In this episode, Jared dives into the importance of "giving yourself more at-bats" by exploring creative ways to collaborate with DJs and showcase your musical talent in live settings. He shares insights from his recent sponsorship gig at a "Christmas in July" event, detailing how to elevate your performance by adding live elements, duplicating melodies, and playing rhythm guitar parts on violin. Whether you're looking to expand your gig opportunities or enhance your flexibility as a musician, this episode is packed with tips to help you stand out.

"If you combine duplicating the vocal melody, playing rhythm guitar, and adding textural elements where appropriate, that is a well-rounded performance, and people will really enjoy it."

- BookLive: Everything you need to start marketing and booking your act online (without having to hire or rely on a tech team!)​
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- Fulltime Music Academy (Gig Vault): 24,665 High-End Venues + Event Planners: Use this directory to book your highest-paid gig to-date.
- Breaking Into High-end Gigs Masterclass: How I Went From Broke Musician to Thriving By Breaking Into These Largely Unknown High-Paying Gigs

What's up, renegade musicians? It's Jared Judge. Welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast, where we do things differently than the majority of the music industry. As a result, we've got more success, more happiness, more fulfillment, and more money in our bank account.

All right, so last night, I sponsored a Christmas in July event at the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Denver. And if you're not familiar with what sponsoring means as a live musician, it simply means performing your musical services for free.

And in exchange, you get your logo on the signage, you get to hand out your business cards, and you build those connections with event planners who could hire you for high end gigs in the future.

So that's why I am all in on sponsorships, and I kind of wanted to share with you how I. This is actually going to be a bit more of a musical artistic focused episode because I wanted to share with you how I approached performing with DJ's as an electric violinist.

So this event, I actually reached out to them after I'd heard about the event, saying, hey, I'd love to sponsor with live electric violin.

And they were like, oh, we already have a DJ. I was like, oh, that's awesome. I can play along with the DJ.

And this makes you more flexible, more versatile as a musician, and able to be hired in more situations. Valuable skill. And check out my Instagram extreme strings violins to see an example of me playing with the DJ.

And so the way that I approach it is, you know, typically I'll chat with the DJ, but I want to reassure the DJ that I, as a musician, can handle pretty much any song that they throw my way, which I know is a bold statement. Cotton, how do you do it? And the answer is, there's a couple. Couple answers.

And the most basic level of playing along with a DJ is basically as a violinist, duplicating the melody that the vocalist in the track is already playing. So this works really well if you already know the tune.

For example, one of the tunes that I know really well, that I was able to duplicate the melody at last night's gig was Justin Timberlake's can't stop the feeling.

That song, you know, I've heard a million times, it was actually one of the first songs that I heard that inspired me to kind of play more pop style music on strings. I heard the vitamin string quartet do it, and so I know that melody pretty well. And it's a very repetitive melody.

You know, it goes like, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. That's like more than half the tune right there. And so that's one thing I do, is I duplicate the melody that the vocal line is doing.

Or if there are a instruments already in the track that are playing a melody, I will duplicate that. Sometimes to just add a texture and add an exciting live element to it. But that's like level one.

Level one works, by the way, if that's all that you do, you will have success in this arena. But I feel like there are more deep levels that actually really enhance the vibe even further.

And so the second level that I tend to do is actually a lot of what I learned from an electric violinist named Tracy Silverman.

And it's called strum bowing. And the overall musical term for what I'm doing is I'm basically playing rhythm guitar during, you know, more rhythmic breaks or even when the voice is singing. I will play rhythm guitar on my violin just to add a live component.

It fills out the texture a bit more. And so the way that I do that, this does require a bit more skill, a bit more listening is the first thing you have to do is you have to know what key you're in.

So, you know, if you don't know the song very well, I take a couple seconds at the beginning of when the DJ switches to that mix is to identify what key are we in.

And sometimes I'll even play a couple test notes to figure out the key. Like, I guess this song is in bb, so let me play a b flat to see if that matches with the root of the chord. And if it does, I'm good.

I know I'm in bb major or minor. And then, you know, most songs use a very simple one four five progression or blues or even just I v the whole time. So I know that notes within the b flat major scale and the f major scale and e flat majority would work very well for that.

And so then you just hear the strumming pattern. What is the rest of the rhythm section doing? You know, are they playing a rock based beat? Is it 16th note based? Is it 8th note based? And then I will play those strumming patterns on my violin. And I do play chords, by the way.

Most of them are just two note chords. So, for example, if I'm in bb major, I'll play BB and Dheenden, just jam on that, you know, and go along with whatever it is. In fact, that would probably go well with this.

