To truly learn a foreign language, you must immerse yourself in that language. There’s no better way to pick up how the language works than to get the total experience of it. Newspapers, television, books and regular conversation all force you into the mindset and fluency soon follows.
The same is true for any subject that you want to learn, especially music.
The music business is one of the most well covered industries there is. There are magazines, newspapers, books, TV shows, dramatic films, documentaries and websites completely devoted to telling the stories of it and they can bring you the best education in the music business that there is.
If you read this blog and the many others that are out there you will learn a great deal about the music industry. If you are already out there, in the trenches, you’ll have an even better understanding; nothing teaches like experience.
The final piece of the puzzle for true mastery is to study the history of those who have come before you and those who are where you want to be right now. Their stories almost always start out in the exact same place where you are or have been, and this makes it easy to see what they’ve done because you’ll have a point of reference.
The easiest place to start is television. There are countless shows, like Behind The Music that chronicle the experiences of legendary musicians. Besides being fascinating to watch, they are a great way to get the quick and dirty story of what went on. A Behind The Music marathon on VH1 is like a high speed crash course. Another good show that’s also on VH1 is their Driven series. While these shows may not be shown on a regular basis, they do come on from time to time and you really should keep an eye out for them. Even if they aren’t about a musician that you’re a huge fan of they still succeeded and you can learn how they did what they did.
Next you can move to written literature, like magazines books and websites for more information. Interviews and auto biographies are good because they get you into the subject’s head and help you understand the why of what these artists have done. Many articles are reprinted online so you can try to search Google on different artists to get the background on them that you’re looking for. Like with TV, you should make an effort to learn about as many artists as you can and not just the one’s that you like. Promotion is promotion and genre has little to do with it.
The last part of this is film. Music documentaries and dramatic adaptations are great because they allow you to be a fly on the wall and see how things went down behind the scenes. Besides making this world much more accessible, it also humanizes the artists and shows you that they are susceptible to the same things that you are. Maybe this helps and maybe it doesn’t, but the knowing that huge bands with legions of fans still argue about mundane crap just like your band should give you some hope.
The key to getting the most of these musicians’ portraits is to ask questions.
How did the subject get started? What was their rise to success like? What problems did they encounter and how where those obstacles overcome – or where they ever even overcome at all? What did they go through when they made it? How did it go wrong?
The funny thing is that nearly all of these stories have at least some common elements that you’ll be able to recognize as you immerse yourself in this world. The reason this is important is that the more you understand the common elements you’ll be able to draw parallels between yourself and the artist that you learn about. It is through these parallels that you’ll have a means by which to gauge your progress and identify problems before they become career ending.
Another aspect to be aware of is what these artists did to be proactive and what they didn’t do. Were they ignored by the industry? Did they take matters into their own hands? Did they approach major players in the industry or did the major players approach them? If so, at what point did this happen?
Remember that immersion is essential to learning and answering these questions. With experience comes greater understanding, and with greater understanding comes the ability to make good decisions. Keep at it and learn all you can and it’ll pay huge dividends.
