Professional skills
The non-negotiables of working life: reading anything put in front of you, running and playing gigs, sounding good in any room, earning from teaching and writing, handling the business, and staying healthy enough to do it for fifty years.
- Sight-read single-line parts in position, rhythmic kicks, chord charts with rhythmic notation and four-to-the-bar big-band guitar parts
- Lead a band: build a set list, prepare keys and charts, run a rehearsal, count off, cue endings and work with singers and horn players
- Produce a reliable, well-balanced sound on any stage and in any studio, and record yourself for honest self-assessment
- Earn as a working guitarist through teaching, chart writing, small-group arranging and transcription, with clear processes for each
- Run the business side: rates, agreements, invoicing, tax basics, promotion, online presence and professional etiquette
- Design practice that keeps improving for decades while protecting your hands, your hearing and your nerves
Everything before this module was about playing. This module is about being hired, and hired again. The six lessons cover what a bandleader, a producer, a contractor or a student actually judges you on: can you read the part on the first pass, do you run a professional gig, do you sound good in the room, can you deliver a chart or a lesson by a deadline, is your paperwork in order, and will you still be playing and improving in twenty years. None of it replaces the musicianship in Modules 1–14; all of it decides whether that musicianship turns into a working life. Work the sight-reading lesson daily from now on, and treat the others as references you return to before each new kind of job.