By Mark Stoddard, author of Marketing Singers, a business and marketing guidebook written specifically for singers.
“I’m discouraged. They told me no.” One of the most common sentences uttered by singers. For good reasons.
Rejections are the common lot for all singers. The best singers have been told no more times than they can count. Being told no is no fun and can be discouraging. Telling you to take heart and extract the word “courage” out of discourage is easy so I won’t do it.
Instead, here’s the solution.
See the horizon on your career goals – what you want to become – and keep your eyes firmly focused there. This perspective allows for little bumps in the road to be taken for what they are – bumps. With perspective a “no” becomes “not yet.”
To achieve their career goals, singers must become performers. Opera directors have told me more than once, “please send us performers, not singers.”
A singer becomes a performer by… performing. Where, when, why, to whom, how, and what you perform isn’t the point and rarely matters. Doing it does. Mastering your craft requires 10,000 hours of practice and performing. If you practice and perform 20 hours a week, 51 weeks a year, that’s about 10 years of work. You do the math from there. Talent ought to be considered an irrelevancy. No one can define it so ignore it.
We can define 10,000 hours and we can prove that those who put in the 10,000 hours of practice and performance master the craft – any craft.
Along the way to 10,000 hours you want an audience to listen to you so you can practice reading their reactions to the way you perform. If you’ve paid attention to my lectures you’ll know how to NEVER PERFORM FOR FREE. (Catch one of my lectures at the Classical Singer Convention in Boston.) But the point is, perform, constantly.
In San Francisco’s Union Square I noticed a crowd gathered on the east side. Nearly 200 people. They were listening to a fabulous tenor dressed in a tux, accompanied by a negative track recording. In front of him was his cape with lots of bills – mostly $20 bills. When he finally said he was finished for the day – much to the chagrin of the crowd, I pulled him aside. He quietly told me he did this most days as part of his practice regime because it gave him the chance to perform and read his audience. And he made $300 or more for the few hours of practice. He also performed at the ACT on many weekends. Smart, talented and performing.
You ought to be performing at every chance you can get. Are you participating in every possible audition and competition? You should. It’s just another performance. But, you say, it’s expensive. And, say I, that’s an excuse. Turn that into an opportunity to hold a concert at someone’s home where you entertain them and allow them to donate to you for your “Audition/Competition Fund.” I’ve held those at my home for performers and they’ve raised hundreds of dollars each time. AND… they were performing yet again.
Performers perform and others make excuses.
I’ll be in Boston at the Classical Singer Convention where I’ll get to see hundreds of ambitious performers competing, doing their best, adding more hours to their resume of the essential 10,000 hours of practice and performance.
The judges know quickly who will pass on to the next round. Inevitably it is the singer who has turned into a performer by knowing how to take the voice, bring the passion and communicate that passion to the audience. That comes from performing again and again.
So get going on your next performance right away and you’ll eliminate discouragement from your life and replace it with the perspective that you’re taking the next essential step in your career.
Mark Stoddard, author of Marketings Singers, is a business leader, professor, marketer and consultant who has been helping singers get jobs for more than 20 years. On the singing front he staged more than 100 professional shows aboard cruise ships that employed classical singers, pianists and strings. He’s also coached singers on how to sell their CDs and other products, use the social media and how to negotiate contracts. Email Mark at mark@mjstoddard.com.
