Plot Your Course for Success

Plot Your Course for Success

Imagine that you’re standing at the wheel of your beautiful sailboat. You untie the lines, back out of the slip, motor up the channel and head out to sea. What direction do you head?

Plotting a course for your music career requires having a destination in mind, and then you have to steer for that heading. Without plotting your course, the forces of the current will carry you where it will and chances are that won’t get to where you want to go.

Preparation is key. Ask yourself these questions before leaving the dock on your quest for music success...

Do I have the skills necessary?

Do I know who is going to do what tasks and do I have the right equipment?

What obstacles am I likely to encounter along the way and am I prepared to deal with them?

Do I have an alternate plan in case of hazards along the way?

Am I equipped with the tenacity and patience, to persevere for longer than expected?

And lastly, am I focused on the destination so that no matter what happens, I will achieve the goal?

It might take hundreds of contacts before finding even one prospect that needs your services, and then it could be months before you even get a gig. Consider it a passage across an ocean and persevere.

When crossing a 3,000-mile ocean, just one degree off course can make you miss your landfall by hundreds of miles. Before you set sail on your musical journey, be sure to prepare so you'll be able to navigate toward your ultimate success!

Source: Larry Jacobson is a speaker, executive coach and author of the award-winning best seller, "The Boy Behind the Gate". (Adapted by Larry Kimpel)

Everything is important...

Hello my friends,

I hope you all are well and getting your grooves on wherever you are in the world tonight. I wanted to touch upon a subject that often gets pushed under the rug so I thought that I'd mention it here and now.

I'm often asked the question... "Which is the most important to having a successful music career... Reading music, or playing by ear?"

I can tell you from having done it both ways that it is definitely best to learn to do both if you're just starting out. It's also very important to begin learning to read music and studying theory if you've just been winging it by ear all these years.

What's my reason for saying that? It's because having both sets of skills makes you much more of a bankable commodity in the industry. It makes you a better player and more self-confident. And it allows you the luxury of being able to handle any music, anytime, anywhere. Now how free does that make you feel!!? Reading music is basically memorization anyway. Get yourself a set of note flash cards, a metronome, and a note chart for your particular instrument and begin to work with them a little bit everyday.

After a while, you'll begin to pickup on the patterns of written notation and then you'll start translating them to your instrument.
Remember, one or the other is great, but having both skills (reading and playing by ear) in your back pocket will make you more money and it will be very satisfying to you in the long run!

Drop me a line if you have further comments or questions right here on the blog.

Peace and Light,

LK