Joe Kirkendall
Music Producer

Career Project Planner

My long-term plan for my career is to be a freelance music producer, working with artists and other producers alike all through my career. I feel with my current skill set and with the current links I have, this should not be too difficult especially with the scene I want to get into. To do this and for this to be an attainable dream, I have set myself three goals which I have assessed using the SWOT analysis method to understand and predict the practicality of them all. Each goal is either something that can be achieved in a year's time, which will allow me to work towards my personal deadline and then build upon after completing, or it is something which is an ongoing goal which will benefit me and my career the more I bolster it.

My first goal is one of the most valuable I think in finding the best connections in my career field and that is to get better at networking. I am not talking about being better at speaking to people necessarily, it is more the action of being in the spaces initially to set myself to speak to the people in the spaces I want to be in. For example, recently I went to an event held after Wilfred’s Balamii set on their radio. A link can be seen below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLtcJwaiqqU&t=466s&ab_channel=Balamii

Here I met my friend Ceesho and also Wilfred but I also met the manager of Balamii who said he would put me on the show in the future for a set. This kind of interaction is the kind of opportunity (SWOT) that I need to have more often and it is about recognising where I need to be for this to happen. My strengths so far in networking is that I am confident and I am a people person; I do not feel uncomfortable in front of new people and I like talking to like minded people in my field. I would say my weaknesses challenge this directly as I would say I do not like to be pushy when it comes to a night out or an event. I do not like to interrupt conversations and I feel like you need to do that if you want to speak to the people you want to speak with; these are my biggest weaknesses in my opinion. I do think there are natural ways of talking to people but if you do not ask, you do not get, you have to know what you want. I feel I could counteract this by going to every event possible and making myself more comfortable with that feeling and also being overly confident (in a good way) where I do not care about looking ‘stupid’ and just doing it. The opportunities I have to do these usually get posted by big pages on Instagram and I see them frequently as I am in that scene. The task for me at this current time is to set time aside and free up any opportunities I have to be able to go to as many of these events as possible so that I make myself known in the scene. The only threat of this I can think of is that I do not go to enough events but I feel setting time aside specifically for these events will counteract that.

My next goal would be to learn another Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software as fluently as I know Logic Pro X. The DAW/software in question would be Ableton Live as it is usually seen as the second best or the best for industry standards. Also I could perform straight out of a DAW, which would be made possible if I learnt Ableton Live fluently, so that would be significantly beneficial to my progression and my musicianship. The main strengths I have towards this goal already is that I already have learnt another DAW fluently, in Logic Pro X. I have also learnt the very basics of Ableton Live so it would be an easy goal to attain over the year. The only weaknesses is I do not know how I would fit it into my lifestyle once I start full time work whilst also maintaining a social life, also working on my networking role from before, and also doing things like the gym. I could counter this by studying but not with an overload, so I can make it fun but I will never burn out. The opportunities for this are that I could go to specific online Ableton classes and/or watch YouTube videos to help me learn. Setting aside time to do all of this will eventually make me great and within a year I could hopefully learn another goal of mine. Again, the only threat is time management and how I could keep it all running without completely burning out. I will work around that and by getting a personal planner and a calendar to help with my time management.

My final goal is that I want to work with new artists in the grime scene. The main threat of this is that there are not many new grime artists and the ones that are new are quite unknown. Grime is having a slight resurgence at the moment so I feel it is the right time to find these artists before they gain too much significant traction and then they are too far unattainable. My strengths towards this is that I am really confident in approaching artists online and I have created a good scene of artists online whilst my time as music producer, specifically in the last year. We have used apps like Instagram and Discord to create group chats where we will all speak, a great way of pairing new artists together. I find using Instagram as a tool to find new talent is fairly easy but I could be better at it. This leads me onto my weakness of this goal, is that I do not like being glued to my phone constantly. I have found that doing this takes a lot of time but I feel setting aside time (like the previous goal) will make this easily attainable. The opportunities I have to do this would be to look around more on Instagram and set aside time to do so. I think in the evening or when I have time spare it would be perfect, this way I would not feel like I am cramming it in or doing it for the sake of it as I may feel burnt out.

As my future goals do not require a CV as such, I thought I would write an intro personal statement instead. This is the sort of thing I would send off to potential clients at bigger corporations in the future at record labels or similar groups like that.

Personal Statement
‘I am a 24 year old Music Producer currently based in Tottenham, North London. I am able to work and produce music in a number of softwares including Logic Pro X, Pro Tools, and Ableton Live. I have worked in and out of studios whilst studying at the University of East London (UEL) and also while helping at my friends studio. There, I was taught how to correctly set up a studio with correct microphone techniques and how to set the levels for different artists' needs. I was also taught how to use a mixing desk fully and mix and master clients songs to their needs. I learnt how to creatively and correctively use different audio editing effects for studio use and how significant they can be for a client's work. I am reliable, punctual, and a fast learner; I feel all these traits would highly benefit your company.’

To conclude, I think my goals are realistic and attainable. They will require some work and time/effort into all of them but I will have to sacrifice some parts of my life to make my dream work and that is the dream life I want for myself. I think my SWOT analysis of each goal has helped me understand the strengths and weaknesses I have for each goal and all the risks I may encounter on the journey to reach my goals.