MUST-read Books for the Holistic Artist (Part 1)
Crafting a Holistic Music Career: More Than Just the Sound
As any seasoned musician will tell you, there’s a lot more to being an artist than just creating great music.
To truly succeed, it’s essential to approach an artist's career with a holistic mindset—one that includes not only musical expertise, but also business savvy, financial literacy, physical and mental well-being, and even an understanding of nutrition.
The Complete Artist
The music we create is an intimate reflection of who we are, giving listeners a glimpse into our soul. It requires immense humility, vulnerability, and transparency. Our music serves as a reflection of who we are and how we see the world.
To sustain a thriving career, it's crucial to nurture the elements that fuel your spirit as an artist. When these aspects of your life are well-balanced, you can continue to perform and create at your very best.
Below is a list of books that I consider essential for any artist aiming to build a well-rounded and fulfilling career. These titles provide valuable insights and are great additions to your personal library. Enjoy!
MUSIC BUSINESS
The Straightforward Guide to the Music Biz: An Entertainment Lawyer Breaks Down the Industry by Kamal Moo
It’s no secret that the music industry has changed substantially over the past several years, and will likely continue to change for many years to come. Now more than ever it’s vital that musicians become familiar with the rights they have in their music and how they can make money in this digital world. "The Straightforward Guide to the Music Biz" is a must-read for anyone looking for a clear, simple, and concise overview of how the music industry is organized and the typical contracts musicians will encounter.
How to Build a Sustainable Music Career and Collect All Revenue Streams by Emily White
Emily White has been at the forefront of the modern music industry throughout her career. In this book, she shares her wisdom for all musicians who want access to this information. White feels that the modern music industry is rarely, if ever, presented in order - from creation to execution or recording to release. For the first time, White has penned all of her best practices and advice for musicians looking to build a long-term career into a single book, while ensuring they aren't missing any funds owed to them along the way. As an entrepreneur, manager and consultant, White has navigated countless new platforms for musicians and presents the findings in a methodical and step by step manner. This book shows musicians how to build a career from day one, as well as how to get your career organized moving forward if it isn't your first rodeo.
CREATIVE TOOLS
Songwriting Without Boundaries: Lyric Writing Exercises for Finding Your Voice by Pat Pattison
Writing great song lyrics requires practice and discipline. Songwriting Without Boundaries will help you commit to routine practice through fun writing exercises. This unique collection of more than150 sense-bound prompts helps you develop the skills you need to:
tap into your senses and inject your writing with vivid details
effectively use metaphor and comparative language
add rhythm to your writing and manage phrasing
Songwriters, as well as writers of other genres, will benefit from this collection of sensory writing challenges. Divided into four sections, Songwriting Without Boundaries features four different fourteen-day challenges with timed writing exercises, along with examples from other songwriters, poets, and prose writers.
ARTIST MINDSET
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
Julia Cameron's novel approach guides readers in uncovering problems areas and pressure points that may be restricting their creative flow and offers techniques to free up any areas where they might be stuck, opening up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery.
The program begins with Cameron’s most vital tools for creative recovery – The Morning Pages, a daily writing ritual of three pages of stream-of-conscious, and The Artist Date, a dedicated block of time to nurture your inner artist. From there, she shares hundreds of exercises, activities, and prompts to help readers thoroughly explore each chapter. She also offers guidance on starting a “Creative Cluster” of fellow artists who will support you in your creative endeavors.
A Soprano on Her Head: Right-Side-Up Reflections on Life and Other Performances by Eloise Ristad
(Foreword, by Lorin Hollander, concert pianist)
Eloise Ristad deals here with complex problems which torment and cripple so many of our most creative and talented people, and she does so with compassion, wisdom, and wit. The problem of stage fright, for instance, is a suffering of epidemic proportions in our society, and involves modalities of thought and projections that rob spontaneity and enthusiasm in artistic performance.
Those interested in creative education have long felt that an entirely new, holistic and nurturing process of allowing individuals to discover and express themselves is needed if our educational system is to avoid the neuroses and creative blocks of the past generation. This book illuminates through its conversational style the destructive inhibitions, fears, and guilt experienced by all of us as we fail to break through to creativity.
But what is important, A Soprano on Her Head supplies answers and methods for overcoming these universal psychological blocks--methods that have not only been proven in her own studio, but which trace back through history to the oldest and wisest systems of understanding the integration of mind and body. The work bears scrutiny both scientifically and holistically.
Audition Success: An Olympic Sports Psychologist Teaches Performing Artists How to Win by Done Greene
Audition Success presents a groundbreaking method that has already made Don Greene one of the country's leading audition trainers. Combining specially designed self-tests and real-life examples from the careers of two performers, Audition Success will help performers understand what prevents them from nailing an audition and give them the tools to reach their goals.
BREAKING THE MOLD
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant
In Originals Adam Grant again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?
Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him, and a TV executive who didn’t even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull
From a co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios—the Academy Award–winning studio behind Coco, Inside Out, and Toy Story—comes an incisive book about creativity in business and leadership.
Creativity, Inc. is a manual for anyone who strives for originality and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation—into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about creativity—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.
SELF IMPROVEMENT
Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life by Jim Kwik
JIM KWIK, the world’s #1 brain coach, has written the owner’s manual for mental expansion and brain fitness. Limitless gives people the ability to accomplish more--more productivity, more transformation, more personal success and business achievement--by changing their Mindset, Motivation, and Methods.
For over 25 years, Jim Kwik has worked closely with successful men and women who are at the top in their fields as actors, athletes, CEOs, and business leaders from all walks of life to unlock their true potential. In this groundbreaking book, he reveals the science-based practices and field-tested tips to accelerate self learning, communication, memory, focus, recall, and speed reading, to create fast, hard results.
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
START WITH WHY asks (and answers) the questions: why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over?
People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it. START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who have had the greatest influence in the world all think, act and communicate the same way—and it's the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.
Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.
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Cheers!
Warmly,
Mark
