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Maintaining Client Relationships

Business relationships are built on the premise of buying and selling and within the audio industry we are often on both sides.  Sometimes we are the customer renting and buying services such as talent, venues, equipment, and staffing. Sometimes we are the company that is booking talent, venues, and staff.

There is an old saying that says the customer is always right – I disagree with this ideology as it is often a two-way street between companies and customers to create the most beneficial outcome for both parties. In this two-part series, I would like to take a look at some things companies and customers should do to develop successful business relationships. Relationships that are productive and strong.

Companies service our industry in many different facets;  venue booking, talent booking, equipment rentals, staffing, trucking, catering, security, and more. Most of these companies work in broader environments than just the entertainment industry, and they will have more than one customer at a time. However, to be a productive company, it is beneficial to strive to balance old and new customers, maintain and keep up with new inventory and industry trends, and to get creative in how to support the customer needs.

It is easy to get caught up in building new customer relationships – new projects and the challenges those projects bring can bring significant benefits and increase profit. Be careful to not forget to take care of your long-term clients. These relationships are already built, but still,  need to be maintained.

Make sure to tell all customers about new services or products that are offered as well as the new and exciting things happening within the company. The trust has been built for continuous sales so market new and improved services or inventory to support the company.  Continue to maintain existing relationships to ensure income. A non-proactive approach can drive customers to the competitors, so take a dynamic approach to building old and new business relationships.

Don’t shortchange the existing customers for new ones, strive to maintain and exceed the professionalism that has been provided in the past as new customers are added to the company’s base. Shortchanging any customer for a one-time exciting show could result in a loss of profit with both the new and old customer going to the competitor next time. Finding a balance is essential.

Business relationships are not a perfect science, but some steps can be taken to develop these relationships to maintain a steady stream of shows and income, which can result in increasing the company’s inventory, services, and capacities.

As mentioned these interactions are two-way so watch for next month’s blog on how the buyer or customer should hold up their end of the business relationship.

The Six Figure Home Studio: A Review

When I first heard about The Six Figure Home Studio, I was skeptical. Who was this guy and was he really making six figures? Could a 31-year-old engineer/mixer really have enough experience to give solid advice to the thousands of people coming to his site?

I was surprised to find what Brian Hood has to say has a lot of value. In six years, he grew $5,000 and a studio in his parent’s basement to a 6-figure income (gross/pre-expenses) business in Nashville. He recognizes common business struggles for home studios (and freelancers) and has come up with easy and practical tools to help. I reviewed the website, podcast, video series (free portion), mailings, and Facebook group. A few elements stood out as the best:

 I Publicly Shared ALL Of My Studio’s Income, Expenses, and Tax Numbers

Brian posted his business earnings from 2014 (month by month) and yes, it was over six figures (around $120,000). The catch: After expenses and taxes his net income was around $50,000. This is an excellent case study of the reality of owning a home studio.

Website Download: Rate Sheet

(link at the bottom of the page)

This is a free download if you give an email address (which does sign you up for the mailing list). The rate sheet is geared towards music production but has a lot of great advice and the rate ranges provided seem reasonable and realistic.

Facebook group: The Six Figure Home Studio Community

The first two rules for this group are “No gear talk unless it’s related to business/budgeting/growing your bottom line” and “No mixing talk. There are more than enough groups for this.” It feels like a community – the conversations are interesting, and everyone is treated with respect (including the women in the group). It’s a great resource for business questions.

Video course: The Simple Business Roadmap

This free “course” is a collection of videos that can be watched in about an hour. In the videos, Brian gives simple suggestions how to start a business and create a plan. It’s worth it to sign up for the video about sales where he talks about how to target potential customers (including online strategies).

Article: Why Most Home Studios Fail To “Make It” (Spoiler: It Has Nothing To Do With Marketing)

Brian has created “The Home Studio Hierarchy of Needs” which shows “the fundamentals necessary to create a successful, profitable, flourishing home studio business.” When it comes to finding business, studio owners (and freelancers) tend to work in a lot of different directions without much focus. Brian breaks this down into a process that is easy to understand and implement.

