Entertainers University Course-Making a Living With Music-Lessons 1 and 2

Transcript Of This Video

(00:06):

Hey, Rick Bell here, the gig coach from the Entertainers University. Welcome to this mini course about making a living with your talent. First of all, can you do it? Absolutely. I’ve made a living since 2000 and eight’s. Been a long time just playing solo music, my full-time income. I went from a corporate job that I hated to being able to do this full-time, day and night as much or as little as I want now. I like to work a lot because I like to play. I, I love to perform, love to play the guitar, been doing it a long time, but I had to learn how to market that. And that’s what this course is going to teach you. First of all, yes, you can make a living. There are events going on every day all around the United States, and virtually every city you have corporate events, grand openings, celebrations, birthday parties, uh, residency gigs, all of those things we’ll talk about.

(01:05):

But in order to do that, in order to make a living with your talent, and again, it’s very doable. You have to learn how to build a marketable act. The key word is marketable. You have to be able to sell your talent, and if you wanna play and sing, you’re going to have to sell it whether you get paid or not. That’s, that’s up to you. This course is designed for people who wanna make money, because when you’re being paid, you’re going to have more gig opportunities. Yeah, I said that correctly. When you’re being paid, it means there’s some value you are bringing. When you’re bringing value, you are going to be in high demand. I currently play over 300 shows a year, paid shows. None of it’s free. If you’re out there playing for free, you’re going to have opportunities to play, but there’s no value attached to it, so you’re never going to be able to build a career.

(02:02):

This mini course is gonna show you the possibility. So there are three things we’re going to talk about in this course. First of all, we’re going to talk about creating a marketable act. How do you do that? Second, we’re going to talk about how you learn to communicate about that act. How do you speak to buyers about it? What do you put in your marketing material? How do you approach that from a psychological standpoint to add value, to break yourself out from all the other dozens, if not hundreds of musicians playing solo guitar in your market and getting these gigs sitting on a stool, playing cover songs or god forbid, original songs. And the third thing we’re gonna do is teach you how to deliver your act in a way that adds value to the event, because that’s what it’s all about. You are not in the music business. They’re not hiring you to bring music. They are hiring you an entertainer to bring a mood, to set a mood for the event they’re hiring you for. And we’re going to talk about that and why that is so valuable and in great demand.

(03:23):

The great thing about starting an entertainment business and becoming a full-time performer is there is a huge, there’s a huge market for your musical experience as a baby boomer. As someone who grew up in the 1970s, maybe the 1960s, maybe the 1980s, you are familiar with music that there is a great demand for, I play a dozen or more residency, daytime retirement centers every month. There’s like clockwork. Once a month I go to, you know, nursing home, retirement center, a at maybe a 10:00 AM show. Then I’ll have a 2:00 PM show at a different center across town, or sometimes at the same center. These retirement centers are like luxury country club resorts, trust me. And they had great budgets for entertainment. You’ll make as much as $300 per hour playing at some of these places. I do it all the time. There’s a great demand for that music for the baby boom generation, music of the fifties, really, the sixties for sure, the seventies, and even now the eighties.

(04:39):

So if you’re familiar with that music, you have an opportunity to become a highly in demand performer in your area. How are you going to do this? You’re going to put together what I call the gig coach method, which is building a blended show that includes live music performance with you either playing your instrument with track music behind you and singing or not playing an instrument, as we mentioned earlier, and just singing to tracks. Or even if you’re not a singer, you’re going to be a dj. Now, if you can perform, and I assume most of you listening to this, you’re a performer. That’s why you’ve clicked into this. You’re going to learn to combine combined being a DJ with performing live. It’s called a live music dj. I came across this concept 15 years ago, and it changed my life. It has allowed me to perform over 300 shows, paid shows every year, well-paid shows, and play as much as I want, and have to turn down gigs because I have a blended show that includes me being able to play DJ music along with my live set.

(05:56):

Now, does that mean I play 45 minutes of live music and then 15 minutes of DJ music on the break? No. You include the DJ music throughout your show. You learn to pace your show. That’s what we talk about in the Entertainer’s University, how to completely set up the show, pace it song to song to song, when to put in the DJ songs. You may have shows where you only DJ 10% or less. It’s mostly live music. And on the other hand, you may have shows where you DJ 75 or 80% of the time, and then just sprinkle in your live performances along with that. The mix I usually find out for me is probably 50 50 live performance. That’s a three hour show. It’ll be about an hour and a half of live performance and about an hour and a half of dj. This is the magic formula because it allows you to play anything they want to hear and to provide the variety that is required to be a successful performer.

(07:01):

Today in today’s market, you have to have the variety. So that’s what the Gig coach system allows you to do to build a blended show. When you’re performing live, you’re performing with track music behind you. That means prerecorded bass, drums, piano, guitar, background vocals, whatever you want. I show you in the Entertainers University how to find those tracks. They’re easy to get, how to take the guitar out of the track if you want no special software needed. You can do this all online, and I teach you A to Z, exactly how to do it. But you’re going to build your show around track music. It’s not enough to play acoustic guitar and sing. You may be a fantastic guitar player or you may not be a good guitar player at all. You may be a beginner, doesn’t matter. I happen to be a very good lead guitarist, been playing my pretty much whole life.

(07:54):

That doesn’t matter. I can play acoustic guitar as well as anyone. I teach guitar, I teach music. I understand music theory. I went to college with music theory. I get it. I know it doesn’t matter that all the audience wants is to have a good time at your show. They don’t care how good you are. If you’re really good, that’s a bonus. That’s a feather in your cap. But you don’t have to be. If you are great, if you’re a fantastic singer, great. You’ll have moments. I’ll show you how to build moments in your show that they will remember memorable moments, certain songs, certain things, and when to put those in so they’ll remember. Whatever your specialty is. You may be a great vocalist, you may be a great instrumentalist, you may be both, but you don’t have to be as long as you have the right track music behind you to back you up as you’re singing and playing live mixed in with your dj.

(08:50):

Now, being a DJ does not mean you’ve got the headphones on and you’re sitting there scratching, doing the mixing. That’s a club dj. That’s a different kind of thing. You’re going to be a live event, live music dj, which means you have a small DJ set up that I’ll show you exactly what you need to get, and you’ll have it right up there with you set up, which part of your whole thing of being marketable is, is having visual interest in what you’re doing. But you’ll have this set up and it’s plugged right into your laptop, and you’ll be able to trigger songs whenever you want. The line dances, the Cupid shuffle, the YMCA, whatever. You don’t play live. You have it at your fingertips to mix into the show. So that’s the secret building a blended show, and it doesn’t matter if you’re an older, a mature person, the music that you understand and like there’s a huge market for that, and those people have disposable income much less, much more so than the young generation. So remember, we’re gonna build a blended show that it’s live music and dj. You’re a live music dj. That’s going to include some other elements as we go along.

 

Duration

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Date Published

January 8, 2024