The Music Biz

horizonshavenolimit wrote:

hermitstyle wrote:with northern state, i ran the merch at a couple of their shows with tegan and sara, with their headlining tour, i did merch, assisted in live sound and basically loaded in and out their equipment for all of the north-northeast and south-southeast portions of their tour. couldn't get off the whole month to do their entire tour unfortunately. and also for spero and sprout's side band, lucky bitch, i recorded, engineered, mixed and co-produced their ep.

i've been in the music business for 6 years now and i'm still in the shallow end of the pool haha
(not that working with northern state or lucky bitch was bad or sucked or anything, i love working with them, just how many gigs i've done gig wise, i normally have only worked with indie/underground/local bands. i haven't worked with any big names yet)

livin my dream *sigh* how does one get a foot in the door

basically i started out in san diego, ca working for a band from long beach. i just started going to alot of their shows, became friends with the bassist and just started seeing if they needed help selling merch, then slowly started helping them with load-in and load-out. when they went on a west coast tour, they asked me to come along, so i went on tour with them all up the west coast a couple of times, including homo-a-go-go in portland, and they had friends who were part of the defunct crowns on a 45 who moved to la from new york and i started working with their band the same as i worked with the first band.then i moved to jacksonville, didn't work for any bands there, but was going to a lot of shows.

with northern state, i was seriously in the right place at the right time. it was after the tegan and sara show in atlanta that i decided i wanted to go to the chapel hill show because i was really getting into northern state from seeing them previous 5 shows or something, but it was sold out and i didn't have a ticket. after the show, i went up and talked to sprout, said hey i'm cool and not crazy, can i work your merch tomorrow, because i want to get into the show, it's sold out and i don't have a ticket. so that's how i started working merch for them. did a couple more shows before i went back home after the michigan shows. over in europe/uk i did promotions for northern state to get there name around, while they were touring with tegan and sara. and then when they did their headlining tour, they knew i was coming and had me doing merch for their shows and also helping out setting up and breaking down and also some sound. i did that for the first week of their tour, went back to school while they went to the west coast and then i did their last two weeks of shows.

working with lucky bitch was again right place right time. when northern state did their last show in nyc on june 3rd, i was over at sprout's house before the show and she was asking how school was going i told her that i was looking for some bands to record a song for a schol project on the neve, and she told me about her side band and i said hey we should record a demo/ep for you. then i did about 3 months of pre-production with spero through e-mail and then one jam packed sleepless weekend i recorded their ep live to tape with 6 girls all in the same room (except drums. tried that once, didn't work out too well). and now it's being shopped around to local/indie labels and is up on itunes.

all i have to say is it's all about persistence. don't give up. there are not many females in the music industry, so you really have to work twice as hard. i'm not moving to australia for another 42 days, but i'm already hounding studios and live sound venues to try and get myself a foot in the door over there. all i have to say, go to local shows, become friends with the bands, show them what you can do, what you are willing to do, and just don't give up. for the first three years i paid my way for everything. even on northern states headlining tour, i paid my way for everything because they didn't have enough money from their record label to pay me, since it was an indie label, one year contract type deal. don't give up.

thanks that helps a lot i wasn't even sure where to start but hopefully i will be able to get myself in there some how i will keep at it
(and thanks for the thread change i'm new at this hehe)

yeah, it's all about who you know. because of squab (the first band i worked for) i have been able to connect myself with clea duvall (she used to date this chick named radio and squab opened up for her gf's band at one time) and le tigre, plus working with northern state, the crew of t and s know me pretty well, and i am persistent every time i see them to get an internship to work under chris (their sound guy) for a tour. i even ask tegan. heh. also, be prepared to get shut down a lot and told no. it sucks, but if you show that you can take rejection well, and not let it break you, you'll be fine. if you can get in with a local venue, you can make connections with the bands that play there as well. volunteer to work there for free, work long hours, whatever you can do. the beginning foot in the door process is going to suck, putting in long hours, no sleep, no food (sometimes you get so busy you just have no time to eat) but it's all worth it in the end. all you can do is network network network. i've even started my own business. create business cards, even cheap ones with just your name on it, contact info and what you do. here is a pic of my business cards when my business was located in tn:



