Dear Musicians, Tim Redman, bandleader of his band “Retrospect” has put together a library of backing tracks for songs that him and his band have been performing on cruise ships for a number of years. Tim is offering to sell these backing tracks to those that are interested in adding relevant songs to their repertoire. [...]
Dear musicians, By now we’re well aware of the fact that airlines love coming up with all kinds of ridiculous charges seemingly by the day. They don’t like to make them easy to find though. ABC have compiled a list of charges that’s really helpful. You can download it here. Celebrity Cruises have recently sent [...]
Dear Musicians, One way in which gigs on cruise ships are different from gigs on land is that you’ll have to travel far with your gear. If you take lots of it, you will almost certainly be charged big bucks by the airlines and you’ll run the risk that they’ll damage it. Regardless of the [...]
Dear musicians, The CLIA or Cruise Lines International Association, has posted some more statistics and an overall positive outlook on the immediate future of cruising on their Web site. It’s a long read but don’t worry, I have picked out some of the more interesting tidbits for you.
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, Sax players face a couple of unique challenges on cruise ships such as having to double on flute and clarinet, packing their instruments so that they make it to the ship safely and more. Rob Pratt, a friend, client and saxophone player was nice enough to record a conversation with me about these [...]
Dear musicians, You might be on a ship during the christmas holidays and you might be asking yourself if there’s any specific repertoire you might need during those days. Well, the answer is yes, you should definitely be prepared to play some christmas songs and you should definitely have a version of Auld Lang Syne [...]
Dear Musicians, In the coming weeks I’ll be posting interviews with some of our clients and friends that work on cruise ships. This way you’ll get some first hand accounts on what these gigs are all about. Today, I’ll talk to George Adams, a guitar/vocalist who has recently added cruise ship gigs to his successful [...]
Dear Musicians, We get many demos from artists that have a bit of a false sense of entitlement when it comes to cruise ship jobs. Often, this entitlement comes from the fact that these entertainers have already worked on ships before and thus think that what was good enough once will always be good enough. [...]
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, Memorizing repertoire is an important part of your performance and can be the deciding factor for cruise lines to, or not to, hire you. This affects literally all lounge entertainers, whether you’re a classical ensemble, cover band, cocktail pianist, piano vocalist, guitar vocalist etc. Now, for some of the above-mentioned entertainers this has [...]
