How to Grow as a Musician

What All Musicians Must Know to Succeed

Sheila E. Anderson

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781621537182
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music & Business

A Friendly Guide to Launching and Maintaining Your Musical Career It's tough to make a living from one's love of music, but Sheila E. Anderson shows readers how to do just that in How to Grow as a Musician. This encouraging yet realistic guide covers everything from developing and learning one's craft to managing the business aspects of a musical career. This second edition expands on performance tips, self-promotion tactics, and steps to improve one's networking skills to make fruitful connections. Anderson shares her insights as well as practical advice from successful musicians and other industry professionals on topics such as:

• Composing and recording
• Understanding and negotiating contracts
• Putting on a performance
• Getting and keeping gigs
• Utilizing social media
• And more

H ow to Grow as a Musician is packed with candid views on everything from overcoming failure to the art of writing a song to doing that all-important ego check. Whether they're just getting started or have been in the business for years, all musicians will reap the rewards of this thoughtful career guide.

PART ONE

ON DEVELOPMENT AS AN ARTIST

The mastership in music, and in life, in fact, is not something that can be taught—it can only be caught.

—Rodney Jones

CHAPTER 1

Getting Started

Does this sound familiar? You have decided to become a musician; music is your life, and all you want to do is play, play, play. At some point you asked yourself, or someone else, which steps are needed to turn your dream into a reality. The first thing you should determine is if you want to use music as a vehicle for financial gain or if you want a career. Those interviewed for this book have chosen to build a career. Benjamin Franklin purportedly said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” To make a plan is good advice, but how you “work” your plan is equally important. The outspoken filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles told me, “Early to bed, early to rise, work like a dog, and advertise.” The bottom line is that you should have a plan. Know what you want to do and where you want to do it. Learn to be flexible, and give yourself permission to change as you grow.

No matter your career choice, you should learn your craft. As it relates to musicians, famed jazz drummer Kenny Washington put an emphasis on experience. He learned by listening to records, by taking classes, by being mentored, by “learning as he went,” and/or by working with different types of musicians. He advises that “it is important to tell musicians: Study the music, get a good teacher, listen to the musicians and players that came before you. Never let anyone tell you it’s old fashioned. Don’t be afraid to copy any of the musicians. You must sound like others before you sound like yourself. In classical music, you have to go back; in jazz, the young people don’t know nearly as much as they should about this music, and it’s a disgrace. Learn standards; when the record company drops you, you’ll have to be a sideman.”

I implore you to work as often as you can. Take low-paying gigs, work for tips, and go to jam sessions, because the more you work, the better you will get. You will acquire more knowledge about the music as well as about the business. For ten years, I worked as the emcee for the summer Jazzmobile concerts on Wednesday evenings at Grant’s Tomb, without pay. That experience was invaluable! The musicians interviewed shared their journeys of hard work and dedication. Again, “early to bed . . .” What they have in common are passion, drive, determination, and fortitude as they navigate the business. The path isn’t easy, nor is it straight. Life is filled with ups and downs, highs and lows, and there are no guarantees. So, why not follow your passion? Todd Barkan, a jazz impresario and producer, at the end of each concert that he emceed, would say, “Take care of the music, it will take care of you.”

HOW THEY GOT STARTED

Will Calhoun

Will Calhoun, the widely acclaimed drummer from the Bronx, New York, graduated from the Berklee School of Music in Boston, where he received a bachelor’s degree in music production and engineering. He became a household name as the drummer for the rock band Living Colour. His unique blend of improvisational and hard rock drumming can be found on each of Living Colour’s four Epic releases: the groundbreaking multiplatinum debut Vivid, the critically acclaimed sophomore LP Time’s Up, the Biscuits EP, and Stain, as well as their latest release on Sanctuary Records, CollideØscope. A prolific songwriter, Will has cowritten many Living Colour compositions and wrote the critically acclaimed song “Pride” on the Time’s Up album and “Nothingness” on the Stain album. As a member of Living Colour, Will received two Grammy Awards for Best Hard Rock Performance by a group. They also won an International Rock Award for Best Rock Band.

