1 of 7

Royal Northern College of Music

Freelance Musicianship
A Commentary and Evaluation of Working as a
Freelancer in Music

By Luke Keigher

MMUS
 2 of 7

Index
 3 of 7

Introduction
The worldwide musical community resonates with boundless creativity, expression and passion which
transcends cultural barriers.The allure of pursuing this passion as a life long career has captivated individuals
for centuries; however, as the landscape of the music industry changed, career musicians have always been
plagued by financial uncertainty.. In this contemporary era of innovation and connection, the once traditional
role of musician as an entertainer has been expanded into a wide array of freelance opportunities. The
modern freelance musician, unencumbered by the restrictions of a conventional employment structure,
undertakes a unique journey that demands artistic prowess, adaptable craftsmanship, and business acumen.

As a young musician at the start of my career I’m uniquely positioned to access different areas of freelance
musicianship, and in this project I aim to experience, access and evaluate the skills required for all a wide
variety of different roles as I begin to build my freelance career.

Project Proposal
I aim to take part in as many different roles within the realm of freelance musician as possible, assessing
primarily; the skills needed to learn the craft, the difficulty a person may have in picking up these skills, the
relevance of traditional musicianship in these roles, and finally critically evaluating my performance and
developing understanding throughout the various learning process’. Through this I seek to attain more
knowledge on the ever uncertain world of freelance work, learn about different specialised fields, learn the
advantages and disadvantages of specialisation, or a lack thereof, within the career of a freelancer. My own
background consists largely of performing music as a guitarist and working as studio engineer.

I will present my findings chronologically, however dividing the roles into different vocations and presenting
them separately so the learning curve of each is presented clearly. The vocations I have divided all my work
into are Education, Production, and Musicianship. I will provide any evidence as videos and recordings,
the only exception being in my work with Schools, where the most I can provide is links and attachments to
the students lesson notes and resources as filming the children’s progress to submit would go against the
Data Protection Act.

Education
Two years ago, asides from my own endeavours performing and composing music, I had negligible
experience within this vocation. Luckily, with no prior training or experience I landed an interview at
Bedford High School, in Leigh. After being successful in this interview I was faced with a steep learning
curve of one on one teaching with children, as well as the daunting task of delivering full band tuition to two
sets of year groups throughout the day. The first observation to be made about the school is that I was warned
the children were very difficult to control and harder to motivate, beyond this being a word of warning it was
interesting to observe the cycle this creates within the school: Children acting out constantly; wearing down
the resolve of the teachers; resulting in a lower quality of teaching, and eventually more discontent on both
sides. Obviously this is only true up until a point, and a debate would be over which action comes first.
However if we are presupposed that teaching is a craft that can be honed and perfected we must assume that
the best teachers would be able to educate and captivate any student.
Moving onto my first one-to-one lessons, I immediately faced my first challenge in that, to make the lessons
affordable for the school, the decision has was made that the lessons where fifteen minutes long. At the time
this decision made me quite anxious as I doubted my ability to be able to deliver a good enough standard of
learning in such short space of time. This lead me on to spending some time thinking about what I needed to
achieve within this very short time frame, how I would continually assess whether I was achieving these
goals. Within the time slot I wanted to be able to assess what the children had practiced in the week, give
them advice on how to improve the techniques included within this repertoire, set new repertoire and make
sure they begin on the right track, and teach fundamental so they could continue learning themselves.
Practically this makes for quite a formulaic lesson; I wanted to be sure the children where motivated,
enjoying their lessons and having a positive outlook towards learning music. While this seemed a wide range
of topics to be covered I believe that it his possible to deliver to succinct lesson in this way.
My general lesson plan has remained largely unchanged since began my one-to-one teaching, in that I’ll
always greet my student, ask them how they’ve been since we last met, and importantly after that, how
they’ve been getting on with the tasks I’ve set them or any other musical endeavours. I believe this sets the
tone that their well-being is above progress, and makes them feel comfortable so we can quickly begin. With
my new students I like to reinforce the point that if they wish to make good progress and reach the goals we
 4 of 7
set them quickly, than they need to see this lesson time once a week, as a time to consult me, and gain advice
on how to proceed rather than the only time they play the guitar.
Once they settle in I get them to warm up with whatever they’ve been practicing this week, because of this
regularity most of the children have gotten familiar with the concept that they should have something new to
be practicing in that time each week, while this is going on I access their notes from an online live document
that I set up from their first lesson, here is an ongoing log alongside any resources of all that we practice in
the lesson. Before I then move on to any new material, I make a point to ask the children what music they’ve
been listening to, again through repetition reinforcing the notion they should be regularly listening to new
music. I try then to set the new material from what they like, if they mention they’re a fan of a a particular
band, I’ll try and assign them music from the same genre, and then give them a short tutorial on how I’d go
about learning that song, by ear, then consulting charts.I try to make it so they have learned the first part of
their assigned song before the lesson time is up and remind them that everything they did, and everything
they have to do, is on the online portal for them to view at any time.
Another challenge I had to consider is how to deal with absolute beginners. I believe it to be extremely
important that when someone of any age attempts a new discipline to achieve a sense of momentum, setting
up a series of achievable landmarks to break up learning into manageable chunks. My first lesson with an
absolute beginner normally consists of giving them the basic skills to start learning the songs they like. For
the guitar, this normally looks like learning a few basic open chords, and applying them to a song they know,
then introducing their first rhythmic concepts with the right hand strumming pattern. If I can get someone to
be playing a syncopated rhythm and changing chords within a single lesson I view it as a success. Moving
forward from there I include an explanation of the CAGED system, a simple method guitarists use to play
open chord shapes all over the guitar, freeing up students to learn any song they can find or hear the harmony
to.
The reality of implementing these methods is that it is hugely reliant on a Childs engagement and
commitment out of the lesson, with some more attentive children coming back in the second week having
looked up chords and attempted learning new songs, where as some children I need to remind of the same
few chords each week. I decided it was important to quickly adapt to the children, if they didn’t show much
progress in first couple of weeks, instead showing them riff based music and learning parts from songs to
help them get started and gain desire to learn more. Having a primary and a secondary back-up method for
getting the ball rolling with the tuition has remained helpful to date.

