Don’t forget the music…
It’s all too easy in today’s music industry to spend ages sorting, testing, developing, analysing your social media, online, at gig, direct to fan strategies. And while all of this stuff is important in helping you establish yourselves, stand out from the crowd, and make people who may be able to help your career progress sit up and take notice… None of it matters if you music isn’t up to scratch.
I remember when I first got into music seriously as a possible career choice at the age of 14 or 15. I thought that the holy grail was having “a professional recording” so I spent a lot of my hard earned pocket money (and a fair amount of my parents hard earned pocket money!) taking my band into a handful of local studios to record demos. I was never 100% happy with the results. While they got better every time, they never had the same sound that I envisaged I my head… I wanted Nirvana and I was getting very early Stones or Chilis.
Once I started recording for myself in college, I realised that it was less important than the music and songs themselves and what message/feeling you were trying to get across. I also slowly began to realise that “a professional recording” was perhaps not the holy grail! I began to want to capture energy in recordings… I’m still trying every now and then, but when I hear music captured as I imagine it should be, I can very easily fall in love!
And that’s essentially what musicians should be trying to achieve… There’s no right or wrong way to do it… There’s no books out there that tell you how to do it… But that is what makes fans want to be a part of you and your music.
Don’t forget all the other stuff that needs to be tended too, but please remember why you’re doing this… It must be love!
Rich
Ardua Music :: Per Ardua Surgo
