A musician in a Broadway pit orchestra is one of the best jobs in the world for both commercial and classical musicians. Wages are standardized and protected by the AFM (musicians union) and a full benefits package with health, pension and vacation pay is included…
Continue Reading →Performing with your own band is an exhilarating experience. But before you can have your moment on stage, you need to get a group of musicians into the same room to learn some music. And musicians have a knack at being slightly unorganized, slightly tardy,…
Continue Reading →Matt from Florida emailed us a question this week:
I was curious how you sort of get off the ground with piano gigs? I realize that possibly playing in a hotel lobby is a good route, but what is the best way to go about…
One of the most difficult duties of a professional, freelance musician, is finding time to practice. Yet practicing should be at the heart of the musician’s daily routine. Much like a professional athlete needs to constantly maintain their level of fitness, so must musicians keep…
Continue Reading →Happy Inauguration Week! This week we have 2 scheduled features from Cameron Mizell set to post on Monday and Thursday. Behind the scenes we’re working on a several email interviews of interesting musicians – one a Broadway keyboardist and conductor, and the other a freelance…
Continue Reading →We have a question this week from Bob, a college student at who wants to be a conductor on Broadway.
I am currently a freshman composition major at Duquesne University with my applied major in piano performance. I want nothing more than to be a…
Last week I discussed using Google Alerts to find gigs and monitor your local music scene…. I talked specifically about how to have Google automatically send you leads from your local Craigslist website. That’s a great way to do it, but today I want
Continue Reading →When I was in college, I had several jobs. One was at a restaurant, one at the town’s best music venue, and I also gigged several nights a week. All at the same time. The experience taught me a lot about what goes through the…
Continue Reading →Yesterday we talked about getting gigs with Google Alerts…, today we’re going to talk about monitoring your music scene.
Let’s say you are a punk guitarist. It’s likely that you’ll want to know what’s happening in the punk subculture. Not just music, but fashion,
As I wrote in my best of 2008 article…, I just started using Google Alerts last year. It’s changed the way I use the internet. Instead of searching and surfing the internet for information important to me, I have Google search it for me
Continue Reading →I began playing guitar when I was 8 years old, and by the time I was in high school I knew I wanted music to be my career. I had no idea how anybody actually did that, but figured I had some time to figure…
Continue Reading →In 2007 I went on tour and gained 20 lbs. I was sick about as often as we changed hotels and even spent one unfortunate afternoon curled up with the flu on the floor of the bus. And we ain’t talkin’ no luxury tour bus.…
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