Major milestone marker · Luan's School Of Music

4d ago (edited) in WINS

Major milestone marker

I shared this video deep in one of my earlier threads but I really want to spotlight it. It captures for me what is about a year of fairly focused effort of preparing to play my own live solo gigs and I want to celebrate it properly with this community. But bear with me as some background information is helpful.

Three years ago I was introduced to a band in need of a singer. It was a great fit as we were all about the same age, had similar musical style interests, and saw music as a passionate hobby to complement our working and family lives. It was the first time in over 30 years of playing guitar and singing that I played with others in a band-like way, and was itself a personal milestone. I never really thought of myself as a ”singer” so it helped me that i could bring my rhythm guitar into the mix.

I had a vision of getting the band to play out regularly and figured it would take about a year to begin that phase. And about 15 months later we played 4 songs at a band open mic night! It was a huge win for us and something we celebrated. However, rather than propel us to wanting to play out more, for a couple of the band members they concluded live gigs were not for them. They were happy with our weekly practice sessions. And that was cool. I was okay with that.

Respecting their preferences, and undeterred, I decided that I could scratch my playing out itch through solo gigging. Up until then I hadn’t really considered that option. So a little over a year ago I put together a rough roadmap to get me gigging. I knew it would be a ton of work and that it would get me way out of my comfort zone. But I was confident enough in my abilities and so set about working towards it.

Somewhere early-ish in this journey I came across some of Luan’s videos. That was right when he was launching this (and the original paid) community. It seemed like it could be a good fit and so I signed up. Luan further helped me refine my roadmap. I cut out certain things I was doing to more narrowly, and effectively, focus on my goal of being able play solo gigs. And this community, more generally, provided great and needed inspiration to help me keep moving towards this goal.

Back to the video. While this Saturday night was technically my second live event I really saw it as my debut solo performance, as I invited friends and family to this one. The first one was at a restaurant where I played truly as background music. It was awesome to do but there was no place for much audience interaction. In contrast, the one from this weekend was at a bar where it was ideal to get more involved with the crowd, which is something I really wanted to do.

This brief clip captures that sweet moment of success! This happened on a few songs during the night.

Cheers!

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