The Mythology Of The Full-Time Musician

This is an article is entitled "The Mythology of the Full-Time Musician".

In it, the author, Normandie Wilson wrote about how it is for a musician "doing music fulltime".

Below is my understanding and summary of what I gathered from the article. If I am really getting it wrong, please correct me. In any case, please read the actual article first so you do not get a preconceived notion of what the article is about.

Doing music full-time, for huge idols or other 'small time' musicians are the same. It involves doing different thing away from the actual direct process of creating music. They could be doing publicity events, playing at pubs and restaurants, etc. Individual musicians and groups also engage in reaching out either online (which they manage their communication with their fans) or physically in the real world (by getting involved in events,  organising interaction opportunities).

Yet, many musicians not (yet) in the business romanticise about what a full-time musician does, and stop there. Maybe they imagine going on tours all year round, always having fans running after them, adoring and admiring them. If they dig deeper (like connecting themselves to actual music artists who are full-time in the industry), they will find out exactly what full-time musician folks do. There will always be portions which are unglamorous and boring.


A fan base does not come into existence by magic. Once an artist or group actually have a fan-base, it only means that the artist(s) have to work even harder to expand and maintain that relationship. The harder we work in the industry, the more chance of exposure we earn for ourselves. The summary here is hard work, and not always choosing to do only the intersting/glamorous things we want to do.

If we really want be full-time musicians, relying on our music skills to survive, we will need to do more regular stuff that pays our bills. Yet for many musicians wishing to be full-time, they turn down opportunities for regular music related income with immature reasons. Normandie listed some of these reasons as people who only want to perform their original works (and not works by other bands/groups/artists), rejecting projects/jobs that seem to be below the artist's ability level, or integrity.


Each of these opportunities is a chance to get the money coming in, finance our monthly expenses. There is always room to engage our skills at the level we want to challenge ourselves, in the form of personal projects, collaboration with like-minded colleagues, side projects. Once we get into a few gigs or projects, we may actually get to know people, make connections which may then point our music career in a more related direction.

I think Normandie has done a good job painting a realistic picture of what it is like to be a full-time musician. It sets me thinking, about my own career.

Any thoughts?

Into The Valley_20120505idea02 v007

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Originally created for a game, but project was later put on hold.

Created in Sonar.

All pitched instruments from NI Kontakt Factory Library, with an orchestral kit from NI Battery. Big percussive hits were from EastWest StormDrums2.

Completed in 25 May 2012, uploaded to SoundCloud.com on 13 Aug 2012.

I was going for something massive sounding. At that point I was not aware of limiters and multi-band compression. Very early on I ran into the ceiling on the dynamic range, mainly on the low frequencies, due to the booming drums and percussive hits.

In my desperation I turned to my good friend since Poly days, Robin Wong, who helped me troubleshoot the problem. He explained to me about the 'loudness war' in the recording business, and advised me to use a multi-band compressor.

Also, he was very quick to tell me to kill any reverb applied to my low end sounds. This can very easily muddy-up the mix on the low end.

Robin has been doing audio mixing for much longer than me, and in a much more involved capacity. I hope I did a decent job on my own.

I promised to send him my unprocessed tracks so he could do another mix for this, just to keep in practice.

Thanks for all your advise, Robin. 

Half Rhymes, Eye Rhymes and Assonance

From the previous post: Ten Tips for Writing a Song, I discovered the existence of  the 'half-rhyme'.

Doing a bit of research, here's what Wikipedia says. It is the use of words ending with the same consonants, such as 'moon' and 'on', 'soul' and 'all'.

I also discovered yet another kind of rhyming called the eye rhyme. These involve using words that have similar spellings (but are pronounced differently) as if they actually rhymed. Laughter and Slaughter were used as an example.

Another related technique I discovered is assonance. This works with the repeated and strategic use of vowels to create a kind of rhythm in the phrases that gives the lyrics an attractive structure.

Top Ten Tips on Writing a Song

Very short and precise video with sound advice on songwriting!

Ale, Sword and Friends - 20120426inventoryScreen idea003 v005

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An original piece created for a mobile game, to be used for the inventory screen. Later the game direction needed reviewing, so this piece was left behind.

I extended the arrangement before and after the original portion to make it sound more complete as a standalone track.

Created in Sonar, solely with Native Instruments Kontakt Factory Library & NI West Africa. 

start date: 2012-04-26
original complete date: 2012-04-29
new arrangement date: 2012-08-09 (completed in one day)

The piece only consisted of 5 tracks: Harp, Nylon Guitar, Upright Bass, Violin, and Percussion. I want to create the impression that it is possible to perform this piece with a 5-person band.

The original piece was designed to loop back seamlessly upon itself, to be played on forever (as many games music aim to do). In the new arrangement, I added 8 bars of intro in front, and an outro at the back with a fade out.

This is the first piece of music I've written in 3/4 time. It was quite interesting and refreshing to deal with a new feel.

Also, it is the first time I'm using Native Instruments West Africa, along with its patterned looping mechanism (hold down a single key, and the rhythm plays in sync with the project tempo).

I figured out how to use the step sequencer for NI-West Africa's Kontakt UI, and created a few variations from a base rhythm. Assigning those different variations to different keys, I could play back the looped rhythms by holding down a single key.

A Better Place - 20120731albionTest01 v004

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Here's an original piece created entirely with Spitfire's Albion 1, with the exception of the harp and timpani (from Kontakt's Factory Library).
Programmed in FL Studio 10.
Start date: 31 July 2012
Complete date: 5 August 2012

If you have been following my music and keeping and eye out for my writing trends, I believe my current inclination is sticking to minor keys, which gives the impression of gloomy/sinister/mystery for the most part.

This piece starts and ends in the minor key too, unfortunately, but I felt the middle part was like a rush of fresh air, for myself.

I feel I am having trouble with sustaining the music. This is currently as long a duration as I can push the song while still maintaining some kind of coherence in the structure. 

Another 'first' in this song, is my very heavy usage of the 'automation clip' feature in FL Studio. Many patches in Albion use mod-wheel (MIDI CC-channel 1) as a controller for dynamics and expression. I may be wrong, but on many of the patches it felt like note-velocity had no effect on the dynamics and sound at all. So I had to look around a little, read up the manual, to find out how to get at the MIDI CC data.

Using automation clips and laying them out in the playlist in FL Studio actually gives a very useful visual representation of the dynamics in each track. I can then arrange for everybody to go louder at a certain point and bring them softer at another part of the music. Previously I have always achieved this by using note velocity, but this way of working presents another level of intuitive control. This is definitely a good workflow to get used to.

Albion instruments are incredibly organic sounding and they really can be used right off the shelf without any tweaking, EQ or compression. I had an overall maximising process to improve the dynamic range.

Of course it is no surprise that Albion sounds all work together amongst themselves. The only 'outsiders' this time were the harp and timpani, and the latter is really soft in the mix. I will have to find out on the next piece that I decide to have a larger extent of integrating Albion with other libraries.

Hope you like it. Enjoy!

The State of the Music Industry

Grabbed this off http://theoatmeal.com/