Dear musicians, Just because you’re at sea doesn’t mean you have to stop being creative. If you’re planning to record some of your song ideas the minute they pop into your head, you need a flexible recording device with you. Korg just announced their “Sound on sound” multi-track recorder, that’s small enough to fit in [...]
Dear musicians, I’m always on the lookout for gear that either makes it easier or more fun to perform on the road, and I’ve come across a gadget that definitely delivers. TC Electronics has introduced it’s new guitar and bass tuner “PolyTune“. It’s called that because it let’s you strum all of your strings at [...]
Dear Musicians, This is an article I was hoping I would never have to write. But here I am, typing away, because common sense is, apparently, a lot less common than you’d think. Wikipedia says: “common sense” equates to the knowledge and experience which most people allegedly have, or which the person using the term [...]
Dear Musicians, In a previous blog post I wrote about the fact that more musicians apply for cruise ship jobs because they can’t find jobs on land. By now it’s clear that this has created a huge backlog of musicians that can’t get back on ships because the supply is larger than demand and this [...]
Part of playing in a band on a cruise ship means that you will find yourself playing a lot of other people’s music. In fact, it’s rare to encounter a situation where you will actually be encouraged to play your own original pieces. Audiences on vacation are there to hear a familiar tune that they [...]
On July 25th, 2007 we mentioned that announcement of the new Bass Musician Magazine and we want to point to it one more time because we think the excellent articles deserve a second mention. Bass players can use the articles to further their technical as well as creative skills and remain up-to-date on the latest [...]
Dear Musicians, For years, some of us have wondered aloud how secure jobs on ships will be in the future. We’ve speculated that Asian bands may replace Western bands, that orchestras would dwindle down to one guy with a Casio keyboard and that Karaoke machines would replace small bands. I don’t think so. Let me [...]
Dear Musicians, An audition for a cruise ship gig, any audition for that matter, can never determine with 100% certainty that a particular musician will be the right man/woman for the gig. Thus we would like to mention one more time how important it is for you to inform yourself about what the gig entails [...]
Dear Musicians, I’m still puzzled as to why career management courses are still missing in some of today’s most prestigious Universities. It would be a shame and huge waste of time, effort and money, to not be able to apply the skills acquired during a music education. Many musicians make poor decisions when it comes [...]
Dear Musicians, I so happened to stumble upon a study on the state of music education in Canada, an interesting read. It basically says that there’s not enough funding which results in the decline of quality music education around the country.
I bring up the topic of sight-reading music because I get confronted with it on a daily basis. As president of Oceanbound Entertainment Inc., a talent agency responsible of placing qualified musicians on cruise ships, I witness the lack of sight-reading abilities amongst musicians daily and I have to answer hundreds of questions about this [...]
Quick tip #11: Be business-minded It’s possible you chose to become a musician precisely because you didn’t want to be stuck in an office from 9-5 making business deals. So why am I suggesting for musicians to be business-minded?