I have a great passion for music! I can sing; play electric, acoustic and bass guitar; and play the piano. I have always wondered how can I be successful in expressing my music to the world, I knew that it would take a lot of time, hard work, and patience but I always wanted to know where to start from. I went on the internet and did a lot of research, asked a lot of people, explored a lot of options. Here is my experience and my opinion on how to start with things.

First of all, let me make this very clear. It requires a lot of hard work, patience, determination, and commitment. There will be a lot of tough times and instances throughout your journey of becoming a successful artist where people will not appreciate a single thing that you do but you just need to be strong and make it happen. So, here it goes…

1. Find yourself

This is the most important and the first step to becoming a successful artist. You need to find yourself, what you like to do and what you want to do. This could also take some time and that’s just fine. Finding yourself could go in various directions, it could mean what genre you like to perform, what you like to play, what you like to sing. It took me about 3 years to find that I primarily like to sing and play the piano. And even after that I was getting trained in classical music in piano, and I used to learn to play pieces by Bach, Mozart, and various other artists, I used to work on sight reading the notations and all other kinds of stuff. But I did not like it at all, and about 9 months later I had a thought about singing and playing together and then I realized what I actually wanted to do and what I actually wanted to work on. So, it could take a lot of time and that’s just fine but you will not be able to progress further properly if you do not complete this first step. And when you reach different stages of this process you might feel that this particular thing is what you like to do for just a certain time, that is fine too. You will know when you discover what you really like to do because you will never get bored or irritated by doing that thing ever.

2. Practice, practice, practice

Once you find what you want to do, you need to practice! And trust me, there is nothing worse than forgetting your lyrics, playing the wrong chord or singing the wrong note while performing. This will throw the worst impression on your crowd even though you did not mean to do it. Practicing is extremely important before any performance or show. Even if you do not have any performance or shows coming up, you could still practice other songs or other stuff that you might perform later. That will help you get some extra time to polish your pieces/songs before the performance.

3. Look for opportunities.

Always be on the lookout for opportunities. I would recommend starting by performing in your school’s functions. I started with performing at my school’s talent show and asking people to give me a little time to perform at other various events at my high school. I think it’s a good start to get people to know you and your talent. Look for local festivals or carnivals near you where you can play. It might be a little hard to get a hold on people and to convince them to give you time to play but at the end of the day you are gaining a lot of experience and people are getting to know you and your awesome talent. Also, start searching for gigs at restaurants where you can play, but be sure to practice every song several times before you do the final performance.

4. RECORD YOUR SONGS

It is really not hard and expensive to record your songs. All you need is an Apple device, the Garageband App, and Apple EarPods. I started by recording my songs like that. I still am using those items because you get all the features that you might expect in a professional recording studio and also recording with the microphone of the Apple EarPods is really good. There are also cheap plugins like iRock and other things available that will help you to do some more recording tricks. Recording really helps for two reasons; first, you can listen to yourself and judge yourself, find your own mistakes and improve them; second, often times when you apply to perform at gigs or various carnivals people might ask you for demos first so that they know you better.

5. Use the internet.

The Internet is an awesome tool to get more people to know you if used correctly. I highly recommend creating a YouTube Channel if you do not have any problems showing yourself online. It really helps in increasing your fan base. Use websites like ReverbNation to connect with more people. Make a Facebook Page. Make a SoundCloud Profile. Once you have done all that just upload your content. Again, it will take a while for people to know you but share it everywhere with your friends and it will help. After sometime of doing all this, you will start hearing from people who run companies that will help you increase your fan base and get more subscribers and more people to like your content. I have never actually tried such stuff because I did not have any money to put into this but I think it would be nice to give it a shot if you have a budget for it.

These were some tips that I have learned throughout my struggle up to this point. At the end of the day, I think if you are really committed towards this goal and continue all these practices, it won’t be long until you become a star! I think all you need to focus on is doing something different, something that nobody has ever done, and that is not hard at all if you are doing something that you like to do. If you are doing something that you like, you really tend to put your heart and soul into that goal and when you work hard you always get good results!