If you had $10,000 to advance your music career, how would you spend it?

[AJ Love]

Hypothetical question, my cousin and I were discussing this recently

Lets say you are already located in a major music city such as New York, Nashville, L.A, Austin, Chicago etc, and you have a good guitar and amp but not much else in terms of equipment...

Your goal is to set yourself up to further your professional music career.

Do you:

Spend alot of the money on music education? Lessons with the best teachers, workshops etc in order to improve as a musician

Buy yourself some expensive gear? Great sounding guitars and amps to improve your tone

Spend money on going into a studio and getting a great recording done in order to book gigs with?

Purchase recording equipment so that you can make multiple recordings at home?

Some combination of the above?

How specifically would you spend it?

My cousin had all kinds of ideas of how to spend it. I was advocating for the most part to spend a few thousand over the course of many months on getting lessons from world class musicians and saving the rest to see what you might need down the line...

The way he was talking he'd have it all spent by the end of the weekend!

[mge80]

I like the idea of spending it on education, workshops, etc. Similar to what is done to further careers in other endeavors.

Then again, you may "fall into" such situations if you are in one of the major music cities you listed above by happenstance....just being in the right place at the right time. But I think I'd be inclined not to leave it to that chance.

[xroads]

plastic surgery.

[HurricaneJesus]

That's really tough because you don't necessarily need to be schooled to have a 'music career' but then again that's probably the direction I would go in hopes that one semester (or however much time 10k would get at Berklee) would get me some connections to get things going...

[AJ Love]

Originally Posted by xroads

plastic surgery.

Ha!

[brettk7]

Lessons! Really, really good high end lessons where I'll actually learn something.

And a recording rig... I think if I was able to sit and record my own songs and have them be hi-fi enough for me to actually utilize them someway, I would have a lot of musical projects going.

[dewey decibel]

Spend 10k to "improve your tone" in order to advance your music career? Oh boy...

If you were going to spend that much it would be on press, but then you need a product to publicize. Which would make you a recording artist rather than a hired gun slinger. Point being if you just want to be a guitar player I don't see any point in spending that much to further your career, just get out there and play as many gigs as you can and try and align yourself with the situations that have the most promise. I get the romanticism of taking lessons with a bunch of world class players, but IMO as long as you have the basics down everything else you need to learn will be learned on the bandstand. The purchasing recording gear makes some sense but you need to consider that sound engineering is as deep a skill as guitar playing, and 10k isn't going to get you more than a demo studio anyway.

So first question is; what kind of music career do you want exactly?

[Island3r]

Marketing

[madstrat]

easy,..... a p.a.

book shows and start where all good musicians started.....and finished.

[TravisE]

That depends on what you want to do. Would you like to be a guitar player for someone else? Be a successful performing songwriter doing your own thing? Be a staff writer? Be an engineer or producer? What you spend your dough on depends on the direction that you want to go.

[AJ Love]

Originally Posted by TravisE

That depends on what you want to do. Would you like to be a guitar player for someone else? Be a successful performing songwriter doing your own thing? Be a staff writer? Be an engineer or producer? What you spend your dough on depends on the direction that you want to go.

Good point. I suppose for the sake of this thread the goal would be as a guitar player in general.

[AJ Love]

Originally Posted by Island3r

Marketing

Interesting. Marketing your band or project, huh?

Any specifics on that? Print advertising? Radio ads? Hiring a PR person to hype your band?. I really don't think $10,000 would go THAT far in terms of marketing.....

Funny, I just got an email from my cousin, he's still thinking that getting a $3000 boutique guitar and a $3500 boutique amp and a Mac-Book Pro with pro-tools and a few mics is the way to go (!)

[kevinhifi]

Live off the $10,000 for as long as you, and become a night owl and totally submerge yourself in the scene. Meet people, party with people, network, etc. No amount of money will buy you charisma or good songs, and you'll already need those.

[TravisE]

Originally Posted by AJ Love

Good point. I suppose for the sake of this thread the goal would be as a guitar player in general.

I'd say that KevinHiFi's answer is right on. I've seen people make an American Standard and a Blues Deluxe sound amazing. It's not the gear. It's you and what you're playing.

[stevel]

Originally Posted by AJ Love

Funny, I just got an email from my cousin, he's still thinking that getting a $3000 boutique guitar and a $3500 boutique amp and a Mac-Book Pro with pro-tools and a few mics is the way to go (!)

If I were going to do this, I'd save some money on the guitar and amp (a grand on each will be enough) and dump some of that money into mic-pres and mics.

This is good investment, but it will advance one's career differently than say, lessons, buying a PA, etc. Depends on what your goals are.

Steve