How to Get gigs by keeping at it

Sometimes you'll hear people complain about others who are more successful than them in any walk of life. Maybe they get the most attractive or highest number of partners. Maybe their business ideas make most money or as a footballer they score more goals than any other striker.

As far as semi-pro musicians go, perhaps they get more gigs in a month than you play in a year.

Usually, though, all you'll ever see (or at least remember) of someone else's success are the fruits of it.

So you see the beautiful partner on the arm but not the rejections experienced from numerous other attempted pick-ups. You see the fast cars and wads of cash but not the hours and money wasted on other failed enterprises. You see the goal tally on the scoring chart but forget how many times they blasted over the bar or missed penalties.

The point is, any success is made up of a lot of failures on the way.

It's the ones who can push past the

"Thanks, but we've got all the bands we need right now"

and who keep on pitching that get all gigs.

This is the kind of persistence that leaves onlookers complaining:
"How does he get all these women - he's not even that good-looking"


or:

"I can't understand how he scores so many goals - he's not even a good player"

and of course:


"How do they get all those gigs? They're cr*p!"


How to get Gigs

Can you get gigs if you don't have talent?

Or put another way:


"Is it the best bands that get the most gigs?"

Nope.

You too must know great musicians who never get out from in front of the bedroom mirror with their Fender Strat?

One thing that working with so many bands and solo artists has taught me is that the number 1 ingredient for getting gigs isn't musical ability. Or number of hours spent rehearsing.

It's actually.......


Commitment.



Eh?




"Commitment" between everyone in the band to being an act that gets out gigging every weekend (or whatever your gigging frequency goal is).


This is sooooo different from deciding you'd "Quite like to get out and play a few gigs if we can".

It's the difference between dropping in on some venue once in a while to leave a demo for someone to listen to versus:

contacting a set number of new precisely-targeted venues every week to pitch your act.

Of course, if you really are completely talentless it will be hard to get repeat bookings (and maybe even your fee on gig night).

Personally, I'd bet on any committed semi-pro bunch with no talent ahead of a band of half-hearted musical perfectionists any time.

At least as far as landing the initial show goes..


How to Get Band Gigs

Get Gig Fees Sorted - 6 Tips

No-one gigging in a part-time band wants to obsess about gig fees but yesterday's post did get me thinking.

When you're started out, how do you set (and get) the fees for playing gigs that you want?

Here are 5 ideas, a couple of which you'll be familiar with if you've read Gig-Getter.

1. Agree your minimum gigging fee between band members early on
This will avoid anyone making a band booking for a fee the others aren't happy with. Sounds obvious perhaps, but I've lost count of the number of bands I work with who don't get the minimum agreed together upfront.

2. Offer Lower "Trial-Price" Gigs when starting out
Many times I've made an offer to a venue of a fee for first appearance with the sentence:
"Assuming everyone's happy with the night, fees for future gigs will be reviewed" This means reviewing and moving the fee upwards of course.. This can help a great deal to get you gigging and most importantly build your track record.

3. Aim to move your minimum fee upwards as you build a track record As you'll see from yesterday's post about gigging for $0 - my band has never been out for nothing. However, in the early days we'd typically gig as a minimum for £150/$93 a night. This went on for the best part of 12 months - although we did start doing private functions for significantly more. the next year we acquired the Hard Rock Cafe as a regular venue and raised our minimum fees accordingly.

4. Consider early Gigs an an "Investment" Not just if you're playing "trial price" gigs, but as investment in your sound and shows together. the more often you gig the tighter you'll get (rehearsal is no substitute) and the sharper you'll be able to make your stage show.


5. Maximise profit made from each gig
Aim to get a repeat booking on the night from any venue you play at. Ideally book them in blocks - i.e. 3 or 4 at a time. Also, give yourself the best chance of being approached about private work whenever you appear live. use fliers, monitor stickers and/or a backdrop with contact details clearly shown.

6. Remember it's NOT just about the money Sometimes it's easy to forget how lucky you are as a gigging musician. Getting paid for doing what you love. I still have to pinch myself some Friday or Saturday nights. There I am a middle-aged old git, getting off to songs I loved as a kid , maybe Anarchy in the UK or Highway to Hell but someones giving me money for doing it...

How to Get Gigs

Is this How to get Gigs?

I was talking to a friend this week who recently joined a band as lead singer. He was excitedly telling me about their 2nd gig which they're playing tomorrow (Saturday) night. It's a corporate booking for a household-name branded company which he confessed they'd secured through a "friend of a friend".

"Fair enough" I thought, and congratulated him on a getting a lucrative company gig so early in the band's time together. It was then that he let the bombshell slip.

"We're not in this this for money" he told me.

"We've all got good jobs so we're not charging a fee for playing".

Wow. I'm glad I wasn't driving when I heard that. I asked him whether his band ever intended to charge for playing live. He said they did. I asked him how they expected to get people to pay when it become known they had be hired for $0/£0.

He didn't have an answer for that one.

There's another point here though.

What does it do to every other band's chances of charging a decent fee when there are bands around who'll play at events for nothing?

There expenses associated with running any band. Time taken rehearsing, maybe travelling to and from rehearsals. The petrol to get there and back. Similar on gig night itself and not to mention the cost of the gear.

I wouldn't expect a IT person or a plumber to drive out to my house or office and spend 5-6 hours working for me at night for nothing. Especially if it had taken him several more hours work in preparation for what he did when he got here. Even if he was my brother -never mind a "friend of a friend".