The time was ripe for the rock and roll group to exist in the mid-1980s. They had an arena where they could put forth their talents. Other rock bands were working then, and classic rock radio existed (1975–1990). Will met Vernon Reid (leader of Living Colour) when he was doing a radio show with Greg Tate. They had previously met, briefly, one time, during one of Will’s Berklee College breaks. Will had played with Jaco Pastorius, who asked if he knew Vernon and told him he had to hook them up. After leaving Berklee, Will went back to New York City and ran into Vernon, where they exchanged tapes of their groups—Will’s Dark Sarcasm and Vernon’s Colours. They discovered a shared interest. Will recalled,

At that time English rockers were coming and taking the best black rock musicians, so Vernon lost lots of band members. Vernon decided to put together a group who had a focus, and that’s when we formed Living Colour. . . . It didn’t take a long time, in the scheme of things, for the group to take off, about four years. We treated the band like a job (we weren’t making any money) with daily rehearsals, etc. I was living at home and asked his mom if she’d give him a year; if I failed I’d get a job. Word traveled that we were hot, and we started playing at CBGB’s. Mick Jagger came to see us when he was in town. . . . I was never afraid that it wouldn’t happen for us.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

www.willcalhoun.com

Ron Carter

Carter is among the most original, prolific, and influential bassists in jazz history, with more than 2,200 albums to his credit, an accomplishment honored in the 2015 Guinness Book of World Records. He has recorded with greats including Tommy Flanagan, Gil Evans, Lena Horne, Bill Evans, B. B. King, the Kronos Quartet, Dexter Gordon, Wes Montgomery, Bobby Timmons, Jaki Byard, Eric Dolphy, and Cannonball Adderley. In 2014, Ron received the medallion and title of “Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters,” France’s premier cultural award, given by the French minister of culture. Ron Carter has been a world-class bassist and cellist since the 1960s. He’s among the greatest accompanists of all time, but he has also done many albums exhibiting his prodigious technique. Carter is nearly as accomplished in classical music as he is in jazz, and he has performed with symphony orchestras all over the world. He played in the Eastman School’s Philharmonic Orchestra and gained his degree in 1959. He joined Art Farmer’s group for a short time in 1963, before he was tapped to become a member of Miles Davis’s band. Carter remained with Davis until 1968. He is possibly the most recorded bassist in jazz history. He has led his own bands at various intervals since 1972. As a leader, he has recorded over fifty albums. Carter also contributed many arrangements and compositions to both his own groups and to other bands. He even invented his own instrument, a piccolo bass. His recordings have encompassed an unusually imaginative range of ideas—from cello ensembles to reexaminations of Bach.

A best-selling author, Carter’s books include Building Jazz Bass Lines and his autobiography Finding the Right Notes. In 2016, he published Ron Carter’s Comprehensive Bass Method, an advanced-level book pioneering the use of QR codes to demonstrate technique in printed books. Additionally, Ron authored The Ron Carter Songbook, a collection of 119 original compositions. In 2017, Ron expanded his reach to his considerable worldwide following on Facebook, where he regularly posts helpful information and backstories for bass players and fans alike. His “Facebook Live” events are enjoyed around the world. Ron teaches frequently at master classes internationally. He has also received five honorary doctorates, most recently from The Juilliard School.

He was hooked from the beginning. “When I was ten years old, I had my first lesson on cello, and I thought this was for me.” Though he does not like to talk about his transition to jazz, he did reluctantly and briefly:

I wanted to be a classical cello player. To be a jazz musician didn’t come along until much later. . . . Well, when I was in Detroit, my saxophone player neighbor liked Paul Desmond, Dave Brubeck. At the time, they had a big hit, Jazz at the College, in 1954 on Fantasy. There were a lot of sorority/fraternity dances on these big boats, and he knew somebody who did these bookings, and he told the guy to get a band in to play for the dances. So he got together myself, and a piano player and drummer, and had rehearsals and made these boat rides out in Belle Isle. I was a classical cello player. I went to string bass because I thought all the white guys were getting all the gigs. As a classical bass player, I saw all the auditions were being steered toward the white bass players in school. And then in my senior year in college, I was in the orchestra, and the guest conductor told me he would love to have me in his orchestra, but that the board directors weren’t hiring colored musicians. That was 1958–1959. I went back to New York. The Philharmonic had no black people, maybe one. So I thought, let me do something else, then. I decided to go to Manhattan School of Music. I had a full scholarship to go to Manhattan in 1960 upon graduation from college. When I got to New York, I met Chico Hamilton in Rochester during a concert, and he told me when I got to New York, if he was working around town, come to say hello. Well, actually, I auditioned for him as a cello player, but the cello player decided to stay in the band. When I got to New York, the bass player quit. So I joined the band as a bass player with Eric Dolphy. I played with Randy Weston for almost a year, a couple of years, and Bobby Timmons, Betty Carter, Herbie Mann, and so on and so forth.

www.roncarter.net

Etienne Charles

Trumpeter/bandleader/composer/educator Charles is one of the most compelling and exciting young jazz artists ushering the genre into groundbreaking new territory as a trumpeter/bandleader. He was born on July 24, 1983. While in his twenties, he recorded seven impressive and well-received albums for his own “Culture Shock Music” imprint. His new album, Creole Soul, is a captivating journey of new jazz expression. It buoyantly taps into a myriad of styles rooted in his Afro-Caribbean background and plumbs the musical depths of the islands, from calypso to Haitian voodoo music. Also in the jazz amalgam mix are rocksteady, reggae, Kongo, and rock as well as the influence of Motown and R&B music Charles listened to on his parents’ record player when he was growing up.