Home Studio Assessment

This is an assessment based on his above “Home Studio Hierarchy of Needs.” It only takes a few minutes (answering questions on a scale from low to high). The questions range from your social skills to beliefs about business or marketing. The results help zero-in on problem areas such as “skills & knowledge,” “relationships and ethics,” or “profit and maximization.”

Room for improvement

I love the overall concept (a business resource specifically for home studios), but sometimes it comes across as just a personal blog that’s Nashville-centric. I was hoping to see perspectives from a variety of professionals, but the only views other than Brian’s were on the private Facebook page and the podcast’s second host.

While I see value in the site’s paid content, I fundamentally disagree with targeting colleagues (versus clients) for profit. Most professionals in our industry will offer information for free to support colleagues in times of need. We’re all running businesses and everyone doing this has tricks and “secret sauce” that could probably help a lot of people. This site sells it openly; there’s a $695 program that essentially is a mentorship. That’s a lot for a struggling business or someone getting off the ground. It’s like a neighbor asking for sugar; you could ask for money but is that what’s best for the relationship in the long run? In this field, sustaining is about the long game – not the race to the top.

Lastly, in the videos Brian says many times, “I know guys who do this” or talking about “getting connected to the right guys.” I was surprised to hear it given that female engineers and mixers do exist, many of us own home studios, and inevitably one (or many of them) would find the site. It’s disconcerting for a site that’s promoting itself as “The #1 Resource For Recording Studio Businesses” and over 9,000 Facebook followers to be speaking as though women in the industry don’t exist. If nothing else, I hope this is remedied in the future of the site.

Overall

Business education is lacking from audio education curriculum, and it’s often low on the priority list for a lot of freelancers and home studio owners. Owning a studio is about so much more than what gear to buy or learning how to mix better. The Six Figure Studio fills some of the business gaps and offers some interesting and valuable content on the topic. But, it’s also a site somewhat early in its own growth and expertise. There’s a lot to take from it (with a discerning eye).

Heather Augustine – Patience, flexibility, and persistence

Heather Augustine’s introduction to theatre sound happened almost by accident.

Now Head of Sound for the US National Tour of Les Misérables, she recalls how in high school, it was initially acting that drew her to theatre, “I loved that idea that in theatre you can break the mold and push boundaries.” It was a surplus of female actors for the annual musical that led to an unexpected introduction to technical operations: “I actually wanted to do lights, but my sister was older, so she got to pick first, and she picked lights. Little did I know that running sound for that musical would set me up for the rest of my career!”

That initial step led to further sound and tech work at high school and at 16, she got a job as an audio operator at the San Antonio SeaWorld park. When it came time to consider college, it seemed a natural step to continue working in technical theatre.

Her “official” introduction to theatre sound design came after meeting Curtis Craig at a Texas Thespian Festival. Craig became her sound design professor at Penn State, where Heather studied for a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatrical Design and Technology, with an emphasis on Sound Design and Costume Technology.

At college, she expanded on the skills she learned in high school and at SeaWorld. “[which] were more “this happens, you push this button” with a little bit of mixing,” and was introduced to all aspects of technical theatre. These aspects included scenic, lighting, costumes and technical direction, with higher-level classes and show assignments in her areas of emphasis.

Heather PSU Tailgate

After graduating, connections and recommendations from Penn State enabled her to get a job with NETworks Presentations. Following college, she started touring as an A2 (Assistant Audio, also called Sound No. 2 in the UK). Aside from some summer festivals and freelance design/mixing work for smaller theatres in Dallas, Texas (where her family is based), she’s toured for the past six years. Over this time she’s worked on six shows, moving up to the A1 (Head Audio, or Sound No. 1) position for the last two shows.

Early on in her career, she felt pressure to be more technically adept than her male counterparts. “I’m quick to pick up a mix, and I can organize and do split and cut tracks faster than most, but I have to get my hands on gear and spend time with it before I really understand it. I can’t rattle off hundreds of model numbers, and it took me a while to be okay with that. You need both sets of skills to make a show work.”

Even so, she says that her real challenge was her mindset, “It took me a bit longer than it should have to make the transition from A2 to A1 because I would let my insecurities get the better of me and convince me that I wasn’t ready to do it on my own. When I finally decided to make the shift, I found out I was fine. There’s always more to learn, and sometimes you have to force yourself to make that leap.”

