music oppurtunities

Calumus

hey guys, i am a bassist and i'm thinking of moving to Galway in August and i was just wondering what oppurtunities are there for musicians who are willing to work?

rcaz

Moved to Bands and Musicians Community. You'll probably get some better input here!

cathal02

Galway is a good town for music, it's a matter of meeting the right people, it has a thousand musicians but can be hard to find musicians that are committed, willing to promote a band and put the work in, that's the difficulty, plenty of talent but not always the will to improve and move on. You can get gigs with a good Demo in the likes of these pubs: O'Connells, Garveys, Foxes, Spanish Arch, The Cellar Bar, Busker Browns, the Quays and Kings Head if you have a live recording. It's ok for Busking too but don't expect to land on your feet, there are a lot of messers around and you need to work hard at it, need to challenge people early on if you're starting a group to see who's really bothered or not, there's a lot of negotiating with Publicans (same as anywhere in that sense), you need to be driven basically and you need to have transport to make a fist of it. When it's good it's really good, but it can be frustrating. It depends on what you're doing really, if it's a two piece you can target the hotels and smaller pubs that can't afford bands, there's a good studio in the forge (rehearsal space there too) on new road, good engineer there in Ray Diamond too. Nice but small traditional music scene too (Crane Bar especially good), there's DJ's too, you need to have something to stand out a bit as there are a lot of bands competing for gigs at the minute, still room for more though! The Roisin Dubh isn't what it used to me in my opinion but you can get some good bands in there (likely to be unpaid if local) from time to time.

Hope that helped

cathal02

Forgot to say, generally a bassist can find work if you're good, fairly handy, most bands need one and there aren't that many top bass players around (i.e who appreciate the instrument and choose to play bass over other instruments), put an Ad in the Galway Advertiser and here and you'll be picked up, just avoid the messers

Calumus

thanx for that. its just nice to know there's something down there for me