Getting a music industry job

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 10:22 pm

I'm sick of software engineering. I know I'm not a very good songwriter or vocalist but I think I'm pretty good in the production department these days (as in taking other peoples' stuff and making it fit together better). Where should I particularly focus on sending portfolios to in order to get a music production job?

I found a list of local record labels but they're all either JUST labels (who work with independent producers), don't accept unsolicited submissions, or give me a strong "two guys with an iMac in a bedroom who needed a label for an air of legitimacy on Pitchfork" vibe.

Or do I just need to, like, produce my own album (as a portfolio of sorts) with my newer techniques and wait to get discovered and blah?

Or am I just barking up the wrong tree here?

thehipcola · Post by **thehipcola** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 5:30 am

I'm not sure there is any concrete way to do what you're thinking, but I've been trying to piece together a viable way to not work a "normal" job for about a year and a half now, and about 30% of my income now comes from tutoring people on using Cubase SX in a home studio environment, and more recently, through that, I've been contracted to mix an album for $. (And THAT is an awesome way to make money.) Try starting out small and growing it into something that makes it easier to jump off the salary-train. I did it the opposite way, and it's been rough at times, but now things seem to be working out. I've diversified my work, which helps... I do contract work as a piano technician/tuner too, and a little bit of web hosting and basic design, mostly for other piano technicians. Webhosting is NOT a great way to make money...

But its fun, and it's pretty cool to learn about it. I'm pretty excited about how things are building for me, but it's been a long one and a half years getting to here.

I guess what I'm saying is, sounds like near the top of your goals list is the need to get out of a your regular-type job..., so maybe getting involved in a number of things that interest you might make it easier to manage. The main thing that I've learned since quitting my "day job", is that when you start looking for opportunities to provide services you are good at to people who need them, they really do exist all over the place. It builds momentum too, at least for me it did. To the point where at times I have to turn work down.

Yadda yadda..... I will say this, working for thyself is the CATS ASS. I'm still not making what I made in my regular job, but the scheduling freedom and low-stress level of the actual work more than makes up for the drop in income. With a toddler at home, I couldn't be in a better position to be a big part of her day-to-day.

Good luck with whatever you do on this.

CAVEAT: The one thing that has suffered since working for myself is that I find I have significantly less time for pursuing personal music projects...songfighting, bands, my own album and writing...all seem to get backburnered in favour of work opportunities. I keep telling myself that just around the next corner I'll have a chunk of time...but it's elusive as yet....

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 6:15 am

Interesting post THC - good to see you are making a go of things and they are working out. I am getting to the stage where I am seriously sick of working - and would like to do things I want to do rather than "work" stuff. I have just quit my job in the public service - working for the government is seriously soul-destroying stuff - and am about to start work with a company that does a lot of aid projects in developing countries. I'm hoping that will re-energise me for a year or two and pay the bills while I learn more about the recording caper.

I'm hoping I may be able to go into semi-retirement in a few years to play around with music stuff and play with my daughter - while still doing a little bit of engineering consulting on the side to keep the dollars rolling.

BTW: I know your daughter is about the same age as mine - you're not saying that you work from home while she is there are you! How is that possible!?! 2 1/2 year old toddlers are not conducive to high productivity.

thehipcola · Post by **thehipcola** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 6:29 am

Heh....very true! I usually arrange for her to be at her grandparent's house on those days when I'm working at home. Mainly when I'm tracking. Not only due to the noise factor, but if she knows I'm home, it's pretty much a non-starter for whoever is looking after her while I'm busy. And nothing (sorry for the sap!) gets me unravelled easier or faster than listening to my girl crying and screaming for "daddy".

Sounds like you've got similar designs on thangs...awesome! I hope it works out for you...and congrats getting out of the public-sector. I live in Canada's capital, and it's a zombie town. I don't think there's enough $ to make me work a government job...especially after living in a largely civil-service city for a few years...."soul-eating" seems quite appropriate.

Post by jb » Wed Feb 28, 2007 7:55 am

Take out an ad in the paper offering some services on the cheap. And volunteer. Do some production work for free. Do a good job, let the word spread, then start charging as you become more and more in demand. If. And then, when you find you have no time for both your "side production work" and your dayjob, quit the dayjob.

JB

Smalltown Mike · Post by **Smalltown Mike** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:31 am

Caravan Ray wrote:BTW: I know your daughter is about the same age as mine - you're not saying that you work from home while she is there are you! How is that possible!?! 2 1/2 year old toddlers are not conducive to high productivity.

I've worked at home as a magazine/newspaper writer for three years—since my youngest was 11 months old. He's the king of naps and that helps, and is now in school afternoons. But you have to accept working at weird hours.