Heather OZ FOH

In her current role as Head of Sound for the US National Tour of Les Misérables, Heather is responsible for mixing the show, maintaining the overall sound design and managing the logistics of getting the system in and out of the various venues.

Like any major touring production, the national tour of Les Mis travels with everything needed to walk into a bare stage and set up a show from scratch. Set, costumes, electrics, audio and everything else required fits into eleven 53-foot semi-trailers. With a show this size, planning is paramount, and long (and early) hours are part of the job.

Sound get-in at a new theatre starts with an advance rigger/swing tech who leaves the previous city on load-out day (usually Sunday) and works with the local crew in the new theatre on the next day (Monday) for five hours to rig the monitors. The rest of the crew finish the load out from the previous theatre around eight to ten hours after the last show goes down (usually Sunday evening into the early hours of Monday morning), jump on a bus and go to the next city. The full load-in starts at 2 pm on Monday and finishes around 11 pm, with a dinner break. The crew go back in at 8 am the next morning (Tuesday) for another eight hours, with a show on Tuesday night. The rest of the week runs with one evening show on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and two shows on Saturday and Sunday. For a week “sit,” load-out happens after the second show on Sunday, and the process repeats for the next city. Every couple of weeks the show might stay at a theatre for two to three weeks, and the crew will get Mondays off.

Heather PSU Truck Loading

Heather admits that her least favorite part of the job is working between 5 am – 7 am: “I don’t care if we’re loading out and it goes into the morning, or if we start the day with a 6 am call, I’m happiest when I never have to look at a clock during those hours.”

During load-in, as A1 (Head Audio) Heather is responsible for getting the system up and running and tuning and timing it. The current Les Mis system comprises a DiGiCo SD7 at Front of House (FOH), Meyer Leopard arrays, UPJ center cluster and delays truss, UPM front fills, 600HP and 500HP subs. D&B E5s are used for under-balcony delays and onstage monitoring. Meyer Galileo and Callisto systems are used for processing, with two redundant QLab machines for playback. They use a Sennheiser SK-5212 wireless system with DPA 4061 mics.

After the show is in, Heather will mix the majority of the shows, as well as being available for rehearsals (possibly one or two a week), particularly “put-in” rehearsals. These are essentially full runs of a show with full tech elements for swings, understudies or new members of the cast: “People will start leaving for various reasons (contracts end, other jobs come up, etc.), so the cycle continues as you continue to rehearse and put new people into the show.”

The second person in the sound department, the A2, will mix around two shows a week and runs the “stage sound” – the backstage aspects of the show. This includes managing all radio and onstage mics, troubleshooting and running a show track or teaching this to a local stagehand. Heather jokes that “the A2 is the PR rep for the department because [they are] the one around all the actors and crew while the A1 is out at FOH during the show.”

As well as the responsibility of getting the sound up and running at each new theatre, the A1 has to think ahead to the next stage on the tour.

The system is specified before the tour by the Sound Designer, whose job it is to work with the director and MD (musical director) to create and define the overall sound for the show. This will include choosing the speakers, mics, console, processors and everything else that’s required for the system, tuning it, and sourcing or creating sound effects and soundscapes. The job of the A1/Head Audio is to learn the sound and replicate this in each theatre on the tour. Part of the A1’s role is, therefore, to consider whether the tour has enough speakers to cover the next space and whether it can accommodate their rig.

Does the new venue have any quirks for which they need to plan?

It’s clear that as well as technical expertise, the job of an A1 requires solid organizational skills, flexibility, patience, and persistence. Heather emphasizes these last three as being key when touring: “Things are never going to work out quite the way you want them to, and mistakes are going to happen. [You have] to get right back up and try again.”

She encourages any women and young women who want to work in theatre sound to “Figure out what your thing is and go with it. I hear a lot of people trying to figure out the “right” way to deal with discriminatory situations, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Learn from others, but realize that it’s okay to have a different way of dealing with people, and find out what makes you comfortable.”

Heather Phantom FOH

From Heather’s perspective, theatre can be a supportive environment for women. “[There’s] a lot of support. Both from women who are already in the industry, and from a lot of guys who are happy to see more and more women in audio. I can’t count the number of times that someone has told me it’s great to see a woman or an all-female audio team (when my A2’s have been women) come into their theatre.”

