Whether you’re brand new in the music community, or if you’ve been a musician for 30 years, there’s this special unspoken thing that unites musicians. It’s an obsession. It’s all we think about. It’s what we dream about, it’s what we talk about. It’s an identity we don’t just give to ourselves, we earn it. And there’s nothing more fun than connecting with other like-minded people who have also worked hard at their craft. 

Our staff here at Arabella’s Voice Studio knows how important it is to offer our students opportunities to connect, grow, and get to know one another. Our community offers support and help where needed, and most importantly, we have a meaningful network of peers and pros you can learn from. 

One of the best parts about the word “community” is that it doesn’t have to be a formal organization with a strict structure and specific rules. It can be loose, informal, and fun!

Arabella’s Voice Studio is based in Boston, Massachusetts, and we keep our finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the local music scene. Whether it’s workshops at Berklee, local gigs, showcases, deals on studio time, open mics, voice clinics, or anything in between, chances are, we’re connected to it one way or another!

We also offer several different opportunities for our students to meet in person and get to know each other. If you’d like to check out what’s happening in our studio, click here for more information. 

Below are some different events that we’ve done to connect with musicians in our local community. 

1. Networking and Artist Development

A very important, and often overlooked part of being a musician, is having professional headshots available. Can you grab your iPhone, snap some selfies, and call them headshots? Yes – you can. But chances are, they won’t shine like a pro’s work. A professional photographer brings many things to the table that you won’t capture with an iPhone in your basement. They bring technical expertise, creativity, and the attention to detail necessary to make your headshots stand out in the crowd. 

Headshots are important for musicians to have on hand at all times for several different reasons. 

Professional Presentation 

Many gigs you’re hired for will ask for promotional material, and professional headshots are a cornerstone of that promo kit. Keep your headshots in an easy-to-access place like Dropbox or Google Drive so you can provide a link immediately when a client asks. 

• Marketing & Promotion – Flyers, promotional posters, concert programs, and album covers all use musician’s headshots. 
• Press & Media Coverage – Journalists and media outlets will frequently ask for headshots to include in featured pieces, articles, interviews, or press reviews. 
• Social Media Presence – It’s good to have continuity among your promotional material, and one of the first places people look for musicians is by searching social media platforms. If you have the same headshot as your profile picture as you did in a newspaper interview, it allows anyone searching for you to easily recognize your profile. 
• Brand Identity – This goes along with the social media presence. Familiarity when searching for someone is a key component for getting more clicks! 

We’ve done some “Headshot Meetups” in the past for our students that are local to the Boston area. It’s a great opportunity to meet some other musicians in the area, get a great set of headshots, and network with a local photographer who does a lot of work with the music community. Email us at info@arabellavoicestudio.com if you’d like to get more info about local meetups. Also, feel free to drop us a line and just let us know you’re interested. We have put together events in the past based on student interest!  

2. Student Meetups and Open Mics

We have held some student meetups in the past and also attended Open Mic at The Bebop as a group – both of these events were free to attend, and both were a huge hit! It’s a lot of fun getting to know singers and musicians in the area and just hanging out together. The informal atmosphere of a meetup or open mic creates a unique space where we can all just be ourselves. It’s not the same pressure as performing at a gig, and it gives students a great opportunity to get up and play or sing together, back one another up, and even play some original material. 

These little events are great places to network, talk about local gigs, informally promote different projects you’re working on, meet like-minded people, get advice from peers, check out what other people are working on, and maybe even meet some future collaborators! 

It doesn’t matter if you’re a singer, instrumentalist, songwriter, composer, teacher, professional performer, or all of the above… we’d love to get to know you and hear about what you’re up to creatively! Drop us a line and let us know you’re interested in getting involved with our meetups or open mic outings. Similar to our Headshot Meetups, we’re always eager to learn about our students’ interests and what they’d like to participate in!  

3. Virtual Lesson Exchange

Life gets expensive, and we know it can be difficult to afford private lessons when other bills eat up your financial bandwidth. That’s why we came up with a great solution that we are now offering to our students! Our Virtual Lesson Exchange is a program where you can receive one-on-one lesson time in exchange for providing Arabella’s Voice Studio with business administration support. 

How the program works: 

• We provide you with weekly voice lessons in exchange for a virtual 10-hour shift of administrative work. 
• You can spread your admin work out over the week however it works for you. 
• Hours are logged on a Monday-Friday basis.

Responsibilities include: 

• Writing Student Spotlights – Gathering information from student submissions through our website and writing a creative narrative showcasing a student’s success story in partnership with Arabella’s Voice Studio. 
• Client Check-ins – Creating a relationship with some of our students and gathering feedback that can help our company serve our community of musicians better and more efficiently. 
• Event Organization – Every event we put on (like the meetups mentioned above) requires some logistical management. Tasks like finding spaces to host our events, coordinating any vendors needed, and creating e-vites or event pages for our clients and students. 
• Studio Email –  Like every small business, there’s a lot of communication and coordination to manage daily from new student inquiries to managing scheduling within our studio. 

Most of these tasks can be managed via your cell phone and can be divided up throughout the day. If tackling some of these tasks in exchange for weekly voice lessons is something you’d be interested in, please click here. 

Wrap-up Thoughts

We love hearing from our students – past, present, and future – and we’re always open to ideas to help build our local Boston music community. If you have any ideas for clinics, workshops, or community events, or if you’d like to join our team and help run some of our community events, please let us know! We’d love to hear from you on our Facebook Page, Instagram, or feel free to email info@arabellavoicestudio.com.