Most people who make a living as a musician these days do so by being a "renaissance man" of sorts, where they make their money doing a multitude of different things. This includes playing live, but some other examples live sound, stage tech, lighting, promoting/booking events, instrument trade shows, and composing music. You can think of this as being "T-Shaped" in the software industry, except the difference is in the music industry, you need to be "T-Shaped" just to survive, not simply to excel. The "long part of the T" is what you generally want to do most of the time, and it's usually how people identify their job when asked. But really, most of us do a combination of many different things to get by, almost none of these jobs pay enough or are regular enough to do it on their own.This was, and still is, a HUGE shift in the way I live my life after moving careers from software development into music composition...
Even as a film scorer, who has jobs that last for a long time and include many personal conversations with the film makers, you're not guaranteed to get back-to-back gigs, so when you're done with one score, what's next? It's not like there's always someone handing you jobs if you're doing this by yourself. But that's my preferred angle, because the jobs do last longer and there's a more regular (and higher) payout. It just takes a lot of back and forth with the people making the film, in order to get the vibes just right.
tessierashpool|1 year ago