Indie Artist – Career Choices.
There will be those inevitable periods when you find yourself in a creative rut, if your music career spans any length of time. The challenge is to know how to work your way out and get back to the business of making your art. Music is not an easy business, and the hustle to push your compositions and career out of the familiar and up to the next level can sometimes be a drag for even the most resolute artist or band. It can be all too easy for indie artists of any genre to fall into a creative rut when it comes to songwriting, rehearsing, and moving your music career forward.
Are you playing the same tunes on repeat to the point where they bore you? Does every gig you play feel like a dull variation of the last time you stepped on stage? Do you feel like you’re writing the same song over and over, with little inspiration or progress? Do you circle back to the same clubs and venues again and again? Here are a few tips to help you shake things up, break you out of a rut, and get your creativity, inspiration, and career back on track.
Doing Different Projects
Working on music in a completely different context can help break you out of unproductive patterns and give you fresh inspiration, if you feel like your own creativity isn’t going where you want it to. Try making music in a new environment, with new goals, and see where it takes you; whether it’s helping out with hand percussion for a recording or joining the pit orchestra for a musical, singing backup for another artist or filling in on bass in your friend’s ’80s cover band. As discussed in my post Financing Indie Music, while you are working on your new project, you might also consider spending a few hours a week on a part-time job. Companies seek consumer insight to help make business decisions and this requires part-time workers to take surveys. They companies use market research companies to do target audience for feedback on a service or a product; and they pay you for your time. Search the web to get information on part-time options available online.
Instead of working as a leader, you could do fresh projects where you work as a side person. When you are feeling creatively stagnant, this might be particularly helpful in such a situation. The more energy you can spend simply making good music, showing up and helping someone else achieve his or her musical goals, without the burden and responsibility of keeping the entire train moving, the more inspiration you catch in a bottle and use to bring life to your own musical pursuits.
New Team
Try bringing in a new drummer, or two drummers at the same time who will give everything a different feel, when you start feeling like your songs are static and stale. Whether they’re musicians, song-writing partners or producers, when it comes to pushing your creativity and your career, fresh blood can help reinvigorate your efforts. Change is inevitable and in order to grow, you must constantly aspire to change things around you.
Take it Easy
A psychologist and creator of a music blog once said that a good way to break free from a troublesome rut is to “give ourselves permission to suck on purpose, to see how badly we can suck, and how the journey can actually lead us to discover something cool. There was someone who gave himself thirty days to write deliberately awful songs, to make pieces that were laughably bad. But after a month, he actually had a CD’s worth of really good stuff as well. Giving yourself permission to be bad can remove pressure and expectations, unexpectedly giving you room for positive results as well.”
I am going to return with some more tips soon. So keep checking back!
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