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Jared
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Joined: 09 Jun 2009
Posts: 4
Career Advice: +0/-0
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 Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 2:34 pm Post subject: A liable option for a musician? (well sort of :p) |
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Hello folks,
After having a brainwave the other day concerning my post high-school career i'm stuck on weather it seems like a safe option or not to attempt what i have planned out.
I've been a dedicated drummer for five years now (now you get the title joke) and played roughly 60 shows last year with my band who have just broken up, all of who are four years my senior. At school i'm acing my music class, and passing respectably in the higher stream english course. i'm stuck doing a middle stream maths course due to my school, but with recent developments in my schooling plan, that will be more than adequate. I've also worked for a music store part time for nearing 3 years, and am essentially in charge of my own "department".
my plan is to, as bad as it outright seems, leave school once i graduate, move to perth (i'm a west aussie) and find a job at any large department based music store. ideally i'd like this time to simply work on my drumming. join a drum corps, players club...whatever, just some time to work on my overall chops. i figure a gap year is pretty common, so saving some money and working on drumming seems a fair way to go.
from there i would intend to go on to uni, preferably WAAPA, and study for a bachelor of music, a course which offers a "interdisciplinary nature". my other option was to double major in marketing and PR at UWA with a minor in music, but admittedly, the workload would in all likelihood get the best of me. it would help greatly if i decide to do it and succeed.
after uni, i want to do the one thing i believe every musician should consider doing once it their lives, sheerly for the experience. i would like to apply for a short stint on a cruise-ship as house drummer. 6 months would do it, and i genuinely think that it is something i just need to do.. thats all i have to say about that.
the next part is the tricky one, and one i know involves literally hundreds of cv's. but there are literally thousands of drum companies around the world, about an eighth of which are part of the same marketing circle, that focuses on what we'll call Contemporary Drumming Paraphernalia. I would like to work for one of these companies, working in marketing and research. being from australia it does seem like a hard task (as there's noone really around to work for) but i am more than happy to go where the work is. very sad, but very true...
My question, Will following this plan mean complete career suicide? I understand the success rate in music careers to be pretty poor, but unfortunately it seems, drumming is what i'm good at.
Oh and btw. I'm 100% Anti-Drug. I don't have anything against it (aside the bleeding obvious), just not my thing. wouldn't let a silly thing like that land me in a drain outside uni.
cheers |
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Pauloz
Expert
Joined: 02 Oct 2007
Posts: 1160
Career Advice: +3/-0
Location: Sydney
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| Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 1:27 am Post subject: |
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Jared
I can tell you as a musician myself that you can expect some bumpy road in this area. The idea is to get your music going, and stay in one piece in the process.
Your ideas are actually pretty good, but you need to do belt and suspenders. A gap year, fine, not a gap decade or two. Just don't stick your neck out and you should be OK with the general approach.
Taking it from the top:
| Quote: | | ...from there i would intend to go on to uni, preferably WAAPA, and study for a bachelor of music, a course which offers a "interdisciplinary nature". my other option was to double major in marketing and PR at UWA with a minor in music, but admittedly, the workload would in all likelihood get the best of me. it would help greatly if i decide to do it and succeed. |
Yeah, good idea, and it's more manageable than you might think, if you can figure out a way to do it. The flaw I see here is you're ditching a job which can cover a lot of the problems, keep some cash in your pocket and help pay for this.
You're obviously not in Perth, but if you're on the east coast, you can do a lot of that there, with the job covering the costs:
Remember courses are a lot easier to manage these days. You can actually do both degrees, if you do this stuff in workable stages, without having to make big upfront commitments in terms of cash and time. The Sydney Academy of Music can probably give you a few workable options for the music side.
(Bearing in mind their career track tends to lead to symphony orchestras or the Basement, but their standards of performance are excellent, good, tactile, sensitive stuff. I've seen some of those guys play, and they're worth checking out.)
The marketing side, particularly since you're interested in peripherals, could be a very big plus, something nobody around here in Oz seems to do, as you pointed out. That could give you a very nice niche in Australia, because I'd bet nobody here knows how to distribute this stuff outside Billy Hyde and a few others.
Your current position is perfect for getting some help with the marketing side. Any retailer, particularly a music shop, won't mind a bit. You could improve your position there, too.
My concern is that you have a possibility of doing the Wandering Minstrel thing without a lot of support in the process. There has to be some way of having the cakes and eating them too, because you should be able to do your degrees, do the marketing, and stay solvent and above water at the same time. I think it's more a matter of how, rather than if, and you can do the degrees so you don't get buried under an impossible workload.
As for the actual drumming, (admittedly from my perspective as a guitarist), all the real drummers, from Moon to Krupa, did their stuff on the move, developing and evolving their styles and growing into their styles. Technical drumming, a la the book, isn't for everyone, and I would suggest that you shop around for anything, before joining it. Make sure you're not joining a percussive straitjacket society, because that could really get on your nerves, if you're a free spirit.
Cruise ship: Yeah, very good gigs, good quality of life, and for the record, experience on cruise ships tends to mean more gigs, particularly if you do some networking. Worth exploring, on principle. |
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thesilentkiller
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Joined: 02 Nov 2009
Posts: 2
Career Advice: +0/-0
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