When I was a little kid say five or six years old I was way into Elvis Presley he was already into his super hero cape wearing, wild outfit on stage phase! And as a six and seven-year-old I found this fascinating and awesome! The fact that he was from the south and spoke like me didn't hurt! So I started asking for guitars and I must've beat on those plastic cheap guitars with plastic strings for probably five years before I actually learned to play a note. I did a lot of posturing in front of mirrors.You know the way you do when you're a little kid pretending to be a star. I thought about it a lot before I learned enough to get paid. So don't beat yourself up if it takes you a while to learn to play guitar. Then when I was 13 years old my mother bought me a Fender duo-sonic and it was an electric guitar. It was easier on the fingers, easier to play and easier to bend the strings. I took a couple of lessons at a place called Schroeder's music on Montgomery crossroads in Savannah Georgia. I didn't like guitar lessons because they were trying to teach me these 18th-century songs. Trying to teach me how to read music. It bored me so much I dropped out after two lessons. I taught myself how to play the guitar by ear, listening to my favorite albums with headphones on. My record player had an input jack on the back where you could plug your electric guitar in and play along with what you were listening to and in this way was a very helpful tool for learning how to play guitar. Nowadays there are many how to guides you can use. You can go on YouTube and watch a video, I find these helpful even today, you can go to websites like chordie.com or chordfind.com. You can get the lyrics and chords from a plethora of websites! From here on I am going assume that you know how to play the guitar at least the rudimentary basics, chords and such. So now what you need to do is put together at least 40 good songs that you believe an audience will know the words to, a popular song. Because these are the songs that will make you a living. These are the songs that will involve the audience and what you are doing, and keep them coming back for more. So you want to practice these forty songs over and over. set lists of ten to fifteen songs each should get you through almost any gig whether it be a bar gig, a bar mitzvah, a wedding, a rehearsal dinner or any other function forty songs should be enough for almost any function you will ever play. You got your forty songs? Then you want to buy yourself a light weight public address system and you should already have an acoustic guitar with a good pick up system in it.so you can plug it in and run it through a PA system. You will need a microphone and mic cable and mic stand as well and a guitar stand to set your guitar on. So now you have your basic gear ,your PA system , you have a basic understanding of chords and the ability to play a song by yourself just accompanying your vocal with an acoustic guitar. So now I suggest going down to your local church or bar or restaurant and getting yourself a paying gig. Doesn't matter if it's only $50. Because becoming a lounge lizard acoustic guitar single act or piano single act whatever your instrument of choice, requires more than anything repetition. The more you play your ten song sets and your forty songs a night, the better you're going to get. if you want to add songs in and take songs out that's fine. For now you just need a forty song repertoire! I suggest throwing in gimmicks like maybe a list of songs you don't ever want to have to play live . So you can put ridiculous dollar amounts next to the songs you don't want to play like a menu. Put this menu on a big cardboard sign! have a couple of jokes to tell the audience between songs . Maybe you want to tell people about something you read in the paper. Engage people in your life as a person but don't do it for very long. People don't want to hear you talk too much. Maybe thirty seconds to a minute in between songs and then you want to move on. Now that you're on your way, you're starting to learn how to do this week after week you're getting better at what you do. Now you want to concentrate on bookings! One of the best tricks for getting good bookings is to make a friend of someone at your local newspaper in the advertising department. These people always know when a new bar or restaurant is opening up. So, consequently they will have the inside track on any new business that might want entertainment. Also new bars and restaurants always pay more for entertainment than established ones do. This is something to keep in mind when you're doing your booking. it's better to work at a lot of grand openings of restaurants,bars and businesses, because they have not learned the ropes yet and they invariably will pay more, sometimes double what the going rate is in a market! However if you're going to make a living at this just playing music on a local level, you're going to need to find at least one or two places that will give you two to four nights a week so that you have a solid foundation and then you can reach out for more money on the nights you have off. When I first started doing this for a living, actually before I even started doing it for a living, I was still in the Navy and I used to come home on leave and I would go out to the clubs and listen to all of the acts to find out what material went over the best. It's the best way to find out what goes over in your town. Listen to other acts and see what is responded to well and what doesn't do so well. Like any other business you'll need to get business cards and you want to create a website for yourself or use reverbnation, Myspace, Facebook, etc. you definitely need a web presence. I suggest also putting YouTube videos up of yourself. Anything that will make people aware that you exist. If you want to incorporate original music into your nightly act. I suggest recording at least one CD or MP3's of your material. You can sell a card with a code on it to sell MP3s through iTunes Amazon.com and many other services will allow you to sell your MP3s through their website. A great website for getting started is cdbaby.com. If you are incorporating your own music you definitely want to get yourself what they call a P.R.O. This is an organization like ASCAP or BMI, who will collect the royalties due to you for your music that is online no matter where it's played in the world, they will get you paid. Good luck in your future career as a lounge lizard, I hope that this information has been helpful to you. It is meant as a short how to guide to get you started, By helping you think of all the things you will need to make your dream of playing music in bars for a living come true.
Love love love me some Elvis! I was heartbroken when he passed away.
I remember I was standing on a diving board about to dive in when all the radios at once began blaring Elvis dead at 42.....
Such a needless loss, too many yes men.
Agreed and a crook for a manager as it turns out. So many creative people are blindsided by these types or like Elvis, think they owe them everything....
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