Alongside the private tuition I conduct, Bedford also employs me to deliver ensemble lessons to different age
ranges throughout the day, at lunch time taking a year 8-9 group of around 20 children, and after school
taking a class of under 10 of the older years. This certainly provided a challenge at first given my lack of
experience and being slightly apprehensive at the idea of keeping a large group of children under control.
However after a couple weeks getting used to the role and gaining confidence I began to feel very
comfortable delivering these group lessons and the children made some real progress in terms of being able
to play and listen to each other. The skills they learned over the past few terms slowly came together to form
more and more complex songs. The final song of the term we worked through being, ‘Complicated,’ by Avril
Lavigne. I found the real learning curve in this scenario is the class control aspect, managing to set an
expectation of behaviour as well attentiveness from the children was difficult at first, not overly wanting to
resort to shouting or being too controlling, this meant progress was slow at first but over the course of a few
weeks the resulting attitude from the children is that what we are doing is there choice, largely making them
more enthusiastic.

Additionally to Bedford High School I was also offered a role in a local private school after a colleague
recommended me for an open post. This presented me with new challenges, in that the students here had
clearly had guitar tuition in the past, and where very accustomed to higher work rate. Due to this increased
rate in progress I got to experience these students reaching different obstacles in their musicianship and guide
them through it, whether it be something as simple as deficiencies in instrument specific techniques or a
breakthrough moment such as fully understanding how the modes of the major scale are constructed, it has
led me to the same conclusion: Each individuals journey of learning music is unique, and therefore the
education applied to them should be bespoke.

I think within the vocation of education there are several times which traditional musicians skills come in to
practice. When teaching private lessons it’s very obvious that the direct techniques of playing an instrument
are essential musicians skills in order to perform, however also alongside this being able to teach theory
method of why these chords we’re exploring sound good can help students gain fundamental understandings
within music, vastly increasing their rate of progress. There’s also more applications of musicianship in the
teaching of band lessons, such as being able to quickly simplify parts in order to teach them to several
 5 of 7
different children on several different instruments: Reducing rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic complexity
allows for the students to quickly pick up the important elements of a song before the rest of the class get
distracted.

Overall, I believe after a short time at Bedford High School I’ve improved the quality of education the guitar
and bass students where receiving as well as fostering a a positive, and self sufficient attitude in the band
lessons. Alongside this my student base at Kings Leadership Academy is growing weekly and I’ve been
approached to put together a similar ensemble class in this school to further the students skills.

