Wearing Many Hats, Doing What You Love
Meet TJ Jarrett.
She’s an award winning poet. She is also a computer engineer.
The Atlantic published an intriguing article about how Jarrett choose a path less travelled as a poet; she choose not to be a teacher.
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Jarrett’s example of wearing one hat to pay the bills and another hat to sustain her art is a common story, that’s often misunderstood. Can you call yourself a professional, if you don’t fully pay all of your bills with your art?
I would argue, “absolutely.”
And, you might be making more “artistically creative” stuff if you are free to worry about having investors (labels, etc) interfering.
As artists, writers, or musicians, it’s easy to get caught up with how the bills are paid on a weekly and monthly basis, but there isn’t a formula to what a real creative career looks like.
A real creative career is simply a person who is making art they are proud of producing. What’s more important is how much time we have to dedicate to our art; and how we use that time.
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This is the misconception about why I left the public school sector. Many assume I didn’t like teaching.
I loved the teaching part, but after 10 years of teaching experiences within public schools, I knew I would never have a life outside of my job. The essay grading, lesson planning, and extra parts of teaching we a second job outside of the classroom.
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Now, my life as a musician is much different. I used to live by school bells; now I live by guitar notes.
I still teach to make a portion living of my living. The difference is my part time teaching job (music instruction) allows for me to have time to practice and write. My gigging schedule allows for this, too.
In my thirties, I have finally found a balance I wish I had in my twenties.
As artists, it’s important to stay dedicated to our craft. That dedication might mean making money in other ways. The key is to find the ways that don’t eat up every minute of our lives.
What’s the difference between a songwriter and a music student? The student focuses on playing it correctly, the songwriter tries to play it wrong.
Playing things incorrectly is a great songwriting technique.
Sometimes, when I’m learning a song, I accidentally play a wrong note or chord, and become intrigued by the mistake. “Oh, what’s this?” my ear asks.
Hours later, I find myself composing a song, inspired from the mistake. Sure, I can be a distractible student, but I’m a focused songwriter.
It’s easy to view studying songs as simply that, learning to play it note for note, chord for chord, word for word. But what about the wonderful mess of creating something new, going in a different direction?
That song is supposed to be a Dsus4 to Cadd9 and you used Dsus2 to Cm9? Boom, you have a new idea.
As teachers, we need to encourage these discoveries.
That’s one difference between the student and the writer; the writer embraces the mistakes.
When Britney Spears’s warm-up vocal track of “Alien” was leaked this week, I am shameful to admit that I clicked the click-bait.
After listening to it, and reading the producer’s thoughts on the matter, I wondered, “What would people think of my test vocals from my sessions at Catherine North Studios?” (They weren’t pretty!)
Creators of any kind must be courageous when releasing a project. And there are a million moments where our fear might tell us, “Don’t finish this. Don’t release this. Don’t even start this project.”
Now, in the digital-age, we face the additional fear of our warts being released publicly. But the game of creating really hasn’t changed. There is nothing alien to facing our fears when we are creating art or finishing a project.
If we listen to Britney’s vocal track, the only thing worth considering is it’s a reminder to quiet the voices in our heads that are scared of the warts that might show up during the creation process.
Not every take, sketch, idea, draft or trial will be beautiful; warts are a natural part of the journey of completing art we will be proud of releasing when it’s done.
Songs that Stopped Me in My Tracks, Vol. 1
I’m creating playlists of songs I love, centered around a story about one song that stopped me in my tracks. Volume 1 centers around Patty Griffin’s “Every Little Bit”.
* * * Volume 1. The Ghost that Got Away * * *
When I was a freshmen in high school, I was obsessed with heavy metal and industrial music.
I know. Weird, huh? Probably hard to picture me walking around in a KMFDM t-shirt (which I did, while attending my first high school dance at Divine Child High School.)
Honestly, I embraced all styles of music as a teenager, but when I found an acoustic guitar at the crossroads, I took a turn and never looked back.
One song that stopped me in my tracks was hearing Patty Griffin’s “Every Little Bit” on Acoustic Cafe. I was floored by her voice, by that acoustic guitar, by those intimate lyrics:
“You left open the window till the morning/And the winter walked in
Reality fired her wooden bullet/Splintered under our skin
They say I’m walking on freedom/This is freedom/now I know…”
Before the Internet, when I heard a song I liked on the radio, but missed the name of the artist or song, I felt like my life was incomplete. The song became a ghost that haunted me. What if I never heard that song again?
And that’s what happened when I first heard Griffin’s “Every Little Bit.” I missed who sang the song and the title. I didn’t hear it again for a long time.
For a few years, I simply called it, ‘That ghost song.”
“I still don’t blame you for leaving,baby/It’s cold living with ghosts”
When I was learning guitar, I accidentally discovered the the chord pattern, the way the G chord form floats up to Bb and C on the guitar, the droning strings in the middle…I still didn’t know who sang that song or the title, but I had found the chords!
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I forget when I finally discovered Patty Griffin, the author of the song that haunted me for years. I think it was during college. Today, I can simply type in the song on my Spotify account. The ghost is now captured in the digital cloud, but it still stops me in my tracks.
Music might be easier to find now, but songs can still be ghosts that haunt us.
Musicians have the best conference rooms in the world.
My close friend–best man, first bandmate from high school– Adam just finished his MBA program this year. He also has a Master Degree in some sort of science field I can never remember (Natalie calls it “A Master in Fighting Cancer”), and has worked extensively in labs seeking the answer to that mission.
Adam gets numbers.
He’s also a drummer who loves music. I love chatting with him about the similarities of business, science and music.
Adam and I were recently talking about how we spend time in our fields of work. Creating, researching, test, marketing, networking. Artists often hate to use those terms, but in a way, we are doing that.
In one of Adam’s MBA classes, a general rule was that 10% of each week should be spent cultivating relationships, networking. Interactions with people matter, just as much as product.
In the music business, we often feel dismayed at the statement, “It’s all in who you know.” I hate thinking that way, too, but there is a positive spin to this if we think about the places where music networking happens: at concerts, venues, studios, art events…
Thinks about it. We have fun conferences rooms!
If 10% of our week should be spent “cultivating relationships,” then we have a weekly reminder to get out of the house.
Go to a concert. Go to a house concert series as an attendee. Go to an art exhibit. Attend a conference. Get together with a new songwriter and try co-writing. Visit a music venue in a town outside of your city on a lark. Connect with another art form and see how if music can bridge between it.
Dedicate 10% of your week to connecting, and that doesn’t have to be time on Facebook.