I’m a musician, only thing I wanted to do (from twelve years of age). I was around lots of musicians growing up, but lots of them had day jobs, but I knew that it was what I wanted to do but I now teach, as well. I’ve been teaching ten years at Michigan State University (MSU). They reached out to me, indirectly, then I submitted an application and I won out after three finalists. I love it. I freelanced in New York for one year after I graduated from school (BA Florida State), did my MA at Juilliard . . . came to New York City to work and to get my master’s degree.

While attending college, Etienne gigged at night, though he had had a head start leading bands while in undergrad at Florida State.

In Florida a friend got me working while I was in my freshman year. He was a bass player and got a gig at a restaurant where we played for tips. Tallahassee restaurants had all their windows and doors open, so lots of people came in and out and we made lots of money from tips. My buddy moved to California so they asked me to take over the gig and then I became a leader. Then I got lots of gigs, weddings, etc. Got into contracting. I learned how to get a band paid, how to set up the band and I was learning to be a manager. I did that for three or four years . . . [famed pianist] Marcus Roberts would sub out a gig, too. When I moved to New York the first day I had a record date with Ralph MacDonald, Buddy Williams was on drums. That was August 26, 2006. I had met Buddy and Ralph before—they told me to call them when I got to New York City. Buddy told me to join the union. Kamau Adilifu called me for the gig—The Color Purple—and I got on the sub list. Then I got called to do one night then folks have to sign off on you to get the gig. I subbed for Kamau then got to sub for others and was in school and doing the show. Made sure I lived near the subway so I could get to gigs quick and have my phone on. Have to get to a place in thirty to sixty minutes top. Subbed at Swing 46, a gospel funk band, and we were busy on the weekends. Then more weddings and corporate gigs so I worked steadily so money came from different sources. Then I got a job programming at JALC in summertime and I put a group together to play that—Brian Hogans, Marion Felder, Robert Rodriguez, and Ralph MacDonald—things just took off . . .

www.etiennecharles.com

Jeff Clayton

Jeff Clayton straddled genres and continues to do so, although he is primarily considered a jazz musician.

I began in jazz music; it is the art of being a chameleon, it is so special, it prepares you to do any music. You steal solos, jazz, funk, or classical music; you just copy and mimic that. Then you understand the parameters of these styles, and good jazz musicians can copy. I started out on Concord Records as a jazz artist, then I did pop because someone asked me if I could, so I stole some solos, learned some songs of Stevie Wonder from his records until I knew how to play pop. When I did that, I changed the way I played in my mind and body and played pop. When I stopped playing pop, I turned on jazz and classical; they are closely related.

Clayton was born in Venice, California, and his musical education began at a local Baptist church, where his mother was the pianist and conductor of the choir. He began playing various reed instruments, including the clarinet, but he concentrated on alto saxophone. He later added the soprano saxophone and the flute, extending his studies during his high school and university education, in which his principal instrument was the oboe. He dropped out of the university before graduating in order to go on the road with Stevie Wonder. Later, he mixed studio work with touring, playing with artists as diverse as Gladys Knight, Kenny Rogers, Patti LaBelle, and Michael Jackson. He gradually shifted toward a more jazz-oriented repertoire, and although he continued to work in orchestras backing popular singers such as Frank Sinatra, Mel Tormé, Lena Horne, and Sammy Davis Jr., it was in the jazz world that he established his reputation during the eighties. He played in the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra under the direction of Murray McEachern, with Count Basie; the continuing Basie band under Thad Jones; and with Alphonse Mouzon, Juggernaut, Woody Herman, Lionel Hampton, Ella Fitzgerald, the Phillip Morris Superband led by Gene Harris, Monty Alexander, Ray Brown, and many others. Clayton continued to work with pop stars, playing saxophone solos on the Dick Tracy (1990) soundtrack album and on Madonna’s companion album to the film (I’m Breathless). Clayton has worked extensively in partnership with his brother, John Clayton, and the Claytons are also active in the big band they colead, the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, with drummer Jeff Hamilton, as well as the Clayton Brothers Quintet. In 2019, Jeff recorded Through the Looking Glass, his first CD under his own name.

Monte Croft

A thirty-five-year-plus veteran of the New York music scene, Croft is a multi-instrumentalist, playing six instruments and counting: drums, vibraphone, keyboards, chromatic ha...