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Summary: This book helps performers take control of their careers.
Review: "The Touring Musician" helps performers at all levels of experience, and in all music genres, to take control of their careers. Authored by Hal Galper, an educator and professional pianist who has toured with a virtual Who's Who of jazz musicians, this book provides the successful career development and booking and touring techniques that Galper witnessed first-hand as a side man and that he later developed as a band leader, offering an inside look at the proven strategies used by some of music's finest talents. "The Touring Musician" contains:* Point-by-point advice about how to set up a small business. * Eleven sample worksheets and checklists, in a ready-to-photocopy format, that will help keep information organized. * Samples of the major types of legal documents involved in booking a band. * A step-by-step chapter explaining how to book and route a sample tour, including five calendars and five budgets. * Plus solid advice about how to research venue contacts, negotiate gigs and fees, manage band finances, coordinate promotional activities, and much, much more. Comments from musicians who have already read "The Touring Musician" include: "The definitive tour manual, this book will help transform road worriers into road warriors. Great for musicians, managers, road managers, and agents alike, it's a complete reference guide to the road." - Michael Brecker "The Touring Musician is exhaustive in its detail, covering every possible contingency . . . and above all it empowers the reader to make headway through the complexities of the music business. This has to be a milestone in how-to books!" - David Liebman "This is an important book for everyone in the business--from players to club managers." - Phil Woods "All of us can learn from the straightforward, sometimes hilarious, clarity of Hal Galper's hindsight experiences. All who travel need to include this book in their personal libraries--even if they have management." - Rufus Reid
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Summary: The Touring Musician is truly invaluable
Review: "The Touring Musician" is extrememly helpful to me, even though I am not a musician. I am a freelance public relations consultant and I am just entering into the music business. One aspect of what I will be doing is booking tours of jazz musicians. Part II of the Book, "Booking Your Tour" was detailed and informative. The chapter on venue contacts gave vital information on the different types of venues, their pay range and their particular requirements. The chapter on contacting venues and negotiating gigs gives sample dialogues for making contacts and give tips on the main negotiating points. And the chapter on tour routing and budgets presents a detailed scenario that is realistic and contains many of the fine points of routing a tour. I also appreciated the uselful information on touring in Canada in Chapter 11. This book is just what I was looking for to start my booking agency. Thanks to the author and the publisher.
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Summary: The Touring Musician is truly invaluable
Review: "The Touring Musician" is extrememly helpful to me, even though I am not a musician. I am a freelance public relations consultant and I am just entering into the music business. One aspect of what I will be doing is booking tours of jazz musicians. Part II of the Book, "Booking Your Tour" was detailed and informative. The chapter on venue contacts gave vital information on the different types of venues, their pay range and their particular requirements. The chapter on contacting venues and negotiating gigs gives sample dialogues for making contacts and give tips on the main negotiating points. And the chapter on tour routing and budgets presents a detailed scenario that is realistic and contains many of the fine points of routing a tour. I also appreciated the uselful information on touring in Canada in Chapter 11. This book is just what I was looking for to start my booking agency. Thanks to the author and the publisher.
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Summary: A Necessary Addition to Any Professional Musician's Library
Review: Drawing upon his own experience as a solo artist and a sideman with legends of the modern jazz world, pianist Hal Galper has written 'The Touring Musician' which I consider to be the best source of information and practical advice for the performing musician currently available. He covers every aspect of booking and touring that you will encounter in the ocurse of your musical travels. From mental attitude to setting up a home office, contacting and getting gigs, budgets, hotel and travel reservations -- I need to write a novella to convey all the details. He includes websites and phone numbers for a great deal of the companies and organizations you will deal with (airline tickets, hotel reservations, vehicle rentals, office gear) and offers his own worksheet designs to maintain the financial end of things. Hal also shares his personal touring successes and mistakes -- the entire book is related in a friendly, personal manner and always offers encouragement in what, for me, often seems an overwhelming endeavor. As a solo artist myself, I have been searching for this type of detailed professional advice. I recognized Hal's name during my search and checked the book out. Within minutes, I bought it. Within days, I read it and highlighted and underlined... Though written from a jazz player's experience, this book is definitely valuable to any musician who has decided to build a successful career. I offer my sincere thanks to Hal Galper for this writing this book.
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Summary: If you are a musician YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED THIS BOOK.
Review: Hal Galper's book covers all of the essentials that every musician needs to know about how to find work,secure work, and stay working! The Touring Musician provides the necessary tools and knowledge to build a successful independant career; tools that, unfortunately, many musicians were never taught and sorely lack. Approached from the mindset of a small business, Mr. Galper shows musicians how to find performance opportunities and how to market yourself to secure work. The Touring Musician sheds light on how to effectively organize yourself and your band, how to deal with promotion and the press, and how to convince venues to hire you. In addition, this book teaches musicians how to overcome many of the common barriers to their own success. Written in a friendly and engaging style, the Touring Musician is clear and easy to understand, with numerous examples and real world anecdotes. It is applicable to any style of music, and frankly, to performing careers of any type. Hal Galper effectively destroys the cliche that "there just isn't enough work out there" ! Even if you are a fairly successful musician, I guarantee that you will find new ideas and techniques to expand your career. If you are a musician, YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF TO GET THE TORUING MUSICIAN and learn the tools within it from cover to cover. I have been a professional musician for ten years and since utilizing the techniques in this book, I have scheduled more work, and higher paying work, than ever before. Every musician that I have lent this book to has immediately purchased it! There is real satisfaction in doing what you love; this book will help you realize your professional goals. I feel that the Touring Musician is one of the best investments I have made in my career. I strongly encourage you to do the same.
