Want to make it as a singer?
Many students say they want to “make it as a singer”
“Make it as a singer”
“Make it as a singer”
“Make it as a singer”
Just saying it over and over won’t make it happen. Do you know HOW to make it as a singer? Would you even know if had been able to make it as a singer without defining some expectations along the way?
While the bulk of the service I provide to students is voice lessons, I’m also passionate about musicianship, artistry, and enabling artists’ individuality.
A number of lessons have happened in the last few weeks where students have expressed a desire to ‘move forward’ from where they, be that developing their own musicality, finding their own sound, or finding a niche in the musical market.
Listen to yourself…
One of the most common things I’ve heard said by musicians and performers alike, even before I started teaching, is:
‘I just want to quit everything to try and make it, so at least I can say I tried’.
Now, I can’t even begin to describe how much of a can of worms that statement encompasses. As a problem solver at heart, I can’t help but try to look at a situation and take account of the angles and work out some logical ways to move forward. I also like to reap rewards for work, without killing myself. Small, easily implemented changes, that move you to towards your goal are therefore key. So let’s look at this statement and work out how to tackle the points it raises.
Firstly…
What on earth does ‘making it‘ look like?
It’s a phrase most musicians have heard or even said themselves, but what does it actually look like? The answer is, it’s different to EVERY person. Do you want to put out a CD a year? Do you want 23 million Twitter followers? Do you want to only have to make music for a living and make music you want to make? None of those are wrong or right, but you need to know what it is you want to do.
What is important is that you work out on a fundamental level what it is you want to achieve with your efforts.
What do you want to do? What are my expectations?
For example, for years I used to think I wanted to be a session musician. I wanted to get paid to be creative, to spend all day crafting sounds, doing clinics on how to be the best musician, blah blah blah. But it was so ill-defined as a concept, so incoherent on a fundamental level that there was no way I could even assess the way to move forward to achieve that goal.
However, over time I started to understand more about what excited me as a musician. I realised that I am not a needy musician. Give me an instrument, and I’ll entertain myself for hours, days, months, years, decades. And I love sharing my discoveries with others and inspiring them, and seeing them build on that knowledge. I’m happy just making and exploring music. I don’t really need an audience to feel satisfied in that department. Don’t get me wrong, I love performing, but to me it’s secondary to the joy I feel when just making music.
Define your expectations on a fundamental level
I realised that what I wanted for myself was this:
To keep becoming a better musician, and to have the chance to impart what I learned that to others.
I hope you can see these expectations don’t define a job, or industry, or even whether that was done part time or full time, or whether I even got paid for it. All I’d worked out was what I wanted, what my expectations truly were. THAT was a fundamental understanding that rocked my preconceptions of what I should be doing.
Where do I go from here?
Once I understood this, once I grasped that WHATEVER I did just needed to give me that and I’d feel satisfied in my career, suddenly it was less about ‘which is the ONE right direction?’, but it became a useful tool to ensure I didn’t go in directions that would prevent me from achieving that goal, and only to consider the various directions that satisfied those requirements.
Your Turn
On the basis of this, I want to ask you: do you understand what it is you want? Go back through the headings above and try and go through the same process I went through. Understand what it is you want and enjoy, and boil it down into a 10-15 word definition of expectations. I don’t want a job description, I want a 10-15 word statement of what you want, of what will satisfy you as a musician/artist. This statement can describe a variety of different jobs.
If you can do that, then you will know what ‘making it’ looks like. You can bolt on additional statements like number of recordings, Twitter followers, etc, but this is the fundamental point to deal with.
However, if you don’t know how to boil it down like that, you have not defined your expectations, and you have set yourself up to fail. You certainly are not ready (in my opinion) to drop whatever you’re doing right now and try to ‘make it’. Not because you won’t do well, or experience success, but you won’t know when you’ve arrived at the place you want to be, because you don’t even know where you want to be.
