between the closings of Xanadu on September 28th and Hairspray on January 18th, 150 musician jobs will be liquidated from the New York City theater industry. This does not include the musician positions in the limited-run or seasonal productions of Christmas Spectacular, White Christmas or Liza at the Palace.
This number represents over one third of the musician workforce currently on Broadway (407 total musicians as of December, 2008).
The break-down is as follows…
Preview: article topics for the week of 12/22
By David J. HahnIt’s Christmas week, but we’re not taking a break. Here are the articles we have scheduled for the coming week. Subscribe to our RSS feed and have them automatically delivered to your inbox or feed aggregator!
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Tales From the Pit: My Career as a Professional Drummer
By David JolleySo. I’m going to assume that you’ve been trying to eke out a living doing what you love to do, while holding on to the last vestiges of your confidence and pride. You have come to a point where anything, ANYTHING, will be helpful to get you out of that next shift at the Burger Hut. Chet, your 19 year old boss, frequently complains that the rhythm of your patty flipping is slowing the “line flow” to an extent that your 16 year old peers are messing up the order of condiments. Chet knows rhythm. In fact, his emo-nerd-prog-zydeco-funk explosion recently broke up because the lead singer’s girlfriend “managed the band’s finances” to the point of extinction and he’s chosen to take it out on lucky you. Maybe you are waiting for Stevie Wonder to hear a clip of you on You Tube and say to himself, “Stevie, I gotta have that guy in my band and pay him ten million dollars a show!” Or perhaps, you are like me and a great deal of my musician friends stuck here in the middle, trying to make things happen and having decent success, but at a loss as to what the next step may be or how to make the most of opportunities at hand.
Fear not, dear reader. There are thousands of us out here. But there is work, Some of it rewarding. Anyone who has the skills, personality, and ambition to take the necessary steps to shed that scratchy, polyester Burger Hut uniform and invest the time and energy can make a go as (dare I say) a professional musician.
Need a Job? Derek Sivers is Hiring.
By David J. HahnThere’s got to be a lot of pressure on Derek Sivers. This is the guy, afterall, that came up with a really good idea at a time when the music…
The End of a Cruise Ship Contract
By GhostWriterSo here I am, just about five months into my contract, and doing my first transatlantic crossing. They have warned us to make sure we have ways to kill time…
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Should You Join the Musicians’ Union?
By David J. HahnI’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that a lot of you reading this are musicians much like me – you grew up somewhere in the 80s or 90s, you were introduced to music at school or church, you had a few private teachers, you studied a little or a lot of music at college and now you’re out in the world as a professional musician – making recordings to sell online, playing gigs, teaching lessons and – clearly – reading blogs.
Why should somebody like us join the musicians’ union? Or more to the point – why do we bother to have a musicians’ union at all?
The Short Answer
Unions exist because of the inherent imbalance of power in the employer/employee relationship. The short answer to this question, then, is that if you have an employer, it’s very likely that you would benefit from unionizing.
For example, if you work as a church musician, a sideman for wedding bands, corporate gigs or recording sessions, a symphony musician or a theatre musician – this is you. These gigs usually pay relatively well and have a corporate or non-profit employer that pays you. You could very well find advantages to joining the musicians’ union for all the reasons I’m going to list in the long answer.
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Finding the Right Music Teacher
By Matt BaldoniOf all the education a guitar player can get, I really believe that the most important relationship we encounter is between us and our private teacher. It goes way beyond a purely musical relationship, when the right teacher is sought out it’s almost like a combination between a coach, a sensei, a mentor, and a close personal friend.
There are a lot of disappointing private instructors out there. Many guitarists don’t really have much of an investment in being teachers and just use it as a way to make money. Let’s be frank here, you don’t really have to be all that accomplished on your instrument to teach young kids and beginners at the local neighborhood music store. Me and many others I know started out that way, but a lot of us have moved on since then to more intensive levels of teaching.
The really, truly good private guitar teachers care deeply for their students and make a serious investment in them. They start and end lessons on time, they have all the necessary materials needed to present what they teach, and they get results from their students. This is why when you’re exploring your options for instructors you should try and communicate with some of their other students if you can, to get a sense as to how the learning process goes before you invest your hard-earned money.
Should I Bring a Bass Amp On My Cruise Gig?
By GhostWriterWe have a question this week from Ryan, who asks:
What kind of amps have you seen bass players use? I was thinking of using my Acoustic Image Clarus with…
Hauling Your Music Gear On Mass Transit
By Cameron MizellIf you plan on moving to New York City, Chicago, or another large metropolitan area with any kind of mass transit, this article is for you.
When I first went to college, hauling a guitar and amp across campus to the…
Contaminated Scene: The Hate Music Industry
By David J. HahnI was shocked by a story I heard on NPR last week.
In 2004, a white supremacist record label began a program they called “Project Schoolyard USA” that…
Obama’s Recent Comments on Musicians in the White House
By David J. HahnPresident-Elect Obama gave an exclusive interview with Meet the Press yesterday and discussed bringing more artists to the White House, including jazz musicians, classical musicians and poets. While…
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Learning Music Quickly And Efficiently
By Matt BaldoniThis here is a subject that was never discussed, and I had to learn through a lot of trial and error. When working as a sideman, there are so many situations that come about where you’ll get called for a gig and have little time to prepare for it. This could be anything from a one-time hit at a club for an artist, an entire tour, or say playing in the house band for an awards show or festival and backing up several people.
The first things to do when you get the call are to make sure you have the CDs of the material (or in some cases mp3s) and charts if there are any. As to the recordings, sometimes they’ll be FedEx’d or messengered to you along with the charts and perhaps a travel itinerary, other times they’ll be emailed to you in a .zip file of some sort, or they’ll be posted somewhere online for you to download yourself. As to the charts, the same applies. Sometimes they’ll be emailed to you as adobe files, or finale or sibelius files, or delivered to you by hand. So, now you have all the stuff you need to prepare, here’s how to begin.
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Airline Travel with Musical Instruments
By GhostWriterSo here I am, third day on the cruise. Today, we are tendering in Mykonos, Greece. It doesn’t look like I will be able to get off today; had a long day of training, and the rhythm section is supposed to maybe have a rehearsal (yeah, the musicians here are just as unorganized as anywhere else).
Before I start on my experiences so far, I figure it would be best to talk about traveling with your instrument.
I am a multi-instrumentalist, so I have had experiences with a few different instruments. On this trip, I brought two electric basses and my euphonium — with almost no hitches. If I was inexperienced, I can pretty much guarantee that my euphonium would be sitting in the corner of my cabin right now, completely unusable.
First and foremost, it’s important that you NEVER ask an airline worker what’s best – just do it. Look like you know what you’re doing, and keep a professional look about you. When asked, just speak in a calm, polite tone (and I can’t stress that enough) that you fly on a regular basis due to the nature of your job as a musician, and you are sure it will fit. Say something like “this is a 747, right? Yeah, it will fit.” NEVER get angry or testy. That’s all they need to either not let you on the plane, or worse: to doom your baby to an early grave.
