Becoming a Professional Musician in Nashville

The city of Nashville, Tennessee is very competitive in the professional musician industry. Nashville, Tennessee is known as "Music City, USA". Nashville is crawling with musicians. They're working as store clerks, waiters, and in all professions. Most of the musicians have the aspirations of making a living as a professional musician as well. You need to set yourself apart from the other musicians. You have to be unique in order to stand out as a professional musician in a place like Nashville. .

Make a demo recording of no more than three songs since most entertainment booking individuals won't listen beyond three songs in most cases. You need to demo your best songs. Don't over do it when you record your demo. Someone that is a solo artist needs to make sure that he or she doesn't go and put bass guitar, drums, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, lead, and background vocals on the recording if you don't sound like that when it's just you playing live.

Take a look a the competition in the area. What kind of songs are they doing? Are they in a band or solo? Are the solo artists using a looper and / or a processor to generate vocal harmonies? You need to be able to be competitive with the other musicians in the area. If you're doing cover songs, try to do some songs that other people like you don't do, but most people know or recognize.

Get yourself known for doing things that hardly anyone else does in the area to make yourself unique. Uniqueness includes songs and just HOW you do your performance. Some people will do an acoustic version of Eric Clapton's "Layla". Most acoustic cover artists do this song. You can do that song too and make it all your own. Do an acoustic version of Layla but do it fast like the original recording was. Most will be expecting the slow, blues style that Clapton recorded more recently, but they won't be expecting the style that Clapton did back in the 1970s. Most musicians and bands take breaks. You could tell clubs, bars, and other venues that people perform in that you do NOT take breaks. Let them know that if you perform from one hour to six hours that they will get a non stop performance. The person paying you would profit from you not taking breaks due to additional sales from the crowd. It makes the other musicians look bad that they take breaks, but don't worry about it. It makes YOU shine above them all when you don't take breaks during a performance.