Nico's day-job transition story
Our composer friend Nico Mansy was kind enough to send me his story of how he made the leap into doing music for a living. And I wanted to share it, because it touches on a number of things for me. Here’s what Nico had to say:
I had a music career before coming to LA, but arriving here, I knew nobody. So I had to start over.
I worked for free every Wednesday at an editing company in Santa Monica — organizing their sound library — while driving as a messenger the rest of the week. Being a messenger was a horrible job, but it allowed me to keep my Wednesdays open.
And this paid off, as the owner of the company (I owe her big time) passed my demo CD to a friend of hers who was opening a music house. And they asked to meet me.
I worked there as a composer for the next seventeen years, composing for the biggest brands, and even having my music played by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra for a Warner Brothers movie.
An important detail: my demo was five tracks that I had created mimicking the most common styles used at the time in TV commercials: one orchestral piece, one drum n bass, one Thomas Newman style, one hip hop, and an atmospheric synth sound design kinda thingy.
Whatever it takes,
Nico
Here’s what I relate to in Nico’s story:
If you do this long enough, you will probably start over more than once. I had a very successful career as a touring front-of-house engineer, before abandoning that to start at the bottom once more in my current career as a producer/mixer.
Having a flexible job can be really helpful — even if it’s a shit job. It’s a means to an end. And, bonus: if the job is shit, it’s powerful motivation to get your music thing happening, and you won’t have any second thoughts about leaving it as soon as you get the chance.
Sometimes (often? Usually?) you will have to do some work (a lot of work?) for free before you start getting paid. It’s good to value your time and to have a sense of self-worth; also, it’s good to invest in yourself — and putting in some sweat equity can be one way of doing that.
When you’re looking to get a music career started, it can be extremely helpful to be versatile. When I first got into music, it wasn’t as a producer, which is what I wanted — it was as a live sound engineer. But at least I was in the door! And then, in my second transition, when I first started mixing records, I would take literally anything that came my way. I mixed rock, and pop, and rap, and singer-songwriter, and all kinds of random stuff. Eventually I got to the point where I could focus in on my specific areas of interest — but those gigs outside of my area of preference helped us (barely) pay rent in those transitional years.
Thanks so much for sharing, Nico — jamie