Can't stop the feeling right there. And then, you know, occasionally when I'm doing that, I will switch between playing rhythm guitar style and then going back to melodic so I can switch back and forth. And that keeps it interesting.

And all the while I'm doing this, I'm also trying to be present on stage, dancing around a little bit and making it fun.

And so I would say, you know, I probably play melody maybe about 25% of the time, and then rhythm guitar is probably closer to 50 or 60% of the time. So that's the bulk of what I do, is the rhythm guitar stuff.

And people love it. People get really into it. And it, once you get a pattern going, you can put yourself a little bit on autopilot, so you can focus a bit more on interacting with the audience.

And then the remaining percent, I would say, is when I add texture to the song. So I'm not really playing melody, and I'm also not really playing rhythm. I might be playing a sustained note.

For example, it was a Christmas in July event, and the DJ put on there's a new. I don't know how new it is, but new to me, Christmas album by an electronic dance music artist named Cascade, spelled Kaskade. And I didn't know that album existed.

But this Christmas album was awesome. It was kind of like chill, what do I call it? Chill hop. And it's very kind of chill, beat oriented music, but, like, a thinner texture, a slower bpm, probably in the 100, 110 range.

And it's kind of ethereal at times. And so during those ethereal times, it was very appropriate and beautiful to just add long, sustained notes on top of that. Something a violin is very, very good at doing.

But even a guitar could do this, and it just adds something beautiful, warm, bright, over top of it. And so I'm adding texture maybe about 10% of the time, and I don't. These aren't exact numbers, but they're just general.

Here's how I approach it kind of things. And so if you combine those three things, duplicating the vocal melody, playing rhythm guitar, and then adding textural elements where appropriate, I feel like that is a well rounded performance, and people will really enjoy that. And I got many great compliments and even some applause during it.

And this was not the kind of event that you typically get applause at, and it was awesome. The rest of the pieces of the puzzle are really just, you know, plugging into the DJ's system. In this case, I had a mixer.

I used my Yamaha. I think it's MG ten. Xu is the name of it.

And I use that specifically because it has plenty of inputs at least ten of them. And then on the inputs, you can actually add reverb and other effects to it, which saves me from having to have a separate pedal for my reverb.

And so the DJ actually plugged into my mixer and then my mixer was outputting to his speakers. He had a pair of QSC, I think, 12.2s that he was using maybe eighteen point two s. And it was, it was great.

So if you got the right equipment, then, you know, makes the DJ's life easier. And I usually bring a variety of options just so that it can work in pretty much any situation.

And I actually had two sound systems in my car that I didn't use just in case the DJ didn't have what we needed.

So I always kind of over prepare and over plan for the gig. So those are the musical and the technical standpoints of how I approach each gig.

Obviously, it was kind of a very quick surface overview, but hopefully this is helpful for you guys to figure out, like how could you incorporate that into your performance, even if you don't play electric violin, you know, this is something that works well on a guitar.

Obviously, the rhythm part, it's going to be a lot easier for you, but you're going to have to figure out what key we're in and figure out some strumming patterns that work.

Saxophone, this works really well with, but I think it also works with other instruments too. It just has to be adapted.

So if you have any questions about that, feel free to ask them. I'd be happy to even take a listen to you trying this out over a track.

Pick a track, you know, go on the Spotify top 100 list, just pick a song and try to jam over it, duplicate the melody line, play some rhythm guitar behind it, and then add some textural elements to it.

Oh, and I also forgot to mention, yeah, sometimes I do just whip out a crazy solo, you know, with all the arpeggios and slides and things like that. And that's really gets the crowd to pop their heads over to you when you do something like that.

And on the violin, I typically focus on the higher strings, like the high e string when I'm doing that, so otherwise the lower notes can get buried in the mix, which is okay.

When you're playing the rhythm guitar stuff, I kind of want my sound to blend, but just like slightly pop out. And then when you whip out a solo, I want it to just scream over the top and people love that. Alright, that's it.

That's all I got for you. Guys today send me examples of you playing. I want to hear it.

Jared@BookLive.com and by the way, if you want some help on this, if you want to find those opportunities to sponsor and play alongside a dj, shoot me an email, I'll help you out. Right? That's what I love to do.

I'm having so much fun doing it myself. I want you to have that opportunity too. So shoot me an email and we'll hop on a quick free zoom session and I'll see if I could help you out there.

That's Jared@BookLive.com dot alright, that's all I got for you. Thanks for tuning into another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast.



Remember, "Your music will not market itself!". Bye.