Balancing recording new tracks and preparing for upcoming gigs: How do you decide what takes priority?

If you’ve already got great material out keep performing while recording… You get new experiences as you touch new people which leads to writing about those experiences. As a result you always have new material to drop as you go… These cycles feed each other after a while.

Keep all of your plates spinning! Maintaining momentum is key in this business. We all know the stories of up-and-coming artists and bands who played gigs during the day and evening, and then hit the studio at 2 AM to cut tracks. This is not uncommon practice in the music business. Grab those catnaps when you can, rest is essential in maintaining your health, focus and resilience. Resilience refers to our ability to adapt, bounce back from setbacks, and maintain a positive mindset. Time management, on the other hand, is the skill of efficiently allocating our time to various tasks and responsibilities. When these two concepts intertwine, we can optimize our productivity while nurturing our ability to overcome challenges.

Sometimes it’s important to keep both the recording and performing happening at almost the same time. It depends on what kind of momentum, or not, that you have going at the same time. It all depends on how hungry you are and how driven you are, and how good your music is. If you have good things happening I would advise you to keep them going. Keep the momentum moving. If that involves fans and live performances you cannot ignore the fact that you also have to almost constantly release new music even as you continue to perform live. I like to push hard. A strong work ethic is very very important. Fans always want new music all the time. It’s very nice to have the luxury of time when recording, though it doesn’t always work out that way.

Time management skills are crucial if you want to get ahead.Here’s a great example of when not being timely can hurt you. I, as band leader, receive leads for gigs. In my experience, quite often the first person to respond gets the gig. So, when you’re in a band you have to make sure your bandmates are available before you can bid on the Gig. This requires timely communication. And what I mean by that is you need to be able to respond to my text message the second it arrives. Failing that, within five minutes is OK. I can’t tell you how many gigs we lost because of slow communication. That may be the very most important detail, aside from making sure you’re tight as a band. Other hungry bands will book the gig if you don’t move fast.

I agree on both ends of the spectrum. Your entire music career should be about quality control. You should create quality songs you should perform them with quality skills, not just stand there like a tree. If you just want to make songs you don’t have to care about performing on stage. If you are going to tour and perform in front of people you need to be entertaining. This is the entertainment business after all. And it takes time to develop those skills in front of an audience. The more often you perform in front of an audience the better you will get at it. You need be driven in this business. And you can’t let your failures stop you. Watch others, study and learn. Balance recording and rehearsing based on your schedule and needs.

Absolutely. Having a diversified income stream across several avenues within the music world is something most musicians would greatly benefit from. In my case, touring or live performance was something that was never incredibly difficult to book or stay consistent busy with BUT I’m very passionate and really enjoy film scoring. I decided to look at touring as my “day job” for a period of time that would eventually help support my long term goal of working in film scoring. I utilized as much of my touring income as possible to upgrade my studio gear so that I could find better opportunities with scoring work. When I stopped touring completely I was able to step right into focusing on scoring work straight away.