What To Do When You Feel Like You Aren’t Getting The Musical Opportunities You Deserve

4 Pro Tips For Thriving When You Feel Stuck

The world, musical or otherwise, can be an incredibly competitive place.

We work our hardest to develop our skills, improve our standing and make the best life possible for ourself.

It can make us feel incredibly frustrated, to downright wanting to give up, when we feel like the progress we’re making is not being mirrored back to us and rewarded by the outside world.

Here are four tips for what to do when you feel like you aren’t receiving the opportunities you deserve in your musical career.

Tip #1: Ask For What You Want

This seems simplistic and straight-forward, but sometimes people don’t give us something because they don’t know that we want it.

Let me give you two examples from my own career.

When Asking For What You Want Works

Throughout school and early on in my career, I saw many of my friends and colleagues subbing with big orchestras, and I was frustrated I wasn’t also being asked. I made up my mind that I was ready for this opportunity and went to my teacher, who was in charge of hiring for the major local orchestra. I calmly and confidently told him that I wanted to sub in this orchestra, I felt I was ready for the opportunity, and asked if there was anything he needed to hear in my playing to show him that I was ready.

He was incredibly receptive, mentioned one of my recent solo performances that had impressed him and said it had clearly shown I was ready for this opportunity. He went on to have me hired for this opportunity frequently, and I was so glad I had been upfront about what I wanted!

When Asking For What You Want Doesn’t Work

Another time I was participating in a summer camp with great orchestral repertoire. When the casting assignments came out, I was disappointed to not have been put on Principal for any big concerts. Again, I felt like compared to my peers I was ready for this opportunity and wanted to know what I should be doing differently in order to improve my castings.

The horn coach at this camp was a well-respected teacher and player who I had not worked with before, but held great respect for. After the castings came out, I asked him if he had any recommendations for my playing, since I would like to be paying Principal more and wanted to know his suggestions for improving my playing.

He became incredibly defensive and gruffly said “Well I apologize for RUINING your summer!”

I was shocked by this reaction, since I was earnestly asking for his advice and guidance, and this was after all a summer program where we were there to learn from our coaches.

When someone is defensive in response to your making a valid, earnest request for guidance, it’s probably a sign they weren’t judging you fairly in the first place.

All you can do when this happens is continue to try your best, and look for other mentors who will help nurture and point you in the right direction.

Tip #2: Don’t Compare Yourself To Others

This is a challenging one, but so important.

It’s natural to compare ourselves to our peers, especially when we are in school and competing for many of the same opportunities. We may want to measure ourselves against others to track our progress, but this will not always be an accurate representation of our growth.

Instead of feeling discouraged when people I perceive at my level are receiving opportunities that I’m not, I’ve learned to put a positive spin on it and affirm:

If they can do it, then so can I!

The best thing to do is to try to be inspired by what others are doing, and of course to try to learn from them. Ask what they feel has helped them achieve what they are achieving that you would like to. Maybe they will have a piece of information that unlocks something new for you.

Tip #3: Create Your Own Opportunities

Part of the reason we are musicians is because we are creative souls. We can honor this quality by creating the opportunities that feel right for us!

Try reaching out to people you know and starting a chamber music series. Or see if your composer friends would like to collaborate on a new work. You can even contact local churches or community centers and see if they will let you plan a concert or solo recital.

If there isn’t music that highlights your strengths or the way you enjoy performing, write it! This was a big inspiration behind my Etudes for Low Horn.

Not only will it feel good to create opportunities to perform and grow as a musician in the way that you feel called, but oftentimes as we are stepping into our zone of genius and doing things that light us up, others see what we are doing and are inspired to give us the very opportunities we may be seeking.

Or they might offer us something else we didn’t even know we wanted!

And finally:

Tip #4: Keep Doing Your Best

If you’ve tried everything and still don’t feel you’re seeing the opportunities you would like, just keep your head up and keep trying.

Stay positive, support others, and stay motivated by remembering WHY you do what you do. For me it’s about the joy of challenging myself, learning new things and being able to express myself artistically.

Recapitulation

Hopefully these tips can help you learn from what has worked for me to help create musical opportunities when you feel like you might be stuck.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Have you tried any of these? Do you have any other suggestions for dealing with this subject? Let us know in the comments!

And if you like this post and found it helpful, please share with anyone you think it might benefit!

Happy practicing my musical friends,

Kate