BLAME IT ON YOU!
FIRST STEPS
When I started learning and practicing music production and audio engineering, I was expecting to immediately start getting work after reaching out to a certain level of the necessary skills, but I was just tripping on some good shit!
After a couple of years, I felt like I knew lots of things about the music business and I had so much passion to start working but I wasn’t getting any job inquiries from anybody! Because the hardest part of it is to prove your self to people in the industry and make them trust you and your visions.
It was so frustrating, and I was just making beats and mixing free online sessions…etc.
FINDING THE RIGHT WAY
I realized that the online community does have some potential to help me get to know some people and it did! I was stayin’ up all night, surfing on Soundcloud, giving feedback to different artists and letting them know my thoughts… Basically trying to open up conversations and let some people know I’m here too!
Soundcloud did block me from messaging people as a spammer though… but that was okay. I still had my own ways to find people online.
Releasing my own music on Soundcloud and getting feedback from people who I became friends with there was like fuel for me to keep moving forward.
LET’S BE REAL
It was just that passion which kept me going. I had to stay motivated for doing all those types of different things without having any financial income.
Learning music production or engineering was just one part of what I had stepped into. It is much more complicated than that. I know many great musicians that can barely do music, even though they’ve been improving their skills for over 10 or 20 years!
They have to spend most of their time and energy on their day job and other issues they have in life.
STAY HUMBLE
The thing is, while you’re learning all this, and trying to start getting some work done to prove you can do something in music, you should be able to live that simple and low-expectation life!
Because the music business is so time-consuming, you need to spend a sufficient amount of time every day. if you need working a day job for long hours, it leaves you exhausted after so you won’t really be able to get much out of your music daily. Thus, I believe during your initial steps, it’s best trying to have lower living costs so you spend less time on a daily job or so… to pay your bills.
otherwise, the process will go so slow and since there are tons of things you need to put in the time for, you may even start to lose your passion for it.
THERE’S MORE THAN THAT
No wonder why most musicians are single most of the time… You gotta stay focused. Not just in terms of learning the musical and engineering aspects, but to be able to keep up with the pace.
Branding your self is very crucial for your career. You need to know the proper ways of marketing through social media. All the small details which make you seem professional to get trusted!
After all, I kept doing my thing and finally started to capture some attention through social media, getting some artists wanting to work with me and hire me as their engineer or producer… I figured there are way more things in this industry besides the main skills, which keeps you going.
IT’S ALL ABOUT YOUR SELF
I hear lots of people complaining about their job, industry, artists, people…etc but the fact is that things always change. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t have been alive doing all this shit now.
Thus, we better always be aware of what is going on, what is changing and what new tools and resources are getting used by others. There may be tough times when you realize you’re not as busy as before, and things don’t seem too well in your career.
That only means you were not considering some factors that were changing. You probably needed to change some strategies and techniques. therefore, just blame it on you and expect all the work to improve your career from nobody but you!