As for the future of theatre sound, Heather believes there will be a shift towards using more digital technology. This is particularly in light of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission, the regulatory authority for wire and radio communications in the US) moving to auction off increasing amounts of the RF (radio frequency) spectrum. She also believes departments will become more integrated. Many shows, like Les Mis, already link sound and lighting cues through MIDI, and other elements such as automation and effects can also be linked together.

In terms of her own career, Heather would love to mix on Broadway. She’s also looking towards a time when she has the financial independence to be able to work on smaller or newer projects that feed her passion.

For the moment, Heather appreciates her job for two reasons.

First, the people: “It’s still mind-boggling to me how you can know someone for only a couple weeks, but after you tech, a show, do a couple grueling load-ins and outs, you form a bond, and it feels like you’ve known each other for years.”

And second, “there are times I watch as I’m mixing, and take a moment to appreciate what an amazing show it is, and how incredibly proud I am of it. Those moments make all the days of planning, the long hours working, and (sometimes) the lack of sleep worth it.”

Music and Life-Long Friends

When I was a kid, I used to sing in the tubes on the playground with my friend Melly. We liked the way the plastic tunnel helped us hear our own voices. We’d lay head to head and play with our voices, intervals, vowels, lyrics, improvising harmonies for what seemed like hours.

We both played the guitar, our little 11-year-old hands barely reaching both E strings for our first position G chords. We wrote songs together in Melly’s bedroom, which she shared with her little sister and was covered in Spice Girls stickers. Her dad was a musician, a drummer and songwriter, and we sometimes listened to his recordings for inspiration. Melly had music in her blood.

We stood next to each other in the school choir. We were both in the alto section, but Melly’s range extended well into soprano. Together we learned Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” and Rogers and Hammerstein’s “Edelweiss”. After school, we’d take turns guessing the soprano part, so we could sing together in harmony.

In middle school, we started a band with three of our other friends called Magenta. We were essentially trying to be the new Spice Girls. Our “thing” was that we all wore magenta lipstick (even though none of us had ever actually worn makeup yet). Melly wrote a song for us called “The Stars Are White” which we rehearsed a few times before our schedules conflicted too much for us to keep going…I still sing “The Stars Are White” to myself sometimes.

In college, we took Electronic Music Production together and learned MIDI and audio signal flow. We learned C Sounds and how to create sounds using computer programming language. We learned Melodyne and the power of auto-tuning software. We learned how amazing it was to have a studio software at our fingertips—we could harmonize with our own voices now, and there was no limit to how many we could have at once! We could make beats with our mouths and a microphone. We could play any sound we wanted on a MIDI keyboard. Melly always created with a sense of ease and excitement that was electric to be around.

2006 – Melly playing with a capo

Melly transferred schools for the last two years of undergrad. The year we graduated, she got a job in Massachusetts and I found one in New York City. I played gigs on the side and took more music production classes. She got her master’s degree in social work. I moved to Los Angeles. She got engaged. The power went out in a thunderstorm at her August wedding and I sang her (and her whole wedding party) songs by candlelight underneath the gazebo.

She adopted a baby boy and for his first birthday, she and her family came to visit me in Los Angeles.

I picked them up from the airport and sang to the baby in the car. We arrived at my house after trekking through LA traffic, and it was time for his nap. We put his travel crib in my bedroom and closed the blinds. Everyone besides Melly and I was asleep, exhausted from a day of traveling. We crept upstairs to my home studio. “Show me what you’re working on!!” she said. I opened Ableton Live, which Melly had not used before. I explained the basic design of the software to her and we started a beat. Five minutes later she was recording vocals and harmony parts and we were discussing lyrics. Her teenage sister Lillian woke up from her nap and joined us in the studio to watch. She had never seen Melly The Musician before—she knew her as a sister, as a bride, as a mom. “This is incredible,” she said. “I didn’t know you could do this!”

2017 – us together last year

“She’s a beast,” I said.

Melly was totally comfortable using Ableton. She played a bass part on my Push controller and quantized it. “This is SO much better than Digital Performer…” she said, referring to our pseudo-antiquated Electronic Production class in college. “Wow. I love making music.”