Let's hear it for writing articles at 5 a.m.!

Smalltown Mike · Post by **Smalltown Mike** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:04 am

fluffy wrote: Or do I just need to, like, produce my own album (as a portfolio of sorts) with my newer techniques and wait to get discovered and blah?

Or am I just barking up the wrong tree here?

My gut-feeling here is that you go to school for it. That may be the traditional side of me, but I think you need a formal education if you're going to go beyond recording and mixing for friends and friends of friends. I would be surprised if a studio would hire you just on experience you've earned through teaching yourself.

Again, my gut feeling. I'm interested in what other people have to add.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:14 am

I do have some professional production experience, from doing sound and music design on a few video games. I'm also still naive enough to think that a solid portfolio would override my master's degree in Computer Science.

But from what everyone here has said, combined with what I found when doing the local label search, it sounds like word-of-mouth and Just Doing It is really the only way to get into music production, and that aside from major-label recording studios, music production DOES just happen in peoples' bedrooms. So I guess the trick is finding a project that has the right balance between challenge, visibility, and not taking so much time that I can't do it while still working at my current job.

ken · Post by **ken** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:19 am

Hey Fluffy,

If you figure it out, I'll pay you good money to make it happen for me as well.

If you want to be a "producer" you could offer those services to people for free to get your name out there. Then you can ramp up your fees until you can quit your day job.

I think it is the sort of field where you need a demo reel and then you need to convince people to listen to it. My initial thought was to send one to all the local recording studios with a resume. I think you should make it more diverse than just your own stuff, but you probably don't have to. I would go to a few open mics and find some singer/songwriters you like and see if they would be willing to let you record/produce a track or two for them to use as your demo.

I hope Sober adds to this thread. He seems to have good luck getting music jobs.

Ken

anti-m · Post by **anti-m** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:22 am

thehipcola wrote:CAVEAT: The one thing that has suffered since working for myself is that I find I have significantly less time for pursuing personal music projects...songfighting, bands, my own album and writing...all seem to get backburnered in favour of work opportunities. I keep telling myself that just around the next corner I'll have a chunk of time...but it's elusive as yet....

This is very true! The curse of "doing what you love" for a living is that you only very rarely ACTUALLY end up "doing what you love."

There is a high potential for spending a lot of time eq'ing jingles about local storage facilities and used car lots... and once you spend 16 hours in the studio mixing those jingles, it's unlikely that you'll be inspired to do much of your own musical work.

I'm not saying that freelance can't be rewarding and that you shouldn't do it... but it can be a real soul-cruncher.

That said, if you're willing to do some soul-crunching commercial work, it seems that there is always a need for jingles and background tunes. Perhaps it would be best to not start looking at the top of the musical food chain (labels / recording studios) unless you're willing to intern. Instead, go after the small fish first.

Make a section of your website devoted to commercially viable goodies, then start talking to all the tiny advertising firms/animation houses/etc. etc. etc. that Seattle is full of. I'm fairly certain that if you pound enough pavement someone up there will at least throw you some small jobs...

... and then you have the beginnings of a commercial demo tape!

(CAVEAT: I'm making these suggestions based on the perhaps faulty notion that the music biz functions in a similar way to that of the animation biz... I could well be talking out my arse.)

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:30 am

I agree with the volunteer and do a good job. Find places that seem to facilitate "contacts" that will be valuable.

- Start a pod-cast production after-school program one a day a week and find out who the kids' parents are.
- Get involved with The Conversations Network who also produce IT Conversations. These are awesome people doing awesome work, getting paid a little but working with top level professionals. You can start as an audio engineer (as I did until I didn't have the time), then take on being a producer for a series and meet incredible folks. I can't speak highly enough of this organization, their work or the sense of fulfillment doing it. You will be using cutting edge podcast production techniques in both audio and video, and be exposed to tremendous people.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:32 am

In my portfolio/demo tape/whatever I was planning on having a wide variety of things, like Sockpuppet, plus+5, the <3 and Octothorpe tracks I've produced, remixfight stuff, cellphone audio, etc. (obviously for the songfight stuff I've gone back and remastered it to sound a lot better with what I've learned as I've gone along so it sounds a lot better than what's available around the web). I also know a few other local musicians via my weekly karaoke so maybe I'll try the offer-to-produce thing.

