How To Improve Your Employment Prospects As A Musician.
By Mantius Cazaubon, Sat Dec 10th

How do you expand your opportunities to work in the musicbusiness? How do you improve your employment prospects? The keyto doing that is developing your versatility. There are manyways of expanding what you already know how to do as a musician.It's all about using the skills that you already possess andchanneling them towards related fields.

Ask yourself what your most basic skill is. Let's say you playthe guitar. You will find that there are several relatedinstruments that you can easily adapt your skill to. Instead oflimiting yourself to the guitar or one kind of guitar, why notexpand your employment opportunities? Why not learn to playrelated instruments?

There are so many guitar related instruments. How about theacoustic guitar, electric guitar, twelve-string guitar,five-string banjo, tenor banjo, ukulele, mandolin, pedal steelguitar, and so on?

You can even learn different styles of playing. Learn to usefinger picks. Learn to play both pick style and finger style.Electric guitarists should probably own both jazz and rockguitars. By doing this you increase your musical scope and youwill be able to take on new projects easily. There will be morevariety in the music that you play. Your arrangements will notall sound the same.

You can apply the examples mentioned above to all instrumentsand musical skills. Let's look at a few others.

Another example is bass players. The same can be said of them.Instead of limiting themselves to the electric bass, they canlearn to use a bow, play related instruments like the uprightacoustic bass, learn to play both fretted and fretless basses,and use effects pedals.

Keyboard players should own more than one synthesizer. How aboutlearning to play related instruments like organ, harpsichord andpiano? Why not learn about MIDI and hook various keyboardstogether, along with a PC?

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could go on and on mentioning various instruments and skillsand how a musician can become more versatile. Musicians mustsimply start with their most basic skill and expand it. This isan excellent way of ensuring that you excel in the musicbusiness.

The world is a very competitive one and you must continue to becompetitive. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Add somevariety and you may be surprised at how far you can reach; andhow much more money you can be making.

About the author:Mantius Cazaubon offers lots of valuable songwriting tips,techniques, suggestions and advice on his sitewww.ultimatesongwriting.com. Visit UltimateSongwriting.com for the ultimate truth about lyric writingand songwriting.