How to Display Your Identity as a Musician

[Rokker]

Being a musician is one of the strongest identities you can have in this game, for two big reasons:

1) Music is a very emotional topic and
2) You can easily display passion and direction with your identity

I get a lot of questions from musicians asking what the best way to convey your identity is, so in this post I will tell you how I do it. However, you don’t have to be a professional musician to incorporate some of the ideas in this post, and if you are not; try to think of ways you can take the ideas I’m presenting here and alter them to fit your identity.

Talk About It As Early As Possible!
A lot of people with strong identities (doctors, lawyers, musicians) try to hide or not talk about their identity as they don’t want it to appear like they are bragging about it. This is a perfect example of shooting yourself in the foot with a bazooka. Instead, you want EVERY SET to know that you are a musician, and the earlier you introduce this, the better.
Now, there’s a number of ways to do this without it looking like you are bragging (for more information about this I highly recommend the Interview Series volume 6 on Identity and also volume 3 on Storytelling).

The Opener
The first way to do it, and something I regularly do, is to have an opener that tells them you are a musician. You could do this in a gazillion ways, from simply rooting your opener with “the reason I’m asking is because my band mate is seeing this girl…” to having the opener be about music in of itself, such as:
“Hey guys, do you think you could tell what kind of music people listen to without talking to them?” and root that with
“yeah you know it’s funny… the reason I’m asking is because I have people turning up to my gigs and they look absolutely nothing like the people you’d expect to turn up at a gig with the kind of music that I play… and that always amazes me. I always thought you could tell from just looking at a person what kind of music he or she’s in to, but the more I do this the more I start to doubt that…”
So the trick is to root your opener with reference to your career in music.

The Cold Read
The second way to do it, is to do a cold read, such as
“You know, you strike me as a girl who listens to a lot of R’n’B music… I better watch out for you. You and I are so not going to get along. The music I play is on the other end of the musical spectrum…”
Or
“Hmm... do you know who Jack Johnson is?”
[She replies]
“It just felt like you are in to that kind of music. I love Jack Johnson. He along with Damien Rice is probably my two biggest influences when it comes to writing music”.
Another example:
“Okay, I already know what kind of groupies you guys would be… You would be that sweet heart that never pisses anyone off, you would be the annoying screaming one that goes crazy every time you catch a glimpse of me and you would be the girl who steals my guitar, make up a bunch of crappy songs and try to steal the lime light”
The trick here is “throw and go”. Just like negs and teases, don’t seek a reaction. If they don’t hook and start asking questions on your open loops, just keep going.

Storytelling
Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize you can use story telling to convey your identity. Here are some topics of stories that I use myself:

- The pros and cons of touring (and traveling at the same time)
- How it feels to be on stage, and the minutes before going on
- How studio work is grueling but so much fun because it lets me be creative and express my feelings in songs
- The beauty of having an emotional outlet in the songs I write
- How different songs can affect my mood and inspire me
- How awesome it is do be doing something I love, follow my passion

Make sure your stories are emotional! That’s the beauty of having music as your identity; it’s so easy to convey emotions in your stories. How does music make you feel? How do you feel the seconds before you hit the stage? My stories have very little factual value, but loads and loads of emotional value.

The Accomplishment Intro
Probably the best way to tell the girls about your identity is having someone else tell them. Having your wing tell them you are an awesome musician is so much more powerful than telling them yourself, so teach your wing how to AI you (and you will of course AI him). The best way to do this is by actually giving an accomplishment you’ve done (hence the name!), such as:
“Did you know he’s currently working in the studio producing a new album? It’s going to be awesome!”
“I was at one of his concerts and it was amazing! I’ve never seen anyone play the guitar like that!”
Instead of simply saying “He’s a good musician”.

The Importance of Displaying Passion
What it all comes down to in the end, is displaying passion for your music. I can’t stress this enough. It will help you in all stages of the model; it will generate attraction, it will be your biggest stepping stone in comfort, and probably even reduce LMR! (not guaranteed, slight variances may apply, batteries not included, check with your local dealer)
I ALWAYS tell them how lucky I am to be able to follow my passion (and then qualify them by making them state their passion) and how I’m bound for greatness. I also suggest you create some sort of grounding routine that tells them what steps you took in order to pursue you dreams of being a musician.

Advanced Framing
For advanced readers, I have been experimenting lately (with great results) with incorporating frames (such as being non-judgmental / open-minded) with references to music. You can do this with all sorts of frames, but here’s an example:

“You know what I really like about striving to become a better musician? You have to be open-minded. After a while you’ll learn that every genre of music, every song has something unique about it and something you can learn from and the only way to be a really one of a kind artist is to be willing to listen to a lot of different styles and kind of mish-mash them into something that is you. We all know that the best artists are the ones that are influenced by a wide range of other artists, but follow their own paths, and don’t give a shit what others think of them. Now a day, I never judge an artist or a music genre because I know I can learn something from it and in the end make me a better musician”.

Take this concept and try to come up with other ways to incorporate frames. (This is similar to what Captain Jack refers to as “Stealth Patterns”, even though it can be even more discreet. Check his post at his blog here).

Summary
Again, what’s so powerful about being a musician is your ability to display a deep passion for something that everyone loves, and also being able to throw in a lot of emotions in to your “job talk”. Make sure you use this to your advantage!
And even if you are not a musician, the ideas and concepts in this post will help you too, so try to figure out how to incorporate them in to your own game to fit your identity.

- R