The Vera Project (Photo by David Dawes via Flickr / CC BY 2.0)

Seattle has a rich musical history, and the arts and culture scenes are incredibly vibrant to this day. It’s a wonderful environment to explore yourself musically, as there's a market and venue for almost any genre you can imagine.

There are a ton of great venues of all sizes in town, and shows happen on every night of the week. It really isn’t that difficult to find a gig! If you’re new to the scene or have just moved to the area, here are my top five recommendations for clubs to start with.

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We musicians spend so much time and energy trying to promote our upcoming gigs, and even more so once we actually arrive in order to put on the best show possible. However, it seems that many bands totally check out after the gig thinking that their job is done!

If you've been thinking like this, then you're missing out on getting as much as possible from every show you play. After the gig, the work is only half done if you really want to maximize every opportunity. Here are my top recommendations for what should be done after the gig is over – within a week, max, but sooner is better!

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While you already know that there's tons of work to be done between the day you get confirmed for a gig and showtime, the day right before the gig is an especially critical time; it's likely the last chance you'll get to do some real promotion and take care of any last-minute business. Here's a checklist of five things that should always be done the day before your gig. Make sure you've got 'em all taken care of!

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When you desire to improve upon a skill, regardless of what the skill is, consistency is key. Practicing your instrument for 90 minutes every day will produce much better results than trying to fit six hours of practice into two days per week. This holds true for every aspect of the music industry. Consistent, daily work will be much more efficient and keep you much more sane than trying to fit a week's worth of work into your single day off.

I've got a number of tasks that I try to invest time into on a daily basis. Though everybody's priorities and daily schedules will vary, here are a few ideas to get you thinking about what you should be doing every day.

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Learning a new instrument can be a really, really great thing for anybody who's been playing for a while. It will allow you to step back from your primary instrument and come back to it refreshed and with new perspective, and it'll often inspire new compositional ideas that you wouldn't have had on your main instrument. If you get good at a second instrument, you might even be able to use it to get more gigs!

Though learning a new instrument can be a lot easier once you already have a musical background, becoming a multi-instrumentalist can present its own set of challenges. Here are some things I've done that have helped me develop my skills on a few different instruments.