i haven't updated it yet or printed out more cards, going to wait until i get to australia and have an address i can use (more than likely my gf's and a phone number). mines intricate, just for the fact that i do promotions, so i wanted to create a business card that would also show i have some photoshop skills and my website is not linked to my actual website right now, because i don't know how to hotlink or re-direct yet. heh. but you can check it out here:
http://www.sublimonalrecordings.bravehost.com

also, find yourself a mentor. find someone who will be willing to take you under their wing and show you the ropes. want to work in the studio? have your own studio? even record label? get pro tools, logic or both. learn all you can on them. create midi songs. sing nonsense into a microphone and mess around with the plug ins. right now, i have three separate pro tools files from well known bands (i love that my school had connections and got little things like that, that i, uh, borrowed....) and i create my own little mixes and different versions of the songs messing around with all sorts of plug ins in pro tools and logic. the more versed you are in the programs, the more you can step in and help and know what you are doing. learn harmonies. learn what sounds good together. never ever say no to any job opportunity. even if you absolutely hate the music. i wasn't going to say no to lucky bitch. that was 6 girls. they all played an instrument and they all wanted to be in the same room together. they wanted a 'live' ep. they don't play to a click. it was a lot of challenges that i had to overcome to try and isolate everyone's mic, amps and drums (i ended up having to move the drums to a separate drum room. couldn't isolate that to save my life). but i can walk away from that, with a great ep knowing that i overcame that experience. and if you do plan on recording a band, plan on everything breaking or going wrong. seriously. out of the three days that the girls and i recorded, we probably only got about a day and a half of recording in. the first day, it took us 6 hours to set up. mic cables stopped working. signal from the wall box to the board was not coming through properly, faders weren't working, headphone mixes weren't working, mics stopped working. we call those the recording gnomes. everything that you can expect to go wrong will. the band could be late, etc. but you know what, i wouldn't change what i strive and fight to do for the world. i absolutely love it

Man this is completely fascinating. I love getting an inside look at how music is created. It makes it feel so much more real. I was actually considering buying the lucky bitch EP you are talking about and I think this might be a the push to make me purchase it. I already have Hesta's so this might even it out.

So how long have you been "in the industry" per say? Like how old were you when you started working with real bands. This is something I would LOVE to do even if it was only a hobby or side job. Maybe I can become a graphic designer for musicians, haha. I wish.

Also referring to a post in the other thread, there is no shame in working for indie/ underground bands. Most of the bands I love are completely under appreciated... I'd way rather see An Horse live than Rhianna but I think those acts are slightly different...

i love this thread its so helpful

LVeg wrote:Man this is completely fascinating. I love getting an inside look at how music is created. It makes it feel so much more real. I was actually considering buying the lucky bitch EP you are talking about and I think this might be a the push to make me purchase it. I already have Hesta's so this might even it out.

So how long have you been "in the industry" per say? Like how old were you when you started working with real bands. This is something I would LOVE to do even if it was only a hobby or side job. Maybe I can become a graphic designer for musicians, haha. I wish.

Also referring to a post in the other thread, there is no shame in working for indie/ underground bands. Most of the bands I love are completely under appreciated... I'd way rather see An Horse live than Rhianna but I think those acts are slightly different...

you really should pick up lucky bitch's ep you can either get it from itunes, or from their myspace and they hand drew each ep cover, so they are all different. you can also be like, i know the person who recorded, mixed and co-produced this. ha. i still haven't picked up a hand copy, but i'm going to ask for one tomorrow when i see them.

i've been in the industry since december of 2002. i took about a 2 year break from actually touring with bands though.

oh, and i have no shame working for indie/underground bands. i actually love working for them, because they don't take you for granted. it just sucks paywise since you get very little or no pay at all and sometimes you just break even or actually lose money going on a tour, so that's the one thing that i would love working for a big name band. i've got bills to pay but in all actuality, if i got signed with a big name band, i would work with an indie band on my off time.