This new year has made a lot of noise so far, off to a gallop and a cock-a-doodle-doo, both globally and personally. My most recent news: I am teaching at Dusty Strings Music Store!
Two years ago, I set off to adopt a five-fold business plan that addressed these areas of work: performing; recording; weddings & private events; teaching; and healing. All five areas of my business plan are in full swing.
Performing – This winter I am performing these concerts in Seattle:
Recording- Working on mixing the last tracks of my upcoming album, Braids of Kabuya, and ideas like this keep coming:
Teaching- I am SUPER pleased to announce that I am now teaching private harp lessons at Dusty Strings Music Store in Seattle (Fremont). Not only does Dusty Strings make the finest lever harps in North America, but they have a newly renovated music school. Its pretty awesome and inspiring. People who work there are nice. Please check it out! I teach on Thursdays.
Healing- This month, I celebrated my 1st year anniversary playing therapeutic harp music for Providence Hospice patients. It is a gift to play music for people who are so appreciative.
This post was originally published at Pyragraph and is reposted here with kind permission.
Backstage in NYC
A year ago I quit my day job. It was easy to make the announcement and write the first part of my story, because I was excited! However, writing this follow-up has been a lot more challenging.
A little background: The day-job I quit was part-time. It was secure and it complimented my creative career as a musician and poet. So, I was conflicted about leaving. However, I knew that if I stayed any longer, I would never take the chance to see what was behind the other door—the door that led to working on music and writing exclusively, the door that led to me working as a freelancer and calling my own shots. I was miserable with the thought of never knowing what that would feel like.
For various reasons, the clock was ticking. If I was going to jump, it had to be now.
How did I prepare for this? I talked to other full-time musicians and I crafted a business plan. Then, I seriously talked my five-fold business plan over with at least a dozen people, as well as a representative at Seattle Small Business Association. I got green lights. I created an active teaching studio. Also, I became a Certified Clinical Musician (someone who plays particular therapeutic styles of music at the bedside of the sick and dying). The plan was that the day job hours would be taken over by therapeutic work, more or less. Since putting my plan into practice, I still think it’s solid in theory, but several factors beyond my control caused a certain amount of failure.
An important nuance I’ve had to take note of is seasonal fluctuations in work. I have wedding gigs in the summer, but not many students. This past year has shown moments of good fortune—touring with amazing musicians to New York with the successful show, Now I’m Fine—contrasted by disappointments when efforts don’t pay off—I did an intense two-day trade show for state healthcare workers expecting to drum up new clinical music work, but got empty leads, which left me physically and mentally drained.
There have been lots of challenges this first year on my own, but they’ve only pushed me to try something new and get comfortable with making mistakes when they happen.
New things I’ve tried this year and succeeded at:
Recording original tunes in studio and at home (in progress)
Making a music video
Bartered harp lessons for other needed services
Led healing harp tones guided meditation workshop
Fallen short:
Getting 3-5 therapeutic music accounts (I’ve succeeded so far at only gaining two)
Rejected grants
Future goals:
Skype harp lessons
Self-publishing a multi-instrument album
Leading more group workshops
More therapeutic music accounts
In one year’s time, I’d say I’m not as rosey-eyed, that is, I may not have taken into account how the highs and lows are much more extreme, which can be more exciting and more scary. Yet still, I’m optimistic by nature, so I always have that working to my advantage. I am very comfortable with turning down offers that are not respectable or reciprocal. I also happen to live in a wealthy city, where there are many resources for artists and people who will pay for artistic services.
My choice to work freelance has really been about my need to fulfill a dream. In his poem, “Harlem,” Langston Hughes asks:
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run?
I knew my dreams would lose their strength, or worse yet, cease to exist, if I didn’t answer to their calling. That is what this career choice has been about, because working in the arts is more than just “making a living,” it’s a lifestyle. I like seeing where the mystery unfolds, even if it’s a little terrifying. It’s my path and I own it.
“My work as a therapeutic harpist is a service and not a performance. I don’t expect any kind of recognition,” multi-talented Seattle musician Monica Schley explained when she sat down to discuss her experience as a Certified Clinical Musician. Most of Schley’s musical roles, such as her chamber-pop band, The Daphnes, or role in the experimental pop opera, “Now I’m Fine,” involve performance and entertainment but through her service as a therapeutic musician, she says, she’s found “soul purpose” and improved aspects of her musicianship.
Schley began her journey with the harp at the age of 14. Since then she’s gained mastery of her instrument and acquired a wide repertoire of music which will soon debut on her first full length album “Keep the Night Dark.” Her experience spans classical, chamber, rock, jazz, improvisation and avant-garde. She teaches, composes, and has collaborated with dozens of musicians. Three years ago she did something different. She enrolled in a course in clinical musicianship accredited by the National Standards Board for Therapeutic Musicians. In addition to the coursework she served an intensive internship playing roughly 40 hours in hospitals and kidney dialysis centers and 20 hours in hospice. This is the first year she’s been practicing with full certification. As a therapeutic harpist, Schley says, her ability to memorize music has improved and “It really opened up my ears to how I connect music and sound.”
Schley has played for over 250 patients and each environment calls for a unique marriage of sound and music. “If I go into a room with an oxygen machine or beeping I’m going to play in that scale to avoid disharmony,” she explained. “Like any doctor, I want to make things better and not cause any anxiety. I enjoy that about what I do. I’m attuned to sound. If I’m playing for someone recovering from surgery I choose something with a regular beat and play chord progressions that are soothing. When someone is passing on simplicity is sometimes the best thing. Sometimes I play just one note.”