Production
My background until recently in production consisted of a basic knowledge of studio, and post-production
work when shadowing in small recording studios around Manchester. It was an opportunity that arose as a
runner for Manchester indie label, ‘Scruff off the Neck,’ which opened my eyes to further avenues I could
explore with my basic knowledge of studio equipment and sound processing. I decided to shadow the sound
engineer whilst working as a runner for the labels Twitch broadcast SOTN TV, and for the next three months
I dedicated my time there to analysing the work flow of a live sound engineer; from the physical set-up,
cable routing, mic placement, managing of monitors, front-of-house speakers, signal routing within the desk,
and working quickly and efficiently.
Whilst the last point seems to be a given I found the steepest learning curve of starting out in production to
be the speed at which you must work. Compared to a studio environment where an element of calm is much
preferred over urgency, working in a live environment there are many things that need to be completed with
speed otherwise a live audience and performers are going to be unhappy. I find that comparing how I reacted
in situations back in this role to now that being in these environments definitely trained and reinforced my
decision making skills as well as my ability to work under pressure. I think these are two things that anybody
seeking out a role in this vocation would have to be comfortable with.
Having impressed the current sound technician by taking over the desk for a few sessions, he decided to
leave the role to me when he left to pursue more tours. This meant that every Monday for a year I had the
regular gig of setting up a studio for three bands, sound checking and mixing the bands to Twitch and
managing the switching between an interview space, a live band area, and a computer system; essentially this
just means I got a lot of experience working and mixing under pressure in a short space of time. It was
around this period when I started to get my first live sound engineer offers at 33 Oldham St.
This offered me a new challenge, which most sound engineers struggle with more than anything, in the form
of feedback. Working in the Scruff studio, since the main output was straight to Twitch and everyone in the
room was using in-ear monitors, there was no chance to produce feedback in the room.However now my
problem lied in the majority of the time I couldn’t turn a load vocal up loud enough to be heard over a
drummer in the room without the monitors and the FOH feed backing. The answer to this came to me after
consulting the internet and asking my old mentor form the Scruff studio, I had to ring out the microphone
and discern which frequencies were feed backing, then locate those frequencies on a graphic equaliser and
remove them from the mix, thus eliminating the feedback. This has been by far the most helpful and notable
thing I’ve learned working as a live sound engineer, beyond artistic choices like how to process a kick drum,
this is an essential part of the craft.
As I developed my skills as an engineer several times a week and gradually improved I started to receive
other opportunities, notably becoming a regular sound engineer at another central Manchester venue, Night
and Day Café, and covering for popular rock band’s, Ist Ist’s, sound technician for one night of their tour in
Hebden Bridge.
These opportunities offered their own challenged in the form of working on bigger shows with greater
expectations and much more influential people who wouldn’t shy away at telling anyone they are doing
badly at their job. Especially walking into Hebden Bridge, being the largest venue I’ve mixed to date by a
long way. I had to be confident and stick to the methods I’d developed whilst mixing much smaller venues,
whilst under the judging gaze of a far more experienced in house engineer. In the end the gig sounded
amazing, so much so that an ageing audience was transported back to the 90s and ended the gig with a brawl.
Beyond this, I then went on to work two festivals for scruff of the neck, streaming to twitch and creating
content at The Great Escape Festival and YNOT Festival.
Most of the back catalogue from my time at Scruff of the Neck has been uploaded here: https://
www.youtube.com/@ScruffoftheNeck/videos

Having these skills as a live sound engineer quickly opened up further opportunities to better paying work.
These new gigs were defined as corporate gigs, essentially meaning that in working there you are not aiding
and abetting art, but instead managing microphones at conferences, and making sure the work party can hear
the cover band. This type of work is infinitely more sapping of creative energy and requires little to no
 6 of 7
challenge from a technical prospective, however pays double or triple what an original music venue in town
would give.

The only other project I undertook over this time I have used as a lesson to myself. This project was mixing
and mastering a live recorded album which I had captured at The Yard, a venue in Salford, recently. The
problems arose out of this project for several reasons, one being that I was given no time frame to complete
the mixing of 13 tracks, and with all my other freelance work occurring on top of a masters degree, less
important projects like these can fall through the cracks. The next problem being that due to the nature of the
job I’d accepted that I had to go and listen in very close detail to all of this material for an extended time;
my problem with this being that I couldn’t stand to listen to the music, it was performed very inaccurately
and was sometimes grating to experience, meaning progress and motivation towards the project was slow.
Another inhibiting factor is a desire for perfectionism in this work: Coming from a studio background I can
be very particular about how a mix should sound, therefore trying to make this mess of a recording sound
listenable as extremely grating on me and the result I ended up with is something I was never going to happy
with however with he time I had dedicated already far eclipsing he amount I charged it was time to call its a
day and talk away a lesson in that don’t accept work you don’t want.

During my short tenure within this vocation I feel I’ve received an unbelievable amount of information about
the topic purely through practical experience; working under pressure on the job meant that I’d picked a huge
range of practical skills.This was reflected by the progress and prowess shown through my work as well as
the influx of new opportunities coming my way. After a year in the field I was I was in charge of my own
broadcast studio and core engineer and three separate venues across greater Manchester. I believe there are
many ways in which the skills associated with traditional musicianship have application in this field,; for one
the majority of the time it is musicians I work with, and having a slightly more advanced understanding of
what a performer wants and needs, in terms of sound on stage and the feeling in the room. Beyond this there
are a useful moments for musicians with good ear training, as when picking out harsh frequencies being
quickly able to discern pitch its a huge help, and finally understanding rhythmically how effects and delays
may need to be tweaked dependent on feel. For example the delay time of an effect must be in time with the
song and not clash with the feel. E.g. no 8th note delay with a swing feel.

