Ep 120-Susan de Weger on Being a Successful Musician

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Susan de Weger is passionate about supporting musicians to thrive on and beyond the stage. Originally trained as a French Horn player, she left music to carve a career in business then pivoted back to music to go to grad school. Susan is changing the way we educate musicians through her role as Associate Lecturer in Music (Entrepreneurship) at the Conservatorium of Music in Melbourne, Australia.

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Musician, entrepreneur, and music educator Susan de Weger discusses the role of education and mindset in having a healthy definition of success.

Topics discussed in this episode:

Being damaged & bruised during undergrad
Differing versions of success
Defining success
Rick Ruben’s definition of success from The Tim Ferriss Show:

A successful person is one who enjoys their life, is great at what they do, is curious, and is continually pushing forward & wanting to be better than they were yesterday without beating themselves up about it.

Placing other people’s needs before your own.
Having to innovate
Teachers don’t live the life their students lead
Identifying your audience
Finding your audience’s needs
Entrepreneurial Musicianship at the New England Conservatory of Music
Making it easy
Ignite Lab
Dealing with doubt & fear
Fearless camp
Impostor Syndrome (Valerie Young in Ep 15)
Reach out to schools about career development
Engage students more in the score
Notable Values
Beyond the Stage
Disconnecting performance from payment
Planning future success with relationships
- Where will you be living?
- What will you be doing?
- How will you be making a living?
Being thankful
Mindset

Website:

notablevalues.com

Recommended Listening:

Foo Fighters, The Colour and The Shape

The Podcast Mission

To help composers with the business end of writing music through mindset, marketing, and business skills.

The Philosophy

I believe that composers are self-employed small business owners. In order to succeed in getting our music in front of people who are interested in hearing it we need to know essential business skills such as marketing and networking. Building a successful career as a freelance composer is possible and thinking like an entrepreneur will help composers make a living writing music.

The Promise

I promise to deliver high-quality free content through the podcast and newsletter that will help you build your career as a composer. I want my free content to be better than other people's paid-for content. I also have online courses and am available for speaking and coaching.

I think this is such innovative and important work. I love it. It really helps to have a composer asking questions to another composer.

Kurt Knecht

If you have any interest in composing, song writing, or the process of music making from start to finish you need to subscribe to this podcast. It's run by a wonderful composer and he has wonderful guests of the highest level.

Timothy Tharaldson

What a wonderful way to use composers as resources for others!

Tina Davidson

This podcast is an excellent resource for composers at all stages of their careers. It is composers talking shop to other composers, addressing the issues that matter to our careers. It is so well thought out and executed—a total class act. Bravo to Garrett Hope for creating this much needed and well curated hub of knowledge for our community.

reeesm

Hey Garrett, again, this is so generous—to offer contemporary composers, conductors, and innovative thinkers in the new music field, the opportunities to talk about music. Really enjoyed doing a segment with you and the exchange of thoughts in talking with you about my reflections about being a composer and the paths taken toward releasing this orchestral CD, Dream Vapors. Thanks!

Rain17

By taking the time from his own life as a composer to offer the rest of us a window on how our peers work, Garrett is a truly wonderful musical citizen! Through the preparation he does for each interview, and the intelligence of the resulting conversations, Garrett has created a tremendous archive that will encourage and inspire countless music-makers. Thank you for this series, Garrett!

Alex Shapiro

Garrett Hope's series gives a wonderfully colorful and dynamic insight into the world of new music, featuring many important and diverse voices in the community today. A must-listen for anyone working within the field.

Maetstra | Maestro

A wonderful podcast and a great resource!

mgnumes

I don't even know where to start describing how incredible and important this podcast is. As a podcast aficionado who already has a long playlist of my tried and true favorites, I didn't anticipate this one completely knowing the others out of the water. In terms of helpfulness, this podcast is a must for composers today. Here are a few reasons I love the show: *The consistent format serves to highlight the content, trends, and differences between each guest. *The host, Garrett Hope, has ample experience as both a working composer and as someone who has spoken with hundreds of composers about their own career experiences, so he really knows what questions to ask and which subjects to delve into. *Practical, specific recommendations. I leave almost every episode with at least one concrete thing I can tweak or try in my own practice, promotion, business, or approach otherwise. It's not just BS, generic, arrogant sound bites from people not wanting to discuss the nitty gritty; the guests are great about giving valuable, honest perspectives. *The guests span a pretty diverse range, and it's great to see how different kinds of people of different ages and experience levels, with different interests, abilities, and dictates carve out their own careers. It's not just a monolithic image of what a composer needs to be. There are also non-composer guests as well, which is helpful, because we composers obviously need to be aware of other colleagues (like performers)! *Each episode really flies by. The episodes range from 30–60 minutes, but it's always the most riveting, inspiring, thought-provoking hour of my day/drive. Thanks for this wonderful gift you're giving to the new music world!

Chrysanthe Tan

A must-listen podcast for composers, performers, or any independent artist.

Anthony Lanman