One day while I was chatting with Nomar Slevik, we got on the topic of “why we are not bigger than we are in music.” We are actually pretty comfortable with our current growth rate but it would be nice to just get that 1 in a million lucky break, cinderella story thing happen. We know that, that is just wishful thinking. So I said to Nomar, “The best advice I can give you is that maybe you need to invest more in your music career.” He agreed with that.
What does it mean to invest in yourself? In the case above it meant Nomar needs to invest money into his career. Which is pretty straight forward. Derek Sivers wrote an interesting blog post about this topic. In short he says that you should be willing to put money in to yourself. Unfortunately I’m unable to find his blogpost
I know some people are probably saying, “How can I put money in to myself when most or all my money is tied up in other obligations such as living!” The way I see it investing doesn’t have to cost money. It can also be time. Invest time in educating yourself. Here’s a few examples. Instead of wishing or talking about how you can’t wait until the day you can afford that great piece of gear, you can educate yourself about it in the mean time. If you can get the manual from the manufacturer’s website go ahead and take the time to read it. Don’t just stop there, learn about the techniques and theory involved.
Here’s my example of self investment. When I first started writing music on my computer, it was pointed out to me that my sound quality was not that great. At the time I thought, well I just need either A. better equipment or B. go to a professional studio. However I could only afford a modest upgrade to my equipment and had $0/¥0 to apply toward getting my music recorded in a studio.
Being a drummer one of the things me and my drum pals would talk about was how it was not the equipment that made the musician/drummer good but their technique. A bad drummer on an expensive drumset will still sound bad. A good drummer on a bad drumset will still sound good. We also had the notion that a good drummer can make the set sound good by knowing little tricks on how to tweak it to improve the sound.
Instead of saving all my money to buy fancy compressors and equalizers I took the time to learn about mixing and audio engineering. I read everything I could find that I thought would improve my sound and took notes on it. In fact to this day I still have a big green binder and a note program on my computer full of articles and tips on audio engineering. I still continue because there is always room for improvement.
Also if you just take the time to study up on something you will become more knowledgeable in the area.Here’s a couple of music business examples. There is this notion that there is a thing called the poor man’s copyright which is mailing a copy of music to yourself and not opening it. And another notion that if you use x amount of seconds or less of a sample you are not infringing . In fact the second question was brought up at the Kansai Music Conference during Bill Hochberg’s presentation. When I heard it I just rolled my eyes. All it takes is just a little bit of time to research about copyrights.
Most music business / copyright questions (or almost any question) can be answered by just taking the time to go to, one of the least utilized resources, the library. All you need to do is look for a book on the topic and just read. You don’t have to read the whole book. Just the parts you need to know. That’s why books have table of contents and indexes.
You might be thinking that the library is fine and all but I got the world at my fingertips by using the internet. I think it is cool to use the internet but you have to be careful, because the internet can also be misleading. It really helps to use source evaluation techniques when getting information online. Just ask yourself these simple questions:
1. Who is this website etc. written for?
2. Who wrote it and what is their qualification / view on the topic?
3. What are they trying to argue / get across?
4. Is it possible to verify this elsewhere?
1 and 2 are the most important. There are some other methods but these are the most important in my opinion.
If you don’t want to or can’t read, you can always ask someone who is knowledgeable in the field of your inquiry to explain it to you. You can find your self a mentor too.
One more thing about investing in yourself is that when you become knowledgeable you can share it with others. One of the things I read about Dizzy Gillespie was that he was always willing to take the time to explain musical things if you ask him. That is something I try to do too. I find that teaching can give you new insight in to a subject matter you know. Also you might learn something from the person you are teaching too.
Self investment falls into two broad categories, monetary investment and time. The time investment is more valuable in my opinion and will have longer lasting and rewarding results.
