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Casual show tonight with TesseracT at Wembley Arena, supporting Dream Theater
And in this day I’d like to tell you the truth about being a full time musician - I don't see many people talking about this as opening up about this stuff can tell a story vastly different to the reality a musicians ego would like you to believe. It also runs the risk of bursting the bubble for a number of people, but I feel it's important and my duty to share these truths, as doing so could help others along their journey as a self-employed creative.
Let's burst the biggest bubble - TesseracT is not my full time job. Of course it's not. Unless you were in the Beatles, or are one of a handful of successful cherry-picked pop stars, it's very unlikely that the job of creating music and touring it is the sole thing keeping a roof over your head and food on the table. Composing and performing music exclusively, and having it pay handsomely is the musicians equivalent of winning the lottery and should be nobody’s short term, or medium term plan in my opinion. If we play our cards right and continue pushing this thing forwards, TesseracT might be my pension.
In my experience, if you're good enough at composing and performing, and you pair that with consistent marketing and reinvestment into your project, you will be presented with opportunities which will help you to craft a life around being a full time musician.
I have been doing this long enough now that I can sustain my lifestyle on a combination of: drum lessons which make up the vast majority of my income, a small amount of income generated from live streaming, and a small amount of income from TesseracT. It hasn't always been this way though. In fact, this combination is a fairly recent development in my life and in order to maintain it, I push forward every single day with either a live stream and/or work towards a new drum lesson (and of course working on TesseracT material). The latter is particularly time consuming and I can sink days into a single drum lesson - but I love it! The saying 'time flies when you're having fun' has never been so true as when it's applied to the jobs we do. I'll work on a single drum lesson from 10am till I fall asleep - no problem.
The traditional understanding of 'full time' does not apply when you are self employed. You're either working, or you're not. The only reason for not doing something towards my work is when I am allowing myself time to chill - which is very important.
Before TesseracT released our first album 'One', I worked in an office in Reading, in the south of the UK. My job was a 'bid coordinator' - sexy! It was my job to pull together a good-looking document which answered a bunch of questions about the company I worked for, which would then be mailed to a prospective client concerning a specific job they needed doing, for a huge amount of money. Was this job my dream or my desired career? Absolutely not, but I am grateful for it. For the couple of years I worked there, it gave me the income to pursue my creative career. It also gave me a bunch of graphic design skills I still use today.
That job gave me the confidence and skillset to become a graphics consultant. I did this type of consulting work throughout the 2nd half of the album campaign for 'One', all of Altered State, all of Polaris and some of Sonder. Specifically, I was the person responsible for all of the graphical content and formatting for a £multi-million contract submissions for a prominent UK train company - extremely sexy!
While I was on tour in the US for Sonder, I was also running a huge graphics and formatting project for a Scottish Ferry company - oh my god, so sexy! I'd wake up at 5am/6am every day, open my laptop and run through a huge pile of requests, right up to sound-check. Then after sound-check, I'd go back to the bus and carry on working until 30 minutes before our stage time. I'd work after the show if I needed to.
All of this leads to a point - you have to work hard. To become a full time musician and afford to hold down anything resembling a home or family life, you need to find a way to break free of working at a particular place and offer a skill that you can do remotely, from anywhere in the world. Otherwise, you're setting yourself and your band up for failure - as the band quite likely won't pay your way.
You could consider setting up a business that you're able to run remotely - I did this too. I set up four music rehearsal studios (The Rhoom Studios in Reading UK) which are still open to this day under new management since I moved to the US. Having both of these things in place: essentially 'passive' income from the studios and the ability to offer consultation remotely, has meant that I've been able to maintain my position as the drummer in TesseracT, and say yes to going on back-to-back 6-week tours with a couple of weeks at home in between. It's still tough to go away for those stretches of time, but it's made significantly easier when I'm not having to worry about where the money is coming from during or after the tour.
99% of the musicians I know do something else to ensure their financial freedom.
So, if it’s your dream to get your band to the point where you’re playing stages like Wembley, what skills do you have that you can begin to monetise so that, one day, you can leave that uninspiring job to give your creative dreams a chance of success?
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Comments
I suppose it's not too far from someone like Ola Englund who plays in two bands, releases records as a sort of cottage industry, has his own guitar brand and of course a YouTube channel. All music-related of course, but the actual "bands" bit seems almost like a hobby.
He did when they started out though, he' been at it for decades,, even Paul Stanely credis Gene's financial forsight, and so does Ace who famously regrets not taking Gene's advice and trade marking his lightning bolt guitar strap design. The band have mentioned in numerious interviews how much they owe to Gene's financial foresight and ''side hustles'', and Gene himself has talked about their need to do it from the start to make ends meet.
The number who have the luxury of Ed Shereen, going to work on song writing for himself day after day, is close to zero.
Look at Steven Wilson, multiple band projects, remastering, touring.. he's a busy chap.
" wow I didn't realise @axisus was the drummer in tesseract "
I do know* one pro musician. He's a drummer - mostly function band stuff, but I think he's done some session work. For a while he managed two function bands with the same name, filling in on drums himself depending on who was available. He also teaches drums and has a sideline in photography.
(* Actually I work with his girlfriend.)