A creative voice speaking in us

I picked up my first guitar in the 8th Grade and I really haven't put it down since.  I am 34 years old now but at an early age,  I knew that music was the thing that gave me a voice.  There is a creative voice inside each person trying to speak and I found that out through the guitar.  I went on to play the drums and then, piano and other instruments as well.  During my studies at Wright State University in the piano program, I learned that I could sing a bit and completed my degree in vocal education, but I was always just feeding and growing my creative voice through musical expression.  When I got old enough to realize that the world wasn't lined up at my door with a few million dollars to pay my way into endless jam session, I began to get really creative.  I knew that giving guitar lessons paid very well and it meant that I could just play guitar and people would pay!  That was much better than stocking shelves at the Ace hardware, so I quit that job and began teaching guitar privately full time.  It was a weird conversation with my Dad, but it actually worked.  I was making 3X more money per hour than I did at the hardware store and that was great!  I always told myself that I wanted to make money doing something that I love to do.  So, my motto was: find something you love and figure out how to make money doing it.  So far, this motto is working great and it has pushed me to be even more creative and find multiple ways to market and use my music to make a living.  A few of the creative ways that I have made money with music include:

• Playing concerts
• Leading church music programs
• Selling guitars
• Selling music online
• Teaching lessons and group classes
• Writing and Publishing books
• Tuning and repairing pianos
• Buying and selling pianos for students
• Recording and producing music for other bands
• Managing recording projects for other artists

In each of these endeavors, I have also grown and learned as a musician and been able to develop my creative voice as a musician and producer.  There are many ways to make it and it is part of the creative process to find them and work on them until you perfect them.  I will be blogging about more of the concepts and how they have worked for me in future posts but the most important thing I have done is stick to it and continue to love the music and the journey.  If you can't do that, then there is no point at all.  You have to continue to seek to develop your artistic voice and do things that work for you and allow you to continue to do what you love.