Take it from someone who's been on the Sydney scene for a lil' over two decades. It's hard. Lucky I learned to read and studied (and am
still studying theory, nowadays privately from jazz musician friends of mine). Sure, you can go to AIM, get all the tuition you'll definitely need, but the most important assets you'll need to survive as a drummer, particularly in Australia, are your attitude, your versatility and flexibility, and having the skills to do so. And if you can write music (not just with drums, but with other instruments) it will mean that you can have your name on album credits, particularly when it comes to royalties being paid by APRA (Australasian Performing Rights Association), who do
not in general consider a drummer's performance on a recorded track as something you can claim royalties on, unless the band considers the drum track a major part of the composition. Two gigs a week in Sydney with a covers band (and a well paid one at that)
may be profitable, two gigs a week with an originals band (if the chances of that happening will happen) will mean you'll have maybe enough fuel in your car.
Look, I'm not trying to be cynical or pessimistic, but that can be the hard facts. There are quite a number of music scenes in Sydney, and it pays to be mates with musicians from all of them. If you only stick to one being your favourite, then people will think of you as being a 'one trick pony' and you may rarely if at all get called to do anything outside of what you can already do.....and more importantly, be paid for it. Years ago when I started gigging after school with God knows how many original bands, I was given the chance to play some blues and early rock n' roll songs.....stuff that, if I still staying blinkered and was saying "Nup, not for me, I'm a grunge and punk drummer" (it was the 90's after all!) then I would have never been able to slowly build up a network of contacts of bands and musicians looking for a well-rounded drummer....after that I had been in or subbed in a few cover bands going around that time. To this day, wherever I go I can never go too far before I bump into someone at a gig or rehearsal studio, who'd then do a double-take and say "Jeez! Ain't seen you for a while! What you been doing?" before grabbing my number and I'll get an SMS or Facebook message asking me to do some stuff for them (if the money is right, of course). In fact, first day that I started my Cert III in Contemporary Music, not only one of my muso friends was on the staff (he ended up being a MIDI music lecturer of mine) but there were three of the staff that either knew me by face or name already, and more importantly, knew what a hard worker I am in bands. (Incidentally, we had a good drummer who came into the course after he left AIM, but because what he learned there was only focussed on drum performance and drum notation and that end of music theory, when he came into our course at Nirimba TAFE College, which at that time had it's music theory taught along the lines of the Berklee method ie:
all drummers had to pass tuned percussion and melodic theory, that guy unfortunately got cold feet midway through that diploma year, ran off and left his performance band without a drummer.....of course, the staff then turned, looked at me and asked for me to perform for two bands, knowing how I can run band rehearsals and learn songs on the fly).
After the course? Well, I established my business name (as a drum tutor...thing was I was already tutoring a few before I was in the course), played in more bands, people over time have also got me doing stuff like percussion overdubs (once they learned that I play and teach percussion as well as drumkit) or sometimes I'll get a call here and there to do some programming, sitting in with them on a variety of systems, watching what they do, then do some drum programming corrections or complete rewrites. But even so, not every week you can be filling up with work....really to survive here you need to do the gig-teach-record routine to get anywhere. But if you are prepared to work
a lot on your skills as an all round player (and more importantly,
really really know what you're doing and do it better than the next guy) then eventually to work will come to you. But there is no hard and fast rule, some are very lucky and achieve success quickly with a fluke, others have to have a day job and just play the music they like (I've done that too, I worked for a language service unit for a number of years). Those though who get their success without having the skills to back it up? Well, frankly it can happen and the problem is that once the hype and the dollars go...well, just read the tabloids, lol.
Nowadays, more than at any time, you need to have your fingers in as many musical pies as you can, and never ever think that playing songs or with a band in a style that you're not particularly enamoured with (for that moment) is a waste of time, because not only will you be learning a new skill or style that you can use in your future, but you will then be networking with people in or outside of that band who will see
you and hopefully will see how well you played your instrument, who in turn will recommend you for their own band
or someone else's. And if you went to do a music course at a tertiary institution, that is
definitely one thing they hammer into you, that as a well rounded musician you'd have to be prepared to play
anything to get anywhere.
Thanks for letting me have my two cent's worth!
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