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Summary: If you are a musician YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED THIS BOOK.
Review: Hal Galper's book covers all of the essentials that every musician needs to know about how to find work,secure work, and stay working! The Touring Musician provides the necessary tools and knowledge to build a successful independant career; tools that, unfortunately, many musicians were never taught and sorely lack. Approached from the mindset of a small business, Mr. Galper shows musicians how to find performance opportunities and how to market yourself to secure work. The Touring Musician sheds light on how to effectively organize yourself and your band, how to deal with promotion and the press, and how to convince venues to hire you. In addition, this book teaches musicians how to overcome many of the common barriers to their own success. Written in a friendly and engaging style, the Touring Musician is clear and easy to understand, with numerous examples and real world anecdotes. It is applicable to any style of music, and frankly, to performing careers of any type. Hal Galper effectively destroys the cliche that "there just isn't enough work out there" ! Even if you are a fairly successful musician, I guarantee that you will find new ideas and techniques to expand your career. If you are a musician, YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF TO GET THE TORUING MUSICIAN and learn the tools within it from cover to cover. I have been a professional musician for ten years and since utilizing the techniques in this book, I have scheduled more work, and higher paying work, than ever before. Every musician that I have lent this book to has immediately purchased it! There is real satisfaction in doing what you love; this book will help you realize your professional goals. I feel that the Touring Musician is one of the best investments I have made in my career. I strongly encourage you to do the same.
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Summary: Best I've seen! An absolute must-have!
Review: I'm only about 3.5 chapters into this book and to me it's the best book on getting the business end of a music career I have ever come across. I have a stack of music business books about yea high and they are mostly very good, but Hal's is far and away the top gun. He not only demonstrates the logistics of getting a band started, how to ask a club/venue booker for gigs, how to set up the money end, but he also looks at the inner psychology of what it takes to be a touring/performing musician, and does it so that all the hard work you take on looks manageable. Not only is this a good book for entry or mid-level musicians, it's a great read for ANYBODY who would want to start his or her own business. Sometimes it's a little dry and hard to read, but the information it contains is so valuable I don't mind at all. I highly recommend this book from a "road rat" who has been there and done that.
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Summary: Best I've seen! An absolute must-have!
Review: I'm only about 3.5 chapters into this book and to me it's the best book on getting the business end of a music career I have ever come across. I have a stack of music business books about yea high and they are mostly very good, but Hal's is far and away the top gun. He not only demonstrates the logistics of getting a band started, how to ask a club/venue booker for gigs, how to set up the money end, but he also looks at the inner psychology of what it takes to be a touring/performing musician, and does it so that all the hard work you take on looks manageable. Not only is this a good book for entry or mid-level musicians, it's a great read for ANYBODY who would want to start his or her own business. Sometimes it's a little dry and hard to read, but the information it contains is so valuable I don't mind at all. I highly recommend this book from a "road rat" who has been there and done that.
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Summary: Do you need this book?
Review: If you answer any one of the following questions with a "no," you need it. Do you know how to find leads for work? Do you know how to talk to a potential client? Do you know how to select personnel and organize your band? Do you know how to negotiate a reasonable performance fee? Do you know how to rout a tour? Do you know how to organize your touring budgets and keep your expenses down? Can you organize your transportation? These were a few of the questions I faced when I started booking my own groups in 1990. Seven years in the making, The Touring Musician contains the answers I found in the sum of my 45 years experience of touring the world as the perennial and ubiquitous "sideman" as well as my own personal experiences booking my own bands since going out on my own in 1990. The techniques used in this book were successful in keeping my band on the road 4 to 6 months a year. The music scene is currently going through a period of rapid change. The advent of computer technology, the internet and the burgeoning numbers of new musicians entering the scene every year demands that musicians learn how to fend for themselves by taking the reigns of their careers into their own hands. Mid-career and entry level musicians alike all face the same challenge, how can I survive in this new environment? I believed that if I could survive while playing the music of my choice, so could others. To do so requires only a few basic elements, a quality musical product, a willingness to work hard to make your beliefs a reality and the right kind of information. Only you can supply the first two elements. My hope is that The Touring Musician will help many musicians by offering the third.
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Summary: At last it's out!
Review: Seven years in the making, and with the help and interest of senior editor Bob Nirkind and the folks at Billboard Books, The Touring Musician is finally being published. It's got a lot of information in it that I hope will help my fellow musicians get a handle on their careers. However, it's the age of information and, is it's nature, information is fluid and changes all the time. I've endeavoured to write what I know to be true from my own experience touring the world and booking my own groups over the last 45 years. If you find that some information has changed since it's authorship, please let me know. Also, I've not as yet been everywhere and done everything. If you've had some experiences and information that could help others survive, in this most difficult of businesses, please let me know. Feel free to contact me if you need any advice using the info or processes in this book and I'll try to get back to you as soon as I can. It's getting harder and harder out there for both entry level musicians and us pot bellied, gray haired professionals. The only way we can survive is to help each other. That's why I wrote the book.
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