Sorry, but I feel strongly about this one.

This is no way to get gigs. No band should play for nothing. It devalues you and every other band.

Tips for Overcoming Stage Fright as a Musician

Stage Fright can only work against you as a gigging band or solo artist so I was interested in this find. I havent seen the site before but it's a good read about overcoming stage fright.

There are a number of useable tips.

For example:

1. Having a “pen” name to separate yourself from the performer you want to be. This can free you up mentally/emotionally and help you shake the chains of stage fright

2. Faking confidence (’til you make it). The very act of pretending to behave the way you want to feel (confident), will in time make you feel confident.

3. Imagining succes. Not only will this “programme” you to succeed but having “seen” success ahead of time, performers will be more relaxed about the event when it comes around. Only proviso here would be to to start the imaginings well ahead of the event. Otherwise you can get too uptight when you think about it.

4. Prepare well. Personally I would also recommend preparing for what you’ll do if things do go wrong and having some “off the cuff” remarks you can fall back on in case you “dry up”

Free Tips about Overcoming stage fright

Overcoming Stage fright eBook

3 Quick Tricks for overcoming stage fright

Stage Presence - Is it something you're "Born with"?

Got involved in a debate with a couple of musicians this week about Stage presence along the lines of:

"Can we learn it - or do some just have it?"

We've all seen that some of the best semi-pro acts in terms of sound and/or technical ability have little impact on their audiences.

Other less "gifted" (or perhaps less "rehearsed") musicians seem to connect with every crowd they play to.

Some people argue that the ability to command attention and interact with a crowd is something you either have or don't have. That this ability is effectively "charisma" and performers have it both on and off the stage.

I'm afraid I personally don't buy that. I know more than one musician who has the crowd eating out of their hands when they're gigging but who no-one seems to notice in everyday life. Similarly I know musicians who are the life and soul of most parties who seem to fade into the wallpaper when they pick up their guitar or drumsticks.

Somebody suggested:

"You cannot teach stage presence. You can teach someone to project, but this does not necessarily imbue 'presence'. That comes from the energy you exude, the aura of who you are. Performance skills can be learned, and acquired through experience. Presence, like personality, is something you are born with."

I've seen transformations in a band's crowd reactions enough to know that
stage presence can be learned with various techniques.

Confidence is the key.

This comes from:

1. Experience gigging
2. Knowing how to work a crowd

Get Fans = Get Gigs

Many times you'll hear that the best gigs go to those bands who can pull-in the biggest crowds.

Certainly the fuller the venue when your act plays there the more valuable you are to that venue.

It's not the only factor of course, but it does help you get gigs when a venue knows you can draw a decent crowd.

So, here are 5 Social media tools you can use to make engaging and building your fan base much easier.

I found the post on a neat new blog I discovered today: Music 3.0 by Bobby Owsinski who's one of the music industry's best-selling authors.

Some good stuff there for gigging bands and solo artists to keep an eye on.

How to Get Gigs by knowing what makes YOU different

It always amazes me when I ask a band or solo artist who contacts me about their material or genre. When I ask them how they'd define themselves.

It's usually only those who are regularly gigging who can give me a clear answer straight back. Anyone trying to master the basics of how to get gigs should keep this in mind.

When you're trying to pitch your act to venues there's nothing worse than mumbling some long-winded & confusing response when you're asked what sort of material you do.

Before you can give a meaningful response, one which can help you to get gigs, you have to have done the work first of course. You need to have studied the bands you're competing with in the gig venues you're targeting. To know how you compare with them. It's Step 1 in the Gig-Getter manual.

When you've got this background it becomes easy to establish the elements that make you unique. Then, you can easily create a one-liner which will neatly sum you up and help you when you talk to venue and try to get gigs.

Here's someone else's take on this point about being able to summarise your act and use that to get gigs or promote yourself

How to Get Gigs by encouraging people to take pictures

If you can get some good action pictures of your band or act they can go a long way to help you get gigs.

The best of these pictures are the type which include some of the audience getting off on it. These say more than any amount of words when you're trying to work out how to get gigs. You should use the pictures as part of your demo kit of course, either printing one or two onto your CD or using them on your website.

Ideally you can encourage anyone taking pictures at your gigs to later email copies to the band so you can use them on your website, Facebook or myspace pages.

Now, if you're based in Australia, you might be familiar with children's rock band The Wiggles. I read an interesting piece about their marketing recently (yes really).

It served as a useful reminder that often people can be shy when it comes to taking pictures or video of your stuff.

This is because they’re used to going to places like museums, movies, shows — and even grocery stores — where they’re scolded for taking photos.

These guys remind us that if you don’t blatantly tell them you’d be flattered if they took photos or videos of your store, your work, or (in the case of gigging bands and solo artists) your performance, they might assume it’s not acceptable.

The Wiggles announce at the start of every show that everyone in the audience is encouraged to take as many photos as they could — and to share them on the internet. As soon as the policy is announced, cameras and camera-enabled mobile phones start going off everywhere in the venue.

Make your crowd the stars of the show where you can and watch your website visitor numbers soar as people go and check themselves out....

How to Get Gigs

Here's one example of "Stage Presence"

But better be careful if you decide to add it to your repertoire.

You could be sued for loss of teeth...


Stage Presence in action


Happy 2010!