What would it take for me to expand my equipment setup into a full, charge you by the hour type recording studio?
Well, the answer to that is obviously “Money”.
But that’s the answer for almost everything.
For me to have a retirement job that brings income enough for me to continue to merrily write, I need a business.
The martial arts world has left me behind. Completely silly regulations that can be found in NO OTHER PURSUIT has left the martial arts world in a foolish mess. What, you may ask?
Why, the insistence of grades, and hovering times.
To ensure a black belt rank is consistent among all practitioners, the martial arts world has invented hovering times. These are ridiculous, and here’s what it boils down to.
In order to test for second degree black belt, you must wait one year as a black belt.
Okay, that’s realistic.
But it gets worse. To test for third degree, you must have been a second degree for two years.
Um…
yes. you’re right. This means to test for an 8th degree black belt, you needed to wait a year, two years, three years, four years, five years, six years and seven years. Literally, you must wait 28 years to become an 8th degree black belt.
Sounds ok, right?
What if you’re 58 years old, and been doing martial arts for 41 years – but your instructors never joined a federation?
Why, you have to start over as a white belt, learning from someone with less years than you and lesser skill sets. To be promoted to the rank you’ve already earned. To get the same rank other people who started at the same time (except they started somewhere where there were federation schools), I’d be 86 by the time I got the same rank as the others.
All to have a retirement job teaching karate. By that time I’d be in second retirement.
Silly.
What about teaching music again? It takes roughly 3 years to get the clientele to make a living as a music teacher – and everyone I used to work with told me I’d gotten out of teaching at the right time, and you can’t make a living any more.
So that leaves session playing. I can play guitar, bass and keyboards. As you can see from my pathetically small keyboard setup (I’d prefer a couple more, but that’s musicians. you always want a couple more…) I have quite the setup. I could move into session playing, and intern at a studio. AS an intern, you get your foot in the door running lines, placing microphones, and duct taping things down. Little known fact – recording studios end up buying duct tape in bulk, because you’re ALWAYS using it.
Use proceeds to invest, and buy gear. Microphones, mounts, stands, clips, monitors, headphones, mixing desk, compressors, limiters, delays, reverb units, microphone preamps, digital recorders, UI interfaces such as Focusrite, etc.
And probably that means wasting a lot of time using Protools – not my DAW of choice. That’s Presonus Studio One, if you’re interested. However, the two are similar enough it wouldn’t take much to go from one to the other.
By the time I retire from my current career, I could move sideways into opening a small recording studio.
And that will still leave me time and money to write.
What do you think?
