Musicians are always looking for ways to supplement their income and find new performance opportunities. If you have always wanted (and more so if you already are) to be a session musician, but didn't have the right contacts or weren't located in an active scene, you might want to look into offering your services as a virtual session musician.
A virtual session musician provides their interpretation and instrumental or vocal performance to anyone, anywhere in the world in need of their particular expertise. It is not rare to find songwriters, producers, or solo artists in need of extra instrumentation to complete their production.
How hiring a virtual session player is advantageous to the employer:
The quality of the musician is not limited by proximity to studio.
No hourly studio rates to pay or union rules to workaround.
Receive high quality tracks from specialists.
How offering your services as session musician is a great gig:
Ability to work from your home studio for clients all over the world. Leave your equipment setup and tweak for specific purposes.
Work on your own schedule. Take the time to experiment with parts and send only the best performances.
Set your own rates and accept payment online.
Of course it would not be fair to only mention the positive aspects of online session work. The most obvious disadvantage of creating a full production in this manner is that the magic could disappear. When you gather great musicians in a room together, they interact, play off each other, and create a vibe that translates into emotion in a recording. That being said, great performances are still being created online.
The process in a nutshell:
Songwriter records guitar and vocals to a song she wants to be considered for film.
She finds a drummer in NYC, a bassist in Berlin, and an electric guitarist in LA, who she thinks would be a good fit for her song and contacts them in this order. Each player has great experience and can produce great recordings of their instrument.
She provides each one with a simple MP3 of what she has so far, a tempo map, and basic references of what she wants where (charts or midi generated tracks are nice).
Each player takes the time to review the song, record their performances, and send the tracks back for review.
The songwriter requests any changes and the changes are revised tracks are promptly sent back.
With her completed tracks, she now forwards the song onto a virtual mix engineer and finally to an online mastering engineer.
How to begin offering your services?
Ensure that you can record your instrument WELL.
You don't to have a studio with 96 inputs, or a cabinet of vintage mics, but you do need to have enough quality mic preamps, microphones, and knowledge to record your instrument well. You may need to do some research and experimentation to find the best approaches to recording your instrument, but once you've got it – you've got it. You don't necessarily have to worry about processing it as this will be done by the mix engineer, your goal is to get a solid, clean recording of a great performance which compliments the production.
Offer the service on your website.
The basic steps you need to complete are to create a rate sheet, gear list, provide audio examples of your playing, and setup a Paypal account to receive payment from clients. Add anything else to show off your skills and convince potential clients to hire you. Try to answer their questions before they have to contact you such as your revision policy, if you provide processing, what your turnaround time is etc. The more you can differentiate yourself, the better.
Offer your services on other sites.
eSession.com is setup specifically to allow individual musicians and engineers to offer their services online. They provide easy search capabilities and a very cool plug-in called “Virtual Glass" which allows realtime video and audio streaming from within your digital audio workstation. Also check out IndabaMusic, a newer collaboration site with a built-in, online audio workstation.
In addition to specialty sites, make sure that your social networks know that you offer this service. Participating in online forums and simple including a link to your site in your signature can be a great way to drum up business. Connecting with producers and songwriters directly should be your main goal.
Whether you plan on making this your full time gig, or just offer the service to get occasional gigs, offer you services as a virtual session musician can be a great way to build up your contact list and play on numerous, international projects.
A virtual session musician provides their interpretation and instrumental or vocal performance to anyone, anywhere in the world in need of their particular expertise. It is not rare to find songwriters, producers, or solo artists in need of extra instrumentation to complete their production.
How hiring a virtual session player is advantageous to the employer:
The quality of the musician is not limited by proximity to studio.
No hourly studio rates to pay or union rules to workaround.
Receive high quality tracks from specialists.
How offering your services as session musician is a great gig:
Ability to work from your home studio for clients all over the world. Leave your equipment setup and tweak for specific purposes.
Work on your own schedule. Take the time to experiment with parts and send only the best performances.
Set your own rates and accept payment online.
Of course it would not be fair to only mention the positive aspects of online session work. The most obvious disadvantage of creating a full production in this manner is that the magic could disappear. When you gather great musicians in a room together, they interact, play off each other, and create a vibe that translates into emotion in a recording. That being said, great performances are still being created online.
The process in a nutshell:
Songwriter records guitar and vocals to a song she wants to be considered for film.
She finds a drummer in NYC, a bassist in Berlin, and an electric guitarist in LA, who she thinks would be a good fit for her song and contacts them in this order. Each player has great experience and can produce great recordings of their instrument.
She provides each one with a simple MP3 of what she has so far, a tempo map, and basic references of what she wants where (charts or midi generated tracks are nice).
Each player takes the time to review the song, record their performances, and send the tracks back for review.
The songwriter requests any changes and the changes are revised tracks are promptly sent back.
With her completed tracks, she now forwards the song onto a virtual mix engineer and finally to an online mastering engineer.
How to begin offering your services?
Ensure that you can record your instrument WELL.
You don't to have a studio with 96 inputs, or a cabinet of vintage mics, but you do need to have enough quality mic preamps, microphones, and knowledge to record your instrument well. You may need to do some research and experimentation to find the best approaches to recording your instrument, but once you've got it – you've got it. You don't necessarily have to worry about processing it as this will be done by the mix engineer, your goal is to get a solid, clean recording of a great performance which compliments the production.
Offer the service on your website.
The basic steps you need to complete are to create a rate sheet, gear list, provide audio examples of your playing, and setup a Paypal account to receive payment from clients. Add anything else to show off your skills and convince potential clients to hire you. Try to answer their questions before they have to contact you such as your revision policy, if you provide processing, what your turnaround time is etc. The more you can differentiate yourself, the better.
Offer your services on other sites.
eSession.com is setup specifically to allow individual musicians and engineers to offer their services online. They provide easy search capabilities and a very cool plug-in called “Virtual Glass" which allows realtime video and audio streaming from within your digital audio workstation. Also check out IndabaMusic, a newer collaboration site with a built-in, online audio workstation.
In addition to specialty sites, make sure that your social networks know that you offer this service. Participating in online forums and simple including a link to your site in your signature can be a great way to drum up business. Connecting with producers and songwriters directly should be your main goal.
Whether you plan on making this your full time gig, or just offer the service to get occasional gigs, offer you services as a virtual session musician can be a great way to build up your contact list and play on numerous, international projects.
