Canadian Musician - January / February 2020

FIRST TAKE Looking Back to Push Ahead Setting & Working Towards Your Career Goals for 2020 By Andrew King, Editor-in-Chief HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope the holidays treated you well and you haven’t clawed off any parts of your face in response to the onslaught of Christmas mu- sic that surely made its way into your ears. Have you found some time yet to take stock of where you’ve landed on your musi- cal journey after everything you did in 2019, and more importantly, where you’re headed for 2020 and beyond? As artist manager Steve Kenny of Traverse Music Management reminds us in this issue’s Business column, we have to be incredibly careful and calculated when deciding where to invest valuable resources like time, money, and energy in advancing our careers. That could mean months spent growing your social media audience or pitching to high-profile streaming playlis- ters, or hours and hours on the phone after a full work day booking a national tour. Ultimately, for every achievement bragged about in an artist bio or trumpeted on social media, there are countless behind-the- scenes hours invested at the expense of any number of other opportunities. With that, I wanted to highlight a few feature stories we published throughout 2019 that could give you some ideas for 2020 career goals and get you going on achieving them with some sound advice. Before we get into that, though, I should highlight some content in this very issue that fits the bill. First, do check out Steve’s aforementioned column as something of a roadmap for how to be selective about which opportunities you chase at any given point in time. Then, dig into Mike Raine’s piece on how to navigate the ever-evolving world of streaming playlists, or his Indie Insider interview with author Karen Allen on how musicians can take advantage of Twitch, a robust live streaming platform more typically associated with online gaming. And without further ado, here are a few others that are worth revisiting: Get the Call for Session Gigs From January/February 2019 Ken Kelley rounded up an impressive panel of some of Canada’s best and busiest “hired guns” – musicians who are often tapped to lend their touch to other people’s projects, be it in the studio or on stage. You’ll learn how to build and maintain a network of contacts, which types of skills are most in- demand in today’s industry, and get some tips on etiquette to make sure you’re called back on the regular. Get in the Game! From January/February 2019 I’ll wager a bet that “make more money” is, in some form or another, one of your goals for 2020, in which case a primer on a sig- nificant revenue stream should be right up your alley. Here, Kevin Young talks to some veteran and emerging video game com- posers about how they got their feet into the right doors, what the job entails, and how one might go about complementing a career as a performer with this adjacent art form. The Era of the Artistpreneur From March/April 2019 I penned this one myself for our 40 th An- niversary issue back in the spring and it’s turned quite a few heads in the time since. It’s all about taking your career into your own hands, and how thinking and acting like an entrepreneur – especially with assessing and taking risks – can be integral to your success. Capture Killer Vocals! From September/October 2019 At this point, being able to competently record yourself at even the most rudimen- tary level is essential to your growth as an artist and potential for a career. As Adam Gallant writes, “recording vocals is often the most important part of the record-making process,” so if you want to advance your skills beyond just basic lyric or riff ideas on a Voice Memos app, our 2019 Home Record- ing feature is a great place to start. Striking a Balance to Boost Your Career From November/December 2019 “As musicians, we need to find our own balance between education and experi- ence because while we can focus on one, incorporating the other will always make us better.” Before capping off our 2019 Focus on Music Education with that line, writer Omar Shabbar interviewed a handful of musicians – including one of his university undergrad classmates, an accomplished PhD candidate, and Protest the Hero singer Rody Walker – about their respective experiences with mu- sic education, and how they’re successfully striking their own balances in that regard. This is just a handful of the many pieces we brought you last year in an effort to help propel you to the next stage of your career, and rest assured there’ll be plenty more where they came from throughout 2020 – starting with these next few pages! So once again, Happy New Year and happy reading! CANADIAN MUSICIAN 9

Canadian Musician - January / February 2020 | Page 9