Help! I am a musician and I don’t know what to do!
It has happened recently that someone exclaimed to me that they don’t even know what they are supposed to do “nowadays” with music. Fortunately, my main job as a musician has never changed. It’s to tell folks what I think is rad after I’ve made it. That’s the job. Musician. Music.
I’ve made a lot of songs. Not as many as some, but more than most. It’s always my job to make something I think is cool, then tell folks what’s cool. Has been since I was a kid. I am not telling folks what they need to think is cool. I am telling folks what I think is cool. No mind-reading, no metrics, or promo. It’s simply my outlet. Musician, music.
Don’t look at the lights, musicians.
Maybe because there’s rich music stars, and our society deifies those with coin, folks think the goal is to get rich, or even popular. Nope. An artist knows what’s cool that’s not already out there. Once they make that, they show folks. Boom. All it is. Musician, music.
You see, when you like one of my songs, you agree with my taste in music. It makes me feel good. Keeps me truckin’. I want to be someone whose taste in music you have a sense for. It makes us buds, even if we’ve never met. It’s fun for me to listen to artists who I feel a sense for. I’m getting into them. It isn’t the other way around. There’s too many people and as a musician I’d never get to making more music.
What do you want from music stars?
If we think about what we expect from musicians, I hope the list isn’t long. Because “music” should be the only thing on it. Everything else is in your head. This industry is like high-school prom. Each social media service is a different school. Even if you’re popular in your school, they’ve never heard of you in the one across town. It’s not a job to conquer. It’s all a distraction from the books. Haha.
Many musicians want things out of their music. It’s as if they traded all that hard work not for a message they felt needed to be heard, but for thumbs up. Follows. Metrics. Those things are there for the taking, have at them.
Let’s talk if you want to be friends. Otherwise enjoy the music.
I’m interested in the kinds of conversations that assist me in writing more tunes. My music doesn’t exist in a vacuum. I need folks to interact with. Have long talks with. Work with. I found the majority of musicians on social media were interested in promo schemes and distros. They were interested in metrics. Numbers.
If you want to stop AI, then you, yourselves, have to stop being robots too. We need more from musicians than folks who bought capitalism and dragged it around everywhere they crawled online. We need insight. Guts. Heart. There’s never been guaranteed money in that. In any field. So, it doesn’t matter to me. Musician, music.
Ever been listened to and understood? It rocks.
What matters is you talk to someone who needs it. I haven’t found a way to do this except think about one person at a time. I can’t think, “this whole group of folks needs to hear this.” But I can sing to one person, even me. And I do.
I sing to one person at a time live. I’m looking at them, singing the best I can just for them. Not only does this help with delivery, it helps me conserve energy the whole night. I’m not yelling to the back acting crazy. I have trained myself to look at folks one at a time, singing.
I look at my “presence” much the same way. If I’m trying to talk to everyone, I run out of energy quickly. I’m not rewarded with insight or relationships. And I don’t sound as good. So I talk to one person, unless I mess up. I get excited. But I’m back pretty quickly. Happens.
Training is a key issue, though most musicians don’t look at it that way.
It’s very tough to do a job you don’t know how to do. In my younger days, I was in retail management. The key issue with turnover was training. If folks didn’t feel confident doing what they were paid for, they left. They needed to feel good or competent at their jobs to stick around.
I feel that applies to many in the art world. Folks just don’t know what to do. They get discouraged and when it happens a lot, it drags whole scenes and communities down. Unfortunately this happens a lot when the goal is “growth.” Growth for me in music is like in biology, it happens anyway. It’s how you grow that is key. It’s an inside job.
Why would I want to grow your music business?
“Growth,” as is used in business or music is a capitalist term. Businesses want to grow always. Every one I’ve worked for had projections and charts. They planned on growing. If they didn’t grow, people got in trouble.
My music works nothing like this. See, I’m the one who is growing. I’m just letting you watch.
An experiment from yesterday if you want some djembe filled sludge funk music.
Larry Graham. Musician. Music.
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