Musicianship
As a student at the RNCM, my background is obviously as a player/performer. Specifically within the
genre’s of soul and jazz music. This said I will always try and expand my horizons by accepting any gigs that
are worth my time; and as a result of this I’ve had the opportunity to play in an array of different function
bands. Namely having two semi-regular gigs, on the Revolution de Cuba circuit around the north of England
and sometimes down into Birmingham with Lucy Deakin; and playing around the Irish bar circuit with Joe
Keegan and his band. The nature of both of these gigs is quite similar although the music played is very
different, Im a dep for both of these gigs, meaning I get called the moment that the first guitarist can’t do
something. However a draw back of this is that the gigs are always offered very last minute, either on the day
or the day before the performance. Due to this lack of warning I found myself under greater pressure to
perform accurately without the proper amount of time to prepare, whilst this wasn’t an issue within the
vocations of teaching and production, the amount of pressure I felt on stage certainly affects my own
performance, making my arms become tense and my hands become sweaty, leading to great rhythmic and
technical inaccuracies. It was clear to me that this lack of preparation was a factor in this and I needed to
dedicate my own time to practicing these sets without any promise of further work. This certainly aided my
confidence on stage and let me divert more attention into performing the music. Beyond this I always make a
constant effort to analyse how I feel on stage, in order to meet head-on any anxieties may arise. This means
in the scenario that I tense up and can’t play properly, I’m practiced in the method of quickly calming down
and getting back to the performance.

Beyond my work as a function musician I also have been undertaking the writing of an original project with
my writing partner, Nina Pinto. This is a fantastic outlet for creativity and brings me a huge amount of
satisfaction, making it the only job I’ve mentioned so far which does not equate to an income for me but
instead focuses me and fulfils my own desire to compose and perform music out of the context of a function
band. Dedicating time to projects like these firstly increases the amount of fulfilment a person feels from
their work as well as preparing them for any opportunities surrounding original music. Over the past few
months, whilst delayed with Nina’s vocal health, we have been finalising an EP at Dead Basics Studio,
actually the first studio I worked at in Manchester, showing that diversity of fields within a career can open
up new doors and opportunities, especially when all these fields are within music.
 7 of 7

Conclusion
My first year or so working as a freelancer has opened many different avenues work; including
breakthroughs in each of the three chosen vocations which have allowed me to continue developing my
skills. Within the field of education, I discovered the importance of tailoring each lesson to the individual and
helped me realise each persons musical journey is unique.Adapting to the various teaching settings presented
to me also gave me the opportunity to develop different methods such as private tuition, and classroom
teaching, with a focus on classroom management to develop positive learning environment. On the
production side, I have very much enjoyed my foray behind the scenes, namely this has taught me the
importance of working quickly and efficiently, especially in high pressure environments. Overcoming
various challenges, such as managing many different input sources, eliminating feedback, and enhancing my
decision making abilities.Working at various venues and festival sites then pushed me on to delivering a high
professional standard of engineering. Finally in the field of actually performing music I continued to hone
my skills in the field of live performance, analysing the rogue elements of a performance which could cause
me to tense up and inhibit my performance.
Throughout this journey as a freelance musician, Ive recognised and appreciated both the skills of traditional
musicianship and adaptability in embracing new opportunities. The ability to perform, compose and theorise
music has been invaluable in all the different roles I have experienced; additionally being open to new
avenues of work and experiences has meant that many new opportunities regularly come my way and my
colleagues all know me as someone who they can bring this type of work to.
As I continue building my freelance career I intend to further refine my skills in each of the areas I practice,
as well as exploring other specialised fields such as camera, and fieldwork. On the topic of specialisation and
whether focusing on one trade may be advantageous I believe the evidence is too circumstantial on either
side to draw definitive conclusion, however I can state that there are many advantages of having this
multifaceted career, such as the opportunities that cross vocations, the shared base of skills and developing of
musicianship, and a largely varied day to day life.
In conclusion, being a freelance musician offers a dynamic and varied approach to a career path, demanding
above all adaptable craftsmanship, quick decision making, and the ability to suitably meet the standards of
your environment, whatever that may be. During this project I have improved my skills and improved my
understanding of the challenges associated with working as a freelancer in music. As my own journey
continues I am excited as ever to embrace new opportunities and keep contributing to the ever evolving,
vibrant, musical community. A quote from Robert A Heinlein seems particularly relevant, “A human being
should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a
sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act
alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight
efficiently, die gallantly,” and finally, “specialisation is for insects.”