Top 10 Gigs You May Not Have Thought Of
1. Transcribing songs
There are a few different ways to get paid for this.
I once worked with a singer-songwriter who didn’t read or write music, but worked with musicians who did. His situation called for written lead sheets, so we would sit down together once or twice a week and write down his songs. He’d play them (slowly), and I’d input them (quickly) to Finale. In the end he’d have professional lead sheets and I’d charge my hourly rate. It was a good gig – one of those odd jobs for musicians.
Another thing I’ve done is transcribe and arrange songs for musical theatre singers. Sometimes singers really want to audition with a particular song that they’ve heard on the radio or YouTube, but either they can’t find the sheet music, or the sheet music is totally lame. Arranging singers’ “books” for auditions can be good jobs for musicians with great ears and notation chops.
Is there a similar gig you can think of in your scene?
2. Applying for grants from local arts councils
A few years ago I received a $1,000 grant from my home town’s arts council to play a recital at the library. I had to come up with a theme for the recital, fill out a one-page form, and the check came a few months later. I hired two guys and made it a trio event – it was a great gig! That particular arts council gives away grants each year to a number of local artists.
Check out this article on grants for musicians. There is some really great advice in there.
3. Church gigs
When I first showed up in NYC, I had some ideas of what I thought I’d do here. I planned to hustle theatre and other contracted musician jobs, and if that didn’t work out I’d temp or teach. Good plan; good back-up plan.
A job I certainly hadn’t thought of was playing organ for a primarily Spanish-speaking Catholic church in the Bronx, but that’s what happened. It turns out that New York church-goers take their music very seriously, and pay much better than the churches I’d known in my home town. At the going rate of $100/service (and sometimes 7 services a weekend at larger churches), the Catholic church pays better than some off-Broadway shows. Organist gigs and some worship band jobs are worth looking into if you haven’t considered them before.
4. Hotel gigs in Dubai
I promise you that I have never heard of this one either. Check out the info from Natalie, one of our readers, who was good enough to explain the job in our forums.
5. Accompanying at schools
Sorry if this particular one is piano-centric, but that’s what I know best. In fact, before I’d starting touring and traveling with theatre, I’d made a lot of my bread as a piano accompanist at the high schools, middle schools and 2-year colleges near where I was living.
There are countless music programs in cities across the country that are lead by teachers that either don’t play piano themselves, or have the budget to hire separate accompanists. These gigs can be great jobs for musicians that can play piano well, and working with kids (but not having to be the teacher!) can be a very rewarding experience.
In my experience, the best school accompanying jobs are college-level (even community colleges) because they have the budgets to pay you what you’re worth. I have also seen some full-time high school positions with benefits, which could be great for someone looking for stable work.
6. Clinics/master classes/assemblies/business seminars
I’ve lumped all these things together, not necessarily because they are all the same, but because they all involve a similar hustle.
I know of a conductor in NYC that gives business seminars on leadership by bringing in a full orchestra and showing how a performing orchestra is a model of teamwork. I have a friend in Chicago that is an inspirational saxophonist that is frequently hired for clinics and master classes at middle and high schools. Schools look for educational and inspirational programs to perform at school assemblies.
What knowledge do you have that you can share?
7. Transposing music & various other copyist work
This is the younger cousin of #1 on this list, and also includes computer notation skills. Key changes most often happen for singers (not to single y’all out, sorry), but also for those times that your music director wants the oboe part re-written for the clarinet, etc. It takes some quick inputting to Finale or Sibelius, a few clever mouse clicks, and BAM, you’ve got an easy job for a musician. There are a lot of people out there that never have the opportunity, time, or whatever to get past the learning curve of Finale or Sibelius. They are often happy to pay you to do it for them.
There are often other, miscellaneous copyist jobs here and there if you have notation skills (and obviously there are great big, successful copyist jobs too, but you’ve probably thought of those). I used to do some work for a choir near Chicago that wanted a jazz bassist to play with their group. They hired me to write out (and transpose up 8va) the bass notes from the piano part. Now there’s a gig you didn’t expect, right?
8. Page turner
I’m serious. It’s a job. NPR wrote a story about it. According to the report it pays $50-100 per concert in Minnesota (where the story was done).
9. Recitals for local social groups
I was hired once by a women’s league that wanted a jazz musician to play a recital at their luncheon. The year before they’d hired a inspirational speaker, and apparently the guy had been a perfect bore. Feeling some pressure to come up with something a little livelier, they’d found me on a recommendation.
There are lots of social groups (leagues, committees, sci fi conventions, who knows?) that have periodic meetings that need interesting entertainment for their membership. See if you can find some in your area and ask them if they’d like to hire your group for a recital.
10. Teaching lessons on a secondary instrument
This idea is so widespread that I maybe shouldn’t include it here, but for those of you that haven’t thought of this yet – you don’t have to teach lessons on only your primarily instrument. If you had to, don’t you think you could teach beginner piano lessons? Or guitar? Or whatever instrument you know a little about? If you have a firm foundation in the fundamentals of music and a familiarity with a second instrument, I bet you can keep a few lessons ahead of your beginner students.
I don’t mean to advocate teaching something you don’t know anything about, I’m just saying that a beginning pianist doesn’t need their first lessons from Glenn Gould. You should give it a shot.
What do you think? Do you have any unexpected musician jobs to add to the list?
About the author
#10 has been a lifesaver for me. I’m a drummer, and after I graduated from college about two years ago (at David’s alma mater, NIU), I got positions at 4 different music store/music schools to teach private drum lessons. I thought my schedule would eventually fill up, but at one of the places, I had a whopping THREE students, and that number didn’t change for months.
In the interview process, it came out that I’m a self-taught guitar player, so after long enough with three students on my schedule, the director there convinced me to start teaching guitar. It turned out I wasn’t too bad at it and I went from teaching 3 students on Saturday morning to teaching 19 students over the course of Monday, Tuesday and Saturday. And only TWO of those are drum students now!
3/19/2009
Thanks for the info David. I have made a choice to leave my IT job and pursue the pianist life as a career. I am moving to an area that has quite a number of social gatherings and #9 was a reassurance that I am on the right track!
3/19/2009
thanks, great info!
3/24/2009
I transcribe a lot but I wouldn’t ever think I could get paid for it.
10/12/2009
Elyse, I’m sure if you put yourself out there a little more with some examples of what you’ve transcribed that you would get some people who would pay you. Depending on how quick they want it, charge like, $30 – $50/hr. Let’s say they wanted it in the next 4 days. Charge $50/hr and work work work. You’ll get quite a bit, AND you’ll have something for your library if someone wants to buy that transcription. If they want it in the next month, charge $30/hr and don’t work too hard all at once but don’t miss the deadline. If I could transcribe better, I would be doing this.
12/16/2009
So how do you find these elusive church gigs? Especially when you’re no longer in school, where they post them.
8/3/2010
what about just singing and making albums!?!
8/27/2010
Seems to me that singing and making albums is the FIRST gig everyone thinks about, which would make it the last gig to be included on this list! But while we’re working on making those albums, and making money from those albums, these are nice gigs to help make ends meet.
8/27/2010
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