[Harp-L] Musician's Handbook - The New Rules for Getting Gigs

["Bill Hines" <billhines4@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was catching up with a big stack of stuff I had printed off to read
over the holidays, and one thing I really enjoyed reading was this small
booklet by Randy Singer - The Musician's Handbook - The New Rules for
Getting Gigs. There's just a TON of great tips, insights, interesting
stories, and so forth in here that made it extremely valuable
information, as well as a very interesting read with all the great
stories. Especially since a number of them involve well-known artists. 

I think it's a must-read for anyone that even considers making money
from music, and even if it's just a hobby. Since almost every band at
almost every level I go to see violates some of these simple principals,
I think everyone should read it. But it's not about what happens on
stage strictly - there's a lot of great advice about what you should be
doing *off stage* to promote, create opportunities, record, gear, etc.
There's a review of the Digitech Vocal 300 and how that can be used for
harp/vocals.

There's just a lifetime of useful information here from someone who's
been places a lot of us would love to go. I'd sure like to know Deborah
Harry better :^)

Randy had given out some promotional copies a while back, and advertised
that here. No doubt some of you downloaded it then. He was pretty
discouraged when he didn't get any feedback, that's a shame. It's still
downloadable for free on his website http://www.randysinger.com. If you
do take advantage of Randy's generosity, send him a note and let him
know how this has helped you and/or post a review on some musician's
site.

PS I also enjoyed reading Jason Ricci's entry on BluesWax titled "Don't
Quit College" or something like that. Smo-Joe said he's not signing up
to get a userid/password to read that - for others who feel the same, I
believe that is also posted on Jason's MySpace site in his blog or
something, I know I had read it before.

Bill Hines
Hershey, PA