Learning about the music industry - week eight

Yes I know it's a day late but I have a very good excuse. Last week was about recording our acoustic album. This involved turning our rehearsal studio into a recording studio and getting the bulk of the album recorded in a single day. Over the past few weeks we've been carefully taking each of our songs apart and turning them into familiar but different acoustic versions.

We started on Tuesday with producer Phil coming over to set everything up. That evening we recorded one song – my baby did me wrong. The following morning we started in earnest and worked from ten in the morning until late at night recording another nine songs. Once the songs were done we spent the Thursday evening over at Phil's house recording vocals and backing vocals. With a few tweaks and some additional vocals on one song from a friend of ours to go we hope to have the whole album ready for mixing in a couple of weeks time. Certainly it's sounding fresh, sharp and I hope you'll enjoy it as much as the fans who came to the pre-recording fan night on the Monday before we started recording on the Tuesday.

So to this weeks learning. Real live networking. I have to say that networking isn't necessary one of my strengths. However, it is our manager strengths and he really pushes us to network here there and everywhere. Whether its industry meetings, meeting our fans, or just getting out and about with people in general, networking is something you have to get used to but also something you have to do a sense of modesty. As Ariel points out it is definitely not about going up to people and saying 'hi this is how good I am' it's about saying 'hi hello what's interesting about you and this is what people other than me say about me.' Certainly, we've got some great quotes from other people that we can use as part of networking. We've been compared to 'High energy Coldplay mixed with the Beatles in the potting shed,' or 'better than Keane,' plus lots of other really good quotes from other people.

I find the best thing to do with networking is very definitely to take a deep breath before you start, to go in to any situation knowing what you do is good and that some people like it and some people won't and that's okay. That the real people you meet through networking will want to help you, will want to work with you on and will really know what they're talking about. After you've been networking for a while you'll soon be up to pick out the ones that don't.

Networking for me has to be based on a good product and a modest, honest way of doing business.

I will write more next week when i have recovered from recording!!

Cheers

Zak