Enroll as a music student had change my mindset. Before I study music, as a person who live in village and don't like to expose myself to the outside world so my mindset only influenced by the society , then I was thinking that music is easy to learn and confidently I say I can become full time musician. I started learn to play guitar at Form 4 after inspired by seeing more friends brought guitar to school for Happy Teacher performance. When thinking that music is easy to learn, at one time I stucked when practicing a song, then I asked my friends what is the solution. What they told is practice a lot. That can be the wrong advice if it can cause you develop some bad habits. To practice effectively is by firstly learning the right techniques, that which I know when studying music in UiTM Shah Alam. My mindset that which I can become a full time musician also has changed after knowing about the scarcity of opportunities in music business
Have a opportunity to be a full time musician is rare but opportunities to survive are many. When talk about career security, even the highest demanded job cannot sustain forever. Actually no jobs in this world are secure. The world is rapidly changing. The only way are to be versatile and diversify our market. Even the top artists make a living in concert, music production, album selling, or whatever related in music business, they start building their own other business or invest to other business which are not related to music. About the market diversification, we also can see the examples in the discovery of the artists. As the artist grow, they will start to revolutionise and explore to the other genres. For example rock band such as my favourite band, Muse, and many other band also, in early stage of their career they create purely rock album and when they grow, the albums they create afterwards sounds more poppy. This revolution can disappoint some fans and cause the rise of questions such as "where is the band's greatness", if the revolution diminish the original identify of the band
Okay, let's stop talking about the successful artists. What about the person like me who is not already starting anything yet? The market diversification is best for matured business, but for early stage of business we should narrowing the target market. Satisfying the minority of audience will help to build the bigger fanbase. As my dream is to be a composer, if we see, the opportunity to film scoring is very few in Malaysia. Many films and dramas in Malaysia more demand to the pop music for their soundtrack, not much in orchestra music like the Hollywood films. Other than films, video games are much demand orchestra music. But in Malaysia, there's no video game industry. So, the other option is working for the pop music and doing arrangement for the songs
If we talk about self promoting, there are different strategies in comparing between matured artists and new artists. What works for successful are inapplicable for new artists and what works for new artist are inapplicable for someone who want to start their career. There many different strategy to self promoting. In social media, I've seen musicians making music for trending memes to make their video go viral. If I think this is a main opportunity to market myself, I should be quick before the trend is over otherwise I won't get maximum advantages to stand out. So, I should plan for it and improvising and arranging skill are my important tools
So, the hard thing in starting a career is starting. There's no right formula to becoming successful. What works for today doesn't work for tomorrow. It requires a lot of experimenting. Experiment like a scientist. Always be aware of our psychology bias and external factors that can sabotage our decision making
