Tooting Your Own Horn- An Interview With Musician and Conductor, Warwick Tyrrell

I recently had the chance to talk with long time musician and conductor Warwick Tyrrell, to discuss all thing music related, both past and present. As a classical musician, Warwick has experienced facets of the music community globally to an extent that most could only dream, across a period of thirty odd years. This presented him as the perfect subject to bounce questions off in regards to saturation of the music industry,  the need to supplement music with additional work, and the “doing it for the love” mentality.

 

Pro Advice for Aspiring Musicians-Bill Bennet

As former CEO and President of Warner Brothers Records in Nashville, Bill Bennett has been able to witness the ebb and flow of America’s rich music culture through several decades in the industry. This first hand experience is primarily what influences Bennett’s primary tip of artist perseverance, and to ultimately ‘let go’ of the things that hold you back.

Music Union of Australia

 

You’d imagine a federal body founded under the basis to help, and protect the interest of Australian Musicians would be a primary, and highly regarded resource with up-to-date and cutting edge info right? Yeah… about that..

Triple J Unearthed

 

Created in 1995, Triple J Unearthed acts as a subsidiary organisation for the radio station Triple J presenting playlists, reviews and competitions. For those living under a rock, Unearthed has essentially  become a proving ground for aspiring Australian musicians, allowing them to upload their tracks to an international audience.

” Mr Jobs, Why is my IPod Wet?”-Saturation in the Music Industry

To start this off I have a challenge. Go to your Facebook page, click on your friends list and count how many of those people who consider themselves a musician. I took it upon myself to complete this little activity and counted over 30 people from a friends list of about 400, gathering DJs, singers and band members. So what is the point of this little experiment you might ask? To highlight an extremely prevalent issue affecting almost every facet of the music industry, and that is market saturation.

For the Love- The Economic Struggles of Performing Musicians.

Everyone knows Australia’s psychedelic, rock-pop darlings Tame Impala, who are arguably the most successful band to come out of Australia in the past few years. Reaching number four on the Billboard charts in 2015, winning eight Aria Awards and holding 2 Grammy nominations to name a few, Tame’s success has come far from performing in small venues across Perth in 2007. Despite the obvious success of the band, what you might not know is that last year in 2015 Tame Impala were involved in a law suit for the amount of $450,000 USD, against their record label Modular, to which Vocalist Kevin parker claimed

“Up until recently, from all of Tame Impala’s record sales outside of Australia, I had received…. zero dollars. Someone high up spent the money before it got to me” (Parker, Cited in Rettig, 2015).

Track 1: Prologue

If you guys have read my about section you’d have read  Encore’s aim to ultimately act as a resource for aspiring Australian musicians. This however could involve countless topics, so here is essentially a small description of what to and what to not expect from Encore.

No Crowd Surfing, No Moshing, No Monkey Business

This short film was a major assignment produced by yours truly last year for a university assignment. Although my editing techniques and filming are notable sketchy (to be fair, It was my first attempt at anything like this) the topic still demonstrates relevance to Encore in discussing key issues regarding up and coming musicians in Australia.  I’ve decided to include this short film for this reason, to show musicians that quiet often there are even more un-forseen issues than expected in regards to venue size, public performances/broadcasting and noise restrictions. The reflection also provides some information in regards to external resources on these topics, and even the struggles of creating band interviews.