We kept playing for what seemed like hours like we had always done. Except this time we were in my studio, and her sister was watching us, and her baby was asleep in the next room. And yet it was just as it had always been. We were on the playground again, in the tube again, head to head, listening to our voices and making music together.

 

 

It’s Time to Stop Just Talking About It

In January 2017, I asked the readers of this blog how they were going to take action to support women in sound – what were they going to stand up for that year? I am more than a little ashamed to say that it’s taken me over a year to decide to take an active stand myself. But now that I have, I don’t plan to stop.

I am tired of talking about being a woman in sound. Please understand me: I am not tired of talking about my career in sound (far from it), and I am not tired of talking about other women in sound. I am irritated by only being asked to answer questions about how difficult it is to be a woman in the sound and music industries. I am frustrated by requests for a definitive answer on why there aren’t more women working in pro audio.

I am exhausted by the questions put to me by professional panels, organisations, and publications which are more interested in talking about the issue of the lack of women in sound, than taking action to do anything about it. I am tired of talking about the problem when I could be boosting the profile of women in the industry by talking about my career in sound.

It is no longer enough to acknowledge there is an issue. If I want change – if we all want change – we have to take action and encourage the leaders in our industry to do the same.

A few days before International Women’s Day, I saw an opportunity to call out one of the major audio industry publications on the representation of women in their magazine.

Below is a transcript of the full Instagram conversation. The original can be found here

@soundswilde

Happy International Women’s Day, Sound on Sound. Let’s have a chat.

I was given a copy of the December 2017 issue of Sound on Sound at a conference last week and I was drawn to this statement in the Inside Track article about Kesha Lee “This is the 132nd article in Sound on Sound’s Inside Track series, and it’s a sad reflection of the state of the music business that only three female engineers have featured in the first 131”

You’re absolutely right; it is a sad reflection – not just on the state of the music business, but also on the organisations and publications that perpetuate gender imbalance and inequality in the music and audio industries. Which, by your own admission, includes Sound on Sound. You’re part of the problem.

The fact that fewer than 3% of the engineers featured in the Inside Track series have been female is pretty shocking in itself. On top of this is the reinforcement of the message that in order to work in the audio industry, you need to be male. Let’s take the December issue as an example.

There are no female writers credited that I could see. Of the 18 ads which include pictures of people, only 1 has a woman at a mixing desk – and she’s a student with a male tutor. Of the 11 ads which include quotes, none of the quotes are attributed to a woman. Special shout out to Radial Engineering who included 8 pictures of 8 male engineers with a quote from each of them in their ad, and to Warm Audio for their tagline “like father, like son”. Way to be inclusive, fellas.

As a woman working in pro audio, I am often asked why gender imbalance persists in the audio industry. The short answer is that there is still a cultural and sociological bias that women don’t belong in technology. This manifests in the kind of non-inclusive imagery and marketing that you can see in the December 2017 issue of Sound on Sound. Put simply: you can’t be what you can’t see.

I’ve been training and working in pro audio for 18 years. There have been a lot of positive changes in the audio industry, for which I am grateful. We still have a long way to go if we want the 5% (the current representation of women in audio) to change to 50%. I want to work in a diverse, equal industry. I hope you do too. If you consider Sound on Sound to be an ally of women in the audio industry, then we need you to step up and do better. You’re in a position of power and privilege. You can use it to challenge bias among your advertisers, subscribers, and contributors and pro-actively support a more gender-equal industry. I hope you will.

Kirsty Gillmore – sound designer, sound engineer, European Co-Director of Soundgirls.org.

@soundonsoundmag:

Hi Kirsty, thanks for the thoughtful and thought-provoking points you make.

As regards advertising, SOS is only allowed to reject submitted advertisements for very specific reasons. Unfortunately, these reasons don’t include perpetuating gender imbalances within the industry. This isn’t a question of editorial policy but a matter of law, and one on which we have taken legal advice in the past. It is counterintuitive but is also, sadly, the current situation.

Regarding the authors who write for SOS, we are aware that bylines are overwhelmingly male, and we would really like for this to become less so. This is a reflection of the pitches we receive rather than any bias within the office. If you’d like to help us change this, then we’d love to hear from you or any female engineers interested in writing for us.