I think finally getting a basic portfolio website together would be a good idea. That's sort of what beesbuzz.biz was going to be but of course it very quickly turned into a big ol' "archive of everything fluffy" and then sockpuppet.us is more a "hay guys here is my fake band which never gigs" site so yeah, I should turn my professional-life site (which currently just says "I have no website" and has a copy of my resume, since I just use the domainname for email) into a no-frills audio production portfolio.

melvin · Post by **melvin** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 10:30 am

My two cents:

Two of my best friends have owned a recording/mixing/mastering studio for more than a decade, and it took until the last year or two for either of them to make anything resembling a living from music. Here is how it worked out for them:

Guy #1 spent years networking with music publishers, labels, TV and film production companies, and all other manner of music industry types, and eventually got hired to do a few "commercial music"-type gigs. Suddenly, in the past year, he's been hired to do theme songs for multiple reality TV shows, the show “Queer as Folk”, a Christian radio podcast, and the soundtrack for Michael Madsen's self-produced schlocky horror flic. Unfortunately, he's not doing music he loves per se, but the money is good.

Guy #2 always had a knack for mastering. Although it had been almost impossible to get paying mastering clients at his own studio, he recently managed to hook-up an "apprentice on the nightshift" gig at the mastering studio that does about 90% of the rock albums in Canada. So his independent experience did pay off, and now he masters (B-list) records for real money. Mind you, to Smalltown's point, his real-world experience is augmented by a degree in audio engineering.

Before these guys found their respective niches, I used to pitch them with a simple idea that perhaps Fluffy could try: offer independent musicians a sweet package deal. Something along the lines of "$1,000 gets you a 3-song demo tracked, mixed and mastered." Even though a lot of people can record in their bedrooms these days, I would think the simplicity, convenience, reasonable cost, and promise of "expert" assistance would appeal to a lot of independent bands, and help you get a good portfolio of work together (plus the all-powerful word of mouth).

So, in summary:

- Network with industry turds
- Network with studios
- Consider putting together a sweet deal for indie musicians

Oh yeah, and BELIEVE! Good luck!

thehipcola · Post by **thehipcola** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 10:35 am

Yah, education does help with some credibility. I forgot to mention I did attend a 2 year program for audio engineering and production. It certainly does help dispel any questions possible clients have about capabilities I may have or just "say" I have.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 11:27 am

I've always believed that proof is more important than paper. Maybe that will work to my detriment. I dunno.

Anyway, from this thread I guess I should definitely start small and keep music as a part-time thing, though now I know some steps I can take to start making it even a part-time thing and not a personal-hobby thing. Thanks, everyone.

Billy's Little Trip · Wed Feb 28, 2007 11:56 am

The only problem with bands, is that they usually don't have much money. All of the guys in my band are in the music business as a career except me, I own a swimming pool biz which gives me time to do what I like. But the guy that recorded our CD, and a good friend, has a very lucrative business in the music industry. He, like hip, went to a sound engineering school. But he parlayed his engineering and production skills into designing and building sound studios. At first he had his own company building home studios for rich guys, then small recording companies. Now he works for a very large company designing and building major TV and radio station studios. He says that the sound school he went to is the reason he got where he is today because it got his foot in the door. His first big career move was as an intern at a radio station early in his career and from there to good paying engineering and production jobs, in which he made a very good living before he got into building studios. Now he's RICH!......and too important for the likes of us. We never hear from him anymore, lol.

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 1:37 pm

fluffy wrote:I've always believed that proof is more important than paper.

That is 99.9% correct. But the piece of paper may help to open doors and break the ice. Also, you will probably develop contacts and get ideas while getting your piece of paper. Even a short course in audio engineering would probably be useful.

I've been thinking of enrolling in this course - not really as a career path, just because I miss studying and I'd like to study something I enjoy. (Oh and because one of the subjects is called KMB003: Sex, Drugs & Rock'n'Roll. How cool would it look on a resume to have a High Disticntion in that!)

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:06 pm

melvin wrote:Oh yeah, and BELIEVE! Good luck!

That's the hardest thing for me right now.

Billy's Little Trip · Post by **Billy's Little Trip** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:29 pm

fluffy wrote:
melvin wrote:Oh yeah, and BELIEVE! Good luck!
That's the hardest thing for me right now.

Good luck is just bad luck that's not as bad as really bad luck.
.......oh, that's good.......are you writing this down Fluffy?

Reist · Post by **Reist** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:35 pm

I was definitely looking into audio engineering for college next year (in Kelowna), but it's just too expensive. Maybe in a few years I'll get to do that, since that would just be great.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 11:47 pm

Well, I guess the first step is getting a portfolio people can see. http://rowdytop.com - any suggestions people would make?

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 7:06 am

i think it looks good. hey, i'd never seen your ackerson remix,,, that's good to hear, since the project seems to have died a bit. i may be unfamiliar, but is it not customary to talk a little about what you did for each track?
-bill

Getting a music industry job

Getting a music industry job

Re: Getting a music industry job