Schley brings a small 22 string harp with a guitar strap to her therapeutic sessions. She plays for various lengths of time depending on the audience. “What I do is passive,” she said. “I’m never asking anyone to do anything. Sometimes I introduce myself. Sometimes I just play.” Unlike her experience with entertainment and performance, therapeutic music isn’t meant to elicit any audience response except healing and the feedback she does receive is positive. “Monica has shared her incredible harp music with our patients and staff, bringing relaxation, therapy and healing to us all,” writes an R.N. Therapeutic harp benefits everyone listening to it including staff, medical professionals and family. “A lot of the time a family member is in the room and they may enjoy it as well. Sometimes family doesn’t realize—they need it too,” Schley said.
According to the National Standards Board for Therapeutic Musicians therapeutic music enhances a patient’s environment to make it more conducive to healing. “Whether you’re aware of it or not sound goes into your body and organs,” Schley explained. Curing is done by the medical community but healing is facilitated by addressing the emotional, spiritual, mental and physical aspects of life which can be done with the universal language of music. Therapeutic music can relieve stress and tension, augment pain management, reduce blood pressure, aid mental focus, ease transitions, or accelerate healing among other benefits. “I’m happy to be able to use my skill to help people,” Schley said. Clinical musicianship “has helped me in so many ways to be a more compassionate and better person. It’s truly meaningful work.”
This post was originally published at Pyragraph and is reposted here with kind permission.
She nursed on the muse at first, then became her own mother
—Erica Jong, from Self-Portrait
Four years ago, I was digging deep into the music world around me. I was getting calls from jazz, classical and pop ensembles for a regular variety of work and I had just published a book of poetry. I was quite busy and planning for a near future of more of that. Four years ago, I also became a mother. I had no idea what I was about to get into!
Call me naive, but I just wasn’t prepared for the onset of colic in a newborn to last over four months. Every day from 5-8pm my little baby would scream her head off no matter what we did. I thought she was breaking. It was so exhausting that my husband and I began to dread the “witching hour,” as we later learned it is called. That type of mothering dipped severely into my creative flow. I was paralyzed by serious duty, and like so many other artists without an expressive outlet, I got depressed.
Life has definitely improved since that dark winter.
It might have taken me a few years to notice, but I am embracing the fact that though my time to produce/work on my craft has diminished as a mother, the quality of my work and focus on it seems to have increased and improved. I don’t get as much time as I used to, so I make better use of it.
When I was a brand new parent, I was struck with awe at how little time I had for self-care, let alone time to practice my instrument. I searched online for resources from other mothers who are musicians. Indeed, I am not alone out there, but it was difficult to find the self-help/buck-up-kid words I longed for. I needed a mother for my artist me!
About that same time, a mother/musician acquaintance of mine who was living out of the country, started posting on her Facebook page exactly what she did, hour-by-hour, with her two-year-old each day. It was her practice to write out a daily journal of time spent with child/art/family merged together. I thought that was beautiful, and looking back, reading her passages was sort of a turning point for me. I started to do the same in my own private journal—there were good days, challenging days, ideal days, disaster days, and goals to strive for. It also helped me see how I was actually spending my time.
Present day good news: I have a happy four-year-old. I consider that to be the supreme guidepost of any success. Also, my duties have eased up, as she goes to preschool and plays in her imaginary worlds at home. Time has definitely expanded for my creativity to live alongside my mothering duties and I am grateful. Every now and then, I still find it helpful to write out a daily log.
Here’s a recent example of one of our days.
7:00—Woke before the others
7:10—Wrote in my journal
7:30—Made coffee and granola w/berries for the family and me
8:10—Got kiddo dressed
8:45—Prepared sheet music for a rehearsal, tuned and practiced (child playing by herself)
9:30—Went to Musicians’ Union office to photocopy and connect with colleagues (with kiddo)
10:30—Arrived home to rehearse w/ violinist who also has a kiddo—children played; adults played
12:00—Finished rehearsal and hung out for a bit
12:30—Friends left; hubby came home; we all ate lunch together
1:00-1:20—Cleaned up dishes, kitchen and child
1:20-1:45—Hubby took kiddo on a walk so I could message clients/make phone calls
1:45—Got ready to thrift shop and run errands with kiddo
1:55—Abort mission! Bee sting! Child stepped on a bee on the walk!
2:00—Nursed wounded child; applied baking soda compress; ice cream; cartoons
2:20-4:30—Kiddo said she wanted to stay home; worked closely on an activity book together
4:30-6pm—Prepared dinner, ate and cleaned up
6:00-6:30pm—More client emails, writing and invoices
7:00—Drove downtown as a family to hear a musician friend’s house concert
9:15—Dropped off semi-overdue children’s library books
9:30—At home; kiddo fell asleep in the car and plopped peacefully into bed
9:45-11:45—Typed up song lyrics and poems, worked on a writing submission, listened to Self-Employed Happy Hour (a Pyragraph Podcast!), practiced my instrument
I am a Certified Therapeutic Musician. You might ask, what is therapeutic music? And where is it used? You can read the answers to these questions, hear what this kind of music sounds like and more, at my Therapeutic Healing Page Here.