Your own writing is great, so do feel free to send some of your own article ideas over. We’re always on the lookout for new reviewers or people with interesting techniques to share. If you’re interested, drop an email to Ellen Glasper, our Production Editor (nell.glasper@soundonsound.com), and we can take the conversation from there.

Concerning the representation of female engineers and producers within SOS, this has always been a difficult thing to get right. Recent feedback has triggered a discussion in the office about how we can improve the representation of women in the magazine and in the industry in general, and we are open to suggestions about how best to do this. A lot of female engineers and producers have broken through in the past few years, which is great to see, and we hope to cover them in the near future if they’re willing. — The SOS Editorial Team

  1. Incidentally, we’ve received several article pitches over the years from people wanting to explain why women are so under-represented in the industry and suggesting what can be done about it. They were all written by men, and they all basically amounted to “women just aren’t naturally interested in this tech stuff.” They were awful, and we never printed them.@soundswilde

Thank you for your considered response, @soundonsoundmag. While I understand you have no legal recourse to change the content of advertising, you could issue a statement supporting diversity in sound, and encourage your advertisers to reflect this in their advertising with SOS. I also fail to see how including more women in the magazine is “difficult to get right”. You’re not even reflecting the current percentage of women in audio at the moment (5%) in most (if not all) issues, so (failing blatant sexism) it’s difficult to see how you could get it more wrong. Feature more women engineers. Feature more women producers. Feature more women studio owners. Particularly feature more WOC. It’s great that you’re discussing this, but discussion alone will not change gender inequality in the industry. 5 of the MPG awards this year went to women – there are 5 interviews with top industry achievers waiting right there.

Thank you for the offer to contribute. I am heartened that you welcome applications from female writers. I would be further heartened if you took action to go and find female writers, instead of passively leaving it up to them to find you. Have you approached any female tech writers directly? Have you reached out to the many women and feminist music and sound tech collectives, co-ops, and non-profits worldwide to ask if any of their members might be interested? There’s a comprehensive list of women and feminist sound & music tech collectives, co-ops, and non-profits. Have you actively encouraged women writers to apply with contribution ideas?

Regarding articles written by men claiming women “just don’t like tech,” I’m not that interested in your decision not to run articles that perpetuate gender bias – I would hope that you do this as a matter of course. I’m interested in the actions that you decide to take now and pledge to take in the future that will change gender inequality in our industry. You describe SOS as “the most respected music/audio magazine publishers globally.” Do you respect the female and non-male members of your readership and the global audio/music community enough to actively challenge bias in the industry, rather than simply noting that it exists?

Here’s a couple of suggestions: include the recent AES #HeForShe event in the news section of  SOS, if you haven’t decided to already. I believe you were in attendance. Take notes on what Ableton is doing on their website at the moment to increase the visibility of female artists and producers. (Note from the author: Ableton showcased exclusively female artists on their website for a limited period for IWD 2018)

I think (I hope) we’re in agreement that the gender bias in the audio/music industry needs to change. I repeat: you have a position of power and privilege in our industry.  Please use it to pro-actively support gender equality.

SoundGirls Note – Here is a fantastic ad campaign that DiGiCo ran last year.

Missed this Week’s Top Stories? Read our Quick Round-up!

It’s easy to miss the SoundGirls news and blogs, so we have put together a round-up of the blogs, articles, and news from the past week. You can keep up to date and read more at SoundGirls.org

March Feature Profile

Natalia Ramirez – Tuning her way into the music industry

The Blogs

Managing your Work Load

Inspiring the Next Generation of Audio Engineers

SoundGirls News

https://soundgirls.org/event/los-angeles-soundgirls-social/?instance_id=1256

The Studio Side with “JP ‘The Specialist’ Negrete”

Colorado SoundGirls – KCSU and Bohemian Foundation Venues

Los Angeles – DIY Artist Workshop

Slate Digital Workshop at Emerson College

Round Up From the Internet

150 Female Producers You Need to Know

Women In Sound: Rising Above Sexism

 

SoundGirls Resources

Directory of Women in Professional Audio and Production

Member Benefits

Events

Sexual Harassment

Managing your Work Load

Have you ever felt overwhelmed with how many things you need to do and there is just not enough hours in a day? Looking at next week hoping it will be an eight-day week rather than seven? Hands up, I am one of these people!

