How to Make It in the Music Industry

Apologies for the long time away, I have been extremely busy with work. Still, I will not let it lie.

I have been playing at least a couple of nights a week on London’s open mic scene. I cannot describe to you how beneficial this has been for my confidence and my ability to perform. For all my peers who sit at home smoking and dreaming, you need to get out and do this, it will make you so much better.  By chance I also met Tony Kaye, director of American History X, who invited me to the premier of his new movie, Lake of Fire. If there’s any reason to play out, that’s got to be it! And it proves that you never know who will be in the audience.

A band has expressed some interest in jamming. They are a tightly nit group and I hope that something will come of it. They heard me play and seemed very interested, so will keep you posted.

I’m certainly feeling the pressure to write more songs; the last month has been pretty slow creatively!

I’ve also recently watched the film Once, starring Glen Hansard, the famous irish singer songwriter. It is absolutely brilliant and I would recommend everyone watch it. Some of the performances are staggering; it’s something we can all aspire to be!

I will write more soon, I promise!
Take care,
Chris.

Jack, the producer, and I, have been working in the studio to record “Don’t Fall For Me’, my latest tune, and hopefully the one I need to get me on my feet. The quality of it is sounding tip-top and am very excited about playing it to you.

I’ve also been playing a lot gigs around West London, mostly open-mic nights, and the response has been lukewarm to astonishing, depending on the crowd. I’m optimistic that it will improve as I finish off some new songs I’ve been working on and introduce those to the set. We shall see :-).

I’ve also been hassled a lot to get a MySpace. I promise I will as soon as ‘Don’t Fall For Me’ is finished.

Lastly, if anybody has any suggestions for a band name or act name, other than my own name, please make it known!

Take it easy,

Chris xx

Saturday was the day of the festival. On entry I was frisked and had my guitar case searched. Apparently the bouncer wanted to know if I was ‘carrying a gun’. This was somewhat unsettling but I pretended it was OK.

The event was held at Renaissance Rooms in Vauxhall. This is large club consisting of two rooms, one which is effectively a nightclub, and a second which a stage/club. The event took place in the afternoon, on the same afternoon as the Notting Hill Carnival.

For the first time in a long time, London had a glorious day of sunshine, so this seriously affected the attendance at the festival, which was held indoors. The capacity of the place is rated at 2500, but I doubt there were more than 250 people at the height of the festival. Apparently Channel 4 were about, but I didn’t see them.

We were ushered into the VIP area, where we were given food and a (single) free drink. I went down to watch some acts play, most of which were of questionable quality. An act failed to come on stage when called, so suddenly I found myself being told ‘You’re on, now!’, and someone was rushing my guitar backstage for me.

On stage, there was nowhere to plugin the guitar, and made do with a mic plug on a dj mixer. Sound quality was rubbish, though our performance was OK. It was all over pretty quick, and we played again in the VIP lounge straight afterwards.  Once again performance was satisfactory but not astonishing.

All in all, it was a good experience, which was largely held up by large failings on the part of the organisers. I can’t berate them too much though, I suspect they will have lost lots of money that day.

On Thursday night I took to the microphone and played a little open mic in Ealing, West London. This was more for my benefit than that of the audience’s, but I wanted to get the practice. I felt quite relaxed and calm, which was good. There was some nice positive feedback from audience members, which is always nice, and helps build confidence. I played four songs in total, three originals and an Elvis cover (”But I can’t help falling in love with you…”). I was also fortunate enough to run into the brilliant photographer Ian Miller, who captured some great shots of the gig.

A friend captured the first song I played. I’d love to get some feedback so please let me know what you think.

Live at Finnegan’s Wake

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Egl5u7hT2Sg

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Egl5u7hT2Sg[/youtube]

Ok. From zero to hero in a fortnight? Well, not quite. If you read my article about the importance of socialising, you will have heard about my experience using Gumtree to meet musicians. In two weeks, this has resulted in:

• Meeting a fab soul singer.
• A new song being written inspired by my experiences.
• An open mic night performance.
• The playing of a festival, this weekend.
• Meeting attractive girls, and a music lawyer PA (never a bad thing).

“The playing of a festival?” you say. Like I said, not quite. We’re playing at the Black Gay Pride gig. It’s a large club with thousands of people in it, in Vauxhall. I’m neither gay nor black so I don’t know how I’ve ended up on this bill, but this will undoubtedly be the biggest gig I’ve played, so I’m not complaining. We’ve been given opening slot, and we’re also playing in the VIP lounge as well.

I will be taking photos and reporting back when possible!

If you’re interested, the soul singer I’m met and am playing with is Bonnie Freechyld.

My name is Chris Muktar. Born 1983, I am currently 23 year old, unemployed, university graduate, sat at home, with my parents, wishing for a better existance. I live in the suburbs of London, UK. I have been working in the city in a proper city job for a year, until I snapped and quit, largely because I had higher hopes in life than to become an accountant.

My quest is now to take myself and my music and make it successful. I know that this is the dream of a lot of people, and 99.9% of people fail, and this is a one surefire road to disaster, but I thought I’d document what happens here, and maybe over the coming months and years we will see an interesting story develop.

Two people I tenuously know have been signed, and reasonably well and very well out of it. They are “Liam Frost and The Slowdown Family” and “Cherry Ghost”. I met both these guys while at university in Manchester. You have heard of Cherry Ghost, his album hit #7 in the UK album charts and he is supporting the Manic Street Preachers. It must be a very tough life. Liam Frost is about 22, and Simon Aldred (aka Cherry Ghost) is about 32.

With that in mind, let me introduce myself a little bit better.

At 23, I can play the guitar. I have bought an electric stage piano, and I can play it pretty poorly but I can play with two hands and to a metronome. Having given up on bands and such like, I have been a solo writer for a while, and have written countless songs, although only a handful are worth reciting (in due course). I realised early on that I would never be a fantastic guitarist, and I would never be a fantastic pianist, and I would never be a fantastic singer, so instead I picked songwriting, as few of my peers seem to do much of that.

I should point out that I hate writing songs, at least while writing them. It’s extremely difficult, but I must admit the self satisfaction is awesome.

I have relatively little live experience (as of August 2007), though I’ve played a few times. I know this is something I should probably work on.

I haven’t lost the plot 100%, just yet. I’m trying to start a company selling medical instruments, although success is slow in coming. I hope maybe somehow I’ll be able to make some money out of this blog one day, a bit like ‘Steve Pavlina’. We’ll see. I hope not run completely broke, and my goal is to move out of my parents house and into central london ASAP.

So without any further ado, I will start to write whatever I think is relevant to help all of us succeed.