As a working musician, my day involves many different tasks.
Music
First and foremost, the most time I spend is on creating and playing music. I spend at least 2-3 hours a day practicing different kinds of music, writing music, or just recording. I also arrange and spend a lot of time listening to music. Listening to music is important to me as a musician to get ideas, and get better at my craft by learning from the best. I mostly sing and play piano. Then I use a lot of midi for other instruments. I often practice jazz pieces as well as music for school. I find myself not getting as much time working on original music as much as I would like to, but when I find the time, I unleash all my ideas.
Social Media and Website
Another activity I spend a lot of time on is social media or the internet in general. I spend about an hour or two on social media browsing, editing my website, creating new looks or just trying to figure out the best design for me. This can be quite addicting, fun, and sometimes annoying. I also think about different posts to make for social media accounts. I take photoshoots of a ton of photos which I can use for different posts throughout the weeks. I also like to look at other artists on social media and articles. I like to see what they are doing and how I can possibly use it for me or get ideas based off their posts. Reading articles keeps me up to date on new music, what is working, and what is popular.
Design
Part of being on social media as well as being an artist, is designing art and photos. I love using canva for making graphic art. I also use canva for making reports and many other things. I don't do each of these things everyday, but split up a new task each day to focus on. I like to think what I am most inspired to do right now and how can I make it the best that represents me. I want my designs to look professional, well-done, and say something. I often like combining different looks together and fonts that are contrasting in each art I make. I make art for my album, profile picture, banner picture, and many more things.
School
Currently, besides playing music, I spend most of my time in school. My daily school routine looks like this:
Wake up at 6am, leave at 7am, have class at 9am, a few more classes until 12pm. My classes are guitar class, audio engineering, commercial arranging, music entrepreneurship, music marketing, history of popular music, private lessons, etc. After 12pm, I have a very long break where I practice and do homework. My homework usually involves creating music, doing marketing things, working on my new music release, studying, and many more things. After my break, I have a few night classes. I also am in choir and popular music ensemble. I really enjoy singing and playing with my pop band. School is a long day, but I get to learn many new things that are preparing me for a career in music professions. I learn something new everyday and get to be around amazing students who I can also learn from.
Research
Part of being a musician is doing research, rather it is actually looking up information, listening to others, or trying something new. I don't tend to do research on the internet a whole lot unless I really need it. This usually occurs when I am doing an assignment, or I hear something interesting and I want to know more about it. This happened once in my history of popular music class when my teacher was talking about Duke Ellington, one of my favorite pianists, and he mentioned something about him I never knew before so I decided to go check it out and look it up.
Most of the time my research is through listening and trying new things. I try new techniques, new improvization methods and skills when I am practicing. I find a lot of really good singing techniques from my choir director that has helped me a lot in shaping my voice and reaching those higher notes. You can really get a lot more out of personal interactions. That's what I really like.
Free Time
I don't get a ton of free time from music, but when I do, here is what my time looks like:
First, if I am not doing something music related I am most likely at work. I work about 14 hours a week.
If I am not working, I am either on my phone for fun, reading, hanging out with my sister, sometimes playing a game, watching tv, or shopping.
Oh yeah, I really love shopping. I have to stay away from it as much as possible or I will spend all my money on buying clothes and things I don't need.
Something else I like to do once in a while on my free time is arts and crafts. I enjoy making home-made cards, and paintings.
Money
Ofcourse, money is an important part of my day. I don't spend a ton of time looking at my money, but it is always in the back of my mind. I try to put a savings away for my music career for equipment, making music, design, and a lot of music business things.
5 years from now
5 years from now, I hope things look a lot different. I hope I will be spending more time working on creating music than covering it. Although, I still want to play a lot of jazz and pop music. But, I'd like to spend more time than not of writing, recording, and that sort of thing.
I also hope to be in an actual career for teaching piano and songwriting.
I hope to possibly have more help in achieving my goals, where right now it is mostly me (and of course my sister who helps a lot)
I hope to have a well established brand and sound, because I am still discovering that.
I want to have a full complete album that I love and am proud of that is released in 5 years.
I hope I can also help others by writing songs for people, teaching others how to play piano or write music as well.
Overall, I would want my day to be full of teaching, creating and giving back what my teachers gave to me.
Comments