Learning how to say no to things have been a bloody hard journey for me. I think learning how to say no and prioritise yourself is something that applies to both full-timers and freelancers.

Personally, I love doing different things. Djing, producing music, scoring for short films, etc. It is incredibly hard for me to manage all the things I want to do at the same time as I am working full time. Do not get me wrong, I love my job, and I would not have anything different (Except for maybe an eight-day in the week), but sometimes I just do not have the time for it all!

Not only do I want to do these other music-related things, but I also want to see friends, have fun, and exercise as well! Being able to cook food at home, have a day off, and just do absolutely nothing. The list goes on.

The truth is, all of these things will not happen. At least not at once. And we need to learn to accept this. I have accepted that there are different things at different times and stages of life! Some weeks I will have time to exercise and time to cook proper food that will nourish me. Other weeks I will eat fast food for a week, and the thought of exercising is just not happening. And that is OK!

The only way to manage workload is to try and plan ahead. Try and stay on top of things, prioritise what is important, what can wait, and so on. At university, I was taught the traffic light model. Some of you might be familiar with it, some of you might not be.

With the traffic light model, you put things into categories:

Red is off track and urgent.

Yellow is not incredibly urgent and is relatively on track.

Green is on track and projects can wait.

When I was taught this in university, everything felt urgent & off track in my life.

I just could not let go of the idea that I needed to do everything and everything at once. But now a couple of years later I truly understand the importance of this and the importance of saying no or “this can wait” to not burn myself out.

There are things in life we need to deal with urgently, whether it is your personal life or work-related.  And we should deal with these things immediately! We might have gotten sidetracked, found the task boring or it just felt stressful to deal with it. But the longer we wait, the harder and more stressful it will be to deal with it. Ask for help if you need to.

I would say, look at your life as a DJ mixer. Just try to avoid going into the reds. There is nothing good happening there. Try and stay in the greens & yellows. Evaluate your life, where are you right now? Incorporate an admin hour or two in your day/week, so you can properly sit down and have a look at where things are at. When you take control of things in your life, you are less likely to feel overwhelmed, and you will make time for the essential things in your life. And the most important thing in your life should always be yourself and your well-being.

 

 

Missed this Week’s Top Stories? Read our Quick Round-up!

It’s easy to miss the SoundGirls news and blogs, so we have put together a round-up of the blogs, articles, and news from the past week. You can keep up to date and read more at SoundGirls.org

March Feature Profile

Natalia Ramirez – Tuning her way into the music industry

The Blogs

 

Festival Guide Part 1: Guest Engineer

Powering Through

Review of Daphne Oram’s An Individual Note

SoundGirls News

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Music Expo Miami 2018
SAE Institute, 16051 W Dixie Hwy, Ste 200, North Miami Beach, Florida 33160
Saturday, March 24 10:30AM-5PM
What: Over 20 sessions covering songwriting, recording, mixing and mastering, business discussions covering artist branding, revenues, music showcase, beat battle and product demos.
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Powering Through

For my March blog post, I’m going to answer two questions I was recently asked.

How do you manage performance while stressed/upset? Like today I played a show and I was really stressed all day, and I could really feel it when I was on stage. I was really still and didn’t move a lot and, I could feel it in my voice too. What do you do to kind of control that?

I’m really close with my parents but they’re a little bit unsupportive of my choice to go for music. My mom more than dad. So far I’ve gotten into all the colleges I applied for, and I also might be able to get a full ride to another school that used to be my top until I realized I didn’t like the programs there. My backup is either graphic design or entertainment management, both of which are at the college I want to go to. If I go to the school I want to go to, my friend and I are gonna get an apartment together and really work hard on building our band and putting ourselves out there.

I know at the end of the day it’s my decision but it’s difficult to discuss this with my family. All in all, I guess I know they just care and want the best for me and are coming from a good place. But it’s so difficult to face that, and it affects me a lot (especially performing). Did you have to deal with something like this?

I’m going to answer these questions together, as they are both about maintaining composure and performing well even under stress and sadness.

