So I've got a lot going on right now:
with the last film finished it's full steam ahead into the next one,
I'm in the process of organising both a podcast and some voice
recording for a super exciting project that I can't talk about,
Junebug are about to launch their E.P (click here for gig dates) and
then it's festival season...then we're potentially going on tour.
The key word there is 'potentially'.
It's a word I find myself using a lot when it comes to music projects
and jobs. On this path there are many 'potential' jobs/gigs/breaks.
The most common is that someone will see you at a gig and ask for
your contact details because they book gigs. Once you've given your
email, they become a 'potential gig'. Somebody says they might be
making a film that needs music (the other common word is 'might')
they become a 'potential job'. I did a soundtrack for a film
competition where you re-scored a short clip. If I win, I get paid
and I get to share it around, so that's a 'potential job' as well!
The end result is that when people ask
what I've been up to or (the quite frankly brilliant question) 'how's
the music going?' I end up saying something like:
'Well I'm potentially gigging at
[Coolsville Gig Emporium] and I've got this composing job that might
be a thing, and I've been asked if I can do this session for a group
so that could potentially be quite good'
All of this makes it sound like I spend
a lot of time waiting for people to email me...and to a certain
extent yes that is part of it.
The sad thing is that the majority of
these 'potentials' will amount to nothing; for every twenty times I
give my email to someone at a gig only one will ever contact me. For
every thirty emails I send out I get maybe one reply. When you're
starting out, this absolutely sucks, but you have to learn that this
is part of the process. Whenever I got a 'potential' I was telling
everyone about the awesome opportunity that had just arisen, only to
be disappointed later on.
The useful things to remember are all
the proverbs involving eggs:
don't put all your eggs in one basket,
and don't count your chickens before they've hatched.
Or: don't pin all your hopes on one
gig/job you might not get, and don't assume that a 'potential' is a
'definite' until it's confirmed.
I'm going to be super busy over the
next few weeks so my Youtube channel's probably going to become a
ghost town (again!) however my hope is to keep up with the blog posts
as I'm travelling around.
