The 3 Roles Every Successful Musician Plays

Any seasoned musician knows how to recognize and switch between roles when performing. When we have the bassline, our job is to emphasize beat one and remain steady. When we’re playing harmony, we shape our line to the melody and blend. And the melody line should carry over the rest of the ensemble.

But we often forget that even when we’re not performing, we still have roles to play. As small business owners and musicians, we need to wear several different hats and view our careers from different perspectives. Below are the 3 roles every successful musician needs to master:

The Technician

A technician identifies a problem and fixes it. Most musicians are skilled technicians. We spend hours in the practice room drilling scales and doublestops to fix intonation problems. We practice with a metronome to increase our tempo or to train ourselves to keep a steady beat. None of us would have made it to a high level of musicianship if we weren’t successful technicians. 

Being a technician means we have a close-up view of the world around us. It’s like standing on a sidewalk, seeing the cracks in the cement, and planning to fix them.

But while being a technician is a valuable skill, we need to broaden our perspective if we want to see where the sidewalk is actually taking us.

The Manager

When most people think of a manager, we picture this: a middle-aged balding dude who sits behind a desk in a store assigning tasks to underlings. But despite what Dilbert comics and The Office would have us believe, a manager doesn’t just manage people.

As musicians, we have to manage our resources.

What are our resources as working musicians?

Our most important resource is our health. It’s the resource we rarely notice when it’s in good shape and the resource that affects everything in our lives when it’s not. Managing our health might look like not taking a gig because we haven’t recovered from the last one and need to rest. It means eating healthy food, getting enough sleep, and going to regular doctors’ appointments. We want to do everything we can to make sure we have a long, pain-free career. 

We also manage our time. As musicians, we have to make choices about how to spend our time every day. Should we take the gig that’s an hour away, or do we use that time to practice for an upcoming audition? Ideally, we want to spend most of our time doing what we love, whether that’s performing, teaching, composing, consulting, or a combination of the 3.

Skill development is another resource to be managed. This can look like setting aside time to practice. It can also look like attending workshops, doing an online course, or attending career coaching so we can develop the skills to effectively shape our careers.

Our energy is the last resource. Managing our energy looks different for every musician. It might mean choosing to spend our time on less physically demanding work, like teaching private lessons. It might mean taking time out of our day for self-care, or to do things that replenish our energy reserves, like reading a book, exercising, or going out with friends.

Being a manager is like standing on the sidewalk and noticing not just the cracks, but the surrounding landscape. It’s deciding if it's worth the money to fix the cracks, who might be the best person to hire to fix the cracks, and if fixing the cracks is even the most pressing issue to address.

The Entrepreneur

The role that most musicians tend to overlook is the role of the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur is the dreamer—the one who comes up with a vision for the future, then finds a way to turn it into reality.

Imagine your dream career. What would this look like? For most of us, this might mean playing gigs we truly enjoy, teaching dedicated and reliable students, or getting paid to share our ideas and expertise.

For every single one of us, this also involves being financially stable.

The entrepreneur has the power to turn these pie-in-the-sky dreams into reality.

Entrepreneurs don't just fix problems as they come up. They control the direction and scope of their career. They don’t wait for life to push or pull them in one direction or another. Entrepreneurs are masters of their fates.

The role of an entrepreneur involves taking stock of where they are in their career, determining where they want to go, and formulating a plan. An entrepreneur might look at their performance career and decide they want to teach more, then plan out their transition. An entrepreneur looks at their bank account, then plans how to generate more income streams by developing different skills.

An entrepreneur doesn’t become so focused on the cracks in the sidewalk that they are unable to see anything else. An entrepreneur sees the entire landscape, and they build the sidewalk in the direction of their dreams.