The Three Seasons of Musicianship

Whether you are years into writing and performing music, or just a few days. One thing you’ll find out sooner or later is; Where and when your mind gives up, your heart and passion will carry you through!

That is just a fancy way of saying you’ll get to points where it may not make much sense to carry on with your craft but your love for music will be what could empower you to strike the next key, play the next chord!

From my experience, I have seen most unsigned musicians go through three seasons.

First Season:

The Passionate Musician

Remember the first time you thought about exploring music? It all made sense in your mind, you saw what you needed to do so clearly and possibly started out with very little or no mental boundries!

You may have joined a network of musicians, played some open mics hoping to gain some fans along the way. You may have persisted for weeks, months or even years. You may have even invested financially in hope…. That fire or passion does not last for ever, after sometime, it starts to fizzle out.

Second Season:

The Realistic Musician

Sooneer or later, many come to realise that the dream, the vivid picture they had. I mean the success they thought would be achieved fairly seamlessly becomes questionable. The dream that was so real slowly starts to fade away.

At this point, many begin to redefine what their music ambition is (we don't think there anything wrong with this).

For some, it becomes a little difficult to listen to performers/artists that are mainstream, as it is easy to feel "I am more talented than they are how are they mainstream and i'm not"…… Many musicians at this point will decide not to listen mainstream music!

It is also at this point some musicians choose to either quit their music goal or create something more local music wise, start running their own open mic nights etc…. That isn't to say that everyone who start running an open mic night is in this season but some are!

Third Season:

The Undeterred Musician

"I can say from experience; very few musicians who aren’t main stream get here" As months turn into years, very few have kept a single vision, pursuing what the initial goal was.

One thing most musicians don’t feel they have is time. I mean we all get older, more responsibilities, real life kicks in! and many feel that they just wouldn't have the time when they get older (Which is not entireley true)

“To be undeterred does not mean you don’t go back to the drawing board, you do but that is only to strategize not to reconstruct the dream”.

The industry is always changing and though our world is digital, we play to a physical audience, whether the gig is virtual or not, real people buy tickets! And though streaming platforms can (to put it plainly) be hacked. A person attending your headline gig can’t be (We hope to do a write up on this in the future)!

Whatever season you are in there is one little secret that has helped many successful unsigned and signed act alike, and this is Partnerships!

Partnerships the forgotten secret

Partnership as partains to music is realising that there are others who aren’t necessarily musicians but have a reach that can add value to your musicianship. Most undeterred musicians have realised this. The truth about the music industry is; It realy isn't about how hard one works, but how smart!

There are so many kinds of partners that can be established and although we wouldn't be going into them in this write up, we hope to at some point in the future.

With all the above said, let us carry on in our current season realising that there are crowds waiting to be played to, you just need the right people to give you access to them.

Until the next write up!