Yes. The late teens and early twenties are inherently chaotic times for most of us. The arts are scary to a lot of people for a lot of reasons, including issues of self-love, capitalism, and creative blockage. Often it seems easier for children of musicians to find their way into music, and I speculate as to whether this is a result of fewer barriers such as these.

As you say (and you are completely right), it’s your decision at the end of the day. If you can go to college for free and do not have another opportunity conflicting with college (e.g., an all-expenses-paid impending tour for your band), it is probably a smart choice to go to college. It’s hard to go to college for free in the US, and if you find yourself at a crossroads, you can always switch your area of study or leave altogether. At the end of the day, finding your path takes time and you will make mistakes. Period.

It sounds like the emotions or thoughts of people around you affect you strongly, and I think a lot of creative people have this trait. I definitely struggled (and still do) with navigating the feelings and thoughts of people around me, especially my loved ones. When I was in my preteens and teens, my biggest challenge as a performer was learning to stop worrying about what my audience thought of me and my songs. At this point, my audience was mostly my friends and family. I wrote a lot of songs about my parents, growing up in a small town, moving a lot (divorced family), and that sort of thing. People would cry, and give my parents the stink eye. I would be nervous to sing new songs that talked about this stuff, but I faced the fear and would do it anyway. I’m glad I did it, but it was not glamorous! It was terrifying and embarrassing, but also totally necessary.

Oddly, my parents never really confronted me about anything I said in my songs. In this sense, they were very respectful of my creative inclination. However, they were not able to provide me stability through high school, college, and after college. For me, these years were a hodgepodge of putting pieces together, and aside from my grandparents buying me a microphone for my birthday and my aunt paying for my college textbooks, every dime I spent was my own money. Any bit of space I’d previously been able to occupy in their homes all but dissolved as their own romantic relationships started to dissolve. I was stuck in the middle trying to figure out how to make my life happen. Both my parents felt awful and their home lives were coming apart at the seams. I felt terrible for them and wanted to help them, but also I just wanted someone to help me drive my stuff to my new apartment and walk it up the stairs, and maybe to help me put up curtains. Maybe eat dinner with me in my new apartment. I was barely 20 after all. With no one to do these things with, I did them by myself. It was sad, and exhausting, especially after it went on for years. Other family members would say things like “Well if you’re not feeling great, maybe try something else.” What they didn’t realize is that making music DID feel great; it was one of the ONLY things that felt great! But I was only able to do it after a 40 hour work week, after getting off the phone with a crying parent, after cooking and cleaning and paying all my bills, after dragging a desk up the stairs to my apartment by myself.

Really the thing that felt bad was getting through all of the chaos to put my life together in a way that allowed me to make music more often than not. I had to trust that this much was true.

It actually can get harder as you get a little older. Many, many well-meaning people will see your “musician lifestyle” as a lack of commitment to your own self-worth and life. Many will ask why you would do something that doesn’t pay very well, especially during the beginning years. I have lost count the number of times a well-meaning family member or friend has told me to “be ready to get a real job when the time comes.” The sting never lessens, but you indeed become less and less concerned with getting stung at all. So much of the life of an artist consists of stings. It’s part of the job. A lot of times, the discouraging family member is actually just worried about you. They don’t want you to go through all that pain and sadness.

At first glance, all this chaos may seem like something you should avoid. But, listen to other artists and musicians. Their stories always have chaos! They always have tough decisions. They always have shows where something is affecting their emotional state and they need to power through anyway. Channel all the bad stuff into your performance. Treat every performance as an opportunity to be your best performance ever. It’s a skill you must practice to get better at. Play lots and lots of shows and get feedback and keep challenging yourself. Work.

I have a joke I tell myself which is that “the life of an artist is a life of constant embarrassment.” No matter how successful you become, you will always need to take risks to make meaningful work. Taking a risk means there is a possibility you could fail. Furthermore, there will always be people who find a way to undermine you. There is always failure, there is always rejection, and there are always haters. There is always the fear that you may be misunderstood. Check out this interview with Janelle Monae where she talks about how she is afraid of rejection right now.

Every single person has their own struggle. It may not come early on—it may come later in a career. Regardless of when and what it is, it is meant to provide strength and wisdom.

 

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